With the help of a good friend, I’m constructing an author site. Yes, it feels silly-self-promoting to have ".com" behind your name on the wide-world-web, but I figured might-as-well. One of the five tabs you can select is “about” – as in, about me. I’ve long toyed with the idea of writing a credo, but the timing has never felt true. But now, maybe it’s time.
Most credos I’ve read start with the words I/we believe. With each phrase, I’ve always sensed an exclamation point should follow; here is something definitive, something known. I won’t do that, or maybe better put, I can’t do that. My credo, if it can even be called such a thing, rides piggyback on the slithering black curved back of the lovely question mark. I start each phrase with why? This is by all means a work in progress, much like myself. I’ll start with ten and possibly add to or take away as days pass. I don't have many answers, but I do have questions...questions about me.
Why is it that my father raised me on a diet of the King James Bible and western movies that, as it turned out, was magically delicious?
Why is it that I live out West and love out West but I’ll always be from the South?
Why am I most at ease in those in-between moments of dusk?
Why am I a storyteller who, unlike a historian, must follow the trail of compassion wherever it leadeth?
Why do I not equate talking with thinking?
Why do I try to not run yellow lights, ever?
Why do I prefer the words melancholy to organized and ache to closure?
Why do I put all my eggs in the basket of grace, a grace that if it’s grace at all will one day drive me to my glass-clearly-knees as I whisper simply amazing?
Why do I cry every time, every blessed time, when Linus says lights, please and gives his that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown speech?
Why do I feel in the very marrow of my bones that contrary to wildly successful first lines, it actually is about you…and me?
I am so glad God brought you guys here 6 years ago. Our lives are better for knowing your family, John. I think "Well said," should be your credo....or "apples of gold in settings of silver."
ReplyDeleteBlessings,
Holly
Love the spin on the traditional credo...I wouldn't have expected anything less from you, my friend.
ReplyDeleteI should write one of these for myself...
Anytime you need a good dose of the south, please bring your family to Georgia...it's peachy and I'm in it...double whammy.
Looking forward to the site!
Hm...I'm learning...and you're one of the teachers...that silence is golden. And that talk is cheap. I don't think I'll ever depart too far from the chatty self that is me, but I'm trying to listen more. And trying to be okay with being heard less often. Not everything in the world needs my voiced opinion.
ReplyDelete'Course most of it does.
It says "sprocket" as my title, but I'm "whimzie" and it doesn't link to the "sprocket" blog b/c that's my vomit blog. (Ask your wife. She can explain.)
ReplyDeleteYour credo questions are a great summation of why I like to visit here. Some of your "whys" could have come straight out of my mouth (Linus makes me cry every single time). Others make absolutely no sense to me at all (although I really should try harder not to run the yellow lights). I like that your words often ring true with me although you feel very differently than I do about some things. It makes me think about what I believe and why. I think that's worth the trip here whenever you have something to say.
And why is it that someone can teach you anything when they also testify to sitting and learning at the fee of their Master?
ReplyDeleteYour humility gives you a platform which I wonder you even recognise
why indeed, John? any man whose creed is his questioning is a man worth getting to know ... a man i want to know.
ReplyDeleteand yes, of course, it is a work in progress. questioning is the long and most often slow ride into more questioning.
i always knew, even before you wrote about your neighbor lady, that you were a *dusk* man. in the in between is where questions feel most at ease.
i'm thinking that the unknown is home for you, John. A man's questioning is great hospitality among friends.
thanks for the welcome.