The Parachute I Forgot to Open

In May of 1991, I stood on a college commencement stage holding my newly minted, hard-earned diploma.

I remember one of the ceremony attendants informing me that ours would be the last graduating class to receive the parchment on actual, real sheepskin.

I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but looking back, I should have given more weight to the stark responsibility that comes with being handed a piece of paper that once roamed the fields and ate its fill of meadow grass.

As I already suspected, however, parchment doesn’t pay the rent. And so finding work somebody was willing to pay me for was already heavy on my mind.

A month later, I was back home living with my parents, who were understanding yet simultaneously insistent that I find a career to plug into—and soon.

Day by day, the reality of post-college life began to sink in for me.

And yet I was eager—at any cost—to avoid the very real prospect of returning to my high school job at Eckerd Drugs, donning a polyester blue smock, and spending long afternoons “fronting” hair color boxes in the Aisle 4 beauty section.

I recalled a day in high school where Jack Eckerd himself, who happened to be visiting one of the 1,500 plus stores that bore his name, caught me leaning on the counter and flipping through customer photo prints waiting to be picked up.

He let me know in no uncertain terms that “leaning” was no way to get ahead in his company.

And so I was eager to avoid running into the man again. I like to think he caught me on a bad day.

So, in pure career panic one day, I opened a graduation gift from a family friend—Richard Nelson Bolles’s What Color is Your Parachute?

I was open to any advice that wouldn’t lead back to the cash register and stocking beauty supplies.

I flipped past three hundred pages of resume hacks, interview tactics, and job-hunting strategies.

Alas, none of the practical job-hunting tips stuck. In fact, I don’t recall any of the book’s primary information—to help one find meaningful work and practical ways to go about it.

But I do remember one piece of advice tucked away in the appendix. The message stuck hard, and it’s been rolling around in my head for the last 35 years.

Though I failed to heed his job hunting advice, all I can say after all the years is: God bless Richard Nelson Bolles.

The Long and Winding Resume

My first career stop was at the sports desk at a suburban newspaper group. I covered every local story from 10th grade girls volleyball games to an 85-year-old man training for his 10th triathlon.

From there, I transitioned into high-tech marketing writing and eventually to startup digital platforms. Oh, and I sold alarm systems door-to-door for a brief period of time.

In truth, my resume reads less like a logical career path and more like the complete index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But whether I was writing a marketing piece for a new integrated circuit chipset solution, pitching medical equipment to needy patients, or designing sales conversion copy for a media startup, every single job was a living tutorial in guiding an audience down a pathway to a decision.

While Bolles’ quiet dictum ran as a background command in my operating system, my day jobs were teaching me the architecture of extraction.

Along the way, I learned plenty about “funnels.”

The Funnels That Make a Life

In corporate marketing, a funnel is the standardized process of guiding a stranger from Awareness to Interest, Desire, and Action.

In simple terms, it is a methodology for engineering a “relationship” with someone for the explicit purpose of extracting money from them at the bottom.

Search Google for “marketing funnels,” and you’ll find enough software, metrics, and conversion theories to keep you busy for years.

I’ve spent decades building and optimizing these commercial pathways of extraction.

But over time, a much more universal truth has become apparent: our very lives are made up of vertical slides that go far beyond the products we buy.

Career funnels, social funnels, identity funnels—consciously or not, we are all engaged in massive descents that define who we are.

Collectively, these pathways come together to create what we call a “life.”

Which brings us to the heart and the message of this series.

Many of the essays and observations on The Subtraction Machine examine “The Addition Machine”—our extended metaphor for the world and its relentless methodology of “more.”

More speed, more static, more metrics, more consumption.

The Addition Machine excels at constructing intricate, seductive funnels.

Imagine for a moment an ordinary plastic funnel—one you might use to pour new motor oil into a car’s engine.

And now think of the same funnel shape as a pathway for your choices.

They are wide at the top to capture maximum volume, but narrow downward—systematically squeezing your attention, agency, time, and money into a single exit point.

In marketing funnels, the exit might be a new car or a curated collection of high-tech camping gear.

In a career funnel, you might follow the contours of the slide to become an attorney or an electrician or a career counselor.

A God-Shaped Funnel inverts the framework.

Worldly funnels are simple to enter because they are heavily marketed and have wide, welcoming openings—whether it’s a new home, a career track, or a social circle.

A spiritual funnel, the kind we’ll be exploring in this series, is narrow at the entrance and widens into infinite openness the further you descend.

Of course, practically none of us can simply close the door on our daily obligations.

But we can make intentional choices to strip away the synthetic clutter to engage more fully with the divine.

And that is the purpose of this series.

The Barn That Wanted Nothing

I wrote about an early childhood memory in the opening essay on The Subtraction Machine.

I can still see the image as clearly now—fifty-plus years later—as I did at six years old on a June day in 1975.

Our neighborhood stood on the edge of the North Texas blackland prairie. Out in the plowed field a half-mile away stood a single structure—a rotting, sagging barn set against a deep cornflower blue sky.

Of course, I had no way of expressing it then, but that singular image came to represent a pure interface with God to me.

Today, that same field is covered in thousands of tract homes and commercial strip centers.

This series is an attempt to recapture that connection and share the experience with readers.

That 1975 barn wanted nothing from me. It offered no pitch, demanded no metrics, and desired no action.

It simply stood in still and quiet surrender to God.

This is the ultimate aim of A God-Shaped Funnel.

This series is not meant to be an academic treatise or a listicle for reducing the clutter and noise in your life. You’ll find plenty of that information in myriad lifestyle optimization blogs out there.

Think of it as a field guide for exploring the Divine and re-engineering our daily interface with God.

Not many of us can completely disengage from the world.

We live, work, and raise families inside its machinery of addition. The demands for “more” are baked into the air we breathe.

But we can awaken to its workings. And we can learn to act in deliberate ways that cultivate spiritual growth and connection.

A God-Shaped Funnel will showcase historical outliers and modern practitioners—monks, artisans, writers, and quiet dissidents—who carved out un-funneled lives in the middle of noisy eras.

We’ll extract their blueprints and lay them out as working daily instructions we can all use.

It begins by following Richard Nelson Bolles’s advice: putting the Missioner before the mission.

It continues by stepping out of the machinery, clearing the field, and learning how to stand moment by moment in the presence of God.