I can’t say ‘favorite’ because these are basically the earliest books I loved, or the latest books I have loved.
I’m stepping into a great big backyard. It’s familiar, yet new to me. It stretches on farther than I can see. It’s nice. I notice in the middle of the yard, there’s a small trailer. It makes me nervous because it looks…a little damaged. As I approach it, I can hear breathing sounds, quickening. There is a small window. I look in. I connect eyes briefly with a wild stallion and as soon as it sees me it panics. Jumping, kicking in the trailer. I fall backwards and then stumble up and away from the trailer.
Sitting on the porch I stare at the trailer. I can see it moving. The horse is pacing. I’m wondering what to do about it. I ignore it. I walk around it as far as possible, but I can’t stop thinking about it. At night I can hear the sounds.
So I throw a party. Loud music. Lots of people. There’s some caution tape around the trailer so no one gets hurt. And…for a moment…Yes! The sound is drowned. I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in a while. To keep it up, I drink, I laugh, I get a little reckless. Until I pass out.
But then the people are gone. The music has died. The drinks are out. And I can hear the horse and it’s angry. I’m angry. I can’t sleep, I can’t be free.
But I also have kerosene. I don’t know what this horse’s problem is, but it won’t calm down: I don’t really have a choice. Don’t judge me; I’m putting it out of its misery. As I pour the fuel around the trailer, the horse kicks wildly. The trailer may collapse before I’m done.
It doesn’t.
I watch the flames safely from the porch. I don’t know if I should say some words or something, but I wouldn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know its name. The trailer was moving, but now it isn’t. I feel sad.
The sadness kept me up all night, but the dawn’s light gives me hope. Smoke rises from the burnt out trailer which is still pretty intact. I approach slowly. Why am I so scared? As peer around the corner I’m breathless; I hear nothing inside.
But I see them. Eyes, open and sad but fierce. It kicks and neighs; I scream and recoil. Backwards, I fall.
Darkness.
Silence.
I must have hit my head. I’m on the ground and I slowly realize I’ve been lying just a few feet from a wild creature trapped in an attempted murder site. As my eyes regain focus they fall upon the horse’s eyes. It’s lying down, but its head is raised. I never noticed how beautiful its eyes are. There’s fire still in them.
I climb to my feet. So does the horse. I slowly approach. It breathes faster. Its knees are quivering and I realize mine are too. I can feel the hair on the back of my neck. It breathes loudly and I want to run. I have to run.
But I don’t. I just stay. As I keep breathing, I notice its scars. They’re from me. It hurts me to look at them. But I keep looking at them. The horse keeps breathing, too.
I stay. It hurts, but I stay. I just…stay.
I’ve lost track of time, but…sometime…later I notice the door on the back of the trailer. I do something risky: I unlock it. The horse watches me. I throw open the door and light streams in. The horse shivers and watches me.
It trusts me, so I climb on and we ride out together into the great country that surrounds us, faster than I could ever go on my own, feeling a dangerous wildness and an exhilarating trust.
If your skin is white, like mine, I urge you to take the online Implicit Bias test conducted by Harvard University. They have several, but I’m specifically talking about the White-Black bias test.
You won’t like the results. Most of us white folk put a lot of energy into appearing to be unbiased based on race. Most of us get very defensive if called a racist. I admit to having a certain amount of ill-founded pride in being ‘very tolerant’ towards race — so I was very disappointed to find the test revealed that I had a certain amount of implicit bias. In other words, I automatically have a stronger positive feeling towards people of lighter skin than darker skin.
My first response (which is typical for people taking the test) was to blame the test. After all, I think racism is evil, and all prejudice based on skin color is wrong, and even dumb. But what the test measures is our ‘gut response,’ formed before the thinking part of the brain kicks in. Just take it and you’ll see what I mean.
Now that I’ve calmed down, I know it’s true. My experiences, conversations, media, and curricula have taught me to see dark skin in a more negative way. Think of a Disney villain…I’ll bet they have darker skin than the Hero. How many Bad Guys can you think of that have dark skin? How many mugshots have you seen on the news of folks with dark skin? I didn’t ask for this. But I am responsible for my response. These experiences form my automatic bias, and if I pass them on uncritically…well, I’m not one of the Good Guys.
I’m not a Bad Guy for having implicit bias, but my responsibility is to stop uncritically accepting the ways that my bias gets passed on or tolerated. I have to start with myself, so I’ve developed a list of ‘explicit biases’ that I want to train myself in. Just as our negative implicit biases take a while to learn, so will my correction to them.
When I encounter a person that is culturally, socially, economically distant from me, I run through a list. I affirm in my head that this person:
It might seem clumsy, but I already make those assumptions about people I find very similar to me. Either way, I am convinced that my moral responsibility to change racism does not stop at passively deciding something is wrong, but includes actively changing the way it works through me. In this case, it starts with rewiring my brain.
I’ve been finding myself feeling frazzled pretty regularly which is something that happens when I haven’t taken time to review everything going on in my life from a ‘big picture’ perspective. Tasks are essential, but without a larger sense of goals and priorities they just become turns around the hamster wheel.
The problem for me is that I cannot get the big picture perspective without slowing down, stepping back, and doing honest-to-god thinking. And because I’m an introvert, I cannot do that in the midst of other people. I really have to take some time by myself to do that.
My office has a door and walls. The walls are permanent and meant to keep the environment out, and me in. The door, however, opens and closes – alternatively allowing things going in and out and then stopping things going in and out.
I’ve not been treating the door that way. I see the open door as symbolic of my openness to people. I like people and God knows I want them to like me. So I leave it open almost all the time. As if the door were a wall and of course I don’t want to put up walls between me and people.
But the alternative is not between walls and unrestricted access: I have a door. My door is here to selectively enforce boundaries that I – and I imagine, everyone else – need. There are times when I need to temporarily close off open access to me so that I can do some deep, reflective work. I may only need this a couple hours all week. But I do need it, and the door helps me take that time.
I need to be able to close my door without feeling like I’m putting up a wall. I’m just closing the door now, so I can better welcome others through it later.
I spent way too much of 2017 sick.
My goal for 2018 is to be much healthier. Some causes of illness are out of my control (like having small children in the house) but many are in my control. Here are some things I should do to be healthier:
Back in my freshman year of college, my roommate Jon had gotten involved with an on-campus Christian group that was also associated with – I think – Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Jon invited me to an event they organized and I was game. It wasn’t the kind of thing we often did, but I seem to remember a potential romantic relationship for one of us was at play.
The event was an old fashioned BBQ with hay rides and everything on a farm outside of Gainesville. Really outside: I can remember how bright the stars were out there. The most notable part, however, was that this BBQ was hosted at the personal home of Sonny Tillman, the founder of Sonny’s BBQ. He is something of a legend in those parts. Guess he had a soft spot for FCA and provided his farm and all the Sonny’s food we could eat. nAnd I was ready for it. Doing a lot of cycling in those days, I could put away some calories. As I went through the line, I loaded up my plate with everything I could: pulled pork, beans, garlic bread – oh and ribs! I have to have ribs! My plate was full and then some, and I had to walk carefully back to a table.
By chance, I happened to cross paths with Sonny himself as I was delicately navigating the crowded barn. He looked down at my overloaded plate and then at the 150 pound awkward 18-year-old holding it and said, in at least six syllables of deep southern drawl, “Hungry, boy?”
I grinned sheepishly and said, “Yeah.”
He said, “You better finish that plate, you hear?”
And in one of the proud moments of my life up to that point, I did.
When I fall apart under stress it looks like this:
My mom recently told me that when I was born, she sincerely prayed for me to have to particular qualities that would help me in my life.
It’s funny because when my son was born, I also felt a deep desire to pray for something in particular for Henry. It’s hard to want something for someone who will have to eventually become his own person. I agree with Merlin Mann that the absolute best you can do for your child is allow them to be messed up in their own way. So I worry: if I pray for Henry to be calm, is it just because I don’t like noise? If I pray for him to be artistic, am I already trying to live vicariously through him?
So here’s my prayer as I hold him in the hospital. I want him to know depth. I believe the world and every part of it is deep. I want him to just know that whatever he stands on, there are tectonic layers and plates stretching through time and space and all resting on a molten core that infinitely provides energy for everything he does.
As much as I can avoid passing along fears, inadequacies, and all sorts of shortcomings, I want him to know that deep down, underneath his own quirks, that he is not alone. That there is a richness to the soil he is planted in and to never stop drawing from it.
When I was pretty young I read an article in Guitar Player about Richie Havens. Thirty years after the world saw him in the film Woodstock, he was still touring the country and playing threehundredsomething shows a year. You gotta respect the work ethic, but for someone who had been around for a while with many albums under his belt and connections with various organizations…why would he continue to tour almost nonstop?
A couple years later, I was working stage crew in Clearwater and Richie Havens was playing. Before he went on, somehow he found out that my friend Jeff and I were fans. I guess it touched him that he had fans that were only like 15 years old. He closed the door to the greenroom and played a couple songs. For an audience of two. I figured out how he could keep up his touring schedule: he just loved to share the music.
I thought about this story about two days ago. Richie Havens died today. If that sounds like a coincidence, it’s not. I think about this story about once a week anyways. Probably always will.
I just don’t want to do it.
Solution: Just do it.
I’m feeling guilty about not completing the task yet, but I would rather avoid it then deal with that feeling and the consequences. This one usually makes itself worse.
Solution: Forgive myself for the delay. Then, just do it.
I need the last minute pressure of the approaching deadline to force me give up on my silly perfectionism and accept less-than-perfect work from myself.
Solution: Manage expectations about what kind of time and energy I can put into a project/task, then just do it.
I’m nursing the task in my own task list because it keeps me in control of the project, instead of putting the ball in someone else’s court where it belongs.
Solution: Sharing is caring, and I’m in the caring business. Let someone else do it.
