By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Reaching Out(Iron Man ... The Long Winding Path) (1474 Words)
(Sunday, November 2, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
I. The Gathering Before The Flood
The room was full before it filled.
I could feel the energy enter ahead of the bodies that carried it.
Sugar arrived first … then the voices … then the restlessness that always accompanies both.
It was the first Sunday of November and the younger Iron Men ... To, Et, Dem, GJr., JS, and JD ... filed in with sneakers, laughter, and the invisible hum of middle-school motion.
I have learned to read those frequencies before they speak.
Sugar plus adolescence predicts distraction.
Yet distraction, if observed without judgment, can become data about the soul.
Their introductions scattered like marbles across the floor.
Each name rolled toward a different memory.
I asked GJr. about his recent baptism.
His answer cut through the noise.
“When they lowered me under, I felt a wave of peace.”
He said it without performance.
The room went still for a moment … as though that wave had touched us too.
Then the noise returned.
Still, I caught that fragment and stored it ... proof that peace can be recalled even amid chaos.
II. The Question That Stopped Nothing
I submitted a question to test the current … “Do you think brain rot can be used by the enemy to distract you from productive, purposeful things?”
They answered without words.
Their chorus of the viral “6-7” chant filled the space like a ringtone looping in a tunnel.
That noise was the answer … confirmation that they already knew the truth.
“Of course it can.”
Their reflexive chant became evidence, not defiance.
The enemy’s strategy no longer required anger … only amusement.
I did not correct them.
I simply listened to the rhythm of distraction and marked its tempo.
III. The Stories Within The Noise
Dem, a ninth-grader, spoke next.
He described a weekend party ... five hundred invitations, open alcohol, private security, and police.
His tone was matter-of-fact, not repentant.
A friend had become sick from drinking.
The story arrived without moral commentary.
Et followed with a memory of his finger being severed by a door in Wal-Mart.
JS described “brain rot” video games on Roblox ... endless loops that reward mindless repetition.
To added his celebrity sightings … Kai Cenat at Lenox Mall, L’il Baby, Cupcake, LeBron James.
Each contribution was a spark looking for kindling.
Then someone noticed the wallpaper image ... a monkey holding two bananas.
Laughter.
Shouting.
I watched quietly and realized that I was witnessing the curriculum of culture … sugar, social media, spectacle, and speed.
The four horsemen of youthful attention.
These forces did not have to conspire … they already occupied the room.
My role was not to silence them … but to redirect the river before it flooded the banks.
IV. Turning The River
I projected The Long Winding Path.jpg on the television.
The room dimmed.
Colors replaced chatter.
“What do you see?” I asked.
GJr. spoke first … “I see a river.”
Et followed: “I see a metaphor of life.”
Those answers opened a window.
Through that small frame of attention, I slipped in a message.
“Each of our lives is like this image.
We are land that channels rainfall and snowmelt into creeks, streams, and rivers.
We run our race with strong grace.”
Then I asked, “What is grace … in the key of life?”
Dem answered, “The ability to be kind … even when you do not feel like it.”
That was the note I had been waiting for.
Grace, defined not as indulgence but as discipline.
The ability to act beyond emotion.
Kindness as conscious resistance.
His phrasing became a lyric worth keeping.
V. The “Crooked” Classroom Of Fellowship
The discussion drifted again after that moment, but I no longer resisted the drift.
I have learned that the "crooked" path often leads to revelation.
Every tangent carries a truth.
Our fellowship does not require straight lines to reach holy ground.
In fact, the Holy often hides in the detours.
My task is to listen for coherence inside chaos … to trust that God’s voice can rise above static.
What I witnessed was not disobedience … but disorientation.
These young men are growing up inside algorithms designed to fragment them.
They are fluent in noise.
Their culture rewards reaction over reflection.
My small group becomes the countercurrent … a temporary space where silence can still speak.
I no longer expect perfect focus.
I expect brief awakenings.
Each spark of insight ... a definition of grace, a metaphor of a river ... is enough to light the next meeting.
VI. The Mirror Of The Classroom
As the meeting ended, I felt a familiar ache ... the same one that follows difficult days in my geometry classes.
The parallels were undeniable.
School and church share the same affliction … the struggle to sustain attention on what truly matters.
Both are crowded with good intentions … and competing distractions.
Both promise transformation … but often deliver performance.
Both require teachers to become translators of meaning … in a language that students rarely choose to learn.
I left the room with a quiet heaviness.
The sugar had burned off, but the residue remained.
I understood that attention itself is spiritual warfare.
To hold focus is to resist fragmentation.
To listen deeply is to worship.
The “enemy,” as I described it earlier, does not always tempt with evil.
Sometimes it tempts with entertainment.
The result is the same … the slow corrosion of purpose.
VII. The Teacher’s Prayer
Walking to my car, I whispered the prayer that ends most of my reflections.
“Lord, help me find ways to self-select audiences with ears to hear and teachable spirits.
Help me recognize when to reach and when to rest.
Help me build fine fellowships that are deeper than chatter and longer than attention spans.”
That prayer is not resignation.
It is recalibration.
I know that I cannot reform every classroom or congregation.
But I can refine my calling ... to reach out to those who respond, and to respect boundaries when they do not.
VIII. The Larger Lesson
Later that night, I replayed the meeting in my mind.
The sugar, the noise, the laughter, the monkey with two bananas ... all of it formed a parable about stewardship.
The world’s distractions will not disappear.
They will multiply.
The Teacher’s task is not to compete with chaos … but to cultivate discernment.
To teach the young to name what feeds them … and what drains them.
To show them that “brain rot” is not just digital decay … it is spiritual corrosion.
And to remind them that grace, when practiced, can purify both mind and media.
I realized that my role in these sessions is less preacher and more participant-observer.
I guide conversation without choking it.
I allow the “crookedness” to reveal its own map.
The same principle that governs my classroom applies here … boundaries must breathe.
Discipline without dialogue becomes domination.
Dialogue without direction becomes drift.
The art is in the balance.
IX. The River Beyond The Room
When GJr. said that the image looked like a river, he spoke prophecy.
The session itself became that river ... winding, restless, sometimes muddy, but moving.
Each story, each laugh, each interruption was a tributary feeding into a larger current.
I do not know where it leads, but I trust that it reaches the sea.
Perhaps that is the true ministry of teaching and mentoring … to keep water flowing toward wisdom … even when the surface looks chaotic.
The goal is not containment … but continuity.
Rivers cleanse themselves by movement.
Conversations heal themselves by honesty.
The long winding path of that photograph now symbolizes my own vocational faith.
I am learning to let the water work.
I am learning to see distraction as a mirror for my own divided attention.
I am learning that grace, as Dem said, is the ability to be kind even when I do not feel like it … including toward myself.
X. Conclusion — Reaching Out, Still
Empath Remixes #88 is less about what I taught and more about what I saw.
I saw that distraction and desire are twin rivers shaping this generation.
I saw that laughter and loss flow through the same channels.
I saw that my role is to stand at the bend of the river with patience and presence … not to dam it, but to direct it gently toward purpose.
The “crookedness” of our conversation mirrored the “crookedness” of life itself.
The flow was holy precisely because it was unpredictable.
I left the room without closure … but with clarity.
A “day off” had become a “day on” again ... a continuation of the work that never ends … to reach out while respecting boundaries … to teach while learning … to trust the current while guarding the shore.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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