Blast off Monday

Photo from NASA website

Blast off!

Just a few seconds ago, I watched the Space Shuttle Endeavor take off on its final mission. Now that's what I call taking the initiative and putting the Monday morning clichés to rest!

"Life" (as in life-charged life) is a good topic for a Monday morning! So many of us drag our way into work, listless, and the excuse offered is, time and again, "Well it is a Monday, you know...."

Personally, I believe the whole Monday sad-face performance is counterintuitive when it comes to the foundational impetus of the "Life-charged life." Monday is critically important in terms of establishing an initial trajectory to a new week that has the potential - always - to be awesome.

Now don't get me wrong; it's not as if I'm advocating pom-poms and cheers. I just honestly believe that "The Monday blues" tradition makes absolutely no sense when we consider what the idea of life promises.

This morning, walking Scout Labradoodle around the neighborhood, I stopped to look at a bed of Day-Lilies in full bloom. It wasn't even 7:00 yet, and a Monday morning no less, but there they were, responding to the imperative of insistent life.

Monday, in a way, indeed every Monday that comes along, is in a sense The 8th Day of creation.

This good Earth was created - in the vernacular of the Genesis creation stories - in six days. On the seventh, God rested; or, using the ancient Hebrew, God nepheshed. "Nephesh" carries the idea of refreshment, of replenishment. Again, not coincidentally on the seventh day, Easter represents the refreshment of life in terms of redemption and resurrection (gotta love these "r" words!).

Today, then, Monday in all of its Monday-ness, begins the "Second Week", or "The Eighth Day" of creation. Monday carries with it the impetus, the initiative, the invention of insistent life! Now we've got some "i" words going on!

You bet Monday is all about life!

Here's my question for the day: Is your Monday going to be a "Life-Charged" Monday? How you answer will likely set the trajectory for the entire week.
- DEREK

Establishing the Brand

Well, America has spoken. Or - at least - some of the people who read my blog have shared their feelings. Overwhelmingly, there has been "two thumbs up" for the new format. The changes will go like this:

• I have decided to move my primary blog to WordPress
• My primary blog is now "The Life-Charged Life".
• I'll still post at "Derek Maul" at Blogger, but it's essentially going to be the same content, cut and pasted from here.
• "The Preacher's Husband", for the time being, will remain at its current Blogger home.
• My emphasis will shift from "A Life Examined" to "The Life-Charged Life."

About that. While my stats have become increasingly strong (thanks for reading, and thanks for passing my posts on to your friends), I'm looking to involve more people in this conversation.

My publisher, and other experts, tell me that the narrower the door, the more people come through. Or, you catch higher numbers with a smaller net. Or, if I want more readers interested in my writing, I should talk about less...!

Okay, I know the above paragraph sounds contradictory, but what we're talking about here is the difference between limiting my audience to people who already know me and are interested in my life... and associating a clear sense of direction and content with my name and this blog title, The Life-Charged Life.

Branding

What we're talking about here is - in a sense - branding. Branding - the way I'm imagining it in this space - involves the following elements.

1. First, it requires a consistent association between the brand and what the brand stands for. If "Derek Maul" is the brand, then it needs be clear what kind of reading experience should be expected.
2. Branding needs predictability. Not in the boring sense but in the sense that there is "consumer confidence" that the brand really does deliver on the promise. No predictability = no brand.
3. Distinctiveness. There should be no confusion as to what makes a visit to this blog a unique experience. My blog needs to be qualitatively different from others.

Put all this together and what I'd love to see happen is this. I want people to begin to associate "Derek Maul" with the idea of "The Life-Charged Life". Also, and especially in light of the kind of events I tend to be invited to speak at, I want people to associate the name "Derek Maul" with "The Life-Charged Life for Men".

This coming week I'll be talking, specifically, about what I mean by "The Life-Charged Life." I hope you will read along (either here or at WordPress), and that you will introduce some of your friends to what I believe promises to be an exciting new resource.

With enthusiasm - DEREK!

Birth of an Heirloom: The Grandaddy Letters, Volume 2

Rebekah's good work

I may have mentioned before in this space how Rebekah is pretty much a genius at everything she does. Any task she puts her mind to, she does well; end of story. In fact, she's partly to blame for the "Live Like You Mean It" anti-mediocrity credo that serves as a thread of continuity running through so much of my work.


We may not be actual grandparents yet - we have to wait until mid-October for that privilege - but that doesn't mean there is no grandparenting to be done. Not, that is, if you can pull out a sewing machine and resurrect a skill-set lying dormant for several decades.

Rebekah's mother's sewing machine...

Heirloom baptismal gowns have to come from somewhere, and Rebekah decided the best place of all is from a heart of love. It's been a project several weeks in the making, and this week she finally put the finishing touches to a gown she conceived, designed, tweaked and made. It is, in a word, exquisite.


As I was brought up in the Baptist Church, I thought long and hard about infant baptism back when Andrew and Naomi came into this world. 

detail...

I was baptized at age 14, on an Easter Sunday at the Folkestone Baptist Church in England. It was the first time Rev. Pike had immersed anyone from a kneeling position (my idea). But kneeling really was the only practical option after the unfortunate incident of the previous month - a bona fide catastrophe involving an unanticipated but spectacular double-dunking that took both the good reverend and the hefty lady he was baptizing all the way under. She went back, he went back, and four feet shot straight up into the air. It was a beautiful moment for those of us sitting in the balcony.

Covenant Baptism: 
But I digress. Infant baptism made great sense once I understood the event in terms of Covenant. In the Old Covenant - God's agreement with Abraham and the Children of Israel - circumcision represented the commitment. Christ's "New Covenant" is also a sign and a seal of God's promise. Baptism is a mark that declares "this family belongs to God!" Andrew and Naomi were - are - children of promise in the same way. Baptism isn't a ticket to salvation, it's a sign that God's covenant promise is faithful.


This new baptismal gown - made by hand, by Rebekah - is one way we can say that our new baby grandchild is a part of the household of God and surrounded by deep and abiding love. Our love, God's love, Naomi and Craig's love, all wrapped around this amazing miracle of insistent life.


The birth may be a long five months down the road. But we've seen the sonogram; Naomi and Craig have heard the heartbeat; Naomi saw the baby "turning somersaults" at the doctor's office this week....

.... And, most importantly, this little life is well known by God, a special and specific creation of wonder and promise. "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)


Love is most often a deliberate, faithful and ongoing collection of small things. Mother Teresa famously said, "There are no great things; only small things with great love."

This new gown, then, is one very great small thing!

In love and because of promise - DEREK

Gourmet Update

OK, so here we are, 26 days into 2011. How's the new year working for you so far? This time a year ago I was all excited about the "Gourmet Initiative" Rebekah and I adopted for 2010. I thought now would be a great time for a review.

Our plan, in case you missed it the first time, went like this.

1. I had given Rebekah three new cookbooks for Christmas.
2. I promised to cook one new recipe per week during 2010.
3. All she had to do was thumb through and find something special that she wanted to eat.

The idea was to challenge the boundaries of my skill set as a chef. I was a decent cook in general, but over the years my imagination waned, and I had to admit I repeated my "standards" every couple of weeks, so that everything I prepared was beginning to taste the same...

For 2010, following new recipes (to the "t"), I wanted to learn new techniques, tap fresh resources, force myself to research new ingredients, and expand my repertoire in the kitchen (see exhibit A - above right, shrimp parmigiana with my home-made marinara sauce...).

Rebekah and I had completely rebuilt our kitchen that summer, we stocked it with matching, professional cookware for Christmas, and I wanted to give Rebekah an exceptional gift - something that would last all year long.

The results are in:

The idea was an unqualified success. Too good. I enjoyed the gourmet challenge so much that Rebekah found herself on the receiving end of kitchen heroics more than one day a week. In fact, by the middle of March we both added a few too many pounds! So this time she bought me a cook-book for my birthday. The title "Cooking yourself Thin", was exactly what we needed.

Well, we tweaked the calories, added an amazing cookbook called "The Three-Hour Diet", and pretty much revolutionized our entire approach to food during the course of the year.

All told, by December 31, the promised 52 gourmet experiences stood closer to 152. Both of us lost some weight. But, most importantly, we established a shift in culture that has impacted my life across the board.

Gourmet Living:
By and large (pun intended), I believe most Americans eat too much because they are, simply put, unsatisfied. Junk food - and junk living - cannot satisfy. However, because it's all that we know, we gorge ourselves in the baseless hope that it will.

If the accumulation of wealth, for example, is your standard for "the good life", then of course you are going to pursue the goal even when it leaves you feeling empty... because the answer is always "More! Then I'll be satisfied." It's the same thing with power, with illicit relationships, with substance abuse, etc....

The principle follows when it comes to junk food. It simply doesn't satisfy, so we feel like we have to eat more and more to fill the emptiness. But it never will satisfy - that's the point! We end up overweight and disappointed.

Good quality food with great flavor is satisfying. There's no need to gorge.

Gourmet life is no different. If we pursue the truth, if we address a relationship with our Creator that guides our life, then balanced living, addressing the spiritual reality as well as the physical, will also be a rewarding life.

As for me, I'm interested to see where my commitment to gourmet living is going to take me during 2011. A well-seasoned 2011. Life is good... God is good.

Life-Charged Words

Every year, at about this time, I receive an invitation to stand behind the podium at the Men's Interdenominational Prayer Breakfast in Zephyrhills and share what's on my heart. The experience is always a blessing because, while the good folk of Zephyrhills may well be the most senior group I speak to, they also happen to be among the most enthusiastic, the most responsive, and the most faithful.

My rough cell-phone picture (below) is just a slice of the room. The organizers counted heads and reported a record attendance. Fifty-eight Zephyrhillians (if that's a word), came together for fellowship, encouragement, prayer and - hopefully - a good word from yours truly.

Early on in my speaking career, when I looked at my upcoming commitments, I used to worry that I might repeat a story or an illustration I'd used before. Then I realized two truths:

• First - and more likely with some audiences than others - odds are no-one would remember what I said last time anyway!
• Then - and this is an exciting realization - God is working in my life constantly, graciously willing to teach me new things every day ("New every morning is his love..."). If I'm paying attention, if I'm growing in my faith, and if I spend enough time on my knees, then there's always going to be a fresh testimony to share.

The point - of course - is to pay attention.

What I did this morning was to begin to build my emphasis for 2011. I've been thinking specifically about my work in encouraging men's ministry, and I'm starting to hone a new message, something that will in all probability become the skeletal outline for a new book.

I offered my Zephyrhills friends the first five of what I'm calling "Ten Life-Charged Words". Ideas like "passion", "capacity", "clear vision" and "Jesus." I'll be sharing some selected glimpses into this project over the next few months.

Stay tuned. There's going to be a lot to talk about!
- DEREK