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In the latest of a string of successes for my writings, my recent essay on Continuous Innovation has been posted to the RAPP Global Blog! This is directly at the "front door" for our agency worldwide, so it's a huge deal. Plus, I had the chance to work with some great people outside my regular circle here, which is just additional fun.

We wanted this version to be a little more readable and interactive than the original, so we came up with the idea of splattering it with links all over the place - making it the hyper hyperlinked remix version, if you will. Take a look at some of those links, they were half the fun in getting this done.

ESSAY: Continuous Innovation

Update: Received a wonderful comment from a user identifying themselves as the Chief Technologist for NASA at Langley, VA. Here's hoping I can help space exploration, if in some small way!

I guess I must be good at this essay thing. They had another writing contest here at work, and I decided to enter. I wasn't really looking to do anything special, just wanted to see for myself if it was a fluke: if it was possible that I could write that well again. I really figured I had no chance, because of course, they wouldn't let me win twice, right?

Well, they did.

This contest was supposed to be about "Innovation." Here's the full essay, along with the announcement email, from the same Global Strategy guy. Plus, some minor mentions from later in the year. Enjoy!

Continuous Innovation


You have two minutes to do something innnovative. 120 seconds. Go.


Can we all be honest with each other here? When you look at the results from your latest campaign and see a click-through rate of .05%, or an open rate of 1.14%, or an average time on site of 00:00:14 with a bounce rate of 85%, you're not excited. Even though these numbers may be well above standard for your client's industry, or average rates for the medium, you can't help but wonder about the majority. The ones that just didn't do what you wanted them to do.

So what happens? You get in the office the next day and flip through your Rolodex of optimization techniques, survey out a 30+ variable testing matrix that would confuse a rocket scientist, and set about to "move the needle." Brief, blow out, build and blast; you manage to make that K.P.I. look a little less S.O.L., and your client is happy to carry on doing the same thing with the same messages in a slightly better looking package. That needle's moved, but that majority? Still there.

So why doesn't this FEEL good? Why doesn't this inspire your work and infuse your day?

Why doesn't this feel Innovative?


90 seconds.


The fact is, a lot of the things we fill our day with are NOT innovative. And really, there's nothing wrong with that - great work relies completely on great execution. An excellent process or cutting-edge idea will be the inspirational equivalent of a blank sheet of paper if it isn't carried out with absolute attention to detail, timing, and budget. The world needs people that do this, and for at least some part of our lives, we all must be one of them.

The problem is we confuse Innovation with The Work. We can't block out 30 minutes on our calendar to just "Innovate." Innovation doesn't generate any discrete deliverable, follow any Visio flow chart process, or wrap itself up neatly into a revenue stream by the end of Q2. Innovation is like a rainbow: ephemeral, beautiful, and impossible to precisely predict.

But, you CAN create the right conditions for it.

Just like we all know that stormy-sunny mix that gives the best opportunity for a solar color gala, we all intrinsically know the circumstances that will foster innovation within our organizations. We know the value of those hallway conversations, the break room areas, the coffee machine (oh YES the coffee machine), the foosball table, the huge whiteboard, the iPod with noise-cancelling headphones. We know those things that don't have a direct return, the stuff that's expensed before the bottom line, the things that usually get axed when numbers need to add up.

We know what fosters innovation - we're just afraid of it.


60 seconds.


The core problem with innovation is that it is rooted in, and generated by the Unknown. We can fertilize and water the field all day long, but ultimately it is innovation that makes a seed become a plant. The fear is that you might throw all your might and resources into a singular project to foster innovative growth and... it doesn't happen. Or worse yet, you take your baby idea out of the incubator and try to introduce it to the real world and guess what? It fails.

You know what we call new ideas that succeed? Innovation.
You know what we call new ideas that don't? Failures.

Under this paradigm, it's easy to see why a project with unclear and uncertain returns would never get off the ground. It's understandable trying your hand at the tried-and-true before ever venturing off into the unknown. When the world is black and white, why would you ever want to put yourself in the red?

And that's your problem.

If you see every new venture, every weird idea, every novel concept as ultimately falling down the plinko machine into one of those two buckets, the risk is always 50-50. You're always that fixed distance away from perceived utter disaster, and you're always going to stay there.

Take a moment and think of the enormous gamut of problems you work with and attempt every day - from a way to remember to pick up the dry cleaning, to some method of resolving conflict with a co-worker, to influencing a new audience to buy your client's product.
The wrong thought is to rank these solutions the same way we would a coin flip - heads/tails, right/wrong, successful/not. We deal in a work that so tightly integrates with the human experience, that of communicating and carrying understanding of a client to groups of other humans. We play on emotion, on aspirations, on cognitive dissonance. So how can we call one idea absolutely innovative, or another absolutely a failure? How can we not appreciate the campaigns that "showed a small ROI" or "did sorta well" for what they are - learning opportunities.


30 seconds.


If asked about his greatness, Edison would tell you about the thousands of ways he discovered how NOT to make a lightbulb. Einstein would tell you about the 42 years of life BEFORE he won his Nobel Prize for Physics. Michael Jordan would tell you about the 26 times he was trusted to take the game-winning shot and MISSED. Greatness only germinates from the ashes of failure. Innovation will only spark after countless ideas are tried, tested, and most are found lacking. The world's Next Big Idea isn't sitting out on the sidewalk like a lost penny - it's hiding behind a veil of missteps, mistakes, and missed opportunities.

The clear fact is that in order to foster innovation in ourselves or in our organization, we need to create a mentality that ALLOWS for failure. We need to build into our campaign plans an aggressive process for correctly identifying results, then extracting every single bit of meaning or understanding from them - both "good" and "bad." This knowledge then needs to feed our future works. This knowledge must be immediately shared within our organization. This knowledge needs to be openly celebrated in front of our clients, to prove how we've positively built from failure and made our partners' money really worth something in the long run.

We need to innovate, or we will become irrelevant. Therefore, we need to fail, or we will never find success. And when we fail, we must intensely scrutinize the results in order to innovate.


Time's up. Did you innovate? Did you fail? How about both.

I am pleased to inform you that our writing contest winner is once again Eric Swayne. Yes, that's right. Eric Swayne. Again.



Well done Eric!



This contest focused on innovation. As direct marketers, innovation is a bit of a strange bedfellow. I mean, we typically focus on a linear approach of testing, learning and then optimizing. Innovation requires new, often lateral thinking, is often inefficient and as Eric rightly points out ...gasp...can actually require failing, maybe even repeatedly, before getting to the Promised Land. And yet now more than ever our ability to innovate as customer obsessed agents on behalf of our clients is the litmus test by which we are judged as true leaders in our space.



Traditional executions across traditional channels, nuanced by creative and offer are simply not working as well as they used to. Consumers demand more...more relevance, more experience, more inspiration, more opportunity to co-create across multiple touch points. Across channels heretofore not even considered media. To truly succeed for our clients we are going to need to be brave, pioneering and yes, perhaps even fail from time to time. Different than many the Rapp way, the way of data igniting creative experiences, of direct marketing sensibilities informing new applications across emerging channels, gives us an unfair advantage. It slides the odds of success to our favor. And I am happy to take any advantage I can get, fair or unfair, on behalf of our clients.



Take the time to read Eric's entry on risk taking, on having the courage of our convictions and on our mandate to innovate as a brand. It is inspiring. Please join me in congratulating Eric on what is quickly becoming the Swayne Writing Contest. (Actually, the entrants are presented to a panel of judges without name!) I encourage all of you to participate in the next iteration and help us crown a new champion. Not to mention win a bunch of money :-)

This next one came from the CEO of all RAPP itself. He CCed our Global President, and the President of North America:

This is really well done Eric. I’d like you, [name witheld] and [name witheld] to trim this down, add a couple of real Rapp examples of innovation and put this on the website blog. This is a very relevant topic.


Thanks Eric.

And here's the blog he was talking about: http://opinion.rapp.com/. I'm working with other amazing luminaries of the RAPP stratosphere to get this live, and I'll let you know here when it's up.

I'm still utterly amazed and honored to win this go-round. The money's nice (VERY nice), but the validation as a writer and strategic thinker is many, many times more valuable. It's mind-boggling and humbling to have a reputation throughout the world-wide stretch of RAPP. I hope I'm afforded many more chances to do this kind of free-form, blue-sky thinking.

ESSAY: The New ROI

So the great place I work at recently had a writing competition about "reaching the new complex consumer." I was inspired to enter, because it's a fascinating topic - and the winner got a nice load of cash! I may not win, but I'm pretty proud of this little piece, so I wanted to share it here.

Remember: I'm writing this as a marketer, to other marketers. Some of the tone may get a tad fanatical for you, but when you're in the Advertising/Marketing industry, that's what it takes to get the attention of The Jaded.

Enjoy!

The New ROI: Collective Networking Between Brands and Consumers


There is no more "them," and it's all our fault.

For good or ill, we started as Marketers with our "magic bullet" messages and drilled all the way down to the "guerilla" level for the express purpose of reaching and changing the behavior of Them: The Consumers. We've poked, prodded, offered, discounted, promoted and printed everything we could to affect The Target Audience. Each new medium has just been a wider net for us to reach more numbers to get more prospects and yield more ROI. We've used all 360 degrees around The Demographic to find a new angle, but now They have done the unthinkable:

THEY have learned to ignore us.

You have felt it. That inward shut-off when you see the overly-idyllic lifestyle photo, or your hand reaching for the dial at each mention of "Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!" You know the Marketer's bag of tricks and can provide textbook examples of each, probably with material just from your morning commute. You've reached the point where it's sub-conscious, and yet if you're a Marketer, you'll get to your desk and try to analyze the next email campaign for whether we can get more out of Them with the "buy-one-get-one" or the "half-off" offers.

And this is the point: You ARE one of Them.

Marketers can not live in a diatomic, "Us vs. Them" world anymore, because the world has fundamentally changed. Publication now inherently includes participation, and the same people using your product are now recommending your product, rating your product, ranking your product, or just ranting about your product. Every move a Marketer makes throws off ripples of conversation, and the successful organizations are the ones who can anticipate these fluid dynamics, strategically activating groups and memes that maximize their clients' potential.

Marketing isn't hypnosis anymore, it's anthropology.

Our new study is to understand the full experience of how consumers interact with products, and how consumers interact with each other. These interactions are the new "synapses" in our collective intelligence, and it is at these points of exchange that every brand finds its success or failure. As information flows through these points, nuance is gathered. Impressions are made. The Sneezers come out, and Tipping Points are neared. Everything that goes into forming an opinion, or deciding on a purchase, filters through this decentralized network.

Marketers can't be Brand Managers. They must be Brand Matchmakers.

In the status quo, brand management is about control. We control the ways and places our Brands interact with Consumers, and only let that interaction occur when it's in our Brand's best interest. "After all, if all a Consumer knows about our Brand is what we tell them, then that's all they can say about it, right?" Following this path, some Brands have taken the recursive path into effective silence, repeating only the boilerplate messages and ignoring the conversations around them. It's the Marketer's role to take this Brand into The Real World and introduce it to the Consumer, making every interaction genuinely positive for BOTH parties.

Marketers have to be done "telling." They must INVITE.

Every marketing campaign has to begin by identifying (or creating) a point of JOY between a Brand and a Consumer. Is it an amazing timesaver? A gift to the Environment? A security for the future? What interaction between one Brand and one Consumer will be so incredible that it can not be kept under Wraps? Your campaign is a personal invitation to participate in this moment; to experience the Brand at THIS point. It's no longer a question of gimmicks or tricks -- it's a moment of relationship.

Brands are parties, and the best ones have party favors.

Return On Investment is a fine metric when you're dealing with concrete assets. A bridge costs so much money and lasts so long, meaning a certain ROI. But can we reduce the social work we're doing to the level of asphalt? Marketing is about Return On INTERACTION; the mutual benefit gained by both the Consumer and the Brand from encountering each other. If the Consumer can take away an artifact, a benefit, a new mental benchmark (or even all three) from a positive interaction back to their social network, the Brand is the real winner.

Successful brands create a "Gold Rush Effect."

You would think the first person to find gold in the Klondike would keep their mouths shut about it. It's a finite resource of immense value, so shouldn't you keep it to yourself? Unfortunately, that person had to use what they found to get what they wanted -- gold exchanged for money or stuff. They HAD to interact with other people who wanted the same thing. It's in our nature as Consumers to share our experiences, and it's in our nature to want GREAT ones. Brands want their Consumers to walk away with the huge gold nugget, because they know that more will come looking for the same.

Welcome to the Consumerscape. Hope you brought business cards.

It's the equivalent of a political campaign, this concept of Brands "pressing the flesh" with Consumers. For some Brands, it's going to be hard to get out there and mingle with "real people." For others, they will have skilled Marketers to help them develop a form of charisma, a genuine personality that encourages Consumers to come closer. Some businesses will focus on earning a million dollars. Others will focus on winning a million friends. Which will be worth more?

Morning Haiku: Donut

Sweet rush of sugar -
mental fog clears from the brain.
Thank you, free donut.

Top 10 ways to NOT be a Web Designer Rockstar

1. At the end of Derek Featherstone's presentation on Accessibility, stand up and yell "Git 'r Dun!!"


2. Walk in, sit down, boot up your computer and say "Gosh, I love Internet Explorer!"


3. Pretend you are a reporter. Then go up to Garrett Dimon and interview him. Acting like he's Neil Diamond.


4. Try to start up a conversation with James Craig telling him about how cool your Palm Treo is.


5. Tell Jared Spool you think chickens are sexy, too.


6. Challenge Bryan Veloso to a DDR dance-off.


7. Tell Jonathan Snook you blame Canada.


8. Ask Molly Holzschlag repeatedly if she really is "unsinkable."


9. Pick up all the notepads from the entire row of tables you're sitting on.


10. At the Friday night party, go to the bartender and tell him your drink needs a little more "Blue Flavor."

Technorati Tags: webjamsession, webmasterjamsession, blueflavor, list, top10, Garrett Dimon, James Craig, Jared Spool, Derek Featherstone, Molly Holzschlag, Bryan Veloso, Jonathan Snook

DIGG ME!

Since I'm totally part of the Web 2.0 scene, I'm trying to get into this Read/Write Web kinda thing. To that end, I've added some schnazzy cool buttons below each post - just click those to add to your aggregator/bookmarker of choice.

I've also posted one of my personal favorite writings to Digg - go take a look and tell everyone you love it!

WHY BABIES ARE LIKE ALIENS

ZEN AND THE ART OF CUBICLE LIFE

I'm going to be stringing a few different concepts together here, so bear with me...

My Dad works as an engineer, fixing complicated data storage sytems in mostly oil companies and government hush-hush black holes around the world. He's got a favorite saying: when resolving an issue depends much more on the natures of the people involved than the physical electron-routing problem itself, he likes to call this an "Electro-Political Issue."

Apt title, if you ask me. And I know that even if you work at McDonalds flipping burgers for a livin', you deal with politics to some degree. People want to get what they want, and sometimes that means that the right thing, the thing that needs to happen, doesn't. What's more, in order to do the thing you're being paid to do, sometimes you're going to have to bend over backward to get someone else what they want.

I've always been intrigued with the concept of Zen. It's become a very fashionable term: "That's so Zen," or "I just had to zen out," or even Everything Zen. If you take a look at the true meaning of the word, it comes from a form of Buddhism - a religion whose main goal is the end of suffering. Zen seeks to obtain insight into the end of suffering through long periods of meditation; specifically, a seated meditation called zazen. This is a moment of complete self-denial, in which one seeks to completely remove the mind of all thought, so that it may be opened to a new enlightenment. Again, this is the true key of Zen, whether practiced in meditation, archery or even motorcycle maintenance - complete denial of self-thought to focus on a task, even if that task is to clear the mind entirely.

If you work very long in a corporate setting, you'll find plenty of people who want very much to be successful. They put their whole heart and soul into a task to squeeze every last drop of gain, improvement or recognition. Workaholics, we may call them, because their exhaustive grip of passion is so engaged with their work that they can't take a moment to detach and nourish their personal lives. And through this process, could we call them truly successful? Even if they earn tons of money, can we call them a success if their personal lives are in such shambles they have nothing of true worth to spend it on?

Sometimes we get so caught up in playing the game: working the people, gaining the influence, putting my pedestal higher and higher, running after this dangling carrot of a goal. We run and run and run, and even if we finally reach what we want, we find it wasn't worth it in the first place.

What we need at work is a good dose of ZEN, and I think it's the completely Christian thing to do.

I'll show you: take a look at this verse:

"And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." -- Colossians 3:17

You see, we get all entangled within the vain passions of work when we do it for US. When we put in those extra hours so that WE can get noticed or WE can produce more than the next guy. Our priorities get out of whack because WE think that we can sacrifice the personal to gain in the professional. And yet, when we follow that kind of path, it seems like both suffer in the long run.

Paul here advocates a Zen-like approach to work - a complete denial of self by doing EVERYTHING for God. We don't work to promote ourselves or our agenda, we work because that's what God has put in front of us, and we give it the attention and passion it deserves. BUT, when God puts something else in front of us, like a family that's expecting us home for dinner and kids that need a strong parental role model, we put down the one task to take up the other. There's no regret or hesitation in doing this, because we're completely focused on HIS agenda, not ours. Considering whether a task is worthy of our time takes on a higher meaning, because we've got a whole new paradigm to frame it in.

And, when the office gets political, when things get snippy and catty, when people promote themselves within the guise of a job, we don't take the bait. Why? Because we're only doing God's work on this Earth, and we don't NEED the recognition of a false sense of accomplishment. We don't need to hang our self-worth on an initiative or program, because God makes the call, and we are genuinely content with His answer.

There's a concept in sports called "pushing" or "forcing" your game. It happens when you're so driven to succeed, you start to make rash decisions in the hope of an ever diminishing return. You drive the ball instead of passing, because you want that next hoop so bad. You swing at a pitch that's outside the strike zone, because you want that RBI for your stats so much. You really try to smack the ball off the tee as hard as you can, because you want those extra few yards on your drive. Of course, the result of this phenomenon is that you actually end up getting LESS: more misses, more whiffs, less distance.

When we give up our own agenda in the workplace through a Zen-like medition on what's important to God, we protect ourselves from pushing our own game. When you're not forcing a task into place - trying to will a job to work the way YOU think it should - you're actually MORE productive. Denial of self actually makes your self work BETTER.

Perhaps the Psalmist says it best:

"Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass."
-- Psalms 37:5

Technorati Tags: zen, God, sports, work, life, cubicle, politics, self improvement

AN OUTSIDER TALKS ABOUT THE "DISCIPLE GENERATION"

I got the chance to read this article from Salon (you'll have to watch a brief ad to view the whole article) about the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, written by someone who's probably not a Christian but is very interested in this new movement. He labels it the "Disciple Generation," and I can't tell if I'm heartened by seeing a community of believers that bring an honest version of themselves - music, culture, tattoos and all - to worship God, or if I'm concerned about a religion trying to make itself so insular that its members hold tighter to the group than to God.

For example, here's a quote from one of their founding ministers, Mark Driscoll:

"They know there's more to life than waking up, eating what's in the fridge, watching what's on TV, and then going back to bed, than the rest of their porn-addicted, video-game-playing, loser friends," he tells me. "That's what I give them through the Bible. I say, let me give you some rules, not to be a jerk, but to help you out. And when was the last time that anyone in their busted-up family did that?"

I love that concept. But then I read this quote and editorial after the writer describes the church blessing babies on Father's Day:

In a husky voice, the 35-year-old pastor prays for the continuous fertility of his congregation. "We are in a city with less children per capita than any city but San Francisco," he declares, "and we consider it our personal mission to turn that around."

The way Driscoll sees it, the more babies his conservative Christian congregation can produce in this child-poor city, the more they can redirect local politics, public education, and culture in one of the liberal capitals of the world. To complete his trifecta of indoctrinating, voting, and breeding, Driscoll has developed a community that dwarfs any living experiment of the '60s.

Maybe the writer's just being paranoid, or maybe there's something more domineering at work here - I don't know yet. But it's an interesting read, nonetheless.


NOTE: I found out after reading that this is not the same as the Mars Hill Bible Church, home of the incredible speaker Rob Bell. I've actually listened to some of his podcasts, and I really like what he has to say. As far as I know, their beliefs are different than those of the Mars Hill (no Bible) Church.

Technorati Tags: disciple, generation, mars, hill, bible, church, God, Christian

HOPES FROM SHAWSHANK

Saw The Shawshank Redemption again yesterday, and this line from Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding (played by the great Morgan Freeman) just stuck out in my mind:

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Some days I look at my life and I'm so excited that I can barely sit still, because it's a journey of freedom. I hope that I can make it across this life's vaporous border into my own Paradise With No Memory. I hope to see my ultimate Friend and Redeemer and shake His hand, hug Him, or just stand there and look into His eyes. I hope That Place is far greater than it has ever been in my dreams.

I hope.

Technorati Tags: hope, paradise, shawshank, redemption, quote

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY PATH: Write It Down!

One of those ugly things about becoming an "adult" is that you learn that slacking through or relying completely on talent just doesn't work anymore. Not following through on a project or not remembering an appointment doesn't just give you a bad grade anymore - it could mean your job, your livelyhood, or your career. It's taken a school of hard knocks for me to learn that I needed to change my wicked and slothful ways, but now I'm pursuing a new path - one I'll be shaing with you. Call this "GTD for the common man" or a "Dummies Guide to Juggling Life," but I'm going to share in this topic ideas I've found that actually work for me - whether they're radically geek or extremely boring old-school.



Like myself, I'm sure many of you think you have a brain. Let me help you with one clear truth - you don't. At least, you don't have the brain you really need. All of us have deficiencies in how our minds work, even the ones that look like they have it all put together. For me, the problem is often that I have too many ideas. I'm an ENFP, which means I'm great at perceiving interrelated ideas or intuitively discovering needs, but I'm terrible at following through on them. I get more lightbulbs above my head than there are on the Vegas strip, but just as fast as you can lose your money on a blackjack table, they're gone. Our brains are incredible processors, but without training or help, they're terrible hard drives.

So when you look at creative types across many disciplines, you'll see one theme running through how they pull down all those ideas - everyone has to write it down. Whether you're an aspiring comedian, web comic artist, creator of fine art, or just a guy trying to get things done
, there's an amazing power in putting your ideas in a written form while you're thinking:

• Writing your ideas actually helps you remember them, because you engage your visual and kinetic learning paths


• Writing creates a fixed state for your ideas, so you can look back on them and see how your position has changed - this is why you should write the date on everything


• Writing ideas creates a small level of commitment - every time you see it, you'll be reminded about what that means for you

What should I write on?
What actual instruments you use are completely up to you. As an avid Palm user, I always love using my PDA, but it's not always the best choice for writing. I've taken to carrying a small notepad with an elastic closure with me where ever I go (not a moleskine, mind you, I'm too cheap for that), because writing my ideas on a small pad of paper eliminates the barriers of Graffiti and styluses (styli?). Whatever you write on should be quick, easy, and present as few barriers as possible for getting the ideas from your mind onto something concrete.

What do I do with what I've written?
Also entirely up to you, but writing an idea down shouldn't be the end of it. If it's a project, you need to move it into some sort of workflow system, even if that's as simple as a to-do-list. The paper is a temporary fix, just getting the idea down and set so that it doesn't float out your mind. Even if you write everything that's ever in your head, if you don't do anything about it you're still stuck at square one. I like to use an icon system of sorts for defining items that require action, are just for my own information, or are related to a phone call I've made. Review your notepad or index cards or whatever as often as possible, so you know that everything that's in there has a place and an action if necessary. If you don't know what to do with what you've written, put it in a different place or on a page called "HUH?" and come back to it later. If it still doesn't do anything for you, you can probably get rid of it.

I hope you'll enjoy embarking upon the path to personal productivity with me, and I really want to see your comments on if you're using this concept!

"Today is where your book begins/ The rest is still unwritten."


Technorati Tags: GTD moleskine notepad writing productivity personalproductivitypath

ALMA MATER

I had the joy of visting my dear alma mater this Easter weekend, for the spectacle we all know as Spring Sing. I try to tell people at work why in the world I'm heading back to Arkansas, but they never seem to really get it. By far, the best part about the whole event for my wife and me is getting to see people we were in college with - friends we can reconnect with over shared bonds of wild experiences and lessons learned since. The best time to see everyone is the cast party after the Saturday night show - a tradition that spans at least a decade and has always been in the same place, so all the old folks know where it is. We all gather 'round, do all that sharing, sing our crazy club songs for each other and swelter in an overcrowded room with college students burning up from activity, excitement and adrenaline.

We stayed up late (well, late for us old married folks) into the night, then had to wake up for church at an hour that seemed so early it could probably be only represented by an imaginary number. Blearily my wife and I stumbled into Sunday-appropriate clothes and steadied each other down the shuffling walk to the hotel complimentary breakfast. We'd reached that state of tired where the caffeine wakes your body up just enough that it realizes truly how tired you are and only wants to sleep more. Adding condiments with that level of fine motor control is just a joke, as I managed to turn my preprocessed egg patties into a salty mess in very short order. With the in-laws driving (thankfully), we made it to early service at church and found seats quickly, hoping nobody noticed our almost-a-hangover.

I don't know how you get when you're truly tired, but when I'm at that point, I find that my emotions come to me frighteningly fast. It's as though that buffer of my usual good sense is stripped away by fatigue, and everything I'm feeling strikes to the top in vivid color in every case. I tell you all this to say that while all that tempted me to just dismiss what I felt at worship that day, I couldn't shake these emotions because they seemed grounded in a deeper truth than I planned on encountering.

Worship was great - a well-paced combination of scriptures and songs, with very few moments taken for sermonizing or announcements. My father in-law was so thankful for a tempo that kept him from sleep that he thanked the minister personally! The fully planned part of the service ended with the traditional invitation, a moment that only signalled to my fuzzy mind that it was time to stand, and that the end was near at last. I can honestly say that my mind was upon things Divine during the worship, but I can also say that the chance to eat again and hopefully regain some portion of my energy at lunch was definitely thought of.

With the invitation song fully in stride, and everyone standing to clear the aisles, a father and his daughter made their way to the front row of seats. The girl could only have been 14 or 15 at the most, and she must have had something like Cerebral Palsy or Spina Bifida, because her motions were forced through tremoring muscles and wavering steps.

She leaned in a familiar way upon her father as she pushed her disobedient body down an aisle that must have seemed 60 feet long to her, even though it would be only 6 feet to a ruler. It was hard to watch her body force her to make several attempts at sitting down, but she seemed to have a peculiar expression on her face - a mixture of determination, happiness and anxiety. The preacher came down to meet her at the front, and a whole row of college students (that probably didn't know her) left their seats to find ones behind her in support.

The song ended and we all sat back down, some finally seeing over the crowd what all the hubub was about. The preacher returned to his pulpit to tell us the good news: Kaitlin, this girl, wanted to be baptized. From that moment, it just caught me; I was so emotionally touched by seeing this girl, wrestling not only with the life questions that come with being a teenager, but also the ones screamed out by this degenerative disease, seeing that in the face of all of this her soul had found it's one true and supreme Love - and that she wanted to show her love in practice. A definite lump lodged itself in my throat and defied any attempts at manly supression. This girl was going to demonstrate to me something deeper than I'd come prepared to see: a naked and beautiful truth about the One I chose for my Lord and Master.

Her father rose to his feet, and lended his strength to help his daughter to hers. He told us that they had rehearsed this occasion thoroughly the night before, but that Kaitlin found herself to be very nervous this Easter morning in the face of all of the reality and all the people (a packed auditorium of easily 500). A muffled laugh swept through the crowd as we all remembered our baptism Day, or just empathized with her stage fright. The father told us he would just go through all the points they talked about, and let her just affirm her answers.

"Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Nod.

"And do you believe that he came down to Earth?"

Another nod.

"And that He died for our sins and rose again?"

More nods, as the signals for this motion echoed through her neck's muscles.

"And do you believe that He's coming back one day to take us with Him to be in Heaven with the Father?"

"Yes!" - uncertain lips unable to restrain a certain voice.

The father said through tears and joy that he was so proud of her, and that they were now going to baptize her for the remission of her sins. A spotty "Amen" wove through the crowd, and my view of the scene distorted as my eyes suddenly found themselves handling more water than they were capable.

Men and women came forward to help as the parties were separated to their respective sides of the baptistry, where the daughter donned a "gown" (more like a waterproof bag with holes and a zipper), and the father strapped on Arkansas-redneck-appropriate camoflauge waders. The two came together again in the middle through sounds of rustling water, and the daughter again clung to her father for support. Her father's words dropped sotto voce as a crash course in "How to Survive Baptism Without Drowning" with the ever-essential "Chapter 5 - Hold on to Your Nose" was administered. He returned to full volume with words I've always found to be simply magical:

"...I now baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son..."

The daughter broke the plane of the water, finding its symbolic burial below.

"..and of the Holy Spirit."

Her father pulled her from the water to what must have been an incredibly beautiful scene - his "newborn" daughter taking the first breath of her second life. Dry clothes and propriety aside, the father held his daughter tight in joy and love - and I noticed something.

For the first time since I'd seen her begin this journey, she wasn't shaking.

And as I applauded with the rest of the congregation, I couldn't help but think...

My life is wracked daily with the struggles of sin. My spirit has to force my body to walk a straight path each and every second of my life. I lean on my Father, and should do so familiarly as He guides me through my struggle. We walk a path that to His eternal eye seems but a few steps, and seems to me to be the fullness of decades. He washes me in the power of His Redemption through His grace and mercy. And one day He will call me up from the plane I inhabit, and He will view his favorite sight: His child taking the first breath of an eternal life with Him. And even though I may have lived decades, I will cling to Him with joy and love as a child.

And never again will I be shaken.