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2011-06-11T16:02:00.001-07:00

Living the Life

2011-04-13T23:01:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I spoke at a writers’ conference in Fort Walton Beach with one of my publishers. Toward the end of our session, while taking questions from the audience, one of the attendees told us he had been writing for ten years and had only received rejections. He then asked us what was wrong with the publishing industry, why was it so broken it couldn’t see there was money to be made from his books, adding that he knew the only way to get published was to know somebody, to have an “in,” an unfair advantage.

At the conclusion of the session, I spent some time talking to the keynote speaker of the conference who had slipped in about half way through our presentation. He is truly a fantastic writer, a bestseller, and a great guy. He is also someone who not only teaches the craft of writing, but continually works to improve his own.

As we talked, he mentioned how, when he first started writing, he wrote four novels over ten years and couldn’t get any of them published. He shared with me how he didn’t give up, how he worked hard and learned his craft, and how it paid off with his fifth novel—the one that launched his brilliant career.

He didn’t give up, he worked hard, didn’t make excuses, and he broke through, got published, and has done very well. Unlike the angry young man that has yet to attract the attention of an agent, the successful writer didn’t blame his failure on a corrupt, nepotistic system.

I have a lot of writer friends (lots of friends working in all the arts) and not one, not a single one—was helped because they knew someone. They’ve worked hard, paid a price, and earned everything they’ve ever received.

Later in the weekend, I had the privilege of observing the work of and talking to a visual artist. She is a working artist, making a living and her way in the world by living the artists’ life. We spoke about the romantic notion some people have surrounding art and its creation. She, like the best and most productive artists I know, is living an unassuming life dedicated to creating, to improving, and to supporting her work the best way she knows how. She doesn’t have a huge studio or expensive equipment. She has a table—a dining room table. And on it, she makes amazing art. And she does this day after day, week after week, year after year.

Both artists—the bestselling writer and the successful visual artist—are living the artist’s life, one of continual creation, humility, evolution, overcoming self-doubt and drama and criticism with the dignity of discipline and dedication. They continue to produce good work because they work hard. They don’t merely strike the pose of an artist or talk about art. They work hard to create it.

Living an artistic life is like living any kind of life. There are no shortcuts. Hard work and humility are more important than appearances and connections. Imagination, creativity, and dedication are more important than talent and intelligence. And attitude and approach are more important than anything else.

River Readings 2011 Conference

2011-04-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

Moments of Excruciating Rapture

2011-04-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

It’s 2:58 a.m. on Saturday night (or, more accurately, Sunday morning), and I should be in bed. Everybody else in my family is—has been for hours—and though I’m always the last to succumb to sleep, I’m not often up this late. Tonight is special. I’m delighting, as Augustus McCrae would put it, in being a live human being on the earth.

This happens from time to time—most often when I’m writing, when I’m in the middle of a scene and the words are flowing well and I’m experiencing that rare intersection where purpose and pleasure come together. It happened recently when I was playing basketball. Bringing the ball in, looking at the players, I was overcome with how much fun I was having and how grateful I was to be having it. It also frequently happens when I’m alone late at night—sometimes praying and studying, other times reading, and often when I stumble upon a movie, especially one that is, I’m embarrassed to say, highly romantic, nostalgic, or sentimental—some recent flicks include It’s A Wonderful Life, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Doc Hollywood.

Tonight, after unsuccessfully trying to go to sleep around 12:30 a.m., I got up started watching the latest Spielberg/Hanks collaboration, The Terminal, and I knew what I was getting into when I put it on. So I sat back and let myself be swept up into the shallow, feel-good, sentimentality of the movie—and guess what? I began to feel good. And, around 2:00 a.m., as I went to the kitchen for a snack, I had one of those moments—those moments when I’m so happy to be alive it hurts.

Here’s how it happens: Suddenly, serendipitously I become aware of the sheer joy of a particular moment and I pause to reflect on how fine a thing it is to be alive in that single moment of space and time. Often in moments like these I’m also overcome with a heart-breaking sadness because I’m more acutely aware that I will be dead soon and these moments will be over. I realize how precious a thing this one moment is, and how I will never get it back again, and how I only have a very limited number of them, and then I will have no more.

This feeling had already happened twice this weekend—as I laughed my way through Friday night with friends and as I spent my entire Saturday with my family, glancing in the rearview mirror at Meleah and Micah and realizing that in just a few short years they will have families of their own and that what we have now will be forever gone.

These quick reflections make me grateful for the moment, reminds me to revel in it as fully as possible, not to take it for granted, to realize how rare it is.

Ultimately, it’s all I have, these brief moments in space and time, these little glimpses of God, of heaven and eternity, and I experience them as overwhelming joy and unbearable loss all in the exact same moment.

These moments are exhilarating and excruciating at the same time because they are so precious and so fleeting. Soon, too soon, suddenly and before we know it, all our moments will be over, and we don’t know when. This realization reminds us just how choice and brief these moments are and makes them all the more momentous.

Many of us believe that we will have other moments in the next life, better moments (though it’s hard to imagine sometimes), but this is a matter of faith, of trust and hope. All we can know for certain is what we have now—this very moment. Someone once said that no love is ever lost, that they are all kept in the heart of God. I hope that’s true. I hope that I’ll get to relive these moments again and again in the timelessness of eternity.

I hope. I trust. I believe. But for now I relish with great joy and deep sadness this precious, present moment I’ve been given. Right here. Right now.

I need to go to bed now so I won’t be so tired when I wake up in the morning, but I’m really enjoying this moment, and I’ll never get it back again, and it’s possible that I won’t wake up tomorrow at all, so I better make the most of it. Right here. Right now. In this present, precious moment, that is . . . gone forever.

Well, Go On, Commence

2011-04-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

A commencement isn’t just a long, often dull ceremony associated with graduation. It’s a beginning, and since life is a series of beginnings (and endings and new beginnings), I’d like to address you, my fellow students of the U of L in a commencement speech of sorts.

In the University of Life, life itself is our teacher. Experience is the greatest educator, and education is unending. If we go to other schools, particularly college, it is merely to learn how to learn, to be made a student, so that when we graduate and commence into our “real” lives, into jobs and families and all the ambiguities of adulthood, we will be prepared for the truest, deepest learning to begin.

There’s a catch, of course. There always is.

If we are truly to learn, to grow, to become, if we are to eat the book of life, take into ourselves all it has to offer, life must find us willing students. When the student is ready, the teacher will come. Well, ready or not, life, the great teacher is upon us, but we will learn nothing if we’re not open, willing, ready to learn.

In the profound words of the brilliant Frederick Buechner, “Listen to your life.” Listen closely and listen carefully. It whispers. Life, like God who gives it, is subtle—easy to miss. Buechner goes on to say “See [your life] for the fathomless mystery that it is. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are sacred moments and life itself is grace.”

If we are found ready, how will we learn? Not line upon line, precept upon precept, and not in any semblance of linear or vertical progression. The courses offered at U of L are circular where we wind and wander more than ascend and achieve. Life is a series of steps forward and setbacks, never quite what we imagined, never quite what we planned. The students who do best at U of L are flexible. In creating the world, God created order out of chaos, and sometimes (far more often than we would like to admit) the chaos shows through. Roll with it. Let life take you where it will. Don’t attempt to master it. It is the master, you and I, its pupils, and we must add humility to our flexibility. At U of L we learn to bend or we break.

What will we learn in our classes at U of L? Probably variations of the same curriculum, each with nuance specificity unique to us. The degree programs here are highly individualized. We learn different lessons at different times—largely up to us. Life is a Montessori institution, but I’ll share with you a little of what I’m trying to learn:

Meaning in life is more important than money (or anything else). Meaning comes from purpose, service, and love. Purpose comes from us knowing who we are and what we’re here for—finding and opening our gift and using it to serve others. Our gift will do much for us, but it’s what it does for others that is most rewarding. Loving and being loved gives our lives more meaning than any accomplishment or achievement or attainment.

Life all comes down to choices. There are always two trees. Choose life. There are always two gates. Choose the narrow one. There are always two paths. Choose the one less traveled. Character is destiny. Choices determine character. Our fates are up to us. What a gift. What a responsibility.

There are costs involved in everything, and they’re often hidden. We can pay now or we can pay later, and it’s always best to pay now.

As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than intellect.”

Depth and richness—spiritually, intellectually, creatively—need stillness, silence, and solitude. Just be. Be still. Be quiet. Be yourself. Be true. Be.

Life is difficult. There’s nothing easy about this school. The course work is rigorous, the schedule demanding. We’re not only having knowledge and wisdom put in us, but also having ego, pride, envy, selfishness, self-righteousness beaten out of us.

U of L is, or should be, a party school. As difficult and as painful as life can be, it is also fine and inspiring and awe-filling and wondrous—worthy of celebrating. We celebrate to appreciate, to savor, to honor, to cherish. Life is a gift. Gifts are given at parties. Commence the celebration.

Finally, life is short. It’s the gift none of us want, one that seems to keep on taking, but mortality is a gift. Soon we will graduate from this life, taking with us to the next only that which we learned here. Every semester change, every tick of the clock, every drop of sand, every heartbeat draws us that much closer to the commencement at which we are surrounded by flowers instead of classmates. Time is short. Life is precious. Ding. Ding. School is in. Get your ed on. Commence to living. Commence to learning. For at the U of L you’re only a student once. Commence to making the most of it.

All in All, I Shall Not Look Upon His Like Again

2011-04-03T09:13:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King was killed, I was born, and our country was being born again—or at least being given the opportunity to.

If we had just had ears to hear—and not just hear, but perceive. If we had just been ready, as a people, as a country.

God sent a man. His name was Martin. But like most holy men sent from heaven, he was largely ignored, and of course, eventually, inevitably, killed. Like Bob Marely asks in Redemption Song, “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?”

His message was one of love. That’s how we know it was from God. For God is love. He that does not love, does not know God.

“At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love,” Dr. King said. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

He went on to say, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. ”

He, the right, was temporarily defeated, evil momentarily triumphing, triumphing in some ways still, but his message lives on, his hope for equality for all people, his dream.

It lives in me.

Born the year he died, I feel not only a desire to embody the dream, but a responsibility to proclaim it, as well.

Of course, it’s a lot easier now, but standing with Dr. King, boldly being a part of his movement, proudly proclaiming his message, is not without costs. I count them. I stand with him.

Mark me down as a friend of Martin Luther King, a follower of his message, someone who spoke up, for as he said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

Where do you stand?

Hear his haunting warning: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

And what is the message we have heard from him and declare to you? That God is love. That God is light. That filled with love and light, Martin was given a dream.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

We’re not in that nation yet. We must repent. We must turn.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
We should all have that same dream.

When pressured to turn his back on love, to resort to the same violence being perpetrated on his community, Martin stood strong, saying, “That old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind” and that the “Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” Encouraging his oppressed people to “Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

Cut down at the age of 39, everything Martin did and said was as a young man. He accomplished more in his short life than most of us would if we were given ten long ones. And under enormous pressure, threats, acts of violence, criticisms from every corner, and in the face of staggering odds, he faced down an empire of oppression, like Jesus before Rome, maintaining the moral superiority, never giving in to hate or ego or violence or retribution or retaliation.

Living under the very real possibility that he could be killed at any moment of his young life, Dr. King believed that “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important,” adding prophetically in his final speech on the night before he was gunned down, “I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

As a people, as a nation, we are making baby steps toward the promised land. Thanks to Dr. King we know what it looks like, know what we must do to get there. Some of us, like him, have even glimpsed it, but we’ve got a long way to go. Yet the darkness and wilderness around us must not make us give up hope. We must press on, these words of Martin Luther King ringing in our ears: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

Please, God, let those have the final word.

Martin was just a man—the greatest man our young country has produced, in my opinion—but just a man. But as far as men go, I’ve yet to find a more true hero, a more worthy mentor.

As Hamlet said of his father, the king, I say of my spiritual father, Dr. King, “He was a man, take him all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

First Annual River Readings Conference to be held June 18, 2011

2011-04-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

River Readings 2011

Myth, Meaning, and Mindfulness

June 18th

A symposium of Art and Religion

Dive in, the water is fine

Join Michael Lister and special guests
for inspiring and informative interactions.

Topics include:
(Hu)Man’s Search for Meaning
Living from the Deep Soul
Myth, Metaphor, and Poetry: Love language of divine ecstasy
The Way: Beyond religion
Open Source Spirituality: Synthesizing sacred journeys
Care of the Soul: Sacramental living
One Love: Compassion, justice, and oneness
Eros and the Ecstatic: Sex as sacrament
Yoga, Meditation, Mindfulness
Creativity and Consciousness: Art, freedom, and paganism
Embodiment: Mysticism, Ecstasy, and Ecology

at the Sarzin Lecture Hall in the Language Arts Building of Gulf Coast State College.

Register today at www.RiverReadings.com

Sometimes When You Lose, You Win

2008-09-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Every Olympics has great stories—usually too many to keep track of—but for me, the greatest story of this year’s games didn’t happen this year and was only part of the Olympic coverage because of (of all things) a credit card commercial. It’s the story, not of a champion or a medalist, but of a dead last, disqualified loser.

The story goes like this . . .

At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British runner, Derek Redmond, was forced to stop in the middle of his run of the 400 meter event due to a snapped hamstring. Trying to finish despite the horribly painful injury, Derek quickly discovered he was unable.

When he fell to the ground in pain, stretcher-carrying medics made their way to him, but determined to finish, Derek got back up and began to hobble in an attempt to at least cross the finish line. However, it was obvious there was no way he could finish the race.

Then, out of nowhere, an older man jogs up beside Derek, hoisting his arm over his shoulder and helping the agonizing athlete. The man’s name was Jim. Jim Redmond, Derek’s father, and he had broken through security and onto the track to help his son.

Derek Redmond didn’t finish first or second or third—or at all, according to the official Olympic books—but he and his father crossed the finish line and completed the race.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

By not winning, by not even officially finishing, Derek Redmond and his father, Jim, have inspired millions, have touched me so deeply, so profoundly, I can’t think of the story, can’t see the images, the pain on Derek’s face, the strength and resolution on his father’s, without tears coming to my eyes.

Sometimes, to find our lives we must be willing to lose them. To live, we must die. To win, we must lose.

When the mighty Roman Empire executed Jesus, it looked as if all was lost. But long after Rome burned to the ground, the message of love preached by the Jewish peasant is still proclaimed and occasionally lived out around the globe today.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

When a bullet of ignorance and hate pierced the precious body of Martin Luther King, it looked as if the movement was over, but the movement wasn’t a man, and that seemingly defeated man’s dream still haunts the dreams of a nation, his call to “Let freedom ring” still rings round the world.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

When anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa, it seemed as if racism and injustice would have the final word, but after 27 years of prison, he was paroled on my birthday in 1990 to become president of the same country that had imprisoned him, to eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and to continue to inspire true freedom fighters everywhere to this day.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

Both King and Mandela credit Gandhi for having a huge influence on their non-violent struggle against oppression, injustice, and racism—something he did long after an evil, fearful, cowardly assassin took this peaceful, righteous man’s life while he was out on his evening walk.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

It’s not if we lose . . . Each of us will lose. What is life but a series of losses? Ultimately, we lose everything. It’s how we lose that defines us. Competition, like the challenges of life, reveals our true character—who we really are, not who we pretend to be. In the game of life it’s far better to be a loser with character, with depth and substance, than a shallow, unscarred winner—which, of course, is not a winner at all.

Sometimes when you win, you lose.

By losing with such dignity, such character, Derek Redmond became a winner. By helping him so nobly and gracefully, Jim Redmond became an even bigger one. When the world was watching, they performed to perfection in a most magnificent defeat. Derek and Jim are heroes. Each man, the kind of father, son, and loser I’m trying to be.

I Thirst

2008-09-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

It seems like Jesus spent his whole life thirsty.

I can relate.

I suspect a lot of people can.

From his first miracle to his last words, Jesus was simultaneously thirsty and a quencher of thirst.

So should we all be.

Each one of us is defined by our thirst or lack of and what it leads us to do or not do.

While attending at wedding in Cana, Jesus was asked by his mom to do something about the fact that the host had run out of wine. He did. He made more—instructing the servants to fill the wine jars with water. Water went in, but what came out was wine so good one of the guests remarked that the host had broken the tradition of serving the best wine first.

Jesus quenched thirst.

Jesus’ true followers continue to quench thirst. "I was thirsty and you gave me drink. When?

When you did it for the least and the lowest."

Jesus thirsted.

Traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee, Jesus, weary and thirsty, stopped in Samaria for water. Encountering a Samaritan woman, he asked her for a drink. She gave him water and they discussed a kind of water, a gift from God, that would quench true thirst.

At the end of his life, while suffering the horrible torture of execution by crucifixion, Jesus said, "I thirst."

They are among his very few last words, which along with his transforming the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, bookend a life of thirst, a life of quenching thirst.
Humans are beings with needs. We thirst–and not just for literal drink. Christianity says God became human, among other things, to know what it means to thirst.

I thirst. I serve a God who thirsts.

Jesus’ haunting last words echo through history to remind us that God thirsts, that God thirsts for us even more than we thirst for God.

I drink a lot. I’m always thirsty, always drinking—some water, some wine, tons of tea, some cola, an occasional beer, the occasional coffee, and lots of orange juice—but my physical thirst is emblematic of a much deeper thirst.

Jesus drank his way through his thirsty life—so much so that his critics called him a drunk and condemned him for the drunks he kept company with.

Like Jesus, I thirst for far more than physical drink.

My thirst for life, for God, for the other, for knowledge, for wisdom, for experience, for love is insatiable. Unquenchable. Only satiated for moments at a time.

The unquenchable thirst at the heart of humanity propels us to search out sources of refreshment. But there are many unsatisfying substitutes, many counterfeit elixirs. The world is a wilderness, a cracked and sunbaked desert beneath a unsheltered sky, and we thirst in it searching for an oasis, too often finding mirages.

We thirst and the world offers us drinks, but ultimately they are as unsatisfying as the vinegar Jesus was offered as he hung suffocating to death.

We must be careful what we drink. The shallow emotionalism of religion, the surety of self-righteousness, the mob mentality of nationalism can be as intoxicating as alcohol. The simple sweetness of self-deception, of trite, easy answers and sentimentalism can be as ultimately empty as a sugary soda pop. We can drown from the wrong drink as easily as dehydrate from no drink at all.

Thirst is communal—something we all share—and one of the best ways to quench it is with the common cup, sharing both your thirsts and our drinks.

Thirsty beings is who we are, and it is our thirst that gives us the empathy we need to become thirst quenchers for others.

Life is a cup offered to us. One we should share.

Take, drink, Life says. But sometimes the cup offered is not the one we want to drink. We must drink it anyway.

In the dark garden known as the place of crushing, Jesus, praying next to a winepress, begged for the bitter cup he was about to drink to be taken from him. It was not. Sometimes the cup we drink is bitter, and it takes all we can do to get it down. We must drink it, take it in, swallow it down, let it make its way to every cell of our very being.

Beware. We are what we drink.

We all have a vampiric thirst. We must drink or we will die. But not just any drink will do. We need the drink of life. New wine. Blood. Living waters that truly quench—for a while anyway. And we must keep drinking.

I thirst.

As I write these two simple words, my mouth is dry, my soul parched, and I long, I ache, I crave, I thirst. But as thirsty as I am, as deeply felt as my desire is, I don’t wish for my thirst to be taken from me. I am my thirst, just as Jesus was his, just as you are yours. Without it, I could be content, satisfied, satiated. If I weren’t missing something, I’d really be missing something. So I continue to thirst, continue to drink, continue to thirst, continue to drink, continue to thirst, continue . . .

image by Wonsook Kim