I Miss Telemarketers

A few years ago my wife and I signed up for the national Don't Call registry.  We did so for two reasons.  First, we dropped our land line a few years back and did not want telemarketers using up our cell phone minutes.  Second, and perhaps more importantly, I hate telemarketers.  With a passion.  Now that they no longer call I kind of miss them, but not for the reasons you might think.
As much as I despise telemarketers they did perform a useful function in my life.  Namely, they let me blow off steam.  I come home from work and I'm not having a good day.  There was traffic, construction, I had to wait 45 minutes for the doctor, etc...  Then the phone rings.  It is some strange person calling from some strange land like India or Iowa and they want to take up my valuable time trying to sell me something I have no interest in buying.  So I take this opportunity, this gift if you will, to release all of my pent-up anger and frustration.  "When you were a kid did you imagine that your life would be such a failure?"  I snidely ask at the first opportunity.  Or, "No wonder you can't get a date with a voice like that."  And perhaps my favorite, which I reserve just for the guys, "So how many [fill in with product name] does your pimp make you sell each night before you get to go home?"  They hang up and I feel better.  For the moment, anyway.
Venting on telemarketers was much safer road rage.  I am not a small guy, but I understand that cutting off the car in front of me may have some adverse consequences.  Like a 6'8", 340lb very angry man who wants to see if in fact I will break open like a pinata when he hits me with a baseball bat.  Telemarketers are not a threat.  They are faceless voices on the other end of a phone line.  They are not people, after all, they are telemarketers.  Right?
In an impersonal society we treat people, well, impersonally.  Granted, calling me at mealtime to sell me timeshares in Fort Wayne is not a sign of respect.  Yet that does not give me a free pass to pretend that the person calling is entitled to have my spleen vented all over them.  It is strange, but when we think there are no consequences, or at least no direct consequences that involve baseball bats, we can get pretty cruel.  Inhumane.  Downright unchristian.
I don't know what Jesus would do about telemarketers and to be honest I don't really care.  I know what I am supposed to do.  I also know that there have been days when I really didn't want to treat that person calling me with anything that resembled compassion, grace or love.  And that is why I miss telemarketers.  They force me to be the person I am called to be.  Jesus said to love your enemies. But what about your enemy who can't hurt you, who you can't see?  That is tough, but just as important.  What we do when we think there are no consequences tells a great deal about who we are and what we believe.  Real love for other people shows up when someone calls you while your children are screaming, you have a massive headache, and your dinner is getting cold.  Valentines Day love is easy.  Thursday night telemarketer love is the real deal.
Alright, if you have read this far you are entitled to know that I never really said such nasty things to telemarketers.  Usually I just muttered something under my breath and hung up.  But I thought the lines up and I wanted to say them.  Badly.  Which in some ways makes me no better than the people who have teed off on telemarketers.  But it might also mean that God's grace has a hold on my tongue if not my heart.  I hope that is true.  I also hope to never, ever, get a call from a telemarketer again.

Pirate Grace

Its not just about living forever, Jackie. The trick is living with yourself, forever.

Captain Teague, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

A few years ago my oldest daughter and I went to see an IMAX movie. One of the previews was for the Rolling Stones concert film, Shine A Light. There, in six story glory, were the aging rock icons. I have always had something of a love/hate relationship with the Stones (I am sure they feel the same way about me). I really like some of their music, but even the thought of seeing them play Start Me Up live was not enough to overcome my fear, and I do mean fear, of seeing a 60 foot high Keith Richards. There are some images that no amount of psychotherapy can help you overcome.

How Keith is alive is beyond me and most medical science. All those years of hard living did, however, prove helpful in landing the part of the grizzly Captain Teague in the last installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. Turns out that Johnny Depp patterned his character, Jack Sparrow (sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow) off of Keith Richards. So who better to play Captain Jack's brother than the battled scarred guitar god. Even though he had a cameo role the writers gave Keith one of the best lines of the movie (see above). Jack is always worried with saving his own life. Throughout the three films the pirate is willing to make any deal or turn on any friend in order to survive. But, as Captain Teague reminds his brother, survival means very little if you can't live with yourself. That these words come out of the mouth of one of the most notorious partiers in rock history just adds to their meaning.

There are some religious traditions that believe that this life is all you get. There are others faith communities that teach reincarnation, though in each incarnation you come back as a different person or thing. The Christian faith affirms that through Jesus Christ we have access to eternal life. In general this sounds like a good thing, especially when I think about spending eternity with all the people I care about and with God. Then I remember that I also have to spend forever and ever, without end, with myself. Suddenly reincarnation sounds like a brilliant idea.

Learning to live with ourselves is not easy. I have found that it is much easier to forgive someone else than it is myself. I carry around with me all of my mistakes and mess-ups. I can't seem to get rid of them. Or, is it more accurate to say that deep down inside I don't want to let them go? In a weird sort of way hanging onto all of my mistakes and misdeeds is a last act of control in my struggle with God. Sure, God can say I am forgiven, but not until I say so.

Grace may well be the most difficult thing in the world to grasp. It is so easy to understand yet so extremely hard to accept. God is not shy about extending grace to us. The problem is getting over ourselves long enough to receive it. If we do have all of eternity ahead of us, perhaps, maybe, possibly we might need to learn to live with the person we see in the mirror. Grace can help us do that if we just let go. Don't believe me? Just go ask the 60 foot high Keith Richards...if you dare.

The Epic Fail

Epic Fail. This phrase entered my vocabulary via by teenage daughter. You may be familiar with the term. If not, let me give you a few examples.

Epic Pool Fail - My daughter's middle school class went to Washington DC this past spring. The kids had been preparing for this trip all school year and they were keyed up for the experience. When they get to DC and make their way to the National Mall they discover, much to their disappointment, that the reflection pools are empty. Draining the pools is something that is done on a regular basis. Unless this is your long awaited trip to see our nation's capital. Then it is nothing less than an epic pool fail.

Epic Prank Fail - I had a cabin of eight 3rd-5th grade boys at camp last week and a teenage Counselor in Training. I felt it is my duty to pass on one of the great camping traditions - the prank. Let me be clear, we were not going after any of the other campers. That would be cruel and unchristian. The teenage Counselor in Training of the adjoining girls cabin, however, was fair game. My CIT had found a plastic rat and we decided to let the boys place it in the female CIT's sleeping bag. Oh, the sparkle in those boy's eyes when we hatched the plot. The excitement, the expectation, the pure joy! It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. This is what church camp is all about.
So, on Thursday evening, after all the other campers had gone up to the dining hall, my boys got to work. We had lookouts, escape plans, and a well conceived prank. Problem was, she was not freaked out by the rat. No scream, no yell, not even a whimper did the female CIT make. This my friends, constituted an epic fail.

Epic fail is a term applied to activity in which people really try at something and it does not work. What distinguishes and epic fail from your run of the mill failure is the amount of expectation and energy put into the failed enterprise. Of course, like any phrase, it can be misused and overused, but I think it has value. Lots of things don't work, but some fail so badly they are nothing less than epic.

There is, however, another part to the epic fail - the epic redemption. You can't have failure without the possibility of redemption. And if something is an epic fail then that which redeems it must also be epic. In the Christian faith we have a word for epic redemption. Its called grace, and it comes from God. Grace is capable of taking even the most epic of failures and redeeming them. Epic redemptions happen everyday. There is no failure too big, or small, for God's grace.

Many of us have epic fails in our lives -broken relationships, addictions, jobs or businesses that did not work out. Some of those failures seem more than epic, they are life threatening. There is good news, my friends. For every epic fail there is an equally epic redemption waiting to happen. So take heart and know that even in your worst circumstance, your greatest blunders, your most epic fails, God's grace is hard at work. Thanks be to God for epic redemption.

The perfect birthday gift #1

This weekend I celebrate another birthday. For what it's worth I will be 43 years old. What do you do to mark such a momentous occasion? I mean, come on, its hard to get all giddy and excited about middle age. Ponies and balloons really don't light my fire anymore. Someone asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I pondered this question for a while. At first I came up with all the Miss America pageant cliches: world peace, no more wars, an end to childhood hunger. Then I thought no, midlife is nothing without a crisis. What would I want that woulde ease that growing since of anxiety I have sometimes about getting old (do you realize in 7 years I will qualify for an AARP card!!!) In a flash of self-absorbed brilliance I came up with three perfect gifts.

Gift 1 - A Time Machine
Some people might look at this gift and think about all the great historical events they would want to visit. Not me. My time machine has one purpose and one purpose only: to ferry me back to those events in my life that need to be fixed. The list is rather long, unfortunately, but doable. At last count I identified around a dozen key mistakes that if corrected could make me into the man I always wanted to be. All I have to do is travel back in time, make a different choice or, in one instance, just keep my mouth closed, and shazzam, life is perfect. The whole process should take 20-30 minutes, which is about the average time we use gifts anyway. Then that little machine could take its rightful place in the corner and start gathering dust and my dirty clothes.

I was pretty excited about the mere prospect of this gift (purposefully ignoring that such a machine does not exist in real life) when a feeling of unease hit me. This whole fantasy was predicated on the belief that by fixing those mistakes I would be perfect, or near perfect. What if, heaven forbid, I fixed those dozen bad decisions only to discover that I made 12 equally horrible choice later on in life. Then I would have to go back in time and correct those mistakes. And then correct the mistakes I made after I fixed the second set of mistakes. It would never end. My life would be consumed by this process. Stupid time machine!

I had another realization as I was imagining all of this. If I had such a time machine not only would I not be able to fix every mistake in my life but I would be missing out on one of God's greatest gifts: grace. I'm human and I am going to make wrong decisions and bad choices. Even with a time machine I will never be perfect. But I don't have to be (though God really wants me to give it my best shot). God loves me even with all my imperfections, perhaps even because of them. Grace is love that comes not to us not because we have earned it, but as a gift freely given. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good birthday gift. Better than a time machine...though if I had only kept my mouth shut that one time...