You have spent most of your life being a good person, and that is nice.  Me too.  I used to be (ahem) clergy, so I know what it means to be impressively good (at least, as far as anyone else knows).

Every writer fights her internal editor.  My internal editor is Sybil.  He has at least 57 distinct personalities, all of them very upright and well-dressed.  Many of them suffer from male pattern baldness, but that is beside the point.  My IE takes on the look and attitude of real people I know and says to me: “If you write that what will these other upstanding citizens in your head think of you?  They’ll probably think you’re dirty or some sort of scoundrel.  Write something pretty.”

Am I alone here?

I wrote myself a note in the fancy-fancy notebook as a warm-up exercise.  It is to me, but I’ll share it with those of you who are denizens of decency by day and writers by night:

“Within the first book of the bible there is murder, incest, rape, polygamy, drunken debauchery, war, oppression, sodomy, racism, greed, arrogance, and piles of men who are described as having “known his wife.”

There are enough Christian books about some beautiful Amish prude, whose husband is tender, sexless and hard-working, whose beard feels bristly across her makeupless-face.  There are enough Christian paintings of churches in dark vales lit with an interior incandescent bulb providing light for the rest of nature, which must include a deer who is panteth-ing for water.

God is not in the business of redeeming the ideal.  Redeem a rape, something horrible.  Maybe it’s as simple as living to tell about it.  That is a God universally believable.  All of this other perfectionism is an expression of the wild religious ego; a false, impenitent self, hiding behind knit-together fig leaves.  In your work, give God a moment where he must forsake Christ on the cross because of the sin of your characters, otherwise you are not an artist, and probably not a Christian.

Don’t write a Christian story.  Write a good story instead.”

In the dreamy moments where does your mind wander?  There is a choice.  Do you prefer to go back to a better time, or do you dare attempt to fashion the unknown future?

Faith used to describe those who dared to imagine a heaven-inspired future.  In an ironic culture, faith has become a synonym for fear.

Faith perspective

The world was created good, then derailed.  There was a moment of bliss, followed by endless generations of inherited blight.  We want the bliss, but the blight is between our teeth.

Moving forward is painful and filled with trepidation.  But do not be deceived: there is no going back.  There is nothing to go back to.  The AM radio days – gone.  Black and white ballgame days – gone.

Milk and Honey World

Ancient Israel was promised a land that flowed with milk and honey.  If you go to your refrigerator chances are you can easily procure a glass of milk, be it soy, rice, chocolate or regular cow milk.  Within the matter of a couple steps you’ll probably also find a pot of honey, a squeezy, plastic bear, in my case.  I live in a land flowing with refrigerated, pasteurized milk and Grade AA clover honey.

But this aint no Promised Land.  Because the Promised Land is always coming.  It is always in the future.  Hopeful artists strain toward it, create with a sunlit future in mind.  They dream of it.  Pray for it.  Bleed in that direction.

When we arrive in tomorrow, we’ll screw most things up, leaving the next generation a Promised Land dream.  (Am I right, baby-boomers and reformed hippies?)  This is the order of life and generations.

Trains to History

Sadly, there are still trains in the stations preparing to hurdle backward to 1950′s Americana, to Reagan or to JFK, to Egypt.  These rusty vehicles are piloted by fearful men, self-styled engineers of a prettier history.

I wonder how many Jackie Robinsons, Moses-es, MLKs, Reagans, Davids, Ghandis, Lincolns, Churchills have been herded onto the reverse train.  How much more difficult will our future be without those willing to break barriers, stop impending wars, engage in necessary wars and pray extravagant prayers?

The scriptures conclude with, “Behold I make all things new.”  There is never any indication that God will enter the business of rewinding toward a more genteel Egypt.

Dream and create forward.

Or be angry and cynical.

You can make a living either way.  Fear, anger and cynicism provide easy external validation.  Throngs of people are waiting to join your protest, read your book or blog, and watch you on TV.

Making art or inspiring hope of any kind is very lonely.  Validations are few and usually internal.  It takes a hundred years for the dream to come true.  You lose all your money and credibility along the way.  You’ll be ousted by the short-sighted.

The noble job of artists, leaders and entrepreneurs is to grasp their imagined future and rip it backward into the present.  Of course you’ll be wrong about some things and you’ll screw them up, but at least you won’t be surrounded by the angry mob you’ve riled-up who have boarded your return-to-nowhere train.

Your thoughts, please…

unaccomplished writer.  unsolicited advice.

Step 2: Realize: the pen has never been mightier.

Last week the e-book overtook the real book in sales at Amazon.com.  Slightly more people chose to read books from a Kindle, an iPad, their phones or a computer screen than from a traditional page.  Before the rise of the e-book, the publishing world was already unraveling.  You made it happen.  You, with the small blog; it’s your fault.

We destroyed the long-standing rules of publication simply by pressing the publish button in our efforts to gain online readers.  People found value in your free work and in the connection with other people that your blog offered.

Consider the time your readers spent reading your last thousand-word post.  Time-on-site is a valuable metric.  As a writer, it is the one I pay closest attention.  Three and a half minutes to read the post; that’s three and a half minutes they will not spend reading better, more established, traditionally published authors.  Maybe 1 out of 50-70 readers will leave a comment.  This takes 4 minutes, sometimes longer.  Now your next reader, she will read your post, the latest comments and she may comment on the comments.  Voila, community.  All you did was write the post, but a few of your readers are now spending nearly 10 minutes investing in the community you’ve created.

Of course this reading-time thievery has negative consequences too.  Fewer page-book readers mean that those of us hoping to crack into traditional publishing have fewer potential buyers for our product.  This competition for readers means that only our best work will survive.

No smart business will risk their future on some hack with a blog who may not deliver sales.  Fewer of us will be traditionally signed.  Bye-bye Oprah’s couch and the dream of finally being as reclusive as we wanna be.  The business now requires constant connection.

Your blog is a community; community takes time.

When a reader commits time to your community they are giving you their free minutes as opposed to say, Melville, who is dead and doesn’t mind.  Isn’t it great to be so powerful?  Of course you are also borrowing time from living authors (who need to eat) by entertaining or instructing their would-be readers.  This dilemma demonstrates the power of your blog as a community-building tool.  Seth Godin, in a talk given to independent publishers, said in essence,

The books you are publishing are merely the souvenirs of community.

If this is true, and I believe it is; the game has been forever changed.  (You really should listen to this talk.)  Marketing becomes even more tribal, our networks more important.

We know how this community game works.  In order to build our own community, we must be willing to build others.  This not only rewards us with indirect traffic from related communities, but depending on whose community you invest in, can also improve your writing.

Look for writers with blogs who are better writers than you with a slightly larger audience than yours.  Learn from them.  Get involved by leaving solid comments.  You will get free exposure; so don’t be campy.  Find a couple of writers with smaller audiences than yours and leave them equally valuable comments.  What you receive, you must give.  There is no area of life in which this principle is not applicable.  Be genuine; be generous.  Retweet.

Writing well or creating any sort of art is the most selfish pursuit.  You do it for you until it comes time to share your work.  Then all of your ME time belongs to anyone who cares to read.  Blogging can be abject narcissism, or it can be a nexus for your readers.

Slow, sustainable community building

We get the newsletters telling us how Joey from the Bronx earned a 6-figure income in 6 months of blogging.  Good for you, Joey.  The sales spiel is always the same, “We can help you become an A-lister too.”  Sure you can.

You visit Joey’s site.  Joey blogs about blogging: tips for SEO, how to master Twitter, how to create better spam.  If Joey is a real person at all, he should be publically executed because no one should JUST blog about blogging, especially if you are a writer.

My theorem for growing your writer’s blog is opposite of what 6-figured Joey might sell you.  Your writer’s blog is a community-building business tool.  Businesses that are most enjoyable for the proprietor grow steadily and often slowly.  The writing/business balance has never been more important because you, the writer, have never had so much power.

Even if you pay your bills by doing a job, writing is your business.  Developing your craft is working within your business.  Blogging is working on your business.  In the current market, would-be writers must do both.

Remember: small to medium

Your job is not to grow from small to mega.  Your job is to grow from small to medium.  Screw six-figured, short-cutting Joey who cannot write his way home from a wide-open field.  He makes his dollars by advertising.  You want to make yours from art.  Nothing wrong with advertising, but we cannot afford to take cheap short-cuts.

While it won’t hurt to bone up on the business of blogging by taking a couple of online courses; I fear for you, tender writerly-guy.  Your success as a blogger may impede your success as a writer.  Small, steady growth is always sustainable.

Writers with blogs must meet their audience, converse with them and invest time.  Chris Guillebeau, a tremendous blogger and good writer will respond to all of his readers’ email (I’ve tested his claim; it’s true).  This goes a long way.  You with the small blog, email a thank you note to every subscriber.  It matters, and it legitimizes your efforts.  Communication with readers tells them that you are not going away.

The sticky subject of blogging before you have a book for sale.

Many established writers will poke fun of blogging writers without books to sell.  Of course they will; we’ve already established that your blog is indirectly stealing their sales.  Publishers will only consider signing you if you already have an audience; the infamous Catch-22.

I don’t have anything to sell my readers yet.  Oh well, I am pre-selling.  You probably are too.  Ignore the nay-sayers.  Build your audience.  The discouraging writers are not part of your community anyway.  Forget them.  You must blog.  Just don’t confuse your blogging time with your writing time.

Realize your power.  You’ve already done your part to destroy the publishing industry.  Now we must rebuild it.  Readers need us.

I’m on vacation in 32 hours.  I’ve got a guest post lined up, and I plan on posting semi-regularly as well.  I may drift from this series for a few days.  If so, I’ll be back.  Write on.

Step 1: Decide to be a writer (or an artist) with a blog.

Part two (Part one here) of a week-long series: How to Grow a Medium-Sized Blog for Writers and Creatives.

I used to blog about religion.

The Bible is a long, long book.  Chapter 19, shortly after “In the beginning,” there is a story about two sisters who get their father pass-out drunk so they can have sex with him in order to bear children.  Chapter 19.  Their father is technically one of the good guys.  It is in the Bible.

There are other long Christian books.  None that I’ve read involve incestuous drunkenness.  Books about the Book are dull and safe.  Three years ago I read a book by a well-known pastor; I suspected some confessions.  The word “confessions” was in the title.

He wrote about how he didn’t like some people.  His job was hard.  He cared about his image.  I mean, he did everything but make an actual confession.  I read the whole book because I hoped he’d confess something so that I could forgive him.  Whenever he came close to admitting a flaw, he patched it up for me.  In essence he said, “Here’s how I became better; and you can too!”  So I hate that guy now (forgive me, please), but he sold enough copies to warrant more non-confessional-type books about how to be awesomer.

The book made me want to confess things.  Things I didn’t even do.  So many people write books about being great.  Becoming better.

So I hated life… and decided to become a writer.  I started Ream of Paper.  No one came.  Maybe religion doesn’t sell because people are used to hearing half-honest confessions, and I’m only slightly more truthful than the writer of the terrible book.  I got depressed; I watched The Apprentice.

A crappy book and Bret Michaels saved my life.

Think about it: There are no top-40 songs about the hormonal workings of love, but there are millions of love songs.  The singers of these songs sell love, not pheromones.  The 80′s proved that you don’t even have to write good songs in order to make a living from writing songs about love.  You just have to write them.

Before Bret Michaels appeared on the Apprentice, he wrote a little song called Every Rose Has Its Thorn, a terrible ballad that any of us could sing at a karaoke bar.  I’m a tenor.  I will join you, if you’re willing to sing alto harmony.  Bret Michaels was on the Apprentice because he wrote sappy love songs and sold them.  Not vice versa.

On your small writer/artist blog, you are a young Bret Michaels. Write a bad song.  Write a better song.  Join a band. Fight with CeCe.  Write more songs.  Sell them on your blog.  This is where you promote your records.  Just be honest, please.

The non-confessional book reminded me that writers make confessions and big bold statements, or they invent imperfect worlds similar to our own to tell their stories.  It reminded me that even the Bible is full of shameful stories with unhappy endings.  And Bret reminded me that I do not have to be the best songwriter in the world to sell records.  When you and I write, we write about the feeling of love not the science behind it.

So I started writing more honestly.  I started writing about transformation, and people started reading more.  I got a few links.  Wow, I became a medium-sized blog in only 500 days. (That is tongue-in-cheek in case you didn’t catch it.)

My early mistake was in my approach to blogging: “I am a Christian blogger, and I want to be a writer.

Insert any faith or set of staunch ideals for mine.  Feminist, Atheist, Buddhist, Republican, Socialist; unless you are building your blog as an echo-chamber, you will not achieve an audience for your writing.  And your writing, my friends, is what is for sale.

The correction: “I am a writer with a blog, and I’m trying to live a little bit like Christ.

It took me a long time to admit this because I used to be paid for my faith similar to the guy who wrote the bad book.  You are at an advantage.  Your ideals have probably not been attached to a paycheck.  You probably do not feel the pressure to paint acceptably; like Thomas Kinkade when you’re feeling Van Gogh.  There is nothing wrong with Kinkade; he’s got his thing with the lights and the buildings on hills.  I’m not him; you aren’t either.

I no longer blog about religion.

If you’re a writer with a small blog with goals of becoming medium, you must tell your truth.  My faith is often expressed in my writing.  Sometimes it is not.  It does not matter.  I am a writer with a blog, and my writing is fueled by certain ideals.

Beginning writers with blogs confuse the medium with the message with their underlying ideals.  Photographers with blogs, for example, do not face the problem writers do.  Writing and blogging feel like the same thing.  A photographer understands that she must continue to take pictures, rather than describe photo-shoots.  Writers with blogs must write far beyond what they post for public consumption.

Writers with blogs must be careful to separate message, medium and ideals.

You are an artist with a blog and a set of ideals.

First: you must always write for you.  I know this is selfish. There is no other way to go about the craft.  When someone else buys something you’ve written: bonus. Sure you write a second-draft for your audience, but never sit down to do your business with them in mind.

Unless you are the sort of unfortunate lunatic who bears your soul to everyone you meet, unfiltered.  Then go ahead.  But expect to be ignored.

Your blog is not your art; it is a tool to help you sell your work.

While it is important to have a nice, clean gallery, you must hang things up for display.  Even if you have not reached the point of exchanging money for your work, you are selling yourself (more on this tomorrow).  Blogging is a sales medium, a place to create community.  Not your art.

Your ideals are not your art; they are fuel.

This was my biggest mistake; don’t repeat it.  Spouting ideals will add subscribers.  Leave this for people who are paid to spout ideals.  You are paid to reveal motion, motivation, tension and character.

Ideals make you hurt and hope.  The hurt and hope is the story or the picture or the painting or the film.  If I am not sympathetic to your ideals by way of your creative work, you should be happy having a small blog; you’re not ready for a medium audience.  I do not even have to agree with your worldview to join your audience, nor must you accept mine if I’m doing my job.  Let religious and political leaders titter over the how’s and why’s.

You’re a writer.  Show the struggle.

The nineteenth chapter of the Bible is an incest scene.  Why is this scene so close to the beginning?  I don’t know.  The main character is a flawed good-guy.  Or is he a bad-guy who is trying to be good?  This is a question for theologians and moralists.  I don’t think it matters.  He is a good character; I know a lot of people like him.

Write about him; don’t judge him.  Introduce us to him on your blog.  Now you’re heading toward medium-sized blog.

Photo Credit: Witheyes from flickr.com

writing and living well.

Since I am a writer, I do not fall in love with principles.  Most often principles are hat-stands designed for people who wear hats to cover bald spots.  Sometimes they are true.  In his book Outliers: The Story of Success (Amazon Affiliate Link), Malcom Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours of practice as if these hours were some sort of principle.  Immediately I want to dismiss him, until he stops writing about Bill Gates and starts to include composers; then I must listen.

I write Ream of Paper with about 7,000 hours of practice under my belt, not enough to be great by Gladwell’s or any other set of standards.  But I practice.  Think about, and I mean give it a quick guesstimate, not the whole of your afternoon, how many hours you have spent writing.  How many hours have you practiced?

My first crack at writing a novel, I chalk up to pure diligence.  Your collection of poetry that no one will buy is not a loss; it is a reminder of 1,500 hours of practice.  The words, everyone of them a reminder that no one is reading 18th Century imitation lyrics.  See, you’ve learned a great deal from your practice.

Since I have a blog (and since you are presently reading it), I am occasionally inclined to believe that because a few hundred readers show up each day, I have somehow bypassed the practicing stages.  You fall into this trap too.  We don’t need practice; we have readers.  Therefore you and I are brilliant already in this digital age.

But we’re not.  We’re still practicing.

Your notebook, the one you’ve pushed aside in favor of the WordPress Dashboard is awaiting your return.  You should go and scribble in it for an hour.  If you’d like, you can later revise your practice and post it to your blog to show your many, many generous readers how far you’ve come in your 4,000 hours of practice.  I do not think this is a bad habit.  Receiving criticism and rejection properly also requires around 10,000 hours.  Don’t roil in it.  Feel it and then go practice some more.

A little over a decade ago I bought my first guitar, a cheapie with a short in the pickup.  For about a year I practiced everyday for half an hour, sometimes two or three hours, and then I rushed to the stage.  I was not ready for the stage, truthfully I am still under-qualified.  The stage did not teach me to love the guitar even more, it taught me to love the stage; unfortunately I am good at being on stages.  I have thousands of hours of practice on the stage.  People love a vulnerable rock star.

So you have a blog, or you could think of it as a stage.  And you love your blog; you should.  Don’t practice being on the stage too much, because your goal is not to work the hell out of your stat counter; your goal is to write better and to connect a reader to herself by proxy of your work.  To play that guitar like it demands to be played when no one is watching.

Whatever aspirations you might have, whether in banking or in business or in art, require 10,000 hours of patient, mostly unnoticed practice.  This is more true if you are starting over in a brand new field.  Transforming your work-life will involve taking what you’ve learned from past experiences, and either breaking from those experiences or transferring the knowledge you’ve gained into a new collection of 10,000 hours.

The accolades and critiques you receive along the path to where you are going, neither spurn them nor digest them.  Look at them.  Listen to them.  Remember them.  They are only fuel for more practice. You are getting better.  You’re at 8,000 hours, genius-status is only a year or two away.

Do not be fooled by the stage.  Your stat counter is only a tool; you could do without it.

Later this week I will refine a bit of my notebook practice on RoP for demonstrative purposes.  On that date, you should “lay it on about how groovy I am,” (old song lyrics) or supply some critique.  Because I need the practice.

Photo Credit: Pensiero (Stefano Corso) from Flickr.com

I think the day after God made the sun, the third day, he woke up to it’s wooing the following morning and began forming the fish and the birds, resigning, “Back to the ol’ grind.”  It must have been a rough day, the fourth.  Fish, for all of their intricacies, look mostly like fish; and birds resemble other birds with slight variations.  I have this vivid onomatopoeia relationship with God, where I make him speak, and his words become truth; a certain kind of truth that fades away after a day or maybe two at the most.  But for a while I hold an animated version of God who looks sadly like me, and he’s facing whatever current dilemma I happen to be warring against.

I am sometimes surprised by his salty language and the fearless way he handles his problems.  The thing I admire most about my version of God is the way he chews off his tongue rather than uttering “Damn it,” because when he says it there are serious consequences.  However I dress him up, the one super-power he is always endued with is patience.  That shred of reality translates nicely into my two-dimensional cartoon of him.  The everlasting patience makes me envious and hungry for fruit that I am probably not supposed to eat.  Yes, in this particular way, I want to be like God.

I am sitting down to begin Day 10 of creation.  My patience is inevitably thin.  I am cranky.  The Cleveland sky is as tenebrous as ever; leading me to God this morning with some serious questions, like, “If you’re so creative, explain the tedious gray over my house.  There are other colors, you know?  This place is so poorly lit; even the shades of brown that should bear names ranging from muddy amber to bistre, cordovan to burnt sienna are just plain tan.”  He is no hurry to acquiesce to my complaints.

So my personal Day 10 of creation begins with a God who doesn’t ignore complaints, just the complainers like this junior-wanna-be-writer, who wail for dead leaves described as russet and bronze.  During creation sometimes you must accept the temporary tan; He tells me as much, “Hey, you should have a little bit of patience.  You know how long I had to think before I painted something mahogany?  A long time!  So write the words ‘darkish tan’ and shut up.  You think Day 4 was a blast of creativity?  It was all pectoral fins and wings!”  Of course this is the edited version of what he actually said.  Before I worked his words into three sentences they were much more graphic, and he spoke in one run-on sentence.  Aloud, I lament all the editing I must do for him, and he gives me a Bronx cheer.  He is very pleased with himself, God – my version, and the real one.  He also digs me.  And you too.  He told me to tell you so, but I can’t repeat what he said about you.  You wouldn’t believe the language he uses sometimes!

Pitfalls of Vision and Nostalgia

Everybody has goals.  They vary in size and scope, but we all have them.  Goals are inescapable.  From the illustrious quest for middle management or some authoritative leadership to small business success to out-drinking your buddy on a Friday night: a goal is a goal.  To achieve a goal requires vision; of course we all know this from our self-help culture of independence.  Who could argue with the hope and wisdom of an intended future?

Inasmuch as we all have goals; we, too, all have history.  One of my perennial highlights is the one night a year I get to spend with my best friends.  When we get together we light expensive cigars which none of us would otherwise dare to afford.  My closest friends go way back.  While none of us are currently playing with G.I. Joe guys, an outside observer would easily draw the conclusion that this collection of men is celebrating something important.  The past is brought forward, and I think for all of us, these nights are of great value.

Vision and nostalgia are like blood and air.  We need them.  They rightly define us in a sometimes uncertain present and remind us that life is generally worth living.  But they are also killers…

When Vision Holds You Hostage…

Intentions have a way of becoming well-crafted lies.

Being a former pastor, I used to surround myself with other star-eyed leaders with hopes of grandeur.  These are great people, all of them visionaries in their own right, flawless in hope.  To a man, they want to do what is right and what is best.  But if I had a nickel for every real-life opportunity missed because of tireless pursuit of their great vision, I could buy all my readers a soda and we could sit down and lament the error of our ways.  By the way, I am no exception, perhaps I am an object lesson on the foolishness in vision-chasing.

photo credit: mandoron.files.wordpress.com

Your goals and vision should inform your decisions today.  That is their purpose.  When the hopeful picture becomes too great a reality, the present becomes the past, and real life is traded for a future dream.  Intentions have a way of becoming well-crafted lies.  It is a foolish artist who proclaims the painting to be completed without ever dirtying a brush. Vision suffocates contentment when we allow it to blind us to today.  Today is a big day.  It’s the only one you’re guaranteed that hasn’t been completed.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

– George Ball (thanks to my friend Brandon Irwin)

Ahh, remember when gas was a quarter, when girls wore skirts… and

photo credit: jonathanrosenbaum.com

remember Fonzie’s motorcycle?  There is a reason I continue to listen to Pearl Jam and U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Violent Femmes.  (Leave me alone, my wife still listens to Bon Jovi.)  Music has a tremendous power to transport us back to another time.  Often this romantic trip through memory’s wires takes us to High School.  Before kids, before marriage, before college, back to a simpler time.  But high school was hell with a hallway of uncertainty and pimples.  We just forget, because the soundtrack rocks!

We are robbed of contentment when we insist that bygone days were better than these.  They weren’t, and it doesn’t matter to which days one is referring.  A large percentage of the American population wants to travel back in time to the fifties because they believe they were better days, more moral days.  But people have been practicing corruption and immorality at approximately the same rate since the dawn of time, some cultures have merely remained quieter than others.  We have the internet, and don’t think journalists from yesteryear would have been afraid to use it in exactly the same manner as they do now.

Someone once famously urged, “Say not, why were the former days better than these?  For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” Or in other words, stupid question, stupid premise!  Like living too far into the future, remembering how great yesterday was, or even how terrible it was, will hinder the importance of now.  History is necessary with all of its scars and guideposts and ratted bangs.

Unless you have a Lotus DeLorean, you’re stuck here.  Might as well be all here leaning towards a vision, remembering your past, content to do your best with today.  Really, that’s all we’re each allotted with every sunrise.  Some would say “Life is a balance.”  Maybe.  If by “balance” you mean a walk across a tight rope with the past to your left and the future on your right both trying to suck you in their direction then, yes, life is a balance.  Stay on the rope.

Next week, we’ll discuss the wonderful lie of happiness, and maybe figure out why you and I are so damn good-looking, as we explore the expanding culture of narcissism.  Go ahead, sign up for email alerts.  You deserve it!

In the coming weeks I will also post a “Cultivating Contentment” list, for those of you who refuse to read anything without bullet points or numbers.  Have a great weekend.

I have a friend who wakes up most mornings angry and disappointed.  Because life is not in order.  Because she is not who she expected she would be, at least not at this stage of her life.  Because yesterday her to-do-list was twelve items long and three of those items are still unchecked.  Because her efforts toward achieving her desires, simple desires, are all undone.  Not every morning, some days she wakes up in serenity.  You’d think that these days would be celebrated, and sometimes they are, but often they serve as reminders of the other days, the undone days.  Did I mention that she is a “list person?”  All of these things end up on a list somewhere, if not on a sheet of paper then at least on some mental storage space.

Dusk on a peaceful day is sometimes invaded by the nagging thought: “Why can’t there be more days like today?”  The pressure to make tomorrow as good, or preferably better than today, begins at nightfall on the day before tomorrow.

What would you tell her?

My friend Dustin has cancer, not only cancer, but an uncertain diagnosis even after a battery of tests.  My friends and I all say, “Why Dustin?” not in a pitiful way, but in the way that one acknowledges something good and right in the world.  As humanity goes, Dustin is among the best of us.  In talking to Dustin on the phone, there is never a sense of false hope or pretense.  He doesn’t talk in fantasy about life post-chemo or even in the hazy fog of pre-chemo nostalgia.  Yet there is a certain hope that is ever-present in his voice, even if there are certain hairs that are no longer where they belong.

During his last round of chemo Dustin made an origami chess board.  I’m sure he has moments that are less filled with grace, moments where you just have to swear and damn the whole situation, and probably if only by accident, someone who is standing too near it.  Get it off your chest.  But when that moment passes, if you’re Dustin, you just start folding paper into swans.

If you put my two friends together, they are separated only by the opportunities afforded by a piece of paper.  One writes down all the things that are not right and need to be fixed, then she balls it up in frustration or maybe lights it on fire.  My other friend folds it neatly into some preplanned three-dimensional object for someone else to play with.

Contentment is like that.  It is truthful and obvious, imperfect, but willing to make a toy.  Discontent is more work, more effort.  Content – toys.  Discontent is lies and false hope and easy solutions.  Content – truth and toys.  Discontent is fear of the next day.  Content – hope and truth and toys.  Discontent begs to be correct and victorious.  Content – present and hope and truth and toys.

(Ream of Paper will be dedicated to the idea of contentment for the month of October.  Please sign up for the Ream of Paper mailing list or subscribe via RSS.  If you are interested in the beginnings of the contentment series please see Beginning a New Series of Thoughts and Defining Contentment.)

I once suggested to a group of Christian leaders that we should embrace contentment as a value.  You’d have thought that I proposed streaming Saw II behind their Sunday morning worship lyrics.  The reigning idea within Christendom is simple: “Contentment breeds complacency.”  If people feel quieted and peaceful, there’s a good chance they won’t change.  Maybe there is more than one accepted definition of content.  Maybe that’s the problem…

Contentment is such a huge biblical idea, you find it everywhere throughout scripture.  It starts showing up early on in the Book.  Discontent shows up in Genesis 3 and ruins the whole Paradise Garden, the gift of God.  Contentment, the ideal, remains so important to God’s work in the life of his people it makes it into the Ten Commandments.  “Thou shalt not covet” is a sexier way to say – “Be content!”  Early rabbis taught that the tenth commandment was also a promise, as in, “If you do these other nine things, you will not live in envy.”  What a unique perspective.  If discontent ruined everything, then following the heartbeat of God will somehow undo the disquiet that lives naturally within the hearts of humankind.

The whole of the Hebrew Scriptures then point to Shalom.  The New Testament carries out that thought using a Greek version of the word Shalom (though it is less powerful and developed) – transliterated – Eirene.  The idea put forth in scripture is wholeness.  Imagine bring that to a family reunion!  Your siblings would think that your doctor upped your dosage!

The shalom idea is so huge scripture donates an almost unlimited amount of words to drive home the point: sufficiency, loving-kindness, contentment, peace, to name a few.  The origins of these qualities are always the same: God.  It is supposed to be clear to the reader that God’s intentions are, and have always been, restoration and reconciliation and thereby we join a journey towards wholeness, peace with God.

The great prayer of Israel reads:

⁴“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Did you catch that?  Heart.  Soul.  Might.  Your whole being.

⁶And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

That’s a lot of reminders.  But as God continues to speak there is something else that comes through in his message…

¹⁰“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you-with great and good cities that you did not build, ¹¹and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant-and when you eat and are full, ¹² then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (italics mine)

This God, whom we are to love with our whole being, wants to give us things we have not earned or worked for, and in exchange he asks that we REMEMBER.  Personally, I’d ask for more, but he is God.  Just REMEMBER.  Be satisfied.

It’s kind of like optimism, except it is way different.  Contentment is kind of like happiness, but it is not dependent upon circumstances or the presence of a smile.  It is not flashy.  It won’t make the news, but you’ll know it when you see it.

As I mentioned earlier, this exploration into contentment will take some time.  We’ll be exploring topics like: how to cultivate contentment, things that rob contentment, why you’re afraid of it, and so on.  If you enjoyed today’s post, I recommend subscribing via email or using your RSS feedreader.  Have a great weekend.  See you Tuesday.

RoP

I haven’t forgotten about you.  I haven’t stopped writing.  I’ve been working over-nights and taking care of my children, so my writing time has been devoted to a personal thing that I am working on.  Sorry.  But here we go…

I’ve roughed out several posts for one ongoing thought.  I think that you’ll like it.  Or maybe you’ll really hate it.  I pray that you’ll have some strong reaction.  Beginning this Friday I will resume my Tuesday/Friday blogging regimen.  <Everyone cheers!>

Below is a sampling of my forthcoming thoughts, though I have withheld the word that ties them all together.  Consider it a teaser; my gift to you.  We’ll see you on Friday…

No one ever talks about it because it’s just not popular; and it gives the impression of a kind of resignation, unacceptable to the people grasping for control, those who are earning their way in and proving their value.  Should you embrace it like wine before bedtime; you best keep it to yourself.  Because if you find it, if it finds you; many will not understand.  It’s hard to fit in when you’ve learned to stop seizing upon the opinions of others.  You still care, but with a palm instead of a fist.

Recessions, depressions, traffic congestion – you learn to live around them.  You sing your sad songs with a tilted grin.  Truth, it exists, and you can study her contents.  It’s okay to mourn if you’ve got to.  And by the way, “okay” means okay.

This certain grace is trying to find you.  To accept it, you lay down your undying quest for happiness.  Don’t worry, you’ll get something better, not fleeting.  You’ll work and you’ll dance.  You’ll eat and you’ll pray.  You’ll know something.  Not a lot.  Not everything.  Just enough for this day, and probably the beginnings of tomorrow.  You won’t appear wise to everyone, but you’ll forget to care.

Vision and history will line up in perspective as hope and informant for the unfurling present.  The op-ed pages will cease to make as much sense as they once did.  Newsprint looks like a coloring book, all black and white, waiting for some child to scribble over the lines.  Youthful Ideals have peace talks with Aging Disappointment.  They decide they are both right about certain things, neither of them change their ways; they just become friendlier and reside in their familiar places.

Lying down on your bed you think, “To eat, and to drink and to find satisfaction in your work… this too I see is from the hand of God.”  Rest as if your faith has been proven, “become sight,” as an old hymn says.