Category: Uncategorized

This is where I live now.

Welp, I ended up back where I started. Away from the whims of billionaires and algorithms, on my own little corner of the internet, that I pay for yearly: my website. Welcome! This is where my newsletters will live now, and I have to say, there’s a lot of freedom in being back where I know how things work. I’m getting too old learn the quirks of a new publishing platform every few months. When you’ve been a freelance journalist for five years and had to learn 25 different editors’ preferences on em dashes and paragraph length, your brain is full.

So here I am, a few days after a reading in Denver, meditating on what it means to live in my little niche, to decide how hard I want to push, how many technological tricks I want to learn in pursuit of fame and followers. Lewis and I regularly discuss, in terms of money, how much is enough, and what is the difference between sacrificing to reach your goals and living as slaves to someone else’s. We don’t live in a culture that believes in “enough” or the biblical sense of “plenty” as viable goals. Whatever your values are (family, career, jetskis, etc) capitalism is the machine that tells you “more” is always better.

A more achieverly, picture perfect family.

The career ladder.

Jetski…boat…yacht.

So while it is tempting to spend the next three months trying to master the new social media landscape and somehow crack the platform game, I’m instead choosing to invest in the quality of my work—the journalism, the books, the connections—and to let whatever reach it has be enough. I am choosing to make contentment a value so that I can be freed up for whatever else needs to happen, be it enthusiastic kids, caring for a friend, saying “yes” to an opportunity, or starting a brave new adventure.

What you will find in these newsletter-style blog posts:

Brain kindling to start your mind fire

Spirit kindling to start your heart fire

Conversation kindling to gather people to your fire

Giggle kindling to warm you up.

Brain Kindling

This story about the gun reform debate dividing Uvalde was published with The Trace and The Guardian. It was a long time in the works. It was months and months of going back and forth to Uvalde, listening and watching things unfold.

It’s been almost six months since a shooter killed 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

Now, the victim’s families are fighting to change gun laws in Texas, a Second Amendment Sanctuary State.

From Uvalde, @BekahMcneel reports. #Longreads https://t.co/0GhHTwDs6e

— The Trace (@teamtrace) November 16, 2022

And this post for The Invisible Cake Society, run by my friend Jenna DeWitt gracious and vocal queer Christian advocate. It’s about raising our kids to be affirming.

I am honored to feature @BekahMcneel on Invisible Cake Society this week! Bekah writes about raising kids with affirming theology and her journey to get there herself. There's so much to learn here wherever you are in life. https://t.co/tzZdEvQPnX

— Jenna_DeWitt (@Jenna_DeWitt) November 18, 2022

Spirit Kindling

I know. I know. But it came on randomly this week and weirdly moved me.

Conversation Kindling

Top Five “Board” Games I Will Tolerate (most don’t have a board)

1. Apples to Apples
2. Clue
3. Pictionary
4. Punderdome
5. Taboo

Giggle Kindling

6yo currently demanding that his father stand in the bathroom while he showers so the former can run some jokes.

— Bekah McNeel (@BekahMcneel) November 2, 2022

Small Girl Mows Small Lawn

A local six-year-old stunned many last week by doing what, she said, “no six-year-old has ever done before, probably.”

She mowed half the lawn.

San Antonio resident Moira McNeel said she’d taken on the task, “Just to see if I could do it. Not for fun.”

Her father confirmed that the endeavor was, in fact, not a lark, but a serious undertaking.

“She took it upon herself to volunteer. She saw a need and she stepped right in and did what needed to be done,” the father said, “I’m very proud of her.”

By “need” her father means that he appreciated the help, though he maintains the work he was doing up to that point was perfectly adequate in quality. “I didn’t take her desire to come help as a sign of criticism,” he said, he was happy she wanted to give mowing a try, and even happier she asked so nicely.

Fortunately, the only mower the family has ever owned, a Scott’s manual push-reel, posed little threat to her safety.

McNeel mowed for approximately five minutes, pausing only to direct her father to take photos for this article, and to alert the media, who was on the porch but, to her frustration, not watching the lawn-mowing.

All told, McNeel said, “I did a full swoop.”

The McNeels’ only patch of actual grass measures exactly 15 feet in diameter, so a little went a long way. McNeel was able to cut in straight rows with minimal missed blades between the passes. When she had mowed “enough,” she said, “I was tired.”

McNeel’s father offered no further details on the current status of the job, and would only comment on the enthusiasm with which the child took up the task.

“I have never in my history of mowing lawns seen a little girl mow a lawn so well,” McNeel’s father said, “Or with such zest.”

Disclosure: Moira McNeel is a primary source of joy for the author of this article. Her father is also a financial contributor to the Hall Monitor blog and, according to Texas state law, owns half of it.

A decade of being bravely underwhelming.

In late December 2009, ten years ago, I did something strange. I started a new journal expressly dedicated to chronicling a love story—my love story. In my 18 years of journaling before then, I had always been cautious about how much weight I ascribed my various romances. That’s easy when you have a written record of all the non-starters that came before. I knew how much shame I felt when reading “he’s the one!” in bubbly 2001 letters, when mere pages later he’d disappear.

What’s even more strange about my decision to start an entire journal dedicated to my love story is that it had not even really begun. I’d met a guy. We’d hung out twice. But when I started the journal we were one week into what would turn out to be a four week silence between first meeting and first date. No flirty messages. No emails or phone calls.  There was no evidence to suggest that this non-relationship was going anywhere.

Nevertheless, in a fit of romance, I did it. I started a brand new journal with the explicit and stated purpose of writing about my love story with one Lewis Maverick McNeel…who had yet to call. 

In that first journal entry, I wrote about the moment I now know, and then suspected, I had fallen in love.

We were at the grocery store, and I was buying break-n-bake cookies…for one of those fancy holiday cookie swaps where everyone goes all out. I was working in college ministry, making $16,000 per year (all of which I was fundraising), and jumping from crisis to crisis with the people around me, students, friends, and family. I just didn’t have the resources or energy to make elaborate cookies. 

But that was the life I was in. I was unsure of the value I brought to the world. Convinced that I had to earn my keep by being agreeable, unimpeachable, and useful. Knocking myself out to sell myself short, professionally. Auctioning off my time and energy to the people I thought would keep me safe, emotionally. Running on affirmation and little else, spiritually.

Break-n-bake cookies do not bring affirmation.

I lamented my predicament to Lewis at the checkout and he said, “I’ve been underwhelming people for years now.” 

I fell in love on the spot. And then he disappeared for a month.

Four months after he reappeared, he asked me to marry him. And for the first time in my life I really didn’t care if anyone thought that was a little irresponsible or too fast. I was certain. I bought a wedding magazine, looked at the recommended planning timeline, and realized that most people spent longer planning their weddings than we would spend going from “hello” to “I do.” 

That was the easiest brave thing I’ve ever done.

The next brave thing happened in 2012. That’s when I left the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). 

Despite my bold dreams of a life in ministry, there was no future for me in it. Looking back, I realize that I had traded usefulness and approval for calling. For 28 years that denomination had been my home, but it had also kept me childlike and dependent—because women in that world will always serve at the pleasure of the men, the “specially gifted” who are ordained by God. I had never been taught or allowed to think outside those rigid guardrails, so I just maintained them. A strong, smart woman joyfully submitting, proving that the system worked.  

I believe I would have wasted my life as a Martha sweeping the stoop of the boys club had it not been for those break-n-bake cookies and that fast engagement. I was not defined by my fancy cookies or my prudence. I was loved beyond my usefulness. 

When I left that church it was like coming up out of the ocean and being able to see without the salt burning my eyes. 

In this new world, I could be a terrifying anything. I could be what I was supposed to be. It turned out that was a journalist and a mother. 

My fingers trembled a little as I submitted an essay to The Rivard Report in June 2012—after all, I was nothing but a failed ministry paraprofessional at that point. I had no idea if they would laugh at my small life, my small thoughts. Would they dismiss me like my writing had been dismissed and diminished for the past four years? 

I was able to push “send” only because I said, “Maybe they will be underwhelmed. It won’t be the end of me.” 

I had just quit my job and left the church community I’d been in for almost a decade and the denomination I’d been baptized into. I’d married a man I’d known for less than a year. I had dedicated a journal to a guy who hadn’t called me. I’d taken break-n-bake cookies to a cookie swap. If some editor on the other end of an email laughed at my small mind, what was that to me? 

Of course, that’s not what happened. Robert Rivard and Monika Maeckle may have been underwhelmed at some parts of the essay—I don’t remember what that first draft looked like—but they also called me. They gave me a shot. 

In 2013 things were looking strong on the career front, and the thought of starting a family sounded like setting off a bomb in the middle of it. Having a baby would change how the world saw me. I was so close to being taken seriously, I felt, to no longer being underwhelming. If I had a baby, the climb would become steeper. My capacity to perform would be split between worlds, and I needed every bit of it, because I was already balancing two jobs.

I would also have to fight for my writing to be professional and motherhood to be relational. Parenthood is not a career. It is a relationship. Caring for children’s needs, however, can be a career, and one at which many parents excel even as they are unpaid and undervalued by society. It’s noble and incredibly necessary—and not the career I wanted. But we have a hard time separating parenthood (mostly motherhood) the relationship from childcare the career, and I knew that doing so would test the limits of my professional and relational confidence. 

But Lewis— that man who had given me the courage to underwhelm and befuddle and flout expectations—wanted to be a father. He wanted the parenthood relationship. And he promised that if he could be 100 percent architect and 100 percent father then I could be 100 percent journalist and 100 percent mother. He didn’t care that there were precious few examples of this in our world, very little evidence it could be done.

I had lived 28 years looking to others to tell me what to do. Only two years listening to Holy Spirit inside me. The Holy Spirit reminded me how this whole adventure had started. “I’ve been underwhelming people for years.” 

I was free to underwhelm. Free to do it differently, even if different was disappointing to many. 

Having Moira was the only brave thing I did in 2013-14. We have had to fight for balance every single day of her life, but we have found it. It is not the vision of motherhood or professional life I had imagined. And with it have come incredible doubts. Such doubts, in fact, that I was not sure that a second child would be a wise decision for me. As a mom, I felt underwhelming, and not in a free and easy way, but in a fearful, inadequate way. 

But one day, at our new church, a couple prayed for me. A couple with five lovely, successful adult children, prayed that I would have confidence that I was not the perfect mom, but the right mom, for my daughter, and whoever might come along next.

And so having Asa was the brave thing I did in 2015-16. 

With a second kid on the way in 2016, I quit my side hustle and leaned hard into journalism. In 2017 I walked away from a sure thing—The Rivard Report—to try something idealistic and new—Folo Media. One month into 2018 I had to walk away from Folo on principle. I did not have nearly the portfolio or reputation I needed to be a successful freelancer, but that was the option. The day I left Folo, I thought back to 2012, when I’d left my ministry career. Maybe this was it. The end of my journalism career. 

But I had given birth to two children while working two jobs. I’d submitted an untrained essay to a fledgling publication just one month after leaving an entire life behind. I had married a man I’d known less than a year. I had dedicated a journal to a guy who hadn’t called me. I had taken break-n-bake cookies to a cookie swap. 

I had been underwhelming people for years.

Freelance journalism, any journalism at all really, is like tying your ego to the tracks. It is rejection and tough feedback. It’s also thrilling and fulfilling. But it does feel like I have to do little brave things on the regular now. Pitches, fighting for stories, calling sources without a big institution behind me. I publish things on my blog. On other people’s blogs. I write things that less than 100 people read and things that tens of thousands of people read. Both feel incredibly vulnerable.

I regularly hover over the “send” button and tremble a little, and then tell myself, “Maybe they will be underwhelmed. It won’t be the end of me.” 

Ode to Tom Wolfe, a delayed tribute

I was 19 years old when I read “Radical Chic,” Tom Wolfe’s biting critique of New York socialites who try to capitalize on the cultural cache of the Black Panthers. The teeth of the essay have come back to bite me often. It’s incisors haunt me as I try to write about social justice in an age where “wokeness” is having a moment.

That’s not a bad thing, that haunting.

When he died in May, I thought about how Wolfe’s work in general, and “Radical Chic” in particular, brought me into journalism. Ultimately, it was less about what he wrote, and more about the fact that he wrote it.

I read “Radical Chic”…and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test…and The Painted Word…and Bonfire of the Vanities…and Hooking Up…while I was deeply mired in the corner of the Evangelical world that is skeptical of outsiders at best and anti-intellectual at worst.

Jack Simons— a singularly formative voice in my education— assigned “Radical Chic” to his intro to journalism class. Simons is a Fulbright Scholar, Baptist preacher, and Vietnam vet, and at the time he had been seemingly exiled to a tiny building on the far edge of the campus at The Masters College (now University). He also taught a class on Southern Women Writers, which he boiled down to an exploration of the fear of “sexual predation between the races.” He devoted one class per semester to the proper use of swear words in writing.

In other words, he was a smart guy in a weird world. So when he assigned Tom Wolfe, he knew what he was doing.

He also assigned what came to be all of my other favorite books.

I read those mentioned above and other works from Wolfe, and fell in love with his style, which is super fun. It’s catchy yet human, casual yet precise. It’s readable. A perfect hook for the boy crazy and distracted reader (see photo below)

Wolfe often wrote about things far from the ordinary person’s experience, but he did it in a way that felt like it was happening in your back yard. More importantly, he wrote about a world of limited access in a way that didn’t act like he was happy to be there.

He was one of “them” in almost every way, except for the collective self-righteousness.

For an Evangelical kid from semi-rural Texas, Tom Wolfe was my inside man. He made me see that those people who, in every other form of writing, tended to sneer and disregard people-like-me, were just as silly and insecure as I was. They were striving and shallow at times. They were guided by the same base instincts as I was, and just as afraid of them.

With a trustworthy guide who was not trying to sell me or shame me, I was able to take a few glimpses into worlds outside my own. Wall Street, free love, radical counter cultures, and hyper-intellectualism. While my people were adding more locks to the door, I was able to cautiously peek outside. I could let down my defenses, because Wolfe was already on the offensive.

Evangelical alarmists beware, though. Wolfe made me feel “safe,” but I clearly was not. He made it appealing to think for myself. And that led to a life that is far from where things were headed when I first read “Radical Chic.” For those who knew me before, I’m a cautionary tale. If you ask me, I’m a close call. What if I had ignored the “Radical Chic” assignment, never discovered Tom Wolfe and kept fearing the Left and running harder to the Right? 

If we want more people to fall somewhere in the middle, instead of on the far ends of ideology, we’ll always need Tom Wolfe in some form. Someone inside the camps has to be willing to critique their campiness in the most searing tone. Someone inside the pastures has to be willing to tip the sacred cows.

Writers like Tom Wolfe are good for everyone. No one has to be on the back foot when our toughest critics belong to our tribe. It opens up dialogue inside and outside, because it doesn’t equate criticism with rejection.

In the church, we call these internal outsiders “prophets” and they have long since been exiled by the greed of kings and the anxiety of priests. They are had to find in our partisan media environs and increasingly polarized academic institutions. There’s pressure to choose a side and back their play as they drift to the fringes. There’s pressure to put Team over Truth, and it’s dangerous.

But it’s a world with lots of fodder for the next Tom Wolfe.