Greetings, Humans!

I've decided to succumb to the peer pressure and start a blog. Whether it's an exercise in self-reflection and communal sharing or an indulgence in pure narcissism I'm still not sure. Maybe it's a little of both. I guess my main goal here is a simple one: tell the truth.

I was watching a wonderful special on Garrison Keillor last night on PBS. He was discussing the renaming, in 1994, of the St. Paul, MN theater that is home to Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, from 'The World Theater' to 'The Fitzgerald Theater', after writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. He quoted Fitzgerald who said, "What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story." I certainly believe this to be true, and the statement suites the splendid candor propagated weekly by Keillor and his delightful Prairie Home team.

I certainly have plenty I am ashamed of or at least embarrassed about, some of it rightfully so, but much of it unnecessarily, and I would venture to guess that I'm not so different from most people in this regard. So, basically, this blog is about being human, or failing at being human, or trying to become more human. Here's my two cents for the day:

I've been thinking a lot lately about being content. Like most things in life, contentment lies on a spectrum, with an endlessly unsatisfied and staunch perfectionism at one end, and total apathy at the other. Also, like most things in life, I think the goal is to strike a balance between the two. Everything in moderation, as I like to say (and often do). I personally tend to err on the side of "endlessly unsatisfied and staunch perfectionism", and I think we live in a society that tends to cultivate this sort of "Gotta be the best! Gotta be number one!" mindset. So I've been asking myself a radical question lately: "David, hypothetically speaking, what would happen if you were actually content with yourself and your life, exactly as it is now?" In Philipians 4:11-12 Paul writes, "Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." (NKJV)

It is so easy to attach our contentment and joy to something we do not have and say, "As soon as I have X, life will be good, and I will be content," or, "As soon as this day, this week, this year is behind me, then I will be happy." But as soon as we get X, we inevitably find a Y to start wanting and needing, and our happiness becomes entirely dependent on the acquisition of just. one. more. thing., be it personal, emotional, physical, or mental. This sort of thinking is so terribly seductive. But the tragic result is that it chokes the life out of the present moment and ostracizes it to some point in the distant future when we finally have all our ducks in a row and everything is running smoothly and according to plan and there are no more clouds to rain on our parade. But we all know that day is never going to come. This is life. Right here, right now. This untidy, un-P.C. rattling of the world is life, and I think at some level we want to postpone life because we are afraid of truly living, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of being different, afraid of being original or beautiful or bold. So we attach our contentment to something we don't have yet, and then when we have it, we find something else to attach it to that we don't have, and we just keep postponing life, telling ourselves that once we have everything we need, and everything is in its right place, and everything makes sense to us, then we'll start living. But that day is never going to come. John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." It's now, or never.

So the flip-side of all this doom and gloom is finding contentment, finding joy, in the simple things. I've started praying fairly regularly again, a practice I had lost track of for a number of years. And while prayer is a vast and mysterious practice, its function in my life of late has been relatively straightforward. More than anything, the act of prayer has given me the occasion to step back, breathe in, and really take stock of all the things in my life I have to be grateful for, all the causes for joy exploding out of every moment, if only I open my eyes to see them: A warm bed to wake up in every morning. Two delightful doggies that are always happy to see me, no matter how magnificently I have succeeded or how terribly I have failed. Food in the fridge and pantry when I open their doors. The burn in my legs as I ride my bike around town. The breathtaking Colorado landscape. The most beautiful, incredible, inspiring people whose lives I look upon as great works of fiction being written with every passing moment, and whose pages I turn so expectantly. The very fact the we live in a universe (not a planet, a universe) capable of yielding consciousness. If the universe had expanded just a bit more quickly, it would be expanding still, but if it had expanded just a bit more slowly, it would have collapsed back in on itself again, and in either case, we would not be here to talk about it or ponder its significance. When you get right down to it, the very fact of existence is, in itself, more than cause enough for explosive joy, and yes, a deep sense of contentment.

The novelist, essayist, and preacher Frederick Buechner writes:

Who knows whether there is life on any other planet anywhere else in the universe, but there is life on this planet. And what is life like? Think of not knowing what life is and then finding out: a book suddenly learning how to read; a rock jutting out into the sea suddenly knowing the thump and splatter of the waves, the taste of salt. You are alive. It needn't have been so. It wasn't so once, and it will not be so forever. But it is so now. And what is it like: to be alive in this maybe one place of all places anywhere where life is? Live a day of it and see. Take any day and be alive in it. Nobody claims that it will be entirely painless, but no matter. It is your birthday and there are many presents to open. The world is to open.

It rattles softly at the window like the fingers of a child as I sit on the edge of the tub to tie my shoes. It comes down the glass in crooked paths to stir my heart absurdly as it always has, and dear God in Heaven, the sound of it on the roof, on the taut black silk of the umbrella, and the catalpa leaves, dimpling the glassy surface of the peepering pond. It is the rain and it tastes of silver; it is the rain, and it smells of christening. The rain is falling on the morning of my first day, and everything is wet with it: wet earth, wet fur, the smell of the grass when it is wet, the smell of the wet pavement of the city and the sound of tires on the wet streets, the wet hair and face of a woman doing errands in the rain. Wherever my feet take me now, it will be to something wet, something new, that I have never seen before (The Alphabet of Grace, pp. 35-37).

I have a tendency to look back on the past with an unhealthy level of nostalgia, at times wondering if the best days of my life are behind me. Of course, I in no way believe this silly thought to be true, but just for speculation's sake, I sometimes ask myself, "What if the best days of your life are behind you and the rest will be just so-so, plain, average, ordinary, mediocre? What if all your great adventures and romances are already finished?" And every time I realize that even if this thought were true, which I certainly don't believe it to be, but if it were, my stunning realization is that there is enough joy and preciousness in one single moment of existence to sustain a whole lifetime. There is enough love in one simple memory to make any number of ordinary, average, mediocre days so much more than worth it. And truth be told, there is no such thing as an average, mediocre, or ordinary day. There is wonder, and joy, and sweet chaos to be tasted in every moment, no matter how commonplace its appearance. I think as we learn to recognize this strange beauty and cultivate true contentment and gratitude within ourselves, as we surrender our insatiable needs and wants on the altar of joy, we open ourselves up to whole new realms of possibility, whole new ways of living and seeing and experiencing life. We become liberated from the tyranny of trite desire and are at last free to encounter all those things we sought in the first place. It is that profound paradox that Christ speaks of when he says, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39 NKJV).

And so I am obliged, compelled by the very fact of life itself, to be content in moments as they pass, whether they be lovely, painful, sad, or entirely ordinary. As Garrison Keillor said, "I was afraid of living an ordinary life, and I realized, that's what everybody gets. And that's good enough."