Posts Tagged ‘Paul Young’

I have a lot of things to catch you up on:

-the Paul  Young event in Seattle

-the Anne Jackson event in Portland

- the surgery

- Ashley’s car wreck

But perhaps the biggest news of all is something I haven’t yet confided to you — I am moving.

Well, not me physically. I’m staying put. I’ve got books to read and write, a dog to retrain and a husband to ignore.

But this blog site. It’s moving.

A while back the very good folks over at Patheos.com contacted me and invited me to join their staff of bloggers and experts.

I knew of Patheos only because my buddy Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed was leaving BeliefNet and moving Jesus Creed over to Patheos.

I wondered if perhaps he had suggested me. But Timothy Dalrymple claimed to have found me all on his own. He didn’t mention whether he was in the post office at the time, reading the Wanted posters or not. He just said he found me and would like for me to join their team.

They have an impressive bunch of folks there — real scholars, academics, historians and such, which begs the question of why they would want someone like me. But maybe they need friends in low places, too. Somebody who has been behind bars and inside of them.

I explained to them that I’m kind of free-wheeling and that I have never had advertising on my site because I never wanted to worry about pleasing people when it comes to speaking what I’m thinking or observing what I’m observing. They said that was fine and dandy with them. They liked what I had to say.

And they liked what you all had to say, too.

Some of you have been reading my blog since I first started it back in 2004. I appreciate that long-friendship. Of course my biggest fan, Gordon, has passed away and I hate that. I hate that he’s missing out on this. But then again I think well, maybe Gordon put somebody up to this. I imagine he’s poking God in the side all the time telling him to pay attention to me. I’m delusional that way.

I was very reluctant to change to a new site because well, I don’t want you all to throw in the towel on me and think somehow you don’t matter. I worried about whether you’d make the move with me. I worried about whether you’d feel comfortable saying what you thought on a different blog site.

I worry alot.

Too much.

The thing is while I appreciate you all, each of you, making this move will hopefully put us all in touch with a bigger audience.

You all are the faithful few.

A writer’s livelihood depends upon the faithfulness and the devotion of her audience. The bigger the audience, the more her publisher does the happy dance and everyone knows as long as the publisher is deliriously happy, I can write books about something other than vampires.

So we are moving. All of us, I hope, to a venue where the audience will get so big that the Tea Party will desert Glenn Beck and start following me instead.

Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

Just so you know, the site isn’t going to look much different than this one. There’s going to be advertising. Hopefully none of those belly fat ads. I take that personally. But the blog page will look identical. We’ll be  using the same WordPress program so you ought to be able to comment just like you always have.

You do need to add this link to your favorites:  http://www.patheos.com/community/karenspearszacharias/

And here’s the RSS feed link: http://www.patheos.com/community/karenspearszacharias/feed/

I’ll be leaving this post up so if you get lost in the transistion you can always come back here to karenzach.com and find me. But starting tomorrow — Wednesday — all the new blog posts will be at: http://www.patheos.com/community/karenspearszacharias/

That’s where we will pick up the discussion on Paul Young, surgery, the car wreck, etc.

We all get an awesome new hood to hang out in and explore, how cool is that?

Blessings, Karen

He leaned over to Kim and said, “Can you believe he’s 53?”

It was a remark aimed at the youthfulness of my husband.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got that whole George and Barbara Bush thing going on. People ask if he’s my son.”

Sigh.

Tim loves it when people comment on how young looking he is.

Well, he may look like he doesn’t belong in this 50 crowd, but the really poetic moment came when we discovered that we had all attended the same church together waaaayyyybaaaccckkkwheeeeennnn.

Kim and I were mothers of young children at the same time. This may not have been the first conversation we had. Who can remember that far back? But I loved Kim. I love her honesty, humor and genuine nature. This is not a woman indulgent of the pretentious. My kind of gal.

We learned that waaaayyyy baccckkk wheeennnn we were all “young”  (pun intended) Paul was on staff at East Hills. Tim was in graduate school at Portland State. I was at home, raising our son who turns 31 this Sunday, and trying to work the Christian formula.Which at that time, I remember as shedding the house of all white sugar and white flour. I did that for about as long as Tim could stand it. Then my even younger looking husband demanded that I go out and buy white flour. He didn’t like that stone-ground stuff.

It’s funny now, thinking about all the things that I used to equate with being “Christian.”

At the time I attended East Hills back in the early 1980s, I was all about working the formula. I read books about how to raise good kids (that at least took better than the whole wheat craze). I attended Bible Study at Pastor Cook’s house. What I remember about Jerry Cook is that he was the first fellow I ever heard talk about Vietnam veterans from the pulpit — in an honorable way.

And I remember the praise and worship. It was remarkable. In fact, if you’re read Paul Young’s book, The Shack, the God-character could have been modeled after the gal who lead worship at East Hills. Paul told me she passed away recently. In my mind she’s still in her late 20s. (It’s funny how when you’re in  your 50s you think of yourself as being your own son’s age.)

Paul and Tim both had that MK thing going. In fact, Paul said he used to be a translator for Wycliffe when he was only 5, because he was already speaking like a native. Tim used to do the same thing for his own daddy.

There’s that other thing — Wallowa County — the setting for The Shack. That’s the county where Tim’s grandfather once owned a 3,500 acre ranch, and where his Uncle Bob still owns a logging company.

I’ve spent time in Imnaha, writing.

Today, over lunch, we just sat around talking about raising kids and growing up and writing books and serving God.

Paul has received over 100,000 emails and letters in response to The Shack.

At  our core we are a people created for the transformative power of story.

Created by a God who at his core is simply a poet.

Robert Frost said that a poem begins with a lump in the throat.

We are the lump in the Creator’s throat.

It is over us that he rejoices.

It is over us that he weeps.

It is because of us that he labors.

It is he who is able to create a thing of beauty out of whatever brokenness we offer him.

The power of The Shack is it’s ability to remind us that we are the lump in God’s throat.

Thank you, Paul, for that.

Thanks, too, buddy  for making time for lunch. Tim and I enjoyed it so much.