A Christian Writer’s Journey

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Sean T. Smith

I’ve always been a dreamer, something that my father instilled in me from a very young age because he would say things like, “son if you work hard, you can be anything you want to be. Follow your dreams.” I saw my old man write books, toil as a carpenter, and then go to law school. He practiced what he preached, rising from abject poverty to success through discipline and years of burning the candle at both ends. When I left the University of Florida to pursue a songwriting career, my dreams were vast and my ability limited. I had no idea how hard my road would be.

It occurs to me that I’ve had a lifelong problem managing my expectations, and this character trait has tarnished my relationships, my career, and my soul. When you shoot for the stars, mostly you don’t wind up where you thought you were going. The heart of the matter is pride. Leaning much upon my own understanding rather than upon God. So here’s my story, and perhaps some other folks can avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, and perhaps with the telling of it, maybe I’ll finally wrap my head around the truth.

I moved to Nashville way back in 1992 with a heart full of dreams and a cheap guitar. Those first years were heady, back when I knew I would “make it,” and I figured that within a few years, I’d be living the dream. I played the Bluebird, penned hundreds of songs with fellow songwriters, and wrote every single day. I saw, quickly, that I had much to learn. I’d been in town for about a month when I saw a writers round with Bob DePiro and Mike Reid… they slayed me with their talent. Every song was perfection, their vocals were mind-blowing, and their musical ability was so far beyond me that I saw there was an entire mountain yet to climb. I embraced it, and I learned, worked on my craft, mentored by some great writers. I had songs on hold for major artists, went to number one parties, and rubbed elbows with the movers and shakers of Music Row. Then I started doing a dangerous thing.

I began spending too much time gazing at where I wanted to be rather than what I needed to do to get there, and worse, whether that was where I should go. Enter the bitterness, the, sense of betrayal and the resentment. The great Harlan Howard, whom I had the great pleasure of spending time with, once said to a disgruntled songwriter, “well, nobody called and asked you to move to Nashville.” Right.He didn’t say that to me, but it would have bee spot on. Nobody told me to decide to become a writer..that was my choice. But the desire to succeed was eating my soul, clouding my vision and ultimately hurting my music. Some of my fellow writers nicknamed me “Doctor Doom.”

I moved back to Florida following a divorce and the feeling of being let down in my songwriting career (or lack thereof,) thinking that I could leave writing in my rear-view mirror. I was wrong, and I started writing fiction, which didn’t require the same sort of schmoozing and glad-handing that songwriting seems to. When I got my first publishing deal, I was ecstatic. I’d signed a contract for a trilogy, and I hadn’t even written two of the books yet. I decided I would be a wildly successful author within perhaps a year or two. I’m hard headed, obviously, though my wife uses more colorful words to describe my frequent and woeful lack of understanding.

It takes years of hard work, multiple books, and networking, and talent to make it as an author. Like any other artistic endeavor, it’s a subjective thing, and people will buy what people buy. I find the writing in Fifty Shades of Grey to be awful, but tens of millions of people strongly disagree; E.L. James reached the stars by connecting with her readers, and more power to her. I could undoubtedly learn a thing or two from her. So, I’m writing, working, knowing it takes time, and trying not to chafe against that knowledge. Trying to enjoy the journey, and not focus on the destination.

During these decades of writing, I burned down one marriage and almost destroyed another. One of the central reasons this happened is because I expect things to go my way, and when they don’t, I get rankled. My essential impatience, my propensity to reach beyond my means to grasp. Marriage is hard work, and when things go south, which they will in any marriage at some point, I’ve had the feeling that things should be right again quickly. Wounds should heal, others should change, I should change…if not overnight, then within a time frame that I deem acceptable. Utter nonsense. It’s destructive. Because, once again, that resentment sets in and things only get worse. You end up feeling like you’re wasting your time, and when a sense of futility becomes pervasive, it’s already almost too late. It takes discipline and hard work to make it back from that.

Against this backdrop, I’ve experienced the same sort of impatience with God. It sounds as dumb as it is, yet when I’m in the midst of it, I can’t see it, missing the forest for the trees. I cry out to God, asking for help with more selfishness than humility: Help me make it as a writer, help my marriage, please send a briefcase full of money from the sky! When I don’t get the quick results I desire, I feel betrayed. Like no one is really listening. Like the songs on the radio are full of false promises, and that the Word itself has misled me. But I have misled myself by choosing to focus on the wrong things, by hearing what I want to hear instead of the truth.

The truth is, life can be terrible, hard, and mean. And there is no assurance of a good outcome for any of us on this earth simply because we choose to follow God. The whole idea of abundance theory preached in many mega-churches is dangerous drivel. It’s connected to Calvinism and the idea that success is predestined, a concept which helped to form the Protestant Work Ethic and build a nation, but which in many ways undermines the deeper message of the gospel. This Calvinistic attitude spawns the belief that poor are poor because God has decided it, and conversely that the wealthy are wealthy because they have earned favor in the eyes of the Lord. This belief system is insidious. Ask the Paul, Peter and Timothy about that.

Because the assurance and peace Jesus and the Apostles talk about is the eternal kind, not the earthly kind, and the our peace on this rock is found in knowing this and feeling fulfilled and joyous despite our circumstances. Salvation, peace, and joy are not things we have earned, but which come, ultimately, through the grace of God. Apart from God, I can do nothing. I am worth nothing. And this, perhaps, is the central truth I’ve missed over and over again.

The story isn’t mine. It never was. Paul extolls us in Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our fate…” I’m an author, yet I’m not THE author. I focus on the things which I want, the tangible trappings of success, and I fix my gaze upon that which I cannot obtain alone. I cling to my pride like a talisman and wonder why I become disillusioned. I truly want to reach people, to touch lives and be a force of light, but I’ve been going about it all wrong, putting my own story ahead of the most important story.

It will take hard work and discipline, and faith, but when I look back twenty years from now, I pray I will be able to say that I was living and writing for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, and that I released my foolish pride, my selfish expectations, and human arrogance. By emptying myself, I pray that God will fill me with His spirit and that the kind of peace which matters is the peace I will have found.

I still have a mountain to climb, and my way is unclear. I have much to learn, and am certain I will falter. I am not alone, and in this knowledge I will rest assured, striving to fix my eyes on Jesus, my sole destination.

War on the Poor: Death of the American Dream

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Sean T. Smith

With Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio throwing their hats into the ring for the Presidency, the battle for the Oval office is beginning in earnest, and Americans can brace themselves for exhausting months of harsh rhetoric, attack ads, and promises that will be broken. The poor of this country will continue to suffer.

Steinbeck’s brilliant novel The Grapes of Wrath depicts the hopeless, terrifying poverty of the Great Depression in an era before “safety nets.” Since the recession which began in 2008, the middle class has been hit hard, with the number of people receiving some kind of public assistance soaring, many good jobs vanishing, earnings remaining stagnant, and the cost of living steadily increasing. We keep hearing about a recovery, and indeed Wall Street is enjoying record highs. Main Street has yet to reap similar rewards.

Against this backdrop, the hard-core conservative talking heads have embarked on a systematic strategy of demonizing the poor, portraying them as lazy, dependent, entitled, and faintly evil. This campaign has worked. People like Reince Preibus, the chairman of the RNC, have framed the issue in such a way that the shrinking and embattled middle-class, one paycheck away from needing help themselves, buy into the distorted caricature. Democrats have fueled the fire in some ways, and have fired back by seeming to couch the debate in ways that make it seem as though class-warfare is actually happening. Both sides are wrong.

The country is losing

If there is any sort of class war it is so one-sided that labeling it a war is like calling the United States invasion of Grenada a war. The elites, the upper 1% are crushing the rest of us. The irony is that they’ve managed to convince the nation to fight for them. It’s a shell game on a global scale. People like the Koch Brothers are buying and will continue to purchase elections for their own economic gain.While the average American saw savings shrink, retirement accounts vanish, jobs go to China, those at the top of the food chain got richer. And many of them did it with corporate welfare which dwarfs any sort of public assistance programs. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Banks bailed out by the Federal government held on to that money, earning billions from interest, while still not making loans and injecting more capital into the economy. Here’s a link to ten corporations with billions in earnings that didn’t pay taxes. It includes Bank of America and Facebook. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-us-companies-paying-no-taxes-2013-03-26

Average CEO compensation is up %50 over the last year, with top CEOs earning upwards of Fifty Million bucks. Meanwhile, the multi-national corporations are staunchly opposed to increasing the minimum wage for workers and continue to shift jobs overseas. To distract us from this fact, the media blitz focuses on the poor. Politicians buy into it, left and right, taking the money doled out by lobbyists for entities which don’t give a damn whether the average person lives or dies. Despite the absurd Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court, corporations are not people. We all know that.

I have absolutely nothing against wealth, but I do take issue with unadulterated greed which leads to great evil.Rather than pulling together as a great nation, we are increasingly divided, pointing fingers and accusing rather than trying to solve the problems we face. We are being manipulated.

Poverty is not an issue which should be owned by either the left or the right, for it is an American issue. Conservative Christians might take notes from the life and words of Jesus, who spent his time with the poor and the outcast, the disenfranchised and the hurting. Liberals should take a hard look at the Democratic party and the candidates they are continually presented with, who are just as much in bed with corporate money as the Republicans are.Politicians speak out of both sides of their mouths, held on short leashes constructed with money. Movements like Occupy Wall Street end up being polarizing and accomplishing nothing, as the protesters are marginalized and look foolish, the rest of the nation turning up their noses as the cliches of poverty and lassitude are displayed on national television.

“Since the market is right, poor people get what they deserve.”

Poverty must be a choice, then. Rather than try to improve their lives, the poor enjoy wonderful lives of lavish vacations, new cars, and mansions gilded with gold. Some of them even have phones. Damn them!

The fact is, no one wants to be poor. Furthermore, they don’t want to remain so. I’ve been reasonably well off, and I’ve been poor. At the moment, I routinely work fifty hour weeks, plus spend another twenty or thirty hours writing. I don’t want to remain poor. Since the market crashed, the company I worked for went out of business, my customers have less money, and I work harder to earn less. I struggle every month just to keep a roof over my children’s heads and keep the lights on. I know personally other people in the same predicament.

Solutions

Education is the best way to combat poverty in the long run. Rather than cutting funding for schools and teachers, the Federal and State governments need to focus on this issue. Job training and trade programs should be much more accessible, and should begin in High School. Our education system does not prepare the majority of high school graduates for the real world. The fact is that most grads do attend college, yet school programs focus on this carreer path almost exclusively. As manufacturing jobs have fled the country to go to China, there is a great vacuum left for jobs which pay a living wage. Upward mobility, a crucial aspect of our culture is becoming a thing of the past.

Recognizing our similarities and common humanity, rather than focusing on our differences would go a long way toward restoring a hurting nation. It’s always easier to point a finger at some one else, rather than looking in the mirror, though, so America’s war on the poor will continue while the rich get richer and the American Dream dies a slow death. I pray every day for my beloved, broken country.

Tired of That Bullshit: Here it Comes

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Sean T. Smith

The BMW scooted down a mile of traffic and cut in one car ahead of me, not merging, but slashing, his actions, and those of the same ilk, causing the the traffic jam in the first place, when there were people like me who would have let him go ahead and slip in without causing everyone else to slam on their brakes.

THOSE guys, drive me nuts.

Those guys are everywhere, it seems. The ones who think they are more important than anyone else, bringing civilized folk to an abrupt halt, while they cut in and get what they think they deserve. There are fewer of them, those predatory self-important hyenas who fancy themselves lions but who are nothing more than carrion-feeders, than there are decent and good people. The school of fish is a buffet for the souless shark.

I’m a big man, and I’ve never lost a fight, not a man-to-man fight. Been beat down by groups a few times. I’ve been shot at and stabbed at and had my nose broken and my eyes swollen shut, but my scars are honest and earned. There is no such thing as a friendly fight, but there is a difference between a fair fight and a sucker punch,. Except, in today’s society, there is no distinction, and perhaps there never was.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says, ” Appear weak when you are strong, and appear strong when you are weak.” The guy in the BMW with a short-guy complex is winning in America. He is weak, and yet we, the people, are defeated. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson would smack that guy in the face. Or, not. Our founding Fathers were Mercedes kind of people. They were short, wealthy, and male. They owned slaves, land, and “cut in” even though it made Britain rather angry. They were brilliant, and they got richer because of the American Revolution, no more saints than Bill Gates or Carnegie or Warren Buffet.

Americans are getting cut off by that guy. It’s been happening since the first boots landed on the New World. The people with money and clout dictated what everyone else would do. They made the laws, established an oligarchy, and enforced their will by killing and burning and revolting when it suited them to do so. They gave the rest of us a chance, gave a nation room to breathe, until the United States became great, not because of these bastards, but in spite of them. America stayed one nation through the bloodletting of the Civil War, not because the industrialists and plantation owners deemed it so, but because Lincoln was willing to spill blood for that ideal. American boys paid that price in blood at Antietam and Gettysburg and all over the eastern United States, which were anything but united. In World War Two, the Greatest Generation fought and bled and died from Omaha Beach to Berlin for that dream of freedom and a nation that stands as a city on a hill, a beacon of righteousness. Generations have died for a flag and an ideal which could be true, but which is being stolen right now,.

The sonsofbitches that think they are above everyone else, then as now, did not allow their sons to be put in harm’s way. They did not fight themselves, but chose to hide behind wealth and position and condescending smiles. They cut in, assuming, aggressive, and entitled. Along the way, they created a news network and convinced people that whatever sprang from that network was the Truth.” If FOX says it, coming from a college dropout or pretty blond, then it must be true,” thinks a whole segment of our great nation. Go ahead, and cut in. I won’t be angry. It’s all right with me because—

“Screw you, cutting in front of me, you entitled sonofatbitch!”

I’ll just speed up a bit so that you can’t get in, and blithely smile at you while you rage, and then cut ahead in line and get in anyway, causing this whole traffic jam. Nothing gets done, really, except that the jerk got in ahead anyway. And that is that bullshit.

The country is gridlocked by assholes.

The bank bailouts, the stock market crash, the worst Congress in history, the lies perpetrated by certain networks, prove this.The fear, misinformation, ignorance, bigotry, and outright hatred spewed by those in power and those with a vested interest in it prove that nothing is going to happen in terms of real legislation. Change? No. Because the king likes to be king, and who can blame him? The thing is to convince the paupers that they are kings. And that happened. They did that!

The rich will continue to get richer, though, and they’ll claim that they are hurting. They’ll try to convince the rest of the country that poor people are poor because they are lazy and rich people are rich because they are good and Americans will buy it and let them cut in.

There will be a wreck. I’ll be that guy that really slows traffic down. Because I’ll ram the next son of a bitch in a BMW that cuts me off, I’ll floor it in my work truck, and I won’t give a damn. And when he gets out of his car, pressed white shirt and angry and talking about lawyers, I’ll knock him right on his ass, because I don’t care anymore about the traffic jam and fairness and that bullshit that I’ve been putting up with while people like this steal from me. I’ll punch him in the eye because that’s what I’ve been wanting to do, every time I’ve been stuck in this traffic for the last twenty years.

That’s what I’m going to do, and that’s because I’m sick and tired of that bullshit.