A Reading from Meh to Meaningful, My New Book Draft
Introduction, Part 1
I’m looking for feedback on sections of my new book draft “Meh to Meaningful.” What can you identify with? What is unclear? What do you want more of? What recommendations or ideas do you have? Help me craft a powerful tool for people who feel “meh” and want to recapture a more meaningful life in this broken world.
This brief “how to” is currently divided up like so:
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Faith-Filled Follower
Chapter 2: The Fortified Follower
Chapter 3: The Face-It Follower
Chapter 4: The Finish-It Follower
Chapter 5: The Perfect Follower
🥁 Drumroll, please….
Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity…
Hebrews 6:1
I wanted to be Spiderman, just like many other American boys in the 80s—not the muscular, CGI-buffed Spidermans[1] of today; I'm talking about the second-rate Spiderman cartoon of the 80s. I remember little about that show except for two things: 1) The creators were so under-funded that they kept using the same four clips of Spiderman swinging from his webs throughout the city; apparently, Spiderman only traversed one square block of Manhattan; 2) Peter Parker’s boss, Mr. Jamison, had the squarest head of anyone I had ever seen in my life. It was like a fed-ex shipping box. I was mesmerized by it, especially because I was at that age when I still had trouble distinguishing between cartoon and live-action.[2] To me, Mr. Jamison was as real as my grade school principal, Mel Schwartz.
I wanted to be Spiderman. Now, in our sensible Midwest home, my mother wasn’t about to waste the hard-earned family dollar on a spiderman costume. Underoos were a different matter; those had a practical function, at least. They were a bit more expensive than the tighty-whitees or the sail-boats-and-anchor briefs, but at least they had some use besides imaginative play. But a costume? If you couldn’t wear it to school or church, what was the use? So, Spiderman wore a grubby t-shirt and the shamefully short shorts of the 80s.
I posed atop the Empire State Building—our laundry table—scanning the hectic streets of Manhattan—the unfinished basement that was the winter playground of Midwest children—for signs of trouble. The sounds of my city weren’t car horns and milling crowds, but a rumbling dryer and the occasional hum of the sump pump.[3]
The moment I spotted trouble, I would begin to swing from building to building towards the scene of the crime. My dad once asked us kids how the copper water pipes running between the floor joists got bent—hey, a superhero’s gotta get around somehow. I tried crafting my own web-slinger a few times but it projected webs about as far as a hand soap pump, not all that useful when swinging from floor joists to support pillars in the middle of a basement.
It turns out that Spiderman-ish dreams are genetic. Our youngest son donned his first Spiderman costume at about 3 years old[4] and took it off somewhere around the age of 8 when it was giving him a wedgie the size and shape of the Mariana Trench. Apparently, our webbed friend had taken to wearing capris—saves on material costs. Recently, our grandson has donned the webby wear. It’s like a family rite of passage.
“Okay. So, what’s the point, you web-headed menace?” Here’s the point: We all outgrow Spidey at some point, no matter how friendly, amazing, or spectacular he is. And that’s probably a good thing. Nobody’s gonna hire a thirty-year old in spandex getup, complete with faux-pecks and creepy white eyes—nobody a decent citizen would wanna work for anyway. At the same time, it feels like we lost something when the costumes were sold for fifty cents at the neighborhood yard sale.
I once met Spiderman in Times Square. He wasn’t what you would call a superhero specimen, his slightly rumpled and ill-fitting uniform straight off the discount rack at Spirit Halloween. I’m also 100% sure Marvel’s Finest never would’ve been caught dead with a fanny pack. In a heavy Spanish accent, he asked me if I wanted a picture with him. I agreed…until he informed me that it would cost five bucks. Let’s just say some of the wonder’s been lost—for him and me both.
Where’s the passion we had in grade school? At some point many of us went from animated to “meh.”—Okay, maybe not you; you have a Peter Pan heart; no, you do! But the rest of us lost the sparkle somewhere in the treacherous hike from cartoons to cubicles. For many of us, life just isn’t what we imagined from the lofty pinnacle of the Empire State. We’ve settled. It’s not great, but “it is what it is.” Meh.
Something similar has happened to many of us who claim Christ as superhero. Does anything seem to be missing as you follow Jesus? Feeling unsatisfied, bored, listless, guilty, or ashamed about the state of your faith?
If you grew up with Christ, you might wonder what happened to the little guy who belted out “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” while squatting on the potty trainer. If Christ burst into your life later, you might wonder where the exuberant, I-gotta-tell-everybody disciple has dashed off to.
[1] Yes. “Spidermans” is grammatically correct. Remember the good-ol’ days as a kid when the plural of man was "mans"?
[2] Honest disclosure: I thought the Wiley Coyote was an actual man in a zippered-up costume. I was always astounded that a real man could survive a 500-foot canyon plunge.
[3] If you don’t know what a sump pump is, I am sorry you missed out. It is the underworldly guardian god of all Midwestern homes, who holds back the floods perpetually threatening to fill your basement like a bathtub and consume any Mattel boardgames you have left on the floor as sacrifices of appeasement.
[4] Take that, Mom! Actually, we probably inherited it from someone else. I’m not wasting money on costumes!