The Faux Pas That's Now a Family Legend

In the time B.K. (before kids), my wife and I lived and worked in Houston. I was at Shell Oil, and she worked at the Houston Chronicle in the department that wrote and produced the travel sections and special editorial and advertising sections.

Her department had five or six people, including her boss. One of her co-workers, whom we’ll call Mollie to protect the identity of the innocent, had gone to college with us at LSU. And Mollie said she would be late one morning, because she had to first take her beloved but old and ailing dog to the vet to have him put to sleep.

My wife knew the people she worked with had a tendency to the cruel and cretinous. She could imagine what jokes they were going to come up with. And so that morning, before Mollie arrived, she put the fear into them. Don’t you dare make light of this, she warned. Don’t you dare make a joke about it. This is really upsetting, she loves this dog, so back off and give her some silence. Even back then, she was known for “the look” – which I had been the squirming target of many times, and our sons would be even more – the look from Mom that says don’t even think about it.

Her co-workers got the look. They promised to behave.

Later that day, my wife and Mollie would be going to get their pictures taken for passports, needed to do many of the travel stories they were being assigned. So they both planned to be a little more dressed up than usual (this was back in the days when people dressed like they were going to work in an office, because they were).

The department was working, when in walked a somber Mollie, quiet after bringing her dog to the vet and dressed for her photograph.

My wife, my poor wife who wanted to be encouraging and sympathetic, who had warned the cretins within an inch of their lives, decided to say something nice about Millie’s clothes.

“Mollie! You look dressed to kill!”

The words were out before my wife realized what she had said. There was a moment of silence. No one said a word; everyone focused on the typewriters in front of them. My wife thought she might have dodged the supreme embarrassment bullet, that everyone had missed the gigantic faux pas she had just committed – the very one she had warned the others against.

And then she saw shoulders shaking, as people tried to stifle themselves. She saw people shaking. And then it couldn’t be contained, as a huge wave of laughter erupted.

When she told me later what had happened, I tried to be sympathetic. But I was laughing too hard.

I got the look.

Two of my High Calling colleagues, Sam Van Eman at New Breed of Advertisers and Deidra Riggs at Jumping Tandem, are hosting a feature on laughter, Like Therapy Only Cheaper. To see the stories told by others, please visit Jumping Tandem for the links.

What we see in childhood

Little black notebook is waiting her prayer,

murmured and spoken her Saviour to hear;

words penned to page with the ladies to share,

the gospels, the psalms that she held so dear.

Her mother took boarders, two bits a night.

Young man saw motion with such airy grace,

her voice full of song and laughter and light.

He met with her mother, argued his case.

She bore him five children, including a son;

He sheltered and loved her his whole life long.

Puzzled  that he thought of her as the one,

She nonetheless loved him; he was her song.

       Now in her winter, I sit by her feet,

       watching her write in her notebook so neat.

This poem (a sonnet!) is submitted to the One Word Blog Carnival on “childhood,” hosted by Peter Pollock. To see other poems, please visit Peter’s site. The links will be live at 10 p.m. Central time.

This poem is also submitted to TweetSpeak Poetry’s prompt to write a sonnet based on personal history. My poem is about my paternal grandparents. If you’re on Facebook, you can see the prompt at the T.S. Press page. If you want to get really involved, you can check the photo play prompt from a recent High Calling post, which includes photography and a sonnet (I’m photography-impaired, so I just did a poem).

The Quiet Listener

 Thirty years ago, I was a 20-something speechwriter for a large manufacturing company, and part of a three-person speechwriting team. One day, the vice president of our staff function called me to his office to talk about me writing speeches for his boss.

In the middle of our conversation, the CEO barged into the office and started screaming at the VP. Who didn’t say a word but quickly took up his pen to take notes as the CEO’s tirade continued. The CEO didn’t know me, even though I wrote speeches for him. He didn’t even glance at me. And I thought to myself, what if I had been a job candidate, or a reporter?

The screaming stopped; the CEO left. And then the VP resumed our conversation exactly where we had stopped, as if nothing had happened. I was so shook my hands were trembling.

That’s one kind of quiet listener – the executive who works for a screaming CEO. Luci Shaw, in Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit, writes about another kind, in the context of talking about poetry: “…poetry enriches; it forces us to take time, slow down, and reflect what might otherwise escape our notice. It helps us to view life metaphorically instead of in terms of mere fact or information. Poetry helps us to become whole-brain people, teaching us to be thoughtful and creative in many areas of our lives. Most books that Christians read don’t push them in this direction, where they can be quiet listeners. We’re often pushed by the books we read toward busy-ness, efficiency and self-ism. Poetry can counter that. It opens up the windows to the whole universe, takes our eyes off ourselves, and often helps us to focus on Creator and creation.”

Substitute the words “business people” for “Christians,” in that paragraph, and it would be just as true. If you want to see how the business world usually defines career success, you’re going to be hard put to find the words “quiet listener” as Shaw describes it. “Listening skills” are often considered critically important for managing people, but they tend to be narrowly defined, as in understanding what a subordinate is concerned about or how to help a team function better. It’s about efficiency and effectiveness.

Business has never been known for promoting quiet people, no matter how good they are. No, we want hard-driving, results-oriented, shareowner-value focused A-type personalities who can “get the job done.”

What Shaw is describing is on a different plane altogether. A quiet listener thinks with both sides of his or her brain, in an integrated, big-picture kind of way. But in management reviews, they’re going to be overlooked or considered “not aggressive enough.”

Sometimes these quiet listeners are the prophets, the ones (to quote Shaw quoting Flannery O’Connor) who not only see clearly but also see what’s distant and often hidden. And if quiet listeners are at a career disadvantage in business, you can imagine what can happen to prophets, especially when they’re right.

Quiet listeners and prophets are needed in the business world. Somehow we have to get over this combined disdain and fear we have of them (and the fear is the fear that they may be right). Otherwise, the workplace can become a very nasty, toxic kind of place.

This is the last of our High calling discussions of Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones. I started this discussion weeks ago making the claim that what she says is as applicable to business as it is to art and writing and music. Now that  I’ve finished the book, I’m more convinced than ever. Instead of Who Moved My Cheese? or The 7-Minute Manager, we might do much better with Breath for the Bones.

To see more posts on the last two chapters of the book, “The Shadow Side of Creativity” and “Tracing the Creative Process of Poets and Poems,” please visit The High Calling.

The Power of Story

I became part of a story once.

Twenty years ago, the company I worked for, and the industry I worked in, faced a monumental problem, one coming down the track like the proverbial freight train. Whatever company and industry credibility that existed was going to be vaporized.

A small group (“team” wasn’t the lingo back then) of us started working quietly and diligently with a couple of key executives. We knew what had to be done – embrace the coming chaos, take responsibility, and ultimately run the business very differently. My specific job – leading the communications group focused on the change, help design the strategy and write speeches to help pave the way. At least we hoped we were paving the way.

Presentations were made. Meetings were held. Consultants were consulted. We weren’t openly laughed at, but you could always see the facial expressions – people thought we were out of our minds. The problem as that no one else had a solution. And our little troop kept getting bucked upward. “Just wait until the CEO hears this! He’ll chew them up and spit them out!”

When we reached the CEO, he didn’t chew us up. He immediately grasped the problem and our solution. He fully embraced, and went further than we were suggesting.

The result changed the company and the industry. We embarked on a series of initiatives than confounded friends and foes alike. Real change happened. I had my hands full with communications and writing more and more speeches.

About a year later, I was in a meeting with several of our business executives. One had been talking with a counterpart at our biggest competitor, who’d followed us with their own initiatives. The executive said that both of them had agreed that “the damn speechwriters were running our companies.”

There was a silence, and several heads turned toward me. No one said a word (but all of these executives likely agreed with the statement). And then I said, “Actually, all the speechwriters are doing is writing the speeches the CEOs are asking for.”

This period in the company’s history lasted for about six years. It overlapped and even opened the doors for another fundamental change – the beginning of the worldwide web and electronic communications, and our little intrepid band got to be that story, too.

The power of story is enormous. In Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit, Luci Shaw talks about the importance of story in our lives, and considers the role it plays in the Bible. “The bible,” she writes, “doesn’t teach theology systematically. It tells stories. It chronicles human failures and triumphs; it voices human lament and celebration. God reveals himself through the stories and poetries developed by the human authors who wrote the books of the Bible.”

The writing and telling of stories become imperative for us, she says. “…I believe that my learning faith and writing about it are gifts from God and that they have value; therefore, I persist in telling stories…”

Stories have power and value, and not only in art. They can change and transform the work place as well.

And like Shaw, I persist in telling stories.


Over at The High Calling, we’re discussing Breath for the Bones. Today the focus is on chapters 3 and 4, on metaphor and story. Visit The High Calling to see links to other posts on the chapters.

Can You Do Your Job Too Well?

One day on a late Friday afternoon I was called into my boss’s office. There had been a reorganization of my area, and all the teams had been given new functions (and headcount!). My peers and I were finding out one-by-one what our new assignments were going to be.

But it didn't turn out quite the way I expected.

To read more of the story, please visit The High Calling.

The arms of the fatherless

Always in the eyes:

violence, done;
innocence, pillaged;
oppression, afflicted;
spirit, separated;
hope, abandoned.

The arms of the fatherless
are broken.

Seen in the heart:
to deliver, defend;
to help, share a portion;
to take up, relieve;
to show mercy, find;
among us always.

The arms of the fatherless
are broken
until bound up.

This poem is submitted for The High Calling’s Random Act of Poetry. The prompt was to write a poem to or in honor of an orphan, someone who has adopted an orphan, or your own adopter. Check the comments in the post to see links already submitted; they will all be collected for an article this Friday.

Photograph: Sole Provider, sculpture by Joe Mutasa, presented by the artists of Zimbabwe and Chapangu Sculpture Park in memory of those who died Sept. 11, 2001, a gift to the people of the United States for the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The gods are dying

Mid the smell
of sheep dung
came the song.

The gods are dying.
The gods of men are dying.

Self-shaped objects
of worship crumble,
beginning a funeral
dance, a danse macabre
of Athens and Jerusalem.

The gods are dying.
The gods of men are dying.

A funereal keening
pours from stone lips.
Wealth, knowledge, science,
philosophy are sucked into
mirrors of polished vanities.

The gods are dying.
The gods of men are dying.

A child born.
A son given.
Salvation.

Over at the High Calling, a poetry prompt (well, partially a poetry prompt) is asking readers to take a big thing of Christmas – family, Christ, celebration, grief and so forth – and share it in something small, like a poem, a photo, a Bible verse or a song. Check and post and see some of the offerings provided via links in the comment section.

Photograph: Statue of the death of Adonis.

Talking with Poet David Wheeler

Today at the High Calling, I have an interview with poet David Wheeler, author of the recently published Contingency Plans: Poems. David has written some extraordinarily fine poems, and the interview explores how he approaches his poetry and writing.

Below are some questions I asked David that are related to the poems and to his reading in general.

In a recent essay, you wrote about the experience of preparing to run a 10K, and how you happened into it almost accidentally. And you did cross the finish line. Would you do it again or stick to walking?

Look. Running and I are on good terms. We hang out sometimes; we've just learned to set boundaries, one being that under no circumstances will I run competitively, nor with companions. That's kind of a pillar of our relationship. That circles back onto my own insecurities about myself physically; but, they're insecurities I'm okay with, as long as I don't get pushed too much. We've all got them, and we just learn to deal. I'm a walk commuter; that's how I deal.

You said you preferred reading Dickens and Tolstoy to sports (and I agree). What writers have influenced or impressed you?

Lately, I've been most impressed by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Kathleen Norris. I haven't read a book so absolutely revolutionary and compelling as The Brothers Karamazov. Something I do every year around Christmastime is pick up lengthy work of fiction; that was last year's book, and I can't stop raving about it. An incredible piece of fiction--three brothers, all with conflicting worldviews, clash in the wake of their despicable father's brutal murder--Dostoevsky manages to work theology and philosophy seamlessly into it's textures, with out ever preaching or giving over to dogmatic statements. He asks questions, he poses hypotheticals that have literally changed the way I think about both fiction and faith.

And then there's Kathleen Norris, this feminist poet from North Dakota who's spent considerable time with Benedictine monks. You don't live like that without having some fascinating stories to tell. I just finished her memoir, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, where she looks around at the beautiful and harsh badlands, comparing the ascetics to Plainsfolk and vice versa. What got me hooked was her book The Cloister Walk, a collection of essays about faith and writing, what it means to live as a creative personality in relationship with a creative God, in a church that doesn't always know what to do with creative types, people who buck the trends. She's provocative, one of the best living writers I've ever read.

Some of the poems in Contingency Plans reflect a strong sense of place, or the importance of place, for example, the seven poems grouped in the section “Lake Padden, Bellingham” and several in “Sanctuary.” What does place do, or not do, for a poet?

Place doesn't confute the poet. That's an opinion. Any setting in the Northwest, I have come to believe, cannot go unheeded. It is there, and it demands attention: for its beauty and for its bravery. It is a subject that is constant and stalwart. Place, it seems, is sometimes the only thing grounding me in reality when I write. A poem like "Against Acedia" has the subject so veiled under this lackluster detachment to everything around him. Acedia or what is sometimes referred to as "sloth" or the "noonday demon" is an intangible mentality, emotionality, to the point I'm not sure how anyone can adequately excavate its emptiness; so, I pitted it against Place.

Adage goes that "the devil is in the details," working us into frenzy and sometimes shutting us down altogether, over the small things; we have kitschy gift books about how not to sweat the small stuff. Then there's the converse argument that God himself is actually in the details, so close at hand, so carefully looking out for each of us.

But, I'm inclined to agree with Ezra Pound when he states "The natural object is always the adequate symbol." The details are the details, and it's up to the poet, the reader, the artist, and everyone to decide what to do with them.

Related:

Interview at the High Calling.

My review of Contingency Plans.

Q&A at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Photo display and prompt for Contingency Plans at Three from Here and There.

Post at The High Calling

Today, I have a post over at The High Calling – a story about having no grandfather stories. The post will be live this morning. As a small introduction…

Grandfather’s Story

He stares, dimly, peering
at, listening to this
world he’s been
designed into.
His hand wraps
around my finger, with a
surprisingly strong grip
for one less than
an hour old.
I lean my head and kiss
the little forehead, and
I know:
today, a grandfather
has been born.

Who Defines Stickiness?

We’reached the final chapter of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survivie and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. The authors have covered the “basics” of stickiness, and now point to four villains that will undo and circumvent stickiness every time:

• The natural tendency to bury the lead – to hide (usually unintentionally) what the real point is.

• A focus on the presentation rather than the message. The forms of a slide show, a formal speech, or a press release are not what should determine what you’re trying to say.

• Decision paralysis – when you have too much choice ot the situation is ambiguous.

• The “Curse of Knowledge” – where you confuse how you arrived at your idea or message and confuse it with how to communicate it. In other words, you communicate it like you were the audience (more on that word in a bit).

A good example the Heaths cite is that tool that has done more to destroy communicate than aything else in the modern era: PowerPoint. “Business managers,” they write, “seem to believe that, once they’ve clicked through a PowerPoint presentation showcasing their conclusions, they’ve successfully communicated their ideas. What they’ve done is share data.”

The point of all this is simple: don’t treat the people you’re trying to communicated with as an audience.

I wrote a paper on this once. I said that, for communication purposes and any other purpose, for that matter, employees are not an audience. No one you’re trying to communicate with is an audience. The word assumes a passive group of people who will listen and “get educated” or be entertained. A group of people watching a movie in a theater is an audience; a person watching a television show may be part of an audience. The person sitting in a conference room listening to you talk, the person in a large hall listening to you speak, or the people joining you for lunch are not an audience. Instead, they are people you’re trying to communicate with, perhaps build a relationship with or become part of a community with.

But they are anything but passive. And today they’re often tweeting what you’re saying while you say it, and offering their own commentary in the process.

(By the way, I wrote in my paper that “message,” as in “my message points,” also should be tossed on the trash heap of bad communications.)

Ultimately, it is the people you’re trying to communicate with who will define stickness. Understanding them, their needs, their desires, and how best to talk with them will make what you’re saying stick or be ignored as superfluous.


Laura Boggess has been leading a discussion of Made to Stick at The High Calling. Last weels discussion on stories can be found here.

The posts in this series:

On Simple: The One Time Something I Did Went Viral

On Unexpected: Singing Opera in Journalism Class

On Credible: As Concrete – as Air

On Concrete: It Was All in the Numbers

On Emotional: An Engineer Got Emotional
 
On Stories: The Sticky Stories of Billy Coffey

Another Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday

Once more, it’s that time of the week, when our intrepid leader Duane Scott officiates at Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays.

Yesterday, page visits to a blog post I did earlier this month skyrocketed (well, “skyrocketed” may be too strong a term, but my normal number of page visits quadrupled in a day). I couldn’t figure out why – there didn’t appear to be a single source. And then I found out that High Calling Editor Marcus Goodyear had included that post of mine in a Faith in the Workplace newsletter he does for Christianity Today Magazine (online).

Thank you, Marcus. That was an awfully nice thing to do.

In August, something similar (but smaller) happened when someone took a poem I’d posted and linked it in StumbleUpon. Whoosh went the page visits. Thank you, Someone.

I’m familiar with this stuff, and I know this online stuff, but I still get amazed when it happens.

It’s been two weeks since I went to the High Calling editorial team to Laity Lodge near San Antonio (that’s “near” in Texas terms; it was actually about 140 miles away). Since then, the High Calling web site has merged with the High Calling Blogs web site; the combined site is simply The High Calling. I really like the design; and I’ve successfully maneuvered the Drupal platform and actually posted an article this week: Is God More Pleased with My Work than I Am?

Ann Kroeker, one of our number at Laity Lodge, did a blog post this week on the experiences they had at their lodge house (Lodestar) with scorpions. We didn’t have scorpions at our lodge house (Song Bluff). I did have to get rid of a wandering cricket in my bedroom, though. A couple of people closer to the main lodge had experiences with tarantulas. And I was followed by a couple of vultures while hiking one of the trails. (That was a little unnerving; I think I’m on a hike and they think they’re looking at dinner).

I’ve been reading a lot of good stuff lately:


• Billy Coffey’s novel Snow Day was officially published on Monday. It’s storytelling like only Billy Coffey can do it.

• I finished Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the book we’ve been discussing for The High Calling; my last post on it will be Sunday afternoon.

• I read Three Roads Home, a group of three love story novellas by Travis Thrasher published in 2003.

• I’ve started reading Another Hotel Room: Selected Poems 1988-2008 by Steven Marty Grant.

Thanks to all you who commented on my post yesterday – the one about approaching a tough decision on what to do with our elderly dog. I talked with the vet Wednesday, and we’ve worked out a process for sometime in the next two weeks or so. I was so cool, calm and totally professional with the vet on the phone. I only lost it twice.

Finally, it wouldn't be an official Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday without a new photo of the world’s greatest grandson. My daughter-in-law Stephanie took this picture while trying to fit him for clothes – and she found this hat. So, here’s Cameron in a bear hat.

The Sticky Stories of Billy Coffey

I wrote speeches for corporate executives for a long time, and now, more often than not, I’m writing speeches for myself. And while substance is absolutely critical, I learned long ago that you can write the most brilliant speeches with the most brilliant thoughts imaginable – but if you want people to remember them, you need to have stories.

And not just any kind of kinds, but personal ones, stories that surprise and entertain and help make the point of what the speaker was talking about. Many speakers often asked for “a good joke” but they were usually the people who hadn’t heard any good ones themselves and would tell jokes poorly, or at least not well. Humor is always a dangerous thing in a speech; the safest humor is always self-deprecating, allowing listeners to laugh with you and at you. Not many executives are comfortable with that, however.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath talk about the three kinds of stories that help ideas stick: challenge plot stories, where a formidable challenge has to be overcome (they give the example of David and Goliath); connection plot stories, in which people develop a relationship that bridges a gap (consider Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan); and creativity plot stories, in which someone makes a mental breakthrough, solves a problem or does something really innovative (the story of the apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head, for example).

For stickiness, those three types cover the waterfront. I speak from personal (and unexpected) experience. I gave a talk in June at a conference of university public relations people, and the person who introduced me had done their homework. I was speaking on corporate use of social media, but the introducer included one thing about me – that I edited an online poetry journal called TweetSpeak Poetry. Guess what all the questions were about at the end?

If you need to see examples of sticky stories – where you can find all three kinds the Heath brothers talk about in one place, you need to look at the blog site of Billy Coffey.

You want to find stories that include a challenge? They’re there. Or stories that make connections? Look no further. Or stories where people do unexpected and creative things? You’ve got them with this blog.

Billy Coffey, a writer in Virginia, tells what I call true stories. He watches and listens, and he carries a notebook around to record notes. He overhears conversations; he remembers stories from high school. He recalls people when he first knew them and what they became, and how they handled success and defeat and victory and tragedy.

Some of the stories he tells include all three types of stickiness. There about challenges, connections and creativity. Not once have I known a story of his to disappoint or fall flat.

Tomorrow is the official publication date of his first novel, Snow Day. There’s a Facebook party scheduled; see his blog for details. I will be posting my review of the novel tomorrow as well. (Earlier today, Jennifer Dukes-Lee interviewed Billy Coffey about the novel.)

But you can be assured of this: Snow Day is sticky, exactly the kind of sticky described in Made to Stick.

Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Made To Stick over at The High Calling. Last week's discussion can be found here.


Previous blog posts in this series:

On Simple: The One Time Something I Did Went Viral

On Unexpected: Singing Opera in Journalism Class

On Credible: As Concrete – as Air

On Concrete: It Was All in the Numbers

On Emotional: An Engineer Got Emotional

What I’m Up to At The High Calling Blogs

For several months, I’ve been posting occasional articles at The High Calling Blogs (HCB). The site is owned and operated by Foundations for Laity Renewal, whose mission is to renew society by renewing the church; renew the church by renewing the family; and renewing the family by renewing individuals. In addition to HCB, Laity Renewal also operates The High Calling web site (and I’ve written an article or two for that site as well).

How I got there is one of those “internet stories.”

Long before I was on Twitter or Facebook, I had been following a blog called Inside Work, which focuses on the integration of faith and business. I would occasionally comment on a post, especially those written either by editor Jim Hancock or a business executive named Bradley Moore. One day, I followed Bradley’s link to his blog site, Shrinking the Camel. And enjoyed it so much I started following that blog as well. A regular commenter on Bradley’s book was a guy named Marcus Goodyear, and one day I followed the link to his blog, Good Word Editing. That’s where I discovered The High Calling and HCB, because Marcus is senior editor for these sites. About the same time, I found another blog I liked – New Breed of Advertisers – by a guy named Sam Van Eman whom I didn’t immediately connect to HCB – but he’s one of the editors there, too.

Looking at my RSS reader, I can see that Inside Work, Shrinking the Camel, Good Word Editing and New Breed of Advertisers are among the very earliest blogs I followed. (One day, in a post or a comment at HCB, Sam – and I remember distinctly it was Sam – mentioned a book he really liked called Stone Crossings by L.L. Barkat. His comment led me to her book, which led me to her three blogs, which eventually led to me becoming a co-editor with L.L. and Eric Swalberg for TweetSpeak Poetry.)

So what was it that attracted me to these bloggers and sites like The High Calling Blogs?

Obviously, we shared a common faith – different backgrounds and affiliations but a common faith nonetheless.

We shared an intense interest in how faith does – and doesn’t – function in the workplace.

Even more significant (for me, at least) was the sense of community. People from all over the country and even outside the United States come together in the spaces called The High Calling and HCB. And they share their community by writing about life and work and culture and family and art and a lot of other things.

Earlier this year, I received a direct message on Twitter from HCB, saying they had a proposal for me. I didn’t hear anything else for a few days, but soon enough L.L. (the HCB managing editor) asked if I would be interested in being a contributing editor. I didn’t have to think about it. I said yes – a big fat enthusiastic yes.

What a contributing editor does is write posts or articles on a regular basis (mine generally fall into the category of “work”), participate in commenting and discussions about posts, and help build the community. On my posts, I work directly with Brad Moore, who’s an HCB content editor in addition to his day job as a senior business executive and (most recently) a poet, with his own poetry blog. Brad is one of the best editors I’ve ever had. This is a heretical confession for any writer to make – but I don’t mind being edited by Brad because he helps me be a better writer. (And my next post is scheduled for Tuesday.)

That’s what this community is about as well – encouragement.

If you haven’t been to HCB, you should visit. If you’re looking for community, you’ll find it. If you’re looking for good writing, it’s right there. If you’re looking to stretch and challenge your faith, you’ll find it there as well.

It’s a cool place to be a part of.

The Jesus Prayer

Last November, my wife and I drove one Saturday over to Columbia, Missouri, to see youngest son in college. We brought food relief, went out to eat (at the Flatiron, if you’re ever there and looking for something good and inexpensive), and then hit the University of Missouri bookstore. My wife and youngest son gravitated to logo clothing while I wandered among the book stacks, and specifically the poetry stacks.

One of the books I found was Short Trip to the Edge by Scott Cairns.

Cairns is an accomplished poet and an English professor at Mizzou, where he teaches modern and contemporary American literature and creative writing. He’s also an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and he writes about his faith. A lot. His Love’s Immensity, in fact, is a collection of translations and adaptations of writings of various Christian apostles, disciples and saints on faith and prayer, from Saint Paul to St. Therese of Lisieux, and written as poems.

Short Trip to the Edge is the account of four pilgrimages Cairns made with the hope of finding a spiritual father to guide him in a life of prayer – two to the monasteries and “sketes” of Mount Athos, one to an Orthodox monastery in Arizona, and the fourth back to Mount Athos, this time with his teenaged son. To join Cairns on his journey is to discover some of the most revered places in the Orthodox church, to see how seekers and others undertake a pilgrimage, and to watch as they and the monks and priests leading them participate in worship.

It’s a very different kind of Christian faith from what I’ve experienced. It’s a tribute to Cairns’ writing that I found myself sitting alongside him, in my own “stall,” listening to the chants of the monks and standing in line with the other pilgrims to receive the Eucharist, and then afterward to join in venerating the icons. (And veneration of the icons is something almost alien to this evangelical Presbyterian.)

As I was finishing the book this past week, what should arrive in my email but a daily reflection from Mark Roberts, senior director of Laity Lodge and Scholar-in-Residence, part of the High Calling organization (my blog is affiliated with the High Calling Blogs). This is a daily email, and Roberts has been writing and meditating on the Gospel of Mark. Thursday’s reflection cited the Jesus Prayer. And Roberts said that, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, “One of the most common and influential prayers is… the so-called ‘Jesus Prayer,’ which has a variety of forms, and is spoken millions of times each day by believers throughout the world.”

And it’s the prayer that Cairns prays throughout Short Trip to the Edge.

Okay, so it was a coincidence. But I ponder coincidences like that, and I started to pray the words. I can’t say that anything miraculous has happened as a result, nor do I expect that. But I’m finding it is a way to calm myself and focus, and I’ve started praying it several times a day.

The words are simple.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”


Short Trip to the Edge also has things to say about poetry. Visit TweetSpeak Poetry for my post on that aspect of the work.

On Friday, my friend Jim Schmotzer looked at The Jesus Prayer in poetic form, and it's a beautiful rendering. The fact that it was on both of our minds at the same time is another one of those coincidences.