Fear can be debilitating. Period. It can paralyze even the best of us.  Fear wakes us from dreams and washes us in doubts.

I think most of us feel tremendous pressure to fit into society by being uniformly shaped bricks that look “normal”. Mortar is a lot easier to apply if things—or people—are the same or similar. Things—like companies and organizations—are much easier to build with bricks than with irregular stones.

David stood at the mic, re-tuned his guitar, and said, “Here’s is the problem of evil in three minutes.” Then he played a song that, to this day, blows my mind every single time I hear it.

At the end of last week, I spent some time at my painted-baton-passing friend’s house…He showed me a Moleskine journal that had his first watercolor painting in it, and I said, “Do you have a lot of those journals going way back?”

He chuckled and responded, “C’mon. Let me show you.”

Here’s what I learned from this moment: Always have the tools within reach that allow you to share your gifts with others. 

Reading. Reverie. Rest. Rise. 

As a dad, I believe that one of the most important things I can do is to figure out what my kids are really passionate about and give them the ability to pursue that passion. However God has wired them to think and dream and do—part of my role is to give them a pasture to play and experiment in.

It’s tough stuff for dads and moms, but. . . we don’t raise children; we raise adults who used to be children for a little while. 

Ansel Adams once said, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.” 

Recently, I was at a morning meeting with a small group of guys who have been meeting for about two years. We’d been reading a book that a mentor and dear friend of mine had me study about 25-30 years ago. So, I decided to get these guys to write a thank you letter to my mentor.

In marriage, I out punted my coverage so much that the statisticians have given me an asterisk.

“I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the things we need.  And that's the tricky thing about life, really, that the things we want most will kill us.”  —Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

My son, Steady, and I were watching a movie last night, and he asked me to pause it for a moment. Then he said, “Why do you think we only use 10% of our brains?”

We need artists, mystics, and clowns speaking truth these days. Especially on days when we are arguing about the wrong stuff because we’re so angry that we’ve lost sight of the root of the real issues.

I've realized this taking pictures: life and photography are very similar. Sometimes, my life is a little out of focus. Now and then, I get over-exposed to the stuff of this world and my picture of God gets washed out by white noise.

I was with my dear friend, Michael Haun, last week and we passed by a church and saw all the WASPs coming and going in the narthex (lobby). They were congregating in the Nestibule.

I go to Julia’s to get a great cup of coffee, but I also go there because I need to be a little more uncomfortable these days. Don’t misunderstand me: there are some really cool people at Julia’s. What I love about it is that I also see people in my town that I wouldn’t normally see. Just sayin’.