26Jul, 2010

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 6 – Building and Defending a Love Fort

Posted by Don
1

My dog Lucy has been covering the blog for me lately, as I’ve been preoccupied trying to get some lint out of my belly button. It tickles so much but I can’t get it all out. Anyway, here’s her blog today. I’ll be back tomorrow reviewing Andrew Peterson’s new record, Counting Stars. It’s a lovely record that makes you want to cut the top off your car and go driving at night through the hills. But for now, here’s some thoughts from Goose: So Don and I have a good thing going. It’s just us up here in the condo, though it seems like we have somebody in the guest room every night. I like when we have guests but I wanted to say something about why I bark so loud when they first come to the door. I wanted to say why I run to the door and shout when I hear their suitcases rolling down the decking toward our door. I want to say why I keep barking even when Don pulls on my collar and tells me their name. I even growl sometimes but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. I don’t bark for long [...]

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23Jul, 2010

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 5 – How to Love and be Loved

Posted by Don
2

Every so often Lucy, my dog, will take my blog for the day. It’s nice to get a break, honestly. I think she has some wise things to say. Here’s Lucy’s most recent blog: I pretty much like everybody. I don’t like them instantly, though, but if they show the slightest bit of niceness I like them immediately after and I like them a lot. When somebody first comes to the door I bark at them to let them know this is where we live. I set very clear boundaries. And then I get so excited to see them and be with them I just about explode. When my bladder was smaller I would just pee right there on the floor. I peed because I was very excited and also to show that I would be submissive and I wasn’t going to threaten them. Not all dogs are as trusting, but that’s another subject. Here’s the thing about people, though. Not everybody is going to like you back. But that’s okay. You shouldn’t hardly think about that at all. A dog can only take so much love. I have more than I even know what to do with. Here’s how [...]

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22Jul, 2010

The Context for Spirituality is not Spirituality

Posted by Don
1

I don’t read very many books about faith. And I don’t listen to very many sermons about faith. I’ve not known exactly why for some time, or at least until lunch yesterday. Those books were fine (I may have even written one or two) but they didn’t seem to be very applicable to my life. And it’s never actually helped me to “work on my spirituality or my relationship with Jesus” either. What has helped me is finding myself lost in the woods and calling out to God, looking for wisdom in the scriptures. Yesterday, at lunch, my friend David mentioned he’d spent some time in Colorado with the guys at Ransomed Heart. David used to work with them and went back to hang out with them for a weekend in the mountains. He mentioned that one of the guys reminded him that spirituality was not a context. I asked David what the guy meant, and Dave said what he meant was that you learn about God while learning to fly a plane or raising a child or planting crops in a field. It’s not a hard, fast rule to be sure, but the idea is that sitting around looking [...]

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21Jul, 2010

On Writing: I am a Skeleton with a Penis at a Typewriter

Posted by Don
1

For years, my favorite poet has been Billy Collins. I’ve shared his poetry before on this blog. As I’ve helped Lucy write her blog, we’ve warmed up our writing minds with poems from Billy. He helps me engage my heart in a way that isn’t too sentimental or affected. Anyway, today I came across this old poem called Purity and it’s one of my favorites. It’s great advice for writers, too. It’s about coming to the typewriter completely vulnerable. And not fake vulnerability like the hacks, the guys who talk about how bad they feel about how many women they’ve slept with (a sly way of bragging about sexual prowess) or about how humbled they are for having won the prestigious blogger of the week award from the local quilting circle (are you really humbled by that? You know you like those old ladies swooning over you) but the real thing, the vulnerability that costs you, that can even shrink your readership. I had lunch with a friend last week that had quit drinking. He’s an artist, a writer, and I asked about his career. He’d just released a new project. He told me he was so busy trying not [...]

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19Jul, 2010

CNN.COM and David Gentiles

Posted by Don
1

John Blake at CNN has spent about a year or so on an article that hit CNN.Com today. He was certainly one of the more thoughtful interviews I’ve ever done, if not the most thoughtful. John and I sat down in Atlanta last Christmas, and have talked several times since. I assumed the story got lost, but John kept thinking about it, and mostly he kept thinking about David Gentiles, my old mentor who died last year. John would call and say “I feel like I knew him” and “There just aren’t many guys like this, are there?” For the article, he interviews Ariele, David’s daughter, and Rick Diamond, David’s long-time friend and fellow pastor at Journey. I love the fact that David’s love for people has left such a legacy that people are still being inspired. If you’ve not looked at CNN.Com today, you can check it out here.

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