fate and wonder.

I know a great person who is always talking about the "will of God" or the "plan of God" or how amazing it is that "God brought this to being..." 

Just a reminder to all of us.

You don't need fate to have wonder and gratitude. In fact, arguably, randomness and chaos producing some amazing results for your life is much more wondrous and gives you even more to be grateful about. 

thousands and thousands...

There are thousands of people on this planet that are just as talented as me. And probably you. 

There are thousands more that are more talented than me. And probably you. 

Which leaves me, and you, with some decisions for our jobs, our passions, our creative endeavors, our dreams, our stories, our relationships... 

I can... 

1. Worker harder than them. (Keeping in mind there are thousands who will also work as hard.)
2. Wait for some luck. (Give the power to someone or something else.) 
3. Be more creative and unique. (But there are thousands who are just as creative...) 
4. Lower my expectations. (How low do I go?)
5. Quit. (Buy some weed and sit under a tree.)

or....

Cheer for them. Help them. Learn from them. Be generous and kind to them and humble around them. Stop competing with them and start being grateful for their inspiring presence in my life. 

And suddenly it seems like a much nicer and more enjoyable world. 

the wrong fear.

The man in charge of the air base was worried about sabotage, most likely from a foreigner (a.k.a. terrorism).

So, he ordered all of the planes to the middle of the airfield, as far from the fences as possible, wing tip to wing tip, and made sure all of the weapons were removed. 

Which would have been great, provided there had been a terrorist attack. And, after all, what other kind of attack would there have been since... 

"A Japanese attack on Hawaii is regarded as the most unlikely thing in the world, with one chance in a million of being successful..." 

 Turns out that Japanese attack - not the other one - happened and destroyed all of the airplanes that had been set-up almost perfectly for them. 

That's the thing with fear, and with pride, and with letting either one of them - worse both at the same time - make decisions for you. You might end up losing everything you thought you were protecting - or never thought you could lose. 

how can I help?

It's always funny the reaction people give (and might be expecting) when I hear the conversation. It's some variation of:

Person A: I've got to give up social media. I can't take it anymore. 

Person B: Really? Oh man... Yeah... 

Person A: It's just gotten to be too much. 

Person B: I get it. Forever?

Person A: No, no. Just maybe the summer. 

Here is more of the variation I think we should be pushing for:

Person A: I've got to give up social media. I can't take it anymore. 

Person B: How can I help you get rid of it forever? 

It might be a little harsh but that's me. When someone announces to me that they are getting off it, I hear it as though someone is announcing they are not going to do cocaine anymore. Awesome! What can I do to help? 

the ice maker.

There was an ice maker just sitting there. It had worked in the past but it wasn't working that day. And it drove us crazy. 

It was almost there. Almost ice.  So tempting.

If it had never been there it wouldn't have been near as annoying. If we had never known we could have had ice, we wouldn't have cared.

It would have been way nicer to have disappeared than to be there, not working.  

The things that bug us the most are usually the things that we know what to expect and we aren't getting it. We know it should be working and it's so close but it's not.

In other words, we hate the busyness of our lives because we know how our lives, our time, is supposed to work not because we are clueless.  

So good news. We know the right solutions, the way things are supposed to be - all we need to do is fix them.  

how...

It might be the thing I struggle the most with: the line of more and enough. Move too far either way and things aren't great: I can be content with nothing of meaning or I could never be satisfied with everything in the world. 

I've recently realized I need to answer a more important question. How much is enough? 

In other words...

How many people do I need to impact? One? Five? Ten thousand?

To be enough. 

How many blog readers? Ten? Fifty? Two-Hundred Thousand? 
How many book purchases? Hundred? Thousand? Million? 

To be enough. 

How many likes? 
How many nice emails? 
How many changed stories? 
How many.... 

And on and on the list goes... at what point would I think I've had enough? Not the cliché answers but my honest and authentic answers.

They don't necessarily have to be a number. Maybe it's an amount that supplies something else. But the point is that I will never have enough unless I start to define it. 

Neither will you. 

It's a question I've been thinking a lot about lately... 

The American Dream.

"There is no The Canadian Dream," the man said. "That's the difference in our countries. We aren't constantly pursuing this thing until we die."

Think on that. 

now we want it.

There was a typo on the label so no one wanted it. One particular store really didn't want it. You couldn't pay them to take the wine.

Then the wine won best of show in San Francisco - it crushed the blind wine tasting competition and China is asking for it along with everyone else. That store is now calling, begging for the wine they had turned down.

Which forces us to ask the question. What is your typo? What is your "best of show"? What amazing wine are you waiting for someone else to legitimize and missing out on, in the meantime,  because of a typo?

wine evangelist.

I was at a winery and saw a name tag with "wine evangelist" on it. Funny. I liked it. 

Funny, because I have a strong negative reaction to the word evangelist in most cases, but in this one I didn't. 

Which leads me to believe that it's not evangelizing I struggle with but what evangelicals are usually evangelizing - a bad story.  

Share a good story and be proud of it and the world is better - share a bad story and that word becomes toxic. As does the world.

they never leave.

There are these little black fish with white dots and blue eyes. Tiny little guys. 

We didn't see many but the ones we did see were always in the same spot. Always. They sat around this little reef, and on that reef, guarded a small section. Each of them never left that section, no matter when we saw them. 

Looking from above, I had all kinds of thoughts. 

1. I wonder if there is a reason.

2. You guys realize there is a big reef here, right? 

3. You guys realize there are a few more of you, right on the other side of the reef, right? 

4. What are you guarding?!? 

5. You guys realize there are some really cool things in this ocean all around you, right? 

They might be the most brave fish in the ocean. I'm not sure. I've tried finding information about them. But, from my vantage spot, I felt like their answer to every question would be... are you kidding? It's dangerous out there! 

Which reminded me, again, to not act like those fish (or at least my perception of them). There's too much ocean out there. 

freedom from idols.

I've been thinking a lot about idols - visual manifestations of a deity used to worship the deity. It seems that even though many humans, especially religious folk, talk a good game about getting rid of idols, what we usually mean is substituting our idols for the other idols. 

Which has been done through human history. My god is better than yours. 

On July 4th, you can often see the idols of the gods of capitalism, empire, militarism, and tribalism all over the place. Which is ironic, because when you have an idol, you're never free. Idols demand sacrifice of some kind. Always have and always will. Which is interesting to think about when you have a God that makes a commandment to make no idols. Ever. 

This Independence Day find some true freedom. Not from another idol or an old idol or another tribe's idols but from the idea of idols altogether. 

Happy Independence Day! 

more, more aloha.

It's a little tourist-y which is unfortunate, because, again, the word is amazing. 

How can a word mean hello and goodbye? Shouldn't that be two different words? They mean separate things, right? 

Yet, every time we say goodbye to one thing, we say hello to another. Every time we say hello to one thing we say goodbye to another. You can't have a life of hello's without some goodbye's and you can't have a life of goodbye's without hello's. 

Saying goodbye to Hawaii is never fun. Especially after a vacation. Goodbye's of any kind are usually a little less fun. But instead of saying goodbye, we've been saying "aloha" of course, Not because it's the Hawaiian thing to do but because we mean it.

Yes goodbye to Hawaii and hello to all kinds of other beautiful things in this world that Hawaii has enabled us to see and that we might see again and that we will see because we aren't in Hawaii. 

It doesn't hurt the word also means love because love is all over most hello's and goodbye's and when both are draped in love, well it makes them all the better. 

Goodbye. Love you. Can't wait to see what's next. 

All in one hopeful, open-ended, inspiring word: aloha. 

fear, of course.

The line bothers me quite a bit: "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." 

It bothers me because a) it says fear is good and I rarely believe that and b) people use it to fight back on love and or grace and or mercy. 

So, I try to think of metaphors often. 

In the last few weeks I've been afraid of sun, of waves, of the ocean, of monk seals. 

Sun is terrifying when you sit in it all day without sunscreen. 

Waves can kill. 

The ocean, of course, is full of mystery and depth and animals and currents and shore breaks. 

And monk seals will bite you if you get too close. 

But that fear, that's a whole different kind of fear. That's a fear that enables you to enjoy the sun, to play in the waves, to swim in the ocean, and to appreciate the monk seal. 

It enables you to enjoy without hurting yourself. 

If that's the fear of God we're talking about, I'm all in. 

pearls.

9/11 and Pearl Harbor, are, I believe, the two worst attack (as far as deaths) carried out against the United States, in its history. 

The tragedy is obvious. 

Both have beautiful and honoring memorials that I have been to and, each time, I'm moved by the history, saddened by the horror, sickened by the loss of life. 

But, something else hit me recently. 

There are memorials. Both of them are covered in "never forgetting" and both have millions of visitors each year. As I was standing in a line at Pearl Harbor I was reading about the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II that is taking place in the world, right now. 

Disease and famine in 4 countries. 

The numbers are hard to even fathom but this one struck me: 600,000 children are expected to die of starvation in the next 3 to 4 months. 600,000 children. In both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, combined, less than 6,000 died, 

Obviously, I hope, this is not meant to minimize the worst attacks on U.S. history. One loss of life is enough to mourn. I love the memorials and I'm grateful that we will not forget the tragedies they represent. 

My only question is are we even aware, enough to forget - or not - what is happening right now in our world. 

You can read more about the famine here. 

Many of the survivors of both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 felt guilty for surviving. Reading about Somalia I feel guilty as well. Next time you hear life isn't fair, remember it's definitely not and we have much to be grateful and responsible for. 

rich on a cliff.

It's a 40 foot jump off of a rock into the aqua ocean below. 

We were debating whether or not we were going to do it, staring at the rock from the shoreline,  and everyone started to talk about a guy who almost jumped and then sat down. He was sitting there for a long time. We watched him. 

My daughter and son and I eventually decided to jump. We made our way up the rock and met the man's son. We found out his name was Rich. His entire family had jumped but not Rich. They were hoping he would go soon. In fact, everyone was encouraging him to jump. He didn't. 

Kids were jumping. We hesitated, but everyone said "You just have to jump. Can't think about it." 

We jumped. It was magical. 

From below we started a chant for Rich to jump. Another man offered to film the whole thing and email it to Rich. Hundreds of people were eventually chanting "Rich, Rich, Rich" and he didn't jump. 

We talked to his wife and his daughters. Rich was an engineer. Afraid of nothing. They couldn't understand what happened to him. Rich was a great swimmer. He worked on a bridge that was hundreds of feet high - never afraid of heights .

It was in his head.

We climbed the rock again. "Rich, you gotta jump. Stop thinking about it. Let's do this. People of all ages, religions, races, telling Rich to jump. Nothing negative was said to Rich. It was cool to see. But it wasn't working. 

We jumped again.

We chanted again.

We kept waiting.

We eventually saw Rich walk off the rock. 

Later, we saw him in town. I went up to him and said "Rich! The guy from the rock! Did you ever jump?" 

"No," he answered. 

"Well," I said. "Kudos for resisting all that peer pressure. That was impressive." 

He laughed. 

I think he wished he had jumped. 

But he had waited too long. He had thought about it too much. He had hesitated and analyzed and sat there imagining every single possibility and those thoughts eventually paralyzed him. Like they always do. 

Sometimes, you just have to stop thinking, get off your butt, and jump. 

So, jump!  

sugar and stuff.

Sugar. Military power. And religion. 

Well, really, just a religion that pretended to be about God but was really about sugar (or economics) and military power. That's what transformed Hawaii from the pretty Eden-esque paradise it was, to what it is today (well at least according to a book I recently read). 

You can decide whether those three things (or one) made Hawaii better. 

You can decide whether those three things (or one) continue to make things better, or worse, in the world today. And then you can decide whether you want to be a part of them (or it). 

more aloha.

A little more about aloha. The word also means love, and literally, "the presence of breath" or "the breath of life" Haole - often the name given to foreigners - literally means "without breath".

Having breath is a way of life. We're talking about true breath and true life. And, sadly, much of The West (the common foreigners) still don't live either. To quote a line from a book about Hawaiian history I'm reading:  "...Americanizing Hawaii, importing our favorite religion, capitalism, and our second-favorite religion, Christianity."

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. What a killer line. 

Capitalism is our first religion. Christianity our second. Both don't offer much breathing or aloha. 

So... for today...

more aloha, less religion.  

sparkle.

Have you been around the people that sparkle? You know the ones... they glisten in the sun. They shine bright. They're attractive in the ways that we care about attraction. 

Have you been around those people? Are you one? 

For the record, arrogant, judgmental, cynical, bitter, fearful, angry, people never sparkle. 

binged.

My family and I have been in Hawaii. A few days ago I stayed in our little condo while the rest of the family went on a hike to a waterfall, visited a  memorial, brought some plate dinners to the beach, and watched the sunset.

It did sound like a pretty magical time but while they were gone my time wasn't wasted. I binged watched eight episodes of a new show on Netflix and caught up with all my friends and family on social media and watched some fantastic YouTube videos. 

Of course, I didn't do that. Who in their right mind would do such a thing and choose Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube over Hawaii? Right?

And that is the question. 

Who would? Hawaii is special but so is wherever you are. Hawaii also vividly illustrates the correct answer to some of our common questions. 

the signs. part two.

Here are the signs I've been trying to pay less attention to:

1. No quitting beyond this point. 

2. Only qualified candidates can start that. 

3. Certain degrees only, beyond this line. 

4. They know what you should do zone. 

5. Pass this line and God will be angry.  

6. No, you aren't, enough, to pass this line. 

7. Fear only zone. 

I don't think these signs are very useful or inspiring anymore. But I still follow them from time to time, unfortunately. 

But a little less every day.