Summer Light

Light diffuses
Through cloth shade;
Extends its way
To strengthen day.

Light dances on
Partially bare shoulder,
Partially concealed
By white cotton thinness.

Light moves
Across soft skin,
Arches roundness,
Stings my eyes.

Light filters, slices through
Particles of dust,
Touches smoothness,
Slips round, pours round,
Flows round toward completion,
Disappearing into folds
Of the smells of morning sleep.

Light fractures
By a single touch
To softness bathed,
Softness cleansed
By light.

Shawn Grady's "Through the Fire"

I’ve posted a review of Shawn Grady’s Through the Fire over at Amazon, and I’ll repeat what I’ve said before about the book –it’s a terrific story. I love how Grady writes – it’s terse, concise, powerful and action-packed. The novel almost effortlessly pulls the reader into the story – and that’s where you stay.

There’s a little romance here – the hero’s fiancé calls off the engagement at the beginning of the book and he finds another love interest not too much later – but it’s not the primary plot of the story. That honor goes to the fires being set by an arsonist.

Beyond the writing, I liked how Grady draws his characters – they’re real, multi-dimensional people, with the kinds of problems and flaws shared by all of us. The hero of the story, Aidan O’Neill, has problems and issues beyond the failed engagement. He’s never been able to deal with the death of his father, he’s developing a drinking problem and he’s suspicious of both his best friend and the new love interest in his life. He journey to discover the identity of the arsonist coincides and becomes one with his journey toward faith.

Through the Fire is a great read, and an entertaining one – but one that also makes you think, about what firefighters risk to protect us, what goes through the minds of arsonists, and what firefighting work is actually like. And Grady makes sure that when those tones sound the alarm at the fire station, we slide right down the pole with the firefighters.

Knows

Knows
The interior contours
Of the drop of rain,
The shapes of life
In the drop of blood,
The texture of salt
In the drop of ocean sea.

Knows
The echoes of hope
In the young girl’s tears,
The fear of desperation
In the young man’s sweat,
The taste of darkness
In the shriveled soul.

Knows
The hidden places,
The silent rooms,
The abandoned squares,
The vacant hallways,
The empty hearts.

Knows.

Decisions, Decisions

Somebody must have said this sometime: “Life is always a curveball.”

Tony Dungy, head coach for the Super Bowl-winning Indianapolis Colts, wrote in his book “Uncommon” that you don’t let the bad things that happen to you define who you are as a person. I’d add to that a corollary – don’t let the good things that happen to you define who you are as a person, either. Rather, it’s your responses to both the bad and the good that defines who you are as a person.

I’ve reached that stage in life where I understand that the bad things that happen are actually and ultimately good things in disguise, even though they look bad at the outset. (Some bad things, of course, are always bad – family illness or tragedy, for example. But good can come even of those situations, too.)

So my current struggle is one I’ve experienced before. It’s odd how things in life can be circular, like you need to periodically relearn some lessons. I don’t think I have to relearn anything as much as apply what I learned before. That’s hard enough.

In the middle of all of this, a good friend sent me this, a 10-year-old sermon from the pastor at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. It’s about making tough decisions, and it’s good. And more than good -- it was really helpful.

By the way, thanks to so many who read the poem I posted on Monday – I had all kinds of nice words in emails, in person and on Twitter and Facebook. It was a great encouragement to get them.

Testimony (in the closet)

Once worn once,
Cocooned within
Transparent film.
White, ivory
Lace covering ivory
Satin.
Neckline ruffled,
Flared sleeves,
Time long past.

In its corner,
On its arch of black wire,
It sleeps
A vigilant rest.
Young softness
Given freely,
Threaded to
Young hardness
Offered openly.
Lace layered on satin,
Becoming one.

His spot-stained hand
Touches clean lace.
The fires still burn, if lower,
Still burn into oneness.
Fingers trace lace,
Graze satin.
Oneness, still.

This Happened to a Friend of Mine

Some time ago, this happened to a friend of mine.

He was hired a few years back for a specific job at a non-profit organization, what at my company we’d call an “individual contributor” position. Gradually his skills and abilities led to more and more responsibility. He knew a lot of stuff, because he’d done a lot of stuff.

He was kind of an oddball, something of an interloper working among people who had been there a long time. And, no surprise, his perspective was different from that of his colleagues. He saw and sensed things more quickly than others; he spotted trends with the eye (or heart) of a prophet. He would say things, disturbing or aggravating everyone in the room, and then be proven right, which is often worse than being wrong.

But he was liked anyway. Quiet, dependable, extremely skilled and talented. Solid in a crisis. Adept at fixing messes. People generally forgave him the prophetic outbursts, which he did learn to keep under control. Mostly.

The department he was in expanded, and he found himself leading a lot of people. He had a crazy idea about people. He believed people had the same intrinsic value and worth, because they were each made in the image of God (yeah, he was one of those types). He knew that people possessed different skills, talents and abilities, but those differences didn’t make them any less valuable in God’s eyes. And that’s how he managed, or tried to. He wasn’t a socialist; he differentiated among top and good and average and bad performers. But everyone knew he treated all of his people with respect. The team flourished, producing results that were outstanding, and advanced themselves, the organization and their profession in the process. It’s still an amazing story.

Things were fine for a while, and then came one of those annual job reviews. Here’s what he was told by his boss:

Outstanding performance. Great results.

But, here’s what management thinks about you.

You are not a good leader, because your people like working for you. That means you’re too soft.

You’re old-fashioned. You don’t think like we do.

You are good at too many things. That means you’re tactical, not strategic.

Hard as it is to believe, given the performance and results of his team, that’s what he was told.

Here’s what my friend said:

I have to lead people in the way that’s central to me. I can’t and won’t browbeat them. Look at the results. Could that have happened by making people afraid?

You’re right, I don’t think like you do. And that’s what makes me valuable.

Being good at many things could mean that I can see things clearly from many different perspectives, that I may be the most strategic person you have.

The discussion ended fine; there was no shouting or even defensiveness. (Not with a bang but a whimper, as T.S. Eliot said.) But my friend was shaken.

He asked me what I thought, since I knew him well. I said that if his review was typical for others in his organization, then his organization was doomed.

He didn’t know what others’ performance reviews had been. But he knew he couldn’t change, at least in the ways his boss suggested. He started updating his resume, making phone calls, and networking.

A week after his performance review, something happened.

His boss unexpectedly left the organization.

And my friend was promoted.

He still doesn’t understand it. Neither do I.

Sounds like one of those crazy organizational things.

Or a God thing.

Those Pesky Book Reviews

On Monday, author T.L. Hines posted an article on his blog about book reviews -- and about why you shouldn't do them if you intend to be a published writer yourself. His reason, and it's a valid one, is what can happen when you review a book you hate -- and you later run into the author who wrote it, like at a writer's conference. Without a doubt, your name has been burned into the writer's mind. It can make for general unpleasantness all around.

I wrote a review of his latest novel, Faces in the Fire, and posted the review on Amazon and some thoughts about the book on this blog. That review doesn't apply to Hines' argument, because I really liked the book and my review and my blog post reflected that.

I've learned to avoid the problem Hines discusses by writing reviews only of books I like, and like a lot, books so well written that they make me think of something in a new way, blow my socks off with an incredibly crafted story, or send me to Amazon to find everything else this author has written.

But there's a key word in the first sentence of that paragraph -- learned. I once wrote a review that cited a book's fine writing but pointed out some problems. Some saw the same things but weren't as bothered by them; others felt more strongly than I did. But for whatever reason, it was my review that caught people's attention. It caused some nasty reactions, it did, from the writer's fans. It got so nasty that I ultimately removed the review (in that sense, online is much easier to manage than print). Some Christians can sometimes be very un-Christian like in their behavior. All of us have our moments. But it wasn't worth the general nastiness. (And Hines is right -- those names and comments are burned into my consciousness, and this was just a book review.)

But I still write and post reviews. I read a lot of both fiction and non-fiction. I review perhaps a fifth of what I read (ask my wife how the books pile up around here). I read a variety of genres. But I review very little of what I read. Some books begin with an interesting premise and then fade into triteness. Others promise something different but then discourage you with the utterly expected. Others have characters that never move beyond cardboard. Still others go well for the first three fourths of the way and then collapse into compressed and hackneyed plot resolution.

And then there are the ones that make reading pleasurable and completely worthwhile, including the ones you wished you hadn't read. These are the authors whose writing is consistently good because they work at it hard and work at telling the best story they possibly can. They may not be the "brands" that dominate the best-seller lists but they love what they do and they compel the reader to love what they do. And it's not just the "literary" crowd but writers working across all the genres. Some are well known but many are not, and I'll write reviews of their works and post them and blog about them and tweet them and retweet them, because they deserve a wider audience and readers deserve to find them.

Here are some of them: T.L. Hines, Dale Cramer, Athol Dickson, Travis Thrasher, Chris Fabry, Charles Martin, Bonnie Grove, Susan Meissner, Anne Lamott, Michael Snyder, Charles Martin, Marilynne Robinson, Brandilyn Collins, Mike Dellosso, L.L. Barkat. Check them out.