When I was a boy growing up in the a bit bigger than small town America, I would do one of two things with my time:  I would explore or I would entertain myself.

Exploration would mean walking around and finding new areas of the corn fields, railroad tracks, or old broken down barns, and pretending that I was the “ruler” of those newly explored places.  Entertaining myself would mean watching TV, listening to music, or occasionally playing basketball or football when it wasn’t too cold.  Exploration would keep me on my toes, every step I would be wary of what was coming next.  Entertainment allowed me to watch someone else keep on their toes, at no expense to my own life (my dad typically paid the cable bill).

As I’ve grown older, I’ve noticed the same two choices, but the stakes are much higher.  I could explore new paths (not necessarily geographical) and new steps in my life that are natural and sometimes scary to travel into, or I could seek to constantly entertain myself, and watch others take the risks, explore the scary, and move into the unknown.  She question is…

Is 2010 going to be an entertainment year, or an exploration year?

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Uber genius Gregg Easterbrook (writer of the column Tuesday Morning Quarterback) is one of the few sports commentators I respect, because he says things, not to sound like he knows about football, but to actually sound like he knows about winning football games. Here was his reaction to Sunday’s “crazy online kick call” by Mike Tomlin:

“Tomlin Wins Points with TMQ: After scoring to take a 30-28 lead with four minutes remaining, Pittsburgh attempted an onside kick. On NBC’s “Football Night in the Known Universe,” Tony Dungy said he was “shocked” by the call. That’s the point! The Packers were shocked too — completely unprepared — and the gamble might have won the game then and there had Ike Taylor of the Steelers not recovered the ball 1 yard too soon. Football pundits fell all over themselves assailing Tomlin’s decision, which TMQ thought was a great call. This is another example of the phenomenon that sports-yak types don’t want coaches to make innovative or risky calls (Bill Belichick on fourth-and-2 at Indianapolis and so on). Instead, they want game action to be ultra-predictable — because the commentators don’t want to be taken by surprise. Plus, here were the Green Bay possession results in the fourth quarter: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. Tomlin knew his defense, especially his secondary, wasn’t performing. The onside attempt made eminent sense.”

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This is so not the point of this post, but it about sums it up.

Crossing lines and building bridges seems to be what Jesus was all about:  Samaritans and Jews, friends and enemies, first place and last place, none of that mattered to Him, as long as they were being pointed to His Father.  As for me, sometimes I just want to do my own thing.

A bit over a year ago, I traveled with my friend Steve to Gillette Stadium to see the Patriots play the Steelers.  Being a Steelers fan has its benefits, one of them is having the coolest, manliest colors in the NFL, so I wore my number 7 jersey proudly, along with a turtleneck, a Steelers coat, a Steelers hat, Orange long johns (nobody was going to see them anyway),blue jeans,  my terrible towel, and a pair of work boots.  Loving the Pats like he does, Steve opted for the red, white, and blue of Patriot nation, and the battle was on.

The weather cooled off that weekend just in time for the game, as what had been 60 degree weather turned into rain and 38 degrees on just over a few days.  Our apparel was warm, and our ambition and competitive spirit was high.  Arriving at the stadium early allowed us to find a decent parking spot to pay $40 to park, and this was a good price.  If you’ve ever been to Foxboro, you understand that it isn’t like Boston. There’s plenty of room there, so the owners charge so much for no reason other than their own greed.  This makes me happy I’m a sports fan.  Let’s all cheer for teaching morals and values through sports!

As we walked the half mile or so to the stadium (I suppose a parking a quarter mile away was $60), the drizzle came down like a fine mist, and the conversation with Steve flowed about the game and the big players and our excitement for the evening.  I also asked him in a most humble and wussy way, “Um, Steve, if someone tries to beat me up today because I’m wearing Steelers gear, you got my back, right?”  Steve assured me he would be there.  This made me much happier than the $40 payout I had just given to Bob Kraft and the gang.  When we arrived in our seats, I noticed an unhealthy environment issue around me – When we walked to the stadium, I saw plenty of Steelers fans with their towels and heavy black and yellow clothing and beer in hand, ready for a great game, but when I sat down, my section enjoyed almost all Pats fans.  It was after all, in New England.

I purposed in my heart that I would not overtly be a butt head or an over zealous ‘away team’ fan, so as the game started, when the Steelers had something good happen, I cheered, but did not stand or scream, or even wave the “terrible towel”.  Of course, early on, very little happened to make me cheer, so this wasn’t difficult.   Eventually two opposing things happened to make my night as confusing as a young teenager who just wants to be friends but can’t live without that person (please see your teenage friends facebook status for details):  First, it started raining.  The entire game it rained and rained, until everyone, myself included, felt miserable.  Overpriced hot chocolate from McDonalds didn’t help.  A hot dog, that based on what I paid for it could have fed a small orphanage in Peru, didn’t help.  The rain came down cold and wet and nasty, and eventually pressed through my clothing into my skin like tiny tacks that the devil might sit on, ouch!

Secondly, by the time the game ended, even I, who cheered heartily for the victory the future super bowl champion Steelers pulled out that night (33-10, in case you wondered, though that was so not the point of this post) was happy to be walking back to my car.  The entire crowd moved slowly and almost everyone looked down at the ground, not only because of the loss, but also because of the intensity of the rain at the cold at this point in the evening.  As we walked towards the exit, I felt something happen to me – I no longer had my terrible towel in my hand.  Very slowly I turned around a full 360 degrees and saw nothing. And then, deciding to take an additional 90 degrees for fun, I saw these three guys laughing at me and looking back about 15 feet behind me.  I looked at the ground in that particular direction and saw my towel – cold, wet, and clumped on the ground being walked on by other passerbyers.

Glancing toward the direction of Steve, I noticed he had continued walking and with his hood on, he wasn’t able to see the stressful situation his friend had found himself.  So I looked back at the 3 guys and said to the one that appeared to be the culprit, “What are you doing?”  He was short and probably drunk and kind of reminded me of Johnny Lawrence, the anti-Ralph Macchio from the movie “The Karate Kid.” His response was typical of someone who was angry at the loss of his sports team and had numbers to back him up:  “Whatever I want to do, what are you going to do about it?”

So now I have an ethical decision to make in the midst of all this chaos.  Thousand of people walking all around me, most of which think I’m stupid for wearing the colors I’m wearing, and I’m processing,  Do I say something sarcastic and inspire their ire, or do I stand back and not give in to what they clearly want me to do?  Extra, extra, read all about it, local pastor arrested for inciting an argument after last nights game.  He clearly was at fault because of his clothing choice. After some careful thought in 3 or so seconds I was able to think, I looked straight at them, and said:

“Well, I’m going to walk back there, pick up my towel, and celebrate MY team’s victory.  Have an amazing night guys!”

Someday I will be more like Jesus and use that opportunity, not to have an ounce of sarcasm in my voice, but to point people to the Father.  Unfortunately though, it didn’t happen that day…

and it probably won’t happen in that sport.

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How many places can you see Jesus?

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I don’t blame the mainstream media for making fun of Christians, because there are times that I certainly want to, like the one and only time I visited Des Moines, Iowa.  I traveled with a vacation Bible School organization known as Neighborhood Bible Time in the summer of 1996.  For the most part it was an amazing time.  3 weeks of training in Colorado led to 10 weeks of going to 10 different churches in 7 different states with another “NBT evangelist”.  The stories I could tell from that summer are endless, but you have to start somewhere, so I begin here, in the central United States, a hot bed of conservatism and the corn fields of moon pies and RC Cola.

My partner, Dave and I had traveled to Ohio and Michigan, and for week three we had the honor of hanging in the 4 lettered state not known as Ohio or Utah.  I had only traveled through the state, so I looked forward to spending the week at this most important of political states (cough, cough).

Though we worked as a team, Dave and I had our separate functions on the team.  I worked with the elementary students, teaching, singing songs, and showing magic tricks like nobody’s business, and Dave worked with the teenagers, playing football, throwing water balloons, and eating lots of junk food – so basically having a way better time than me.

I taught two sessions per day.  One consisted of all the 1st through 3rd graders who came to “Bible Time” and the other included all the 4th through 6th graders who were along for the ride. I met with each group for about an hour.  Training was actually long and arduous that took a lot of effort, yet provided a lot of fun too.  One magic trick I used was called the Burning Bible. The point was to teach kids that the Bible is forever, that it is God’s Word and it will endure.

For whatever reason my bosses instructed me never to show this trick to the younger 1st through 3rd graders, but to restrict this particular trick to the older children.  So week after week, when it came time to run through my games, music, stories, and magic tricks, I would skip “the Burning Bible” for the young kids and go with something a bit less daunting. This week in Iowa the kids were crazy!  They cheered louder than the places I’d been so far, and they were having a blast with Mr. Marty and his most excellent entertainment techniques.

On the 2nd of 5 days of meeting, the 1st – 3rd grade kids were just going nuts, which meant that I was on my game.  They were captivated and laughing and silent when I asked them to be.  I had them in the palm of my hand.  Things were going so well that about half way through, I turned around and grabbed the first thing that I could find because I didn’t want to lose momentum, and in my head as I grabbed the Burning Bible trick I said,  Ya know, it’s just this one time, and I have no clue why I can’t show the kids this anyway, so…

As I suspected, the kids were enamored with my new trick.  Their mouths dropped to the floor and it was almost like they weren’t listening when I explained to them that the Bible was God’s Word, and that it will endure forever.  They were so quiet, I then went into story time, and the rest of the morning went so smoothly, I continued to dwell on the fact that I was the man, and that my 20 year old self was an amazing teacher to these young children.

I thought nothing of the event as the rest of the day went great and that night Dave had a great time with the teenagers too.  The next day we had the same great kind of a day as before, minus the Burning Bible trick, though some kids asked for it again, to which I ignored them and continued doing the other things I had been trained to do.  After the meeting that morning, Dave and I were quite tired, so we headed out the door around 1:00 pm for lunch and a nap (I believe we called it “Bible Time Five”).  As Dave opened the actual solid wooden door out of the church, he hit this lady in the head.

“Oh, sorry,” Dave said quite apologetically.  The women smiled, appearing to be forgiving and very nice.  “That’s okay.  Is there something going on here for children this week?”  “Absolutely!” Dave said with much gusto  “Neighborhood Bible Time is happening here this week!  You should bring your daughter tomorrow morning!”  Dave said this while motioning to the 6 yr. old blond girl standing directly behind the  woman, “It’s a great time for kids.”

The woman continued while smiling, “Oh, yes, I was just wondering, Did someone burn a Bible in that meeting yesterday?”

In that one moment, everything became clear.  I knew I’d seen the little girl before, and I knew why I wasn’t supposed to show the Burning Bible magic trick to the young children.  Stupid Marty!  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Dave smiled trying to be funny, “Yes, maam, that’s what happened.”  I quickly interjected, “No maam, that was me, and that’s not what happened.  You see, I was doing a…

As I talked the woman lost her smile in between the words “I” and “was” and spoke quite loudly while taking a step back and pointing at me:  “I rebuke you, in the name of Jesus”.  A look of relief came out of her face as she walked away, grabbing the arm of the confused 6 yr old and back towards her car.

“Maam, I’d love to explain to you what happened if you have another minute,” I said, trying to save whatever bit of Christian fellowship I could with this woman.  As she continued to ignore me like I didn’t exist, I then resorted to a touch of sarcasm, “Ummm, maam, can we talk about this like mature Christians?”

At that, the woman flipped me off, called me an asshole, got in her car, and drove away.

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Have you ever had those situations you didn’t know what to do by virtue of the fact that you’ve never had to deal with that before?  I tend to have a lot of these situations in my life and its unfortunate.  In the summer of 2001 at the front  of our church property one Monday laid a gray cat, clearly dead and clearly rolled over by a car.  Evidently the driver of the car emerged from his or her vehicle and lovingly placed the cat off the road onto our property.

I asked my boss at the time what we should do with the body of dead cat, and he told me to let it stay there until Sunday (6 days away) or until the owner of dead cat came to save  the lifeless feline from being eaten by the birds of Fellowship Church.
That week happened to be 1)the week of VBS and 2)the hottest week of the summer, so all the kids who happened upon our campus complained about our lack of air conditioning in the buildings and that nasty smell emanating from dead cat.

Saturday rolled around along with another successful week of kids craziness and once again I asked my boss what I should do, to which he replied that I should “get rid” of dead cat and he should not be there the next morning.  “How should I get rid of him?” I asked, not familiar with the politics of ‘getting rid’ of koffin kitties, having rarely spent any time with pets as a child.  “I don’t care, just make it gone,” was his response, clearly feeling the same way I felt about dead cat.

So I walked to the back of our church and grabbed a heavy duty construction trash bag.  Then I walked slowly toward dead cat as if somehow it would jump up and attack me.  Oh yeah, I forgot the shovel.  I had a shovel in my other hand.

Dead cat was nothing, if it wasn’t heavy.  I got the shovel deep underneath the cat, and heaved it above the ground.  Then I had that awkward bag shuffle we sometimes do when we have something to place in a trash bag, but we don’t have two hands left to open the trash bag wide enough.  Do you know the awkward bag shuffle?  It frustrates me.  I have the awkward bag shuffle often now as I place Bruno’s (the dog Carie and I are currently dog sitting) dung in a plastic bag when he goes on Neighbor Michael’s lawn.  Just kidding.  He hasn’t gone on Neighbor Michael’s lawn…yet.

So after about 10 minutes of trying to fit dead cat into a bag, I then walked over the the dumpster and threw dead cat away, not realizing the impact this would have on dead cat’s human mother.

As you probably could have guessed (though in some world inside of my head I did not), dead cat’s human mother eventually came to me, showed me a picture, and asked if I had seen her cat.  Immediately I knew what had happened to her cat, and I inferred to her that I knew.  In shock, she brushed my words off as if it probably wasn’t her cat I had done that too.  I half-heartedly and like a politician agreed, saying that the possibility existed it was someone else’s cat, and that I could not be certain, but inside I thought to myself, I’m sorry maam, I threw your cat away about a week and a half ago.  If I was raised with animal common sense I would not have, but I don’t have any of that.

If it ever happens again though, I’ll be sure to give the deceased animal a funeral.

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Of my first 18 Christmases in this world, I only remember 3 gifts I ever received.  There were several years my parents gave me presents galore – lots of little toys or knick knacks in which I ripped open each one hoping the next one would be better than the last.  But the only gifts I remember were the years that there was only one gift “under the tree.”

Granted they were large gifts, but those years – the years of the 10-speed, the waterbed, and the gifts of cash my parents handed me with the realization they couldn’t figure out what a teenage boy wants anymore – were memorable.  Now I did buy several items with the cash gifts, but I don’t remember what they were, I only remember those 3 gifts.  For whatever reason we’ve tricked ourselves into believing that the more there is to open, the better.

This year I want to give gifts that would not be “one of the many”, but will be “one for the memory”?

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Today I shamelessly name drop and beg you to listen to the band that is about to be huge before they are huge.

The Undeserving is a group of guys from Fremont, Ohio, a place I have often wrote about on this blog, and they are about to go viral on us in the music world.  They have a new song “something to hope for” that is going to be used for the ABC show “Find my family” and a new album that will be released in 2010, produced by some of the big names in the music biz (oh yeah, cool people use words like “biz”).

This band has some really great tunes, and the lead singer really stands out to me to be a first class guy, though on Facebook we tend to debate who the best team in the NFL is, I really appreciate his songwriting and music expertise. (coincidentally I am losing this argument at the moment as the Steelers blow chunks all of a sudden)

So I’m requesting your support of this up and coming band, and pray they will be used to be a light in the world in which we live.

Because they deserve it.

Tour Recap Video

The Undeserving

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Fremont Baptist Temple’s Christmas Cantatas in the 80′s and 90′s were big.  Big everything.  Big drama.  Big music.  Big crowds.  Big hair.  Practice for the choir started in the fall on Sunday evenings a few hours before the Sunday 6pm service.  From the age of 13 I sang in the choir, first as a tenor, then sometime after puberty when I didn’t sound like Charlotte Church anymore, bass.  I loved getting to sing with guys like Steve and Bill, and contributing to the production as a whole.

Sheltered isn’t even the word to begin to describe who I was in those days, because it wasn’t just that I was actually sheltered, but I embodied my parents desire to shelter me.  That is, I never really fought it.  I so wanted to not disappoint them or even impress them at times that I did my best to tow the line when it came to all things “worldly.”

So one Christmas our church performed a production entitled, “Born to die.” The story and song told of a young man who walked away from his family’s Christian tradition to go live with his friends in “the world” and no doubt do some pretty monstrous things like listen to AC/DC  and smoke and get to 2nd base and beyond with his worldly girlfriends.  Eventually our young protaganist loses his job and has no money, which is right about the time all his friends leave him for better concerts (Poison perhaps?) and his girlfriends  go looking for hotter guys with money.

Eventually he gets to the place where he gets evicted from his apartment, and has nothing but a desire to return home for Christmas, a very few dollars, and a gold watch his grandfather had given him years earlier.  So he goes to the bus station trying to get home and attempts to talk the ticket guy into giving him a cheap ticket since he doesn’t have enough money to get across the street much less back home.  A conversation ensues and the guy ends up feeling bad for the repentant hero, and barters with him to trade a ticket home for his grandfather’s gold watch, which also happens to be the last remaining worldly possession the young man has.

I remember sitting in the choir during the rehearsals and the performances refreshed to know that I would never end up like that guy, stripped of everything because of his stupid decisions which could have been avoided had he just listened to what the Bible taught.

Years later I found myself in Christian college, still towing the line and making my parents proud of me for what I was not doing, when I became a floor leader (the rest of the world calls it an RA, but the “tattle tale” structure was different there).  One of my responsibilities was called “shadowing”.  “Shadowing” was necessary when a young male or female college student didn’t tow the line via the rules of the college, and when they got caught (if it were a big enough crime, like going to the movies or talking to the person they were dating on an unchaperoned sidewalk), they would have to go through an appeals process to stay in the school.  During the appeals process, the person being “shadowed” would have to follow the floor leader around their classes or to their rooms and they couldn’t talk to anyone else besides administration or floor leaders.

I remember “shadowing” several of those people during my junior and senior years in college, and feeling sorry for what they were going through, but also encountering a certain happiness that I was glad I would never go through that situation or be like those people, having lost many of their college friends because of one or two bad choices they made when they could have just followed God’s advice.

Then I graduated from school and moved to Atlanta to become a high school history teacher.  I really loved it, but working at a christian school I got paid enough to eat and sometimes pay the rent.  My real life had started, away from the rules and the people telling me what to do and towing the line.  I remember one beautiful September day walking on the school campus feeling like I could take on the world, having put myself in a great situation, loving the co-workers and students with whom I was constantly  surrounded.  And I thanked God I was not that guy who would sell his soul and his family out for a good time, or those people who messed their life plans up by some stupid choice to go off campus and visit Hooters or other people I knew who did bad things.  I towed the line.  I did the right things.

And then, just like that, I became that guy/those people and I would never be the same.

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A sunny chilly day in Worcester, Massachusetts found me driving to pick up my friend Jason Destratis for lunch at Moe’s.  As Carie and I are attempting to be wise with our money, I was jubilant about our restaurant choice because I had a coupon for a free meal at Moes.  Both Jay and I requested the attendance of our friend Steve Bramlett to join us, but he had foolishly locked himself into a staff meeting where he works.

For whatever reason I found myself quite warm driving to pick Jay up, and rolled the windows down, which of course is another way of saying I pushed a button to mechanically lower the pane of glass.  The sun shone brightly down onto my face and for a short time the 33 degrees felt like 75.  When I picked Jay up, there was no doubt where we were going and there was no doubt what we were hungry for – The Homewrecker, chips, salsa, and maybe even a bit of queso.

As I drove onto Lincoln St. the driver of a car in one lane decided very quickly to steer into my lane, causing me to face the Lincoln St. Plaza, almost perpendicular to the 5 year old haven of materialism and gluttony.  Target, Lowe’s, Barnes and Nobles, Texas Roadhouse, and Papa Gino’s are just a few of the eating and shopping establishments dedicated to causing us to stumble in the aforementioned areas of decadence.

I watched as Jason leaned over to see (perhaps for the first time) the newest restaurant being added to the  collection of “the Man” machines (thank you Homey the clown, circa 1991), 5 Guys, burgers and fries. “Is it open?” Jay said, salivating like an 13 year old girl over a Thanksgiving feast of Twilightian Vampires during a new moon. “I don’t think so man” I said almost regretfully.  Then with a glimmer of hope, while turning my right blinker on, I said, “But we can always find out!”

As we drove in, the plaza appeared a bit chaotic, but this was because of the Christmas season and shopping and had little to do with 5 Guys, so we drove past the store slowly, and though there appeared to be a few people in the newest greasy spoon in town, I hypothesized that training was going on before the big day, whenever that might be.  So Jay made the call:  ”All right, let’s just head down to Moe’s.”  Just then appeared in my vision a phone number – 508-853-2000 – you can call it right now to see if its for real.

Done?  Good, on with the story.

As I drove away I decided to call the number to see if they actually were open.  ”Hello, 5 guys,” the young lady cheerily answered as she picked up the phone.  I only assume she picked up the phone, though she could have just rolled it up, like my car window.  ”Yes,” I said happy to get a response, “Are you ‘guys’ open yet?  Even if it’s just 1 of you?”  ”Huh?”  ”Nothing, are you open for business yet?”  ”Oh, no, I’m sorry,” she said, having might as well of stabbed me with a cajun fry, and then taken it back.  ”We open tomorrow.”  ”Okay, thank you” I said trying to sound undissapointed and non desperate for the kind of grease that coats your arteries and gets people like House to theorize what’s wrong with me.

“But you can come get some free food” she countered quickly with an obvious smile in her voice that you didn’t need videophone to see.  Now I was responding “huh?”  ”Yes, from now (11:58 am) until 1:30 pm we’re giving away free food.”  I hung up.  I didn’t need to be polite.  I would be seeing her in about 26 seconds.

So Jay and I jumped out of the car and walked with springs in our step and smiles on our faces into the red and white checkered chamber of clogging.  We found what the phone answerer said to be true, ordered and then did our part to help the hour and a half event go viral.  From Twitter to Facebook to phone calls, we did it all, and eventually accompanied by our friends, Billy, Al, and Jake.

And that my friends, is how 5 guys got free food at 5 Guys.

Steve Bramlett would have made it 6.

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