A challenge for the weekend

Getting ready for work the other morning I saw Will Bowen, a minister from Kansas City, being interviewed on some cable news channel. I forget which one.

Anyway, he was holding up his wrist to show a purple rubber bracelet, sort of like those Lance Armstrong down-with-cancer bracelets.

The story was that last summer, after hearing a bunch of his congregants complaining about the church music selection and how some folks dressed at church and catching himself griping about the dismal performance of the Kansas City Royals, Bowen challenged his church to go three weeks without complaining...about anything.

Bowen got a bunch of these purple bracelets made and had "A Complaint Free World" engraved into 'em.

The challenge was that each time they slipped up and let out a gripe, congregants who chose to wear the bracelet had to switch to their other wrist and start counting from scratch.

Bowen says it took him about three months before he went 21 uninterrupted days. And so far more than 2.3 million of the bracelets have been ordered.

I like the spirit of the challenge. Even if I don't necessarily subscribe to Bowen's brand of religion, this challenge means well. We gripe too much. I gripe too much. Griping occupies 50% of my blog postings, I think.

I don't believe I'm wrong about the things I'm griping. But is it really doing any good to whine about so much so often?

I don't know. The Today Show, which did a story on Bowen, also interviewed a shrink who said it was sort of healthy to complain. It's cathartic, she said.

Still, I'm going to keep the pressure on city officials about nuisance neighbors, etc. But if it's not that sort of thing I think I'll try to cut back on my gripes this weekend. I'm gonna try to go two days. If that works, maybe longer. If you're curious about the challenge here's a link to it.