Hugh's Notebook

A Life Without Social Media

A few weeks ago, I decided to kill my social media consumption for Lent. Not because I am all holy or anything, but because I am concerned with the place social media holds in my life. Particularly, well, I won’t name any names, but it rhymes with Spacebook.

So how is it going? Well, that depends. I mean, what are the rules for this sort of thing? Do I have to delete the app from my phone? Do I set up a block on my desktop? How much is “legit”?

I still have my professional page up on Facebook, where I occasionally sometimes post links to things related to my career (I have no idea what that last sentence even means.) But since I killed my personal profile, I have no “friends” and thus no news feed. I have no idea what any of you people are posting.

Twitter was harder, because I am afraid if I kill my profile I won’t get my twitter ID back if I restart my profile. So, I just don’t post there – although once or twice I have caught myself reading all the witty things you folks have to say. Is that cheating?

I am reading a lot more – both on screen and dead tree books. (To see the latest stuff I am reading, check out my virtual bookshelves) And we bought a house at the first of the year, so I am spending countless evenings working on that.

So, I am surviving, but I will say that I feel somehow… disconnected. I find myself asking Renee how someone (who she is Facebook friends with) is doing. The other day I found myself wondering if a friend was mad at me, since I have not heard from him in a few weeks, until I realized we primarily stayed in touch via Facebook. And the people who, despite my many attempts to stop it, only want to message me on Facebook instead of using email like a grown-up.

I am not sure if I will go back to using Facebook after Easter or not. Right now, I would say “Probably”, but I have some reservations. In any event, I am glad you folks are here and still listening.

PS: In case you didn’t know – I have a Tumblr account – if you play over there, check me out.

The Mutiny

There was a mutiny at work.

The staff conspired behind my back and did something against my wishes.

You see, a few weeks back, during our chapel service I mentioned how tired I was, and the pressure on us “spiritual leaders” to act as if we were not tired. The pressure we feel to “have it all together”. The point of the homily was vulnerability, and by being vulnerable, I hoped to show that, in community, anyway, vulnerability is a good thing.

The staff members who were in attendance got another message from the homily.

That night, unbeknownst to me, an email was circulated among the staff. They made a list of all my duties and responsibilities  and then plugged themselves into those positions for four days. When I came in the next day, I was told to pick four days to take off. I demurred and was told they were demanding I take them. Or else.

Demanding.

So, when I left the office yesterday, I turned off my cellphone, put an auto-responder on my work email and went home. Renee and I ate Chinese take-out and I collapsed in bed by 9:00pm.

Today we are headed to Charlotte for a few days to shop for the new house (Ikea!) and then I will spend Sunday and Monday puttering around the house, unpacking and setting up the myriad boxes still unpacked from our move two three weeks ago.

For the first time in almost two years, I don’t have preaching responsibilities this Sunday. Heck, I don’t even know what the Lectionary passage is for this Sunday.

So, my staff committed mutiny and took over. Someone else is responsible this weekend for making sure several hundred folks get fed breakfast. Someone else is preaching and leading chapel. Someone else is responsible for everything I do until Tuesday morning, when I will turn my phone back on and go back to work.

To my staff: Thanks, guys, for making this possible, even if you had to be insubordinate to make me do it. Now, I have to pack for a shopping trip.

No Social Media During Lent

I have a love/hate affair with social media. It’s complicated, and you’re not my therapist, so I won’t go into all the details of that here, but trust me – I do.

In the past, I have tried to rationalize my need for it because of work. But then we went and hired a Director of Communications, so that was no longer the case. So, I am going to do an experiment: I am killing Facebook and Twitter. Not forever, but at least over Lent.

I don’t think makes me holy or anything – just a way to turn down the noise in my head and start focusing on things that matter to me more than worrying about my friend count or what my 8th grade classmate had for dinner.

If you need me, you can use the contact page on this site. I will still blog occasionally, so if you follow my blog mainly through Facebook, you can still stay on top of that with my “public” page, which is located here. Just know that whatever you post on there I won’t see until after Easter, at the earliest.

Thanks for the grace.

Missing My Friend Richard Twiss

Four years ago, I was invited to my first  “closed to the public” annual gathering of social justice oriented Christian communicators, convened by Tony Campolo. I almost never talk about these meetings in public for several reasons. One is that I hate it when folks name drop. The other is that  I believe Hemingway was on to something when he said that to talk about a thing diminishes it. Those three days each December mean a lot to me, and I want to do nothing to diminish them.

Over the next few days, I would sit in a room with a bunch of A-list stars of the Christian speaking circuit, and a few folks like myself who were just getting our start. I was in way over my head.

I felt I did not belong in that room, and at that meeting. I felt someone would discover this, and ask me to leave. As I have mentioned elsewhere, this is not a new feeling for me.

The first night there, I was uneasy and couldn’t sleep, so at six in the morning, I was up and wandering the place.

Richard Twiss was in the lobby. I said hi, and he told me that he and M—– and L—-  (Still not name dropping, sorry) were about to go get some coffee at a local coffee shop – would I like to come with them?

The four of us drank lattes and joked and shared inside baseball stories about speaking and life on the road. Or rather, the three of them did, and I was sitting there, soaking it in, grateful to be allowed to play in this league.

After that morning, I felt like I belonged. I was accepted. I was part of the crowd. There were several times during that trip when Richard would pull me to the side and give me some guidance, or tell me to ignore someone else’s criticism, or just crack a joke with me.

Looking back, I think he knew that I felt alone in that crowd, and he went out of his way to make me feel like I was welcome. I think he must have known what it meant to be in a room and to know that every fiber of your being says that you do not belong there.

Richard was a Lakota man, who had followed Jesus while remaining faithful to his identity as a Native Person. He taught us white people about colonialism, about how we have taken a Gospel written by brown people and turned it into a story about white people.

Over the years, I learned a lot about privilege and power from him, not just by hearing him teach, but because he became a litmus test for me. A question I would ask myself when I thought I was using power unjustly was, “How would Richard interpret this?”

He held a Ph.D, but refused to be called Dr. He told me once that the only initials he wanted after his name was C.A.I. – for “Crazy Ass Indian”. I once referred to my congregation, who are largely homeless, as “People who live outside”. He loved that I didn’t call them homeless people, and he gave me tools to understand that something I did instinctually had power and witness behind it.

Over the last four years, I spent time with him at the annual gatherings, but also at the Wild Goose Festival, where he helped us respect the Creation, even as we sought to reflect the love of the Creator. Occasionally, our paths would cross in other places as well. Wherever we would see each other, he had a hug and a smile and would ask my how my people who lived outside were doing.

Richard died Saturday, after having a massive heart attack Wednesday night. He was in DC for an event, and was surrounded in the hospital by his family and by other folks from our little tribe of social justice communicators. They prayed over him, sang, laughed with the memories of our crazy ass Indian friend as he left this life and entered whatever is on the other side of it.

Richard did tons of good things for his people, and he challenged me to see my story as just one story of many, and not as the “right” story. He was loved by many, and will be missed by everyone who knew him – you could not be in his presence and remain unchanged. Or, at least, I know I couldn’t.

The last time I saw Richard was this past December, at our annual gathering. He told the group that he was taking fewer speaking engagements in the coming year. He said he needed to live into his being an Elder, and to spend more time in his community, among his people.

The picture at the top of the page is from the closing of that event. Richard led us in a Native ritual, where he burned sedge and the smoke streamed over us, even as the Spirit streams over us.

I hugged him goodbye, and told him, “Take care my crazy ass indian friend.” He laughed, and said, “You too, my cracker friend. You too.”

I will miss you, my friend. Even now, with tears streaming down my face in this coffee shop, I hear your laughter and feel your cynicism. I remember what it meant to me those years ago when you made me feel welcome, and I long for the day when we can sit together again over a latte and laugh.

I Have No Idea

I am tired. And busy. And overwhelmed.

On my best days I don’t pretend to know how (or even if) prayer works. So when I get like this, I am unsure what to pray or even how to pray. And after some of the stuff I see at work, there are times I wonder why I even bother.

A while back, I was reading Thomas Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude and came across the following prayer. I am praying it a lot these days.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

The Cupboard’s Full

Yesterday in the Love Wins Chapel service, we tried a new song.

Now, you should know that, well, let’s just say that singing is not where our strength lies. In fact, we pretty much suck.

So, us trying a new song is a big deal.

The song is The Cupboard’s Full, by Tim Coons.

Here is how it is supposed to sound:

And here are the lyrics, if you wanted to try it yourself.

Make a song of gladness, cause the cupboard’s full
We were running empty, now the table’s set
Pour the wine and raise the cup and say, “We are fed, we are fed … wine and bread.”

And our plates are full
We are filled for today
Open doors, swing the gates
The tables set to give away

Sing for joy to the Lord
Taste and see He is good (2x)

Registered with CCLI.
Go to www.entertheworshipcircle.com

Writing For Whom?

Who is your audience?

As I have struggled to enter the world of publishing a book, I get asked this question a lot.

I laugh, and say that I have trouble even figuring out who I am, let alone who my audience is. This does not encourage them.

Who am I?

I am Hugh, but there is Hugh the minister, and Hugh the writer and Hugh the nonprofit founder and Hugh the lover of food and Hugh the personalist and Hugh the Mennonite and… well, you get the picture. And when I am writing, I always struggle with which Hugh to talk about.

In today’s world of publishing, you see, you need to have a “brand”. Your brand is an easily categorized sketch of you, so you fit in a category and thus the sort of people who want to read such a person can find you. But my problem is, I don’t think that way.

Take this blog, for instance: The folks that want to read my thoughts on ministry probably don’t care about what Hardcore Crime novels I have read, and neither of those groups probably care about my commitment to pacifism or the struggles I feel with being a child of the South that loves the South and the people of the South, yet is not ignorant of its (or their) sins.

Struggling to be all of those people in different contexts was killing me. Or at least, killing my writing. Because I could not figure out my audience. Because, I blog about me, or at least from my perspective. And I am all of those things.

If at first you don’t succeed, to hell with it. My audience is me, but the door to the theater is unlocked, so you can see the show for free if you want to.

So, I will write about the books I have read. And the food that I cooked. And my work with the poor. And why I am Mennonite. And the complex fate of being a child of the Southland. And my ongoing house renovations. And there will probably be a picture of a cat. And I will no doubt discuss the failure of violence as our national religion.

Because I am all of those things. If you read my stuff because you are interested in my ministry work, I am sorry to disappoint you. Because I don’t have a ministry. I have a life.

So, my writing here will hopefully be more plentiful, but less focused. I hope you stick around. Because it wouldn’t be the same without you there.

Always, We Begin Again

The new year.

It always happens, you know? Until, one year, it won’t. At least, not for you, it won’t. But for everyone else, it will keep rolling along.

So, here we are again. A new year, with good intentions, with hopes and dreams, of visions of the way I ought to be, and frustration at all the ways I don’t match up with that vision I have of myself that I carry in my head.

I have been here before.

This is where I am frustrated that I am not writing about my work with the poor, because I am busy working with the poor. And where I am frustrated about my lack of ability to lose weight. And how scattered I feel all of the time. And how I seem to keep getting in the way of me.

So, the inclination is to tell you, dear reader, about how I can finally, now that the calendar has turned over, work to change all of that. How I intend to get up at 5:00 6:00am to write every day, and my new 1500 calorie diet and my new therapeutic routine to manage my ADHD. But, I am going to resist that. It might be easier to just disappoint you now, rather than disappoint you (and me) three months from now when none of that pans out.

I am trying to be kinder to myself these days. I think I will start there, and see how that pans out instead.

Everything Costs

They lied to you.

You can’t have it all.

And the reason you can’t have it all is because everything costs. Everything. It always amazes me when people act like they don’t know this.

Like the pastor in (Really Huge Denomination) who told me she wishes she could do what I do, but she can’t because she has a family and needs health insurance and has responsibilities.

So I told her I have responsibilities and a family too – which is why the first two years I did this work, I did all sorts of work on the side – everything from working in a gym to freelancing to selling hot dogs outside a gay leather bar at 3 in the morning. (Remind me to tell you that story sometime…). None of that was fun, but that is what it cost to build a ministry like the one I envisioned.

She was not impressed. To her way of thinking, the denomination should pay her to build a ministry like the one she envisioned. But like Will Campbell said, that’s not freedom. It is just another form of bondage.

Leonard Cohen on His Song Hallelujah

“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled,” Cohen has said, “but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.’ That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.’…

“The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say, ‘Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah!’ That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”

From an excerpt in Rolling Stone of the new book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah’