Songs

Maybe the reason guys like me say things like, “today’s music doesn’t’ speak to me,” isn’t just because we are becoming geezers. Maybe it isn’t so much about the music or the lyrics or the beat, but because we don’t yet have any stories linked to those new songs. However, speaking for myself, since my only real exposure to current music is in Gold's Gym, and since if I didn't work out I would hear only what they play on NPR, if I don't have any personal stories tied to contemporary music, it might be my own fault.

In his clever book, “Manhood for Amateurs,” Michael Chabon, lamented the format change at his favorite radio station. They flipped from the oldies of his youth to contemporary pop, and it hurt. Each of those old songs linked to a story from Chabon’s life, and whenever he heard an old favorite he also remembered a favorite old story. He called it, “the mysterious power of the chance interaction between radio and memory.”

Chabon wrote, “More often there is no obvious thematic connection between a song on the radio and the memory that it somehow or other comes to preserve, between the iridescent bubble of the music and the air of the past that it randomly traps.”

While reading the book I started thinking of the memories and the stories that I flash to whenever I hear certain old songs, and I scribbled several in the margin. If I hear Steely Day singing “Reelin’ in the Years,” for example, I am transported back to the evening when fellow trombone player Jan Ramey gave me a ride home after evening band practice and we heard that song for the very first time her station wagon.

If I hear “Beginnings” by Chicago my memory runs back to my first date with my first girlfriend. If I hear “Never Ending Love For You” by Delaney and Bonnie I am instantly skiing with Cyndi, clicking my poles behind me for a rhythm track, singing to her.

If I hear “Jesus is Just Alright With Me” by The Doobie Brothers I remember sitting in my car on a rainy Sunday evening outside of Bellview Baptist Church in Hobbs waiting for the song to end before going inside, listening to the coolest song I had ever heard and the coolest song I could imagine ever hearing containing the name “Jesus.”

Whenever I hear the opening beats of “Fallen” by Lauren Woods my head snaps around looking for Cyndi who will already be walking toward me with arms outstretched ready to dance. It’s part of our ongoing story, forever linked to that song.

When I hear “Hit the Road Jack,” by Ray Charles, I remember the weekend when Cyndi was away teaching an aerobics workshop and the kids and I worked up a surprise for her. When we were ready to go somewhere, I would say, “Well, it’s time to hit the road,” and Katie would say, “Jack,” and Byron would say “Don’t you come back no more no more.” They were both preschoolers, I think. We practiced over and over all weekend, and when we picked Cyndi up at the airport and tried it on her, it worked perfectly. We all laughed and laughed we were so proud of ourselves. We repeated that little mantra many times through the years and I still think of it every time I hear the song.

I remember the first time I heard “Hey Jude” by Paul McCartney. I was riding in the backseat of my grandparent’s car on the way to a family reunion at Kirkland Docks on Lake Brownwood. I think of that scene every time I hear the song. I also think how strange it is to link my kind and gentle grandfather, a very conservative small-town Baptist preacher, with The Beatles and “Hey Jude.” He would’ve been shocked at the connection.

When I hear “Life Less Ordinary” by Carbon Leaf I am back on Highway 101 driving north from Ventura, California, enjoying the sunshine and relaxed freedom of the road, thinking once again of the extraordinary future I dream of with Cyndi, and I cannot help but smile.

Sunday night at our church we heard a concert by classical guitarist Rodrigo Rodriguez, and in one of his medleys he played a worship song from a few years back titled, “As the Deer.” I was immediately transported back to a Walk to Emmaus spiritual retreat that I attended in 1998 during an especially soft spiritual time in my life. After the concert I told Cyndi, “I could feel my biorhythms slow down when he played that song. It was as if I settled into a comfortable place.” That song, among others, will be forever linked to my stories from that weekend.

In fact, I could go on and on to the point of boredom listing songs linked to stories of my life, and perhaps I already have. I’m not sure the ones I mentioned are even the most important ones; they are just the first few I thought of right away. And I wonder if I would even remember those stories at all if I never heard the songs again. I can learn to enjoy new songs, but I would hate to lose my stories.

How about you. What are your songs with stories?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Telling stories

Michael Chabon wrote about how his life changed when his younger brother was born. “But it was not until that moment, in early September 1968, that my story truly began. Until my brother was born, I had no one to tell it to.” (Manhood for Amateurs)

I wrote in the margin of my book, “So our story doesn’t exist unless we have someone to tell it to?”

A few years ago Cyndi and I went to Uganda and Kenya to visit our friends John and Linda Witte. After we came back I couldn’t stop telling stories and writing about our adventures. One friend told me, “I would rather send you on a trip and listen to your stories than go on the trip myself.”

Well, I didn’t believe that was exactly true, but I realized the corollary was true. If I don’t have an opportunity to tell my stories when I get back, I might as well never go on the trip. For me the stories were more important than souvenirs. Stories are the artifacts of life.

One time I heard Gary Barkalow ask at a Wild at Heart camp, “What is something that you cannot stop doing?” He wasn’t asking about bad habits or eating chocolate or nervous tics, but rather he was asking about the clues into our personality and character.

My answer to his question? I cannot stop telling the stories of my life and the lives around me. If I have any sort of experience, I have to tell about it. For me, the trip hasn’t happened unless I have stories to tell. The book hasn’t been read without a story. A backpacking trip never occurred without a story, and a story doesn’t usually bubble up unless something spectacular happened – like a disaster, or a storm, or a beautiful sunrise, or a wild animal. And the best part of running a marathon is the story-telling session afterward. Without a story to tell, it’s a waste of 26.2 miles.

One year at CornFest at our house my friend Todd cut his hand while carving an ear of corn. He thought he’d have to go to the emergency room to get stitches until Linda put him back together with Super Glue. It worked perfectly. In fact, he healed so completely he didn’t even have a scar. The guys at work didn’t believe his story because he didn’t have a scar. Without a scar, there was no story; and without a story, it never happened.

Like Michael Chabon’s, my own brother was born twelve years after I was, so we each grew up as an only children. We had nothing in common. I was a freshman in college when Carroll started first grade. We grew up in different phases of a parent’s lives. We grew up with different friends and different music and different movies and different family stories. We finally connected during the past ten years as we raised our own families. We finally had stories to share that both of us understood; stories about our families and about each other. Now we talk at least once a week for an hour, usually late at night (late in my world, not in Carroll’s world). Carroll calls me because he actually remembers to make phone calls and he is much more social than I am.

Recently we met for lunch at Rosa’s in Midland and told stories for a couple of hours. I think we were both surprised at how many personality traits we had in common. Who knew? It took stories to bring it out.

Roy Blount wrote about a friend of his who was visiting her mother in a nursing home. Many of the other residents had Alzheimer’s, but the friend’s mother’s mind was unclouded. “They’ve forgotten their stories!” she said of the others. “They can say anything!”

I always think of stories as defining us, of communicating our heart. To say, let me tell you my story, is to say, let me tell you who I am and what I believe and what I think is important and who I love and where I’m headed, and all that. To know my stories is to know me.

And in fact, if I want to describe someone else to you, the best way to do it would be to tell you a story.

The mother in the nursing home said if we have no stories we have no boundaries. We can be anybody, which is to be nobody. One day we are a musician, the next a mountain climber, then a mechanic, maybe a rocket scientist, maybe a street bum. Stories not only tell who we are, they keep us true to ourselves.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Creative process

It was Saturday afternoon and Cyndi was in Alpine, so I was on solo childcare-duty for the weekend.  I was doing some computer work in my library at home, paying bills, and all that, when my seven-year-old nephew Kevin, being a social creature, unlike me, decided to join me at the big table. He brought his partially-built Lego Jedi Starfighter, as flown by the Lego version of Anakin Skywalker. He was hoping I would help him finish the starship, which means he was hoping to watch me put it together for him.

He was disappointed in the outcome because I wouldn’t help him as much as he wanted me to. I helped him line up his pieces when he was trying to build a mirror-image of the drawing in the book – for example, when he was working on the left wing but the drawing was of the right wing. Working with mirror images is a bit much to expect from a kid.

But I wouldn’t help him look for missing pieces. I didn’t refuse to help; I was just really slow at actually getting around to helping. I wasn’t trying to be mean to him, but finding the correct Lego piece is a skill that can only be learned by repetition. Each time he eventually found the piece anyway without my help.

Once Kevin got so mad at my stall tactics he stomped out of the room, pouting and fuming. I let him go; he’d earned the right to be angry at me and my lack of cooperation, but a few moments later I heard him digging through his big box of extra Lego pieces in his bedroom. Then, he came back into the library with the exact piece he had been looking for.

“See, Uncle Berry,” he bragged, “here it is,” defiantly showing me who was boss.

“Good for you, Kevin. I knew you could find it. You are smarter than you think you are.”

He eventually finished his Jedi Starfighter on his own and went on to save the galaxy. It was a proud afternoon.

It wasn’t that I was too busy to help him more, but I’ve been down this road before with my own kids. They tended to be more interested in completing the final product, the airplane or fire truck or starship shown on the box. They didn’t really care who did the actual construction, they just wanted it to be done.

Me, I wasn’t that interested in the final product at all. I wanted them to learn how to read the diagram and understand the drawings, find their own pieces, and learn how to make substitutes when they couldn’t find the exact piece they wanted. I was more interested in the process than in the final product.

And to be honest, I am actually happier after the box-cover model has been completed, and played with, and finally dismantled. That’s when creativity and imagination replace plan-following routine. That is when improvisation begins.

Maybe that’s why I like that sound of young hands digging in a Lego box so much; it sounds like creativity to me.

Later, I thought more about the Lego scenario, and I realized once again how our simple everyday life mirrors the nature of God. I don’t believe God is as interested in the final result of our life as much as he’s interested in the process of getting us there. He cares more about our character than our destination.

I wondered if God ever holds back from helping us because he wants us to try harder. Does he know there are some things we can learn only through repetition? I wonder if it makes him happy when we take the misfit pieces of our life and begin to improvise a new solution. I wonder if he smiles when he hears us digging through our box of spare parts.

For the past few months I have been working around with my list of 100 Life Goals. In fact our Iron Men group that meets on Thursday mornings has been working on this same project together. Several of the guys sent their lists to me so I could make a group compilation, and today at lunch I read those lists for the first time. I was stunned how personal and honest and specific the goals were. Not all the goals were what might be considered actual responsible adult behavior, some were wild moon shots. Some were dug from the bottom corner of the Lego box in hopes they would fit in with the rest of life. They were improvisational, hopeful, and creative. I don’t know if any of us will be successful with our entire list. In fact, I suspect none of us will achieve them all. But I think the process of dreaming big makes God happy. I believe he likes to hear us digging through the box for the cool pieces.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

Being one of us

Being “one of us” is a powerful thing. We are all stronger because of the communities we belong to.

This morning our family engaged in one of our semi-annual Thanksgiving traditions – we joined 37,000 other runners and walkers for the 42^nd annual Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot 8-mile and 5K races. It was a great morning; just cool enough stay comfortable in winter running gear, but warm enough to be pleasant and friendly. It was great to be a part of such a large tribe of people, to be one of us with all of them. How often can so many people get together with no fighting and everyone friendly to each other? The only reason there were police on the scene was to protect us from traffic, not from each other. There was energy hanging in the air from so many people with shared goals. It was contagious. We were all wearing the proper tribal colors (race T-shirts, high-tech fabrics, running shoes), and we all had fun.

That many people won’t fit in the small space of a street on one city block. The pack of runners waiting to start spilled over onto all the sidewalks and side streets and stretched a long way from the starting line. And a group that size won’t move very quickly, even after the starting horn sounds. It always takes a long time before everyone is up to speed; the crowd uncoils like a big slinky. I got closer to the starting line this year than ever before, which meant I started moving (shuffling) only two minutes after the horn went off. Usually it takes 8 to 10 minutes before I start moving my feet.

About a half-mile into the race I found myself trapped behind three double-sized baby strollers being pushed side-by-side, the pushers talking and gossiping and giggling like old friends, all six kids nestled into their blankets. They created a barrier across the road of about 15 feet, leaving a huge wad of runners dammed up behind them trying to find a way around. But that sort of thing is what you should expect in a family event so huge.

By the time I hit mile two, I finally passed my last group of walkers – I don’t mean runners who occasionally walk, but people who never intended to run at all. They were easy to identify by their huge fleece jackets and blue jeans. It took me two miles to catch up them, meaning they must have lined up very near the starting line to be so far ahead of me. I got into place about 20 minutes before the race start; they must have lined up an hour before.

As I settled into my pace for eight miles, I thought about how running has become such a family marker for us. And this particular race has been part of our Thanksgiving tradition for ten years.

Running together is something that has become so important and identifiable with us, yet it started off in our group back in 1978 with me trying to impress a girl. I thought I had to do something athletic to win her attention and I choose running because it had the least skill requirements for a beginner. I was never any good as a runner but I just kept stumbling along. Who knew Cyndi would eventually join me? Who knew Byron and Katie would join in? Who knew Katie would marry an athlete and drag him into our running tribe?

Our beginning with running was fragile and tenuous to start with, but over time it became a fundamental part of our story. And it is our shared stories that make us a tribe, that make us … one of us.

This single activity sets us apart from most of the world but joins us with the thousands of families we ran with this morning. Why did we stick to it? How did it become so important? Who knows?

How often the defining markers of our tribes, the activities and attitudes that link us together, that bind us together, are so fragile and thin. Community can be very subtle. We had a lot of things in common with 37,000 people today, even more things not in common, yet I might feel more a part of that group even without knowing anyone else’s name than I might feel with some family members that I’ve known for decades.

The older I get the more I value the communities I belong to. Maybe its because my family has grown, and grown up, so its been more important for us to get together. Maybe its because I’m finally convinced I cannot do it all myself - or I can’t do it well all by myself - or I no longer want to do it myself. Or maybe I’ve finally listened to the advice of friends who understood the value of community for their entire lives.

Community has to be guarded and cherished. Our tribe is held together only by a few things, but they have become strong things. I am looking forward to more.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

Good branches

I was reading from Jesus’ final words to his disciples before he died: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2, NIV)

Two years ago, after reading that same verse, I wrote in the margin of my Daily Bible, “I lost the election; was that pruning so my life will be even more fruitful?”

Cyndi and I bought our first house in 1980 while living in Brownfield, Texas, when we were just children.

OK, we weren’t really children; we had jobs and degrees and bills and a baby, and one of us had a library card, but it was so long ago it seems like a different life. We lived in a trailer donated by Cyndi’s mom, in the Careyville Mobile Home Village, because there were no apartments for rent. After only one winter with the west Texas wind whistling through that trailer, carrying dust through the walls and blowing out the pilot in our heater and freezing the water pipes, I had enough. I wanted something else. We bought a house on Oak Street from the youth minister at our church, and one feature of the house was a significant rose garden alongside the driveway.

I ignored the roses and let them live alone in peace during our first spring in the house, but the second spring I decided I could learn to become a master rose gardener. I got lots of advice on how to prune the branches for maximum rose production. I weeded the beds constantly and fed them and pampered them all spring and summer. I was out pruning those rose bushes at least two or three days a week and we had beautiful roses all season long. We had roses in our house and gave them to all our friends. That year we had a plethora of roses, way more roses than the previous spring when we left them to grow on their own.

I thought about my rose-farming experiment when I read this verse from John 15. The part about God pruning the fruit-bearing branches wasn’t what I expected. My first thought was that he would prune only the lazy unresponsive non-bearing branches.

As I’ve gotten older and found a better handle on my real strengths and talents, I’ve slowly eliminated from my life the activities and projects I don’t do well, focusing instead on my strengths. I have engaged in self-pruning to maximize my effectiveness and to live the life God has called me to live. I want to act out of the strength of my life and not be distracted by the things I don’t do well. Being able to make those choices is one advantage of getting older.

But if I’m reading John 15 correctly, it says that God will prune away even my strengths and talents, my fruit-bearing areas, my best branches, to make them even better. Is that what I want?

Does that mean God might take away the opportunities I’m good at? Does it mean he might limit my exposure or impact even when I’m doing what he told me to do? Will God take me out of roles and responsibilities where I excel? As in, city government?

Most of us aren’t the best judges of our own lives. We don’t recognize our own strengths and we underestimate the effect of our lives on people around us. Often, those same people can see our strength and significance better than we see them ourselves.

So if God prunes something out of our life that we thought was one of our best attributes, well, maybe it wasn’t our best after all. Just because we get a lot of praise and attention from something doesn’t mean it’s successful in God’s eyes. In fact, all of that may become a distraction from where God really wants us to be.

So Tuesday morning, after reading from John 15, I posted this on Twitter: “Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes. Will he cut back something I’m good at, to improve?”

Because my Twitter account rolls over to Facebook, I got several responses to the post. Mark wrote: “Perhaps that’s what the city council thing was about? It made room for Running with God.” (Running with God is the title of my first book.)

I think Mark was right. In fact, the first time I noticed this particular verse was when I read it on November 16, 2007, only 10 days after losing a city-wide election. It was all still fresh on my mind when I made those notes in the margin of my Bible.

But now, two years later, at least for this particular example, the part of my life that God pruned away, the part I thought was so important to my identity and significance, well, after only a few months, a few weeks even, it was gone from my mind. I never missed it. Some day I may take another turn at government, but for now it has simply disappeared. It was so long ago it seems like a different life.

Pruning is always future-oriented; the loss happens now, but the gains come later. At the moment of pruning, there is no evidence of what is to come; we have no proof there will be something better. All we have is the faith that we will be more fruitful. If I believe John 15, which I do, then I must relax and trust God when a part of my life gets pruned away, and wait to see where the new and better fruit will come from next.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Burning words

One Friday found me at Wendy's in Plainview (an appropriately named town) eating lunch, on my way to Aunt Teena’s farm near Sedan, New Mexico, to pick com. I was reading from my Daily Bible, from Jeremiah 36, about a time when God told Jeremiah to write down all his sermons and prophecies.

By this time in Jeremiah’s life he had been preaching for over twenty years; what a chore it must have been to recall everything he’d said. I doubt he had a folder of sermon notes in his file cabinet. Maybe he kept some form of journal through the years - that isn’t too farfetched since much of the book of Jeremiah is made up of his personal observations and analysis. Also, since he was following Gods direction to write it all down, maybe God helped him remember.

The story says Jeremiah asked another man, Baruch, to write down the words while Jeremiah dictated. Being a writer who edits a lot, I can’t imagine writing with pen and ink on a papyrus scroll without a word processor. Almost nothing that I write is readable on the first draft.

But they did it, and Baruch went to the temple to read Jeremiah’s words aloud. Some of the king’s officials got wind of the reading and had Baruch give them a private reading. What they heard scared them. It was obvious to them these were words from God, and they recognized Jeremiah’s hand in all of it. They knew that King Jehoiakim needed to hear it.

The next scene is one of those stories I have known since early childhood. I remember the picture from children's Bible class showing a regal-looking bearded king sitting in his throne beside an open fire while Baruch read the words.

The Bible says Jehoiakim used a scribe’s knife – I guess an early editing tool - to slice off the portion of the scroll after the words were read aloud and then burned those pieces in the fire. It was a dramatic scene, which is probably why I remember the picture so well even though I haven’t seen a copy in at least 45 years.

What did Baruch think as he was reading? The king was destroying months of work right before his eyes. Surely he was angry about that; yet he was reading aloud before the king himself, an honor few experienced. And what would happen when he read the last paragraph and it was burned up - would the king turn his scribe’s knife on Baruch? He must have worried about that as he read.

I wonder how often our work for God gets burned up by some contemptuous unbeliever after we’ve spent months or years working on it? Do we wonder why we did it all when the only remainder is smoke curling up to the ceiling?

And why did God expect Jeremiah and Baruch to go through all of this if he knew it would be burned up? Did God intentionally waste their time? Did he assign them a futile mission as a mean joke?

No, of course not. I think God was giving King Jehoiakim one more chance to repent before the hammer fell on him. Or maybe God’s intended audience that day was never the king himself but some member of his royal court. Preachers and teachers never know for certain which person in their class is the real target.

All we can do is speak what God gives us, when he asks us, and trust him with the outcome. After all, Jeremiah’s words were burned, but I still have a copy.

Cyndi likes to say, “It’s possible to become richer by giving away.” The problem with giving away – whether money or home-cooked food or talent and energy, or even written words directed by God – is that we don’t know what the recipient will do with the gift. If we worry about whether it will be used or appreciated, well, we haven’t really given it away, have we? We simply have to give ourselves and our stuff away and trust God to take care of it.

Jeremiah must have known the only way to preserve his words for all time was to give them away, even if that meant they might be destroyed by an unbelieving king. His gift certainly lasted longer than the arrogant King Jehoiakim. There I was, 2,600 years later, in Wendy’s, in Plainview, reading Jeremiah’s gift.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

To follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

To post a comment or subscribe to this free journal: http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

Heart guarding

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watchover your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” (NAS) Again, in a different version, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” (NIV)

I have known this verse - I’ve had it memorized - since my college days, at least 30 years. Yet, for most of those years I wasn’t diligent about my heart at all. I didn’t even understand what it meant to watch over or guard my heart.

Guarding our hearts, there’s more to this than merely avoiding evil. Erwin McManus compared it to building core strength. Anyone who has worked out in the gym under an instructor for the past ten years, or read a magazine article about getting stronger, knows that everything comes from our core strength. In the fitness world, it is all about core strength training nowadays.

Cyndi and I ran the Dallas Half-Marathon last Sunday, around White Rock Lake and adjacent neighborhoods. Our original plan was to run with Katie as a family sort of thing, but then she got pregnant and wimped out of the race. So, it was just Cyndi and me (and 4,000 other runners we didn’t know).

I actually handled the distance better than I expected considering my poor excuse for long training runs; well, I was beaten-up and tired at the end, but not defeated. One reason was because I’ve been training with Jeff Galloway's method: alternating running five minutes and walking one minute; it has helped a lot.

Galloway has been part of my overall scheme for recovering from injury, coping with seemingly permanent knee aches, and my strategy to keep doing this sort of thing for a few more decades.

He encourages runners to insert regular walking breaks into their running, whatever the distance. Galloway wrote, “When taken from the beginning of all long runs, walk breaks erase fatigue, speed recovery, reduce injury, and yet bestow all of the endurance benefits of the distance covered.”

I kept to my 5/1 schedule, making small adjustments whenever necessary to space my walking breaks with the water stops. I was able to start back running every time, and I maintained a better average pace than I would’ve had I tried to run every step. That is, until I got to I0 miles.

At 10 miles, I just felt drained. I hit the wall. I don't know if it was because that was the length of my longest training run, or if it was just what happened that day. I adjusted my pattern to running 4:00 and walking 1:00, but I still struggled. I eventually finished the half-marathon by walking 100 steps and running I00 steps (my old backpacking trick). I wanted to finish in less than three hours, so I kept working hard. I did finally finish in 2:55. An embarrassingly slow time to actually commit to paper and hard drive, but even at that, it was about 20 minutes better than my last half-marathon in Austin. It is my recovery-era half-marathon P.R. Hopefully, the first comeback in a new trend.

Back in 2005 when I first realized my left knee was hurt, I actually looked forward to surgery. I wanted a quick fix to put it back like it was. I was willing to put up with surgery if that’s what it took to fix it in a hurry.

What I eventually discovered, thanks to my new friends at the Seton Clinic in Austin, was that what I needed instead, was to increase my core strength. I followed a prescribed series of exercises every day to build my core strength and correct my muscle imbalances. It is a project I’ll continue to work on for the rest of my life if I want to keep moving.

It’s a similar story about our heart. We want quick fixes, weekend seminars, and fast solutions, but it takes a lifetime of guarding and feeding and protecting and building core strength to avoid heart injury. That is the “with all diligence” part.

Everything of value comes from the core. Everything comes from our heart. We have to go to our core and get stronger inside if we want to be productive and long-lasting in our heart.

This is not a passive activity. We have to take the initiative to get stronger. We can’t just hope or pray it gets stronger, we have to work it. We have to do the exercises.

We also have to eliminate the things that hurt us. What have I allowed to inform my life? It is good? What have I allowed to shape my heart? Am I feeding my heart what it needs? What kind of crappyjack have I been eating?

Proverbs tells me to guard my heart, for it is the wellspring of life. God actually sees me as generative, able to create life. My heart is a wellspring; life can flow from me.

This is way different than merely protecting what I have or guarding what I know or staying away from evil. This is not a defensive posture, but an offensive posture. I am supposed to use my heart to create life in other people.

How about you? How do you guard your heart? How do you strengthen your core?“

I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Ears to hear

This morning I was reading a series of parables taught by Jesus, and I was struck by how often Jesus said, "He who has ears, let him hear," and "Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear." Everyone Jesus talked to had ears and eyes, but not everyone heard what Jesus said. Some were paying attention of other voices. Jesus was speaking to those who were spiritually tuned in, or as we used to say in CB radio days, "People who had their ears on." Lots of people heard Jesus, but fewer listened to him, and fewer still let him speak directly into their life. They are the ones Jesus blessed.

l woke up early this morning, at 5:40 AM, to get ready for my men's class, and the song lyric running through my head as I got out of bed was, "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see,” from Strawberry Fields Forever by John Lennon. John was correct. It’s a lot easier to stumble through life not seeing the world and people around us; it was easier for the crowd to hang around Jesus if they kept their ears and eyes closed. Easier, but they missed the encounter with the Son of God. They misunderstood what they saw, thinking he was merely a miracle-working holy man, missing the Savior of the World.

The reason I was singing Strawberry Fields in my head first thing this morning was, well, I’m singing one song or another in my head almost all the time, and quite often the song is my first thought in the morning, but I was singing John Lennon in my head because I have been watching a movie this week called Across The Universe. My son, Byron, bought the movie for me a year ago, and he asked if I'd watched it whenever we talked. I finally watched it this week. It’s a musical based on songs by The Beatles and set in New York City in the late I960s. It has been playing inside my head all week.

I found myself walking down the sidewalk listening to the guitar riff from Come Together. And then I drove by Cyndi’s school say hello and to flirt with her, and in my head I was singing, "Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play.”

Then I was working on some writing and in my head I heard, "There is nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can say that can it be sung, there is nothing you can know that isn't known, nothing you can see that isn’t shown." I don’t know whether those lyrics helped or hurt the writing process, but they wouldn’t go away, and I didn’t really mind.

There are some movies that I can watch and enjoy and appreciate before filing them away in my memory for future reference. Other movies simply take over my life for a few days. I’ve learned not to fight the take-over, but to wallow in it. I’ll watch a particular movie several times and let it sink in. Most of the time I'm not even sure which images affect me; I just know I need to linger in the experience.

This week I was also listening to an audio book titled, "My Revolutions," by Hari Kunzru. It was about a 1960s radical-turned-terrorist, living quietly under a new name with a family that didn't know his history, who finds his past catching up with him. Reading (or listening to) that book, and watching the movie, put my brain firmly into the late I960s all week.

In real time I was too young to understand the I960s. I was too young to appreciate The Beatles until I was in college, long after they had broken up. I was too young to be a hippie; in fact, I'm not sure we actually had any hippies in Kermit, Texas. I did grow my hair out in the I970s, but I was never a hippie. And I certainly never lived like the characters in the movie or the book. Yet, I couldn’t shake them off.

So thinking about what Jesus said, one reason I read my Bible is to keep my eyes and ears open. I want the words and character of God to haunt me though the rest of the day in the same way that movie did. Even if I don't have a specific verse in mind or a point to ponder, I know if I just read and wallow in it, it will make me a better man. I don't want to misunderstand what I see. I don't want to live an easy life with my eyes closed. I want to live with open eyes and open ears. I want to be blessed.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” go to:

http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/running-with-god.html

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

To contact the author, write to berry@stonefoot.org. To post a comment or subscribe to this free weekly journal, visit http://journalentries.typepad.com/journal-entries/,

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

Defining moments

I was recently in a church personnel committee meeting where we were discussing whether to hire one of our own young adults as a youth ministry intern. Paul mentioned that this would be a great opportunity for our young man to understand the stirring he is feeling in his heart toward full-time ministry. Paul said, “He is hoping for a defining moment.’

I joked (but like all jokes I was partially serious), “I am in my 50’s and I am still looking for that defining moment to tell me who I will be when I grow up.”

A fellow committee member joined in, “After 70 years, I am still looking.”

Then Lee kicked in, too: “I still haven’t found it after 80 years of looking.” It was a tough room; hard to be the sage.

The next day during my noontime run, I spent five miles thinking about our discussion of defining moments. I thought, “There is good news and bad news in this.” The bad news was that none of us would ever have that single defining moment that lays out the whole path of our life. The good news? The same thing; we would never have that single moment. We are more likely to have many moments that lay out our near term plans and mark the phases of our lives. As I ran, I thought back through my life of those occasions when I got a glimpse, maybe just a sliver, of defining moments.

I remembered the moment when I knew beyond a doubt Cyndi was the girl for me. It was a few weeks before Thanksgiving of 1978, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in my college apartment in Norman, Oklahoma, talking to Cyndi on the telephone. She was in her dorm room at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque. This was back in the day when calling long distance was a big deal and cost lots of money. As we talked, I was flipping through my Bible, and my eyes landed on Proverbs 16:9. Right then, in that moment, in the middle of my conversation with Cyndi, I knew what to do. I was crystal clear to me. It wasn’t scary. I knew I should marry Cyndi, and I knew God would bless it. It was a defining moment for me.

I remember another moment, in the spring of 1990, while sitting in my adult Sunday school class at First Baptist Church, Midland, when God called me out. The challenge I heard so clearly in my head was, “You are wasting our time and wasting your gifts sitting in class; you should be teaching.” Later, over lunch, I told Cyndi about it, and she said, “It’s about time.” That evening I asked Marilyn, our department director, “I need to be teaching, can you find a class for me?” That moment has defined a large part of me for almost 20 years.

The next defining moment I remembered was when I was riding in my red Ford Ranger pickup on a snowy winter Friday, in November 1998. I was driving to Martina’s Bakery to pick up some beef tortas to take to Cyndi for lunch, when God spoke clearly to me about a new writing ministry. My heart had been hungry for a wider audience to share what God had given me. It was a breakthrough. I decided that afternoon to start emailing weekly essays to a small group of friends, and title them Journal Entries. After a few months, when I started having doubts about it all, Cyndi reminded me, “You were called by God to do this. I know it, because it comes from your heart, and your motives are true.”

I remembered more moments when God continued to define me as a writer. Both were at Wild at Heart camps. The first time was at a Boot Camp in the fall of 2003, in spiritual conversation about my true name. The second was at an Advanced Camp in the spring of 2008 after I saw the movie, August Rush. The message in both of those encounters was too deep and too personal to write about, yet, but the message I heard was similar - there is more here than you know.

And then I heard again when I published my first book, June 2009. It was a defining moment to hold it in my hand, to see the official bar code printed on the back, to see it for sale online, to understand that I can do this, and to know that I can do it again. It felt like the first moment of my next phase.

Not all my defining moments were happy. In 2007 I lost a city-wide election after serving in city government for twelve years. It was a hard message, that it was time for me to move on, time to move boldly into the next phase of my life, time to put past successes behind me and press forward. It was easy to write, but hard to do.

As I continued to run, nearing the gym and hot shower, the familiar soreness in my left knee reminded me of a couple more defining moments. My first marathon finish in 1983 at the Golden Yucca Marathon in Hobbs, NM; and then my 6^th marathon finish in 1998 at the Paper Chase Marathon in Amarillo. They were separated by many years and thousands of training miles, yet they were similar moments, similar gut checks. Both races were too slow, but in each case I was proud of myself that I could suffer and survive, that I could finish without walking off the course.

Do you have any stories you’d like to share? Any defining moments from your life? Mark Batterson wrote, “It is the favor of God that gives me a sense of destiny. I know that God can intervene at any moment and turn it into a defining moment.” (Wild Goose Chase)

Tell me yours …

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Order Berry’s newest book, “Running With God,” from Amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/RUNNING-GOD-Berry-Simpson/dp/1607915448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252036627&sr=8-1

You can follow Berry on Twitter … @berrysimpson

Copyright 2009 Berry D. Simpson, all rights reserved.

Words from October 20

October 20 is a big day for me; it is Christmas, in a way.

Each year I read through "The Daily Bible in Chronological Order," one day at a time. Since it’s arranged chronological order, it reads more like a grand story, from beginning to end. The big story of God and mankind.  The psalms and prophets are mingled in place with the historical accounts; Paul’s letters are placed where they belong among the record in Acts, and like that.

On October 20, after almost ten full months of daily readings, the story changes in a big way. Jesus Christ is born. So every year I can celebrate Christmas in October.

Last year I sent out a whole slew of text messages announcing Merry Christmas. As it turns out I confused a lot of people who received the message but didn't know who it came from. I got quite a few replies asking, "Who is this?" So this year I posted my Merry Christmas on Facebook and email. I don't have much of a presence on Twitter, yet, but I gave that a try as well.

Unfortunately the Christmas story is so familiar and I have read it so many times it is hard to read it again. My mind jumps ahead and forms the words before my eyes get to them. That’s one good reason to read the story in October instead of December; it sort of catches me by surprise.

I thought about Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth and father of John the Baptist. When the angel told him that he would finally be a father after so many years, he said, “How can I be sure? My wife and I are very old." And because of that the angel took away his ability to speak. I wrote in the margin of my Bible: "Seems harsh; surely he was allowed one question. Moses argued with God in front of the burning hush and he didn't get into trouble." What did Zechariah do that was so bad?

And then the story shifts to Mary, mother of Jesus, who was confronted by an angel who said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." It says Mary was greatly troubled at his words. I wrote in the margin: "I can see why the presence of an angel might scare her, but his words should be affirming not troubling." Why was Mary so afraid?

I don't know why Zechariah got into trouble or why Mary was afraid; it was only words. But I know my words to God matter, as do his words to me. Sometime I get so comfortable praying I forget how important it is, what a privilege it is, how eternal it is. I forget the power of words.

I don't know why Zachariah got into so much trouble after asking only one question. We know from other stories in the Bible that God usually allowed a lot of questions. There must be more to this story than we’re told. Something must have been going on between Zachariah and God that we aren't privy to, but it must have been clear to Zachariah since he didn't fight back and doesn't appear to have resented what happened to him. in fact, once his son was born, and once Zachariah’s voice was restored, the first thing he did was praise God. He didn’t complain and didn’t ask why.

I think Zachariah got into trouble because of the condition of his heart rather than his words. I take from this story that my words are important to God, but not as important as my heart. I don't have to live in fear that I might pray the wrong thing or ask the wrong question. What I need to be concerned about is the condition of my heart and the status of my relationship with God.

What about Mary? Why was she so troubled by the angel's words? Maybe in the same way that I get nervous and start moving backwards when someone says, “You'd be really great at this.." I try to avoid being recruited for something new.

Mary didn't stay troubled. As the angel laid out the plan, Mary began to praise God; her words - the Song of Mary, the Magnificat – are some of the best in the entire Bible.

We don't have to be afraid of the words from God. Even if what he is asking us to do is troubling at first, We just have to relax and listen and let him speak to us. We can trust God when he speaks.

October 20 was a strong day for me. Let me be one of the first to say to you, Merry Christmas.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32