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.

part 1
part 2

When you take a road trip, you begin to develop a sort of bond that you could not have without the road trip sort of experience.  The type of bond that we get when confined to others in close quarter situations.  We either become attracted to those around us (not necessarily in a Freudian way) or repulsed.  I’m thankful for these adventures.

Driving through Houston after the last episode did nothing to make us want to scout, visit, or in any way pay attention to the huge Texan city of Houston.  We did however, desire to get out, so we drove through I-10, until we decided to get gas and scarf down some snacks at a gas station off the highway.  As we ejected from our cars and stumbled inside after a long 7 hours of driving, I noticed a patrol car slowly circling the building vulture style and paying particular attention to the single brown car in the gas station.  Ya know, the one from which the four college students were stumbling out.  I mentioned it to Kim, Jon, and Allison, who figured it was just a bored officer with nothing to do on a Friday night.  I kindly reminded them that this was Houston and their basketball team was playing game 3 of their conference semi-finals with Phoenix, so really, there was plenty to do.  They ignored me.  Non-sports fans do that sometimes.

We bought our Pringles and Surge, preparing for the long night ahead, and went on our way.  One thing I’ve neglected to mention throughout my story proved to be the eventual reason for the officer’s circling.  The owner of the vehicle was an amazing fellow from California who had no use of his legs whatsoever, and despite this apparent setback, never let it change his life in any way.  He did everything I did at this time in our lives, including play basketball and flirt with girls.  But he also drove, and this was his car, and plastered on both license plates was the universal sign of disabled persons.

Finally heading outside of the Houston city limits proved to be the end of the “making good time” portion of our evening as the patrol car finally decided to pull us over.  Probably because we were going to Arizona and the Suns were playing the Rockets in the playoffs and all that, but he said something about crossing lanes too fast and that he thought we stole the car.  To me he looked the traffic cop in part 2, but Allison assured me he was not.  I told her while he was checking our credentials out that there was no way she could know that while he continued to smoke a cigar in our presence because the cigar and the smoke partially hid his face like a character from the Twilight Zone. He walked clumsily back to our car and told us to have a good day. If I knew then what I know now, I would have told him to relax, and that everything is going to be all right.

I drove through the night listening to soft rock stations and buzzing from certain drinks I had ingested earlier, when eventually a newscaster came on and informed me that a huge thunderstorm was arriving into the area early this morning.  I didn’t believe him as the sky was absolutely beautiful and I was singing quietly to myself.  I have this theory that bad things don’t happen to me when I sing quietly to myself.  Although at this time my musical experience was limited to Al Denson and the beautiful music of the PCC ensembles.

And then it started raining.

Sophmore year of college with the boys

When you tell someone you’ll drive their car across the country, you generally assume that the car will be in good enough condition to make the trip.  You know, when the owner says, “I’ve taken care of the car and it will be fine”, a good assumption is that the owner has indeed taken care of the car and it will be fine.

We left Pensacola around 2 pm, in the heat of the afternoon and found that the car didn’t have AC.  Not a big deal, but the 90 degree heat threatened to melt our faces off.  Our drive started slow, as we talked about dating outings and birthdays and whether or not we would be returning to Pensacola Correctional Center for the next year.  We moved from Florida to Alabama to Mississippi before we ventured into our first mishap.  The car decided to overheat and we found ourselves parked in a rest area for the better part of an hour.  The afternoon was flying by, and crankiness was underway.

Louisiana passed us by and entering Texas brought on more trials than any humans should ever have to bear.  I had never been in Houston, Texas before, but on the east side of  the city, Kim told us that she needed to stop at a pay phone (remember, cell phones were not as plentiful in those days) at the next gas station.  Allison, as the driver, pulled into the first Exxon she could find.  The station was actually closed down for whatever reason, and consequently was very dark.  We pulled in, Kim walked to the pay phone, and we waited.

After sitting for a few minutes listening to the sounds of Houston and to Kim quip loudly about her new friends driving with her and that she was very safe with such good friends, two cars come screeching into the parking lot about 30 feet in front of us.  Kim keeps talking.  Two guys walk out of one car.  Three guys walk out of another.  They start screaming and yelling racial slurs at one another.  Marty (that’s me) yells at Kim to make the  conversation end quickly.  Her parents roll on about how the family pet is doing.  Then one of the guys form the car of three heads to the trunk of his car and pulls out what appears from 30 feet to be a firearm.  Kim needs to quit talking.  Marty yells louder to Kim, pleading for her to hurry.

Eventually Kim stops talking and Allison drives away.  About a quarter of a mile down the road, immediately prior to getting on the ramp toward  the highway, I see a cop directing traffic, roll down my window and tell him, “Excuse me sir, back at the Exxon there was some guys fighting and one of them had a firearm!”  The officer looked at me and calmly said…

“Sorry, I have traffic duty tonight.”

Love the 'do Marty!

For whatever reason, sometimes we have the opportunity to be thankful in spite of the most horrific circumstances.  The following story is one of those “most horrific circumstances” that I am now currently thankful for (or someone is).

Star date:  The end of my freshman year in college. Twas May of 1994, and I had just finished  a full year of college at this institution of higher learning and even higher rules of living.  Most college students leave their freshman year of college and head home for the summer.  Ya know, hang out with the old classmates and brag about who went to the best parties that year.  Going to PCC however left little room for conversations like these and more room to try to figure out anything at all about what was going on in popular culture,(“No, I’ve never heard of Ace of Base, are they good?”).  Plus my parents lovingly dropped me off at school in September of ’03 from my lifetime hometown of Fremont, Ohio and immediately (meaning that day) moved to Tucson, AZ – but thankfully they left me the address.

So as is the college ritual toward the end of the school year, I looked for someone to give me a ride from Pensacola, Florida to Tucson, AZ.  And if you were going to LA, that would be fine too because route 10 goes all the way across the country, baby!

Allison eventually got in touch with me and asked me to meet her at the Commons one day with a group of people who would be riding across the country together.  When I arrived, I found Allison, Kim, and John waiting for me and we talked for a bit, getting to know each other before we made this insanely long road trip as a group.  Allison was finishing her sophomore year as a Criminal Justice major, Kim, too, would be a senior the following year, John suffered along with me in having 3 more years of college to go.

So we decided on a time and a place to meet after our schools graduation ceremony (figuring if possible we could break out somewhere in between the 3rd and 18th verses of the schools alma mater song) and exchanged pleasantries as we went, living our lives for the rest of the year.

Finally the day arrived that we would be leaving for the year.  We were scheduled to meet at 11:45 am in the center of campus, pack our car up, and drive away.  I guess that schedule worked for two of us as John and I were the only ones to arrive.  Of course this was long before cell phones were readily available (actually, I’d be interested in knowing if you can have one at PCC) so we simply had to wait.  12.  12:15.  12:30.  I’m starting to get impatient.  1 rolls around and there is still no Allison or Kim.  Maybe they thought we were freaks, I quipped inside my own head.

Finally at 2:00 pm, our two heroines arrived apologetically after having dropped a friend off at the airport “and it took longer than we thought it would.”  Either way, at this point already on this Friday John and I were irritated, so we let it go, packed up the car, and headed west.

I’ve written in the past about some of the interesting relational things about facebook. And now…another one.

I’m writing this on the day where I write about relationships with enemies, but that might or might not be extreme for the topic today.  You see, one thing that is fascinating about Facebook is the ability to be friends again with people you’ve been around in days gone by, in different eras of your life.  This is great in one sense, because I love seeing friends I haven’t seen in a while.  In another though, we must meet up with the realization that there is a reason we are no longer in that season of our life.

For instance, I grew up in the thriving metropolis of Fremont, Ohio.  A set of my friends live there or know me from there.  The theology was rigid and the music was bad.

At 17, I moved to Pensacola, Florida to attend college.  A big number of my friends attended there with me.  The theology was also rigid, but the music was good.  By good, I mean professional as opposed to a type that I liked.

When I moved to Florida, my parents moved to Arizona, so during the summers I lived there.  A small portion of my friends live or lived there.

After college, I moved to Atlanta, GA where I taught school and other odd jobs for the year of 1998.  It appears that I have a lot of facebook friends from this are of my life.

Then I moved to Massachusetts in the middle of 1998 and have been here ever since.  Meeting friends, seeing people move away.  Meeting new friends.

I bring all this up because I wonder whether it’s healthy to have an eye on all these people from all these various stages of life.  I’m really glad the technology exists, and I have become close again with friends from my past, and in some cases closer, but for the most part, it has been just a means of seeing that they ate chili this morning for breakfast or that their kid puked all over their back seat because of travel sickness.  But here’s the interesting predicament I’m processing.  I wonder if they (meaning my friends from a different era) like the ideal of the old Marty, who was sheltered and didn’t listen to rock music and didn’t say things like “crap” and “screwed”  and who towed the party lines when it came to eschatology and the church?

Then I wonder if I’m just creating a new crop of enemies for myself by having a facebook account?  I could just as easily write the names of the people who I’d really be in contact with, and get on with my life post facebook.  Wow!  That’s a lot to think about.

I’m just glad I didn’t grow up a Calvinist and jump out of those circles.  I would be so screwed.

Hello,

I’m Marty.  Thanks for reading my stuff.

I went to Pensacola Christian College from 1993-1997.  There were so many stupid rules I can’t even tell you.  I couldn’t go to a movie, hold hands with a girl, or go anywhere without a belt on (of course, it couldn’t be hanging down, looking like I was all gangsta though).  Obeying these rules were hard.  There was a handbook of rules several pages in length.  But I knew this information when I went to PCC, and I was not going into my 4 years of schooling negligent of what was ahead.

So when I heard the story of the young man in Findley, Ohio who decided that he would attend the prom of a neighboring high school against the rules and wishes of the Christian school that he attended, I was shocked to read in several articles that he had no clue that he attending the prom would call for consequences.

Then I heard all the radio stations and read all the articles and editorials and talked to several people who thought the school was being ignorant for such a steep punishment, and worse yet, for even having the rule in their books.  “Dancing?  Why shouldn’t the kid be able to do that?  What kind of a lame school would stop a kid from going to a prom?”

These are all great questions, but none of them are the point.  we can crack all day and then some on the school for being legalistic or for the punishment being too steep (which by the way, I believe they are legalistic and the punishment is too steep), but none of these thoughts mater in light of the actual point of the discussion.

Authority.

I know the school well.  I played basketball against this school when the early 90′s as an attender of a rival Christian high school in Ohio, and they are extremely legalistic.  And I have no clue why this kid is actually telling the news media that “he didn’t know the rules applied “outside of the school”.  I went to these schools, and you kind of get the hint that when all the girls have skirts two fingers below the kneeline and when all the guys have short hair, but not too short, that the rules apply everywhere.  What was he gonna do, not dance in the cafeteria?

All that being said, the father now plans on filing a law suit because the school enforced the breaking of this rule by not allowing him to walk during graduation.

To this, I say, “get over it.”  You knew the rules.  You knew there would be consequences.  And you thought it was worth it. But now if it was worth it, you need to deal with the consequences.

I believe that authority is important.  Imagine if I decided that I wanted to take a walk the next time I was in Washington DC.  As I walked, I decided to stop by Pennsylvania Ave.  From there I saw this big white house and decided to go in.  Some men stop me and say something like, “You can’t go in there sir.”  I say, “Why not?”  The reply, “Because this is the residence of the President, and you are not authorized to enter.”  I of course would say, “I believe that to be a stupid rule.  I go into my friends houses all the time back in massachusetts.  I walk into his house.  he walks into mine.  I’m a safe guy, and I’d never do anything to hurt Prez. Obama.”

This would hardly be a good excuse, would it?  You see, the issue is not whether or not the rule is stupid.  The issue is not whether or not I agree with the rule.  The issue is submission.  I can choose to ignore whatever rules I want, but if I do, I must also face the consequences that come with breaking the rules.  It’s called authority…

so suck it up kid.

On Ben Arments’s blog this morning, he announced a new blog from his friend, Barton Damer.  Bart is an amazing graphic designer and has been doing some really sweet stuff for churches all acros the country (and maybe even the world.
Name drop ahead – drive slowly:  One cool thing for me is that Bart and I have a history.  You see, we attended the same college/military school and at one point took leadership of our collegian (christian college speak for “Fraternity”).
So, Bart, this picture is for you.

Welcome to the blog world!

I went to Pensacola Christian College (yeah, get off my back).  In retrospect, or if you’re still making this decision, which college would you go to if you could do it all over again? 

Answer here.

So I have this idea, I want to do this as practice for writing, and I wanted to see what people who read my blog from time to time might think of the idea, or better yet, suggestions for improving the idea.  Here it is:

I want to write an autobiography based on the timeline of my facebook friends.  So it wouldn’t be a real autobiography, but one actually more focused on those 337 people that have connected with me on facebook.  (I probably have had a real relationship with 300 of them).  Along the way, I would be the constant (Lost fans represent!)amidst the massive amounts of different ages, areas of the country, and social circles represented in the story.

I would obviously want it to be true and yet interesting enough so that its not just about my relationship with each of them, some of which would be colorful, some of which would be,”We met each other at school in the dorm room, and I wrote him up because his room was really dirty” (Sorry I went to Pensacola Christian College).

I would break it down into timeline type chapters, even though I can’t find the social timeline that Facebook used to have, and those would look something like this:
Birth – 17 years old (Ohio)
18-21 – Pensacola Christian College (Florida)
             Neighborhood Bible Time (9 states)
             Arizona
22 -      Taught at a Christian School (Atlanta Ga)
23 - present (now almost 10 years later) - Radio Dj
             Pastor at a church  (Massachusetts)
Current update – Big time blogging friendships beginning to form.

So this is what I’ve been pondering and I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on the project. 

Would it help my writing or just be a nuisance?

This post was written for Randy Elrod’s Watercooler Wednesday.

Welcome to MoMo’s! 

HERE are the guidelines. If this is your first time giving your “amazing story”, PLEASE take time to read them. It will save us both a lot of time.

To join me, write a post today (or a post you’ve written from last Monday to Sunday) sharing something tht has happened to you this last week - anything funny or interesting, crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week.  Put a link in your post to this post permalink (not my general URL) and then put the permalink of your post (not your general URL) here at the end of this post. Thanks.  By the way, I do this because I love stories.  To tell them, to hear them, and to read them.

So tell me your “Inspired by the truth” story every Monday…

Here’s mine.

On Sunday night my wife, Carie and I threw a welcome home party for my friend Steve MacArthur, who recently returned from Iraq to Massachusetts.  We had a great time at the party and all of Steve’s friends brought an italian dish for a brilliant dinner full of pizza and meatballs and other cheesy foods.

One of Steve and I’s old friends joined us for the occasion.  Her name is Darlene.  Darlene is like a 2nd mom to Steve and I and another mutual friend of ours named Ruben.  She is an amazing person, and we quickly reminicsed about some good old times.

One of the times she reminded me about I had somehow forgotten, but evidently she had not, and we had quite a laugh at the expense of this ”old time”.  Basically she was going away for a week or so and got the bright idea to ask Ruben and I to house sit for her.  To give you some brief background information, she had a beautiful house in a wooded area of Massachusetts, complete with a lake, a full bar, a large screen TV, and a hot tub.

Ruben and I were 23 years old.

We started off the week getting a feel for our surroundings, enjoying the comfort of relaxing in a house we could call our own for a short time.  But later on in the week, being the relational people we were, we decided to quench our desire for a more people-oriented environment, and started to invite people over.  

The first thing we did on Wednesday was to invite a group of our guy friends over to get acquainted with the house.  Now one thing I should mention was that it was March in New England and as such there was still snow on the ground.  Also, Ruben was a bible college student from a school in Boston and all the people we invited that week were students from the school.

We chilled for the major part of the day and then decided to do something semi stupid.  We decided to play truth or dare, which by the end of the game, had us all somehow making snow angels outside with a limited amount of clothes on our bodies.  This was very cold. 

From there we ran into the house and jumped into the hot tub.  Unfortunately, our friend Chuckles was with us and tried to get in.  Chuckles is an amazing guy, but he was a bit on the heavy side, so everytime he tried to get in, the water would overflow and run onto the floor. This damaged some of the carpet.  

Later on, we invited several of the females from the school to join us at the house. Amazingly enough, there was a snow storm that hit the area that night, so the crowd of students that normally had a curfew, now could not make it back to their dorms without fear of getting into a car accident on their way home.

So for those of you who are not getting what was happening up to this point, we were basically having a Christian sleepover, something my alma mater at a school in Pensacola would not have approved of. (and possibly for good reason)

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and a few of my friends (who will remain nameless) found themselves in the hot tub with a few of the females from the school.  Which would not have been a big deal since it was still a pg-rated situation, except that one of the females had a boyfriend who did not get invited to the party and told his girlfriend that he would tell on them if she did not.

So everybody got demerits except me, because I had been graduated from my particular Christian college for about 2.5 years.

Also, at the party on Sunday night, Darlene reminded me that her electric bill had gone through the roof that month (like around $1500 through the roof).  Not sure how that happened, but I bet it had something to do with the amount of times the hot tub was used.