Here are 10 facts about me that you might not have known. At least one of them might be untrue. Can you figure out which?
1. I was raised in a mainline Protestant church. Just before I turned 18, I had a profound spiritual awakening that led me into a fairly strident brand of Pentecostalism and Christian evangelicalism.
That particular edifice began to crack while I was living in Haiti, and I realized how inadequate it is to have a faith based primarily on a model of sin-atonement-repentance-forgiveness, when we’re living in a world where 4-year-olds can go for weeks at a time without eating.
Further cracks appeared as I witnessed up close and personal how badly the evangelical church often treats other people in the name of “tough love,” and finding no justification for that in the Bible, nor in the person of Jesus. I’m particularly sensitive to the issue of how gays and lesbians are treated in the church, but it also appalls me how sanguine we are about institutional racism, sexism, Islamophobia and more, both in the church and in the larger culture.
The real killer was having and losing a foster son and not only finding my faith woefully inadequate for all that we went through, but how utterly alone we were in the midst of our grief, and how few people gave a damn for what we were going through. It was as though we buried a son, and not one person who swore to support us through the entire experience could be bothered to call, to visit, or even to send us a card expressing Hallmark’s sympathy for our loss. (That part still hurts, honestly, 12 years later, though I try not to be bitter about it.)
These days, I say I’m post-evangelical, but one friend has observed that my approach to Scripture is in line with mainline Protestant thinking, while another has commented that I would make an excellent Quaker.
2. The pastor at my church once observed that I am probably the most liberal member of the congregation. I was so flattered I could have kissed him, but it’s true. I have nightmares that one day Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, or someone like them, will become president of the United States.
3. Back during college, a religion professor once was explaining the role of Satan in Hebraic cosmology, not as a rebel or fallen angel but as an officer in the heavenly court whose job it was to take an opposing viewpoint, to help ferret out the truth. “In fact, Mr. Learn,” he said, “in my classroom, I have often found that you are Satan.” To this day, I consider it one of the greatest compliments I have ever received.
4. Of all the books I have ever read, my favorite by far is “The Lord of the Rings,” by J.R.R. Tolkien. I love it for its model of heroism, for the language, for its epic scope, for the detail Tolkien put into developing Middle Earth, and on and on. When Beloved Wife and I found out we were expecting our first child, there was only one suggestion made for our daughter’s name. It comes from “The Lord of the Rings.”
5. I can move the little toe on my right foot independently from the other four.
6. There have been times I have lived at the bottom of a well so deep that I can’t even see the shadows whose movement marks the passage of the sun. An oubliette is a terrible place to live; when I’m there, a call from an understanding friend is like a flower blooming in the desert.
7. Most of my friends are women.
8. Music is fundamental to my understanding of what it means to be human. I sing in the tenor range; and with varying degrees of skill, I can play the trombone, the tuba and the piano. I’m trying to learn to play banjo, and from day one have encouraged my children to sing and to play instruments.
Nothing is lonelier than someone who feels unsuited to participating in creating or making music; as a result, I’ve always found it an act of supreme rudeness when those with musical training or superior skill feel entitled to belittle amateurs, but they do. I try not to let it bother me but it does.
9. About 10 years ago, my best friend and I were running a mailing list and web site called Brothers Grinn, entirely of original humor, including our signature piece. “Chicken Soup for the Soulless,” which spoofed the inspirational stories that were making the rounds of everyone’s e-mail back then. At our height, we had close to 1,500 subscribers.
At one point, Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises threatened us with a lawsuit over the parodies. Among the ensuing hijinks, I asked for two copies of the cease-and-desist letter on official Chicken Soup letterhead, so my friend and I could frame them and hang them up. My oldest brother, quoting Spock, predicted, “I expect you’ll both be insufferably pleased with yourselves for at least a week.”
Been ten years now, Blair. Still going strong.
10. Like every other writer, I hate getting plagiarized, and yet it seems to keep happening. Aside from the low-quality Princeton newspaper whose reporters regularly cribbed stories from The Packet while I worked there, I once discovered that a high school student had cribbed a blog post of mine to submit for an ethics class; and Our Daily Bread once reprinted something I had written, without permission, as part of a really fluffy and lightweight devotional. Key Life Ministries did the same thing. (The high school student landed in deep doo-doo when her dad found out; the two ministries apologized immediately and fixed their web sites to reflect the authorship, and probably prayed that I wouldn’t sue them.)
The Most Useless Blog in the World 