1. Today I did a “two years later” interview on Patheos that is here.

2. This prayer I wrote for the Washington Post a year ago, and I think it’s still my prayer: here.

3. Check out our two year updates on our Haiti Partners work here. My friend and colleague John doing a great 2-minute video report.

4. Also as a kind of prayer/psalm, you could watch this 2-minute After Shock video either over on the right side of this page or here.

5. Read the Spirit is rerunning an interview I’d done with them. Was a good conversation: here.

6. I’m on Miami’s PBS TV station for a panel discussion today. Will add a link when it airs and is online.

I’ve never donned a beard or red suit for Christmas. So far that’s my personal line.

But something happens when you have kids. Categories of cool, kitsch, hip, tacky, etc., no longer matter much. It’s a short distance from this to mowing the lawn wearing black dress tube socks with sandals while wearing a Santa hat (I live in Florida; this is possible), but mostly the shift is a good, liberating change.

Why? Because you’re freed from caring what others think of you, and even a bit from what you think of you, into concentrating more on how you can love others. In this case, particularly for one’s children.

Our hand-me-down Christmas tree, though plastic, has lost half its needles, but I love it because my two-year-old son and six-year-old daughter love it. I hung Christmas lights on the house for the first time in my life. For the amount of effort and near falls off the little stepladder, it should have yielded a neighborhood spectacular. Instead we have one simple line of colorful LED icicles across the top of the garage. Yet the kids proudly cheered.

Last night I was preparing our kids to go to the town Christmas parade, which pre-progeny I would have avoided. Just before getting in the car I received a text from a family my wife and I remain very close to from our time living and working in Haiti.

The text’s essence: Sorry to bother you with this, but our families are hungry, all of us, including the children, and we’re struggling without enough money to buy food.

Takes a little of the “Ho, Ho, Ho!” out of the parade.

But not in a bad way. It’s never bad to be called to pay attention to love. I need reminders all the time, sometimes subtly, sometimes with a smack.

In this case, the reminder is to keep the ache of Advent—which means “coming”—alive in all its hope and discomfort.

We’re in a season of anticipating the incarnation, a once and done event in Jesus. But there’s still an awful ache for hopeful arrival, isn’t there?

For the message Jesus read from Isaiah at the opening of his ministry to be realized in our communities.

For that presence of grace and peace to be realized and renewed again in our lives.

For nobody to have to send a text like the one my friends sent yesterday.

So I don’t mind if the jolly, white-bearded one shows up in the parade, as long as another bearded one shows up prominently this season too: John the Baptist. This is Advent and Incarnation through Mark’s gospel, which doesn’t start with a birth narrative but with John shouting from the banks of the Jordan River, “Prepare the way.”

Because I think John the Baptist is a realist Santa, who instead of 50%-off shortcuts to what is jolly, actually points toward a realist route to a truer joy.

Repentance. Preparation. Humility. Judgment. Justice.

Scrooge, some would say, a list like that at Christmas time!

No, Scrooginess would be to obstruct real joy by settling for a counterfeit. I want generous helpings of the real thing, even if I would prefer milk and cookies to locusts and honey.

I want the liberating joy we can find when we care less about what others think of us and care more about pointing humbly toward the one who cares deeply about all of us.

I want joy that can survive (that doesn’t avoid, but responds to) the text I received from my friends in Haiti.

The jingling jolliness of this season is fun with my kids, but can’t survive adult reality. (Christmas commercialism is the market’s logical response to society’s arrested spiritual development.) Joy that can survive comes in glimpses of the good news John was preparing us for, that we await each Advent to come anew, because we desperately need to hear it all over again, year after year: that somehow God is with us, yes, even in all of this.

This is sublime joy that can endure, which arrives with Love itself being born, even unto us, in a stable of straw and muck.

My wife and I thought we were pretty cool with it. Our daughter had attended preschool, after all, so this wasn’t a major logistical change. She was excited as we dropped her off, said goodbye with a smile over her shoulder, then back to drawing in her new notebook.

We still thought we were cool with it after we signed up for PTA at the courtyard table. We ran into the local rabbi. My wife is pastor at a Lutheran church in town and they cross paths regularly. The rabbi’s third child was starting kindergarten. He’s an old hand at this.

We only realized we might not really be so cool with it after we had stood talking with him, kept talking, kept standing and the rabbi finally said, “You know, she’s in her class. You’re allowed to leave now.”

Busted.

So we left. I was happy all day knowing she was in this great, free, local school here in South Florida where we live. But after dropping her off and walking a couple blocks to my office, I then worked on education issues for children in Haiti.

Joy is always accompanied by a shadow if you see the world realistically, even more so if you’re personally engaged for justice with people who struggle in hard circumstances.

Our seven elementary schools in Haiti, with 1,100 girls and boys, open in the weeks ahead. I’m happy for them and all the children in Haiti starting school soon, but approximately 1 million school-aged children don’t get to attend. Haiti wants to be able to educate its own children, and parents are willing to sacrifice, but the resources are too scarce. Today that is Joy’s dark, way-too-big shadow.

My daughter had a great day: “I love kindergarten! I love my teacher!”

Now at the end of the day, she’s here curled up next to me reading an Olivia book. It makes typing more awkward, but sweeter. Now I’m thinking back on the day, about talking with the rabbi, about the schools in Haiti, about the lack of schools. I’m thinking about parents I’ve known in Haiti whose children couldn’t go to school.

The last months in the U.S. have been marked by discouraging, contentious disagreement. But today I find some hope that amidst dissension on politics, economics, theology and a thousand different things, there are issues like this that are an incredible opportunity for unity: Every child in the world should have access to good primary education.

I’m not going to break into hymn or a John Lennon ballad. After more than eight years working in Haiti, what excites me is real, gritty, day-by-day, hard-fought partnership and progress.

So we shouldn’t just endorse the ideal. That’s meaninglessly easy. More of us should be investing in education, not just for our own children, but for tens of millions of children in countries like Haiti where their potential isn’t being nurtured.

Tonight, on this fun, hope-filled first day of school, I can’t think of a better way to make joy’s shadow shrink a little and make way for more light.

Also on Huffington Post.

Look forward to reading more with my kids (though I did skip a poem now and then). I’m a few decades late to the party, but glad to arrive.

When we finished, my daughter and I decided to write a poem in tribute to, in gratitude for, in attempt to be in the tradition of, Silverstein:

The Itchy Scratchy Girl

There was a girl with an itch on her nose,

so she scratched her toes.

The same girl had an itch on her thigh,

so she scratched her eye.

It was a little confusing,

this itching and scratching.

We couldn’t tell if she was missing or catching,

this itch moving all the time.

She started to scratch her tongue

and said, “I’ve got an itch down in my lung.”

She kept reaching to find her itch,

but instead kept finding a rhyme.

Then said she,

“My whole body does itch!”

Ran straight to me,

and started to scratch.

Shel Silverstein‘s Where the Sidewalk Ends on Amazon here.

“The Itchy Scratchy Girl” © Simone & Kent Annan

Because in regular interviews, you don’t have to take the creative initiative. You still have to be on your game, but reacting is generally easier than creating ex nihilo.

[Quick tip: I inadvertently learned, when sending an email to my friend Adrianna who is a publicist at my publisher, that putting "Nervous Breakdown" as the subject line in your email is a sure way to get your email opened quickly.]

Possible results in traditional interview:

1. Double the energy. The back-and-forth can ratchet up the intensity and exchange of ideas. (George Stroumboulopoulos is a good example of creating energy.)

2. Half the energy. A few times I’ve hung up and regretted being too passive or vague. Other times the interviewer hasn’t prepared, so you have to fight through limp, vague questions to try to create momentum. And worse case scenario, if neither interviewer nor interviewee are on their game, unfortunately the regular rules of addition don’t apply. It’s more like subtraction that creates a vacuum.

3. Somewhere in between.

But what can happen when interviewing one’s self?

Okay, let’s assume most of us aren’t brilliant comics and so the TV self-interview is a non-starter. In writing, potential for all the above: it can be doubly dull or increase insight by honing in on questions that will evoke the moment’s most deeply felt answers.

I used this technique in my first book in a chapter titled “Three Scenes of Fear and Improbable Vengeance.” My wife and I were living in Haiti during a turbulent political time. I wanted to capture the fear I felt for her safety. Every attempt failed: too clinical, not bringing the reader into the experience. Then I wrote the worst-case-scenarios in first person, interspersed with interviewing myself. I needed to make it way more personal, yet find a little distance. The self-interview worked.

That chapter came to mind when writing this new interview for The Nervous Breakdown, though this is not as heavy as the book chapter.

“So what do you think of the self-interview?” I conclude, asking myself.

Occasionally useful for public writing. Maybe more often for private writing — as you, or I, or our respective divided selves keep trying to figure out what we feel and think.

I’m in Port-au-Prince right now so figured the easiest way to think about the phrase “Radical Together” is to look back at today.

For my first meeting this morning, I arrived forty-five minutes late. I’d asked someone as a personal favor the night before to come. I apologized much. I respect this man deeply and was embarrassed. He went out of his way to come (on time) and then went above and beyond in graciousness. Apologizing often and sincerely probably has to be part of being together well.

The next meeting was with the president of a Haitian seminary. We’re launching a project together. They already do good work. We in Haiti Partners also have our vision. We’ve found a project that builds both visions—of churches and church leaders working for justice and grace in their communities. Bringing various agendas together for more effective service must be part of being radical together.

Then my colleague and I buzzed around Port-au-Prince on motorcycles. I had a helmet on, since the safety required from being a father overcomes the grossness of pulling on that ripe, sweaty-smelling helmet. I’ve been riding on the back of a motorcycle with Pastor (his nickname) for seven years. I’ve written about him in both my books. Radical togetherness certainly takes time to build trust (and encourages risk but not recklessness).

One of the meetings we went to on the motorcycle was with Architecture for Humanity. They’re generously helping us build a Children’s Academy in Haiti. We then met with Grameen Creative Lab, with whom we’ll be doing social business projects to generate income for our elementary schools to become more sustainable. Realizing we need each other’s talents as we aim for the gritty accomplishment of dreams: radical together.

After that I met with people from Micah Challenge, a coalition of Christian churches and NGOs working for justice. There is often strength in both having a strong individual commitments and responsibility (they haven’t all collapsed into one organization) but collaborating.

Then on the way back up to where I was staying (where my wife and I originally built a simple house in Haiti), I stopped to visit neighbors. I bought a round of juice, Cokes, and beers for the dozen people around the cooler by the side of the dirt road. Then I walked down a steep path to visit with a family I hadn’t been able to sit with on the porch for a number of trips. I talked with a beautiful seven-year-old girl who I’d held in this same spot when she was only three days old. The lives of this family and their neighbors are hard. Very hard. I help them in small ways when we can. When we lived here, they were generous with Shelly and I, for example sending over Sunday meals of fried chicken and plantains to share with us. Radical togetherness means community. Sharing together. Eating. Crying. Helping.

I don’t know how radical this is, being here today. After more than eight years, I’m grateful. It’s complicated. It’s full of selfishness  (looking at myself) still. There are no shiny ideals or squeaky principles about this. Neither radical commitment nor radical togetherness, in my stumbling attempts, lead to the Promised Land. Wherever we are (unless the group is really insular), way too much need of all kinds remains, if our eyes are open. But it can still be real. And true. It’s life. It’s trying not to hide from the pain or the injustices—or the joy. Hopefully being shaped by grace and mercy, generosity and forgiveness along the way.

Radical togetherness: I’m sure many people are way, way better at whatever that means than I am. But in the midst of this world, in the midst of a day like today, maybe it’s less about trying to be radical than just trying to stay alive and faithful and loving and human in the midst of all this.

The two books I’ve written are, in a way, about radical commitment and radical togetherness too. So David, sorry about not yet reading either of your books on the similar subjects. Maybe our ideas overlap, maybe not. But at the least it seems we’re in a similar search. And that in itself is part of following after Jesus together, right?

I wrote my last book in the midst of a crazy workload. Timeline was very short. I’d written my first book under completely different circumstances: longhand over a couple of years, with no contract, by kerosene lamp under a tin roof.

So the pressure was on, I wanted to write, but then 10 minutes into a session I’d think of something to look up, or jump over to work emails, or just hit a sentence or idea that felt like hard work, and so dive into cyberspace for sweet relief.

It quickly became clear I needed help a little less extreme than, but in the spirit of, Jonathan Franzen’s physically disabling his computer’s Internet capability.

Then I found the solution in a computer program called Freedom that disables your computer’s internet for the number of minutes you tell it to.

It’s also a good spiritual exercise in shame/humility: What kind of weakling has to spend $10 to do what you could just do on your own for free? Answer: me. (The reason, for those who are biblically minded, is found in Romans 7. For the non-religiously minded, I’m sure evolutionary psychology has a reason. I already have progeny, so maybe it’s my instinct to keep scanning for imminent danger or prey?)

And so you know, I’m not paid for this endorsement and don’t know anyone at the company. But I am open to deals. Actually, maybe there’s a good “from/to” promotion possibility: When you buy freedom from your Internet, then FREEDOM gives 10% to help students in Haiti get access to Internet. (Email me, Freedom folks!)

Anyway, if you’re trying to write on the same computer that you work and play on, I highly recommend it. I hadn’t used it in the past nine months since finishing After Shock, but just started working on ideas for a new book in the past week…and indeed needed it again last night and will be using it regularly again.

I know I’m not the first writer to endorse this program, but after putting it back in use, I figured I owed it my little ode.

Here to learn about or purchase Freedom.

“In earthquake-ravaged Haiti, questions range from the pressingly practical (how to rebuild one’s home amidst the wreckage) to the wrenchingly existential (how a just and loving God can permit unspeakable suffering). Kent Annan, co-director of an education nonprofit ministering to the star-crossed island nation, broods over such questions in this mix of poetic meditation and gritty storytelling. With searing honesty, he wrestles with the spiritual doubts and anxieties dredged up by last year’s cataclysm.”

1. On “100 Huntley Street,” a TV show in Canada:

2. Interview on a ReadTheSpirit.com:
“Japan & Rob Bell Aren’t the Only Earthquakes”

3. Short video interview on Guideposts.com (that happened moments after the cap on my front tooth, cracked in half when I was nine, fell off when I bit into a pre-interview Snickers bar):

4. An interesting hourlong discussion of my first book on Char Binkley’s radio show, with Gloria Gaither. You can listen here.