The Blind Spot

We all have a blind spot. Our eyes only focus one direction. We cannot see what is directly behind our eye... i.e. what is in our own brains. This is the main problem with humanity. As Jesus reminded us, we have a log in our own eye.

As a White Male in these United States, I have been born into a position of supremacy and become a guardian of cultural purity. Now, nowhere have I been told this directly, but it has been intimated to me many times.

I was raised in San Francisco - one of the most diverse cities on the planet - and I was taught from the earliest age that we all live in a big melting pot and that we are all Americans and that differences don't matter. As a young kid, you nod your head and say, "Uh huh." Because being diverse is just as difficult as learning to tie your shoes and learning the multiplication tables. In other words, its just another subject to learn. We soak it all in at a young age and we learn things that we can't even put into words - like the fact that there are book facts and fact facts, and the world is divided into these two realms that often don't see eye to eye.

My young existence was marred by my mother not being around. I was raised a great deal by my grandmother and by my step-mother. But for a long chunk of time, there was just my Dad. My Dad was struggling with three kids and bills to pay, but he managed to keep us sane, if not entirely well off. I remember distinctly having a series of "baby-sitters" during tax seasons that would look after the three of us in different ways. One had a house down by the beach and we would spend our afternoons in a basement watching old reruns of the Mickey Mouse Club. One of them was an elderly black lady who lived in the Projects down off Fillmore and who liked to punish kids the old fashioned southern way ("Go outside and find me a switch... and it better not break when it hits your backside!") In grade school I saw it all. My friends were Chinese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Black, White, Blue, Jewish, Swedish, Hindi, you name it. I never once questioned it. Not once.

Which doesn't mean I wasn't aware of intolerance. We all found gay people to be strange. And as this was the 70's and the Harvey Milk movement was in full swing, it was hard not to notice them. But, at that age, what we knew of gay people - they might as well have been martians. Still, I remember using all the slang of that era to talk about them. I remember loving dirty racial jokes as well - the white one's as much as the one's about other races. Quite frankly, I just liked jokes. But this was another example of the book world vs. the real world. We were told that we were all the same, but the battle lines were already being drawn as we headed off to Jr. High School.

And this is where I began to learn of a casual racism that pervades most of society. It is the racism of "those people". Those people, over there, who are not like the people here - whom I know. The idea that the black people I know are cool and I'm cool with them, so that means I'm not racist, but the rest of black people are shiftless, lazy, etc... I did not understand it at first. And I don't think it a recent phenomenon. I admit, in darker moments, to being a strong proponent of similar views. Situational racism is the most common type. It seems to be a part of human nature to view those around you with one set of eyes and those who are not near you with another set - so that if someone near you is behaving poorly, it reflects on everyone like them. But if a person near you is being friendly, well, that only reflects on the person near you. Everyone becomes suspect, then, until they prove themselves acceptable.

This is a most destructive view because it allows the idea of racism to continue, but gives everyone the illusion that they are not perpetuating it. It also props up the entire idea of reverse descrimination, which is just another insidious form of racism that hides under the auspices of acceptability. I learned about reverse descrimination as well from Jr. High when it was spelled out to me by people concerned with my educational goals that if I wanted to get into a really good high school I had to score higher on my tests and get better grades than my fellow students of color... or women (which I never understood). In essence, as a White Male, I had to have the best grades and the best test scores to get the best education. Otherwise, I would be passed over by people with lesser grades and lesser test scores because of the color of their skin or because of their sex. Even in Jr. High, I didn't have any illusion that this was another form of racism being propped up by people who thought they were doing the right thing.

So where has this left me as an adult? Confused, mostly. I don't consider myself to be part of a race. I consider myself to be a human being, and a Christian, and an American. It is only when confronted by examples of racism - either being done to me or to someone else - that I even remember that I am a White Male American. At times I feel like I am being punished for the sins of my fathers unto the umpteenth generation. I see things and I hear things and I feel things and I say things that I know to be racist, and it seems like I just can't get away from it. My heart, my soul, bleeds everytime I encounter it, but I know of no way to stop it.

Fittingly, Jesus said not to judge by what we see until we can remove the log from our own eyes, but He did not tell us how we might achieve that. Since perhaps our vision will always be flawed, and we will always have this blind spot that prevents us from viewing our own sins, we should instead seek to find a safe way to conduct ourselves that affords us the ability to look past people's differences and towards some sort of standard of conduct that is universally accepted. We should, instead, seek to forgive each other their flaws, and accept people for who they are, and not what they aren't. We should, perhaps, learn to love them unconditionally.

Its not so much silence as it is keeping my mouth shut!

I have a lot to say.

But I'm not going to say it.

My inner dialogue has been growing increasingly frustrated over the past several weeks as one bad thing after another has been going on around me. Its like the near end of Pirates 3 where the bad guy is walking through a barrage of cannon shot in slow motion. Nothing seems to effect him - he seems lost in thought - as the world around him crumbles into fine splinters of nothing. That's kind of what I've been feeling like.

So, instead of a long litany of compaints that you could all probably guess at, I've decided to keep my mouth shut. Its not censorship. Its not even self-censorship. Its a melancholy boredom. The world sucks... but you've probably heard me say that a thousand times already and even I'm tired of hearing it.

I've been trying, instead, to concentrate on things of import. But my mood has only allowed me to find the faults in the things that I used to enjoy. Food - that's bad for you. Sex - pretty much a sin no matter what you do. Reading - such a waste of valuable time. Movies - they're all pretty much the same these days. Baseball - The Giants suck this year. Etc... I've absorbed so much poison from the toxic atmosphere that I can't seem to get it out of my system. Nothing tastes right anymore.

But this is Friday. Good, wonderful, delicious Friday! A weekend is upon us and a chance to rest, relax, and try to suck the poison from my system. I know God is watching out for me and that in Him there is a cure - but I'm afraid that my infected thinking may be dragged with me into His presence. I've had too much of the world lately. Stop the ride, I want to get off. But I can feel His hand out there in the darkness and I know that eventually I will be able to reach it and be pulled to safety.

Until then... the Giants really do suck! ;)

Some Questions To Keep You Up At Night

Busy, busy, busy... not sure when I'll be able to get back to blogging regularly. But it'll just happen when it does.

For now, a few questions to keep you up at night...

1) After the destruction of the Death Star, where is the first place our heroes run into bounty hunters that we know of?

2) What might you bullseys with a T-16? And how big are they?

3) What are the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field?

Bonus question:

4) In a religious sense, what do the Ewoks represent?

Full marks and bonus doubloons for anyone who answers all questions correctly.

Doomed To Repeat It...

Apparently, I did not learn the lessons of World War I. I have tied myself into a horrible alliance from which I can not break free without straining my credibility and my honor. This horrible alliance will quickly spiral out of control and be the death of me.

I made a pact of non-agression with myself.

As the end of the school year approached and I could see the desolate future on the horizon, as a means to motivate myself towards a brighter future of harmony and wealth, I made a pact with myself to force my hand into finishing my novel. I had three chapters that constitute the bulk of new material in this rewrite. I gave myself plenty of time (three or four weeks) to finish this new material before the end of the school year deadline. To give this pact teeth, I combined the effort to finish the novel with my new effort to get back into shape. I agreed that if I did not finish the three chapters by the appointed deadline, I would go on a diet until the novel was finished.

I only finished one of the three chapters. And so, as of Tuesday of last week, I have been dieting. I figure that like much of Europe, I shall be sending most of myself to death before this war with the Novel is over.

May God have mercy on my fat cells!

You Can't Always Get What You Waaannntttt....

Lord, I try to be more grateful, but sometimes it is hard. I have a tendency to be grateful to a point and then whiny and complaining after that. My sister and Mom bought a pie for dessert last night from Marie Callendar's. I should have said, "MMM Pie..." and let it go at that. But sometimes I want more than just a gift, I want a specific gift. I want the gift I receive to be something extraordinary. And so I asked, "What kind of pie?" See, I'm an ungrateful bad person. And all along I was thinking to myself - Self, whatever she answers, be grateful... unless its something absolutely horrible like Blueberry pie. "Its Double Cream Blueberry," she answered. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! That was not what I wanted. In fact, I knew that if I ate it, I'd probably be sick (blueberries and me do not have a good history - probably psychological, but still). I ended up having the best Chocolate Cake I've had in months, but I felt bad for being ungrateful for the initial gift.

We can't always get what we want. We have to live with that knowledge and we have to accept the gifts we do receive and learn to accept even the mistakes made on our behalf.

To be upfront, I am against the War in Iraq. I was against it at the beginning and I am against it now. We can sit here and cast blame around for how we got into the Iraq war, but the truth of the matter is, no matter how much support we gave the war to start, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of our Commander In Chief, who sent in the troops. He is not souly to blame, but, as the saying goes, the buck stops with him. To have him turn around and blame the intelligence community for getting us into the war shows a clear lack of understanding of his role as President of the United States. The intelligence community says, "There is smoke over that hill." The analysts say, "It could be enemy troops." The wise President says, "Let's go investigate until we know its not a trap." The bad President says, "Let's charge over the hill and attack." We charged before we knew what the smoke was. To then turn around and say that it was the intelligence communities fault is to admit that you don't know what your role is in the grand scheme of things. Or, you do know what your role is, but you did it anyway and then blamed the intelligence community for your own faulty decisions. Invading Iraq had reprecussions and so far, we've done little to handle them.

That's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is, we are ensconced in a war of our making and there is no easy way out of the war. We have blown things up, killed thousands of soldiers, and basically disrupted an entire country. We have also planted a seed of hope in rocky soil. The weeds of terrorism are trying to choke that seed to death, and unless the seed is transplanted, it will die. There are reprecussions to that decision as well. The truth of the matter is, no matter how much we want to get out of Iraq, that is exactly the wrong decision at this time.

I do not support the President. He got us into this war foolishly. But, at the same time, I think we are taking the wrong approach in Iraq. The war is, at this moment, another Vietnam. And we, at this moment, are a nation that has grown weary of the toll and sacrifice of this war. But the answer is not to leave Iraq.

No, much as I hate to admit it, the answer is to throw everything we've got at Iraq. The things that make America great are many, but one of the biggest is our unswerving loyalty to those nations seeking liberty. Vietnam was a different animal in that respect because we entered the country under a false theory - trying to stop the advancement of the communist ideology. But communism can't ever succeed. So, when we pulled out of Vietnam, it was bad for a short time, but eventually Vietnam began to realize that it couldn't thrive as a communist nation. Its still communist, of course, but the capitalist reforms in that country are on par with those in China. Only North Korea continues to stick to the strict Cold War theory of communism and it is completely isolated from the rest of the world. We succeeded in Vietnam by departing. That same approach will not work in Iraq. To succeed in Iraq, we must win and win convincingly.

We must prove to the world that no petty group of thugs can stop the mightiest nation of the world. We must prove that, God Willing, we can bring peace and prosperity to any nation that asks it from us. This isn't the reason we went into Iraq, but it must be the reason that we stay.

We need to send more troops, better weapons, and build a new coalition of nations to bring about change in Iraq. We must enlist the aid of regional partners in these changes. We must be a leader of peace and freedom. And we must eliminate any threats to that peace and freedom.

This is not a Republican thing. This is not a Democratic thing. This is an American thing. Our pride is wounded. Mistakes have been made. But the people of Iraq deserve to live in a world of peace and freedom just as much as we do. And we need to show the world that we can not be pushed around.

So, I'm not for the War in Iraq. I'd be perfectly happy if they brought the troops home tomorrow. However, I'm willing to support the war if we really make an effort to win it. If not, then we are wasting our time and our efforts and our lives for nothing more than political expediency. And only a foolish President would do that.

We can't always get what we want. Sometimes, we have to embrace the bad in order to find the good.

Summer of '77

30 Years Ago I saw a movie that changed my life in a way you might not expect. It was the summer of 1977 and I was 7 years old. I had been going to movies for a chunk of my life already and considered myself, already, to be somewhat of a movie buff. But the movie I saw that summer made me think that I, too, could be a film maker - though it wasn't readily apparent for some years after the fact.

Now, I should note one thing to those of you who think you know what I'm talking about - I didn't see Star Wars until January of 1978.

The movie was Laser Blast. It was a low budget film about a guy who finds an alien artifact in the desert and decides to start using it. The artifact in question is an alien gun. It blows stuff up. But the use of it exacts a terrible price - those who use it are slowly transformed into evil monster like creatures themselves. This normal teenager with normal problems quickly finds himself becoming a homicidal monster with an alien gun. Really cool. The special effects were good and the alien work at the end of the film was done by a stop motion animator by the name of Phil Tippet. Phil went on to bring most of the original Star Wars stop motion creations to life, but is perhaps most noted for the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park (which were not done with CGI).

The movie was cornball. The movie was low budget. But, interestingly enough, its the only other movie listed with Star Wars in the Cinemafantastique Star Wars Special Double Edition (the magazine of that era that looked especially at Special Effects). To think that Laser Blast which was low budget, cheesy, and still entertaining, is a direct contemporary of Star Wars which was mid budget and ballstothewalls fun is not only mind boggling, but also a perfect example of how much Star Wars changed the film universe. Up until Star Wars, Laser Blast was a perfectly acceptable bit of special effects fluff entertainment. After Star Wars, only Roger Corman could get away with doing Laser Blast type stuff.

The reason this movie changed my life is that I remember it. I remember liking it. I was 7 and I knew it wasn't the greatest movie I'd ever seen, but I remembered it all the same. It was a perfect example of what someone who didn't have ILM in their back pocket could do with film.

Star Wars created a whole generation of film makers. But Laser Blast reminded us all that we didn't have to be George Lucas in order to make films. Star Wars made us believe, Laser Blast kept our dreams down to earth.

So, on the 30th Anniversary of the launch of Star Wars, I've got to give a shout out to the film that really made the summer of '77 special to me... Laser Blast.

A Veil Me Not!

13We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. 14But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2 Corinthians 3

I have been uplifted by the mighty words of Paul in his second (third?) letter to the Corinthians. Both this passage and the one that follows about the Jars of Clay have filled me with the sort of vital energy that one needs in life. That, and finishing my finals in Film Classes, and I am raring to go for the summer.

I chose this passage however because it reminds me of the fact that it wasn't only Moses that put a veil over his face. I think we all do that whenever we argue or bicker or gossip or talk behind others - especially when it comes to the Church. I know that I have been guilty, if nothing else, of having very negative thoughts about my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ. I have been sure that they were on the "wrong" side of an argument. If only they could see it my way, then they would see sense. This veil that I threw over my face kept them from seeing the Christ in me.

I've also been in a Church environment where the veil of tension has rested over the entire building - people and all. Dark times, where the light and the glory of Christ resurrected was very dim, as if at the end of a long dark tunnel. We struggled through those times, dragging ourselves kicking and screaming until we could lift that veil and be renewed by His powerful light.

I am starting to lose the light again. I am starting to feel the veil slip over my head and my eyes. I need to be out, to bask in God's glory again. I want to feel sunlight on my face, see the dust clouds disappear without a trace. I want to take shelter from the poisoned rain... where the streets have no name. And so, I am going back to nature. I am going back to God's country. I am going to taste the air and feel the burn and hear the birds and smell the flowers and touch the dirt. I am going hiking and God is coming along with me.

The veil will be lifted and my sight restored. Thanks be to God.

A Time To Rest

The Ecclesiastes most famous passage - A Time For This, A Time For That - is supposed to remind us all that we are, after all, human - and point to God as the only one who can be all things at all times or one thing all the time. We can't possibly work all the time and we can't possibly rest all the time, but God can do both at the same time forever if He so chooses.

Andy over at Mile From the Beach has forced my hand by choosing the subject of today's blog when he announced this week that he was going to take a quick sabbatical from blogging. Welcome to it, Andy - take as long as you want.

I too am planning a retirement of sorts. About seven months ago, I announced my 18 month plan to change my life - to find something that I could do that was different than what I was doing. I sort of stumbled into film making from left field, but I've discovered that it might definitely be a career option in the near future. If I don't sound gang busters about my prospects of becoming a film maker its not for a lack of enthusiasm - its due to a controlled enthusiasm.

I've also learned over the past painful year that I can become a little too exuberant in my visions of what might be. I am not only a dreamer like John Lennon, I am an exuberant dreamer like Don Quixote. Give me a windmill and I'll tackle it. Put a windmill before me and before you can even say Don Quixote, I'll have picked up my lance and I'll already be charging. This has been about as effective a lifestyle for me as it was for Don Quixote. Most of my friends and family have too often felt like Sancho Panz when it came to dealing with my crazy crusades and my obsession with them. But, even if I had not seen what my obsessions were doing to my personal relationships, I really started to take notice what they were doing to my health.

And so, over the last seven months or so, in addition to trying to reinvent the employable me, I've also been trying to disentangle myself from various "obsessions". I've made some good progress. I put the Novel on a much slower track, working on it only when I felt the urge. Its slow and its trying my patience but it has helped the work immensely and allowed me to start having a somewhat normal sleep cycle again (no more writing until 2 in the morning). I let Andy completely run the Tee Ball team this year (though, at first, I really wanted to help out - I quickly realized that I needed to just let go). I scaled back my committment to the Youth Group at my church, and stopped volunteering for every new project that came up, and, shock! even told them that I was too busy to do certain things! I've learned to say No a great deal lately.

But this weekend was something of a breakthrough for me. On Saturday, I left a committee meeting at my church early to go hiking with my brother. And on Sunday, I voted for the hiring of a new paid Christian Education/Youth Leader - which means that come the Fall, I will no longer be the head of the Lakeside Youth Group.

With each disentangling of my schedule, with every new free minute of time that I have earned back, comes five times the urge to fill that emptiness with some new project - some new quest. Thus far, I have resisted the urge. But I know that I will eventually be sucked back into some committment to my time and energy. In the meantime, I am hoping to committ the ultimate Christian sacriledge. I am planning on spending the entire summer away from my church, away from my youth group, away from my choir. I am planning to spend the entire summer with TWO FULL WEEKEND DAYS in which to hike, bike, and otherwise find means of releasing stress, regaining health - both mental and physical, and getting my own house in order.

For everything there is a season. And this is my season to rest. God must have quite a plan for my future if he is giving me this much time to get my head and body straight. I can only hope that I am up to whatever task He has in mind for me. In the meantime, I will be out at the beach, with a Margarita, sharpening my lance for another whack at all those windmills.

See you tomorrow...

Is there a dimension of Free Will?

The thing I love about theoretical physics is that its just so darn theoretical. Postulate things based on evidence and then try to prove them or disprove them. You'd be surprised what the mind is capable of suggesting.

Most of the big questions in the world of theoretical physics, lately, have been thrown about because of the need to find the Unified Theory of everything. Basically, the world of universal physics (galaxies, black holes, etc...) is pretty well explained, and the universe of subatomic physics (electrons, gluons, etc...) is pretty well explained, but there is no overall theory that explains them both. And so, using mathematics and good old fashioned brain power, theoretical physicists have been trying to find the one thing that unifies them both and, in fact, all the theories of physics into one large whole that explains everything.

Some of the theories are crazy. Superstring theory, for instance, postulates something like 21 different dimensions (that's 17 more than the 3-D world we live in plus time) that are all wrapped up in super small strings - so tiny that they actually form the building blocks of all matter. However, with this many dimensions, suddenly the whole universe makes sense. There's also, now, M Theory which basically postulates that there's only something like 13 dimensions.

The latest theory, though, leaves one to imagine the possibilites. The newest theory postulates only 6 dimensions - but the new dimensions include one of space and one of time. That's right... two dimensions of time.

What shape might this second time dimension take, one wonders? Well, if the first dimension of time allows for time to move forward in one direction, the second might allow you to travel backwards in time. Or, if the first dimension allows you to travel backwards or forwards through time - in a straight line - then the second dimension might allow you travel sideways through time.

Sideways? How does one travel sideways through time? Well, that brings us to the topic of this blog. Linear time travel has always been considered impossible because of all the causality loops and problems this would cause (the obvious being that if you went backwards in time and killed your father before you were concieved, how would be born to go back in time to kill your father?) But, if there was a second dimension in time, you might be allowed to go back in time and kill your father, thus causing you to either travel sideways into another timeline exactly the same as the one you left but wherein you had never been concieved because your father had been killed before that had taken place.

The biggest problem with linear time travel is that it really creates the perception that everything is preconceived. You can not undo past events and so, therefore, there is no way of knowing whether you were meant to do something that you did, or if it was your choice to do so. With a second dimension of time, it creates not only the possibility of true free will, but it insists on the notion. If you are forced to do things exactly as they have been pre-ordained, then there is no need for a second, third, or fourth timeline. Everything will occur the same every single time. But with a second dimension of time, there are literally infinite numbers of possible choices available every single moment. Choice then becomes a very real element in your travels from point A to point Z.

Of course, this is all theoretical. And my theories are just science fiction until proven otherwise. But still... it makes you think. Does a dimension of free will exist?

Help With New Novel Needed...

Okay, I started serious work on my new novel last week by accident - which is how these things usually happen. I have no illusion that this new bout of work will carry on from inception to completion without some breakdowns along the way. After all, I'm still working on Novel #1 and have been for five years. But, I am coming to the conclusion that I may have finally hit upon the combination of ideas that works to make this story work.

The short things you need to know before you can help me...

1) Its a religious sci-fi novel. It involves time travel and religion. And its supposed to be an action story - complete in one novel (no sequels, three parters, etc...)

2) Did I mention the time travel part of it? Those of you who know me well, know I like the challenges of time travel stories. Well, some of this (at least the first chapter) might seem almost familiar to you.

Okay, without giving anything more away, I'd like to populate my story with interesting historical figures, locations, and events. What I'd like from you all is some suggestions of people, places, or events you'd like to see recreated in a story. I'm especially looking for odd ideas - not cliche. Although, cliche ideas would be welcome as well (the painting of Mona Lisa's smile, the nailing of the 95 Theses, etc...) There are only a few restrictions on time (must be less than 6000 years ago) and on place (must have taken place on Earth in a known location - no Sinking of Atlantis). Other than that, I'm game for any suggestion.

Thanks.

The Revenge of NCLB

Three wonderful news stories broke over this weekend in various publications that offer a compelling look at the state of No Child Left Behind - the Republican Educational plan that requires ALL students to test above average (obviously the person who came up with that idea ought to be investigated as to whether they actually took a statistics class at all, much less passed it ;)

The basic idea behind NCLB, of course, was that bad teachers and social advancement were behind our woeful educational system. Therefore, if we came up with a way to get rid of both, we could fix the entire system. By giving standardized tests and requiring all students to pass them, regardless of their actual skill levels or prior education, we were drawing a concrete line in the sand and saying, "Either they all pass, or we all fail!" Bad Teachers would clearly be pointed out by their test scores. Students who had not achieved a score above average would clearly point to a teaching problem.

So, what did we learn this week?

1) According to the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, cheating by teachers is wide spread. To keep their test scores high and to make sure that their students all pass with above average scores, some teachers have been known to alter test answers in order to get higher scores. Wow. Imagine that? Bad teachers doing bad things to make other teachers (we'll call them good) look bad by comparison. Never saw that one coming.

2) A substitute teacher in the Chicago area showed a class of 6th graders Brokeback Mountain and told them not to tell anyone that they'd seen it. Clearly this substitute teacher has bypassed the NCLB trap meant to get rid of bad teachers.

And my favorite,

3) Teachers in one small school decided to "teach" their children what to do in the case of an emergency by "pretending" that there was a gunman out in the woods with them who wanted to kill them. Needless to say, the children were absolutely freaked out by the prospect of a person with a gun out there wanting to kill them. Parents were not very appreciative of the lesson and, I imagine, a lawsuit is pending.

Whatever affect the NCLB is supposed to be having, its clear that getting rid of bad teachers is not one of them. But I would suggest that perhaps we ought to have a new piece of educational legislation called, NAGA, and begin enforcing it right away. No Administrator Gets Ahead would punish the lawmakers and administrators of these school districts when their children go without books, adequate classrooms, lousy teachers, and insane curriculum. By setting definite standards for minimal advancement and then giving administrators one school year to meet those standards or else they would lose a paygrade, I imagine most of our educational problems would be solved within one, maybe two years.

Of course, I only say that because clearly our school administrators are all above average and ought to be capable of just about anything.

P.S. Yeah, Randall, I know the logic is a little "off" but its still fun to talk about.

Mother's Day

26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," 27 and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
John 19:26-27


Every time I read this passage, I get tears in my eyes. Here is Jesus, on the cross, dying an agonizing death, and He is still taking care of those whom He loves. For His mother, Jesus shows His concern by finding her a surrogate son – someone who will look after her needs into her old age. For His beloved disciple, Jesus finds him a surrogate mother – someone to look after him until his old age. No matter who we are, we all need a mother.

My own mother was taken from me when I was five by an insidious and cruel mental illness. This is not something I talk about often – not because I am ashamed, but more because of the fact that at the age of five I was too young to process it. All I know is that I got off the school bus from Kindergarten that day and waited at the bus stop for my mother to take me home. Though I knew the way home, I was told to never leave until she arrived. Strangers who knew that I was too young to be standing by myself offered to take me home, but I told them no, and I waited. She never did come for me. A friend’s mother finally came and took me to her house to wait for my Dad.

All I ever knew as a kid was that my mom had gone to a hospital because she was sick. I missed her a great deal, but I was not alone. God provided my grandmother to look after me. She loved all her grandkids. I would come over to her house after school every day. Whenever there was a parade or a show at grade school, my grandmother would be there. She loved me every moment and was stern when she needed to be. She was my second Mom.

Anyone who has ever had Cindy Young as a teacher knows what a magical spell she weaves with children. When she was in charge of Baby Land on Sunday’s, all the kids would want to be in there with her because she was so much fun. My brother, sister and I adopted Cindy as our new Mom. She came over and took up residence in our hearts and home. She was everything a Mom was supposed to be – loving, disciplined, smart, and a dispenser of bad advice for kids with schoolboy crushes. Much of what I am today, Cindy shaped. She was my third Mom.

But Jesus was not done with His generosity.

As Lakeside had been good enough to provide one mother, why not a few more? When I was in Junior High, Lila Bennett came and took over as a youth leader. She taught me cooking and the importance of giving back to the community. She was a spiritual leader as well as a mother. And we were all her kids. She was Mom #4. Then there was Alice Bullock, who mothered all of us. Mom #5. And Janet Lehman and her excellent cooking. Mom #6. And Judy Murio and Judy Ott and Donna Rae Wickstrom and Jeanne Anberg and Nancy Andre and Lian Lie and Ann Colvin and Pat Snyder and Cheryl Lamb and Janice Petty and Gloria Weis and Elaine Padian and dozens and dozens of others. You all know who you are. And you all know what you did.

Some may look at the passage and say that Jesus was most concerned about providing for His mother when He was gone, but I see it as a way for providing for His brother. Many mothers can’t replace the one who gave you birth, but they can ease the pain of loss sometimes, and keep you out of trouble at other times, and show you the way when you are lost, and encourage you and give you a kind word and provide you with wisdom when you need it most. How can more mothers be a bad thing?

My Mom is now recovered from her illness and I am happy to have her back in my life. Though my grandmother passed on when I was in high school, her spirit still lives on in my sister and my niece and nephew. I am surrounded by love and by mothers who have provided that love. When Jesus said to me, “Will, here is your mother,” I was forever blessed.

Happy Mother’s Day to all my mothers!

On A More Serious Note:

Parents with Daughters, pay attention.

I have something to recommend which can be a very hard read.

My sister has graciously and bravely come forward to explain her incidents of molestation when she was younger. As her brother and protector, I can't help but read these blogs and wish I could go back in time, Terminator style, and undo these terrible things. But as a youth leader, I want so much to take these blogs and share them with young ladies everywhere. The thing that strikes me the most about them is how they really bust open the myth of the creepy older man who turns out to be a molester. We'd like to think our daughters are safe because they know enough to stay away from the creepy old man and therefore it will never happen to them. My sister is living proof that this is not the case - molested as she was by a grandfatherly neighbor, a friend of my brother, and a complete stranger. I want people to read this and be warned, chilled, disgusted, whatever... so long as they take the lesson to heart.

Don't let my sister's brave writing float in the electronic dark without doing some good in this world. So I urge you, go now and visit Crime Survivor. Read the horrendous story and take it to heart. Your daughter might thank you someday.

And if any of you knows where I can get a gun and a time machine, let me know.

But, of course...

It isn't that simple. It never was and it never has been and it never will be. If it were, there'd be no reason for Jesus in the first place. We'd never have had any need for redemption because we'd all be living in peace and harmony with one another. This is not to put rose colored glasses on our choices in life, this is merely a way to point out that the process of redemption is as simple as a choice.

The practical side of me says that for me to make this choice, I would have to give up my life. I'd have to leave my job, my family, my clothes, my car, my money, my security, my health (although it could certainly be argued that my health might actually improve as a result of giving up all this stuff), my hobbies, and my preoccupations. I'd have to throw it all out and say to Jesus, "Okay, Lord, here I am - use me as you would. I have nothing but the clothes on my back and a willingness to be led." I would literally be throwing everything away to become a slave to Christ.

That's all I have to do.

Presumably, Jesus would then guide me to homeless people or some such that were in need and I would somehow help them out.

But, of course, this is almost as much of a fantasy as the belief that all you have to do is go to Church on Sunday and you will be saved. In reality, my being homeless and jobless and lifeless would not really help Jesus. How could I really help people if I needed help myself? What sort of work could I really do?

The point is that I should be willing to make that sacrifice, at a moment's notice, if called upon to do so. If I heard the call to leave my job and enter the seminary, I should be willing to do so. I should drop everything and submit to God's call.

God has a plan for us. It is a simple plan. It is different for each of us but each task boils down to one thing - loving one another. It will be shown in different ways and by different means, but the end result will be the same.

To love or not to love, that is the simple choice. Everything else is in the details.

It's Simple...

Here's what I want you to do. At the end of the day, I want you to walk out of work, leave your car behind, call your wife and tell her you won't be home for a while, and go serve your fellow brothers and sisters with love and humility.

No, don't worry. Your bills will be taken care of. Your house will be fine. Your food and clothing and drink will be provided. As God takes care of the sparrows, so too will He take care of you. All you have to do is believe and follow.

That is all Christ is asking of us. That is all that He wants. None of this stuff about protesting Gay Marriage - Jesus doesn't care if you make a sign and picket. And let's not send our money to politicians that support ending abortion - that's not what Jesus asked for. He doesn't want you to feed the hungry with a check or an automatic 10% donation the next time you use your credit card to buy a big screen TV. What Jesus wants is you. He wants you to love and to embrace and to help and to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit.

It's simple, really... To find the best in ourselves, we must look to others. Salvation is an itch on the part of your back that you can't even reach with a back scratcher - it is an itch that must be scratched by someone else. And, in turn, you must scratch their itch. We can not find salvation any other way. To know God is to know one another. To do God's will is to do it to one another. To love God is to love one another.

The hardest part is believing that its so simple.

So, You're dead...

And there is nothing. Nothing. No thought. No feeling. No bright light. Nothing. You have simply ceased to exist. Why?

No, really... why? What, after all, would be the point of life? There would be no answer to the question of why? No explanation. No big reveal. No story end. No story beginning. And a whole lot of meaninglessness in the middle. No why.

The story, such as it is, would be that a freak accident created life on this planet and countless thousands of other worlds. This "life" would be nothing special - merely a thing that occurs, like rain, or erosion, or super nova's. Chemical equations would go together and life would evolve from single celled organisms to more complex structures. These complex structures would come into existence, live for a while, create another generation of themselves, and then die. And so on and so forth, until we reach sentient life forms. But why sentience? What evolutionary niche does it fill to have a species that can think and communicate and write down ideas and feelings? It doesn't. There is no reason. Sentience then is just a byproduct of life creation. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything you think, or feel, or believe is nothing. Pointless. A waste of time.

We are born. We are plugged into a sentient construct called society that teaches us to speak and eat and dress appropriately. We are taught what to believe. We believe it. We grow older and we bring forth life ourselves and teach a new generation. And then we die and return to non-existence.

With all due respect to my athiest brothers and sisters, what is easier to believe that life is completely meaningless or that there is a point to existence that you just haven't yet discovered?

Answering this question is the first step to understanding.

David and Golaith

The other day, I rebuked my brother. I don't remember what it was that I was rebuking, but I remember being very convinced of my righteousness in the matter. I am still convinced of it. My brother was clearly in the wrong. The words I chose were carefully selected to rebuke - a little sting with a little correction hopefully to encourage a new line of thinking and a new more right spirit within my brother. At the end of this rebuke, I reminded my brother of my love in him through Jesus Christ.

Needless to say, I was quite shocked by the response I got.

The gist of it was quite simple - you claim to be a follower of Christ and yet, here you are rebuking me and making me feel like a big turd. Where is the love in that!?

Whoah! If you could have seen how far my jaw had dropped. I sat there and read and reread the message over and over and then I reread the "offending" passages that I had used. I was still convinced of the validity of my message and I did not think the rebuke was out of line, but the pain of the response was evident. My brother was clearly hurt that I would cut so deeply and use Christ as the scalpel.

I did not understand it then, except to say that on some level I realized that I had made a mistake. I replied to my brother that I was very sorry and that I had not meant to attack him and that perhaps it was best if I took myself out of the equation. That seemed to work much better than my words ever had. Within a couple of months, normal relations were restored and there's been some healing between us and some correction on behalf of my brother. I took myself out of the equation and let God do His work.

A few days ago, I reread Romans 14 and the words floated through my brain for a while before they took root. In Romans 14, Paul says:

1Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

5One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

9For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.

Its easy for me to put myself above my brother and to say that I was right and he was wrong, but the situation is more complex than that. While I was trying to correct my brother, God had other plans and used my brother to correct me. I know now to choose my words more carefully and to be certain that someone can understand a rebuke before I use it. Wielded in the hands of a surgeon a scalpel can save a man's life, wielded in the hands of an amateur it is as deadly a weapon as was ever created. We must never use Christ as a weapon, no matter how much we think we're saving someone's life. But, almost as important, we must never appear to be using Christ as a weapon, for that perception can be almost as deadly. My brother did not understand that I was trying to correct him. I had not prepared him for that kind of correction by simply loving and accepting him first. He was not yet ready to hear that he was wrong. And in my rebuke, I made a correction into a weapon and I brought the love of Christ down hard like a hammer. And the wonder of it all is that through the grace of Christ, the teacher became the student, and I learned a valuable lesson about loving my brother.

MIA

I've been missing in agony lately. Somewhere along the line my schedule caught up to me and my body put on the brakes. I slowly dwindled away all weekend and was outright sick by Monday. Yesterday, I finally put myself on the five day disabled list, retroactive to the previous Friday.

So now I'm back and you all missed some really great blog posts while I was gone, and now you'll never know about:

My piss smells like bacon

or

Olympic Ideals in Berkeley

or

The Big Bully Plan

or

Compensation For Discipleship

So, I'll start tomorrow with a clean slate by forgetting these blog topics and forging ahead with new, and far less interesting, subjects.

See you tomorrow...

Some Blog Notes

Everyone else has been active in the Blogosphere lately, but I'm actually pleased to be able to pass on some new information about family bloggers.

My Dad has started a new 10 part series over at his blog, White Tie and Tales, about what his platform would be if he were running for President. Its an interesting idea to think about blogging. You can read his take on the first of his ten subjects, Education, by clicking on the White Tie & Tales link on the side of this blog.

My Sister, in the meantime, over at Superstar in Training (now called Changes Daily - which is a complete misnomer) has announced that she has just launched two new blogs, Letters to Bono and Crime Survivor. I think I'll allow her to explain her reasoning much better by suggesting you go read the latest Superstar blog and then click the links over to Letters to Bono and Crime Survivor from there. (She also says some really nice things about me and AMFTB on there, which is another good reason to go check it out ;)

As for me... I'm just tooling along here waiting for whimsy to strike my fancy. Something will come to me to write, or it won't. Though right now my mind is struggling with the philosophical question about what it is to truly Have A Life, I haven't really developed anything worth writing about yet.

So, see you around...

Where Do I Get My Ideas...

Creation is a tricky thing. It is the willful act of trying to create something out of nothing. It can be frustrating, tiring, and extremely difficult. But when it happens, when creation perches itself on my brain, I can feel His spirit run through me like a bolt of happy lightning.

So, where do I get my ideas? This is the single most cliched question asked writers and I suspect there are as many answers as there are writers. I believe it was Charles Schulz that used to tell people that he had them delivered from an idea mill somewhere in the midwest. If only I had the address... ;)

My ideas always start visually, and that's probably where most of them should stay. I am a visual writer - I need to see what it is I'm describing, I need to imagine the scene completely before I can write it. So, its not too surprising that my ideas arrive in my brain as snippets of visions - like scenes from a movie not yet imagined. I will be minding my own business and I'll suddenly have this powerful vision of a dam exploding and a hero character leaping away on to a helicopter at the last second. Everything in my brain stops at once, like we can freeze frame that one scene and that one moment, and just examine it. Why did the dam explode? Who's the guy leaping from the top? Where'd the helicopter come from? Is this the end of the story, or the beginning? What kind of hero is this? What kind of villain do we have? I'll get this blank expression on my face for as long as it takes me to run down this vision's information. Viola. I've just started a story.

To fully understand me, it might help you to know that I get ideas like this about four or five times an hour. Most don't last in my brain more than the split second it took me to imagine them. Occassionally one will float in there for a few minutes, idly taking one question and answering it, to reveal more questions and answers. But most of the time, I get bored with the story in about 30 seconds to 5 minutes. About once a week, I'll get an idea that stays with me all day long. About once a month, I get an idea that stays with me for several days or a week. And about once a year, I get a keeper.

The process of creating a story is the same from the moment of inception until the moment of writing. Take a scene, break it down, ask the questions, find the answers, move on to the next scene. As the scenes pile up together, the story begins to take shape, and the questions and answers become more complicated. Often times, the scene that started the whole process won't even make it into the final story. The questions and answers are constantly changing throughout the process and some answers lead to tougher questions which lead to better answers which change entire sections of a story. Characters come and go, motivations change, scenery evolves, plot points are as liquid as the brain patterns that created them. But eventually, the story sits on a precipice and I just know I'm ready to write it.

For some stories, this process lasts only a week or so and I just charge right in with the writing. For others, such as the novel I'm writing, the process started years ago (1985 for my novel, for instance). In the last interview he ever gave, Philip K. Dick described it perfectly, "It's like those commercials that say we'll sell no wine before its time. Well, I won't start a novel before its time. It takes at least two years for a story to find its way to paper."

When you look at the final words of a story, just remember all the hard work and thinking that went in to putting those words there. Hundreds of thousands of possible permutations were likely considered for every possible aspect of a book. The physical creation of a thing isn't nearly as complicated as the thinking behind it. Just imagine how complicated was the thinking behind your own creation - what God must have thought about your contribution to the great story of existence. Doesn't it make you wonder? I know where I get my ideas... but where does He get His?

The More Things Change...

Sherman, set the wayback machine...

Our scene: A dirty city street somewhere in Philistine a long time ago...

Bob: Hey, Phil, did you hear what the town crier just said?

Phil: No, Bob, I was too busy working. What is the latest breaking news?

Bob: Some Jewish terrorist went crazy with the jawbone of an ass and killed liked hundreds of Philistines.

Phil: What? That's crazy! Is he still loose?

Bob: No, he's dead. But still... it makes you think.

Phil: Yeah, what was he thinking? Do you suppose he was drunk on wine? Or perhaps caught up in some sort of lover's spat? And where did he get the jawbone of an ass so easily?

Bob: There's no knowing why he went bezerk. But he apparently obtained the jawbone legally.

Phil: There ought to be a law.

Bob: Actually, Phil, I think there are too many laws. I mean, think about it, if someone else had been carrying the jawbone of an ass, there might be a lot of Philistines still walking around alive today.

Phil: You know, Bob, you're right. I'm going down to the cornerstore and buying me a jawbone for protection. And then when people see me walking down the street with the jawbone, they'll keep their distance.

Bob: Just be careful, Phil. You wouldn't want to hurt anyone by accident with that.


This little slice of drama brought to you by the National Jawbone Of An Ass Association - just because I can.

I think I'd rather die

Apparently some people have not learned anything from the Bible - most notably the passion week descriptions of the Garden of Gethsemane. "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword."

I am not one of these liberal gun nuts who thinks we ought to abolish the 2nd Ammendment to the Constitution. In fact, I am all for the requirement of every household having a gun - like they do in Switzerland (where violent crimes are very low, perhaps because the criminals know that every household has an automatic weapon ;) However, I don't think I could ever own a gun, because I'm 99.99% certain that I would never want to use a gun on a fellow human being.

I'd make a terrible soldier. When confronted with a frightful situation where it was literally life and death, one of two things would happen - I wouldn't be able to pull the trigger, and therefor be killed, or I would pull the trigger, and therefore wish I was dead. I just couldn't handle the knowledge that I had ended someone else's life.

In the Navy I provided intelligence to an aircraft that did the dirty work for me. I still regret to this day the knowledge that some action on my part ended the lives of two or more young men - even if they were about to shoot a missile at our ships. This to me is not a win, this is a loss with an asteriks.

My point is that Jesus was very straightforward about this subject - do not give in to violence, no matter what the situation. It is something we have forgotten as a religious body, something that we have completely ignored many times. When it comes to death, the ends never justifies the means. What are we afraid will happen if we can not easily shoot or stab or kill our enemies?

I will never own a gun. Ever. And I'd wish you'd make the same decision.

Empathy, Tragedy, Senselessness

I think the Virginia Tech tragedy, as its now playing out, continues to prove that most Americans don't have a grasp on their emotionally distressed sides. Its far easier for us to look for a quick, simple answer, than to explore the idea of lapses in our mental health system or society. We want the pat, Hollywood answer - where the crazed killer is jilted by a girlfriend and goes on a rampage, or where he was crazy all along. See, he wrote violent stories - it was bound to happen sooner or later. Its far easier to look for a simple answer, but it leaves us with questions. How could we have not seen this coming since it was so obvious that he was crazy?

The answer is not simple, and it never will be. Each of us is capable of a Virginia Tech type tragedy and that's the scary fact. We are all awash in a sea of chemicals and neurosynapses that could simply freak out on us when we least expect it. A common stuffy head can cause undue pressure on certain portions of our brains causing us to see things or hear things that aren't there. Does this make us pick up a gun and kill 30 people? No. Of course not. But what I'm trying to say is, mental health is not always a constant and we should never take it for granted.

I knew a guy, Jerry, about four years ago. He was a roommate of a friend of mine. He was affable, loyal, and a good guy to know. We took him hiking with us. We hung out with him. My brother was even considering moving into an apartment with him. All of a sudden, Jerry disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to him. We assumed that he'd probably gone home suddenly to visit his family until four days later, we got a call from his worried family that he hadn't been in touch with them. Though my friend filed a missing person's report, the paperwork was too slow. In the meantime, after an arrest and a referral to a mental health evaluator, Jerry was put back on the streets by the police department where, less than 24 hours later, he tried to beat a pregnant woman to death with a paint can.

None of us had known that Jerry was bipolar until the incident occurred. The police that had arrested him and let him go did not know that he was violent or potentially dangerous, or they obviously would not have released him. Less than an hour before he'd committed the terrible crime, Jerry had been wandering the streets asking strangers to help him. Clearly out of his mind, most strangers walked away from him.

It was hard for me to grasp that a guy I knew had snapped like that - that I had spent time with him, hiked with him, and hung out with him. He had been a normal guy one day, and turned out to be a homicidal maniac the next. It was senseless, tragic, and I empathized with both the victim (both mother and child lived, thank God!) and the attacker. I'm sure that people who did not know him assumed that he was evil and looked for obvious explanations (he must have been on drugs, or he played too many video games, or he was a racist sociopath). But the "simple" fact of the matter was, he'd forgotten to take his meds and one thing had led to another in a terrible spiraling of events.

The media wants you to believe that this guy's writing was a clear indication that he was sick and depraved and was a serial killer waiting to happen. Don't you believe it. Don't you take the simple explanation. Writing is a form of therapy for the writer, sure - we've all written stories about harming people who have harmed us. I've killed off my ex-girlfriend hundreds of times with falling blimps, vicious attacks by wild animals, etc... But the fact is, writing is make believe. Its not real. Its a release - not much different than group therapy. A writer will write some pretty sick things, but that doesn't make him a killer waiting to happen - just ask Robert Bloch, who wrote, amongst other things, Psycho.

The real tragedy of Virginia Tech will occur if, once again, we look for and then swallow the simple explanation. Evil, drugs, insanity - these are all too simple to explain such terrible actions. Let us look, instead, to a more complex understanding of the events that happened that day and try to imagine what might have been going through that poor killer's head that could cause him to want to kill so many innocent people. For it is only in understanding that we will ever be able to prevent such actions from happening again.

Who owns my inner voice?

Somewhere along the line I got lost. It happened some time after high school and before I joined the Navy. My whole young life had been driving towards the point where I would take up the mantle as world's greatest entertainer/storyteller and then, in a moment, I found myself locked in a game of chicken with oncoming reality. I flinched and dove off the side of the rode and became lost.

It is certainly one of the backdrops that formed my naval experience - the search for myself. What had worked so wonderfully for me in my high school years now felt like dead weight. I had been writing steadily since my sophomore year and had written more than a thousand pages of material. But it lacked... well, anything that resembled a fine quality. It was sophomoric, juvenile, amateurish (though quite a bit of fun). As a writer, I knew that to write more serious stuff, I needed to find a more serious me - the me that was lying just beneath the surface.

Only, I wasn't there. I dug down futher. I embraced my serious side. I became as much fun as a drying block of concrete - still nothing. I tried going the other direction, figuring that maybe I had just feigned being boring to throw off the pursuit. But in nights of debauchery and drunken rowdiness, I still didn't find myself. I tried the still of the night, walking along abandoned docks at three in the morning, watching the sun rise over Pearl Harbor - but found only lonliness and doubt. I tried insanity for a while, but it didn't stick. I tried cookies, but they didn't lure me in. I could hear my inner voice mocking me, but I couldn't find it.

Finally, I tried the one thing that should probably never work - I stopped looking. And there I was. Inside, comfortable with my skin, safe and secure and ready to work again.

Occassionally, I still try to pin myself down. What exactly do I mean when I say I mean it? Do I really believe in Jesus, for instance, or is that some sort of conditioning of my youth? There are plenty of thoughts that seem to contradict the notion - where do those thoughts come from? In fact, where do the thoughts that would indict me in any court of the land come from?

I can't help thinking these thoughts. They're in my inner voice, but I don't know who speaks them. When I buy a plane ticket, I am just dying to say, "Please don't fly us into a building." When I hear about a school massacre I just want to say, "Only thirty people? You were using the wrong kind of weapon - you weren't really trying." To my inner voice, these are funny. They are mocking, joking, a whistling in the dark. I know my inner voice doesn't mean them, but it says them all the same.

As a writer, I'm supposed to develop my own voice. But my own voice and I don't get along all that well. My own voice tries desperately to get me in trouble and as a result, my own voice is locked up inside and is not let loose. Sometimes I wonder, though, if that's wise. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better to say the things that I really want to say. It may not be the smartest thing I could do, but I wonder if it wouldn't be more real.

My inner voice is such a child and I feel reluctant to let it out because it might embarass me. But, maybe if I built it a safe little box for it to play in - something like a blog - it could get some air, meet some other people, maybe mellow out over time.

What I'd really like to do, of course, is send my inner voice off to charm school. But then I'd walk around confused all day as my inner voice spoke to me in a clipped and perfectly understandable British accent (since everything from England is cultured.) I am confused enough as it is.

Oh for the pleasure of dual personalities. I think I'd pick one that allowed my inner voice to speak - though I might then become the most reviled person in America.

I don't know where this blog is going today. Its rambling, but then so am I. Shut up now, inner voice! Its time to go back in the box.

Something More

The director gives the hand motion and the choir stands as one. We look out into the congregation. They stare back, expecting... what? Entertainment? Uplift? I don't know. Having been in the audience, my usual reaction to the choir anthem was to hope it went quickly. We wipe those thoughts out of our minds and give our attention to the choir director again, scanning only briefly our music to be sure we're on the right page. Done, and done. The piano starts tinkling away. The harp begins to pluck. Our lead Soprano steps forward and begins to sing a beautiful solo aria. Her words soar and sail around the clear acoustics of our new sanctuary. I am filled with her voice. Our que comes and we start in softly, backing her up - then more forcefully, as our voices blend and we stop singing the song and start feeling it. And then it happens. The words fade away. The dots on the page stop having any meaning. The song becomes something more, something that transcends the music as written, something that has life and soul, something that is pleasing to the Lord. The music becomes worship. And I can feel His pleasure bathing me in wonder and in awe that He should find such a pathetic thing as my voice pleasing to Him. It brings tears to my eyes every time.

Which isn't to say that I get this reaction from every piece of music I sing, nor from only classical music, nor from only church music. Any piece of music that transcends the boundaries of Earth, any piece of music that He finds pleasing, any piece of music that makes me forget that I'm singing - I can feel His hands lifting my spirit, elevating me. Otherwise, I might as well be singing in the shower.

I have had the reaction only a couple of times in the audience, so I imagine that for the most part, people just sit there and wait for it to be over, or garner there own limited pleasure from a pleasing performance (at least they weren't flat this time ;). I am getting older now and my voice is no spring chicken anymore. I no longer have the range I had even five years ago. But I don't think I could ever join the audience again knowing that even my crappy singing is pleasing, occassionally, to the Lord. I'd rather be active in worship than passive. I'd rather in meant something more than a tick mark on my heavenly attendance card.

In 2000, when I returned from Las Vegas, and before I started work at Yasutomo, I began an active campaign of weekly hikes to Norcal locations. One week, my friend Jay and I decided to hike a new trail in Big Basin Park. It was fairly long (something like 8 miles), but it had a waterfall at the half way point. I was convinced that this was something we could do.

We began the hike with a quick uphill struggle. I have never liked going uphill - even when I was in spectacular shape. Fighting gravity sucks. But this was fairly short, maybe a mile at the most, and then we were at the top of the ridge. The trail dove off the other side of the ridge and continued down to the waterfall.

We practically ran down the hill - it was a nice wide trail and not steep at all, the kind of path I used to love to run in cross country. It just kept going down and down and down. After about a mile and a half it leveled off and went relatively flat (though, deceptively, we were still descending) for another mile or two, until, viola! There was the waterfall. Not some pansy fairy waterfall either. This was one you could have stood under and taken a shower - even in the summer.

The path continued... up the waterfall. We grinned and bore it. We had never yet found the perfect Escher trail (downhill both ways) and this didn't appear to be it either. Besides, the waterfall was tall enough. We'd climb up to the top and be back on the ridge and then after a short hike, we'd climb back down the first part of the trail and be back to the car. Or so I thought.

Apparently, we'd come quite a ways downhill. We climbed up the trail and reached the top of the waterfall and I was seriously spent. But I knew we only had a little more ways to go to the top of the ridgeline, so we continued forward... and forward... and forward... and forward...

In three hours, we still had not found the top of the ridge. A series of switchbacks and up and down valleys had meant that for more than three hours we had been climbing steadily uphill with no end seemingly in sight. I was literally pulling energy from the very last of my fat reserves and the sun was starting to set in the tree infested park.

Jay knew that I was done. And he knew that there was no way he could go to the car and get it and come back for me. If he left me, I was going to have to crash there in the dark park by myself until help could come. And what was help going to do? Nothing. They couldn't carry me. All they could do was help me walk. I was out of water, out of trail mix, out of strength, and out of patience. I was near tears. So Jay did the only thing he could do, he got behind me and pushed me up the hill.

Physically, he pushed, prodded, yelled, poked, and motivated my ass up that hill, and up the hill after that, and finally, up the last hill until we stood on top of that ridge and looked back down the seemingly innocent downhill trail that led to the waterfall. We didn't have time to ponder such philosophy though as it was nearly dark and we still had the last mile to hike.

I stumbled the rest of the way and made it to the car and when I finally got home that night, I slept like a dead man for about fourteen hours and I was sore for two weeks.

I was reminded of this on Sunday as I suddenly felt the holy spirit wash over me in the middle of singing. I've been feeling out of sorts lately - a natural let down from the exuberance of fishing and hiking in God's country and the return to civilization. I've been feeling drained, lethargic, spent, and distant from God. And then, all at once, during the mechanical process of singing, I felt His pleasure on me and I was uplifted. And then I remembered Jay. And I realized that I was receiving this gift as a form of reinforcement - that God was now behind me on the path, pushing me uphill again.

Its a long climb with moments of sheer beauty and many hours of sweat and monotony. Sometimes we just wish it would be over soon. And sometimes we get a glimpse of something more, something beyond that which can be seen or experienced without outside help, and we can feel His loving support of us and know that we are loved and will never be abandoned on the dark trail.

The Lord's Moving Company

The Lord moves in mysterious ways indeed... and gets us to move as well. For the first time in over ten years, I had a really strange thought last night - It's ridiculous to be as old as I am and still be living at home with my parents.

Now, to be fair, there are many reasons I've never had this thought. First of all, there is just no way I can afford to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. If I scraped together every spare nickel I had, I couldn't even afford rent. The friends that I have that do rent apartments (or parts of apartments) all live month to month just to pay the rent. They exist. They don't LIVE. And as for buying or owning a home? Forget about it. Without some serious infusion of cash into my life, that will never happen. So, that's the major reason I live at home with my parents - its economical to do so. If I had to leave, I would move out of state - a long ways out of state - the further from California, the better.

Second, my parents are getting older and they really need help around the house and in the backyard. When they're on vacation, I look after the house and the pets and what not. But even when they're home, I am there as a helper - a fall back position for errands, and construction work, and all sorts of other projects.

Third, I get along really well with my parents as we have a lot in common. This is one reason I have never felt strange or ashamed about living at home before. In terms of roommates, you couldn't ask for a better pair than my parents (and they keep to themselves).

That being said, this thought came to me last night out of the clear blue, and I knew it was more than just a thought. It was a suggestion. A hint. A, dare I say it, command. God was telling me that it was nearly time to move on - to move out.

The question is... where? As I pointed out, economically I can't afford to even live in my car. So, I'm not sure what He has in mind. But I will keep you posted.

The Secret Revealed

Read the Bible.

No charge. Just remember where you heard this startling advice first.

Okay, I'm back now. Fishing is safe for the rest of you once again. I have many amazing adventures to relate... someday... when I'm not so busy catching up with all the work I avoided while on vacation. But for now, its back to the coal mines...

Heigh ho!

See You Soon

GONE FISHING!

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and NO!

But the pursuit of material happiness is just fine with some New Thought leaders, including Lett, who says, "God never said it wasn't OK to be well fed, well clothed or drive a nice car. You have to take care of yourself, as well as others."

Mark Anthony Lord, minister at Chicago's Center for Spiritual Living, echoes that sentiment.

"America was built on having a wonderful life, on being all that you can be," he says. "If you generate a feeling of self that's capable and worthy, you'll attract what you want. I don't care if you use it to get a car."

Emphasis mine.

I think this says it all...

16Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

17"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

18"Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, 19honor your father and mother,'[d] and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'[e]"

20"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

21Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

22When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Matthew 19:16-23

Do not be misled. There is only one Way into God's Kingdom and it does not involve positive thinking or your bottom line. Do not be led astray.

I will see you all in another week. I'm off to go fishing. Keep up the blogosphere for me while I'm gone.

Peace.

A Better Pleasure

There's just no way around this. I'm going to sound like an old fuddy duddy by the time I'm done. I can't help it. But perhaps this is an ecclesiastical moment for me.

There is too much. No matter how we slice it, we have too much. We have outsmarted ourselves. We have begun to equate suffering with stupidity, when, in fact, its the other way around. Only suckers suffer, after all. Only the lazy and indigent and sinners and those unfortunate stupid people who don't know any better suffer. If you suffer, its probably because you weren't paying attention.

Bored? We have four hundred channels of TV for you, On-Demand Cable, Youtube, movies on DVD, radio, satellite radio, ipods, any form of entertainment you can imagine right at your finger tips. Hungry? Fast food on every corner. Thirsty? Starbucks everywhere that soda vending machines are not. You don't even need to look for a water fountain anymore because we have bottled water for you. In pain? We've got a medicine for that or a cure or we're spending billions of dollars on research to find a cure. Unhappy? There's a book answer for what ails you... or drink... or drugs. Lonely? We've got the answer for that online. And if you don't have time for meeting people or dating? We've got speed dating. We've got e-mails that take 30 seconds to write. Or text-messaging that takes 30 seconds to write. Or, heck, just call them whereever they are on their cell phone. There is absolutely no reason to suffer, whatsoever. No reason to wait. No reason to be hungry. No reason to not have anything you desire. If you want it, technology will provide it for you. Who needs religion anymore? It is an outmoded form of thinking. We stopped needing God when we discovered that we could talk to people on the other side of the planet by pressing a button. We can kill those people too in much the same way. Who needs God for anything? If I'm down now, technology will pick me up.

Anything God does to try and temper us, to try and refine us, we can counteract with some sort of man made invention. We have become bloated. We have become complacent. We have become defiant.

We don't mean to be. We don't mean to seek human answers for human problems. That is just our nature. And even though the human answers don't quite satisfy, there is some relief from our suffering - some temporary respite. We get used to the pain. We get used to the isolation. We get used to telling ourselves that we are happy.

But we're not happy. We're not free from worry. And the more that we have, the less happy we are.

But there is a pleasure that can only be found on the other side of pain. There is a pleasure of sacrifice. There is a pleasure of discipline. There is a pleasure of hard work and struggle. There is a pleasure in valleys that can only be experienced by visiting them, and coming out on the other side.

Submitting to God, choosing that path, means that you must walk through His valleys before you can climb to His peaks. You must submit unto death. You must die to become alive.

Death is the end of all things worldy. Resurrection is the inheritance of all things of true substance. There is a better pleasure out there than anything we have here - but it can only be found on the other side of death. We must die to this world and be reborn in Him if we are ever to obtain our true inheritance.

I am afraid to die... because I am afraid to live.

S.A. - Sinners Anonymous

10While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. Matthew 9:10

Hi. My name is Will and I am a sinner.

I have been sinning since I was a little child. I don't want to sin - it just happens. When the time comes and I know I'm supposed to do something one way, somehow I do it the wrong way. I remember as a young boy being annoyed that my Mom always picked my Dad's birthday present for me. So, one year, I asked for some money so I could buy my own birthday gift for my Dad. I went to the store looking for a gift for my Dad and instead I bought a Hot Wheel - knowing full well that my Dad would not keep the Hot Wheel but give it to me instead. I knew it was wrong. I felt really bad about it. But I did it anyway. I can not help it.

I have been trying to follow the 12 Step Program for Sinners. I think I am on number four so far - maybe this counts for number five?

1. I admit I am powerless over my sinful nature — that my sinful life has become unmanageable.
2. I have come to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore me to purity.
3. I have made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.
4. I have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. I have admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.
6. I am entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. I will humbly ask Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. I will make a list of all persons I have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
9. I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I will continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong promptly admit it.
11. I will seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. I will have had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, and will try to carry this message to other sinners, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

This is a tough list. I am not sure I will be up to finishing all 12 steps. But with God's help I will try.

The question is, am I the only one who sees the irony of the Matthew passage above? It is often said that the Pharisees and others were upset with Jesus for speaking with and associating with sinners. But the reality of the Bible is that we are all sinners - every single one of us. Therefore, anytime Jesus is talking to any of us, he is speaking with and associating with sinners - as do we all. We are all trying to remove ourselves from sinful people, to be free of guilt by association, but there is no humanly way possible for us to do that. We are all in the same boat and we are all sinking together. Only Jesus can calm the storm.

Once again, my name is Will. And I am a sinner.

The Road to Damascus

I'm on the Road to Damascus and I can see lightning striking all around me and I am scared - not afraid of death, but not yet ready to be blinded either.

When we meet someone new we go through stages of relationship that ultimately lead to friendship and something even deeper if we're lucky. We're reluctant to meet this new person at first, and then our anxiety goes away when we get to talk to them and realize that they are not so bad after all. Maybe even a friendly feeling grows between you and this new person. You begin hanging out, learning more about each other, starting the long process to becoming friends. Eventually, you are friends and you see each other all the time and know alot about each other. And then, after a few crises' your friend might become something more - a brother or sister - and like is replaced by love. Ultimately, friends become more than family. The bonds are stronger. You would willingly throw down your life for this friend of yours, and they would do likewise for you. But each step on the path from meet and greet to ultimate love for a fellow human being is met with a period of hesitation and a commitment and an opening up of yourself to pain and betrayal. Nobody ends up with life long friends without a few scars along the way. No friendship survives long without some tempering.

When I was young, I was introduced to Jesus as if at a party - see that man over there, he's pretty cool. Gradually, as I grew up at my church, I got to know this Jesus dude. We were acquaintances. I wouldn't exactly say we were friends. While He seemed to know alot about me, I didn't know much about Him. After I joined the Navy, I came to a realization that I wanted to know more about Jesus. I began to ask the questions. The process was slow, but eventually, I came to the point where I trusted Jesus with a lot more influence over my life. We grew closer. We started hanging out together a lot more. And eventually, I'd say we became friends. But it hasn't always been easy. My friend always seems disappointed in me. He seems to think that I can be something more than what I am. He asks me to consider a greater world and a greater role in making that world a reality. I don't know that I could ever live up to these high standards that my friend has for me. For one thing, to do what He wants, I'd have to sacrifice quite a bit. I'd have to not only spend time with Him in my daily life, but I'd have to open up and let Him into my heart.

To be honest, that scares me. I don't want to lose control. The world is a wild and scary place and sometimes the illusion of control is all that I have between sanity and chaos. Giving up control, or the illusion of control, means trusting in Jesus completely. I can't do that by myself. I can't just willingly suspend control. I can't just willingly trust completely. I would be opening myself up to heartache and scars. I will need help. The kind of help that only God can provide. If I give in, if I take that next step, there will be no turning back. I will be following my friend into the Valley of the Shadow of Death and I will be trusting in Him to bring me out to the other side - alive and well and in a better place.

Asking Jesus into my heart means replacing all the junk that's in there now with pure love - talk about a shock to the system. I believe in Jesus. I believe that He's God. I believe that He is the way and the truth and the life. But I'm scared of losing my life to Him and for Him. I want Jesus in my heart, but only part way. And that is unacceptable.

I am at a crossroads. I can continue down this road blindly and hope for renewed sight, or I can remain blind and hobble back home without ever seeing the true world. I don't know which way to go.

The Durn Near Most Useful Thing Ever Invented!

Last night on David Letterman, a new invention was revealed which could just be the most useful invention ever made - a beer sling for your refrigerator. You simply aim the refrigerator towards the couch and then go sit and watch your favorite sports show. When its time to beer up, you press a button on the remote, and a robotic arm slides around to gather the beer can that is pushed out of the top of the refrigerator. The robotic arm rotates into firing position and FWAMO! A beer comes flying across the room and lands in your outstretched hand. If you aim it correctly, you will never have to leave your couch again for a beer.

Of course, eventually nature will call. So, we might need to invent some sort of contraption for that. But these are minor details in the ongoing quest to develop the perfect NCAA Basketball viewing experience.

Next up - Pizza Delivery Speed Dial button on your TV Remote!

Is that the beauty scale or the richter scale?

Hot Enough? Dating Site Mimics Studio 54
By DANIELA FLORES
AP

TRENTON, N.J. (March 21) - Jason Pellegrino (an 8.2 on the attractiveness scale) says the problem with Internet dating services is not enough really hot-looking people. So he and a business partner have created HotEnough.org, a sort of online version of Studio 54, the exclusive '70s disco where gaining admission was a pitiless Darwinian exercise.

A New Kind of Velvet Rope

Mike Derer, AP
Jason Pellegrino says he and his business partner came up with the idea after concluding that most dating sites attract a lot of brave and desperate people, but not particularly attractive ones.
Talk About It: Post Thoughts
The site, HotEnough.org, is for "fit, good-looking" people.

Prospective members must submit pictures and must be rated an 8 or higher by people already in the club. Once they're in, they are permitted to e-mail other "hotties" for $9.95 a month.

"It's definitely hard to get through that rope, but once you're in, you're in and you're part of the party," Pellegrino said. "But you know there's going to be a lot of people outside waiting."

The 33-year-old Nutley resident said he and his partner, Sean Cohen of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., created the site after concluding that Internet dating sites attract a lot of brave and desperate people, but not particularly attractive ones.

A few months after its launch, membership is just under 1,000, Pellegrino said. In the beginning, only 8 percent of those who applied made the grade, but now about 25 percent of applicants do, he said.

Candidates must send in three pictures, including one full-body shot. Active members rate the pictures online without knowing anything else about the people in them.

"People can say that the site is shallow, they can say it's superficial, but I think we're all a bit superficial when it comes to dating," Pellegrino said.

One of the "hotties" accepted into the club is Jimmy Ziomek, a 29-year-old from New York City who rated an 8.2. Ziomek, who said his job in real estate keeps him from going out much, is 5-foot-11, has blue eyes and light brown hair and goes to the gym four to five times a week.

Using HotEnough.org "saves time and it does the searching for you, narrows it down to the people that you are interested in meeting," he said.

Among those who didn't make the cut was Jeanette Ponder, a 28-year-old Internet blogger from East Orange who considered herself an 8 or 9. She said she applied because she thought it would make a good story.

"I got rated at like 5.7," she said. "When you put yourself out there in any situation, even if it's one which you're not taking seriously, it's going to sting."

But she also reasoned: "You cannot make a relationship by being arm candy."

Like it or not, HotEnough.org operates according to a principle that watchers of the singles scene have long recognized: "People tend to end up with partners who match them in physical attractiveness," said Margaret Clark, a professor of psychology at Yale University.

Pellegrino, whose day job as a project manager for a construction company in Maplewood leaves little time for dating, is 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, has brown eyes and a bright smile, goes to the gym at least three times a week and gets his stylish haircut touched up every two weeks. He was happy to make it onto his own Web site.

"I see myself more in like the 7.5 range," he said.


This is reality staring at me in my face. Every time I start to think that just perhaps there might be someone out there in the world for me, I read something that only confirms my suspicions about the visciousness of the dating scene.

No thanks. I'd rather be lonely than rated like a bad musical act on Dick Clark.

By the way, I'm an 11.

BLORK!

I feel bloated. The kind of bloated that makes you sit around doing nothing. I don't want to write. I don't want to be creative. I don't want to work. I don't want to sing. I don't want to eat. I don't want to exercise. I don't want to read. I don't want to be entertained. I just want to sit here and exist.

Its given rise to a new theory of how Dungeons and Dragons actually rules the universe. You see, in Dungeons and Dragons you create characters and send them off with the idea that they will battle the evil dragons of this world. And they try, with mixed success and believe themselves to be quite good actually until something bigger and nastier comes along. During their fantastic quests they learn things and gain experience, collect rewards for their daring, and create a reputation as either a hero of some renown or a loser thug thief of some cunning and a nasty temper. This pretty much describes the real world. D & D was Second Life thirty years before Second Life was invented.

But... (and this is where the new theory comes in)... what do these characters do when they're not running around doing feats of derring-do, when their creator is not actively using them to rid the world of evil? I imagine they hang out with their buds, think about that castle they've been meaning to buy and fix up, maybe wench a little and dream of one day settling down and having a brood, watch the jousting tournaments with their friends and bet on the outcome of the field of 64 brave knights (65 if you count the ritual slaughter to decide who will make the final spot in the jousting tournament). Or perhaps they spend their time in ritual replenishment, fasting, prayer, and arguing over what sort of golden gild leaf they should use on the altar of their deity. Whatever the outcome, I imagine life between adventures is probably pretty tedious and an incredible letdown after fighting dragons.

Live life on the edge the entire time? Nobody can play that much D & D. And besides, without any sleep even the best gamers quickly lose focus. Not to mention the fact that you can quickly scrape off the paint of your best 20 sided dice through overuse - and someday you're going to need that sucker nice and fresh for when you take on the evil prince and his dominions trying to conquer the world.

So, you see, perhaps its a good thing to let your life lie fallow every once in a while, to rest up your weary self, sharpen your sword, wipe the blood off your shield, and reshoe your horse. Bigger and harder battles are yet to come.

When you put down the dice and the character sheet for a while, remember, you're doing your creations a favor. Just as our creator does for us. Someday soon, we will be asked to prepare for battle - and then I hope you have your dice in hand and a good supply of root beer and pizza.

Stock up, the battle is coming!

GO! NOW! DO NOT WALK!

Andy has an absolutely BRILLIANT post over at Mile from the Beach. Click on the Mile From The Beach link on the side of the page and GO NOW! You will not regret it!

Live Life Off The Wall

[1st Verse]
When The World Is On Your Shoulder
Gotta Straighten Up Your Act And Boogie Down
If You Can't Hang With The Feeling
Then There Ain't No Room For You This Part Of Town
'Cause We're The Party People Night And Day
Livin' Crazy That's The Only Way

[Chorus]
So Tonight Gotta Leave That Nine To Five Upon The Shelf
And Just Enjoy Yourself
Groove, Let The Madness In The Music Get To You
Life Ain't So Bad At All
If You Live It Off The Wall
Life Ain't So Bad At All (Live Life Off The Wall)
Live Your Life Off The Wall (Live It Off The Wall)

[2nd Verse]
You Can Shout Out All You Want To
'Cause There Ain't No Sin In Folks All Getting Loud
If You Take The Chance And Do It
Then There Ain't No One Who's Gonna Put You Down
'Cause We're The Party People Night And Day
Livin' Crazy That's The Only Way

Off The Wall
Michael Jackson

When I was in Fifth Grade I was a complete and total nerd - a lovable nerd, to be sure, but the signs of nerd abuse I was about to experience in Jr. High were already beginning to rear their ugly heads. I was not cool. No way. No how. Until Michael Jackson saved my life.

One day, as I was sitting in the school yard playing with my Star Wars action figures and imagining worlds far away and adventures that would one temper my future novels, I heard this infectious beat coming from the kick ball grounds. All of the black kids were over there listening to some new songs on a portable radio. I picked up my toys and came over - starting to hover nearby. The black kids were going crazy for the soul/rock type jams coming from the radio. I asked one of them who was on the radio and they looked at me like I was crazy.

"Man, that's Michael."

"Michael who?"

"Michael Jackson."

"Turn it up."

Soon I found myself not only listening to Michael Jackson's newest album, Off The Wall, but I was able to sing along to the tunes. They were jamming. To this day, I still think this is Michael's best album. In fact, pretty much after Thriller, I stopped listening to him.

Suddenly, I was alright with the black kids. They took me under their wings, taught me how to dance, taught me how to groove, and watched my back. One kid, Dwight, was the most popular kid in my school. We didn't necessarily become friends, but we enjoyed Michael Jackson together. During the school talent show that the fifth graders put on, I even joined the black kids on stage doing a dance routine to Off The Wall. It was the highlight of my Cool Career. For the rest of the school year, the other kids left me alone.

I was thinking about that this weekend not as a reminder of bad times or safety measures but in the way that I loved to groove to this song. I was cool once. This weekend, I was cool again.

It took me a while to get over my own self-induced repression. It took me a day or so to readjust to the sort of wild joy that I remember from my youth. I admit to being quite guilty for a while. I kept making half baked promises to God and I couldn't understand why He was upset with me. And then, all of a sudden, it occurred to me. God was giving me this weekend as a present of pure joy.

Anyone who knows my friend Russ knows that he is fun. All the time. When we get together for our weekends, we get more done in three or four days than most people get done in two weeks. This weekend in Vegas I managed to go to a mountain resort, win money, shop for two hours at Sam's Club, sit in on a toddler's gymnastics class, play with kids in a park, eat at a Benihana's knock off restaurant, have ice cream, catch flying shrimp in my mouth, and squeeze in time to watch some basketball highlights. And that was just on one of the four days I was in Vegas. I spent money like it was going out of style - treating to dinners and movies and tipping extravagently - and the best part was that none of it was my money, or at least, it hadn't been at the start of the trip. ;)

I smiled. And I felt elated. And I didn't grumble but once during the entire four days (three hours to get out of a parking lot is a little excessive even for 160,000 NASCAR fans). I came home feeling refreshed and renewed and ready to tackle whatever challenge might come.

Perhaps there is another point to the whole Prodigal Son story that we keep missing. Perhaps there is a need to go away in order to come back. Perhaps joy is best expressed only after a traveler returns. Perhaps life is lived best off the wall.

Blacked Out

Last Thursday night I flew off to Las Vegas. That was the last thing I remember until Monday evening when I returned to San Francisco.

As is usual with a vacation, the more fun you have the more screwed up things get while you're away. I've walked back into a series of complications in my personal, religious, and business lives. These things will take time to sort out and straighten up.

But it was all worth it... I imagine... since I can't remember anything I did in Las Vegas. So don't ask.

More Later...