A couple of essays...

Here are a couple of nonfiction essays I recently wrote. Let me know what you think!

To Be Disturbed By Love: A Dare


Watching romantic comedies honestly teaches me very little about love. While I suppose this isn't something that needs to be said, you can't learn anything from the movies. I always knew that, in a way, but I didn't want to believe it. Romantic comedies taught me that if I play the awkward but funny and sensitive fat guy for a long enough time, a female friend that I never realized was always a more-than-friend in my mind (and one who I somehow have not noticed is smokin' hott despite trying to come across as a plain Jane) will fall madly in love with me. After our many road trip adventures with crazy supporting characters ( a jerk friend who has tons of meaningless sex and tries to get me to join the anti-virginity club a must), we make out to this really killer song by some indie band as the credits roll and we get to watch the bloopers.

Thing is, for about six years of my life I tried very hard to make this type of thing happen. I'd find a girl, almost always someone who was already a really good friend of mine, and I'd get it into my head that it was time to play Funny Caring Fat Guy on them and then just lay back and wait for the making out to happen. When the indie music kicked in and no lips were on mine, I became confused and frustrated. See, the problem was that my trying-way-too-hard Funny Caring Fat Guy sounded way too much like Obnoxious Horny Idiot Guy and I more often than not screwed things up royally. Half the time the girls I was interested in didn't even know I was trying to date them. Go figure. I know this is a weird way for me to bring up the subject of Jesus, but hey, I'm no sort of normal.

I've read the Bible. Kind of. I mean I've read through all of it over my twenty-two years of faith, but I never really went to town on the thing in a big way. I suppose I still haven't, really. Lately, as I tried to do just that, what struck me most about the whole thing was the character of Jesus. You know, it's funny really and also a little sad how society sees Jesus these days. And it's just completely sad how a lot of Christians see him. After years of him being mostly names to me that didn't really mean anything yet, names that preachers told me were important like Savior, Prince of Peace, and the Lion of Judah, I finally began to see a little bit of who he was.

Christian or not, you have to admit he has been crazy influential. He didn't really go out of his way to attack politics of the time or stir up a whole lot of controversy, but he shook a kingdom just by being who he was. Two thousand years after he walked the earth and the image of Christ is still prevalent today. I would not hesitate to say that he may be the most recognizable face in the world, almost bordering on somewhat of a pop culture icon, which the church unfortunately helped turn him into.

When I read through the gospels this time around, the Jesus I read about was not this fair-skinned blue-eyed, soft spoken man in a white robe and a sky-blue sash. These are things I always knew intellectually, but still. The Jesus in the bible was tough and dark and good with his hands. He was strong and enduring and maybe people even thought he was a little dangerous to the culture of the time. The Jesus in the Bible was disturbing and dynamic. He was a hero; he saved lives. And I'm not just referring to the whole mystical event of Calvary. I'm not even going to talk about that for now. Jesus, he saved people directly, in insane and memorable ways, and I can't seem to understand why more Christians don't recognize this part of him. Or why, for that matter, I never did either.

I think in terms of movies and stories. It's just how my brain works. If I'm trying to wrap my head around a complicated idea or thought process or trying to get through a tough day, it helps to imagine myself as a character on some wit-drenched TV dramedy. I imagine myself speaking dialogue written by Aaron Sorkin, and people usually start asking me why I'm walking around at work having fast paced, intense conversations with about six people at once. This same thought process applies to Jesus. Movies and stories, usually endorsed or told from the pulpit, always shaped my vision of Christ in the past.

Here's a real controversial zinger: The closest I've come to seeing a real Jesus in movies is in The Last Temptation of Christ. I know it's a bit of a silly film, with it for some reason feeling the need to ignore the more interesting portions of Jesus' life in favor of temptation filled visions and axe wielding Willem Dafoes, but the scenes they lift directly from the Bible are very impressive. Jesus, when he saved the adulteress from execution, I don't think he did it like we've all been told in Sunday School. I can't really fathom him calmly drawing in the sand all of the sins of the pious while this girl's life was at stake. He was probably hurt, and a little angry that they would do this to a person his Father had created. While he did draw their sins in the sand, I doubt he was as calm and sheepish as we seem to think. That came across well enough in the film (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=747U-5FclqM).

I don't get how we see Jesus as this nearly silent and very dignified man who spoke softly and never went too far out of line or laughed that much. We say things like, "He healed the sick and did great things." Somehow we usually leave out, "Oh, and this one time he got pissed at how the religious leaders were running things, created a makeshift whip like a messianic MacGuyver, and drove the money changers out of the temple." Jesus could be loud, disruptive, and anti-establishment. No one that came into contact with him went away unchanged. Why isn't he more popular in today's post-modern culture? Why aren't there sweetly designed Jesus shirts in Hot Topic and Hollister for all the mallrats to dig into?

I say all of this just to come back around to my first point: love. Jesus, above all, preached love. It was pretty much all he preached. When I began to discover this new Jesus that had been hidden in plain view all of these years I, for the first time, began to really understand why he went on and on about love. The love he talked about, much like Christ himself, was disturbing and dynamic and hard to wrap your head around. If there was a parable about some secondary subject, it always carried with it an undercurrent of love. Love for God, love from God, love towards others. Love, love, love. Jesus WAS love, pure and unadulterated, and there hasn't been another figure in history to come close to that level.

Recently, I was reading one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz. I can't say what I want to say about Jesus' love much better than Donald Miller does there, so here is the excerpt:


A long time ago I went to a concert with my friend Rebecca. Rebecca can sing better than anybody I've ever heard sing. I heard this folksinger was coming to town, and I thought she might like to see him because she was a singer too. The tickets were twenty bucks, which is a lot to pay if you're not on a date. Between songs, though, he told a story that helped me resolve some things about God. The story was about his friend who was a Navy SEAL. He told it like it was true, so I guess it was true, although it could have been a lie.

The folksinger said his friend was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world. His friend's team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified, When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans, The SEALS asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn't. They sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn't believe their rescuers were really Americans.

The SEALs stood there, not knowing what to do. They couldn't possibly carry everybody out. One of the SEALs, the folksinger's friend, got an idea. He put down his weapon, took off his helmet, and curled up tightly next to the other hostages, getting so close his body was touching some of thiers. He softened the look on his face and put his arms around them. He was trying to show them he was one of them. None of the prison guards would have done this. He stayed there for a little while until some of the hostages started to look at him, finally meeting his eyes. The Navy SEAL whispered that they were Americans and were there to rescue them. Will you follow us? he said. The hero stood to his feet and one of the hostages did the same, then another, until all of them were willing to go. The story ends with all the hostages safe on an American aircraft carrier.

I never liked it when the preachers said we had to follow Jesus. sometimes they would make Him sound angry. But I liked the story the folksinger told. I like the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them and cared deeply about how people were feeling.


The love he talks about there, the kind that made God crawl inside the being of a man so we could relate to Him in some way and so he could love us directly in ways that we could see and comprehend, that's the kind of love I want to have for people. And it's such a foreign concept for a human to accept that it is really damned hard to do.

I don't want to have a romantic comedy type of love. That love is fraudulent and awkward and usually based around having a whole lot of sex. The love I crave right now, the love I've been slowly learning to give others, is so much more than that. I'm not even talking about love between myself and someone I'm in an intimate romantic relationship with anymore. No, I'm talking about the kind of love that confuses the hell out of people.

When I tell people that I want to love everybody, even if I don't really like them or even if they have wronged me in some major way, the statement just does not compute. I get blank stares and eye rolls and they say things like, "Whatever floats your boat, man." But, the truth is, I am not really a good person if I DON'T love everyone. More accurately, I'm only as good as how much I love the person I hate the most.

It doesn't make sense at all, does it? I suppose not. I suppose that in our society today, just being a friend, just being loving for the sake of being loving, is no longer the norm. I still suck at it, honestly. But I'm sick and tired of using love like a commodity. Love does NOT have an exchange rate. I don't want to be kind and loving to my new friend because I hope that she will return the favor by liking me or wanting to kiss me or date me or screw me. I want to love her because she is a person I am able to love. I don't want to treat others well because I want them to treat ME well. I just want to live this life filled with love. No more love based on terms and conditions and whether or not you rub me the wrong way at work. Screw that.

Everybody is Jesus, this much I have come to know. When asked how she loved everyone so much, Mother Theresa said that every person on earth is Jesus in disguise, and we have to treat them as such. Every person is worthy of love because every man, woman, and child on this planet is loved by God. Simply by virtue of being human, everyone deserves my love and kindness, no matter who they are.

My challenge to you is this. Ignore what you know about affection and infatuation and simple respect for your fellow man. Ignore what you know about the message of Jesus, whether you believe in his divinity or not. Spend a period of time, maybe a week or so, maybe just a couple days if it's all you can handle for now, just loving everybody you meet. I DARE you. Seriously. At work, if somebody is just consistently being a bit of a prick, smile and be friendly. Even if everything in you is telling you it isn't worth it, that this person does not care about you or how nice you are to them or that they will never appreciate it, still do it. That wouldn't be the point anyhow. You aren't changed by being loved, you are changed by the act of loving another person.

I tried this a few times. I failed a couple of runs at it. I'm slowly getting it now. I've made new friends by doing this. They were people I used to pass off as sluts or idiots or arrogant jerks. Now they are good friends of mine. I hug them and they hug back, and it's a really real feeling of love that hits me right in the center of my chest when I see them. These people, these annoyances in your life, these irksome, bothersome, fake and stupid people, they can be the best thing to happen to you in a long time if you learn to blind your eyes with love for them.

I only write all of this as a way of telling you one thing that has been on my mind lately: I really, deeply, love you.

All of you.



For the Love of Autumn: A Letter To People of Faith

t's pretty cold out today. I don't know what the temperature is exactly, but it makes me shiver if I stand outside for too long. Even so, it's probably my favorite kind of weather, this lively fall chill. It's the kind of weather that makes me want to spontaneously rake all of the leaves in my backyard into one big pile, and y'know, just "Geranimo!" on in. This weather makes me think brown and red and yellow thoughts - earthy thoughts. It makes me want to walk somewhere alone, underneath trees, so that I can forsake the technological trappings of i-pods and guitar solos and meaningless television programs for the subtle music of leaves touching the ground.

I was actually getting on this philosophical bent while taking a leak on the woodpile behind the garage.

I'm not kidding. You see, what happened is last night a telephone pole caught on fire across the street from my house. How these things happen, I haven't the foggiest. This shut off our power for about thirteen hours straight. We had no water, no lights, no nothing. It shames me to say that I rely on technology a bit too much to function properly without it. Or to make that a bit less embarrassing, I rely on being consistently clean and hygienic a bit too much (though I'm not sure one can ever be too clean). Having no water meant no bathing or brushing teeth for Dave, a particularly troubling aspect on a day when I'd as of yet had no shower and had been working for the better part of eight hours before eating things like burgers and cake, smoking cigars and drinking less than tooth-healthy liquids like Mike's Hard Lemonade.

And so, this morning I stumbled from bed and drowned myself in Axe and deodorant just to feel less gross, put some fresh clothes on, and greeted the day by making water behind my garage. This is where my philosophical instinct kicked in and the music of softly falling leaves captured my imagination and took total control of my senses. I must say, my revelations in life have never come at honorable times. My epiphanies are not stories that you tell at dinner parties.

I'm not kidding when I say that I committed my life to Christ while, at a young age, I was pooping. For real. No joke, I chose my faith during one of those most private sessions on the porcelain throne.

I truly realized I loved God and wanted to do my best to live for Him while watching over some skinny-dipping friends' clothes on some beach on some lake in some state park some September a few years back. I guess it was the sound of the waves on the shore and the moon drifting in and out of the clouds. Hell, maybe it was seeing a for real naked girl for the first time (as dull and draped in shadow as that was) that set off the philosophizing that time. Either way, I found myself singing 'Matthias Replaces Judas' by the band Showbread, and lifting my arms to the sky, muttering an occasional heartfelt, "Thank you." I'm not sure for what. Nothing particular and particularly everything, it seemed at the time.

Today, peeing behind the garage and listening to the leaves fall all over this earth-tone season, I felt at peace and I thought to myself, "Christians need to just let go of everything sometimes and breathe in the richness of this world." Seriously, do it. Right now. Even if you do not share my faith, go find a tree somewhere and stand underneath it. Breathe deep. Smell the earth and the leaves and the dampness. Feel the coarse bark with it's velvety patches of moss. Close your eyes and just be there, underneath this tree that maybe, just maybe, God created for this one moment in time where you could stand beneath it and finally get it all. Finally, for real, be at peace. Even if it's just for a few moments. I'm serious when I say that with your head upturned and your eyes closed, breathing deep the colors of Autumn, a leaf falling from the tree and gently touching your face is a thing of true magic.

I'm just saying that I realized there's more to life than winning souls. This life isn't a high stakes poker game over the souls of the damned. The world isn't coming to an end because of earthquakes or floods or wars in the middle east. This old world, she groans on and on, and probably laughs when every decade or so we declare the imminent doom of the planet and rush to gather as many new believers as possible to our cause before once again descending into apathy.

I'm just saying, seriously now, "Stop." Stop trying so hard to win souls instead of loving those souls. Stop thinking the world is going to burst into flame. Those souls aren't points we receive when we cross the pearly gates. These are real people who love and laugh and think and feel everything we say to them. They get annoyed and offended and hurt, and that isn't something we should carry around on our conscience like a merit badge.

This world is not going to end any time soon, and I don't believe that it will end just because you think it will and say so with such conviction. All in time, my friends. Please, I'm begging you, stop saying things like "Obama is the Antichrist!" or that microchip tracking devices implanted beneath the skin of animals signals the arrival of the mark of the beast. This is all such nonsense. Stop bugging people to come to your church, to your service, to your worship because YOUR church, and YOUR service, and YOUR worship is the best way to go about it.

Stop guilting people into snap decision salvations and embarrassing confessions. Don't win souls, make friends.

Simply stop all of this. Go out, and talk to a tree for awhile. It may not be audible, it may not be truly revelatory, but God will speak something to you there if you are really willing to be quiet for once and listen. I promise. It may simply be something like, "Peace be still."

I think for many people in my faith, what it will be is, "Shut the hell up and love for awhile."

People who say that Spring is the time for love are dead wrong. Autumn, that's the time when emotions are high and love can really form. It's a time of vast, visible, and remarkable change. Spring is all about birth and life and making a family. Autumn is a lot more like falling in love. Love strips you down to your bare essentials. Love presents us as we are, without trappings and decor. Love lays us exposed before one another, and it is there that we really find each other for the first time, amongst our fallen leaves and our rich, earth-brown hearts.

So do it, Christians. Go out and talk to a tree for a while. Look at this world dripping Autumn from every October corner, and try again to find the love that Jesus taught us. This isn't about winning anyone, and this isn't about getting to church before the world ends. This life we've been given by God, it's about loving each other.

It's enjoying the sound of leaves touching down and the whisper of God's voice in your ears, speaking through the trees. This is something I'm realizing more and more.

There's only one last thing I want to say before I go outside again to listen:

I love you.


Dave Daugherty