Front End Alignment

There was a tragic story in last weekend’s Strib, Tragedy follows invitation to prayer, about the Rev. Kyle Lake, a minister who accidentally electrocuted himself as he launched a 30-day campaign at his church based on the book, Suprise Me: A 30-day faith experiment. The book’s author, Terry Esau, was there. Esau, in a Q&A with the Strib, reportedly said:

As you realized what was going on, I was going, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ I couldn’t believe it. My first feelings were anger. I thought, You’ve got to be joking, God. You can’t be serious… Kyle believed that stuff happens, and it happened that day. He violated the physical laws of nature. Electricity is there. If you violate it, it has consequences. I don’t know. There are so many things that happen. And I know there’s the theology that says God causes and ordains all things and there’s also the concept of free will, that we get to choose. Where do those things collide and come out? I don’t really know.

I like the basic idea of Esau’s experiment because it avoids the pitfall of false prayer, i.e., asking God to give you what you want. He writes:

Every day, for thirty days, I pray and ask God to surprise me? “Surprise Me, God.” Nothing more, nothing less. Three words. Not asking for something in particular. Not giving him my list. Not presenting my agenda. Just inviting him to barge into my life in any old way he pleases-to crash into the busyness of my schedule and mess with it.

I’ve not read the book but where I think he goes wrong — and the electrocution illustrates it — is presuming that God can pull levers in the physical universe. It’s a destructive belief and undermines the potential of a truer, more helpful prayer, eg, “Help me see something surprising today” or “If something surprising happens today, help me respond in a way that’s helpful.”

When I told my daughter about the article, she reminded me about this Far Side cartoon of God at his computer, poised to “smite” the dufus guy walking under the dangling piano. I love this cartoon because it’s the perfect illustration of how many people view God.

Five years ago this week, my dad died of miscellaneous complications from a hospital visit. Today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Julian Lennon has a statement on the diary/blog page of his website that includes this:

He was the father I loved who let me down in so many ways. Who knows how our relationship might have developed if he had not been murdered … it’s painful to think that his early death robbed me of the chance for us to know each other better.

Those are my sentiments, even though my dad wasn’t murdered and lived to be 80.

My wife and I were volunteers for this event, the Melaleuca Freedom Celebration’s National Guard Appreciation Run on Harriet Island in St. Paul. (She works for the company. See the coverage in the Star Tribune: Runners linked by love and satellite.)

When the race ended, National Guard members stationed in Iraq could talk via satellite with friends and family. See more photos starting here.

Kent Nerburn is a book author who I’ve helped become a blogger. His books have made a difference in my life - as a father, a husband, a citizen, a man. He’s been to Northfield a couple of times to do readings.

He’s in the UK this week but he’s blogged three times in the past 24 hours about the shooting rampage at Red Lake High School where he once taught.

Read his posts for insight and inspiration.

3/21 - 9:15 PM: Red Lake shootings

3/21 - 11:12 PM: Red Lake Redux: They are all our children

3/22 - 11:55 AM: The Circle — A Story from the Heart of Red Lake

3:15 update: Thanks to Tony, a blogger named Hammer has now posted about Red Lake with a link to Kent’s blog. Thanks, guys.

I’m heading to the Mayo Clinic’s St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester later this afternoon. My motorcycle buddy Jim Douglas and I are paying a visit to Jon Harmsen who was severely injured in a cycle accident about a month ago.

Jon is the son of another friend, Larry Harmsen whom I’ve known and gone biking with for many years. (Jim and Larry rode on the very first RJ Tour back in Nov. 200.) Jon joined us on our one-day Real Joe Motorcycle Tour that we held back in August. (No, I never wrote about it. I did take photos, but lost them in a hard drive crash.) A couple weeks later, he and his wife rear-ended a van and they’ve both been in the hospital since. Details and updates on CaringBridge.

I may moblog some photos from the hospital.

No, no that SOS.

I mean “shot of solitude” SOS which I wrote an essay about 4 years ago (blog post is still us but not the essay.)

One of my Wigley and Associates‘ weblog clients is Eden Prairie Police Chief Dan Carlson. Earlier this morning, he blogged a Week in Review post in which he gave a little glimpse of his activities from his personal life. It ended with a paragraph about the importance of quiet time.

This week I was cramming to get our taxes done (yep, I’m a laggard) and catch up on client work. On Wed. morning, I noticed that the background tension/noise in my head was approaching apeshit levels so I took time for a 30 minute SOS walk in the Carleton College Arb just after sunrise. Ahhh. That simple break got me through two-days of tax prep and is still reverberating. I gotta remember to do it more often.

I started this weblog over four years ago, part of a plan to make Real Joe into a media property, on a par with other big web content sites. The dotcom collapse took care of that, as well as my own naivete about what was required to create a sustainable online content business.

I can’t say I’m any smarter about the latter. But after a four-month hiatus, I’ve discovered that I miss blogging for Real Joe. Something about the regular discipline of reflecting about what’s going on in my life and the cultural sea I swim in… and getting some feedback from other guys who are doing likewise.

I just ordered Real Live Preacher’s new book that’s based on his blog, supplemented with some essays. I’d like to do that someday. But in the meantime, I’ll just blog for myself and a small audience of family, friends, colleagues, and a few strangers. How often? I don’t know. My self-employed income is as tenuous as ever, so I can’t devote much time here. I’m aiming for shorter, more frequent posts.

I hope to have a meeting in another week or so with two guys I know who are bloggers. We plan to brainstorm on ways that we might collaborate on a blog.

I’m in Duluth for the US round of the World Trials Championship, taking photos and blogging for the organizers. I did this two years ago but this time it’s a paid gig for my Wigley and Associates business — the first time that a recreational hobby of mine has been a business revenue-producer and business expense-taker instead of a drain on the family budget. Which helps on the home front, minor though it is.

I’m increasingly liking the self-employed life, and if I can get my book Small Business Blogging done by the end of the summer, I’m guessing I’ll like it even more. My big challenge now is being organized and self-disciplined enough so that I get enough billable hours each month and enough book-writing time in each day. I can’t really afford taking a vacation because of the hit in billable hours I’d take. So either I get way ahead of the game by accumulating more billable hours than normal (it’s surprisingly hard to get more than 20 per week). Or I get a book published and generate recurring revenue from it. I like the latter option.

And if I can pull it off in the business blogging world, then I’ll be better equipped to try and pull it off in a Real Joe-related endeavor, like my stalled Ego Orgasms book.

Ever had your sperm count checked? I did, waaaay back 29 years ago or so when we were trying to get pregnant the first time. We tried the Symptothermal Method to no avail and the next step was for me to get checked out.

I don’t exactly remember the instructions the doctor’s office gave me but I recalled the scene when I read Stuart Green’s Sex and the Married Man column in this month’s issue of The Rake. His buddy’s wife had a fit when she found out he used a ‘dirty’ magazine provided by the fertility clinic to help him do what needed to be done to make the required deposit.

Lucky for me, my newly wedded wife had no such hang-ups. As I headed out the door with a, um, glossy magazine tucked into my coat, she sent me off with a with a “Hey, have fun!” smirk and a smooch. It never occurred to me to thank her for not going ballistic. Maybe I’ll do that today.

Real Live Preacher, anonymous for 18 months, announced his true identity this week: Gordon Atkinson, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas.

But the bigger revelation to me was that last week he announced he was cutting way back on his blog. He’s got a huge (by my standards) following: 1500 readers per day. And yet this has become a problem for him.

Right now I find that I am a little too concerned with the comments and the whole “blog thing,” whatever that is. Try to imagine that you are a regular guy who suddenly finds all these people having such strong reactions to your writing. Honestly, what would you make of it? I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about all this. Pride is always a danger, of course, but right now pride is not the problem. For some reason obsession, fear and depression are the wolves at my door. I have no idea why this is. It’s one of the things I want to know about myself. Also - and I’ll say this simply and leave it at that - my wife needs me right now. And I need her. Blogging can take over your life if you’re not careful. I want to be careful and not let that happen.

The past couple of weeks I’ve had my civic hat on quite a bit in my hometown of Northfield, moderating an online forum on local issues, taking photos of community events, blogging, etc. It’s satisfying because I’m making a contribution to the civic health of the town and of course, I get occasional kudos. But it also connects me to townsfolk and as a bit of introvert, I like the way it happens.

So while I have pangs about neglecting Real Joe, and would like to have Atkinson’s traffic problem, I’m aware of what I could lose if “success” in its typical trappings came knocking on my door. My civic hat is one that would likely be tossed aside.