What an Andy Griffith Movie Taught Me About Church was the first blog of what was supposed to be a 12-part series where I’d unleash my fury at the ignorance and hypocrisy of every church everywhere.

Only, someone commented on it. A pastor, in fact. A comment was actually rather thoughtful.

The idea that a pastor of an actual church would bother to find common ground and not paint me, a church renegade, as evil caught me a little off guard. To be sure, I still had my questions (and have since written a better blog on it), but the more I got to know Pastor Jonny and Circle of Hope, the more I wondered if yelling angry generalizations about church into the void via a 12-part blog series was a great use of my time. (I retired the effort two entries later).

These days, while it’s certainly still easy to steam about church hypocrisy, I’ve been devoting more of my efforts to create music and a book which I hope can help people navigating doubt, questions, and a crisis of faith. Part of the preparation for that is a podcast series interviewing those with stories and insight on these topics – and Jonny became my first guest!

In the interview, Jonny explains some of what I was experiencing when I was writing that blog series – I was seeing things in very black-and-white:

“If your faith is too rigid – sometimes our fundamentalist faith is – instead of adapting or flexing, it breaks. It can’t handle resistance. For a lot of people, when you get out of this fundamentalist bubble, where you were told “this is the only way”, it’s very hard to keep your faith. I grew up being taught Catholics weren’t Christians, Episcopalians weren’t Christians. So if you grow up in an enclave where the “only people” are in a certain segment, once you leave that segment then you don’t think you’re a Christian anymore. Being able to explore the vast tradition of Christianity for 2000 years that far exceeds this fairly recent fundamentalist movement can help you.”

For those of us who are steamed about church, confused, disillusioned, or simply asking questions, perhaps Jonny’s analogy could be useful to you:

“Your faith is like a plant. And no matter what container you put your faith in, it’s going to outgrow that container, that pot, and you’re going to need to repot it. You’re going to need to plant it somewhere else. And if you don’t, it will die or stay at a certain size.”

Looking back, I see that’s where I was when I wrote that blog. I’m glad I was willing to voice my opinion, but I’m equally glad Jonny was also willing to be vulnerable and share his. His approach to faith and church has certainly made a difference for me.

I think that if we consider doubt or a loss of faith as something to avoid – because if we ever acknowledge that it’s there, that will be the end of us – I think that raises the intensity of the doubt more. But if you consider it to be just a normal part of faith, that helps you endure it.”

Full episode here:

I’ll save you The Tales of a Twentysomething Faith Healer (I’m actually writing a a book about it – follow updates here!), but long story short, turns out that saving the world isn’t quite as straightforward as it is in superhero movies.  Through years of traveling, gathering crowds at flea markets, and miscellaneous interesting encounters, I’ve gone through quite a few pivots on my journey of learning what it means to make a difference.  One such pivot was to put this blog into semi-retirement and devote more energy towards my singer-songwriter project.

However, two years ago I started to see something rather ominous on the horizon which I’ve realized I couldn’t fully articulate with my music. I started to wonder if there was, in fact, something I could yet contribute to the topic of saving the world. Coming from a conflict-averse Canadian Mennonite background, I’ve been procrastinating for years about saying something that might be considered controversial. But it feels to me like the situation has grown to such monstrous proportions that, out of respect for my mental well-being if nothing else, I’ve decided to bring my blog out of semi-retirement in order to articulate it.

So can we talk about climate change?

Now, statistically speaking, 20% of you rolled your eyes at the mention.  And if you’re a White Evangelical Protestant, actually, only 28% of you didn’t roll your eyes.

But that’s kinda why I think we need to talk about this.  Just for the record, I didn’t consider myself an environmentalist even just a few years ago.  Like, sure, trees and whales are nice, but as far as topics worth bringing blogs out of retirement for, it didn’t rank super high.

That is, of course, until the 2018 IPCC report came out.

A little background: the International Panel on Climate Change was created by the UN back in 1988, and reports on climate findings every four years.  The 2018 special report was created by 91 coordinating scientists and experts from 40 countries, who analyzed existing research and used 6000 scientific references in the report. 

Here’s the main thrust of the 2,000 pages of data: we have a deadline to get climate change figured out.  And it’s very soon.

Maybe you know this already, but since I’ve heard from more than a few folks who haven’t, I’m gonna run through the details.

According to the report, there’s a temperature threshold earth is approaching, which, if passed, will be irreversible.  That threshold is likely to be 2 degrees, upon which time we’ll see a lot of dramatic things.  Here’s a few definites: 99% of coral reefs die, sea levels rise 3 feet, extreme weather would be exacerbated especially in the Southern Hemisphere, and something like 1 in 8 plant/animal species will go extinct.

Right now, the planet is on track to see fisheries decreasing in catch by 1.5-3 million tonnes; giant populations of plants, insects and vertebrates losing over half their geographic range; 153 million people dying of air pollution alone this century; potentially whole regions of Africa, USA, Australia, Patagonia, and Asia uninhabitable by heat, desertification, and flooding.  Flooding would cause a number of American cities to be uninhabitable in the next 80 years: Miami Beach, New Orleans, Charleston, Virginia Beach, Atlantic City NJ, and large swaths of NYC – especially in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

And it’s not like we haven’t seen preludes to this already.  Whether it’s the disappearing glaciers or record-breaking fires in California and Australia due to drought or the fact that Indonesia is moving its capital away from Jakarta due to the fact that 95% of north Jakarta will be underwater in 30 years, it’s clear something’s up. We are currently on track to heat the world 3.1 degrees – more the double the safety threshold.

The question that’s haunted me is: how is it that nobody from the churches I grew up in seem aware this is even happening? Now that we’re talking about hothouse earth scenarios and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsing and Florida going underwater-type stuff, it would seem logical that a people commanded to steward the earth and care for the poor would be tremendously concerned about something that’s threatening the majority of humanity – especially the people we’re sending most of our missions groups and NGOs to!

Turns out there’s an interesting story behind the church and climate change, and I’m gonna share a little of what I’ve researched.

Of course, with gargantuan claims like “we might be ending the world” (which is not quite what scientists are saying but not too far off), it can be easy to write off as a liberal hoax. And it didn’t really help that An Inconvenient Truth was produced by Al Gore. But the politicization of climate change goes back further than that. From my research, I found that in the 80s and 90s, climate change wasn’t actually a partisan issue. Since Earth Day and Silent Spring helped introduce the idea, global warming was a growing concern among everyone – Evangelicals included. So what happened?

Around the year 2000 a number of conservative think tanks (CTTs) funded by Exxon and other gas companies started publishing books contradicting the general scientific community’s findings.  130 of the 141 books published since 1972 denying the seriousness of environmental problems were created by these CTTs.  For comparison, there were 928 scientific journals published between 1998 and 2002, and zero of these contradicted the idea that humans were to blame.

Evangelicals, of course, were already generally aligned with conservative politics due to the Moral Majority movement in the 80s. Which was long before global warming became partisan.

So correct me if I’m wrong, but to me it seems that climate change denial somehow crept into the church – not because “we’re not into pagan earth worship”, or “Jesus is coming soon anyway”, or “God’s in control, He can figure it out” – but largely because it just happened to be part of the political package deal (for more info, check out the helpful 20-min doc The Climate and the Cross!)

We all, to some degree, have beliefs that are simply convenient to us. It’s unavoidable. I wrote a blog on this here. And often the way we come to those beliefs is through factors that have nothing to do with the actual truth behind them. I wrote another blog on this here. I’m not sure how to fix this, or if it can be fixed, or even if it needs to be fixed. But I’d at least like to make sure we don’t get this one wrong. Because if the science is right, what we do in the next decade is going to have irreversible impact on every generation to come.

Of course, I’m far from the first (or most qualified) to be sounding the alarm on climate change. Two weeks ago was TED Countdown, where we heard from the Pope to Priyanka Chopra Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Don Cheadle, Cynthia Erivo, Prince William, and the heads of Apple, Amazon, IKEA, and TED sharing a desperate need for action. Also, David Attenborough just released his witness statement on Netflix. And there are plenty of organizations speaking up – from Extinction Rebellion to 350 to even some Christian organizations like Climate Caretakers, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, and C4.  Not to mention millions of other less famous folks whose opinions matter no less, and who will be much more affected. But we’ve still got a lot ways to go.

And what exactly are we being asked to do? The IPCC report says that in order to stop the worst effects of climate change, we must limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. And the only way we can do that is by tackling our CO2 emissions. The report calls for a 45% reduction by 2030, and to reach a net zero by 2050.

If you haven’t heard that statement before, I’d encourage you to read it again. 45% in a decade. Net zero by 2050. That’s a tall order. For reference, the USA alone is going through 37 billion tonnes a year right now, and while emissions have dropped slightly, we’re still nowhere near close to being on track. In fact, only two countries are currently reaching the goals set in the Paris Agreement.

So what would it take to pull this off? Well, that’s the zillion-dollar question. On the one hand, it involves doing things we’re mostly familiar with already. Recycling. Driving less. Changing our diets. Buying more locally. Joining organizations. Supporting climate legislation. Helping fossil fuel companies change how they operate. And, as Christian climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says, “Talk about it!” There’s plenty that can be done.

But at the same time, I honestly don’t know of many people who are confident we can reach our goals and avoid the hothouse earth scenario. To actually have victory over global warming would take worldwide mobilization larger even than WWII. It would be unlike anything we’ve seen before in history. All for future generations that we likely won’t get to see. In short, we need a miracle.

And that’s why I’m writing this to the church.

I started this blog ten years ago to show the world that anything was possible. You, the church, made me believe that. You taught me that what’s seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. You taught me that the whole world was my neighbor, to care for “the least of these”, to fight for our children, to follow the truth no matter how weird it sounds. You taught me to believe in miracles.

So I’m coming back to ask this. For those who are passionate about healing the sick, could we perhaps see the opportunity here to bring healing to the millions who die of air pollution every year? For those who are passionate about foreign aid, could we see the logic allowing Africa our carbon budget to help them develop?   For a people called to not store up for themselves treasures on earth, but instead to take up their cross and offer themselves as a living sacrifice, could we learn to reduce our food waste?  Our dependence on plastic? Our need to consume things in general?

No matter what – even if we this somehow ends up being an overreaction – I somehow don’t think we’ll apologize to future generations for making a cleaner, healthier, and more equal world. Sounds to me like it could be another step towards making earth a little like heaven!

Of course, nobody is doing this perfect – myself included. A lot of my journey has proven to show me how little I know. But I was sent out from Bethel to make a difference, and I hope this article in some way is still contributing to that end – even if it is just the beginning of a journey we take together. After all, history has proven time and again that when people collectively recognize a need and take action, anything is still possible.

Ten years after starting this blog, I’m still contending for miracles. Only this time, it’s for us to not set the world on fire. May we, together, rise for such a time as this.

Podcasts:

No Place Like Home

Outrage and Optimism

How Screwed Are We? from Ask Science Mike (this is the episode that began my reckoning with climate change)

I basically bought it because I had randomly inherited a PlayStation 3, and despite the fact that it had been a decade since I had last been in the habit of staring at a TV while wiggling my thumbs, the good Mennonite in me demanded that I not let a free thing go to waste.  I knew almost nothing about the Final Fantasy franchise, but figured it seemed like a good a way as any to help take myself less seriously.

I remember thinking when I first started the game, “I hope this doesn’t take over my life”.  One hundred and twenty five hours later, I stared at the screen with bloodshot eyes, mouth agape, as the final credits rolled down the screen.  My life had returned.

It may not have been the most intrinsically meaningful 125 hours.  I mean, you play as a character with spiky hair in a futuristic world where he must recruit warriors, earn money, upgrade weapons and armor, and defeat an evil lord who is bent on world domination.  Typical stuff.

However, the experience did afford me more than just a free ticket out of reality. I came to an unexpected life revelation, and I figured I’d share it with you and save you the 125 hours. So here goes.

I found out that a friend of mine had met disaster about halfway through his time playing the game.  He had saved his progress while his characters were inside a forest, and found to his horror that when he returned to his save, his characters had not upgraded themselves to the point where they were strong enough to escape the forest.  Being unable to go backward or forward, his only option to progress was to restart the game from the beginning. Since he had already invested 60 hours in the save, he opted to just quit altogether.

Fearing a similar experience, I constantly saved my progress under four different save files.  Anytime I made a choice that I might even remotely regret later, I would make sure I was able to restore my progress to the point just prior to making the choice.  “Hmmm…buy a quarterstaff for 15000 gil that Ashe might not actually use?  Save it.” “Gonna fight that Tyrannosaurus Rex but all my characters might die?  Save it.”

The weird thing is, I began to realize – after I got past the forest my friend got stuck in – I had never bothered to actually go back to a previous save point.  It wasn’t as though I had been playing the game perfectly; I made plenty of mistakes. Like, I would screw up an attack and then have to use an expensive Megalixir to revive all my characters. But these mistakes were never grievous enough for me to bother undoing what I had learned or accomplished in the process. In fact, the only times I ever actually used another save file was when I already planned to.  So, for example, if a shop was selling five weapons and I only had enough money for one, but wanted to test them all out, I’d buy one, try it, then reset the game to test another.  It was basically a return policy for nerds.

Now, I certainly could have continued to repeat battles and quests until I completed them perfectly. But I realized that it was actually less time-consuming to simply take imperfect action and deal with the repercussions as they came. Money could be earned again. Characters could be brought back to health.  And in fact, I found it was often when I went into something with the mentality that “this probably won’t work but I’m gonna try it anyway” that I made some of my biggest discoveries.  My fear of creating permanent problems, it seemed, was rather baseless.

Now, I understand that a video game isn’t real life. Sometimes people make mistakes they regret. You know, use a parachute when skydiving, and all that.

But I think we humans have a tendency to mistake temporal surface problems for irreversible tragedies. It makes sense as a survival mechanism. But it’s also important to consider that we can’t gain knowledge WITHOUT making the choices that we do.  And when we have the mentality that we’re free to experiment and make mistakes, I think we tend to make better decisions.

So, as I neared the end of the game, I bought a keyboard (in real life.  Not a Final Fantasy keyboard.  That would have been cool too though).  It had been one of my life goals for a long time, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it previously because I would think things like “what if you suddenly need $500 for something else” or “what if someone gives you an actual piano sometime, then you wasted all your money”.  In case you’re wondering, no one has given me a keyboard, and I use my Yamaha all the time.

And I hope to continue to make stronger choices as I walk through life, and take comfort from knowing that if life had an undo button, I’d probably be too “lazy” to use it anyway.  The experience of making confident, imperfect choices is better than playing it safe.

So there you have it. Anyone got any sage wisdom from Lord of the Rings pinball?

You never quite know where a coffee conversation can take you.

A few years back, Belle and I met at the Barnes and Noble coffeehouse at Temple University to talk about something she’d been struggling with.  As artists and leaders at a Christian organization on campus, we had gained a level of trust at that point where it was pretty comfortable to talk about what was on our minds.  However, I’m not quite sure I expected what she had to say.

Belle told me that she had been building a new friendship with someone who, though not a Christian, was open to a conversation about faith.  However, in the process of evangelizing as she knew it, she found herself having to face intimidating but honest questions; questions like: why is there so much suspicion about exploring ideas outside of the Christian subculture?  How can we have true faith when we only know God in part?  What does it actually mean to say “Jesus is the only way”?  She had gotten to the point where she was examining why she believed anything at all. It was as though the anchor of faith that she had felt throughout her life no longer felt so steadfast, and she wasn’t sure what to do.

If she had had this conversation with me a few years prior, I would have had a lot of great advice for her – verses about the assurance of salvation in Christ, theology blogs, and an intimidating array of podcasts.  The problem was, I had been quietly been going through a faith struggle myself. 

I had realized by my junior year that my expectations for what faith was supposed to do in college were not being met.  Instead, I was seeing a lot of weird parallels between the church world and the theater world, and the answers to life’s problems that I had been taught in Bible school somehow didn’t feel adequate to solve the problems I was observing in the diverse metropolis where I now lived.  More often than not, I found that when I went to church, I would just want to journal angrily about all the problems I saw.   This is why, a month prior to our coffee meeting, I secretly word-vomited into a journal every doubt and complaint about Christianity that I had previously been unwilling to face.  Unexpectedly, instead of my head exploding, I actually felt a lot of peace, like “the peace that goes beyond understanding” (Philippians 4:7).

I still hadn’t shared this experience with any Christians up till that point, but Belle’s honesty about her own struggle gave me the opportunity to share a bit of my own.  Having come to the shocking realization that neither of us apparently had it figured out, we didn’t reach any hard conclusions about Belle’s immediate set of questions.  However, we left that coffee shop having experienced something that felt like new territory for both of us: community that was ok with “not knowing”.

As we’ve continued to grow and learn about what exactly this all means, it’s been fascinating to discover that the narrative we’ve experienced is far more common than we had realized.  We’ve met many who grew up in church, went to college, then got hit with big questions they couldn’t answer, now feel spiritually homeless.  We even started a group that met weekly to discuss spirituality in a non-exclusive way.  Of course, the group was kept on the downlow; we know that there can be a lot of fear associated with asking big questions without having the answers at hand.

If you also grew up Evangelical, you might know what we’re talking about.  Many of us have been taught that expressing doubt or asking questions about things we’ve been taught is a sign that we aren’t truly dependent on God.  We’ve learned to be suspicious of exploring other religions or even other denominations, and throughout history we’ve seen Protestantism fractured by theological disagreements.  Celebrity pastors denounce one another’s credibility in toxic, divisive ways over social media, and people use Twitter and Facebook to argue about what is most Biblical in order to persuade your convictions to land a certain way.

It’s because of all this, in fact, that we wanted to write this article.  This is not a diatribe against Christianity or a complaint from angsty millennials about why life is hard.  In fact, both of us are currently part of a church, and our lives are pretty good.

We just wanted to encourage people who are on their authentic journey.  We don’t believe that God is waiting with a lightning bolt for the Doubting Thomas, and we don’t have fear about where that journey might lead, whether “inside the church” or “out”. We think a more accurate representation of Divine Love is one that would rather have people express what they’re actually thinking, doubts and all – even if if’s not the whole picture – than going through the motions because they’re afraid of punishment or rejection.  In fact, Jesus was actually a lot harder on the Pharisees because they claimed to see – “If you were blind you would not be guilty of sin, but since you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9:41).

We understand that the formative period of doubt can be a scary thing at first, but we now feel like our spiritual expressions are more faithful than they’ve ever been.  Since we realize that God is bigger than what our own human understandings can hold, we have seen a shift in the emphases of our faith journeys.  For us, it’s less about doctrinal statements on eternal salvation, and more about a sense of belonging to the family of God and participating in a movement where all things are being reconciled to the original good intentions of the Creator (Colossians 1:20).

Having shed new light on our faith journeys, we’ve been able to show up in Christian, interfaith, and secular spaces and feel like we can truly live out our faith in practice.  Belle feels most complete in this expression when she shows up for justice and advocacy work and when she puts her creativity in practice as an artist; I feel most complete in this when I make music, films, and theater work that tells authentic, inspiring stories.

We hope that by being more open about our journeys, we can cultivate communities where people have permission to ask questions and share thoughts without fear of being labeled “blasphemous” or “syncretistic”; where people don’t get emotionally excommunicated for openly exploring other religions or worldviews; and where there aren’t lifestyle expectations that prevent people from discovering who they are.  We think Jesus is ok with dialogue.

Like Belle and I realized about each other at that Barnes and Noble, maybe answers to life’s deep questions aren’t a prerequisite for community.  Maybe, in some ways, community can become our answer.  Could this be part of what Jesus spoke of when he talked about creating the kingdom of God on earth?  We’re not sure, but we think that by encouraging more of this open dialogue, we can find out together.

Resources for further conversation:

Podcasts:

The Liturgists by the band Gungor

The Unravel by musician Brady Toops

On Being by Krista Tippett

Books:

An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr

Faith Shift by Kathy Escobar

It seems obvious now.  Of course I should be here back in my bed, the rustling of wind through the trees outside my window and the faint sound of a TV downstairs.  But kneeling in that airport two days ago, it was anything but.

We had arrived at the Port-Au-Prince airport on time for our flight back to the States, but found ourselves facing massive, immobilized lineups.  Our trip coordinator spoke to airport personnel, and they walked us to past throngs of desperate-looking people to the front of a line, ID badges swinging around our necks, exuding the aura of wealthy foreigners.

But even this new line was a mystery.  There was no attendant helping people at the front of it, and it didn’t lead to the correct airline check-in.  It was here we learned from some fellow line-standers that the airport computers had crashed due to flooding a few days earlier.  Because of the systems failure, no one could give us a definite answer on the status of our flight; one said it was delayed, another said it was on time, another said it was canceled.  One Haitian-American said she had been stranded there for three days: “This was my first trip to see my home country, and it’s going to be my last!”

This wasn’t our first tangle with the effects of the flood: a few days prior we found ourselves driving a Suzuki down a road that had transformed itself into a Viennese waterway, and we only escaped by pulling off a harrowing 3-point turn in the middle of a two-way lineup of cars and motorcycles and a foot of garbage-filled water flowing underneath us.   I had managed to enjoy the journey pretty well thus far, logistics issues and all – whether from mental fortitude or ignorance, I’m not sure.

But for some reason, the possibility that we could miss our flight and be stranded in Haiti for another day or two was much more difficult to grapple with than driving through a flood.  This seemed odd to think about now – it’s not like our lives were at risk.  I found myself wondering why this was the problem that threw me into a horrible mood.  Was it was because we were so close to the finish line? Was it just the final straw in a long list of staggering infrastructural and logistical problems we had faced?

It took me awhile, but I finally pinpointed the source.  The anguish was coming from the unsettling realization of how little we Americans really have control over.  How cash-filled pockets, university degrees and self-help podcasts only go so far in the grand scheme of things.  I was, in fact, feeling entitlement.  Something I had zero right to claim.

It was then that I believe I began to understand the gravity behind the Helen Keller quote: “Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.”

I had to acknowledge that if we didn’t make it out of the airport that day, we would simply be joining a long list of worn-out passengers who had every right to get where they were going, but had fallen victim to poverty and infrastructure problems which had, in many ways, been caused by the intervention of Western countries.

So I knelt between the line dividers, and decided that even if our flight didn’t leave that day, I’d be okay.  Heck, who was I kidding – I didn’t even have work the next day anyway.

Shortly thereafter, an airport official returned to us, gave us our airline tickets, and sent us through security.  Our flight had been delayed, but we somehow arrived back home only a few hours after our scheduled time.

So I am here again, quietly in my own bed.  With the passage of time having numbed the feeling of desperation, it’s so tempting to act like this outcome was obvious.  Like, when have I not come out of a predicament ok?

But when I think back to being in that line-up, tearing up at what then seemed a distant hope that I’d be exactly where I am now, I am forced to acknowledge the fragile, tiny pathways through which our past travels in order to arrive at the vast opportunities of the present.  It’s a incredible to consider how many of those pathways are created by things that we have no control over; things we have no right to claim, but do anyway.

This experience was another wake-up call for me to take nothing for granted.  Sure, there’s something to be said for being prepared, working hard, and doing your research.  But I am also starting to see why Ecclesiastes 9:11 says:

The race is not to the swift
    or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
    or wealth to the brilliant
    or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

I don’t know how to respond to the staggering inequality that exists outside the periphery of many of our immediate lives, and I do hope to continue that conversation.  But I hope that for now, at the very least, I can take the lesson to remain humbly grateful for those times when things work out in our favor, and prepare to face with resilience the times when they may not.

But this podcast was especially interesting; not just because of what it said, but because of what happened to my brain afterwards.  As I biked around the city, delivering sandwiches with my unwieldy orange backpack, I considered the merits of social media.  And my brain formulated an original, genuine thought about it.  Then, before long, another thought was added to that thought.  And within 20 minutes, I had built a cohesive argument around social media based on thoughts that neither I, nor anyone that I know, had thought before.

The reason this experience felt odd, I realize now, is that my brain has not been used to the sensation of maintaining concentration on an original, unforced thought for a sustained period of time.  Sure, there’s plenty of nice little thoughts bouncing around in the grey matter at any given moment, but they often feel so fragmented that few of them translate into action.

Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but I feel like it wasn’t so hard to come up with creative stuff when I was a kid.  I remember there was a period during elementary school when I made an alternative world to Pokemon which came complete with 150 creatures, a guide book, a comic book, and a short novel.  Another time I built a series of interactive Zelda-esque role playing games out of Lego, and would invite my friends over to try to beat the game while I ran everything behind the scenes as they explored worlds, collected items, and fought bosses.  My friends and I also developed a game called “tag in the dark” which was probably as bad of an idea as it sounds, but also we all survived without concussions.  These ideas are pretty strange and that’s perhaps why I’m so proud of them.  And I don’t remember ever having to chain myself to a desk and demand cool ideas to spring forth.

Now to be fair, it’s not like my creative outlets have vanished since the days of yore.  I do a lot of work in the theater/film/music world, so I suspect my creative accomplishments per capita are probably reasonably high.  And certainly the fact that there’s money on the line can change how one views their creative ambitions – “HEY KID!  MAKE SOMETHING CREATIVE OR STARVE!”  

But I’m beginning to think that the rise of technology and social media is playing a bigger role in this matter than I perhaps had ever realized.

Here’s some trends I’ve noticed about social media:

1.  It runs the risk of giving us choice overload.  The internet offers us such an endless amount of options it’s hard enough to decide what to watch on Netflix, let alone what creative project to put your full weight behind.  This is anathema for perfectionists, and it can be easier to stick in an IV of other people’s ideas than go through the messy process of coming up with our own.

2.  It’s increased our ability to live vicariously through others.  I have a lot of creative ambition, but sometimes it gets falsely satiated by listening to podcasts, playing video games, or even scrolling a newsfeed.  There’s something about raw human experience that can’t be replaced digitally, but media can be a quick fix that’s convincing enough that we can go for a surprisingly long time before noticing our lack of actual accomplishments.  Not only this, but with so many youtube channels and podcasts and other voices to compare ourselves to, it’s very easy to feel like we’re not good enough or unique enough to create anything meaningful, so instead we sit back and scroll.

3.  It’s put a high value on instant gratification.  It’s so easy these days to measure something’s worth by how many likes or favorites it garners, when the fact is that often the best ideas seem crazy at first.  The creation of the Aeron chair is a case in point – people initially thought the chair was hideous, but it’s now in every tech startup in San Francisco.  Let’s face it: snap judgments from 2D versions of your friends aren’t always the most thorough feedback for ideas.

4. It can use up perfectly good willpower for inane decisions.  This was new to me, but I recently found out that willpower is a muscle that can actually fatigue.  So even if you’re NOT engaging 24/7 with that IV of kittens and political outrage in your pocket, the very fact that you have to continually decide to not look at your phone or watch the next video constitutes a use of your finite willpower, which is why I often find myself exhausted by the time I have to make an actual important decision.

Now, to clarify, I’m not pooh-poohing social media in general.  I just got Instagram a few weeks ago, which means I now have the complete collection.  I’m just realizing that social media is sort of the Wild West – you might find gold in them thar hills, or you can starve yourself.  And I think we’d do well to tread carefully.

This could look different for everyone, but a good rule of thumb I’ve found is to use social media as a side dish rather than an entree.  I’ve realized when life is already good, I really enjoy scrolling Instagram.  But if I have insecurities in my life – like I’m between jobs or already feeling lonely – social media can run a high risk of handing those issues a megaphone.  Here is my professional unbiased scientific graph on how I’d rank the platforms:

There’s also nothing wrong with making a few rules for ourselves.  For example, one thing I’ve enacted is, before checking my socials and email in the morning (which is when I feel most clearminded and ambitious), I try to work on a personal project first.  I also try to take a Monk Day once a month at least (explained in this podcast).  Finally – and this is horribly nerdy, I know – I give myself Habitica rewards for limiting the amount of times I go on each social media per day.

In the end, I say let’s remain vigilant that social media doesn’t begin to undermine the very reason we’re there in the first place – to accentuate a good life connecting with creative projects and great people.  I’m not sure what the grown-up version of my Lego-Zelda-Animal Crossing game would look like, but by keeping some of these new revelations in mind, one day I hope to find out.

This is a fascinating presentation on how tech companies intentionally steal our time:

I haven’t yet had someone name the accomplishment that I personally think was his biggest; the idea that I think created the foundation for basically every success he saw: the Junto.

When Franklin was 21 years old, a nobody printer who had run away from home, he and his working-class friends started a weekly meeting.  On Friday nights, they would get together over a drink in order to discuss, basically, how to make the world a better place.  The name Junto is a mistranslation of Spanish, but it’s supposed to mean “joined”.

They would ask themselves questions like:

“Have you met with any thing in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto?”

“Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded?  If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects?”

“Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?”

It’s such a simple idea, it almost seems stupid.  Yet out of this group of cabinet makers, mathematicians, astrologers, and bartenders came a series of firsts: first scholarly society, first university, first volunteer fire department, first public library.  Not bad, considering Franklin only had 2 years of public education.

The thing about Franklin that most people don’t realize is that he didn’t work alone.  Like, that key and kite experiment?  His son William was with him the whole time.  The Pennsylvania Hospital?  He co-founded it with local doctor Thomas Bond.  The idea to  support American Independence?  His wife Deborah wrote him a letter while he was in overseas, telling him that she had just fended off an angry pro-independence mob from their house, and maybe he should reconsider his silence towards the issue so their house didn’t get burned down.

Of all the characteristics Franklin had that helped make him successful, I think the biggest one that people overlook was his appreciation of pluralism.  He wasn’t some lone conquistador spewing bifocals and firetrucks.  The guy knew how to network.

I was so curious about this approach of Franklin’s, that a few years ago I helped launch a modern-day Junto.  A group of people from various backgrounds – businesspeople, actors, web developers, college students – began meeting weekly in coffee shops around the city, posing the same questions that Franklin’s group did.  We found ourselves tackling everything from financial planning to poetry, homelessness to neuroplasticity, app development to helping a group member transition from a tech company to comedy writer.

With zero social media presence, we met weekly for over two years, and remain connected today, even as we’ve been launched into new careers, locations, and leadership roles.   This has been proof to me that the idea behind the Junto is, in fact, the quintessential “oldie but a goodie”…Maybe even moreso in today’s world.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but with the nature of my current work, I often find myself without camaraderie for large portions of the day.  And hey, sometimes that can get comfortable.  I don’t get challenged.  All my ideas appear to be perfect.  On the flip side, I’ve noticed that without having others around, problems in my life tend to magnify.  And I can’t tell you how many times that groups like the Junto could answer my problems – whether through practical advice (“A time-tracking app called Manifest?!  What?”), or, on a deeper level, by simply fulfilling that human need to belong somewhere.

I’m beginning to think that there are some problems that really can only be solved through a community.  Especially a diverse one.  Juntos, therapists, friends, faith groups – I mean, sometimes they can solve our problems before we even know we have them.  I say this as someone who gets called out for isolating myself, and am taking active steps to stay in civilized society and out of the hobbit hole.

Sure, community is never perfect.  But hey, neither was the Junto.  I mean, for crying out loud, its name is a mistranslation.

In general, I’m realizing the importance of staying connected.  And I’m thankful to each of those people who have been a part of my journey.  A special shout-out to the Junto-ers who saw the vision behind the group and were willing to take the leap with me (Belle, Joelle, Julian, Meredith, James, Eric, Nick, Sean, Zack, Emily, Jamie, Kamal, Diana, Hua)!  Sure, connection might look different in today’s world than Franklin’s – blogs, forums, meetup.com, and considerably less tricorn hats – but I think the ability to learn to keep an ear to the ground will be key to unlocking the great inventions and organizations of the next 200 years.

Hope to see ya on the journey!

If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.

-African Proverb

Having recently gotten settled into post-college work life in Philadelphia, I realized that with 2018 marking my 10-year high school grad anniversary, it was a great excuse to see what I might unearth at my personal archaeological site:  Saskatchewan, Canada.  Having moved to Pennsylvania immediately after graduation, and only having returned for a few brief stints, I had friends I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.  I couldn’t help but wonder if, through the million meals and Tim Hortons coffee dates I had planned (who could pass up on Roll Up the Rim?), I might find some buried Canadian treasures to import to the States.

It was fun rediscovering some of the little things I’d forgotten – the sensation of frozen nostrils; how everyone actually knows where north is, not restrooms; how everyone will turn around and look if a firetruck happens to go by, cause that’s actually a big deal.

But in some ways it was also a bit alarming.  In many ways I felt less like a former resident and more like an inquisitive tourist.  Sure, lots had changed there in 6 years, but I felt like the biggest changes were in me.  It felt as though my brain had literally shifted.

For example, I found myself driving around Saskatoon wondering how I ever used to get around the city; until this trip it had never occurred to me that 8th street, 22nd street and 71st street were all part of a city grid system which increased northwards.  It had never occurred to me that Grainfields Restaurant was given its name to represent a significant economic and cultural symbol of Saskatchewan; to me it had just been my sister’s favorite restaurant.  It seems that when we were younger, we tended to see things for their shapes, colors and associated memories. Now, I found myself mostly thinking about marketing, city planning, and Yelp reviews.

I found myself on my phone constantly (considerably more, I might note, than most of my friends there…it was nice seeing not all millennial are addicted to LCD), exploring my homeland with virtual eyes for the first time.  It got me thinking that while Wikipedia articles and Yelp reviews are certainly wonderful for increasing correct factual information, we also are much more at risk to oversimplify complex things and mistrust our own intuition.  What an adult thought.

I visited my hometown, and things felt a little more familiar there.  However, with my grown-up eyes, I did wonder why I never thought it odd that there are two Mennonite churches directly across the street from each other.  In a town of one thousand, I wondered what possible theological disagreement could be so extreme as to warrant this?  I mean, in the six-million-person city I live in now, there are maybe seven Mennonite churches, and I don’t think any of them even share the same postal code.  But hey, I’m not judging.  I think that we humans all have different ways of drawing borders in our lives.  The world gets too big otherwise.  It’s the criteria of those borders, and the vehemence with which we enforce them, that varies across humanity.

I found myself constantly humbled by the realization of how little I knew about the world growing up.  And how confident I was that I had it all figured out.  One of my friends I spoke to while there said “When I become an adult, I thought I would have firm opinions on everything”; we had to laugh at how well that had turned out for both of us.

Clearly, I had a number of various epiphanies that probably each deserve their own article.  However, I want to talk about one thing that stood out to me above the rest.  This thing was subtle at first, but as my stay went on, I began to realize that during the 18 years of my life spent here, I don’t think I’d ever consciously had the opportunity to appreciate this aspect of my homeland till just last week.

What was it exactly?  It was in the handcrafted “welcome” sign and candies that were put on the guest bed when I arrived at my friends’ house.  It was in the fact that I don’t recall anybody interrupting each other in conversation. How I didn’t hear a car horn for four days.  How most of the people I drove past in my hometown still gave me the two-fingered wave even though they had no idea who I was.  Seeing my friends owning businesses and nice houses, some settling down and having kids (one is in first grade already?! Come on);  in hearing the stories of friends and family who had quietly endured incredible struggles without feeling the need to advertise and commodify it.

It’s hard to put into a word, but it was a sort of kindness and unassuming humility – might I even say happiness? – that I found myself being touched by in a new way.  I’m not saying these sort of things don’t exist in the States; I think the reason these things stood out was because of their contrast to where I live and work – a somewhat cutthroat industry in an already aggressive city.  I think this trip helped remind me that there’s more out there.

I don’t want to oversimplify Saskatchewan and say that everyone’s happy or has perfect lives; I mean, almost everyone I met with talked about one major problem or another.  And there’s a tradeoff to this attitude: smaller, nicer cities tend to not have a population that can easily support ambitious artsy people – or even have a grid for what that sort of career might look like (one of my friends’ dads thought acting meant “chronically unemployed”.  Ouch.).

However, coming back to the States, I have a renewed appreciation for both the artistic opportunities I have here, and the chill, unassuming vibe I grew up in over there.  Is it possible to combine Saskatchewan kindness with Philadelphia ambition?  Can you be in a business that’s about selling yourself, but do it because you wan to help other people?  I’m not sure, but I’m gonna keep trying.

So next time I find myself fretting over where to get new headshots or being infuriated by that random unknown person who dared unfollow me on Twitter, I hope I’ll happen to glance at my wall, where an obnoxiously large Saskatchewan flag now hangs.  I hope it will yell into my brain – in a quiet, unassuming way, of course – that the world isn’t all blood, gore, and drama.  Keep it simple, take a day off, and keep your stick on the ice.  We may now be seeing the world as grown-ups, but I believe we can continue to learn from our childhoods.  For it’s in these gentle reminders that we might re-discover some of our greatest treasures.

I’m a little late on the bandwagon of publicly reflecting about 2017, but I thought that regardless, I’d like to share some of the things I “discovered” last year which I think helped contribute to the good things that happened.  “Discovered” is in parentheses because I actually discovered zero new things.  In fact, skimming the list below might compel your eyes to immediately glaze as you quietly wonder what idiot didn’t already know these things.  To which I raise an enthusiastic hand.

However, I don’t believe that providing the following list will be without benefit to others.  The more I learn, the more I’ve come to see the truth in Shane Claiborne’s quote: “Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”  Maybe I’m the only one who rediscovered beauty in some simple things last year, but I’m willing to take the chance that there’s others out there who could use some reminders as well.

So here goes!

1.  Books

Prior to 2017, I basically hadn’t read a physical book in a number of years.  I suppose all those college textbook chapter readings left a bad taste in my mouth.  But in February, on a recommendation from a friend, I did this crazy thing and bought a book on Amazon.  A whole $15!  When I could have bought so much macaroni!  Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss changed the course of my year.  I discovered things like the Calm and Momentum apps, techniques like fear-setting for dealing with anxiety, and was introduced to countless ultra-successful people who suddenly became personable and whose paths to success were broken into attainable steps like I’ve never seen before.

I immediately got a library card and became a serial reader.  The Alchemist, The Artist’s Way, The Last Lecture, Awareness, Blink….Hard to believe it’s been less than a year since I’ve been introduced to these books; their lessons have become so much a part of my life today.  Like Ben Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest”.  ★★★★★

2.  Morning Pages

One of the things The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron demands that you do while reading it is to write morning pages every day.  Morning pages are essentially 3 pages of stream of consciousness writing that you do every day immediately when you get out of bed.  Might sound crazy (and time-consuming) – and yeah, maybe it is.  But committing to this did some wonderful things for me.  I found that forcing oneself to just make something has the effect of making one less judgmental.  And I found I was paying more attention to my thoughts, as opposed to just having them rattle around my brain unattended throughout the day.  As Cameron puts it, “Morning pages map our own interior…it is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning…without being moved to constructive action.”

Though I’m not still writing three pages a day, I am glad to have it as a resource, and I do still journal at least every other day. ★★★★★

3.  Other Humans

I think I was somehow under the impression that life is better if you’re hiding in your room for its duration.  I now see that, while this may be tempting, there are times (other than natural disasters) when it may be advantageous to come out.  Like, much as I like to be a Scrooge and stay inside to save money, sometimes going out can actually be the thing that gets you your next job.  I got one of my biggest video production jobs yet by visiting a friend who happened to have someone with him who was looking for someone like me.  I also ran into someone while shopping at Aldi two years ago who indirectly led me to one of my biggest upcoming music gigs this coming year.  Like they say, “showing up is half the battle”.  Also, Aldi is a great idea regardless.

Heck, I even started posting on facebook (don’t get crazy; I do it like once every two months).  It had seemed to me in recent years that people only go on facebook to find someone to disagree with, but I’ve found that getting answers to questions like “is there a phone company that doesn’t want my firstborn child?” can actually be more efficient and personal if outsourced to a facebook post than spending hours scouring 25 tabs of internet reviews. ★★★★☆ (people aren’t always great, but like, you gotta take that chance)

4.  A Spine

One of the books I read this year was called Never Split the Difference.  It’s a book on how to negotiate effectively, written by one of the top former FBI hostage negotiators.  This book like none other helped me realize that, a lot of times, when I don’t get something I want, it’s because either: 1.  I don’t ask for it, or 2.  I don’t do a good job of asking for it.  While I love my Canadian Mennonite roots, and I want to be kind and generous to all, I have realized in recent years (probably also from living in Philly, the angriest city in America) that us nice people also need to stand up for ourselves and learn to have our needs met.  Too much to explain here – I’d definitely recommend the book!  ★★★★★

5. Imperfection

I just bought a poster from Reformation Designs with the Harry Truman quote that about sums it up: “Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction”.  I have an incredible amount of projects and thoughts sitting on my hard drive or in my brain which I haven’t shared with the world.  I literally have 35 drafts of blogs which are sitting unpublished in my wordpress account.  Why?  Cause: “It’s not the right timing”, “My audience wouldn’t like this”, “More research”, etc etc.  Believe me, I’m all for effective preparation.  But I’ve realized that people like me are at risk of literally producing nothing ever because it will never be good enough.  So I’ve experimented.  I asked a lady out when I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be cool or terrible.  I committed to recording an EP of my singer/songwriter music.  And as you can see, I started  blogging again after 9 months of nothing. As that infamous tattoo says, “No Regerts”. ★★★★★

In fact, to make a final point – perhaps mostly to myself – for the first time ever I’m publishing this article in the same sitting as having written it.  Yup, without even having anyone proofread it.  I am horrified and sweating profusely.  But I want to practice what I preach, and hope that by doing this I’ll be setting a higher standard for myself in 2018.

So I hope that, even with the inevitable spelling errors and run-on sentences, this was helpful to someone.  Please feel free to comment below – I’d love to hear from you.  Here’s to an even grander – and more blogging-filled – new year!

Though my future self did not feel inclined to answer such questions at that time, I am now in a position to do so.  And while my younger self may not benefit from this practice, I find there is something rather fulfilling about knowing that the questions I have in the present can and will be answered in the future.

Since the particulars of my past year are of little consequence to my readers, I’ll forego giving you my personal highlight reel; however, I do want to share a few things which I think are relevant to anyone who’s facing their last month of school before the proverbial breaking of the academic chains and facing an uncertain future.  That’s right – I timed the release of this article so that you still have a month to heed my advice.  You’re welcome.

So what should one expect after graduating with some sort of arts degree?  Of course everyone is different, but I’d say that if you’re a go-getter type, you should expect a pretty adventurous year.  My year took me everywhere from glamorous trips to Disneyworld and Chicago to sleeping on a friends’ couch for two months and having basically no job. I had exciting things happen such as getting an agent and shooting a commercial, but then there were things like having to understudy the majority of the characters in a show and learning all their instruments and vocal parts and then not actually performing at all.  It’s highs and lows, but nothing insurmountable.

So what tips and tricks would I offer to soon-to-be grads as they prepare for the real world?  Here are my thoughts…

1. Keep the mentality that you’re actually ALWAYS in the “real world”.  School is not an excuse to be lazy or hide in a bubble.  Almost everything I ended up doing this past year can be traced back to something I auditioned for or a connection I had during school.  I continued to work my two school jobs for a few months after grad, then performed two consecutive shows for which I had auditioned during my final semester.
2. Write down specific names and websites of people and businesses in your profession that you want to be working with, and keep them handy.  That’s actually how I got my agent – fishing in my notes from film class junior year and sending an email basically just saying “hey, one of my professors worked with you, wanna work with me?”
3. In fact, don’t throw out any of your notes.  I know it seems terrible, but you never know what might be useful (AKA MONOLOGUE EXERCISES).  It just so happens that a Gen Ed class I took my freshmen year is actually relevant to the documentary I’m currently working on, and I might even be interviewing that professor.
4. Add as many college connections as possible on facebook (but like don’t be too creepy).  There have been countless times where I’ve vetted future work partners by interrogating people on their mutual friends list.  You never know when a connection may come in handy, so keep your options open and do your best not to burn bridges along the way.
5. Get an alumni ID.  They’re super underrated – no one told me how to get one; you have to go to the library and ask.  And to be fair, I didn’t set foot on campus for about half a year.  But now I’m on campus pretty frequently and check out books and videos from the library all the time.  In fact, I’m actually on campus as I write this. Heh.
6. To counter this first point – stay far enough away from your college that you don’t keep thinking like a college student and wishing you could escape back into the bubble.  The world has no need for a 22-year-old has-been.
7. Have a heart-to-heart with at least one professor.  Just do it.
8. Don’t despair about the future.  Fun fact: that feeling of uncertainty doesn’t actually go away.  At least, I don’t think it will.  But if you find purpose in your work, you can learn to deal with it.  And, in fact, you may eventually find it exhilarating.

The year after grad will likely be full of periods of uncertainty followed by bursts of elation.  Hundreds of emails, a dozen opportunities, only a handful of gigs that actually happen.  Desperation for money counteracted by a deeper longing to create something meaningful, smattered with wistful proclamations that “it shouldn’t have to be this hard”.

Please don’t be discouraged; this is all part of the process.  A Winston Churchill quote I’ve had on my whiteboard for the majority of the year is: “Success is not final, and failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts”.  It’s gonna be worth it.  Honestly, even with all the uncertainty, I’d take this over college any day.  Student loan payments and all.

So hang in there, almost-college grad.  If you stay committed to chasing after your dreams, I somehow think that things are just going to turn out.

And if you were wondering, no one did notice the stolen tassel.