A Penny for your Passion

September 18, 2010 | By Mark | Add a Comment

As you might have noticed, this blog has taken a turn in direction lately. I was tired of what felt like boring and uninspired posts (see my book reviews) and wanted to only post things that I, if a reader, would be interested in viewing. The number #1 quality I boiled that down to was passion. I recall funny blogger man Bryan Allain once saying that he would rather read about a subject he wasn’t interested in that was done from a passionate perspective, than a subject he was interested in from an unpassionate perspective . Or something like that. Actually, maybe it was nothing like that at all. I read the quote about a year ago and really can’t remember. But, I totally agree with what he said. Whatever it was.

Anyway, as an example, this guy is passionate about hating pennies. Am I passionate about hating pennies? Maybe not as much as this guy. But, I am inspired by his inspiration and he has turned me on to the thought of hating them. It’s like a student who eventually writes a book on World War II after developing an interest in history after having a teacher in Middle School who was passionate about history. That is what passion can do, baby!

What else does passion do?

It cuts to the heart of what matters to someone.
It matters to someone because it means something to them.
It touches on deeper things that often end up meaning something to someone else.
It brings out buried stuff in buried hearts that secretly and, sometimes unknowingly, begs for expression.
It makes dead things or people come to life.

This guy is passionate about hating pennies. This blog is passionate about passion. What are you passionate about?

Category: Musings

Random Quote

Driving without Headlights
I don’t know what you do up here in Northern Indiana. Where I came from, on Friday nights, we used to get in our Dads’ trucks cause they used to build those trucks so that you could run over anything and it wouldn’t hurt them. You know, the old gravel roads, they just ran straight for miles and miles and miles. You never had to turn your car because you were always going in one direction until you wanted to go in another direction and then you had to wait until you came to a road to make a turn and then you’d make the turn and go straight in that direction for a long ways.

It was pretty easy driving, so what we always liked to do is go out as far in the country as we could get to where there weren’t any houses or anything that we could find. Then, you’d go as just about as fast as you dared going and you’re turn the lights out. Then the truck, in the middle of the night… It wasn’t a real smart thing to do. But luckily, they built those trucks real sturdily. And our dads always just thought they were getting beat up out in the field. They didn’t know it was in someone else’s field.

So one time I was driving from Philadelphia to Miami, Florida. I was going down Interstate 95 through Maryland, which I don’t ordinary think of as being a beatuiful part of the world. But it’s shocking how beautiful Maryland is. Of course, it was about 2 o’clock in the morning and it was a full moon and so just about any place is pretty at 2 in the morning with a full moon if you’re all by yourself.

And I started thinking about how we used to do that when we were kids. How we used to turns those lights out and drive a little bit too fast on gravel roads. And I wondered if I could still see by moonlight like I could when I was younger. So, I looked around and made sure there weren’t any cars and clicked them off right there in Maryland. Only this time, I didn’t drive too fast because I wasn’t quite so young anymore. I had gotten in the habit of trying to soak up things instead of speed by them.

Looking at Maryland I began to think of just the goodness that I was not blind. Sometimes you have to go to Maryland to remember what a joy it is to see. But then I began to think about even if I was in the middle of Brooklyn – with that moon – if there was a power shortage and there weren’t any lights to interrupt – probably even Brooklyn would be pretty with that moon. I remembered how it used to look when you’d drive in the spring and the corn was just starting to come up and the rows were real short.

You know, sometimes we think that everything is changing. But I’ll tell you what – the same moon is up there tonight. The same stars that Abraham saw – they’re all up there. The same God that put them there and made them shine, He’s still there too. And I don’t know what life has for you. I don’t know what life has for me. But I know this: I know that God is good and I know that God does not lie. I know that God has given us the gift of our lives. Sometimes we wish He would have given us someone else’s life. But He chose to give you your life. Don’t despair of it.

Rich Mullins

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