• Liberty and Justice for All

    Liberty and Justice for All

    The past few weeks have been full of horror and hope for me. There have been moments where I could do nothing but turn off the news. And there have been moments where I watched the news unfold, mesmerized to do little more than watch and pray.

    Where is justice?

    The Horrors

    • In an effort to stamp out Hamas, Israel shelled it’s own people in Gaza, killing more than 1,000 civilians. This included women and children seeking shelter in United Nations facilities. It makes no sense to me. There’s no justification acceptable for it and yet our country is so afraid of Israel that they just stand by and watch. New York can’t build a wall around Jersey and then send in troops, can they?
    • An unarmed teenager was gunned down by police in Ferguson, MO. Understandably, since Saturday racial tensions have continued to mount. Mostly peaceful protests have been punctuated by some regrettable looting and rapid militarization of the local police force. The police killed an unarmed teenager and then have the audacity to blame residents for being angry and taking to the streets? (Including the illegal arrests of two members of the media and an elected official.) The police exist to serve and protect the citizens! All of a sudden it looks the state of Missouri might just wall of the city of Ferguson. What’s next? Shelling?
    • Thousands of Central American children and adolescents are detained by border patrol for illegally entering the United States. Instead of asking the question, “Why is this happening?” the news media and some elected officials in Washington act as though we’re being invaded. Famously, members of the public took the bait. Instead of responding in a humanitarian way, people showed up in Murrieta to protest children’s arrival at a detention facility. Adults. Picketed. Children!
    • ISIS, a group so extreme that Al-queda won’t claim them, exploded into Iraq and are allegedly systematically committing genocidal acts against the population. It’s been hard to verify exactly what’s happening and there are rumors of all sorts of terror. But it’s abundantly clear that there’s an emerging humanitarian crisis going on. If the rumors are true, ISIS is committing atrocities that demand a response from neighboring countries.

    All of these things stun the senses. They aren’t just news items. You can’t just flip the channel to a baseball game and move on. They are people.

    I don’t know how people of conscience, much less ministers of the Gospel, can not stop what they are doing and pay attention.

    These things are really happening. You and I have to act, somehow.

    Prayer is not enough.

    Hope

    • Last week, I had the joyous opportunity to visit the new IJM field staff in the Dominican Republic. The government there is overwhelmed with the crisis of commercially trafficked sexual exploitation (adults & minors) and is welcoming the International Justice Mission with open arms. Even a semi-trained eye can walk around tourist areas in the DR and see rampant sexual exploitation. It brings me hope to meet with passionate people who don’t cast a blind eye to injustice in front of them, but make sacrifices to stand up, seek justice, and ensure that victims experience restoration.
    • Two weeks ago I hung out with Jon Huckins, a good friend and co-founder of The Global Immersion Project. Their work started with leading experiences in Israel, taking Americans to all sides of the dispute there, hearing from leading voices in the peace process. Jon and his partner, Jer, are now taking those same lessons and helping leaders in cities throughout the U.S.. But I’m especially excited about two specific things with their work… 1. They are beginning a work helping church leaders better understand issues on the U.S./Mexico border with an immersion experience. 2. They are beginning to work with teenagers to help them understand the peacemaking process through immersion experiences.
    • This week, Marko and I are finalizing our latest collaboration which will help youth workers equip and activate teenagers in their ministry around issues of justice. We’ll be making an official announcement about it in the coming weeks, but I’m very excited about the long-term impact of this pivot within the Cartel.

    To be honest, this dichotomy is confusing. I’m angered and frustrated about the horrors going on. While at the same time this despair is back-filled with hope in the knowledge that there is a lot I can actually do.

    And I suppose that’s what the meaning of hope is, right? When all you are left with is despair, hope rises. 

    Photo credit: Golden Lady Justice by Emmanuel Huybrechts via Flickr (Creative Commons)
  • Muzzled Leaders

    Muzzled Leaders

    In 2010 Andrew Marin got himself in trouble for calling out a room full of Christian leaders. It was the best kind of trouble… black balled for saying what needed to be said.

    Here’s what he said:

    I stand silent to give dignity to a moment many Christians take for granted.

    There are only a few sacred moments in one’s life—one of them is when you know in your heart that you’ve been set apart to dare to be remarkable by doing nothing other than believing in a just and powerful God.

    The last great Roman satirical poet, Juvenal, commented about power by saying:

    “But who is to guard the guards themselves?”

    I am standing in a room with 600 gatekeepers to our faith. 600 influencers. 600 people that stand amongst and above the rest.

    Maybe you don’t feel as such in your own mind.

    But the Christian hierarchy proves different.

    Jesus said that: “wisdom will be proven right by her actions.”

    Well, our actions have only proven that ‘wisdom’ must be an elite group of predominantly white upper class individuals who care about their “Christian brands.”

    I don’t care about your Christian brand, and neither does the Lord.

    God says to Isaiah:

    “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

    Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

    Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder.

    The wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

    You all are the best; you are all the brightest that our faith has. And yet where are your hearts with the gay community?

    How have your tangible actions proven the Lord’s wisdom right?

    Is the culture war it too political? Too divisive? Too scary? Too unknown to stop us from changing our medium of engagement with gays and lesbians.

    In his famous speech apologizing to America after his sex scandal, Bill Clinton said:

    “This has gone on too long, cost too much and hurt too many innocent people.”

    Friends, I plead with you today that you stop being a gatekeeper and start acting like Jesus.

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    Every day I’m astounded at the silence of Christians who are in leadership positions. In the face of abuses, they are silent. In the face of corruption, they are silent. In the face of social injustices, they are silent.

    Many define themselves by what they say on the platform. But I think their public silence defines them.

    It’s easy to say “I’m minding my business” or “I don’t want to risk hurting my organization.“

    But the silence gives permission for atrocities to continue.

    The silence implies approval.

    The silence proves to those you are called to lead that you aren’t a leader taking them bravely where they need to go.

    The silence says you value your position more than you value your calling to serve something bigger than a job.

    You think being silent sustains your ministry because you don’t want to make enemies with powerful people when, in fact, it kills it.

    “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
    – Martin Luther King, Jr.

    You have a platform, not a brand.

    Speak up.

    Your community needs you.

    Speak up. Speak out.

    Lead.

    You don’t have a brand.

    You only have Jesus.

    Lead.

    Photo credit: Microphone by Evan Forester via Flickr (Creative Commons)
  • Eyes to See, Nose to Smell Everyday Injustice

    Eyes to See, Nose to Smell Everyday Injustice

    4:05 AM. I flung my hotel door open, bleary-eyed but determined to be on my way home.

    Exhale.

    I stepped out of the frigid air of my room and into the predawn Dominican humidity.

    Inhale.

    It’s still hot. It’s August in the Caribbean. It’s kind of always hot.

    But I also smell something familiar for the first time on this trip. Charcoal burning. And charcoal burning nearby most likely means two things:

    1. There are Haitians. Even though the DR & Haiti share an island they have very distinct cultures. And one point of separation… even a point of discrimination… is that Haitian prefer to cook with charcoal instead of natural gas or propane. That might not seem like a big deal to Americans but it’s kind of a big deal on the island. (Read this to learn more about charcoal. This photo essay is good, too.)
    2. Haitians are close. The deep breath of humid, smoke-filled air, wasn’t a distant lingering smell. It was clear that I was close to the fire.

    As I walked to the front of the hotel to catch my ride to the airport my eyes squinted through the dark to try to see the source of the fire. The truth is I didn’t see it. But, forgive me for the conjecture, I imagined that somewhere nearby– probably just on the other side of the wall surrounding the hotel complex, I’d find a few Haitian families.

    In the Dominican Republic, Haitians are to Dominicans much like Mexicans are to Americans. (Let’s agree that’s a big generality, OK?) Much of the economy of the DR is reliant on cheap labor that is often filled by Haitian. And the citizenship/resident status of Haitians in the Dominican Republic is often a political issue. In 2013, a judge ruled that 210,000 Haitians, many who’d been born in the DR had no legal status and might be subject to deportation. Then in 2014, the congress created a pathway for legal residence and citizenship.

    Agriculture and the tourism industries depend on the labor of a voiceless, invisible people.

    Sound familiar? Yeah, we’re no better in the United States. Not one bit.

    Everyday Injustice

    Yesterday, I posted this question on my Facebook profile:

    Worldwide, tourist areas are places where sexually exploited women/children are trafficked for commercial purposes. If you were on vacation somewhere where this were the case, would you go on an “excursion” from your vacation to learn about the sex trade, what’s being done, what to look out for, etc?

    It was just a random thought. Clearly, I’m in no position to start something like that or even know if it’s a good idea. But that’s what Facebook is for right, just asking my Facebook friends what they thought about that idea.

    I wasn’t surprised that most of the responses were “not while on vacation.” It wasn’t that my friends didn’t care– not at all. It’s that they wanted to go on vacation somewhere and vacate. For them, it wasn’t the right time to think about or learn about injustice. You kind of want to know and not know at the same time. Like going to Disneyland… we all admit that going on vacation is often the acceptance of a ruse. We exchange knowledge for pleasure.

    This is cognitive dissonance. On the one hand we care deeply about issues of justice. We want to know. On the other hand, we don’t want to be bothered thinking about everyday injustice, especially when we’re on vacation. We don’t really want to know.

    But it begs the question… many of our everyday activities benefit from everyday injustice. For instance, you buy tomatoes for $.99 per pound and don’t think for a second about the person enslaved in Florida who planted, cultivated, and picked those tomatoes. You don’t think about the person in Tijuana who is raising his children next to a river full of heavy metals so he can make money by assembling a TV you buy on sale at Costco.

    And here I was. On a trip to learn about injustice in the DR. And I’m walking across the beautiful grounds of a hotel and something deep inside of me both cares and doesn’t care that the people who made my stay wonderful probably live in squalor just on the other side of the wall from my room.

    Seeking justice is complicated, isn’t it?

    Photo credit: Haitian Students Breathe New Life into Depleted Pine Forest by UN Photo/Logan Abassi via Flickr (Creative Commons) 
  • What is Justice, Anyway?

    What is Justice, Anyway?

    Over the past few weeks I’ve been watching the Netflix show, House of Cards. It’s a fictional drama about the ruthless, cut throat world of Washington politics.

    As I’m watching the show on my iPad a few things become apparent. First, things in Washington can’t possibly be as interesting for 99.99% of the people who work in our government. Second, when it comes to something that happens on a global scale, my definition of a concept like “seeking justice” might be very different than someone else’s.

    This week, I’m in the Dominican Republic, learning about the work of the International Justice Mission. They are headquarted in Washington and as a person who lives in San Diego… that’s back east enough to somehow be related in my brain.

    I first learned about IJM at a youth ministry conference in 2002. One night Gary Haugen delivered a keynote that blindsided me. Here I was at a conference to learn about how to better minister to the 20 teenagers in my youth group and a man gets on stage, making an argument that I should care and participate (somehow) in educating students about the realities of modern day slavery.

    In retrospect, few 40 minute talks have impacted my life as much as Gary’s did that night. He put words to thoughts I’d had but had no concept for what to do with. And, more importantly, he awakened in me the reality that prayer is a verb. Sure, I can pray for the oppressed. But what if God didn’t want me to merely pray, but to act?

    What is Justice, Anyway?

    Today, I’m starting at the beginning. For as much as I admire, have been impacted by, and cognitively know about IJM’s work  or even from third-party reports like in Half the Sky, (Not to mention Kristen’s having visited their field office in Phnom Phen last summer) I’ve never taken the time to investigate their work myself.

    Thinking like Frank Underwood for a minute I know that my definition of justice might be different from yours. And IJM’s definition of justice… both in how they define it and what they do in response to injustices they identify… might be different from mine.

    So that’s where I’m starting. If my week is going to be all about exploring the work of the International Justice Mission, today I’m going to start with seeking to understand what they mean by justice.

    Are we talking about my kind of justice? Are we talking about a justice defined in a systematic theology course? Are we talking about some version of Frank Underwood’s kind of justice? Or are we talking about a different kind of justice altogether.

  • July 2014: Youth Pastors in the News

    July 2014: Youth Pastors in the News

    Here’s a list of headlines from the month of July for the Google News search term, “Youth Pastor.” I’ve deleted multiple links to the same instance.

    Moral of the story: Don’t like the news? Make Good News in Your Neighborhood. 

     

  • Early Bird Deadline for The Summit

    Early Bird Deadline for The Summit

    Just a quick reminder to my friends in youth ministry… today is the deadline to register for The Summit for as little as $129.

    [button link=”http://theyouthcartel.com/event/the-summit-2014/” color=”silver”]REGISTER HERE[/button]

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    In related Cartel news…

    We’re sending 3 brand new books to the printer tomorrow. (Good Lord, willing) We’ve got a pre-release deal going on all of them. Plus, if you order from us you’ll get them like 2 weeks before they start shipping via Amazon.

    1. A Woman in Youth Ministry by Gina Abbas
    2. Teaching Teenagers in a Post-Christian World by Jake Kircher
    3. One Body by Sam Halverson

    That’s in addition to two new digital products, which will also release on August 15th:

    1. Hypotherables by Jake Bouma & Erik Ullested
    2. THINK Volume 1: Culture by Jake Kircher

    Not to be forgotten, tomorrow we release our 6th edition of Viva… Viva: I AM

  • We are Israel, We are Russia, We are Mexico

    We are Israel, We are Russia, We are Mexico

    Her day starts long before daybreak. She rolls off a mattress onto a clammy cement floor, hoping to step silently towards the light peaking between the doorframe to get outside. She pulls on the door but it’s jammed a little. Finally, with a thud, it opens. In a breath she looks back to the mattress to see her kids wiggle into her warm spot and slips outside. A car honks down the road in the distance, she exhales, letting sleep go while fumbling into her jeans pocket to fish out a cigarette.

    She lights her morning smoke and squats to sit on the step. In the thick air of the morning she sits and waits for her ride. This is the most beautiful moment of her 15 hour day. Fresh morning air, a bird chirping far too early, and a hushed quiet as her neighborhood sleeps.

    A few moments later an old Buick pulls up, scratchy brakes announcing it’s arrival. She climbs in the back, squeezing between a few other women to find a patch of seat. In near silence they ride together for 30 minutes to the gate of her job. She pays $20 per week for this ride. She can’t afford it but can’t afford not to.

    For the next 9 hours she’ll force her hands into the freezing cavity of a fish caught a million miles from here. She’ll make $200 per week, after taxes, union dues, and check cashing fees, she’ll take home $134.50 on Friday. She wonders what it means to be in a union or even if there is really a union. She knows they aren’t representing her but she’s afraid to say anything because she knows they’ll fire her. The taxes she pays aren’t for her because the number she gave the factory were just made up, anyway. But what can she do? She needed the job.

    In a thoughtless motion she makes a small cut across the fish belly with one hand while pulling out the insides with the other. Next she cuts makes another cut, breaks the fish open and places it back on the belt. It takes just a few seconds and she’s off to the next. She works as fast as she can with almost no breaks, hunched over, she and her co-workers all trying to remain invisible to the people they work for. Sometimes while doing this she daydreams and thinks of her childhood, happier days, playing in warm breezes with her friends. Back then she never could have imagined her life would be like this. But mostly she thinks about nothing. She just wants to not draw attention to herself. Plus, if she thinks too much she might accidentally cut herself. So she just concentrates on doing what she has to do and getting out of there. She hates this job but knows that if anyone hears that she might want to look for a better one she’ll be fired on the spot.

    When her shift ends at 2:15 she walks quickly to a place to clean up and grab something to eat out of a vending machine before another beat-up clunker comes to drive her to the Motel 6 on the other side of town. Another $20 per week she can’t afford.

    She’ll spend 4 or 5 hours there, invisible, cleaning rooms for minimum wage. Even though she fights exhaustion– compared to her other job she’s exhilarated at the hotel. She changes into clean clothes at this job– a Motel 6 uniform, and before her shift starts she’s able to wash herself in the utility sink in the storage room where they keep her cart.

    Sometimes, when no one else is around, she fills up the big sink with hot water and hops in, squatting into sink is closest thing she has to a tub. To us, this might seem silly and she feels like a giant baby washing in a sink. But to her, those 5 minutes of bathing are pure luxury. She uses half-empty bottles of shampoo left behind by truck drivers or vacationers to have her own spa.

    At the hotel, she finds some semblance of dignity, but also cruelty. Her shifts here aren’t regular and sometimes when she shows up to work she is sent away. She works odd shifts to fill in and her boss would text her when he doesn’t need her but her phone never has enough minutes. So sometimes she shows up to work and there’s no work for her, so it cost her money to get there but she’ll make nothing. To make things worse her ride won’t come back until 9. So she can’t go home to be with her kids, anyway.

    Late at night she gets back home. Her 3 year old, the baby, is already asleep. Another day goes by and she hasn’t seen her. Her sons are still awake, one watching TV and the other is next door. She goes next door to get her oldest, the three of them make small talk and play cards for a little while before they all go to bed.

    She turns off the light. Barefoot, she walks silently across the clammy concrete floor to the mattress. She leans over, slides the baby closer to her brother as she lays down next to her. The toddler re-settles, makes some sweet sighs, and they both drift off to sleep to do it again tomorrow.

    We are Israel, We are Russia, We are Mexico

    Often, when we watch the news and we think to ourselves, “I can’t believe those countries treat their people like that. That’s disgusting.” We live our middle class lives, we drink our Starbucks, go to our movies, stare at our phones, and we start to think that everything is an over there somewhere problem.

    • How can Israel justify bombing people in Gaza? 
    • I can’t believe people support Putin, what a monster. 
    • Why doesn’t Mexico clean up those drug cartels once and for all?

    Let’s not be myopic. It’s easy to look over there somewhere and forget that we have over there somewhere problems right here in our own communities, too.

    We’re no better than Israel. We’re no better than Russia. We’re no better than Mexico.

    The woman I wrote about above lives in your neighborhood. She lives in every community in America.

    She’s black. She’s white. She’s Latino. She’s African. She goes to your church.

    Over there somewhere is right in front of you. She’s not invisible. She’s no better or worse than you. You just refuse to see her.

    Photo by A C O R N by Flickr (Creative Commons)
  • Sometimes you lie yourself to honesty

    Sometimes you lie yourself to honesty

    Certainty scares me a little.

    Let’s start off by admitting that. I can’t talk about honesty until I admit that people who are absolutely certain about their work life, personal relationships, and non-essential elements of their faith make me nervous. Like I don’t know if I’d trust them to go to a timeshare presentation and not buy a condo. 

    • You don’t own that company but you know for a fact you are going to be doing that until you retired? … Really? 
    • You don’t think your spouse would ever leave you for any reason? … Really? 
    • You are absolutely certain about a pre-tribulational rapture of believers? … Really? 

    I’m much more comfortable with people who add conditional statements to soften their certainty a bit. “The way things are going, I can see doing this for the rest of my career” sounds much more honest. I’ve met too many 50-somethings who thought they were going to do something forever then wake up one day and realize they hate it and need to quit or show up to their office one day to be greeted by an HR professional and a box.

    3 Types of People Who Are Certain

    1. Fast-talking 20-somethings. Yeah, I know you went to college. Oh, cool… you went to graduate school or seminary? Wow.
    2. The unintelligent. Come on. We’ve all met the person at the bar who is absolutely certain Nick Saban is the best coach in the history of college football or that America was ruined by Bill Clinton’s ____ policy.
    3. The Salesmen. Often times these are intelligent people. But somewhere along the line they got hooked on the high of sales. And it doesn’t matter what they are selling, cars or stock or religion or real estate. They sweat certainty. Certainty is their currency.

    Those 3 types are tied together with one thing… they are talkers. Sure, we all talk. But some people are talkers.

    If you’ve spent any amount of time with a talker you know that often times talkers aren’t talking to you. You are just there. They are talking it out.

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    Dishonesty vs. Self-Convincing

    Let me illustrate this with an example from my own life.

    Our last couple of years in Romeo were difficult. I wasn’t dishonest or dispassionate in my output. But I was also not being honest with myself. I was doing things in an unhealthy, unsustainable way and convincing myself that it was just for a season and that I’d get past it. I was convinced, with absolutely certainty, that if we could just get the church past the hump things would get easier again.

    I knew I wasn’t the dad or husband I wanted to be. I knew I wasn’t the pastor I wanted to be. I knew I wasn’t the me I could be. But I just kept convincing myself that we’d get past it and that everything would be OK.

    But my ministry there had long since stopped being fun. Everyone could see that except me.

    I share that to point out this. Even if you are in a mode of self-convincing that doesn’t automatically mean that everything you are doing is somehow bad or that you’re being dishonest. The day-to-day things I was doing were good and right and true. I wasn’t lying, as in saying things which I knew weren’t true. I just wasn’t being honest with myself.

    See, I was lying my way to honesty.

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    Just Keep Talking it Out

    I meet folks in the youth ministry world all the time who are full of certainty. Usually, they aren’t unintelligent… so they fall into either the first or last category of people who are full of certainty… young or selling something.

    When I read a blog post entitled something like: “6 Easy Steps to Leading Small Groups” I automatically think, “That person is either really young or selling something.” I mean, anyone who has ever lead a small group knows that the one thing it isn’t is easy. But it’s most likely that a person writing posts like that is just trying to convince themselves that leading a small group is easy. (Or that they are linking to a book/workshop/seminar/cult gathering) My hope is that they keep writing and serving and figuring it out… because I know too many folks filled with certainty who left youth ministry when certainty was back-filled with doubt or when they found out that they could better care for their family selling insurance than a $8 book on Amazon.

    My advice to both of them is the same: Just keep talking it out.

    Seriously. When people are selling something they believe in they think that if they just keep trying to convince you that what they are selling is great that you’ll buy it. But if they just keep talking they will start to listen to themselves eventually, and that leads to honesty. (Unless they are unintelligent.)

    When people are young and certain they also need to keep talking. The more I’ve taught on things I was trained to be certain the more I’ve had to wrestle with what I’m uncertain about. I remember trying to teach Revelation as a sequential narrative and watched how things I’d been taught as certainties crumbled beneath the weight of the thinly glued together logic. It’s not that I don’t believe in the stuff John wrote about any less, I’m just filled with a more healthy uncertainty because I spent months talking it out.

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    Space for Listening & Silence

    The last thing I’ll share about lying your way to honesty is the role of listening & silence.

    Within the weekly grind of working at a church I never had room for either practice. I listened enough to discern what I needed to say. When a student would come into my office to talk I had a tendency to want to get them into my on-ramps, navigating their spiritual journey into pre-determined pathways that I’d seen work before. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to listen or wasn’t equipped to listen. It’s that I was too busy to listen. Sadly, I can remember cutting people off — issuing some advice — and sending them off because I had to get to my next meeting.

    When you have to teach 2-3 times per week 49-50 weeks per year there really isn’t a place for silence. Silence is different than listening. Silence is just not talking.

    The space for listening, for me, really came when I stopped working as a full-time pastor. Since 2008 I’ve largely been silent at church. I teach occasionally but not 2-3 times per week like I used to. When I go to meetings or even to a training I’m not in charge… so even if I’m the trainer I’m not talking way more than I am talking. As I’ve shared before… when I lead a small group of high school guys my self-talk mantra is “Shut up. Stop talking. Listen.”

    It’s not that I don’t have something I could say… it’s that I’ve learned the power and necessity of listening & silence. I’ve learned that it’s more honest (for me) to wish I’d said more than regret saying too much.

    No one has ever said of a person, “I wish they had listened less.”

    But each day millions look at someone they love and think, “I wish they’d shut up.”

    Photo credits: gr8 minds by wagaboodlemum via Flickr (Creative Commons) |  A Face in the Crowd by Just Ard via Flickr (Creative Commons) | 1000 Faces of Canada #084 by Ryan Seayeau | A Drop of Silence by Thanh Mai Bui Duy via Flickr (Creative Commons)
  • Tammy is REAL!

    Tammy is REAL!

    In case you didn’t know, Tammy, is our first daughter. She was born a few years before Megan was born. She was a rotten apple and one day, while on a road trip, she was kicking the back of Kristen’s seat and wouldn’t stop… so I pulled over the car and left her on the side of the highway.

    That’s the story we told our kids, anyway. 

    Read the original Tammy story here

    I’m not going to claim Tammy’s story was a great parenting moment. But I do think there’s value in a strong family fable… even if it’s a cautionary tale. So while a fictional daughter who we left on the side of the road might be a tad bit psychological damaging to our children: She’s still part of our family and we’re excited that Hollywood is telling her story.

    Now. Where’s my book deal? Where’s my residuals? 

    She’s my fictional daughter and I have the right to exploit her story for my personal gain however I’d like. 

    [All jokes aside. Does anyone know where this story came from? It’s crazy coincidental. My real kids would greatly benefit if I could prove that Hollywood ripped off my story.]

     

  • 5 Simple Pleasures I am Digging Right Now

    5 Simple Pleasures I am Digging Right Now

    I like big and fancy things as much as the next person. But sometimes it’s the little things in life that just rock.

    Here are five simple pleasures I’m digging right now.

    1. Evening walks with my lady friend. Seriously, it doesn’t matter what happened good or bad during the day. But a nice long walk with Kristen is perfect for enjoying. And the fact that Jackson and Stoney get to go, too. That’s awesome, too. 
    2. Morning coffee. Oh, I’m sure there’s a study that’ll tell me that my morning cup is going to kill me. But whether it’s a cup made at home on our french or a cup made on the road with the Aeropress, every day starts off right with joe. (Added a travel grinder to my road kit. Praise be to God.)
    3. Hammocking. We desperately need a way to hammock at home. But setting up and/or sleeping in my hammock is something I look forward to a little too much. We love hammocking so much that we just bought hammocks for the older kids, too. (Cough, we don’t like sharing.)
    4. Netflix/Amazon Prime Video. It’s amazing how much great stuff you get so cheaply from those two services alone. About $200/year and you get about 6 bagillion shows. (Just started House of Cards)
    5. Digital/Print magazine subscriptions. Right now I subscribe to Wired, ESPN the Magazine, and National Geographic. It’s crazy how cheap these are and sometimes I like to flip through the actual magazine… but I also really enjoy reading them on my iPad, especially if I’m on the road or just needing a little quiet time at a coffee shop. (

    Bonus! Combining Things

    A cup of coffee, my hammock, a good magazine, followed by a long walk and a movie with my honey? Are you kidding me? A little slice of heaven.