Kevin Jack Smith is my dear friend. This guest post is by him. We used to reside together in a sort of poverty and sing a lot. -sam

It was three-thirty on a Thursday, and I was stuck in traffic on the interstate.  I was enjoying looking at cars and people, and being providentially preserved from an accident when I got a peek into my own soul I had never seen before.  While estimating how many people were enjoying the weather with me, I actually caught myself feeling better than about ten thousand people I didn’t even know.  Almost certainly some were doctors, lawyers, pastors and Christ-followers, but I felt better. 

Just as I was feeling smug about my life, an almost audible voice said inside me “You know you’re right smack in the middle of this jam.  You are one of them.”

Instantly, everything I’ve known theologically came crashing in on me like a sledge hammer.  The head met the heart then, and I wept for the blackness of my own soul, wept again for the grace that has kept me all these years in spite of my arrogance, then again for the grace that intruded on my commute.  There was much weeping that day, and my Lord and I had a good conversation that day, one that I’ll never forget.

So when I got the new Eric Peters album “Chrome”, I listened to them quickly just to get a feel for album.  I enjoyed it, but nothing like I do now that I’ve looped individual songs to really get their message.  “Reality Came Crashing Down” speaks to me deeply.  I know the message is different than my above experience, but a “Reality Crash” is still the theme, and it tears me up to think of someone with such talent having that moment where fame, glory and money suddenly slide way down the list of “gotta-haves” and love takes the lead.  It must have been excruciatingly pleasurable.  I get misty every time I hear that song, and EP is voicing the heart that I want beating in me, the one that serves his neighbor in the love of Christ.

Welcome to the brand new internet home of S.D. Smith. Who is -am- me, I. You are very welcome. If you are traveling here from the old home place (The Maple Mountain Story Club), then perhaps you are wondering why I have made the switch.

There are a few reasons.

One is simple clarity. The MMSC was intended to be a collaborative effort that would initially be myself and Andrew, and then later expand to some others. That got derailed along the way and it kind of just became my own blog. But it has a silly, misleading title, and I have long intended to simplify and clarify.

Two: I want to make it easier on people who are doing web-searches. People who are looking for my writing may search for my name, but are unlikely to search for “Maple Mountain Story Club.” So, there’s that. I think it serves my readers better.

Three: This allows me to develop a more flexible website which is easier to navigate and has a lot more options.

Four: A Russian sailor who gave me a bag of gold told me I would have good luck if I “svitched ower.”

I have tried to direct people to link to www.sdsmith.net (which was redirecting to the MMSC) for a while in anticipation that I would at some point get this website moving. The day has finally come. So, if you haven’t yet, please make the switch over in your link to www.sdsmith.net. Thanks a zillion.

You may be concerned about what will change. Well, not much. I’m just going to try to be a little more focused (something I’ve been trying to do for a while).

Note: If you want to bookmark the blog (for a link, or RSS), then just do www.sdsmith.net/blog. The front page will have the most recent posts, but don’t mistake that for the blog. The front page has the latest post and some other things, but it is not the blog.

As always, if there are any questions or comments, please comment away here at the blog, or visit the Contact page to…um, contact me.

Again, a huge word of thanks to Brian Patton for creating this website out of the following raw materials: Bolts, wine, snack-packs, ore from Settlers of Catan, indecipherable animal innards, and pieces of wood from the lumber of the chair his enormous rear end broke at my house.

Thanks to you all for your support. I hope you are comfortable in my new home. You are very welcome.

I love you, Dad. You are my hero.

Some past posts that mention, or feature, my Father.

Happy on Father’s Day (a poem for my Dad).

Fortunate Son (some thoughts some time back).

25 Things About Me (see some of the points).

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”

C. S. Lewis

Here’s a part of my Rabbit Room comrade Pete Peterson’s non-review of UP.

“…What a privilege it is to have the trust of your audience. Such is Pixar’s legacy that people who would otherwise turn up their nose at a mere ‘cartoon’ came in droves to fill the house based on the trust of a studio’s name alone. It’s a precious and delicate thing and with each successive film I fear the spell will finally shatter.

But UP isn’t a flop. The integrity of the Pixar name is well intact and may it be so for years to come. There’s nothing I can write here that can say more eloquently what has already been said in theaters across the country. UP’s reviews are written in a communal grammar built of gasps, and happy tears, a language filled with the sighs of the long-lived, the breathless wonder of cynics like me, and best of all the laughter and joyous exclamation not only of children but of those who dare to come and sit in the darkness and hear the storyteller’s whisper and remember how to be child-like once more.”

Right. On.

This was an amazing film. Take your family and go see it. We took our whole family to the movies for the first time (kids aged 6, 3, and 3 months) and it was a wonderful family memory. We’re keeping the stubs.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

William Pitt

HT: Sarah Currier

How To Be a Poet (to remind myself)
by Wendell Berry

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

To hear Berry read some of his poetry see here.