somber celebration...?

"I thank God for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly, let it ring

Salute the ones who died
The ones that gave their lives
So we don't have to sacrifice
All the things we love

Like our chicken fried
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up..."
(The Zac Brown Band, Chicken Fried)

I was thinking about how strange we Americans can be... having a holiday like "Memorial Day"... one that is meant to be a day to honor the brave men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom that we commemorate by... BBQ's and Beer, maybe a little bit of baseball (or basketball... go Cavs!)...

Just as I was about to comment to a co-worker the apparent disconnect... the seemingly irreverent way we have of celebrating what (I was then thinking) should be one of our more somber days... the lines (above) from the song Chicken Fried popped into my head...

Attitude: Adjusted.

The service-people who died for our country... probably wouldn't have it any other way... their deaths were not so we could sit around and mourn their passing... or our own loss... their lives were given that we might enjoy the freedoms they were protecting... and what better way to honor them than by doing just that?

So weather you have made the ultimate sacrifice... or something as small as your best friend's wedding... to defend my freedom and the values of this nation... thank you!

won't you be, won't you be... authentic

Sometime ago, the cable network A&E ran an episode of their Biography series dedicated to Fred "Mister" Rogers. It was an interesting program that featured a number of interviews with Rogers, his family, and many of the people who had various opportunities to work with him over his long career. One of those colleagues was LaVar Burton. Many remember Burton from his work as Kunta Kinte in the ABC mini-series Roots, others as Lt. Geordi LaForge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is probably most universally known as the host of the PBS program, Reading Rainbow. It was that particular show which brought him into the same circles as Mr. Rogers.

Burton expressed, in his Biography interview, that his first reaction to meeting Fred Rogers was surprise.

He wasn't surprised by a missed place curse word, or an off-color joke. LeVar Burton was surprised by the fact that Fred Rogers and "Mister Rogers" were the same person. He had not expected that the fictionalized character would be such an accurate portrayal of the real man.

The ability to be who one is, all of the time, is truly a gift. Think about it.... how free would you feel if you always were the character people believed you to be? Never having to think up a cover story... never really having to explain yourself... where you were... who you were with...

Sounds liberating, doesn't it?

I would love for others to say that I was that authentic of a person... that they felt everything I did was not driven by ulterior motives, but by a desire to show myself for who I am... for who Christ has made me...

THAT would be one of the highest compliments, I think, I could be paid...

(Of course, all of this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain:
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.")

trying to be profound...

Part of the reason I don't blog, or write, as much as an aspiring writer/preacher should is because I struggle with the idea that what I have to say needs to be crafted just so... and that I am incapable of conveying my thoughts in a way that maximizes impact, yet minimizes the opportunity for misinterpretation. I have started literally hundreds of blog posts... bought countless paper journals... and scribbled endless notes and questions in the margins of more than one Bible (each, a different translation)... all in an effort to say something worth saying...

In my life, I don't seem to have this problem... I live my life as an exercise in free-association, or stream-of-consciousness... I also seem to not have a working valve between my brain and my mouth...

Yet... when I sit with pen in hand, or at a computer keyboard... my obsessive self-editing... self-censoring... prevents me from ever hitting the "submit" or "save" button...

It seems I work in reverse... I stutter when the material is prepared ahead of time... when I just "go with the flow"... I seem to have little trouble communicating...

Now... I'm at the place where I'm wondering if I have let something go "unsaid" (at least, in a recorded manner) something profound, all in my quest to say something... profound...

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