I spent Memorial Day weekend re-reading The Shack by William P. Young. Mark Lowry told me to read it a couple of years ago and I did, but I didn’t like it the first time. After hearing somewhere that The Shack is a healing book for people in pain, I decided to give it another go.

If you’ve never heard about The Shack, the story of how the book came to be is just as interesting as the story in the book. Paul Young wrote it for his kids, printed some copies for friends who asked for more copies and more copies. Some guys in L.A. thought the story would make a good movie, if enough people bought the book, so they started a little publishing company. They kept selling out as word of mouth about The Shack spread. There are now 7 million copies in print. Last year alone 3.5 million copies were sold. A book can make the best seller list if 7,000 copies are sold. The Shack is a record breaker because people read it and buy copies for friends to read.

I read The Shack differently than I usually read a book. I read some, put the book down, thought about what I had read and then slept awhile. I did that over and over throughout the weekend. The process of making my way through The Shack was more like a conversation than a literary experience. There were times I couldn’t read any further because all I could do is cry and it seems like the book’s intention was to make that okay. When Mack meets God in The Shack, Mack starts to cry too. God said to him, “It’s okay honey, you can let it all out … I know you’ve been hurt, and I know you’re angry and confused. So, go ahead and let it out. It does a soul good to let the waters run once in a while–the healing waters.”

Growing up, my beliefs about God were so strong. I was a fundamentalist and I had confidence in what I knew to be true about God. Today, I can’t imagine having that kind of certainty again. I wouldn’t want that kind of certainty again. Once we know for sure, we stop investigating and that’s never a good thing.

I don’t have much interest in converting people so they think what I think about God. I don’t want to settle into a set of beliefs that make me comfortable and crusty. I’m intensely focused on this journey of personal transformation and working my way through The Shack this weekend healed and simplified what it means to me to trust in God. I hear it’s done the same thing for thousands of people who once believed, but lost hope as life happened in not so pleasant ways.

The theologeans can argue about it, but the story told in The Shack works for people who need it to work and I think that’s good enough.

I was watching Jason Levine‘s presentation about Adobe CS5 for Production. It looks like it’s going to be amazing, but I had to pause to post a screenshot. I’ve never seen such a serious commitment to sideburns by any man! I couldn’t help thinking, I want to meet that guy! He seems awesome.

If you haven’t seen the presentation it’s here and worth watching if you’re a creative professional or just a fan of creative work.

I’ve driven by Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas many, many, many times. I didn’t know anything about it and didn’t much care, until I was ready to need God again.

The other night, I was online and saw a tweet from Kari Jobe about Christ for the Nations. I didn’t know who she is, but I’ve since learned she is one of the top worship leaders in the country. She’s a rising star and is a Dove awards nominee for Best New Artist. I would LOVE to know how I was following her on Twitter. I can’t see that she has any connection to Cali or GeekBrief.TV. Long story short, she is a worship pastor at Gateway.

I went to Gateway on a Saturday afternoon. The service was at 4PM and it was packed. I felt like I was in a little bit of geek heaven as soon as I got in the auditorium because Gateway has the best collection of cameras and audio gear I’ve ever seen in a church. I had a hard time finding a seat and wound up making my way all the way over to a leftover spot on the edge of the auditorium.

When the music started, I was impressed. It was, without question, the best quality sound mix I’ve ever heard in any church at any time in my life. The music sounded as good as if I had been watching a DVD in our home theater. I was impressed. A guy lead the praise part and Kari lead the worship part. I’ve been to lots of churches with great music, but there is always a sense that the musicians on the stage are talented amateurs. At Gateway, the musicians sounded like professionals.

Within about a minute of worship ending, the stage was cleared of any evidence of musical instruments and mics. Suddenly, it looked like a talk show set. There were three chairs and the screen in the background looked like a graphic from The Oprah Show. It was Valentine’s Day weekend and the pastor wasn’t preaching. He interviewed a pro baseball player and the player’s wife about their marriage and their lives as Christians. It was entertaining, touching and a flawlessly professional production.

A couple of weeks ago Gateway had a worship conference and they streamed some of it online. I’ve seen a lot of streaming video and this was the best streaming quality of anything I’ve ever watched online. Think what you want about Microsoft, but WMV can yield beautiful video when you have the compression setting right. I tweeted that I was watching and that it was the best streaming I had seen. A few minutes later @gatewaypeople replied thanking me and that he or she was glad I was enjoying it. Now, it doesn’t always work on a Mac and that is a major downside to using WMV. Even if a Mac user has his plug-ins all updated and installed, there are times when it just doesn’t stream for us.

I’ve had a couple more experiences where it seemed like Gateway was really paying attention and I really appreciated it. I think if I tweeted this morning I was on may way to Gateway for church, I would get a response. That’s how it should be done. Not a tweet for tweet acknowledgment, but just enough to show you’re paying attention to what people online are saying about you.

Whether you’re doing social media as a church, an individual or a person, if you want people to care about what you’re doing, you have to let them know you care about what they’re doing. The better you are at doing that, the better you’ll do with social media. If your tweets are just about the broadcast, only the people who already really want to know what you’re saying will pay attention. If you attempt to connect personally with someone trying to learn about you, it gives them a reason to come back and learn more about what you’re all about. I’m not always good at doing that personally so if you want to see a good example the person to follow is Chris Brogan.

When you start a business you love, you may be tempted to put 100% of your time and energy during waking hours into making it a success. Cali and I have done that with GeekBrief.TV. Even when we took time off from the show, we used the time to work on parts of the business you don’t see. We took that quote, “Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” to heart.

The problem is, people aren’t designed to only work. We need rest, and we need play.

Yesterday morning I was listening to the audio version of My Life in France by Julia Child and I got a life lesson. She wrote,

In 1963 I was shooting four episodes of The French Chef a week while also writing a weekly food column for the Boston Globe. In the Fall, we were scheduled to take a break from TV work and had planned to visit Simca and John at their rambling farm house in Provence, but as November hove into view, we began to regret it. The quicksand of my cookery work, Paul’s painting and photography projects and all the mini bits of upkeep and improvement that 103 Irving Street required were sucking at our feet.

‘I just don’t know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,’ I sighed.

Paul nodded, but then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days,

‘Remember! No one’s more important than people.’

In other words, friendship is the most important thing–not career or housework or one’s fatigue–and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went, and thank heaven we did!

Throughout the last five years we’ve produced Geek Brief, we had similar opportunities and intentions to travel, but we always made the other choice. We prudently decided we should use that time to work on the business. Sure it would be great to go to Italy. I want so bad to go to Scotland. Hey, we should go to Japan and see all the crazy gadgets and have real Ramen! Instead, we opted for the more prudent choice. We stayed home and worked on our business.

Rest and play are the other side of the work coin. You can’t just breath in. You also have to breath out. Lot’s of people look at our story and think it is inspirational, but I hope people will learn from what we got right AND from our mistakes.

Take real breaks. Leave the Mac at home or at least in the hotel room. Enjoy life with friends and enjoy the beauty in the world. Otherwise you’ll just wear yourself out and burn yourself up.

This is much better than the We Are the World Remake, but it isn’t a competition. It’s about helping where help is needed.

Come Together Now (Music City Unites For Haiti) from Music City Unites For Haiti on Vimeo.

The people who know me best know I’m going through one of the most difficult times in my life. People who believed in me hoped and prayed I would get to this point as soon as I could … the point where I stopped trying to conquer life the way that makes sense to me. My take on taking on the world made lots of sense to me and led to some degree of professional and financial success, but it left me ultimately hopeless and empty.

In just a little bit more than a week, I’ve turned my eyes back upon Jesus and recaptured that joy unspeakable and full of glory that I’ve been missing for the last several years.

Tonight I was watching the Olympic opening on NBC and I read a tweet from someone I was following that said, “Praying for the Cfni recording tonite! It’s gonna rock!”

Somehow, some way I was following someone who tweeted about CFNI. I went to CFNI and not many people know what it is. Don’t get me started about how going to CFNI was not the greatest of experiences for me, but I loved it for the music. Each year they record a new praise and worship album and it’s always very influential in terms of the music you start to hear in churches around the world.

So I clicked on the person who tweeted that. It’s a woman named Kari Jobe and she just happens to be a worship pastor at a church five minutes from my house. That isn’t enough to move me because I’ve been sick of worship music for the last eight years. I clicked through to her Web site and then through to her YouTube page and OMG!!! She writes songs about God and our love relationship with Him that are not cliché and redundant.

The first thing I watched was this video …

Then I watched this one …

And then this one …

Do I need to tell you? I’m going to Gateway Church on Sunday. He who the Son has set free is free … indeed! I also bought her album.

Our friend Geoff Smith is finishing his next album and we were chatting about the process. I got really interested in how he’s doing it because he is such a new media savvy musician. I asked him if I could come to Nashville for a week and shoot a little documentary about it.

Since we started GeekBrief.TV, I’ve gotten a good understanding of producing short-form content. I haven’t really put together anything longer than ten minutes that includes much production but I’ve really wanted to.

With Cali’s blessing, I’m heading out after the Apple announcement on Wednesday. If there is anything worth sharing I’ll post it on the blog. We were able to replace the stolen 5D Mark II so I should get some good stuff.

I’ve tried several times throughout my life to make salsa and every time until today, it sucked. Today, I made a batch of the best salsa I’ve ever tasted. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

1 Medium Onion
3 Cloves of Garlic
4 Red Peruvian Peppers
1 Lemon
1 Fresh Tomato
1 16oz Can of Whole Peeled Tomatoes
1/2 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp. White Pepper
1 Tbsp. Louisiana Hot Sauce.
3 Tbsp. Parsley
Salt & Pepper
1/4 Cup Ice Water

I roasted the Peruvian Peppers and the fresh Tomato on the grill. When the peppers had grill marks all around, I threw them in the food processor. When the tomato skin blistered and cracked, I peeled it off and threw the whole tomato in the food processor. I also threw in the sliced onion and the three garlic cloves. I pulsed to grind that all up. I added the rest of the ingredients and pulsed to mix it all up. I added salt and fresh ground pepper until it tasted like I wanted it. I pulsed some more until everything was very finely chopped.

That was it. I let the ingredients get aquanted for a hour before adding a quarter cup of ice water to cool it down. When the ice melted as I stirred, I dug in with chips. It rocked!

We talked about Julia Child shit and some Barack Obama and the joy of the Neal Show.

Listen here

Growing up in church, I remember a time when I very often thought about the massive amount of joy I had. I felt bad for others who didn’t have it.

Joy, as defined by my theological upbringing is different than happiness. Happiness is based on what happens. Happiness is like rain. Joy comes from the inside like a never ending spring. The Bible talks about joy unspeakable and full of glory. I remember that, but I don’t have it anymore.

From time to time, I use my Twitter account like normal people use a therapist. I did that last night to let go of a personal hero, Leo Laporte. I’ll apologize to Leo some day for that, but I also know it helped. Catharsis is important and Twitter is an effective, albeit novel, way to achieve that.

I’m a broken Christian. I love Jesus as much as I ever have, but I don’t identify with the Christians I see on TV who seem to base their faith on dissapproval of gay people and abortion. When those two issues became so important at church, I left and I haven’t gone back. That’s when my heart broke and I can’t figure out how to unbreak it.

I have a wonderful life. I love the nicest girl in the world and she loves me back. I have all that I need except for that broken part of my heart. I sometimes doubt it is possible to ever get that back, but I try from time to time.

There are a few different ways people live on the Internet, and I think they’re generational to some extent. Older people are guarded in the way they share their lives. Younger people seem to share everything. I guess I’m at the upper range of the younger people age group because I share a lot. I talk about my pain. I show my flaws. I express my frustrations. One of the reasons I do that is because the Bible does. The Bible is filled with stories of flawed people who loved God. The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat their flaws and that’s the way I’ve always believed Christians should live. I don’t want anyone to make a hero out of me, but I would like to be unbroken if it’s possible.