Christmas in July

On Saturday night I completed three essays for a new Health Communications series that will be published in 2009. All were Christmas related.

Truly, sending the essays out next week, it was like trying to fathom Christmas in July. It's difficult to write about snowflakes and Bethlehem when there is rain and Brownsburg.

But now I'm ready for more chicken soup...send me lots of it. And, of course, a donut wouldn't hurt either. Got to keep up my strength.

Writing Invitation

This past week I received a cursory assignment from an editor at HCI (Health Communications, Inc.) to submit some essays to a number of books that will be published through 2010. Last night I wrote two, about 2000 words, and they ain't bad.

One is about Becky's segwey into teaching, taking on a new career, and those challenges and sacrifices made by the family. I also wrote one about a friend who adopted a little boy some years ago. I hope to write three more essays before Sunday.

Health Communications continues to publish the Chicken Soup for the Soul titles and I always think they will run out . . . but the presses continue to roll.

HCI has been decent to me over the years, so I hope I can contribute something that might make a future book.

In the event that they are looking for more Chicken Soup titles, I've got a few they should try:
Chicken Soup for the Tired Pastor's Soul
Chicken Soup for the Dad with Two Teenagers Soul
Chicken Soup for the Pastor Who Eats Chicken Soup for Lunch Every Day
Chicken Soup for the Pastor Who Would Rather Eat Lobster Bisque
Chicken Soup for the College Parent's Soul
Chicken Soup for the Guy Who Drinks Eight Cups of Coffee After Midnight In Order to Write More Essays Soul

When Mama's Gone

This week my sweetheart has been in Dallas for a teacher's convention: one of those hopped-up and over-hyped extravaganzas designed to bore the socks off even the most seasoned of teachers. Kind of like annual conference for pastors. Snoozeville, baby.

Anyway, I never sleep well when mama's away. Sort of an empty slot in the bed. I find myself awake at night, reading, reading, reading . . . trying to find anything that will put me to sleep. And I can't start watching Gomer Pyle reruns. I get hooked, and then before I know it, it's five a.m. and time for revilee.

It's these wee hours when I turn to academia. I go downstairs to my library and find the dryest, most arcane book on a subject that will surely put me to sleep. My favorite: How Brains Think--a science book by William Calvin concerning the firing of brain synapses and the composition of the gray matter.

Mr. Calvin does it every time. In no time flat, my brain don't think. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Blast From the Past

Yesterday I happened to be standing in my writing closet (more on this in later blogs) when I looked up and noticed a curious little stack of periodicals. Digging down under the dust, I pulled out a generous handful of journals that happened to be the source of my first published work.

Here they were . . .literary journals I'd forgotten about. But there was my name in the masthead/table of contents. And there they were, dozens of poems I'd written during my high school years and early college days. Tripe, all of it. But it was honest tripe.

What astounds me even more, however, is the fact that I got paid to write this stuff. Yes, there were editors who wrote to me back then:
Love to see more of your work, Mr. Outcalt!
Send us more jewels like this!
Good God, where have you been all my life?

Oh, to be young again and to be able to write poems. Poems that flowed from the gut. Poems about love and God and broccoli and sour cream and existentialist doubts and crop circles. But poetry is tough stuff, and I admire those who can do it. I gave up poetry for sex when I got married, and believe me, my wife will tell you I made the right decision.

Now I'm old and crabby, and the only letters I get from editors are those that read:
Is this the best you can do?
I'm not paying for this junk any longer!
And you call yourself a writer?

Believe me, the stuff we write when we are seventeen and eighteen (and our lives are uncluttered) may be the most honest words we'll ever put on paper.

Come Be My Light

Finally. . . I've been looking at Mother Teresa's big ol' book o' confessions for weeks now, scraping up the courage to dig into it. It's entitled: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the "Saint of Calcutta". Indeed, I do think the kind mother is worthy of saintly status, but a few dozen pages into the book, I can't help but think how my memoirs would be entitled if anyone had the courage to scrape together excerpts from my journals. Her book is filled with dark confessions of the soul and a lifelong struggle to be a light for Jesus by embracing his sufferings and the hardships of humanity.

By golly, I'm afraid I haven't suffered much . . . or not enough, anyway. Starting next week, I'm giving up donuts all together . . . and man, I just had a good'n at Hilligoss this morning. (Pineapple danish!)

But back to my memoirs . . . I'm afraid anyone would be hard-pressed to come up a spectacular title gleaned from my life experiences. The editors would find plenty of weaknesses and failures in this old boy and absolutely nothing noteworthy to carry a book for 400 pages. But perhaps one of the following titles would suffice as a brief summary of my unremarkable life:

Come Be My Average Joe
Come Be My Forty-Something Suburban Pastor
Come On Get With It, Honey
Come Let Us Have Coffee Together
Come Over to My House
Come to the Office and Fix My Computer
Come Write Another Out-of-Print Book
Come Fix My Lawnmower
Come On, Dad, You're Kidding, Right?
Come Be My Cosmic Joke
Can't You Come Up With Anything Better Than This?

Number Forty

I just finished reading book number 40 for 2008: Beautiful Boy--A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, by David Sheff. This is a tough book, full of tears and honesty, often raw but always truthful.

Sheff here tells the harrowing story of his son's meth addiction (from which only a single digit percentage actually recover). Meth is tough stuff, and most don't survive. Somehow his son did, for now.

Reading about Sheff's addicted son made me realize how tame a life I have led (I didn't even try pot in high school) and how much I miss Krispy Kreme donuts. When I lived on the southside I often stopped in every week for a box of hot glazed and a gallon of milk, since the KK bakery was two blocks from the house. Man, I'm telling you. Feeling sick never felt so good. I kid you not.

Every now and again I suffer from withdraw. Sunday mornings are the toughest, when I'm looking at the fellowship table loaded with treats. Can't eat donuts like I used to, but I can still chug milk with the best of them (skim only, of course). They should put me in one of those milk ads with the moustache. As gray as I'm getting, I wouldn't even have to drink any milk.

Read It

For two days solid we did nothing but read at Ball State. There were brochures, schedules, contracts, fliers, post cards, notebooks, pamplets, binders, and enough small print to make a person go cross-eyed. This was our daughter's orientation to the world of higher academics. Get used to it, I told her. Once you get here, you're on your own.

The only thing I understand clearly after all my reading is that old dad is going to be shelling out a big wad of dinero. That's about the only thing that was crystal clear: here's how much an education at Ball State is going to cost. Get the picture?

Of course, my daughter is worth every penny. A person can't really put a price tag on knowledge. I read that somewhere in the fine print when I payed the doctor for her delivery eighteen+ years ago.

Oh, and by the way, I found a penny on the sidewalk at Ball State near the bell tower. That should bring me good luck. I'm gonna need it.