New MANuscript - letting the song out!

New manuscript – letting the song out

New manuscript on its way to Nashville!

Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy! – Psalm 96, 1, 11 & 12

YAY… YAHOO… WOO-HOO… COOL-BEANS…

Drum-roll, please! My new manuscript is now complete, printed off, and on its way by priority mail to my publisher in Nashville. Time to take a deep breath and get back into my “normal” flow of writing activity.

It is – to be honest – always a bittersweet moment whenever an intense project such as writing a new book is completed. I enjoy the process so much: the research, the praying, the sketching out of ideas, the sitting in my leather chair and thinking, the walking around and thinking, the drinking coffee and thinking, the bouncing-off of ideas with friends, the writing, the re-writing, the re-re-writing, the pulling things together and – finally – the break-neck surge of creativity and composition that pours forth during that last week of frantic assembly before finally letting go and dropping a new book in the mail slot at the Post Office….

This particular book has been different because of the “fast-track” schedule. It’s book # 5, but book #4 is still in the pipeline and waiting for next month’s release date. They have almost become tangled together in the process. I’ll talk more about the other book – Reaching Toward Easter – when it actually “hits the shelves”.

But for today it’s “Ten Life-Charged Words for Men” that has really captured my imagination, and – apart from the obvious – I think I know why:

It was writing the conclusion, Sunday evening, that forced me to consider the core message of the project, the “Why does this world need another book?” question. Well, the answer became clear when one of the saddest lines in 19th Century literature surfaced in my thinking.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” (Henry David Thoreau , 1854).

I realized that “Ten Life-Charged Words for Men” is all about putting an end to such a sad state of affairs! Instead of desperation, the ideas discussed represent a life defined by fullness. People who are “Life-charged” are people who let their song out. Or expressed in another way, the content of my new book is about the process of Letting Life Loose.

I like that, “The process of Letting Life Loose.”

So – and this is what this blog is all about too – Sing, people, sing. Let life loose. Let’s live like we mean it.

- DEREK

Letting the song out!

Grab a Memory - Time is Fleeting

Grab a Memory – Time is fleeting

Image captured early Saturday evening

I’ll admit it, this is a very unusual picture. It’s not clear, there’s obviously some movement going on, the colors are kind of cool, you can make out a hand… but that’s about it.

The photograph has an ethereal quality – there’s something going on but it’s hard to pin down. You know there has to be some discernible content, and also some kind of explanation as to why the image is so distorted – but wrapping your mind around it is takes some doing.

I’m guessing most of you have figured it out by now. And, of course, it’s easier to make out once you know the subject matter. So here’s what happened:

We’d just had dinner with some great friends, ten of us celebrating life together, enjoying one another’s company. Then we sat around and chatted while two of my favorite children in the whole world made all sorts of commotion in various parts of the house.

I could hear the youngest heading my way, and I knew he was about to tumble into the living room and go for some of the cars on the coffee table. So I pointed my camera in his direction and hit “click” as he rounded the corner. However, being a cell-phone it took a while to shoot the image and I had to adjust my aim at the last moment.

Bingo! One small boy, stretched and distorted like a poorly calibrated “Beam me up Scotty” as I did my best to hold on to that particular moment in the space-time continuum.

Andrew, in Pensacola, circa 1988

But you know it’s very difficult to isolate and then hold on to a discrete moment in time. Some theologians talk about “The Eternal Now”, but I’m more inclined to believe what’s really going on is the “Eternal just missed it”, or the “Eternal whoops, there it goes.” Because the instant that we pause long enough to reflect and to process what’s taking place, why, the moment has just slipped into the past and we’re left grasping a blurred remembrance.

Rebekah’s brother Jesse posted this photograph of Andrew on facebook just a few minutes ago. Good grief! I can see the event so clearly in my memory. And there’s Naomi, watching in the background.

Rebekah calls it “Grabbing a memory.” She would always tell the children as much on vacation or during a special event, “Don’t forget to grab some memories today!” And we would.

Once in a while we were able to hold still long enough that the memories would come out clearly, like this picture of Andrew on Jesse’s road bike. In fact some of the most sharply etched memories don’t even have photographs to go along with then.

And then there would be the rush, the out of focus, the jumbled together and the blurred; hundreds of thousands of images sometimes covering weeks or months. And the children grow, and we get older, and the moments come fewer and further between because all of a sudden they’re living in Connecticut, and Italy.

I don’t know where I’m really going with this post, except that the two pictures came across my desk top within a few moments of one another and the connection, the message, was too powerful to pass by without noting.

There are people I loved dearly – both friends and family – who have already slipped out of focus, passed into history as their days on this earth came to an end. And there are those I love dearly whose image I want to (need to) sharpen considerably while I still can.

I guess I’m saying that while I understand that space and time are always fluid, and that there is no such thing as any moment that is not instantly relegated to the past, we always have this golden opportunity to live completely in the slice of eternity that is this day, this hour, this moment.

Grab a memory!

There are realities such as love and hope and peace that have more substance and more durability than the transience of time. Heaven and earth will – one day – cease to be, Jesus said, but the things that are true will continue. I think this is amazing, wonderful and immensely sobering.

So grab a memory by living in the truth of what really matters. Love, hope, peace. Live in love in this moment, live in peace, live into hope. Time may be fleeing, but truth is eternal.

- DEREK

Elvis and Princess Di - breaking news!!!

Elvis and Princess Di Tell All!

Maybe I Should Write Better Headlines?

DATELINE VALRICO - ”ELVIS PRESLEY AND PRINCESS DI JOIN PRAISE TEAM AT LOCAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH!”Some opening, huh? I wonder – and I’m not pointing fingers – how many people actually clicked on this post because they simply couldn’t resist the words, “Elvis”? or “Princess Di”? Of course we all know that Princess Di was C-of-E (Church of England), and that Elvis likely wasn’t a Presbyterian, but The King is the all-time #1 most successful tabloid news-lead keyword, and Diana runs a close second.

Every day I’m curious to see which of my posts people click on and read, and to note what gets passed around beyond my usual circle of readers, and then to wonder why some content gets completely ignored!

I’m actually getting enough hits now to generate some interest from advertisers, but so far I’ve said, “Thanks but no thanks.” Because I’m really not interested in either carrying ads or embedding pre-paid URLs in my text. If I recommend a link – such as the one I often include to First Presbyterian Church of Brandon, or an Amazon.com book page – you can rest assured that it was my idea and not from somebody else.

TABLOID SENSATIONALISM: A lot of people only click if they’re pulled in by the title, and I guess I could work on more compelling headlining for my posts. I used the phrase “London Riots” a couple of days ago and pretty much doubled my readership for that entry. But, again, I want to be accurate. Spiking my numbers via sensationalism would – to my way of thinking – run counter to my core message. I want people to visit this blog confident that they’re always going to read something relevant to the fundamental notion of living a “Life-Charged Life.”

This morning’s musings, then, appear to be keyed in to the “What’s the point” question; or, “Why am I doing this?” I’m writing – as I do every morning – to connect with my Muse, and to discover my creative direction for Thursday, August 11, 2011.

Today, as is typically the case, I really don’t know what I’m writing about until after I begin – my direction tends to reveal itself once I get under way. There’s a solid lesson in that thought. How often do we fail to even launch because we want to know all the details before we get started? But – and I know this is an old illustration – you can’t steer something that’s not under way.

I honestly believe that, most of the time, what God is most interested from me is a little forward motion.

Me: “Where are we going, Lord?”

God: “I can’t say it matters that much, Derek. I’d just like to see you move off your rear end once in a while…”

Me: “All-righty then….”

Err, that’s my cue to exit. But I think I know where I’m going with today’s chapter in my new book - DEREK

Ten Ways to Live the Life-Charged Life

New glass in our font door

One of my more regular writing gigs is the ongoing work I do for All Pro Dad (allprodad.com). In brief, All Pro Dad provides resources and encouragement for men who are motivated to do their dad job with imagination, creativity, commitment, faithfulness, love and anything else that works.

All Pro Dad comes under the Family First umbrella, and features a cutting edge website that showcases a wide variety of resources. One popular feature is the “10-Ways” series that gives “bullet point” ideas designed to help men in their role as dads, single dads, married partners, family team members and a whole host of other challenges. As of this week, 92 of those lists are mine.

So, in recognition of the All Pro Dad project and for a change of pace in this blog, here are “Ten Ways to Live the Life-Charged Life.” I’m writing these “stream of consciousness,” which means that the items are not pro-rated, the list is nowhere near complete, and we could probably go with 20-30 items if we had time. Enjoy:

1. Launch each new day from the context of prayer. Simply put, as little as five minutes of early morning prayer sets a trajectory for the coming day that is loaded with positive.
2. Choose a positive outlook. For example, the fact that it’s raining again this morning will not change. But your choice to see it as a blessing versus an inconvenience is entirely up for grabs.
3. Determine to put the interests of others ahead of your own. In traffic… at the office… what you fix for dinner… how you chose to view a particular challenge… how you handle a disagreement….
4. Make sure the people you love know that you love them – today. Call; say it with flowers; write a note; smooch… use your imagination.
5. Make sure that, because you interacted with the world today, the world is qualitatively a better place. Every day, this is our opportunity.
6. Do something outside of the predictable stream of activity for the expressed purpose of making someone else happy. Fix a cup of coffee for a co-worker; complement your spouse; plant a rose-bush; offer a back-rub…
7. Make the effort to keep your awareness of personal faith front and center all day long. There are many ways to approach this; the point is to make the effort.
8. Memorize a short passage of scripture. I cannot overstate the power of planting good seeds of truth and inspiration in our hearts and minds.
9. Replace one hour of media (television, talk radio) with one hour of reading. Duh…
10. Replace another 30-minutes of media with a long walk. If I started the process of enumerating the benefits of regular exercise this would be a looooooong post!

Bottom line, friends and family and general readers, EACH NEW DAY stands as an unprecedented, previously untried and often unimagined opportunity to live and to grow and to love and to learn…

So why not today?

- DEREK

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. – 1 Peter 6:18-19