From Flickr's Creative Commons by Northhampton Museum
Many of you know that I’ve embarked on my latest project – Nothing Personal – with Andrew Newton. We’ve covered 10s of thousands of miles around the globe, crossed oceans and mountains, suffered nights on trains, planes, and buses, recorded days of interviews, and met some amazing people. Andrew arrived to Muncie last week and when we haven’t been getting him tested for malaria (that’s another story), we’ve been working on the Nothing Personal book proposal.
So far our project has been a success. Much more of a success than our recent trip…
I’m hoping to develop a longer version of my Faith in the Poor post for a magazine. So, I pitched a hip Christian magazine that likes to challenge their readers. I began with this…
I slept with the Prophetess. How many folks can say that?
Yep, probably not the best way to begin a query.
Needless to say, I probably won’t be hearing from them. If they made it through the whole sleeping with the Prophetess bit, they were probably put off by the question that followed. Sleeping with the Prophetess is bad enough, but bragging about it…
It was one of those pitches that I sent out between a bologna sandwich and a diaper change. Somewhere post-diaper change I realized that they might think that I, in fact,…
(This is an excerpt from a column I wrote 5 years ago.)
I was five when my dad presented me with the throne.
It was made of plywood and 2×4’s; most people would have called it an ugly chair, but to a seven-year-old it was a throne.
My father built me the chair to preserve his own sanity. For some reason the swiveling roller chair, which I had previously occupied at the dinner table, annoyed my father. After a hard day’s work, watching me execute 360’s and figure eights, while I skillfully filled my mouth with Mac ‘n Cheese, was not his preferred method of winding down.
The wood throne was stiff and unmovable. If much wiggling took place splinters…
The pebble is polished from countless times checking to see that it was still there. On a deforested hillside swinging a pick next hardworking day laborers, tearing up stumps in Ethiopia, I checked for the pebble. Spending the night on a small couch in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, I checked for the pebble before attempting to close my eyes. In Uganda while talking with a single mother with AIDS about the future of her children, I checked for the pebble. In Ireland, while sitting across from a man who lost his son and wife by suicide within three months of one another, I checked for the pebble.
The pebble was always there. I’d find it in the deep…
Unfortunately my superpower is summoning birds to swoop from the heavens and poop on my head.
All I have to do is say or think something after which it would be incredibly ironic if a bird pooped on my head.
For instance, today, I was crossing the Liffey River in Dublin looking up at a statue of a famous man. Streaks of white poop ran down his metal forehead. I thought to myself, “Boy, someday I hope I’m famous enough to be a statue that birds poop on.”
The sky parted. A distance “ca-caw” could be heard on the Irish summer breeze and then BAM! I was hit! I instinctively ducked in case it was a squadron of bombers. I put my hand to…
I covet your faith. I’m not sure if that breaks any of the commandments or not. It probably breaks several. Still, I do.
My time with Life in Abudance was awesome for several reasons. One of them is that I had a chance to be around people with such strong faith.
I’m surely surrounded by others with such faith, but there is a separation of church and day-to-day life. I appreciate the separation. I don’t want others telling me what I should believe and I don’t want others telling others what they should believe. Religion and politics are in the “don’t go there” category for me. Unless I know…
Pausing right there in the center of the silver ring. It was a parrotfish eclipse. That or a signal to the crime-stopping Parrotfish Man.
I floated 20-feet beneath the surface just off the sea floor, as if in space. A bubble of air escaping from my mask, rising like a shooting star.
Inside my lungs, a gulp of salty air. Outside, the Atlantic Ocean. I held my breath. I breathed in the sight.
The night was a gift. The surface of the water, indiscernible from beneath, didn’t even have a ripple, allowing the moon and the stars to appear as untouched as if I were on the surface.
Unfortunately my superpower is summoning birds to swoop from the heavens and poop on my head.
