Month: September 2021

Allow Yourself to Cheat

/ Ken May / 2 Comments

If I’m going to be a real guitar player, I can’t take the easy way out.  Because, let’s be honest, the easy way is for ameteurs.

How many times have you uttered something like that?  I did for years, and I realized it really held me back.  I haven’t thrown in the towel.  I still try to master things.  I just cut myself more slack now when I don’t get there as quickly as I think I should.

Here is an example.  I was playing for church this morning.  One of the songs had a classic rock riff that went G-C2-Em-D.  The C2 was giving me fits.  I was hitting it clean about 50% of the time.  A few years ago, I would have stubbornly held to it.  But, today, I realized I wasn’t in the groove, so I switched and started playing straight C.  And after the service, person after person came up to me and told me they couldn’t believe I switched and played a straight open C instead of the C2.

No.  They didn’t.  No one knew.  They weren’t concerned about it.  And I was right not to be concerned about it either.

I finally allowed myself to live in this realization: I am an amateur.  So it makes sense that I will sound like one.  But even an amateur can sound good.  And as long as I’m sounding good, isn’t that the goal?

Dealing with Questions About Faith ~ Jesus meets you where you are

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John 20:19-31

Jesus meets you where you are on the road of belief.  He exemplifies this in the way he deals with the disciples.  Their world had crumbled.  Crushing fear pinned them behind locked doors.  They abandoned everything to follow him.  They burned bridges, cut business ties and strained family relationships.  Now they were targeted by the law.

Jesus took all of this into consideration in the way he approached them.  He didn’t come in rebuking them for their fear.  His first words to them were “Peace.”  He then offered them proof by showing them his wounds.  He is telling them “You don’t have to doubt me.”  And he had a habit of doing this.  One time he approached the father whose son the disciples had been unsuccessfully trying to heal.  Rather than rebuking the man, he told him to believe and not doubt.  The man replied with those infamous words “I believe; help my unbelief.”  Another time, Paul expressed that he and his companions in Asia Minor became so discouraged they no longer wanted to live.  Jesus encouraged them.  In all these instances, Jesus came to the place where they were: afraid, hiding and needing proof and reassurance.

Sometimes we struggle in our walk of faith.  We are decidedly unlike the disciples in that we did not get to witness the resurrection with our eyes.  Jesus underhands that.  And he approaches you wherever you are on the road of belief.

My Back Porch

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A crane glides to a landing mere yards from me.  A Canadian snow goose bobs just a few feet from the shoreline.  The morning air is crisp.  A chorus of birds fills the air with surround sound.  The glass top of the pond that sits within casting distance of my back porch reflects the palette of the rising sun.

For two years, my wife and I have immersed ourselves in the resort-like beauty of our back porch in the house we have rented in Sumter, South Carolina.  This is one of the newer additions in town, and we were blessed to be able to rent it.  Our house was built in the late 00’s.  The main draw for this neighborhood is that it has a large, S-shaped pond that covers approximately twenty acres.  Houses line the banks of the pond.  We had an inside connection through a friend who was friends with the land lord.  The house was coming available at exactly the time we were moving.  

I have vacationed on the Outer Banks in a three story beach house that sat right on the shore.  I’ve been to the Bahamas, the Jordan River and a resort on the Persian Gulf.  Those places are all amazing.  But I have enjoyed my time on this back porch every bit as much as those.  You don’t have to travel far to have an amazing trip.  In this case, it’s taking a few steps out my back door with a cup of coffee in my hand.

My greatest enemy.

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When it comes to guitar playing, a particular giant continusoulsy confronts me, and I find myself having to slay it again and again.  You might expect me to say it’s time to rehearse.  Oh, rehearsal for the amateur guitarist.  How often have we daydreamed about working on our most recent lick or riff while saddled with life’s responsibilities?  But rehearsal time is not what I’m talking about.

So it must be staying focussed during rehearsal.  That’s it.  When I do finally find time to sit down, getting sidetracked or not really having a plan eats away at my productivity.  The precious moments fly away, and I’ve not accomplished much of anything.  We have all felt that frustration.  But that isn’t it either.

Comparison.  Comparing myself to other guitar players kills my progress more quickly than anything else.  I either compare myself to someone with much less experience, and my motivation tanks.  Or, more commonly, I compare myself to prodigies and professionals who are able to rehearse ten hours a day, and I wonder why I don’t sound like them.

I am slowly learning how not to compare myself to other players and be happy with my own talent level.  And, more importantly, to be happy with my own level of progress.

What’s your biggest giant when it comes to progress with guitar?

Tips

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“[On Writing Well] is full of what might be called tips. But that’s not the point of the book. It’s a book about craft principles that add up to what it means to be a writer…Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer.”

From On Writing Well by William Zinsser, p.48

In his book, On Writing Well, Zinsser responds to a teacher who asked him to give tips for writing to his English class.  He tells the teacher he doesn’t do tips.  The quote above explains why.  It comes down to developing the craft of writing.

The thought of developing within me the craft of writing stirs my soul.  A current ripples within me when I contemplate the endeavor of taking a blank sheet and flooding words across it and then channelling the churning waters so that structure and style begin to form and the passion in me flows out and sweeps my readers away.  That is a good writer.  That is an author who is on fire for his craft.  That is who I am striving to be.

Dealing with Questions About Faith

/ Ken May / 1 Comment

John 20:19-31

I was thirteen the first time I went snow skiing.  My church youth group arrived at Winter Park, CO, a day earlier than expected.  A friend and I had lessons scheduled the next morning but decided to hit the slopes that afternoon to see what we could learn on our own.  Disaster was about to ensue.

We stayed on the practice slope the entire time.  On the last run of the day, my youth minister took us down the bunny slope.  If you haven’t been skiing, the practice slope is a very gradual and short slope designed for exactly what its name suggests: practice.  The bunny slope is barely a notch above the practice slope.  The only real difference is that it is longer.  Doesn’t sound too threatening, right?

After a dozen falls, he looked at me from thirty yards down-slope.  “Can you make it to the bottom?” He hollered to me.  “Yeah..sure,” I waved him off.  So now I was on my own.

I did not yet understand the color coding.  Green for the easy slopes.  Blue for intermediate and black for advanced.  Knowing this would have made big difference, but as it happened, I crossed from the bunny slope to a more advanced green.  I did ok.  From there, I went to a blue— that was worse.  And from the blue, I turned on a double diamond black.  My life was pretty much over.  I somehow made it to the bottom of the slope, but it wasn’t with my skis attached to my boots anymore.  And I didn’t talk to my youth minister for quite some time.  You see, I got off the path I was supposed to be on, and I didn’t have anyone there to get me headed the right direction again.

This series of reflections from John chapter 20 verses 19 through 31 focuses on Thomas and the other disciples whose world had just crumbled and they were at a cross roads of belief.  They were locked in a room hiding together.  They had gotten off the path and needed someone to get them headed in the right direction again.  That’s when Jesus entered the room and stood among them.  He didn’t chastise them for their questions.  He gave them a gentle course correction to get them back on the path of belief.  If you believe in God, but struggle sometimes with how that belief intersects the circumstances of your life, then this study is for you.

I Hate Long Blog Posts

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I hate long blog posts.  Even though I was born long before the day of social media, I am certainly affected by the microwave generation.  What do I mean?  We can put instant noodles in the microwave that will be ready in thirty seconds and still say hurry up.  I admit it.  I am impatient.  And this mindset certainly bleeds into my taste for blogs.  If I see an entire page of text, I am likely to go right past it.  If it’s worth being said, it can probably be summed up in about two hundred-fifty words. 

There are some notable exceptions.  Sometimes, the subject matter must be more adequately developed.  But most of the time, a writer sits down without doing any prep work.  No thought put into writing.  Work it all out on the page or screen and subject the reader to the process.  When I buy a car, I don’t want to have to walk along the assembly line.  I just want the finished product.  If I am writing a short story or a work of prose, that is a totally different story, but with a blog post, I, as the consumer, want something pithy and well conceived so it gives me one kernel of thought provoking goodness.  I don’t really need to go through all of the author’s mental wanderings.  That’s why I hate long blog posts.

You Will Bear Much Fruit

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This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

John 15: 8(NIV)

Boomer Sooner!  My family and I live and die with Oklahoma University— particularly football.  We can’t wait for that September kick off.  We wear our jerseys in our home on game days.  We have a tradition where I smoke a couple of racks of ribs for game day.  When the temperature is right outside, we turn on the game, turn off the air conditioner and open the windows so we can get as close as possible to sitting in the stadium.  Even in the lean years when our team isn’t doing so well, it’s still the same.  Why?  Because we are Sooner fans.  It’s our nature.  Our actions tell the story and give the evidence of our love for Oklahoma and Oklahoma University.

That’s what fruit is— the outcome of your nature.  Why are we concerned about bearing fruit in our relationship with Jesus?  Because it’s in our nature.  Our new nature.  And if we have a new nature, we are abiding in him.  If we are abiding in him, we are giving evidence of that.  We are bearing fruit.

Ask whatever you wish?

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Ask whatever you wish . . .

John 15: 7 (NIV)

I cannot ask something to be contrary to its nature.  I cannot ask a sloth to fly.  It can only hang on tree branches.  I cannot ask a crabapple tree to produce grapes.  It is contrary to its nature.

When I as a branch abide in the vine, my nature is to be of the vine.  I cannot ask the vine to not produce fruit in me.  It is not the nature of the vine.  I cannot ask the vine to produce thorns in me.  It is not the nature of the vine.  The vine cannot produce something contrary to its nature.  So neither can I produce something contrary to the nature of the vine when I abide in it.