the fricken coop

Why we're all not smoking craters by now.

2012-01-03T15:33:00.001-08:00

i heard a man say again today that there are many paths to God. He believed that maybe in four or five generations that Man was going to get it right. We were all working toward harmony apparently. Aside from this being completely antithetical to the Bible... it's Pollyannish Denial on a Psychotic scale. This guy cannot be watching the same news i am.

All day long, the more i thought about what he said, the angrier i got. i let it slide at the time because i had already gone toe to toe with this guy a couple of weeks ago and i had already gone head to head with another member of the group this morning and i'm trying to only pick on one heresy a day. Besides that, we were in a Bible Study with almost twenty guys, i wanted to see what, if anything, someone else might say in response.

Here at home though and all day at work, the man's words and my anger have been bouncing around...bouncing around, sparring, jabbing, testing defenses and poking each other in tentative ways. It was just a feeling at first but the punches got harder and sharper, faster and more wicked until just a few minutes ago when the ground beneath my anger suddenly crystalized into perfect, fiery, resonating clarity...

Jesus. Was. God!

That statement should echo in your head with white, hot thunder!

He was not a nice teacher, a guru, a life coach, an energy force, a flying spaghetti monster or your homey. He was GOD, YHWH! The Creator of Everything! Not the Ultimate Power in the Universe! He made the Universe! On a whim!! To say that God came, as a peasant; a pimply, pathetic, Jewish peasant; did what we could never do and did it perfectly and in perfect humility, died FOR US and then said, "Finished. No one has to do anything more now to be right with God. Just believe i did this." To say all that might be true but it's just one way of many for us to achieve Heaven or Nirvana or whatever you want to call it, is to walk right up to YHWH and open hand slap him in the face! You have dissed God! You mock his deed. You mock his love. You mock his compassion. You mock his mercy. You mock his grace. You mock GOD! How dare you!!

The more clear this thought became to me the angrier i got! The more i envisioned people, casting judgment on GOD for being so narrow minded as to say He is the only Way, (How intolerant. How exclusive. How dare he! How dare He? He's GOD!! That's how dare He!) the more furious i became. The more furious i became, the more i thought about how my anger must have paled next to the angels' and the Father Himself as Jews and Gentiles alike did just that to Jesus moments before the cross finished God's most amazingly loving, transforming, totally selfless work. The more i thought about this Jesus stopping all of Heaven from wreaking perfect justice on the earth at one insult, one more spit in the face after another, after another, after another, the more i fell in love with this Jesus! He didn't retaliate. He didn't even speak. He just took it. God let's us insult Him. God let's us bitchslap him! All in the hope that someday, somehow, we may realize what we've been doing and beg his forgiveness. How can you not love this God?? How can we not warn them??

Why i'm excited that i went bald: Part One

2011-11-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

Two punks switching the spark plug wires of a '79 Suzuki GS 550 as a prank.

Jesus telling the rich young ruler to go home, sell all he owns and give it to the poor.

Going bald.

What do these things have in common?

Love.

The point was made to me that our fears are fundamentally linked to our idols. i fear confrontation, i fear pain, i fear failure because my god is comfort, security and people thinking well of me. When i perform, it is not just for someone else's benefit. i can't even lead worship without serving the god of praise for myself. That's how sick i am, how entwined with the temple prostitutes i have been. i want people to be wowed by me. i want to be significant. i want people to think i'm special. It's why i have to prove i'm right when i argue and it's why, when i argue, i try and use humor to keep it friendly. i learned to be moral because the people i respected valued that and it kept me out of trouble with my folks and a righteous God who demanded it. Heck, it's why i blog.

Well, that's only partially true. i would do this even if no one read it. But that's a different issue. But it's why i check it every day to see if someone left a comment.

When i was a kid, i was not cool. i'm still not cool but i'm a middle aged, white guy going to seed, and a lot of that pressure is off. But back when being cool was cool, i was not. Nor was i able to figure out what made one cool. When i tried to be cool, i failed miserably and actually became more of a laughing stock. Eventually i moved and thought this would help, no one would know my past, i could reinvent myself. It might have, a little, but nature shows through, a dweeb by any other name still reeks of fail. By stroke of grace, i was taken as a disciple of the Keith. The Keith was cool, you could tell because he had to be bussed to a different school much further away because he'd already been kicked out of ours. The Keith didn't care what people thought of him. This, i learned, was the epitome of cool. i began to stop caring what people thought of me too. i grew my hair long. i got an earring. Cuz that's what us guys that didn't care what you thought of us did.

If your irony sensors are going off it's cuz you are well versed in Greek Tragedy. Yes, i cultivated an entire personality around the disdain for what the world held dear and celebrated my freedom from society and what "they" thought. Only, i did care. i cared what the Keith thought and i cultivated an aura of apathy carefully because i realized i gained a certain amount of respect from it. On senior day, when other sophs were being called out of class to be tormented and hazed, i stalked by, bored scowl, pony tail, knee high moccasins and trenchcoat, unmolested. i was not loved, but i was left alone. It was a runners up prize i would accept because secretly i feared i was not lovable anyhow. Not by those i wanted to be loved by. Many other folk who weren't as cool as they wished thought i was kinda cool. My idol devalued the love i of friends i truly did have and caused me to focus on those who would never accept me as one of theirs so i learned to devalue them. i was worthless, my idol made my own friends worthless and my hurt made everyone else worthless.

Cynicism runs strong in my family.

After i graduated i discovered motorcycles. i became obsessed with the idea of becoming not just a motorcyclist, one who rode a bike, but a biker. It had to be a lifestyle, a personality. The black leather, the two foot long mohawk, saddlebags and a horizon became my dream and i wasted days, months, years on it. Really, i have the sketches to prove it.

i used to have an expression, "God likes to kick out crutches." i formed this idea around the concept that God want's me to lean on Him alone. A crutch is anything that i use instead of Him. While essentially accurate, i think, it is a false portrayal of Him and His motives. When Jesus kicked a crutch, the person walked, not fell down. The ten commandments mention pretty early on that God is a jealous God. He won't tolerate that which is rightfully His being given to another. We often portray this as petty. God is this angry guy who gets tic'd off at being dissed. Or he's some kind of megalomaniac who thinks that it's all about Him. What does He think He is? God? i know, right?

But what if He's a husband who isn't too keen on sharing His wife with her abusive lovers? What if He's a father who doesn't sit idle as his kid takes up a violently destructive and dehumanizing drug habit?

The first thing that had to go was the motorcycles. My first one was sabotaged. After that, i could never spend enough to keep it running for long. My second stayed running just long enough for my brother-in-arms Wayward to earn the right to kick off society's training wheels and then it died too. My third bike is another post altogether. Every time i tried to take step one in fulfilling my dream, they died and i became the dangerous image of a two year old's tantrum in a one hundred and sixty pound monkey frame. Eventually i got the message and one by one they all disappeared from my yard.

Around this time i started noting that my once enviously luxurious mane was becoming a partially shucked corn cob. There weren't enough vines clinging to the pumpkin to merit a rake anymore and eventually i did what every self respecting man ought to do at that point, i got out the clippers and finished the job. It felt weird, it felt naked. i was exposed for what i was: a pencil necked dweeb.

When Jesus told the rich young ruler to go home and sell all his possessions, we are told that he went away sorrowful, for he had many possessions. i had given up what God told me to give up, my freedom, my dream, my identity, both metaphorically in getting married, and physically in getting rid of the bikes. i was obeying, and yet, i went away bitter. i wonder, did any of the disciples follow Jesus around with a bad attitude half the time? One that had given up everything to follow Jesus and was feeling like he'd gotten the short end of the deal?

Probably one, Judas. Fortunately for me, God wasn't done with me yet...

The following are excerpts from the Official Debriefing of the Great Pumpkin Blackout

2011-11-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

Saturday, Oct 29, 2011, 0900 hours *: It begins snowing.

1200 hrs: the power goes out in Elwood Station. Several attempts to alert Peco are made between now and 1400 hrs. Most result in curse-laden, one-sided conversations with automated answering system.

1400 hrs: an oak tree with ants in its pants gives up its tenuous grip on life and falls on power lines across the street. Peco is alerted.

1900 hrs: neighbor Brian asks to borrow cell phone to call wife because his house has become an indiscriminate conductor of electricity. Scruffy goes to investigate.

1915 hrs: Observing Poltergeist-like effects of rampant electricity Scruffy dials 911.

1917 hrs: Scruffy evacuates Elwood Station. Fire department arrives for the first time. Peco is alerted that situation may be somewhat more serious than a power outage and if they could find the time, there presence at the scene would be appreciated.

2000 hrs: Nala the Pitbull is evacuated from Elwood Station. All three cottages are believed to be empty. Between now and 2200 coffee is drank, jokes are told, firefighters wander back and forth under downed tree and smoking wires and remark at Peco's lack of presence.

22oo hrs: Peco scout pick-up truck arrives on scene to assess situation. Peco realizes that situation may be somewhat more serious than a power outage and if they could find the time, a bucket truck and larger crew's presence would be appreciated. Fire department gets bored cuz nothing is actually on fire yet and goes home.

2300 hrs: Barely buried Verizon cable in yard in front of neighbor Brian's house begins to arc in dramatic, Chinese New Year sort of way. Witnesses stand around and prepare to leap into postures of helplessness if something catches fire. Two fire departments show up to aid in helpless bystanding. It is realized at this time that neighbor Mike is in a somnolent state in the third cottage and probably had to douse an oven fire sometime earlier in the day. He is evacuated.

2310 hrs: Verizon wire realizes that no one really appreciates it's efforts and gives up fireworks display. Firemen resume postures of boredom and tell anecdotes of how close they were to going to bed before this call went out.

0100 Sunday October 30th: Peco bucket truck arrives on scene.

0110 hrs: Peco has wires isolated and shutdown. Crisis is averted six hours after nick of time. Fire department departs again.

0115 hrs: Peco removes electric meter from Elwood Station

0116 hrs: Scruffy Mynxbane is asleep.

2000 hrs: Eagles play Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football. Elwood station settles in to watch dramatic fiasco under generator power.

2100 hrs: Peco arrives to fix wires.

2300 hrs: Eagles surprise everyone by winning. Peco surprises everyone by finishing wires and leaving without restoring meter to Elwood Station.

1300 hrs Monday, October 31st: Peco's automated answering system is alerted that Elwood Station is still without power.

1400 hrs: Asplundh tree company comes and removes remains of tree from phone lines.

1200 hrs Tuesday, November 1st: after several less than satisfying conversations with automated answering system, Scruffy attempts to install meter his own dang self.

1201 hrs: Scruffy realizes power is turned off at street.

1700 hrs: Peco Sub-contractor comes to restore power, discovers lock on transformer. Contact is finally made with real, flesh and blood human being at Peco. Real, flesh and blood human notifies the sub-contractor that they will restore power when they receive permission from Fire Marshall. Sub-contractor wishes Frickens luck and leaves.

1730 hrs: Scruffy leaves voicemail for County Fire Marshall since it is after hours.

0800 hrs Wednesday, November 2nd: Beth at County Fire Marshall's office notifies Scruffy that their office knows not of what Peco speaketh. They have nothing to do with Frickens' fire or Frickens' power. Suggests perhaps local code enforcer was party Peco meant.

0801 hrs: Scruffy calls Township Code Enforcer's office and learns that Code Enforcer has been on vacation for last week. Code Enforcer's office wishes Scruffy luck and suggests trying Police department.

0802 hrs: Scruffy calls Hugelberg Police non-emergency line. Learns that local police know not of what Peco speaketh. Police suggest local fire chief. They wish Scruffy luck and give Scruffy cell phone number of Chief Jim.

0803 hrs: Scruffy leaves message for Chief Jim.

0900 hrs: Chief Jim returns Scruffy's call and notifies him that he knows not of what Peco speaketh. Suggests it may have been under chief on scene. Volunteers to make some calls and call back.

1700 hrs: Scruffy gets bored of waiting and calls Chief Jim, leaves message.

2000 hrs: Chief Jim calls Scruffy back and suggests that he get an independent electrician to check wires and call Peco.

2100 hrs: Scruffy secures Dr. Steve and the Electric Mayhem to inspect his wiring following morning at 0800 hrs.

0715 hrs Thursday, November 3rd: Dr. Steve and Electric Mayhem come and inspect wiring. Call in independent Independent Underwriter.

1130 hrs: Independent Underwriter arrives and quickly okays all wiring. Notifies Scruffy that once he turns in work ticket, Peco should get it in mail twenty-four to forty-eight hours from tomorrow. Scruffy expresses sarcastic elation. Independent Underwriter leaves copy of ticket, wishes Scruffy luck and suggests calling Peco again.

1200 hrs: Scruffy calls Peco and is put on hold.

1230 hrs: Scruffy makes contact with what is initially thought to be real, live person at Peco, explains measures taken to enforce safety, explains efforts made to contact Fire Marshall, explains that Fire Marshall has no jurisdiction in situation. Supposed real, live person at Peco mechanically reads note that says they will restore power when they receive call from Fire Marshall and wishes Scruffy good day.

1240 hrs: Alone in Zeke the pick-up truck, Scruffy marvels at madness of modern society.

1241 hrs: Scruffy calls Beth at Fire Marshall's office again. She suggests that Hugelberg must have local Fire Marshall and forwards Scruffy's call.

1242 hrs: Scruffy is put through to Hugelberg Township building, asks for fire marshall and has call forwarded again.

1243 hrs: Beth at County Fire Marshall answers forwarded call. Scruffy and Beth together marvel at madness of modern society. Beth forwards Scruffy to Fire Marshall Nick.

1244 hrs: Fire Marshall Nick patiently explains to Scruffy in terms and pace designed to educate turnip that he has no jurisdiction in case, that Hugelberg has no fire marshall and suggests Scruffy call local chief, begins looking for chief's number. Scruffy supplies number of Chief Jim. Scruffy thanks Fire Marshall Nick for his time to which Fire Marshall Nick says, "well, I didn't want to just wish you luck and hang up." "Why not?" i ask, "everyone else does."

1250 hrs: Scruffy calls Chief Jim again. Explains whole sad saga in four part harmony and things like that. Chief Jim offers to try and call Peco, possibly just to get rid of Scruffy.

1345 hrs: Bubba, who is out by road in front yard cutting up what's left of original offending oak tree's carcass, calls Scruffy inside house to say that there's a Peco truck out front.

1345...still: Scruffy hunts down Peco guy in neighbor Mike's front yard. Peco guy begins to explain that he cannot turn power on without a call from...without formalities or niceties Scruffy displays work ticket from Independent Underwriter. Peco guy examines ticket and says he'll make some calls.

1400 hrs Thursday, November 2nd, 122 hours after losing power: Power is restored to Elwood Station. There is much rejoicing.

More than i ever wanted to know about how my coffee pot works.

2011-11-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

The electrical distribution system is not a river. Power doesn't just flow one direction along a line and terminate in your Mr. Coffee with the built in clock as a perfectly heated cup of joe. It is a grid. Power can flow any direction on it from any plant that is producing it to any house tapped into the distribution lines. When the lines in front of your house get severed by a seventy-five year old oak with ants in its pants that decides it can't take it anymore one night in a snowstorm, the power doesn't just stop, it finds ways around the break and keeps on flowing through power lines on the next street over trying to get to your Mr. Coffee with the built in clock. If however those severed distribution lines somehow come in contact with something else that will take the power flowing in them, like say...oh, a ground wire that services three little cottages hidden back off the road, the electricity will say, "this way guys! i found a way out!"

You know ground wires, if you've ever wired an outlet or an overhead lamp or installed a ceiling fan, they're the naked wires next to the black and white ones. They have no insulation so they can catch any rascally stray electricity that has escaped your Mr. Coffee with the built-in clock and before it can do something nasty like cause a fire, the ground wire gives it a better place to go. Specifically an eight foot rod staked into the ground just outside your house. Hence, "grounding" wires.

So let's review. Distribution wires. Severed by oak tree with ants in its pants. Naked ground wires and the last little fun fact of electrical distribution... at any time those wires outside your house have 4000 to 46000 Volts of electricity racing through them. In case you don't know, your house was made to have 240 Volts flow into it. None of which, if things are going well, should be in the ground wires.

i and a score of firemen stood in my driveway two Saturdays ago watching as 4000 to 46000 Volts poured into our little neighborhood through the very wires that were supposed to protect it. Whenever i got too close to the middle house, the one on the shortest wire and therefore taking the brunt of the assault my hands would begin to tingle and hurt. There was so much electricity coursing through the ground itself and the four inches of snow piling up on it that it ran up the metal downspout and lit the Christmas lights on my neighbor's gutter. There was nothing to do. You can't pour water on an electrical fire, unless you want to know what the inside of a lightbulb feels like. You can't just cut the wires because the power has to go somewhere and it's more than happy to go into the ground through you. Peco (the power company) had been called but i guess they were busy on this night of falling trees and skidding cars. At one point around eleven o'clock a buried cable in my neighbor's yard had finally had enough and let go in a geyser of sparks that fused the mud around it into glass. i thought it was the beginning of the end and yet it was quite pretty for all that. It eventually quieted back down and darkness reigned again. My eyes played tricks on me as i strained for the tell-tale glimmer and flicker of the first tongues of a flame. How much more could these highly flammable bundles of sticks take?

Around one in the morning, the Cavalry came in their orange rubber overalls and medieval hardhats and queer amish style beards. i can still say "queer" without meaning "gay" right? Well, i will 'cause it's the right word. They assessed the situation, drove back down to the end of the street and within fifteen minutes, the youngest member of their three man team walked along the street, methodically touching the wires with a long fiberglass pole with a thing-a-ma-bob on the end. Obviously doing the new guy job of "here, take this stick and go touch the wires and tell me if they're dead." He didn't light up or fall down dead so i led a team of the firemen back up the driveway and into the house where they didn't take their boots off at the carpet, shined lights on everything and sniffed in a meaningful way and declared everything "okay." i thanked them profusely and when they were gone, i started getting ready for bed... a task only minutes before i thought i may never do in this house again. The last thing i saw before welcoming the sleep of the exhausted was a man in orange rubbers, a medieval hardhat and a queer little beard taking the electric meter off of my house. "Just a precaution," he assured me. That night, he could have said it was because he was a lab mouse bent on world domination and i would have wished him luck and dropped off before clicking the "k."

The significance of that act would become much more clear over the next five days.

A fricken guide to crisis management: Snowstorms, Tree-falls, Blackouts, Back-feeds and Pit-bulls.

2011-11-03T18:10:00.000-07:00

My neighbor had his christmas lights on two days before Halloween. There's a lot of ways one could react to that, disgust, delight, denial. We chose to run around like frickens with our heads cut off and call 911.

It was also snowing that day. Two days before Halloween. You might not like that sort of thing. You might feel it's just wrong. It's far too early for snow. Turns out you would be in good company if you hold that opinion. The Ents don't much care for it either. Y'see, in October, a good many trees still have their leaves. Thick canopies of big, shovel shaped leaves, perfect for catching and holding a sticky, wet snow. As anyone who's ever shoveled early and late snows can attest, that stuff is heavy. There were more disarticulated limbs and trunks scattered around this county last weekend than after a gas explosion at a manikin factory. i actually heard a dead tree snickering at a live one, "welcome to my world, sucker."

One tree that didn't fair too well was a great, red oak at the edge of the road right out in front of Elwood Station. It went down between one and two on Saturday, scythed through the power lines and was caught and held by the phone, tv and internet cables underneath; its body forming a low arch over our road. Side note: apparently our the entertainment industry is far more concerned with you receiving their product than the power companies. We had already lost power an hour or two before and so didn't think much of it other than to remark how dumb the motorists that still drove under it were.

Supposing this outage to be a protracted one, i went and got my folk's generator which i wired directly into my power panel to give us a few lights and keep the fridges and freezer running. Heat was coming from the woodstove on Bubba's side of the station. Dinner came from Vinnie's II pizzeria and we were just settling in for a long winter's evening when there came a frantic knocking at the door.

"Dude,canIborrowaphone,mine'sdeadandIgotasmokesituationinmyhouse,sparksshootingoutofevery outletandmyfrontdoorshockedme!" It was Brian, my next door neighbor. Normally a rather logy fellow. It seemed odd that he would jump the ditch and fight the thorn bushes i'd allowed to grow up between our houses to come see us but that night he seemed particularly energized and when he realized he didn't know his wife's work number he thanked me and ran home. i thought it odd that if a man thought his house was on fire that the first person he wanted to call was his wife so i put some boots on and battled the thorn bushes and hopped the ditch to see what kind of fire wives handle better than fire departments.

That's when i saw the christmas lights. Did i mention our power had been out since midday? It bears repeating, our power had been out since midday. This was seven o'clock at night but there were the christmas lights, glowing faintly on the gutter like something out of Poltergeist. While my neighbor put his kids in his car and started shuttling Rottweiler puppies to them and full grown Rotties yelped and shot out the door like, forgive me, scalded dogs, i followed the sizzling noises to the side of his house where the grounding rod from his power panel was glowing, arcing and smoking. That's when i pushed the panic button.

It might be the second or third time i've called 911. Next time, i gotta remember to take a deep breath first, get the facts in an orderly array in my head and THEN call. Yeah, gotta keep that in mind.

At some point it occurred to me that our two houses were fed off the same pole. So i hopped the ditch and fought the thorn bushes back to Elwood Station. i could hear the hissing-sizzling before i even turned the corner and saw the glow from my own grounding rod. Having already hit my own panic button, hitting it again didn't really do anything satisfactory. So i killed and unplugged the generator, ran upstairs, totally forgetting to take my shoes off before the carpet, and hit my family's panic buttons for them. "GrabsomethingwarmandgetoutofthehouseNOW!!" Totally cool under pressure, that's me.

About this time i remembered Nala. For those who don't know, Elwood Station is a twin so to speak. We live in the new addition and Bubba and the Bubbakins live in the old, original cottage. The Bubbakins were at their mother's. Bubba had gone to help a friend with a tree limb and torso problem so that just left one scared and freaked out pit-bull in the house. Normally she's as sweet and fun loving as the next seventy pound puppy but it was dark, there were men running around her house and pounding on doors and who knows if her senses could pick up the electricity coursing through the ground that night. Have you ever opened up the door to a completely darkened house where you know there's a freaked out pit-bull? i stopped reading Cujo as a kid somewhere in the first chapter, cuz i knew i didn't want to know what that would be like. But there i was, doing just that. With visions of white, shiny teeth and torn flesh i ventured in but she only retreated, growling just enough to let me know not to get too close. She was so scared, i couldn't even coax her out with pizza. Extra sausage and bacon! i know, right? i made several attempts but it was no use. Resolving to just throw wide the doors and let her escape into the night at the first sign of fire, i gave up.

The family was evacuated to the house of friends. Brian had finished de-dogging his own house. Bubba was on his way back to get Nala. Sirens wailed in the night from every direction and a long disused and unhooked dog fence sent plumes of sizzling steam into the snowy night. All that i knew to do had been done. So i stood in my driveway and watched to see if the houses would burn...

Extreme makeover, soul edition

2011-10-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

If you've read this or this or even that... on second thought, don't read that. That's depressing as Christmas in Tehran. But if you were already one of the six or seven saps who subjected their sorry psyches to that or this or this then you don't only deserve, desire and demand indemnity but the theme of this thank-you is gonna thump you in the thalamus like a theatric thaumaturge. So buckle up space cadets it's time to go plaid! For everyone else, i am endeavoring to make these posts more than just a quick and quickly forgotten laugh. In all seriousness, you should receive something for your investment of time and so i promise to impart what wisdom has been imparted to me. So buckle up space cadets it's time to go plaid!

i thank God that he sent me here to the Pickyernose mountains to work on this ramshackle shack.

We will pause a moment to allow the saps time to say, "Whut?" and then we'll pause for a moment longer so they may say, "Did he just say what I thought he said??" Everyone caught up? We will continue.

Yes, i said it. i even wrote it. Cuz it's true. i have been brought to the place where i can finally say, this has been a good thing. How can this be? How did this happen? The answer to that cannot be told with anything less than a six pack of Guinness, a campfire and an entire evening but i shall endeavor to sum it up like this...

Renovation. Whilst i was isolated and alone, trying and mostly failing to make something beautiful and new of this poor, dilapidated, neglected, excuse of a house here in the Pennslobovian Northeast, God has been quietly making something beautiful and new of my poor, dilapidated, neglected, excuse of a life. He lifted me up and set me level again where i had gone askew. He has been peeling back the siding and exposing the rot and rodents. He has been pulling out the broken, useless plumbing and fitting me with a working faith that taps into the Living Water and quickly confesses out the crap. He has replaced the dingy paneling with His white righteousness so that i look around my soul now and see Him reflecting off of every surface in the glorious light of His new fixtures.

What can i give you dear reader other than a pick-up truck load of colorful metaphors, amorous analogies and starry eyed similes? The Truth. The main thing that changed, the central focus of all this renovation has been direct, constant and total immersion in His Word. In my case, having no form of entertainment or distraction outside of an ipod and a laptop, i have filled my life with sermons and from them, i have been broken, exposed, healed and learned to start praying more, read the Word more and even to keep a journal. i've come from attacking the Word to get answers to my life and my questions, from study for selfish purposes and to learn about me and my plight, to a place where i study to learn about Him! To my surprise, the more i learn, the more i want to learn! The slaking of my thirst for God has only produced more thirst! i now know the temptation of the monastery. To set oneself apart from the world and live only to study and meditate on the Truth and beauty of the Gospel is an intoxicating drug. But to do that would be to totally betray and ignore everything i'm learning. This joy was meant to be shared. Just as the Old Testament was symbol and story to point to Jesus, the church, Christ's body is here on earth now to be symbol and story pointing not only back to Him and what He's done but ahead to what He's going to do!

And that's where the trial now lays. The roles of refuge and furnace have reversed. Where once i came here in spite and with one foot aimed towards home, i now turn towards my home and my joy is tempered with fear. Fear that i won't measure up, that i'll fall back into my old patterns, that i'll be tempted to give up, that it will be too hard to bring this simple faith to a world so entrenched in rebellion that it calls the Creator a pretender. How will i keep this fragile candle lit in a world that loves darkness?

Turns out you can find the answer to that question in the Word too.

Pennslobovian Prophet Pulls Plug on Post

2011-10-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thornhurst, Pa- Few people read it, fewer still will remember it but in the waning days of last summer, a blog written by the unremarkable hack known to some as Scruffy Mynxbane and to at least two pitiable children as "dad," promised special revelation. Indeed, in a post on prophecy that has proven to be less than prophetic, the writer threatened to reveal "What God is Still Telling Us?" As if his temerity was not subject to the safety belts of common sense nor even the DOT approved cranial protection of a good crash helmet, he even went so far as to hint, some say, declare, that the message to the world at large and at present was this, "Not much." Since that time fractions of fearful followers have sat at their computers with bated breath awaiting the promised revelation.

One month.

Another couple of weeks.

Is this some kind of sick joke? Did Scruffy Mynxbane think the world would move on and forget his bold prediction? Did something horrible befall the pathetic prophet? Secretly hoping for the latter, we came to this ramshackle hovel in the woods of eastern Pennslobovia to get the truth, straight from the horse's ass.

We arrived in late evening and after peeking in several windows, let ourselves in. The shower was running and having had that lawsuit before, we took a look around while we waited for a more appropriate time to do the interview. There were tools everywhere. A radio was playing a preacher from Chicago and there was an open laptop computer at a makeshift desk in the kitchen. Since it was already open, our lawyers assured us it wouldn't be illegal to peruse the open windows. As luck would have it, it was open to a new post that apparently Mr. Mynxbane had been writing before we arrived. There was a title and nothing else. The title read, "What God is still telling us?"

Exiting the bathroom in a stolen Motel 6 towel and some wool socks, the dripping blogger appeared surprised and indignant. After explaining our presence and snapping some incriminating photos he reluctantly agreed to answer some questions.

Knot Gnews: How long have you been blogging?

Wet guy in towel: Do i really have to do this?

KG: We'll ask the questions if you please. What makes you an authority on religion?

Wet g.i.t.: Who said i was an authority on anything?

KG: Who's interviewing who here, Mr. Mynxbane?

Wet g.i.t.: Well, i guess you are.

KG: That was rhetorical. Do you claim to have prophetic gifts?

Wet g.i.t.: No.

KG: Does God talk to you?

Wet g.i.t.: Well, sort o...

KG: Does He use words?

Wet g.i.t.: No.

KG: Have you ever done hallucinatory drugs?

Wet g.i.t.: i don't see how that...

KG: What's the capitol of Assyria?

Wet g.i.t.: Ninevah.

KG: Will Andy Reid still have a job this time next year?

Wet g.i.t.: Golly, i hope not.

KG: So you admit you wish ill on weight challenged football coaches?

Wet g.i.t.: Well, that's not really what i...

KG: How do you feel about Mitt Romney's acidic remarks in the recent Republican debate?

Wet g.i.t.: i dunno, what'd he say?

KG: Please stick to easily manipulated soundbites, Mr. Mynxbane. How many times a day do you brush your teeth?

Wet g.i.t.: Once.

KG: Are you aware that nine out of ten dentists suggest brushing after every meal?

Wet g.i.t.: Yes.

KG: Yet you still persist in this wantonly self destructive behavior?

Wet g.i.t.: I wouldn't say it's...

KG: Why haven't you written the blogpost entitled "What God is still telling us?" Mr. Mynxbane?

Wet g.i.t.: Oh, um, well, it's kind of embarrassing.

KG: We were hoping so.

Wet g.i.t.: Well, you see, i never actually wrote down the idea i had other than the title and um, i seem to have forgotten what i was going to write about.

KG: mmhmm.

Wet g.i.t.: yep.

KG: That's it?

Wet g.i.t.: Fraid so.

KG: Are you at this time or at any time in the near future considering a scandalous relationship with Monica Belucci?

Wet g.i.t.: Wow. i hadn't really considered it... um, i guess not. No, not really.

So there it is. The whole sad story in black and white. What was God trying to tell us? Was He trying to tell us anything or was it all in the head of a balding, hallucinating, self loathing, half-wit with a seething hatred of obese professional football coaches? The world may never know. But one thing's for certain: after waging words with this erratic oracle, we need to brush the taste out our mouths.

Know for Certain

2011-08-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

“Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

These are words God told Abraham way back in Genesis 15. When one looks backwards at prophecy fulfilled there's not a lot of awe. Our natural reaction is somewhere along the lines of, "duh. I saw the Ten Commandments and/or Prince of Egypt. Who doesn't know that?" What we forget is that, Abraham hadn't seen those movies. He was a little behind with Netflix. He was talking to God and God was telling him what was going to happen in the next four hundred years. Wow. That had to be mind blowing. Too bad God doesn't tell us what's going to happen now, huh? Right?

Only he does. God's always telling us what's going to happen. It's one of the ways He proves He is God, in control and immutable. God never saw something happen and said, "Oh myself! I totally didn't see that coming!" Quite the opposite. He warns us all the time what's coming so that we can be faithful and confident in Him and His power. Setting aside even the prophecies that have yet to be fulfilled, we'll deal with them later, let's go back and look at His words to Abe.

"Why?" you may ask. "This prophecy was fulfilled. There's nothing here for us apart from a bit of history and an object lesson. What can five thousand year old words tell us today?"

First, they tell us that it's pretty freakin' amazing that we have a recorded conversation that occurred five thousand years ago! That's not really my point, it just now hit me how wild that is. Sorry.
This conversation is between God and man. God took some time out of His day to talk to his created child. Don't lose the awe of that! That right there should tell you something vital about His nature. He wants us to know some things. He doesn't want us kept in ignorance. He wants us to know Him and so He talks with us. And what does He say?
"Know for certain..." See, don't wonder, KNOW. I'm gonna tell you.
"...for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there." He knows our plight. Not only that, but He's allowing it...for a while. For you see...
"But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves," He's keeping records and nobody's getting away with anything. You are His and while it may not feel like He's protecting you, He doesn't take lightly anything done to you. Our best guess as to when the Exodus happened was right after Pepi II's reign. A guy named Merenre II, believed to be his son took power for only one year. Archeologists have no idea what happened to him (cause they're not looking on the bottom of the Red Sea) but they know that his reign began something called the First Intermediate Period. A one hundred and fifty year Dark Ages for Egypt that kicked off with famine, plague, looting, chaos, an end of international trade, art and building and civil war. Just the kind of thing you may think would happen after: the Nile turns to blood; having enough of blood, the frogs abandon the Nile for the people's homes; dust becomes gnats all over everyone's faces; God ups the ante and adds flies to the gnats (i'm picturing those freakin greenhead ones that bite you in the center of your back and even draw blood); a disease strikes the Egyptian livestock; boils cover the Egyptians; a hailstorm kills everyone outside; locusts finish off the Egyptian crops; God sends darkness upon the Egyptians, darkness that can be felt (i have no idea what that is but it sounds creepy); all the firstborn who are not protected by the blood of an unspotted, innocent lamb die in one night (remember what i was saying about God telling the same story over and over again?)
"...afterward they will come out with great possessions." God compensates his. That generation, who had known nothing but slavery, oppression and poverty, in one day was free and rich beyond they're dreams.
"You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age." A lot of times, when God really digs you, He spares you from coming tragedy altogether. (Enosh, Noah, Abe, Lot, Elijah, Daniel, the Rapture)
"In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." God's got a plan and a limit. He's merciful. He tolerated the Amorites nonsense for four hundred years until their sin just got so putrid He'd had enough and He wasn't going to let them pollute the rest of the world with it any longer. Many like to paint this as a portrait of God's genocidal nature. Few see it as mercy and justice. What was the final straw for God. How do you know when you've finally pushed Him too far? Seems like a good thing to know right? What is the last recorded act of Pepi II in the Bible? The slaughtering of the Israelite children. What religious rites were the Canaanite's known for? Temple harlotry and child sacrifice. "But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel; indeed he made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had cast out from before the children of Israel." (2 Kings 16) "Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire?" (Ezek 16) Is it really psychopathic genocide to wipe out a people who kill their own kids? Would you want to live next door to them? Go to school with them? Have them serve on your town council?

As sexual promiscuity and perversion become the norm and abortion statistics become more staggering and sad, one (one being me) wonders how much more of US will God take?

Next post: What is God still telling us? or How the answer to the last post is probably, "Not Much."

Aren't we Archers?

2011-08-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

³ Children are a heritage from the LORD,
offspring a reward from him.
⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their opponents in court.

(Psalm 127)

If this is true, and that's a rhetorical question, if children are arrows in our hands, then doesn't this mean that it is our responsibility to aim and fire them?

What is worth doing?

2011-08-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

What can a lover of stories

offer the Author of All?

What can a philosopher and crafter of words

give to the Maker of his mouth and mind?

What can a thinker think up

for the All Knowing?

What can the drawer of silly cartoons draw

for the Artist of the skies?

What can one who loves to sit and ponder do

for the One who never stops working, doing and moving?

What can a man who divides his loyalties give

to the God who deserves only pure worship?

What can a man who's sin is always around him

give to the Holy God?

What can a man who loves God but hates life

teach his brother? Teach his sons?

No Compromise

2011-08-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

i had a rambling introduction to this that was longer than some posts i write but deleted it. You should thank me. In its stead and memory i'm going to try an acrobatic maneuver i rarely attempt and should never be performed without a delete button... i'm going to attempt to get right to the point!

Relationships, whether they be political, corporate, nuptial, filial or divine are often full of compromise. That is not the point.

Compromise has two meanings. That is not the point either, but it's operative to the point. The first is for at least two parties to make concessions in order to reach an agreement favorable to both. Or to look at it through ol Ben's spectacles, a compromise is an agreement that leaves both sides equally dissatisfied. This is what most people, i gather, mean when they use the word.

The other meaning is to accept lower standards than are desirable. This, i'm afraid, is what most of us are actually doing. This too is not the point but it is the outstretched arms in which i hope to land the point. There is an alarming span of distance between two people coming together to agree on something and one person avoiding an argument by giving in. Most likely to be followed in true passive-aggressive style, by taking something later on and justifying it as 'owed' to them for being so sacrificial the rest of the time.

Now you may be sitting there thinking, "I don't do this! I'm not like that!" That's because you are the person someone doesn't want to argue with. All jabs aside, it may not be that you are a bully (though i'm not saying you ain't) it could be the compromiser is afraid of the topic or unsure how to broach it. The facts are there could be hundreds of reasons why we just give in and go along and we probably don't fall on just one side of the line or the other, we spend a lot of time on both sides. We may play the potentate at work but live in a congenial shell at home.

So what? We get along. Why should we care? Because if we're accepting lower standards then there must be higher standards in which we Could be living. If i gotta explain that to ya, i won't.

So what closes that alarming gap? What's the crucial difference between the two definitions? How can we stop living lies? How can we explore those higher standards?

Communication. Open. Honest. Communication.

What's in the box?

2011-07-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

It's a tad disconcerting when you're working alone in an empty house one hundred miles from home to look up and see other people in the house with you. i should probably have the radio quieter but i believe music should be felt as much as heard. So, while i think i felt the vibration of a knock, it just as easily could have been a base drum riff. So to paraphrase the ancient ditty, "i was taken by surprise, by a pair of ToNY eyes, while working in the house that day."

His girth blocked much of the living room and he talked about as much as most of his people so i almost didn't notice his wife hiding in his shadow. They were as polite as trespassers can be i suppose and didn't seem inclined to mischief so i attempted to be a gracious host. Not the role for which i was created, i assure you.

He kept me occupied with a steady stream of questions, many of which c

oncerned with whether or not the house had been green before i changed the siding. She moved from room to room in a slightly dazed manner that i normally associate with anti-depressants. "This used to be the kids' room," she wistfully said once, almost to herself. She spoke very little but they revealed that the dump i was about half-way through with gutting had formerly belonged to her brother. He had gotten sick apparently and that explained much of the disrepair and neglect the house had experienced. The couple had a mountain house nearby and it was their custom to stop off here on their way there. Apparently they hadn't known it had been sold. They didn't stay long, said their goodbyes and moved into the front yard. There they paused, had a conversation i couldn't hear and eventually drove away.

They hadn't been a nuisance really but all the same i was glad they were gone. i'm not fond of entertaining strangers as i am not naturally entertaining. It's not them, it's me. i'm also not mentally swift. i'm swiftless-ier when taken by surprise. Afterwards i review the event and all sorts of things occur to me that i wish had had the decency to occur to me when i could have acted on them. In this

case, what occurred to me was that this dump i was gutting, that i had exhausted my regular cache of cusses on, that i would charge for the match to burn down, was a monument, a marker to someone grieving a brother. It was one of the last places on earth she could come and remember and see proof that her memories were real, that people who were gone had once been. To this woman, it hadn't been a poorly assembled prefab, it had been a box holding the precious pages of a one of her favorite stories.

And now, thanks to me, the box was nearly empty. The pages torn out, discarded. Burned. We can't keep the people we love and then we can't even keep the things that reminded us of them. All the more proof that we need to put our treasures in Heaven... before someone comes to renovate the joint.

Hey Dad, gotta question for you...

2011-06-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

Rascal, my youngest son has hit that magical age. It's a special age for a father and son. The age when i can go up into the attic and find all my favorite, old R and PG-13 rated Dvds that i think he's finally mature enough to handle: Last of the Mohicans, Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, Midnight Run, no Desperado yet. Heck, i'm not mature enough to handle Salma Hayek. But the other night it was the instant classic Michael Mann film that ultimately pitted those two powerhouses Pacino and DeNiro together, Heat.

While sitting there in a nostalgic haze i wondered out loud during the hotel scene, "would they really evacuate an entire hotel just cuz some fool pulled the smoke alarm?" Well, i have now gotten that question answered. No, contrary to what you may think, i did not pull the alarm, i hear there was smoke, also no work of mine. And sure nuff, they evacuated the entire hotel.

Then i come out here to the Coop and there's all these eggs tossed back, fermenting in the afternoon sun. Amazing. Answers are just oozing from the universe today. In that spirit, it seemed a good time to respond to the responses. Especially since so many were very thought provoking in their own right. So without further adoodoo, the general responses:

Anonymous R said, i think too much. The pat answer is... too pat. So, the patricia answer to that would be, yes, you're probably right. But i've never really learned to unplug short of cutting the wires and those experiences have left me in near catatonic states so... i think it's safer just to ponder a little too much and force folk to ignore me.
Anonymous of the Empirical Mind says, no such thing as the imponderable! i agree. Empiricism however is only as deep as the breadth of experience and powers of observation on the part of the observer.

Now on to the responses to specific questions:

Work vs. no work. Two men, two inscrutable fates, one God. What's going on? The Empirical Mind says, the world is effectively random. Well, i can see how it would appear so... to one who only believes what they can see, test and prove.
Teenagers. Should we get graded as parents on them? Emp Mind recommends further study into nature vs nurture. i don't think i'm going to be qualified to answer this in any sense until my own two test subjects make it into their twenties.
Is society in a decline? Emp Mind had a fun quote here attributed to Cicero and a thought that something more complex than just entropy is happening since the world hasn't ended yet. And yet Cicero lived in a time when arguably, the seeds which birthed the end of the Roman Empire sprouted. Each successive generation of Romans was less than those before until if fell and the Dark Ages began. It wasn't the end of the world but it would take nearly fifteen hundred years to achieve that level of civilization again. The Dark Ages were the Post Apocalypse. Those unwilling to learn from history...
What am i teaching my kids? Again Emmind says, faith tends to degrade from generation to generation. This is related to the last one i suppose. i might even say an indicator of why. What my boys are learning and what i may have inadvertently passed on will also probably have to wait until they're older.
Which love is truer: love as an extension of feeling or conscious choice to love? The Mind is apparently the only one willing to weigh in on this too... As long as you're in love, does it matter? "In Love," would be the first condition i was suggesting with my question so yes, that's kinda the point... which is truer? "In love" or because i choose to love you. Cause frankly, i've had days that i wake up and i am not "In Love," but i am still married. The Mind also suggests that it may be impossible to tell the difference. i would suggest that is an opinion of either the unexamined life or one that hasn't truly tried loving in a long term sense.
Other than as a food source, what is the point of artists/poets in a recession/depression? The Mind says, get better at yer art, carve yer own space. Ah, a true capitalist. i translate this as, it is up to each artist/poet to define their own use. What has been the role of artists and poets through history? Have they ever served any real use? If we all vanished tomorrow, would anyone care?
Are Lego-playing adults sick? Crimso says, yes, but it's a good kinda sick. The Mind says, that Sports fans and Republicans are sicker given a few provisos. i say we're all sick but most of us are harmless.
Is the internet a real community or an illusory one? The Mind says, possibly but no. Forums and blogs tend to be feudal. i found that to be a delightfully interesting thought and am still chewing on it. Whilst i don't feel like a baron i can see some of what he means. i have power to eject anyone i chose and Blogger can eject me. Though Facebook isn't offering me any military protection and hasn't sent the tax collector to my door yet. And i have truly reconnected in some sense with folk that i had lost touch with, i keep up with their lives or at least the parts of their lives they are willing to share and i don't have to where a silly coif or liripiped hood. This one needs to be fleshed out some more i think.
Are we doomed... to become our parents? Anonymous Love Ya says, You are you. Not sure but i think this was directed at me specifically and not in a general sense so, thanks ;) The Mind finishes up their treatise with, We're doomed to be shaped by our parents, and that's bad enough, don't you think? i would. If that was where it ended.

And that's where i'm gonna end this today... Father's day. It's a thought and warning, fathers, you are shaping the next generation. They may be you, they may be less than you but you have a lot of say in it, make every word, deed and corner of your own life count.

Fertile ground... but for what?

2011-05-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

i'm gonna warn y'all ahead of time. This one gets ugly. Wasn't even going to share it, started it twice and ditched it. But i just read a post in another guy's blog about sharing the good and BAD of your story and while this starts off pretty bad, it got better. So you been warned.

i was driving back to Gehenna for another round of misery, frustration and gnashing of teeth. i was an hour into the drive on a misty-gray day that challenged me to find the right delay setting on the ridiculously useless wipers, a challenge made all the more patience-intesive due to a loose connection somewhere in the switch itself. When out in a soggy field I saw a billboard that said, “Live your Dreams.”

And i wept, for i realized i no longer believe in dreams.

Moments like that, i'm glad i don't pack a gun. i'm far too volatile, far too prone to self-pity. Though strangely, not given to impulsive behavior. i'd rather savor my self-loathing. Feed it like some slimy pet only i could love. i wouldn't put it past me to walk out into the field and put some rounds through the sign though. Somehow i made it the rest of the way up to that lonely outpost on the edge of coaltown blight and settled in to work the labor of the damned. Fully convinced that i was forgotten and forsaken.

Whew! Deep, cleansing breath. In through the nose, ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffp--holdit--holdit--and release it SLOWLY through the mouth... feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwp-p-p-p-blblblbplt. Feel better? Good. That was dark, eh? Yeah. That's what i thought too. But it wasn't until i wrote it down later that night, just like you see it there, that i realized how brain-bugglingly stupidish it was. i looked at it in print and i could see the fallacy as blazingly bright as the sun which never seems to shine here in Pennslobovia anymore. God must have one heck of a highlighter.

First and foremost, that statement, that mood that i allowed myself to descend into walks right up to the cross, right up to Jesus' bloody feet, spits once then looks up with that sneer that only teenagers do right and says, "Yeah? Well what have done for me lately?!" i so often fall into the trap of thinking that because what's going on right now, today, this very minute, because that sucks, God hates me or at the very least, doesn't give a damn. How many times have i even blogged about the very same thing? i know, right? And yet, here i was, doing it again! How many times am i going to have to tell myself that this present suffering is nothing compared to the glory that shall be ours someday? i'm guessing every day until the last one.

The second lie i was believing was that because nothing had happened YET, that it was never going to happen. i mean, really, i'm almost forty, life is obviously over, too late to start something new now. There's nothing for it. Guess i'll just go sit in a corner and slowly decompose for the next thirty to fifty years. Phaugh! A word i so rarely get to write. Pish-posh. At forty, Moses was just getting dumb enough to kill in God's name to jumpstart the revolution. i'll bet he was a Rage Against the Machine fan. God had to cool his heels for forty more years before he was finally broken enough to be useful to God's plan of modeling a humble, Spirit-filled savior for his people. Golly, i hope it don't take me another forty years.

So, what good is all this? You suffered through it, you should take something home. i can't figure out how to pay you each five bucks for your anguish so here's a practical, wrapped for freshness, portable proverb for ya:

When you find yourself in a hole of the spirit, write down what you're thinking. You might be shocked at how much of what upsets you is a lie. Facebook is actually good for this. Have you ever wrote a status and then said, "naw! That's too (depressing, stupid, ignorant, bigoted) even for me."? If you can't do that, try and tell someone, at least say it out loud. Lies breed in dark, closed spaces, bring them into the air and the light and watch them blister and burn. It smells nasty but it feels good. i think this is how some of the Psalms got written.

One last thing though... in order for you to recognize a lie, you gotta know the Truth. If i didn't know Jesus, i wouldn't know salvation, purpose or the Promise of a new Heaven and a new Earth. Without Him i might see the lie and have no reason not to believe it.

So how about it? What lies are you believing? Maybe even based your life on?

A bit o' Spring cleaning.

2011-04-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

Whilst work and wabbits weigh heavily on my time. i dare not ignore the frickens out here in the coop. They keep droppin' eggs-istential nonsense whether i collect it or no. Place is beginning to look like a family garage. i bet if i dig deep enough i'll find a thought from when i was five. Tis time to draw out the tried and true industrial strength grief-blower of my strife strewn soul....

the bullet list:

Pride goest before the fall. It also goest before getting involved in inane internet arguments with folk who you knew even before the pride got involved would never listen.
The guys who wrote the Bible knew what they were talking about. Or they had no idea but the Spirit that guided them did.
We spend thousands of dollars on insurance for our lives which give thousands of dollars to other people after we're dead. But for the most part, give no thought to what happens to US after we're dead.
We are one day closer to the end of the world and Jesus coming back no matter when that day is.
i have never been so ready for it and yet so afraid it will come and leave my loved one's behind as i am now.
i really wish becoming a new creation was a quicker process. i'm really bored of asking forgiveness for the same old sins.
All of these bullet points sound like ideas for the Rabbit Trails to me.... i may need counseling.
Even that last one.
In the Praise category, i have found a church again! Now if i could just worship without thinking and analyzing the singing....
It's a shame more and more people find believing in the devil as the Bible describes him difficult. The world just makes so much more sense if you do.
i love my wife. She looks really cute putting together legos. ;)
The more time i spend honing my writing and art, the more i loathe going to my other job.
i really hope that someday i get persecuted for following Christ instead of just because i'm a jerk.

Nuff fer now.

Remember to use your indoor voice.

2011-04-01T03:15:00.000-07:00

i have screamed at the sky. i have read Ecclesiastes and said, "yep, that's truth." Meaningless, life is meaningless, all chasing after the wind. i have lived almost forty years now and found nothing worth the effort it took to get here. No reward in this life worth the ride. i watch the trail of ants coming out of the walls of the house i built and across the counter of the shiny new kitchen and i see a world that is infested with entropy, decay, filth and i hear the laughing of an evil spirit mocking my attempts to recreate a private Eden. There is no rest or refuge on the earth. i have spent four hours working on a drawing for the Rabbitrails only to have someone tell me it isn't work and not so much as imply that it is a waste of time as make it a declaration of fact. And so i get lost in these dark places where i can't see what the point and movement of history is for. You're born, work at something someone else want's you to do for forty-to sixty years and then if you're lucky, you retire before your back, knees and/or health gives out and you putter around your yard looking for shrews but what you're really doing is hiding from one. This is life in America. Finally having your first child and buying your first house in your mid-thirties and then finding out you have cancer. It's watching your children make the same mistakes you did. Watching your parents walk away from each other and you. It's realizing that optimism is a belief that can only be held by the psychotically insane or the so-far astoundingly lucky. It's never being good enough, smart enough, wealthy or healthy enough. It's working your whole life and having the river or the ocean or a fire or a mean neighbor or a total, mind raping, freak accident take it all away in seconds. There are no guarantees. None. Yes, i have screamed at the sky. Why? What's it all for?

"If you don't love your story then you don't love the author of your story." That was a quote by Dan Allender that i heard one morning on a podcast that i was listening too in my search for the answers to those questions. i dunno if you've screamed at the sky but i can assure you that it rarely gives immediate, discernible answers. And from what i've read, you don't actually want it to. So i went looking the only place available to a guy like me: i Tunes.

Well, sort of. Lemme explain. What i went to was the Word of God. But as the Ethiopian eunuch told Phil, "how can i understand this unless someone explains it to me?" See, wanna guy to be humble enough to ask for directions? Geld him. i don't want anyone to eunuchize me so i try to be humble now. So, taking his example, i also go looking for learned folk who have not only read it but spent considerable time praying and studying it and arguing over what it all means with other folk who've spent considerable time praying and studying it. And then got recorded telling others what they've learned or think they've learned. Some of those recordings are on iTunes. One of these guys is Dan Allender and he's worth a listen or two. For the very reason that he drops bricks like "If you don't love your story then you don't love the author of your story," on you when your spackling a ceiling with your headphones on.

i tell you right now, i had to stop. Spackle knife in hand and ask God to forgive me for hating Him for much of my life. All those curses i had been launching at the air around me, they didn't hit the guy responsible for my curse, the guy laughing at me as i cursed my maker, my author, the lover of my soul. They hit the guy holding my ungrateful fist through it all. Trying to explain it to me. Trying to show me the answers to Why and What for?

i still don't know why or what for? i still ask. But i try to remember that i'm asking the guy in the chair next to me who went to the cross for me and while hanging there asked the sky, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" He died for my stupidity, rose and is sitting in heaven somewhere above the sky, i figure that gives him some interesting and worthwhile perspectives on it all.

Sabotage

2011-03-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

A journey of nearly thirty-nine years had led them to a back porch shop in Pennslobovia. One going out of his mind from the struggle to find work and the other cursing the work he had. On the surface, they couldn't be in more different circumstances but they had one very, vital thing in common.

Male pattern baldness.

Well, yes, they had that in common but that wasn't...

They were both standing on the porch in Pennslobovia.

Well, yes, that's technically true too but not germane to the top...

They were both drinking coffee.

No. Haha, gotcha there, the one had finished his already.

They were both coffee drinkers.

Sigh, yes, they both drank coffee. They both had been struck with male pattern baldness, were standing on a porch in Pennslobovia and they both enjoyed a good cup of coffee or four. May i continue now that you've totally derailed my point?

Yup.

Ahem! Aside from all of those scintillating similarities, they had one other thing in common: they were both. being. poisoned.

Dun-DAH! What? It needed a dramatic emphasis.

Don't you have some traffic you could be playing in? Carrying on. Right. Poisoned. Not physically mind you, though living in Pennslobovia that's always a possibility too. But it's not their corporeal tissue that was effected but the ...

Corporal Who now?

Corporeal Tissue, their physical bodies.

Then why didn't you just say "bodies?"

Because i liked the phrase "corporeal tissue!" It's called a vocabulary.

It's called being a pretentious peckerwood.

Look you!

Are you gonna tell us what was being poisoned or what?

Are you going to stop interrupting?

Are you gonna use real words?

Deep cleansing breath. No, it was not their bodies that were being poisoned. It was their work.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. You said one of them was struggling to look for work.

Indeed.

Now you say his work was being poisoned.

i have.

You're gonna have to explain that to me.

i'm shocked. Work, is a constant. Whatever has been put before you to do at that moment is your work. Changing a baby; building a desk; helping a little, old lady find her taxes; studying for a test; looking for a job; talking to a friend on the phone; drawing a comic strip or writing a blog. It's all the job at hand. Even lying down to rest is the work at hand at that given moment. So, in a sense, work and the present moment are synonyms.

Okay, so work = now.

Precisely.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whenever, that's your work.

Um, yes.

The here and now. Present tense. Talking to you, that's my job.

And a smashing one you're doing too.

And these bums on the back porch, their jobs were getting poisoned.

So, i've said.

Not very quickly, you gotta way of getting off point, if you know what i mean. Too easily distracted.

Plotting murder will do that. As i was saying! They were both frustrated and angry, they were both dissatisfied with where their lives were at, what they had become, what they were doing. The one, that he was thirty-eight and had no job or prospects and was studying for a licensing test in a field he wasn't sure would pan out. The other, that he was thirty-eight, wanted to be doing something else but was stuck skinning his knuckles and filling his eyes with sawdust doing something he had no interest in doing. Both had something to do: study for an exam; build a desk but they could not focus on those simple tasks and even disdained them because their minds kept trying to do someone else's job.

Someone else's job? Whose?

God's. You see, they could not focus or enjoy the simple tasks they'd been given because they were trying to do God's job. To force the future into clarity. To predict and even control the outcome of their work. They wanted assurances they did not have instead of letting God be God and trusting Him and His promises.

Hmmm, i think you're reaching on that one, buddy.

It was as if they were given a thought to convey and some rude, unpleasant smelling, voice in their heads kept interrupting and agitating and sabotaging the natural flow.

Yeah, you're gonna need a better analogy.

If only.

The trial of the trails.

2011-03-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

"So what's your plan?" said Mynnie.

"Plan? There ain't no "plan!"" answered the Pigkiller.

The first is a quote from my wife at lunch the other day. i was listlessly working my whip upon the dry skeleton of a long dead dray and she was rather appropriately fed up. She wanted to know what i was going to do to get out of my rut.

Well wouldn't we all. That's where one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite genre's comes into play. Mad Max was good for something.

In the meantime, i've decided to put some of my new found coloring gifts to use and have started a daily comic strip. For those three or two of you who didn't already know, it's called the Rabbit Trails. If you did already know, then there's nothing to see here, about your lives citizens. Move along, move along.

My Emergency Response Plan

2011-03-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

"Is this the end of the world?"

My wife, Mynnie, asked me that when the Towers fell back in the '01. Obviously the world kept spinning. Some Yak herder somewhere woke up on September 12, scratched his butt and made the tea over the dung fire the same way he always did and never heard nor probably cared too much that some fools flew some planes into some buildings on the other side of the ball. But i don't think my wife thought the Towers were going to fall on all of us. She probably meant, is this how the end of the world starts?

A better way of saying it may be, "Is this the end of life as we've known it?" Does this event signal a larger change? It's an understandable question. Folks look at all the natural disasters in the world, the growing power of cyclones and hurricanes, the volcanic, seismic and subversive activity. The growing political unrest in... um...everywhere and they begin to worry that their comfortable little petroleum fueled, latté driven lives might be about to veer off into the bridge abutment of calamity. Time was when Damocles' sword was made of Mutually Assured Nuclear Annihilation. Now it seems that while we were fretting with one eye on the sky, Pestilence, Famine and War were salting the ground under our feet. If one were to open their hearts to fear, it feels as if we're just one economic crisis away from a global meltdown and there doesn't seem to be enough seawater to pour on the rods.

So what do we do? Live in fear? Live in denial? Eat, drink and pinch Mary for tomorrow we die?

i suppose we could and i feel sure many will, just as they did moments before the waters rose around the Ark or the fiery hail fell on the streets of Sodom but i would like to suggest a better emergency preparedness plan:

Pray for guidance, strength and mercy
Trust that you'll get it
Love God with all your heart, mind and soul
Love your neighbor as yourself

i'm told by a fairly reliable source that if you use this plan, even if you die you will find eternal life.

Whuchoo talkin' 'bout, Aunt Linda?

2011-03-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

"What a great life you have!!! You keep us all smiling!!!"

This is a quote via Facebook from my Aunt Linda. It made me make that snorting sound you do when you try to laugh at a moment of surprise. Intake and exhalation hit each other in the ol' windpipe and create friction that explodes out the sinuses. An internal thunderstorm of the nose i suppose.

Now i could go one of two directions with this quote. The first would be to point out how the faceless quality of the interwebs allows us to more completely brick up a false front to our true selves. That is, i'm afraid, how i responded immediately on the thread. It's a quick, thoughtless, knee jerk reaction, not without a grain of truth but like a clam strip, it's mostly fat-soaked breading.

For everything meine Tante said was true. Folk really do seem to get a kick out of my blither. i don't claim to understand it but i'd be a liar to pretend to ignore it. What's more, aside from getting people to think a little, mostly about their relationship with God, making them smile is a genuine goal of mine. So gimme the flightsuit and the banner so i can thumbs-up to a big "Mission Accomplished!" Meanwhile, the war goes on.

It's the first part of the quote that shocked me really. Anyone who's subjected themselves to the horror of this blog could attest, just prior to plucking their own eyes out, that i am generally a miserable wretch. Take this random comment from a fellow named Tige:

"Hey there. Came by your post accidentally. Your writing is funny. That's great. You are also a moper. Not so great. "

See, you don't even have to be a follower.

"What a great life you have!!!" Three exclamation points seem to put it over the top but no, it's that true! Aunt Linda is absolutely correct. And what's more, it's true for all of us. God gave us these lives and they are good. That's not to say that the circumstances are always fun or easy or pleasing or even generally-amusing-if-you-squint-at-it-just-right, but that's not what "good" means. i don't actually know what good means but i know it's got more in common with "beautiful" and "loved" than "happy." Circumstances are weather. They are the seas in which we sail, but they have no bearing on whether or not the ship is good. The ship is good! The sea is good. The weather, may suck today and be ideal tomorrow but the sailing is good.

Now, why did the same guy who made the ship, make the weather suck so often? Ahhhh. There's the rub, eh? i have no idea. No, that's not true, i have ideas but lack the hubris to spout them. But i will hint them, i have arrogance enough for that. i don't think i ever learned anything insightful, significant or life changing; i don't believe that the person i am and the person i am becoming would be if my life were smooth sailing through breezy, sunny, summer days. i don't think i would have learned to trust, believe and depend on my savior if i never knew i needed saving. i don't think i would have ever lived if i hadn't shot the rapids and wondered if i was going to die. Our God is a God of resurrection, that's how He works. He brings about new life through death...

...but you gotta die first.

Weeds and warts.

2011-02-25T03:09:00.000-08:00

So, if you read yesterday's post, you may very well be wondering, "what the flux was that?" And if you haven't read yesterday's post and you continue to read today's, you will definitely be wondering, "what the hole is this???" For those of you who read it though and are sticking with me, i doubt your sanity but i appreciate the company. It is my sincere but dubious desire that this be of some benefit to y'all and not just gratuitous introspection on my part.

For me, it's not enough to identify bad habits and catalog undesirable personality quirks. i have to dig at the reasons for them, the roots if you will. There's an element of compulsion to this that i get from my mother (a topic for another day, foreshadowing!) but there is also a rationality to it. Weeds and warts don't die if you just lop off the tops. They just sprout up again and again. You have to get down to the ugly and the painful. True change don't come easy or without dirt and blood under the fingernails. So roll up the sleeves and cauterize the razor knife, we're going in!

It's well documented, add some nauseum here, about how i hate my work. Many of my frequent bouts of despair come from the pointless toil i find myself about day after day. i don't think i'm unique in this, only in the fell depths of desperation, the dank, dark dungeon of depression over this topic do i find myself often the lone, barely animated corpse chained to the wall. Others seem more adapted to it. More able to cope, to self medicate, to find relief in American Idol, solace in video games, palliation in pubs and live more or less contented lives. Again, the diagnosis of "thinking too much" rears its head. Is this the solution? Do i somehow learn how to turn off my mind? Put a bottle in my head and pull the trigger? (foreshadow again) Are those my only choices, thunkard or drunkard? Is self destruction the only road and the only true choice the mode of transport?

Yes, yes it is. That, in a nutshell, is life as i see it.

But. The shell is a peanut shell. There are two nuts in it. A bleak nut AND a "but" nut. We'll get to the butnut later. i think an explanation for yesterday is in order. That description of my childhood is not all encompassing. i have plenty more of sizzling summer days on the front porch, playing quietly in my room, saturday morning cartoons in feety pajamas that i could cough up upon a cross examiner's pinstripes should the need arise. My life is not a sorry tale of misery and woe, i just play Woe in the upcoming teevee series. i showed you that exhibit because it flashes before my mind often. A smell, a sound or a distinct lack of sound will dredge it up and i'm there again. Trapped. Stifled. Able to see home but not touch it.

That, i think, is a large part of why i hate my existence as i know it. So much of my time is spent in places i don't wanna be, doing things i don't wanna do because i have to, putting off who i want to be because other's expect it, because society as a whole says this is how it is. It may be why i prefer to work outside. It may be why i have to have a radio on while i'm working. Why i love books, fiction only please. Why i can't concentrate on my job. Why i won't concentrate on my job. Why i get so violently angry when someone or something reminds me of it when i'm not there. Why i feel so powerless. Why i love motorcycles and backpacking. Why i love open spaces but my art is confined and small. There are so many sprouts coming out of this one root that i dunno where to begin.

Which brings us back to the butnut. See, left to my own devices, in a world without a loving God who desires not just life for me but fuller life; in a world devoid of the Spirit living and working in me, i would collapse. i would eat a bullet or a bottle because i can see no point to any of this. If all life is, is doing what you have to do to survive and finding a suitable coping mechanism to forget about it afterwards and on weekends, looking forward to the next meal, next drink, next party, next vacation to get you through then thanks but no thanks, check please, forget my coat, i'm out of here. It's all meaningless, vapor, a chasing after the wind.

But. But there is grace. Grace is what unties my stomach. Grace says God don't make no junk. That He will not waste my life. i may waste some time in gratuitous introspection but He'll get me back on track if i let Him. He'll turn my ingrown love and infected gifts, my weeds and warts, into a garden. i don't know how, i just know it's true. Yes, Virginia, there is a resurrection but the Living Water is flowing now. The seed is already in you. God will make it grow. All He asks of you is that you believe.

And many days, that's pretty much all i can handle.

A moment in the museum of my muddled mind.

2011-02-24T04:15:00.000-08:00

i gave it a week and got only one comment that said i think too much. i tried to ponder what that meant and how i could respond and then i just decided that was a little too ironic even for me. So i'm flipping last week the bird and driving on into the metaphorical sunrise of a new day. Today is all about today. New beginnings. A new gift. The present. Full of promise and vigor and clear, cold sunshine.

And that's all i got to say about that. Now lemme tell you what i thought yesterday. Well, you don't actually have to lemme. With one click of the mouse you could be somewhere constructive, like facebook or the New York Times or checking your bank statement or buying something you didn't know you couldn't live without until you saw it on Amazon. For those masochists who chose to stay with the tour group however, gird your loins and follow me into the yesterday exhibit... if you dare.

The light is filtered and faded shades of yellow like an old photograph. Or maybe it's just reflected from all the avocado green, harvest gold and burnt orange. The air is still. The dust and smoke from a cigarette in the ashtray don't seem to move. They hang, heavy and listless and their only ambition is to penetrate your nose and make you sneeze. Somewhere there is music. Low, slow and maudlin. It could be a radio or it could be the melodramatic tension of a soap opera. It's not the only sound but you wish it was for the only other thing to be heard is the ticking of a clock. It chimes every fifteen minutes but it never seems to get any later. There are no friends here. No family. Just a stranger who is paid to keep you alive until your mother gets home tonight. And that is as much as they care about you. They may offer some dry crackers or a little juice but it's only out of obligation. There may be toys but they're mostly broken ones that the stranger's brat will deign to allow you to touch. Or worse, the stranger may have all girls. If there's a window not covered with leaden draperies, you can almost see your house. You certainly know you could walk there but you are forbidden. A prisoner awaiting release. Waiting.

Waiting.

To go home.

Waiting.

To do something fun.

Waiting.

To be allowed to make noise.

Or play.

Or watch something happy on the television.

Waiting.

For an overworked mother who still has to make dinner.

But at least she loves you.

Having trouble breathing yet? Yeah, me too, let's get the flock out of the yesterday exhibit.

Whew! Okay, everyone's respiration returning to normal? Good. You may be asking, with good reason, "What the fact was that about?" i will try to explain. That was a composite memory of mine. i had many babysitters and a daycare growing up and time and distance have not dulled the experience but it has blended much of them into this exhibit i describe. The daycare differed only in that it was like being in school for three or four more hours everyday, right down to the flickering fluorescents. One with a fence around it. But i could still look through the chainlink at my house and neighborhood and the field where my friends and i used to play army and hope that mom came to get me before the sun went down but my brother and i were often the last ones to be picked up. So what does this have to do with anything?

i'll tell you later.

Egg the Coop

2011-02-18T03:46:00.000-08:00

Late March is putting in a cameo here in February and i got a window open to the world. Just a crack but it's enough to let in the flavor and the music. i can only process information in small doses anyhow before my sense-it breakers start popping. There's an hour before my wife expects me to start working on something that someone's willing to pay me for and the Coop is open for business.

Now if only the hens would get to work. Hens here being a euphemism for brain function and inspiration. A pretty good one actually for if you could picture me standing in a poorly lit fricken coop surrounded by wide eyed hens; all of us staring at each other in awkward anticipation, you would have a darn accurate visual interpretation of my thought process. Waiting, juuuuuuust waiting for a squawk.

And then there's... not a squawk, but a cluck. A pebble sized egg. Then another. And another and another until there's nothing left to do but turn it into the dreaded, cue dramatic, tympanic laden music of doom: Bullet List. But one with a point and maybe, just maybe, there's a squawk in that:

One man goes to work at work he hates, does not pursue and yet is constantly handed while another longs for work, works hard at finding work and is foiled at every attempt. Both pray for deliverance from the same God. What is this madness?
Are teenagers good indicators of whether or not we are successful parents?
On a related topic, is society as a whole, American or global, really in decline? Sort of the Are-the-old-geezers-right? kind of question.
What am i teaching my kids about love, church, faith, career really?
Some days i wake up and i'm just in love, it flows naturally and mysteriously. Other days i wake up and choose to be loving, despite how i may feel. Which is the truer love?
Where is the space, what is the role of the artist/poet in these economically Hunter/Gatherer times?
Is an adult who builds with Lego indulging in a creative hobby and artform or are they just sick?
Do online social networks represent real community or are they an unhealthy illusion and distraction from real communities?
Are we doomed to become our parents?
Does anyone care?

This last one will be the first one answered. For i'm opening it up to you, oh seven followers and unknown number of lurkers, to choose the next blog post. Pick one, pick several, introduce your own, tell me to shut up. The hens and i are open to suggestion. And we're waiting. Juuuuuuuuust waiting. Staring.

The Woeful Tale of the Tailless Cat

2011-02-07T06:42:00.000-08:00

One may go through life without a tail but that doesn't mean one has to enter death without one. Over the years i've made multiple references, most of them derogatory, about the tailless grimalkin that has haunted the Coop. Her given name was Tabitha, about the most unimaginative name i can imagine someone can give a cat. i can say that because i didn't name her. We just called her Tabby. Which always struck me as wrong because she was not a Tabby. She was a Manx. A breed from the Isle of Mann that for one reason or another do not have tails. And that's that. Which is why this is the Woeful Tale of the Tailless Cat and not the Woeful Tale of Tabitha's Tail. She was born without one and never knew no different. A fact which might, i think, have contributed to her legendary clumsiness. She tripped, fell and missed more jumps than a drunk gymnast. The only thing funnier than her athletic disasters were her attempts to regain her dignity afterwards. Which might explain why those crazy Manx Islanders bred cats without tails in the first place. Not a lot to do there i understand.

Tabby was a refugee. i don't remember how she lost her first home but we rescued her from a second party who couldn't keep her either. Tabby never played nice with other cats. She didn't fight with them, that wasn't her style. She was far too subtle for that. She just made her presence so unbearable and repugnant that the other cat retreated under a bed and wouldn't come out until Tabby was gone. i imagine her making snide comments about the other cat's breeding and socio-economic status until they cried. Kinda like an alpha cheerleader.

So she came to live with us here at the Coop and with the possible exception of her bedding down ritual (she couldn't lay down without first placidly, ripping apart whatever surface she had deemed worthy for her recline: sofa, carpet, clothing, bare leg...) she was a pleasing companion. And so the years passed like sands in the litterbox, no one sat with idle hands without a fuzzy poke in the arm...until...

Tabby's catapult from grace was almost greek in it's tragedy. Her one character flaw; her inability to suffer another cat's presence; brought about her final catastrophe. When we took in a stray kitten and nursed it back to proper intestinal function, Tabby, true to form, went about attempting to shun the kitten into submission. The kitten however was blessed with a kind of stupidity that wasn't aware of breeding and socio-economic status and was delightfully interested in playing with old cats that didn't want to play. Her tried and true strategies stymied, Tabby would have nothing to do with it... or anywhere that it had relieved itself. As the kitten was polite enough to use the litterbox, Tabby would not. Not when we provided her with her own litterbox, not when we placed a litterbox in the new areas of the Coop that she had chosen, not even after she served a disciplinary period out of doors. Tabby was incorrigible and unrepentant. So after a long heart to heart talk with her one evening, we both decided that it would be best for everyone if she chose to live outside. She also chose shot put ejection as her best exit strategy and so, with fleeting regret, i heaved her as far as i could.

She adapted quickly. Supplementing her diet of cat food with rodents, fowl and amphibians from the local watering holes. When once the boys tied a large rubber spider to a fishing pole to tease the kitten with, we got the idea to go outside on the deck and see what Tabby would do with it. It was a wild kingdom episode. As soon as the rubber spider hit the ground forty feet in front of Tabby she went into a predatory crouch. i twitched the spider once or twice and before i could react, she had crossed the span and pounced! We were properly awed. She became the bus stop companion, following the Ballyhoo down every morning and making use of idle hands. She frequented our picnics and patio sits where she would enthrone herself on the chair next to you and poke your arm to remind you what it was for.

The only thing she couldn't handle were the winters. Turns out the Isle of Mann rarely, if ever, drops below freezing and it almost never snows there. She spent them cussing the cold in Manx and making sure everyone within the sound of her Roseanne Barritone knew of her displeasure. More years passed. She lost her hearing and didn't hunt so much but cussed year round. She learned to hang just outside a window and make metronomic miau until she was fed. If we slept in on a weekend, she might even come to the deck door of our bedroom. She earned the title, Most Annoying Cat in the World and wore it proudly.

i thought, perhaps, in death she had finally deigned to be gracious and kind. i found her on a winter's day where the sun was shining and the temps were well above freezing. She appeared to be sleeping in the open with a tarp pulled up like a blanket. She could very easily have died under the brand new deck where i never would have been able to reach her but would remember she was there until the day she finished decomposing. i thought, could it be? Had she made her passing as easy as possible?

Then i started digging. The pile of stone i pulled from her grave grew larger than the pile of sloppy, wet clay i had to shake off the shovel. Dignified and subtly cruel to the end. Touché my old nemesis, touché.

Cat in a Cast Iron Tub

2011-02-05T02:27:00.000-08:00

(Author's note: It's pretty dubious to call me an 'author' but "Writer's note" doesn't have the same ring to it.)

(Author's second and more pertinent and less pert note: This post is a reprint of an old one i wrote some years ago, back before i had a blog. Just reread it for other reasons but felt i'd like to share it with this new audience cause it still rings true. And cuz, i'm just not this random and funny anymore.)

It is without a doubt a mark of genius to be mistaken for a madman by the magazine-perusing populace. Stay your hands, dear friends! Afore you snap off that snappy snippet of snide rebuke for my assumed arrogance; allow me to elaborate. i, of the lowercase first person, am in no ways referring to my own insignificant mortal wisdom.

i refer, instead, to God. If you disagree, take it up with Him, i'm sure He'd love to hear from you.

But perhaps Messieurs, Mesdames and Mesdemoiselles you are wondering, what does this mean? What is he talking about? Why in the wild, wild world of sports is he referring to us in French titles? i assure you I have no idea. Unlike a genius, my madness is genuine. i shall endeavor to persevere however and leave you with more than a cryptic voorlooper. Life, i think some of you may agree, is tough. It is not a sport for
pansies. As a matter of fact, it's the most extreme sport there is boasting a near one hundred percent fatality rate among the participants. It's a cat in a bathtub and with each birth another mouse is pushed from the ledge and slides bum first into the fray. Yes,
i am focusing on one aspect of it, to be sure now. There are lighter moments to it. Lego’s come to mind...MnM's are good, as are in-ground pools that are someone else’s responsibility to maintain. This is by no means a complete list but more just to show you, gut Herren, Frauen und Fraulein, that i am not one sided on this issue. i am merely trying to convey, in hyperbolic metaphor that Life, as an entity, is capable of a certain peevishness that would relegate Cinderella’s stepmother, Lady Tremaine to the same category as Mrs. June Cleaver.

Granted you say, get on with it. So i shall. Into this atrium of attrition, this cauldron of corruption, this Tupperware of testiness I brought a son. Well, two actually: Churchmouse, my eldest and Rascal his carbon copy. For now, let us concern ourselves with the first.

As i gazed upon our proud little jumble of boy, a red faced, screaming, little lizard of
love, “How could i?” i asked of myself. How could i have pushed another mouse from the ledge? How could i in good conscience be responsible for another panic-stricken innocent clawing and scratching at the cold, enamel encrusted cast iron of the physical realm!? Well, in my defense it wasn't intentional, it just sort of happened. But here he
was! Kicking and screaming and clearly none too pleased with life as he found it so far! What could i do now? How could i undo the damage I had done?

By the way, for those of you still wondering what a voorlooper is, it's a Dutch term meaning a precursor or something that goes before. Are you with us now? Can the class move on? Good, now pay attention.

i have, in my infernal wisdom, tried to raise Churchmouse to be tough. The cat's got claws so the mice gotta have teeth and the wherewithal to use them. i have not tried to shelter him. i punch holes in his umbrella. i hid one card of his solitaire deck. i made him walk the two miles from our way station to his Grandparent's house, through the
woods and over a stream and across busy highways, when he was three, bearing his own diapers and spare clothes in a backpack. Life is tough, i had to make him tougher. If he hurts himself, i check for blood, no wound, no sympathy. Get back in there and bite that Cat in the rump! Yeah, so your arm’s broken? Does that mean you can't do your chores?
We'll get it set tomorrow, right now keep digging that foundation! Are you crying? There's no crying in Baseball?! i've pulled no punches. If he asks a question, i don't sugarcoat the answer. There's nothing at the end of the rainbow, the closer you get the further back it retreats. You want to go to college? Keep crushing those recyclables. No, there is no Sea monkey heaven, their out in the septic field. Sorry, women are a
mystery to me too, son.

Here's where God's wisdom departs from men's. Or more specifically this
man’s…

Churchmouse, my son, is perhaps the most empathic, caring, gentle soul it has ever been my fortune to meet.

Imagine if you will, a bramble patch. Raspberries abundant. Thorns prevalent. A picture of life, offering a sweet, succulent, ripe, red reward and placing it firmly within the sharp tendrils of prickly punctures a'plenty. Imagine Rascal, an almost three-year-old who has a phobia of plants. “Floraphobia? Never heard of it. Just push your way through, Rascal, fercryinoutloud! And for the love of Mike! Will you quit that
whining!

"Would like me to hold your hand, Rascal?" my eldest says. And there in a shaded forest floor were two struggling, almost helpless mice, fighting feisty flora and fickle father alike, hand in hand. Proving to all who would bear witness that weakness born by two in love can go where ever strength may struggle to. And it doesn't go there alone.

Churchmouse noted to me the other day that he has never seen me cry. Someday i'll tell him it's because i'm not as strong as he is.

What would David Lee Roth do?

2011-02-03T02:52:00.000-08:00

i got a question for ya. How do you know when to jump? i just got done reading a post by one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller. This one, in case you don't already read him. If you don't, you should, you apparently already read blogs and his is much better than mine. Don's been like a jumpmaster in my life since Ballisticat turned me on to him a few years ago now. When i read Don, i can feel the aluminum hull of the plane, the thrum of the engines, feel the wind whipping through the open door. i can see him standing there, goggled and dimpled, smiling at me, one gloved hand gripping the frame and the other patting my shoulder and yelling, "Time to go!" i can see the ground, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar below and most of all, i can feel the weight of the parachute on my back. With Don, this is a scheduled event. i didn't exactly know what i was getting myself into when i started reading him but i figured it out pretty quick. For a long time now, i knew this moment was going to come. And, more importantly, i wanted it to.

Don's latest is about making a list of your Likes and Dislikes over the past year. He says to use this as a tool for making better choices in the coming years. Wise. Not particularly helpful for me, since i can't remember last year but ... wise.

i won't bore you with my list, (collective sigh of relief) even as short as it is but i will tell you that the first item on the Dislike side would be, "being a carpenter." This is particularly bothersome to me. It means i've spent the vast majority of the last year and indeed, my adult life, doing something i hate. No wonder i'm a grumpy, bitter person. So, you say, simple, just figure out what you want to do and do it instead. Problem solved, post over, back to Facebook and some serious literature.

Not so fast, Mr. Motor-mouse! We never answered the original question. How do you know when to jump? For you see, leaving a career in which you know how to make money and can even make money when you've been laid off in this economy is not a hop off the curb. It's a leap of faith of biblical proportions. You mistime this jump and you don't break a leg, you splatter like a watermelon dropped from the Empire State Building. And mama melon has to pay the mortgage on the melon farm and raise the two little melonheads all on her own. When i think about actually stopping carpentry and working full time on a book, Don, the plane and the parachute all disappear and i'm standing on the rim of a skinny concrete detail, with rounded edges, no handholds, the wind tearing at my clothes and carrying the sound of laughter and the really solid looking, unforgiving city street faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar below. i got two choices, climb back in through the open window and the shuffle back to the suffocating safety of my cubicle....

or Jump.

Quit yer pushin', i'm thinkin' here!

What's in a name?

2011-01-31T03:04:00.000-08:00

(This post is a continuation of the previous thread. i do that from time to time. Cuz i don't have the time or space to say what i want to say and let's face it, you probably wouldn't read anything that long anyhow :)

There was this girl. Nice girl, came from a lousy family but she tried real hard. Just wasn't given a lot of direction, you might say. So she kept screwing up, chased the wrong boys, hung out with a bad crowd, she was going nowhere fast. No job, no education, no real future. She finds ways to cope, you know what i mean?

Then she met this guy. The guy. He's rich, successful, classy, totally out of her league. Heck, he's out of anyone she knows' league. He's friggin' perfect. And for some reason, totally into her. At first she's terrified that if he finds out what she's really like, where she's been, about that trip to the clinic, he'll drop her like yesterday's tampon. But he's not going anywhere and you can't hide forever. Slowly, painfully, her whole ugly past comes out. Eventually he meets her crazy family. Even that isn't enough to turn him off. He asks for her hand, she accepts.

So the day comes. She's in a room with her friends, but she's completely alone. She's in a white dress, looking in a mirror. She feels like a fraud. She looks like a princess but she knows who's underneath. In a few minutes, that poor girl from the street is going to belong to someone amazing. She'll have a new home, a new family, security, love, things she always wanted but never dreamed would come. And all she has to do, is accept it. She can't earn it. She doesn't deserve it. It's all because He loves her. He will change her station. He is providing the home, the future, the security. He even bought the dress. The symbol of purity that covers her. In every way, His love for her is completely changing who she is and who she will be. And to show the world that- He will give her a new name. His name.

This is the moment we Christians live in. We're still in the world, surrounded by our friends but not the same. We have been married, adopted into a new family, a new home with wealth beyond our imagining. We have been made spotless, bathed and covered in a purity not our own. Because of Jesus' love we belong, we're wanted, we are changed.

We are new.

Agent Smith knows that too. But he knows that if he can keep reminding you of what you were, the son of Ander, son of man, he can keep you down. If he can keep hitting you with disappointments, false comforts; if he can keep dredging up your past, smothering you with guilt, responsibility, duty, false religiosity, he can pummel you into submission. The son of your parents cannot stand up to him. The daughter of your mother cannot break the cycle of failure. All your cleverness, all your strength, all your resources will fail to get you off those tracks. Will fail to save your marriage. Will fail to protect your kids. Will fail to ward off depression, addiction, bitterness or loneliness. You will be run down by car after car. It's inevitable.

Unless someone else lifts our head. Someone else gives us strength, wisdom, purity and a new name. Unless someone else gives us the faith to remember and believe that...

"My name... is Neo!"

The sins of the father...

2011-01-29T03:55:00.000-08:00

"You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson... "

Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel. Agent Smith sees it. He knows that you cannot rise above what you are. He knows you are just the product of genes and environment. A child ignored and neglected seeks out his own comfort and raises children who feel ignored and neglected who become seekers of comfort and neglect children of their own. Children of divorce, divorce. Children born out of wedlock become single parents. A parent injects their fears and false securities into the mold whether intentionally or not and the next batch is poisoned before leaving the nest. Lather, rinse, repeat.

"Nay!" say thee. "I am a ship, not a caboose! I choose my own destiny!" Good for you! Go forth and sail proud. But why, pray tell, in so many ports do people recognize you. "Would have known you anywhere," they chuckle, "you're your mother's daughter." Or do they grab your chin and burr, "Yew have the look of yer mutha." "Your old man was the same way at that age," they say with a shake of the head or a knowing smirk because they know the old man better than you. And one day, sitting on a lonely beach, the ship smashed against the rocks, holding a bottle with a note in your grandmother's handwriting, you look back and with the telescope of hindsight, you can plot out how you followed an invisible path that couldn't have been more rigid had it been two tracks made of steel. Oh sure, some of the details were different enough to cloud the journey, beer instead of vodka, porn for adultery, career instead of civic duty but the gutter outside the old port bar has tasted those tears before. They just fell from your father's eyes.

If you haven't reached that port yet, just wait, you'll get there.

Agent Smith knows this. He barely needs to hold your head to the tracks. You don't have the strength to fight fate. You couldn't win even if you knew what to do.

Except, you do fight. You roll forward and with a strength you shouldn't possess you push and through clenched teeth you tell him,

"My name... is Neo. "

But what's in a name? i'll tell you later.

There is no spoon

2011-01-20T02:46:00.000-08:00

Way back in the olden, golden days, when television had three channels and a random assortment of UHF signals that may or may not tune in depending on where you stood in the room and how you held your hands or whether mom was running the blender, there was a sitcom called "Taxi." Upon said sitcom was a character, played by the great Christopher Lloyd, called Reverend Jim "Iggy" Ignatowski. Jim was a child of the sixties, which means he was born somewhere in the late forties, went to schoolthrough the fifties and woke up one day from a flashback of the original Mouseketeers in a condemned building with an Ordination from the Church of Peace and a fingerpainted thesis to find himself in the seventies. Jim was on a voyage, in the sense that a raft with no rudder, sail or oar set adrift on the ocean without sight of land, is on a voyage, of self-discovery. Meaning, he was always discovering things about himself. "Jim," his fellow taxi drivers would exclaim, "I didn't know you played the piano!" "Jim, I didn't know you spoke French!" To which Jim might reply in wonderment...

"Neither did I."

i think i now know how Jim felt in those

moments. "Dad, I didn't know you could paint."

"Neither did I."

But apparently i can. i had always looked at painting as an easy way to ruin a good drawing. Now i see it as a separate entity all together. It's not just coloring in the spaces defined by the pencil. It's breathing life into nothingness. It's calling forth something that wasn't there before. But it took a new point of view to see it.

You can see it to the left, just a blur of color. Those darks, the obscene red and garish yellow. What the heck is going on? You might say it just looks like a mess and that's okay. Cause that's what i thought too.

Except that Mynnie who was sitting across the room said, "that looks great!" i wondered about her eyesight a bit but then i decided to step back and see what she was seeing. And there it was...

A spoon, from whence was none. i was just too close to it to see it and i knew what i was painting!

i was told about a family last night. The husband has had a brain tumor removed and is undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer. His wife, wanting to leave him alone, decided to remove the snow that builds up on the roof between the addition and the main house herself. Instead of using the ladder like he always does though, she climbed out of a window onto the roof. And fell thirty feet. Concussion, broken wrists, broken leg, broken pelvis. She's now in a nursing home where she's looking forward to a long and painful therapy. Something else happened to the husband that i missed because he's in the ICU at the hospital. i don't know who their children are staying with in the mean time. If anyone's life looks to be a mess of the garish and obscene right now it's them. Suffering is like that. When you're in the storm, your reality is very small. You're not planning next week. You're surviving right now.

And there are storms all the time and of all kinds. And it may seem like God is sleeping. And you may be tempted, quite rightly, to yell out, "Master! Don't you care if we drown?!"

That would be a limited perspective though. With time to mull it over, you may remember that, of course he cares, he's God and loves you perfectly. He's also the master of the storm and if he's sleeping it's because he's not worried about it. He can pull back and see this maddening swirl from a different perspective. He can see how it fits into the whole. He can not only see the spoon but the cup and the chili.

And it's going to be delicious.

Where'd you get that tan?

2011-01-10T02:04:00.000-08:00

Having a blog would be such a boon to my my myopic memory if i wasn't so adverse to living in the past. i was just about to launch on a retrospective of two thousand and ten when i realized... i have no idea what happened in two thousand and ten. So i let my mind wander back a bit... there was a new years eve party, i remember that. Couldn't have been that good a party then. There was a Christmas. i remember the big gift of the year being a big surprise, even to those of us who thought we knew what it was. (see last post for sorry tale) i remember Happ looking at me kind of funny when i made him read from the Bible to start Christmas day. Which, honestly, he should have seen coming after making a snide comment to me earlier in the month about how no one mentions Jesus during Christmas. That's what you get for being right.

Okay, so i've made it one week back into the Ten. Going a little further i see a totaled mynnie-van and a mynnie with yet new injuries to her already battered body. i see a best buddy battling a surprise cancer. Said battling looking mostly like sitting uncomfortably and waiting for other people to decide his fate for him. Lots of fun there. i see me nearly setting fire to a development. i see a father in intensive care with hoses and pipes leading to all major orifices and a family hoping for the best and worrying about the worst. i see me losing my job. And we're only into July!

So i'm thinking, wow, the last half of the year bit hard. i really don't remember anything all that bad ... in comparison... in the first half of the year. What did happen in the first half; how did i start it off? i decide to go back and peruse last year's blog-eggs. And there, second entry for the year in February is a post about my church closing. That's when two things hit me.

My memory apparently reaches some kind of limit at six months or six events. And...
Twenty-ten sucked.

Oh sure. The Silver Lining Society will certainly point out that all of these things led to a deeper awareness of God's provision and peace. And after all, hasn't losing my church forced me to ponder next steps? Hasn't losing my job brought more freedom and less stress (job related stress)? Didn't Pop come home after all? Isn't Ballisticat's prognosis hopeful and chemo going well? And wouldn't you say that Mynnie is far from as squished as she would have been had she hit the tree on the driver's side of the van? Not to mention the cool, new van, the Starship Mynnieprize. And wouldn't you say that this whole sorry tale of airsoft guns has taught Rascal a valuable lesson about how materialism does not equal peace, fulfillment or joy? Besides, he has a working gun now. Not the one he asked for, but it works.

Yes. Yes, you could say all of that and more. And still even be right.

And twenty ten still sucked. Just cause God brings you through the Valley of the Shadow of Death doesn't mean that it was like a vacation in Maui. It's still the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My skin may have a healthy, bronze glow but it came from passing through the fire, sometimes literally and not from sitting on a beach.

Now don't get me wrong. i'm not complaining. i'd rather go through the war with God than bask on a beach without Him. He is my treasure, my companion, my vacation and my joy. If here we are, almost a year later and i still have no church home, still have no job and no prospects of a writing/art career, if i glare as Cialis ads instead of laugh at them, if Monster Airsoft still hasn't returned my last angry letter or my money, i still have my Hope.

i said my second post in the Ten was about losing my church. As it turns out, my first one was about discovering that i am a hoper. i guess, as i tentatively stretch out one toe into the cataract that is twenty'leven, i should be thankful that my hope is not wishful thinking. Not denial. Not an inability to deal with my problems. It's not whistling through the graveyard. My hope is no paper tiger. It has been tested and found true. And it has a great tan!

Allow six to eight disappointments for delivery

2011-01-03T03:38:00.000-08:00

There are people in this life that know what they want. Plan how to get it and then, go get it. Three step process. Identify. Strategize. Execute. Epilogue: sit back and enjoy fruit of labor.

And then there's us Frickens. On the rare occasion that we Frickens know what we want, it is usually out of reach, out of bounds, or out of stock. Take the typical case of one Rascal Fricken.

Rascal is twelve. Rascal loves his first person shooter video games. Rascal incessantly stalks around the house making machine gun noises with his lips. Yes, we are worried about Rascal. Rascal decided that nerf guns and paintball markers weren't doing it for him. He wanted an airsoft rifle. For the uninitiated, Airsoft are 12mm plastic beebee guns that often are the same size, weight and feel of the original military rifle they are based upon. They are used by military fanboys to simulate the combat they will hopefully never see but idolize just the same. Rascal doesn't have anyone to simulate combat with so i guess he just wants a more realistic toy for when he stalks around the house and make machine gun noises with his lips.

Regardless the validity of the dream, Rascal wanted an Airsoft gun. Rascal plotted, scrimped, saved and strategized. He located the particular gun he wanted and could afford, found a website and brought it to me. i warned him to do research on the website and the gun. He claimed to have done both. The purchase was made and the cold, hard, calicifying lesson in reality began.

When i was a kid, if you ordered something, you knew how long it was going to take to get it. Allow six to eight weeks for delivery. That was the mantra. That's why it was funny when Wile E. Coyote put an order form in the mailbox, stood there for fifteen seconds and got his ACME Little Giant Flying Saucer Kit without leaving the mailbox. Nowadays, kids don't laugh at that. Cuz that's actually the way it is. You click a mouse and the Ups guy is knocking on your door. This is the age of On Demand, OnStar and instant mashed potatoes.

Or, at least that's usually how it is. Apparently Monster Airsoft.com is still using that old Speedy Delivery guy on the bicycle from Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Have you ever been trapped in a house with a twelve year old who is waiting for the one thing he thinks is going to make his life complete? One of these days i'm going to have to try waterboarding so i can see if there's a comparison. It's like taking a trip to Grandma's that's five weeks long. i have no idea how people used to travel by ship. It's amazing any children survived after the first month of "Are we there yet?"

One week of "Do you think it will come today?" shy of an infanticide, it arrived. i'm not sure who was more relieved. After some assembly being required Rascal took his new toy outside and perforated the box it had come in with a thousand 12mm holes. And he was happy.

For approximately six hours. That's when the trigger broke. The next day the cleaning rod snapped and the simulated M203 grenade launcher under the barrel quit cocking. It became obvious to me that twelve year olds caught in the first blush of young lust are not to be trusted to do good research. So i wrote the company. The company rather bluntly directed me to their fine print. i wrote the company a slightly angrier letter. They agreed to credit us to another purchase from their stock. We sent the rifle back to them, yes, in the perforated box, i thought it a fitting show of our affection. About a month later the company responded with, not a letter to me, but a forwarded, inter-office memo from one schmuck in their warehouse to another schmuck in their warehouse about how he fixed the trigger and it should work as long as "no one tries to pull the trigger while the safety's on." i didn't complain too much about the sarcasm as this is exactly what my older boy had done. But i reminded them of the other malfunctions and waited another month.

Eventually they got around to telling me that they would give me the credit after all because one of their warehouse schmucks dropped the rifle and it broke in half. No foolin', that's what they said. Never mind that i had told them i didn't want the original gun back anyhow. By now, Christmas was approaching. The cost difference between the gun Rascal had bought and the "quality" guns was another c-note so Mum and i told Rascal that maybe if he picked out another, better grade gun, he might get some Christmas money to help. Rascal was in the dream factory now. A whole new arsenal had opened up to him. He chose a space-age looking Austrian job with picatinny rails for future scopes and grenade launchers. He made his selection and when his head was turned the elves went to work ordering it. Having some experience with how these schmucks operate, i kept a close tab on the status of our order. The order was confirmed on the seventh of December. On the fifteenth, they notified us that the item we had ordered, which was in stock on the seventh, really wasn't in stock but had to be ordered by them. We could expect it in 3-5 business days. Ten days later, on Christmas Eve, through a series of unfortunate events, we finally held the box in our hands. Something told me i should open it but it was Christmas Eve and i had a chance to have all of the gifts wrapped by midday for the first time in my life. i wrapped the gun without opening it.

Rascal has been a pretty good sport about it all. Especially when he opened it up on Christmas day, the day he had now been looking forward to since September. The day where dreams seem possible. Even if those dreams only involve more realistic Austrian designed focuses for machine gun noises made with your lips. He saved it for last.

The very last present.

It was a gun.

It worked.

It hasn't broke yet.

It's not the one we ordered. Coincidentally, it's a model that's fifty dollars cheaper than the one we ordered and doesn't work with the scope that his Grandma picked up for it. But one good thing came out of it all. i haven't been asked in over a week, "Do you think it will come today?" Well, not by Rascal anyway.

It's a shame that it wasn't a real gun though. That would have come in handy for getting our money back.

The Deep

2010-12-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

What if you didn't just think that you didn't belong in the world you were in...

...you had proof.

Long, long ago i wrote a young adult fantasy. i'm in the process of rewriting it. Here's the link if you're interested.... really, really, really bored... and possibly are the recent recipient of a full, frontal lobotomy:

The Deep

The Gospel of Tron

2010-12-20T03:23:00.000-08:00

In the beginning was the User, and the User was a bumbling fool.

The Ballyhoo and i went to see Tron: Legacy the other night. While it's a visual feast, the story is devoid of calorie. It's a jelly donut where someone forgot the jelly. i was struck mostly by the obvious biblical metaphors. Small wonder, eh? Happ who studied archetypes in literature this year tells me that that's all it was. Disney just used the Bible as an archetype, a primitive model for their story. You can't read too much into it. Hmmm. Methinks me son misapprehends the power of story to shape idea and thought. Especially since i have been telling him the opposite of this since he was old enough to sit still while i spoke and it only took one teacher with a different story in one class to change his mind.

God Himself knows the power of narrative. That's why the Bible exists. It's the story we need to know if we are to know Him.

"¹⁰⁵ Your word is a lamp for my feet,

a light on my path." Psalm 119

Words are lamps. They light up the soul of the speaker or the writer. They illuminate what's going on inside. That's why a lie has such power. It clouds the viewer's eye's with false light, false images. It misrepresents the soul of the liar... until the lie is laid bare. It's why the Bible is attacked so viciously, so often. Atheists want more than anything to prove it false. To expose the lie they see it as. The lie their faith is based upon. If it's not a lie then they are much to be pitied.

The Satan is known as the father of lies. He knows that the best lies have nearly eighty percent truth to them. He can quote scripture. Just take something true and suck the jelly out of it. Most folk won't dive in deep enough to notice anyway. Disney is not the devil but they seem to be about his work willfully or not. That's what they're stories show and Tron is perhaps one of their most obvious. Let's review shall we, (spoiler alert: i am not paying any attention to whether i give away the story, plot or twists of the movie so if you really don't want to know anything about it, don't watch the original Tron from the eighties.)

Kevin Flynn is God. He has the white clothes, the beard, the inscrutable mystic ideology and the power to create. He creates an entire universe within a computer and populates it with programs.
Programs are angels. We have Flynn's archangel, Tron and a new one he creates in his own image (literally) named Clu.
Clu is Lucifer. The best and brightest and obviously the most beautiful of all the programs. Flynn creates him to aid him in creating the Perfect System. The one that will bring light to all the universe, both in and outside the computer.
Obviously there has to be a fall. God and his angels can't just go on to create harmony and beauty. And here's where Disney really starts sucking the Jelly out and injecting silicone.
ISO's arrive. ISO's are people. Innocent yet wonderfully wise as Flynn describes them. ISO stands for Isometric algorithms. Which, as near as i can figure is what mathematicians use to discover things about stuff they don't understand by finding identical parallels between the mystery and already known areas of study. i say, "arrive" because that's how Flynn describes it. He didn't create them, the conditions were accidentally right for them to spontaneously form. Translation: there is a God but we evolved without his actual design.
Flynn is enthralled with the ISO's. He forgets about his original ideas and henceforth, CLU. CLU becomes jealous and overthrows Flynn. Translation: Lucifer is God's fault cause he's absent minded and callous. Lucifer has a legitimate beef with God.
Kevin Flynn's son Sam shows up on the grid. Sam is Jesus. But he has no idea why he's here or what he's supposed to do. He want's to rescue, not people, but God, Flynn.
As a matter of fact, rescuing people/ISO's is gonna be a bit tough, cuz there's only one left, Quorra. Far from the outcast, downtrodden, poor and needy that Jesus came to, Sam is going to end up rescuing a pretty hot, pretty capable, pretty worthy critter who will help rescue Sam as well. Translation: God needs us as much as we need Him.
Cutting to the chase, literally, in the end, God has to sacrifice himself in order to kill Lucifer and allow Jesus and his chosen person to escape. Translation: Good and Evil are two sides of the same coin, God cannot exist without the devil and no matter what happens, we normal folk are probably better off without their interference anyhow.

So, i guess what i'm trying to say is, don't let pretty lights, pretty people, cool bikes and driving techno beats distract you from what the world is preaching every day. In that sense, Tron is a great movie with a great message.

Much and Little about Far, Much and Little

2010-12-03T02:55:00.001-08:00

Words, more importantly, the definitions thereof, are vitally important to one's knees and back. Allow me to elucidate. Let's set the wayback machine for just last Saturday morning...

Rascal and i hit the trail that morning at around seven or eight. i didn't have Crocodile Dundee with me to tell me exactly and i didn't care enough to find out. At about nine-thirty Rascal asks, "are we almost there?"

"Almost where? Where do you think we're going?"

"Anywhere, I thought we were camping." i had to stop. He immediately sat down, something he was prone to do whenever i stopped walking. He thought we were camping. Here we were, on a mountain in a state forest with snow falling all around and backpacks the size of armoires. What was it he thought we were doing now?

"What is it you think we're doing now???"

"Hiking."

"That's camping!" i explained carefully with elaborate hand gestures for emphasis.

"I didn't think there was going to be this much walking." i wasn't doing anything at that moment so i had nothing to stop doing out of incredulity. i might have blinked. i doubt Rascal noticed. After talking for another couple of minutes with many more elaborate hand gestures for emphasis we arrived at the source of the problem.

Words. Specifically, the word "camping." Y'see, when i bite into the word "camping" i get the sensation of being on a mountain top, wind in my.. ON my scalp and the world at my feet. My dream is to get as far from civilization as possible, see as much as possible while bringing as little as possible. This may not have always been my feeling, it may have been heavily influenced by people: stealing my gear, blaring their radios, glaring their lights; a love of the wilderness and the movie "Last of the Mohicans." Where e'er it comes, it is burrowed deep within my heart now and is constantly pushing it into motion. Whether by canoe, motorbike, foot, horse or hamster team, that is my objective: Far, Much and Little. The mode of transportation of the Little is a means to an end. The making of camp: a vile necessity since i can't hike in the dark and tend to fall asleep if i walk, ride or row all day. Far, Much and Little, an objective i thought my youngest frick shared when on our last trip, where we made camp in the truck, it wasn't until we were taking a day hike down the gorge that he said to me, "Now it feels like a camping trip."

Assumption versus communication. The assumption was that Rascal and i shared a meaning. Communication, with elaborate hand gestures for emphasis whenever possible, revealed that what Rascal meant was... going into the woods some-where, making a semi-permanent campsite, striking out from said campsite with the goal of going to see some-thing and then returning to that same aforesaid campsite in the same afternoon, if not by lunch.

There's an African proverb that goes, "If you need to travel fast, go alone. If you need to travel far, go with friends." The American version would be something like, "If you need to travel fast, go by car. If you need to travel far, you're on your own."

Plan?? There ain't no plan!

2010-12-02T02:52:00.000-08:00

Yeah, camping trips rarely go according to plan... and that's all part of the plan. For you see, without opening yourself up to the potential for the nuisance, the crisis or the trial, you will never experience the spectacular, the amazing or the wonder. Or as Dori put it Finding Nemo, "If you never let anything happen to him, nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo."

F'rinstance:

Finding a quiet little private campground out of the way.
Waking up in the morning with muddy raccoon footprints all over my sleeping bag.
Seeing stars again. No really, you forget how many there are until you get away from the lights of the world.
Shooting stars.
A full moon so bright you mistake it for a manmade spotlight.
An entire church group throwing aside their dignity and jumping in the river. Frolicking like they got no sense.
A horseback ride where Wayward and i "accidentally" became separated from the group for a while and then got to gallop for a bit when we got caught.
Morning on the water with no one around and mist devils, little swirling fog tornados rising off the river all around our canoe.
The ride of the midnight snorter! Deer, apparently taken aback by men sleeping in their path to the river, running right through our camp in the middle of the night and then stopping and stomping on the other side while trying to figure out what the heck was that?! Not one night, but two in a row.
Listening to my sons laughing and tearing the heck out of the inside of the tent while i cook.
Starting a bison stampede with the thunder of the motorcycles and then outrunning it.
Finding Moose Drool. And enjoying it.
Finding an underground river. While still above ground.
Waking up to six inches of snow.
The mountains, the rivers, the sunsets, sunrises, the forests, deserts, lakes, skies, the secret glades and scenic valleys, furry critters, feathered critters, bugs, noises, music and silences that you will only find away from the things of men.
The highs and lows and mysteries and stories, the light and the darkness in the souls of companions, Ballisticat and Wayward and the Ballyhoo. Being there for each other when the trail becomes the trial. Griping at each other when the trail becomes the trial. Sharing the awe when surprised by the serendipitous. Staring into campfires at the end of a day, partly from wonder, partly from exhaustion. Wondering how people lived like this all the time? Wondering if we could? Wondering if our wives would let us. (That's not a typo. You don't need a question mark at the end of a question you know the answer to.)
Learning new meanings to old words like, "friend" and "home" and "dinner."

When i escape, when i go through the gate of the Great Northern Wall that we have built between us and the wilderness, i am physically representing my desire to cross the wall between us and God. To cast off my luxuries, my comforts, my security and put myself at His mercy. That requires risk. God is BIG! He's unpredictable. But He's also secret and intimate. That can be scary and that can be glorious. And that's the point. i want to go back to Eden. i know i can't. Not yet. But i sure do appreciate the glimpses.

Wanna go camping?

2010-11-30T03:11:00.000-08:00

The packs straps were burrowing into our shoulders as if looking for a place to hide, we were lathered like race horses wearing thermies and a parka and Rascal says to me, "I left my trail mix and meatsticks in the car." What i heard was, "Father, despite your very clear and specific instructions to me and despite your putting it in the same bag as the clothes i was to put on just prior to embarking on our three day journey, the very same clothes i am now wearing, i seem to have left a third of my provisions for this journey, by an almost deliberate act of ignorance with my cast-off laundry in the car." This was the first thirty minutes of our latest camping trip.

It was not an auspicious start.

Which made it just like every other camping trip i've ever took. Let's take a quick tour...

There was the first trip i took on my own, the Wayward Son and i managed to lock ourselves out of my bronco at a rest area on the turnpike, a subject i've written ad nauseum. When we finally arrived at the State Park there were no campsites available.
There was the one and only trip i took that Mynnie came on, the one where it rained the entire weekend.
One where i was a chaperone to the church youth, where i led my charges into the waterfalls to do some rock climbing and one fell twenty four feet to break his arm and glasses. And then it rained the rest of the weekend, so hard it flooded all the tents. Fortunately i don't use them.
There was the time the Wayward Son and i had all of our gear stolen out of our campsite.
There was my brilliant idea for Ballisticat and i to put a canoe into the West Branch Susquehanna and then row UP stream.
My other bright idea to take a four year old back packing. Yes, i carried him the last few miles of the last day. i talked Ballisticat into going on that trip too. Funny, he hasn't been able to go camping with me since.
My one and only motorcycle trip, again with the Wayward Son, involved finding no campsites at the park (maybe that's his thing) and so we camped in a carwash in the streaming rain. At least we weren't able to lock ourselves out of the bikes though it did take me a while to figure out why mine would inexplicably die while i was riding it. (The rather loose kickstand had a kill switch attached to it. Bungee cords, don't leave home without them.)
The Ballyhoo gang and i started our second trip together (Rascal was now eight) with a car accident.
On our last trip together and our first trip without Happ the Pretty, Rascal and i chose the wrong side of the gorge to camp on and ended up sleeping in the truck in a tourist trap.

No, nothing goes according to plan when we willfully go homeless. Which is precisely according to plan...

For Kevin

2010-11-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

Some idle thoughts while idling on the great Eastern Not-so-free-way of 95....

95 is urban blight made into a road. Too many people on top of each other means, less progress with more violence.
Okay, one more time for the cheap seats... MERGING IS MUCH, MUCH EASIER AND SAFER FOR EVERYONE IF YOU ARE TRAVELING THE SAME SPEED AS THE TRAFFIC YOU ARE MERGING WITH!!!!! NOT TEN MILES AN HOUR SLOWER, THE SAAAAAAAAME SPEED!
You know that commercial where they ask, "What if cars behaved more like schools of fish or flocks of flying birds?" and it shows all these cars moving in total harmony to merge at high speed into just one or two lanes of traffic? Yeah, they need to perfect that technology and stop worrying about whether or not people can parallel park. (See bullet point two.)
Cruise control people! You have a forty thousand dollar Toyota! I know you have it!
Sudnah's drive slower as a people than yankees. It's not a criticism, it's just an observation. Up here in the colder climes, if someone is doing less than five miles over the speed limit, we look for the Person with Disability tag, otherwise we assume there's just something wrong with their car.
i understand why you would put one rest area in between the north and southbound lanes, i just question the wisdom of having people merge with the fastest traffic. (See bullet point two.)
This one's for the Washingmore area. If you are contemplating widening a four lane highway because of your traffic woes... you have a larger infrastructure problem that you are totally ignoring. It's a band-aid for a sucking chest wound, Mr. Cityplanner. That's way too many humans in way too many cars all trying to go to the same place! There has to be a better way!
That said, the answer, Tokyo, is not to have guys who's job is to physically stuff more people into the train than it will hold so the doors will shut.
The path to bigotry and elitism is a steep hill smothered with lard. We have toll booths. Someone invents EZ pass. Fine. They no longer have to come to a complete stop. Those of us with conspiracy issues can continue paying the toll with paper and chips of metal that no longer represent a bar of gold in some deposit somewhere so the government that's taking our picture anyway can't track us as we drive our families to grandma's. Then they create special lanes for the EZ pass. Fine. Makes sense. Why should Tamika the Tolltaker have to stop painting her nails to watch an EZ passer pass her? Then come the express lanes for EZ pass. "Come to the darkside," they murmur as they rip through the toll booths at highway speeds. "We have cookies." Then someone lets you use their EZ pass on 95 and you spend a half an hour in Maryland traveling four miles in stop and go because they only have two lanes of express EZ pass and four of regular toll booths but fourteen million cars trying to use them and you start thinking, "This is stoopid. All those idiots who don't have EZ pass should get only one lane a mile from here so the rest of us can drive!" Then it hits you, "Eep! i have become one of ....THEM!"
When the real #{}<<'n issue is, WE ALREADY PAY TAXES! WHY DO WE HAVE TOLL BOOTHS AT ALL??
i've never used the caps lock button this much.
i heard of a population study done on rats once where the rats became increasingly violent and manic as the population increased beyond the environment's ability to sustain. i saw this study in action in that traffic jam yesterday. (see bullet point two)
This one is not technically a 95 issue except that 95 touches Jersey so maybe that's the transmission point for this stupidity. Traffic circles are not a viable solution to anything. They are the problem. They are a virus that must be stamped out with extreme prejudice.
Finally, driving 95 has reinforced my desire to someday retire to a boat. That and the list of cool restaurants that have docks that i'm compiling. i need one somewhere in between the Rideau Chain, Ontario and Annapolis, Maryland though. That's a long way to sail between Guinness and fish.

No one made me do this.

2010-11-15T02:55:00.000-08:00

i've gotten lazy...er. And i'm not happy about it. Apparently, without someone, physical or metaphorical, standing behind me with a bullwhip, i don't have a lot of motivation to do much of anything. Strangely, the things i want to do are so self-serving that my conscience kicks in and doesn't allow me to do them either and so i sort of hover, trembling in a dead space between what i ought and what i nought without enough umption to bump me bum either direction. It's why i hate Saturdays. Quite often on a Saturday there is no one telling me clearly what i need to do. There's plenty to do. Too much usually and so an ordering has to take place. A structure of priority has to be assembled. But that is something to do and there's no one making me do it.

Even my writing has suffered. i once wrote a complete book. It wasn't a good book and i'm in the process of rewriting it but i actually got something down from start to finish. You know why. Cuz a couple of little kids started reading it and wanted me to finish. So there's your bullwhip. A gentle hand behind it but a whip just the same. Now? Heck, my last blog post wasn't even up to my standards. Granted, my chief concern was getting it written down before the smoke smell was out of my nostrils but that's barely fit for my notes and now i feel that there is a burnt out hole in the center of my blog as well as the back of the yard. Something published needs to be entertaining for the reader. There's an unspoken contract between me and thee that says, your time here will not be wasted. And i have to apologize. It has been lately. So before i go and waste more of it. Let me end here with the apology and the promise, that hopefully, there will be a return to the days of yore when reading a blog by a scruffy scribe contains a laugh and a truth and well spent minute or two. Or at least a laugh. Possibly just a chuckle. Heck, i'll be happy if you smile.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash

2010-11-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Minutes. Maybe even singular. That’s the timescale we’re talking about here. Possibly no more than sixty seconds from the time my little “controlled” burnpile jumped its ring of rocks and caught the surrounding leaves to the time I walked around the side of the house to get some more tarpaper. In that minute the fire ate itself a six-foot diameter circle. While shocked at the blackened ring of immolation, the fires themselves that formed the ring didn’t look very daunting. So at first I tried to just stomp them out. My feet, disproportionately large for a man only five six and steady fodder for mockery my whole life, only served to spread the impending disaster. The pillowy piles exploded and my podiatric paddles poofed with each panicked punt as if plunged into puffy pyrotechnic poodle pelts. Next I bolted for the rake. My thought was that if I could rake the flaming piles back within General Sherman’s Circle they could finish off the fuel they had and save Savannah. At first it seemed to work. Then to my horror as I was knee deep in a burning pile of brush and leaves that some fool had left at the border of their property, I turned to notice that the line of fire I thought I had defeated had jumped the line and was now windborne from my raking.
“It’s getting away from me, Dad!” I pointed out, most likely, unnecessarily to God. All around me the woods were burning. Small pines were starting to catch. The first neighbor’s house in the path was only twenty feet away from the rapidly growing, rapacious demon I had given birth to. I needed water but the house I was working at hadn’t had water since the pipes froze sometime last winter. I ran for the nearest neighbor that I knew was home, slipping and falling as I went. There were no introductions.
“Do you have a hose I can use?”
“Why sure, lemme…”
“My fire got out of hand!”
“Oh! It’s right around back!”
As it turns out, they had two hoses, already linked. I was hoping it was going to be long enough as i stumbled back to the rising flames, slipped and fell again. “Should I call the fire department?” She called to my running back.
“Probably a good idea.” I answered, not really wanting to need them but knowing the genie was out of the bottle and chaos theory had left Jurassic Park and taken field trip to the Poconos. Now I’ve worked on houses all over, most of them nearing the million-dollar mark. I’ve borrowed lots of hoses. One thing I’ve seen a lot of is poor water pressure. Here, in a little prefab in the hills, which gets its water from a little pumping station down the road, the pressure was phenomenal. Go fig. From then on it was just fire versus water. Time felt very fast but before I had half the circle drowned, a young man appeared with a rake and began pulling back everything the hose wouldn’t reach. I took the moment to grab a hose my house did have and got very wet adding it to the chain with the water going. Another lad with a rake showed up. He raked half-heartedly for a minute as if disappointed that he wouldn’t get to throw on his turnout gear and chop something with an axe and then called off the Dalmatians. Then he was gone too. The first lad borrowed the hose, something he’d probably been wanting to do since he arrived. While he was using his extensive training to carefully aim the garden hose at some remaining hot spots, I surveyed the scene.
From edge to edge the swath of black was now fifty-one feet. That’s no exaggeration, I measured. My throat was acrid and dry and my pants were soaked. My boots were black and my face and hands felt singed. I felt like a fool crossbred with a moron and slathered with some idiot.
I have been using November to remember to be thankful. Each day giving thanks for some blessing of God’s small or big. Tonight, I’m thankful for long hoses, good water pressure, an accurate self image and for mercy on a fool. I think I’ve got a new perspective on the Gospel.

Who indeed?

2010-11-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

The frost-tinged wind has blown the treetops bare.

The leafy remnant are more crumbly browns than shades of fire.

Witching goblin, ghostly ghoul retreat to their respective lair.

Cattail valleys echo with the wandering wa-wa choir.

Gunshot signals hunter's boon and hind's resignation

In the evening there is woodsmoke on the crackling, whistling wind.

Cricket and frog relinquish the night to Owl's inquiring conversation

Who, they ask, who, yet believe that Winter is the end?

Looking for the Ghost smoocherer

2010-10-19T18:08:00.001-07:00

i think i'm becoming a ghost.

It's a strange revelation for me since i wasn't aware that i was tethered to the world of the living at all until those tethers started getting severed. It started with my church closing it's doors. Snip. A group of people i had been worshiping with, been accountable to, laughed with, cried with, prayed for, been prayed for by for years was gone one cold day in February. The ground felt soft and shifting. But there was ground.

Then Happ, me eldest son, got his driver's license in June. Slice. Suddenly there's one less face at the dinner table. No more challenging discussions about life, ethics, God, growing up, acne. Elwood Station became noticeably more silent... at least on nights when his friends didn't coagulate at our place.

In July the adze finally fell. Though i wasn't sure it was permanent at first; it soon became clear that my boss was streamlining. Jettisoning the jetsom. For years i've looked at the same unshaven faces day in and day out. Spent more hours with a partner that i wasn't married to than the one i had. Now, i spend my days alone, talking to myself or the radio and trying to convince myself to stay at work. But the reasons are becoming ephemeral. They're ideas now, ideas with no flesh and no warmth to them. Just cold reasons.

Even Mynnie, the lovely bride i did marry has been less and less available. She's constantly about the needs of others. Work, volunteering and taking care of her recovering father, a man who nearly took the more traditional route to ghosthood, keep hacking out more of her time, and rightfully so. It might even be a good thing, right?

Now i'll have more time to write, non? Writers instinctually crave alone time anyway. In point of fact, i need it in order to write. People being around are a distraction; they interrupt the flow of my own thoughts. More and more those distractions were disappearing. This was a good thing, right?

It was insidious and patient. Like blood seeping unseen beneath a bandage. Like bleeding out. i was losing all of the close human bonds i had and as i did, i started to lose the ability to relate to those i had left. My world was in my own skull and everyone who tried to engage me was interrupting. i was starting to see people as nuisances more and more. Becoming less tolerant and more eager to be separate. To be alone with my thoughts but those thoughts were becoming restless. They were no longer interested in writing. They were lost, unfocused, missing something unnamed. They began to seek solace of their own in increasingly dark places dragging me along for the ride. (Yes, i know, they are my thoughts and therefore me, but it's easier for me if i think of them as someone else, so roll with it for now. It could be demons, right?)

What is it? What's missing? What have i lost? As usual, i turned to God: in prayer, in sermons (podcast of course, i haven't found a new church yet after nearly eight months), in more prayer. The darkness brought guilt and a need for forgiveness but not pious, self-justification. Pagan penance, buying God's favor wouldn't bring peace or purpose to the demons. Religion, phaugh. No. God reminded me, first in words and then in the touchable, pulse filled arms of my wife, that grace and mercy and forgiveness are not rites and fancy words, but they are all warm, wet kisses in a real relationship.

In the cold, blue light of the moonlit trees, with little sound but the cracking of branches by unseen feet and no companions but my own thoughts, it's easy to believe in ghosts.

When one loses or discards all ties to the living and lives only to please one self, it's easy to become one.

The Wilderness waved

2010-10-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Of late, I have been working in the Poconos. Everything about the Poconos is a misnomer. They are called mountains, THE Mountains, by most Philthadelphians and New Joykers. But they are at best, foothills. The only reason they probably sidestepped that label was the lack of any genuine articles over their shoulders for people to skip over them to goggle at. It doesn't end with geography though. Every clump of cabins, shacks and hovels are called Estates. Every hotel with a putt-putt and waterslide is a Resort. Actually the Resorts might be the only names around here that possess a kernel of truth. If one accepts the alternate meaning of the action of turning to and adopting a strategy or course of action, especially a disagreeable or unpleasant one, so as to resolve a difficult situation, that is. The whole place just has the look of a run-down movie set for a white trash zombie flick that may or may not have ever gotten made.

Sure the work has been lonely, nasty and unrewarding; spending long days in a dank, dark crawlspace in dirt, filth and rotting fiberglass that are probably agitating my chest cold. Sure, I’m trying to fix up a pre-fab house that appears to have been assembled by the three stooges, maintained by someone who firmly believed in the Bugblatter Beast Philosophy of: if you can’t see it, it isn’t real and is ten years beyond it’s shelf-life. Sure, it’s rained most of the time I’ve been here and today, the first time I had a moment, pilfered really, to sit in the sun and write, I was immediately discovered by a swarm of gnatskitos and a pack of puginese yap-hounds. Sure, there’s no running water, no shower, no way to wash hands, face or dishes. Sure I spend two or three nights a week here now away from hearth, home and holly, sleeping on either the floor or my woodpile.

But the two hour drive up here, framed on either side by rolling foothills packed solid with autumn leafy things all the colors of the MnM's in the faithful jar at my side and WHUT slingin' its eccentric mix on the crackily ol’ jukebox reminds me that in my humble, pointless opinion, journeys are a heck of a lot better than destinations. Just hope now that I live long enough and strong enough to retire to that motorbike and tent someday and prove it.

My desert is flooding.

2010-10-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

It's raining in my desert. Come to think of it, it rained for a large portion of last week in my desert and it's reportedly going to rain all this week too. One would think that all of this water would, by definition, disqualify my arid wasteland from it's "desert" status but one couldn't be more wronger. You see, (try to imagine Larry Fishburne's voice for this next part, i do) this: is a desert. of the surreal.

Tis not water this desert lacks but land. And if it keeps raining that will be less metaphor than material. The ocean is sometimes referred to as a desert. They share much in common. A wide featureless expanse where there is no succor or sustenance to maintain intelligent life. Intelligent life being here defined as: those who would not willingly go into a desert.

Biblically speaking, the desert is a place of testing and purification. Where everything one relies on in this life is stripped away and the soul is laid bare before God. Where the proud are humbled, the independent are made beggars, the active must be still and the distracted and disoriented are taught what is really, truly vital. There was a line from the Book of Eli. Solara asks Eli what life was like before the war made the world a literal desert. "People had more than they needed," he says wistfully. "We threw things away that men kill each other for now. We had no idea what was precious." Hostile and deadly, the desert is a place of silence. Where the only sound might be the wind, which, not coincidentally, is a favorite symbol for the Spirit of God.

The sea however is chaos. The sea is always changing, shifting, never solid. The sea is deep. There is all manner of mystery beneath. Only God can plunge it's depths. Only God can conceive it's vastness and it's boundary. There is no place for a man to stand. He must cling. He must remain in motion. He must fight to live in the maw of a beast that is actively, energetically trying to kill him. One may meditate in a boat on a calm day or steal a moment in the dark of an early morning but soon a wave will come and the struggle will resume. If the desert spawns visionary poems of prayer, with a weary, languid question mark if punctuated at all then the ocean is an exclamation point! A sharp cry is called for between breaths, between crests. One word sums up all and that word is HELP!

My desert is flooding. The pillars topple as the ground beneath heaves and drowns. Thrown from the ship of a steady job, a ship i had served since a cabin boy, i must cling to whatever work washes my way. That flostam can carry me far from home. Family are struck down or betray and those that remain can drag you down in their panic. Illness takes my strength. Disease, the comfort of my beloved. All that seems solid dissolves and i'm aware of a great, gaping depth beneath my kicking feet. What was it Peter saw when his faith wavered in the waves? What took his eyes from Jesus'?

Yea, though i tread in the trough of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. But i'm getting kinda nostalgic for land.

Okay, one more this about that.

2010-09-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it doesn't happen often but it does happen. i was wrong. No not that, i'm wrong all the time, what doesn't happen often is me admitting it. Since i was wrong in print i guess the only noble thing to do is print a...

Correction: Any father who does not weep when he hears Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" may yet be worthy of the title, he may just be really bitter about his own dad.

i was reminded, after my last post, of the power which words possess. Which is somewhat interesting given that the original premise of my post was on the power of some words, albeit set to music but i don't think i choke up because of the chord progression of Chapin's guitar.

But the power of chords or words is nothing to the swords of action. A reality that pierced my skull in a four hour car ride the other day. My swashbuckling driver and host and unwitting teacher was explaining some of the things his church has done in the past year or so. Knowing that i was seeking a new crew of crazies to worship Dad with, he meant it as a plug for his own. It was a fairly successful plug cuz when it comes to putting boots on the ground, his crew of crazies is training marines. As he talked, i realized that it was due largely to the force of this Deacon's personality and skill set. Deacons, in my mind, are the blue collar branch of a church. They were created when the church had to come to grips with the gripes of some greek grandmas. The Apostles quickly remembered that Jesus showed them that feeding the soul was indivisible from feeding the tummy. Being men of action, the Apostles lost no time in appointing someone else to take care of it. And thus were born the Deaconate. Those that don't talk about Christ's love, they show it.

And that brings me to the point i was trying to make with the last post... what do i show my sons? Many things i'm sure but there's a few i'd like to fix...

i show them that Lacrosse trumps church when we skip one to attend the other
that trying is futile when i give up on my dreams
that work is cursed when i constantly curse my work
i show them how to destroy oneness and unity in marriage and to be an adversarial husband when i fight with my wife in front of them
i can see how my attitudes have passed on the idea that we are little people who are at the mercy of forces much greater than us. We can't fight city hall, fate, big business or the river.
i teach them incorrect roles for a man when i ignore my responsibilities and let others pick up my slack
i teach them that the computer is more important than they are when i miss what they are telling me because i'm "doing something."

and on that note, i'm gonna go make them lunch and put a picture on a post-it in their bags so that i can at least teach them that i love them. Maybe that's all i can hope to accomplish.

When you coming home Dad?

2010-08-26T02:55:00.000-07:00

Any father who does not weep when he hears Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" is not worthy of the title. i'm just saying.

i was working the seventh or eighth hour of what i suspected was going to be a twelve hour day when it came on the digital jukebox. Yes, i put the music in the pod. i did this to myself. i am my own worst enemy. Tell me something i don't know. Now i also cannot hear it without singing it but as i kept coming to the chorus i choked up. For i can see how it's already begun.

My eldest, Happ, is sixteen. As soon as he realized he could ride his bike to other towns, we started seeing less and less of him. Now that he works and can drive, we don't even bother making dinner for him anymore. Which, come to think of it, is probably saving us hundreds on fodder. My interactions with him consist of occasional shoving matches as we pass in the hall. He's just the vampire who watches tv while we all sleep.

While we may never know where the tall guy is, we always know Rascal's whereabouts. My twelve year old is a video game enthusiast. He's the kind of guy who wonders out loud how a dude in Japan could be a level ninety-three while Rascal has had the game only two weeks and is a level thirty-seven. Or should that read, "has had the game two weeks and is ONLY a level thirty-seven?" When i think about connecting with Rascal, i realize i don't possess the hand-eye coordination or virtual patience to spend quality time with him.

But that apparently won't be a problem now that i am a freehammer. Of the four days of beautiful camping weather the Ballyhoo had off of school this weekend past, i spent three working. The day i didn't work, the Sabbath, i spent not in my Father's house, but sleeping, watching baseball and clicking plastic bricks together. We're always teaching our kids something, even when we're not around. i shudder to think what mine are learning from me.

Where's Sargent Ermie when you need him?

2010-08-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

i am not a marine. i wanted to be one once though. A nasty knock on the noggin from a secret admirer that i got as a kid kept me out. Seems the marines don't want guys who may suddenly slip into a coma during training or combat unless it's from something they did. Public Service Announcement kids: if you're planning on going into the Marines after high school or college, start wearing a helmet now, just in case. Looking back now, i'm surprised i wanted to be in the marines at all or even the army. i tried them too. i was not what you'd call a recruitment model. i was a small, long haired kid who preferred to sit and read or draw than run, take orders and run some more. Worse yet, i tend to cynically question most authority. Not disobey mind you, just not go along with any real enthusiasm. Think of marines splashing into the water to storm a beach and one of them just kinda moping along going, "yeah, yeah, but what's the point?" i probably wouldn't have lasted long. Most of us navy brats growing up had military dreams but that was more of a chance to use cool hardware to blow stuff up, legally, than a carefully considered career path. Of all the choices i had coming out of high school, what made me think the military was a good one?

Up till now i had always thought that i chose that as an "out." i didn't know what to do so i just kept the military option open. Presidents do this all the time. Yesterday, however, i had a revelation, a peeling back of my psychic onion, if you will, that, after the tears from the fumes cleared up, showed me this was not the case. The real reason was much more bothersome than mere lack of creativity or options. For the fact of the matter is, i normally have plenty of creativity and options tend to be what you make for yourself. i learned that from reading. No, the real reason i wanted to be a marine is the same reason why i didn't hit the road and travel after failing to get into the service and the same reason i've never tried to become a professional writer or artist, why i stare at a blank page and then give up, why i hate days off, it's the same reason i don't volunteer unless asked to and the same reason i'm weirded out by being my own boss now. It's the very same reason that through all these years the most constant prayer i've made no matter what was happening in my life, has been, "Lord, show me Your will." As pious as that last bit sounds, i now know my motivations were slightly wrong of center.

i want to be told what to do.

Whether it's from a Sargent, a parent, a boss, a wife, a pastor, a total stranger with a gun or God Himself, i would rather have an unpleasant but clear task or responsibility to perform than be cut loose to my own devices. i honestly don't trust me to make a decision in a vacuum of authoritative opinions. That's why the end of high school totally freaked me out. Why the thought of not having a job gives me shingles. It's like being turned loose out of prison. i don't know what to do but i know i have to do something! It's why i became a carpenter in the first place. It's something i knew, gut level, that i could do. It was the lowest common denominator that i thought i could stand when i looked at the newspaper classifieds. It was the reason i was looking at the newspaper classifieds at all! i needed a limited set of pre-approved options from which to start my adult life. The idea of carving out my own path gave me the willies. Granted, it wasn't as if i had no responsibilities, no dire consequences for failure. i had two, a wife and a child on the way who needed me. As it was though, my wife earned more than i did for the first seven or so years we were married but it was safe. i was flogging my body instead of my mind because i knew, solid-as-a-hammerhead knew that if i sweated and bled for certain people they would give me a little paper that my family needed to survive. No one could say i wasn't doing anything. i had protected myself from absolute failure and the harsh but accurate criticism of laziness. To protect my ego and my selfish right to complain, my mind labeled everything else as "impossible." i was a carpenter because i had no choices. When the real reason was, i chose to become a carpenter because there were too many choices and i lacked the confidence to choose one!

So now, i'm laid off. i'm only a carpenter right now because that's what people are offering to pay me to do. The stakes are just as high as they ever were. Absolute failure means not just my family out on the street but the one living with us as well. i think about the options and my soul wants to pull back into its shell and let somebody kick me to the side of the road. The possibilities are limitless, anything could happen, there's no one telling me what to do...

and that gives me the willies.

Post from beyond the grave.

2010-08-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

It seemed a strange way to begin the afterlife. He was sitting in the dark, staring at a computer. He kind of thought the coffee would be better. Instead it had that nutty flavor it got when the coffee pot needed cleaning. He would have to throw that in the dishwasher more here in the New Life. He had only been reborn for a half an hour and he already had chores. Clean the coffee pot, shoo scavenger cat away from the recycling, the only semi-holy thing he'd done since rising from the dead was pray for a minute. He had wanted to do this right. He had wanted to dedicate this second life to God. He thought rising up from the dead should start in prayer and meditation like a monk in the lotus position upon a windswept seaside cliff, instead, he had said, "grace" over bad coffee.

Maybe being resurrected meant that he didn't have to force it. Was he closer to God now? That seemed a dangerous line of thought. People who thought they were closer to God seemed to him the type who could justify any fool thing they did and call it "blessed." Like medieval popes, since they were God's emissary, whatever they did was sanctioned. Down that path lay madness. God asked for humility. The Bible called it "fearing" God. Blithely assuming that he and the Big Guy had an understanding now didn't sound like "fearing."

This new life still included scrubbing pots, nocturnal nuisances and breaking wind, what was different? How was he different? The cursor stayed still for a long time after that question. To pass the time it blinked. This is how eternity would be marked, by a steadily blinking cursor next to a question mark. A great, black carpenter ant tried to skitter across the keyboard to remind him that this was not eternity. The forces of decay and destruction were still at work. He had been reborn only to die again some day. So what was this New Life? Again, what made it different from the old life?

The sky beyond the window began to lighten. Somewhere the Sun was rising. The scavenger cat came back and meowed for mercy. Soon he would have to stop writing and go do work that people actually paid him to do. Work that would need to be cleaned and maintained and even so, carpenter ants would eventually devour it. Only the intangible and invisible was eternal. To be seen and to be touched was to be able to be destroyed. Just ask Jesus.

What did Jesus do when he rose from the dead? He made his bed, folding the grave clothes and laying them neatly on the stone. He played peek-a-boo with his friends, serving and sharing meals and talked with them. Then, about a month later, he just flew away. He had just stuck around long enough to prove he lived, to be touched and to be seen and to say his piece and his peaces. Were they new words or did they just have added weight from being said by a formerly dead guy who now lived? Do the words of the resurrected have more impact or are they just more focused from a new point of view?

The writer guessed he could only write some words and find out.

For Nick

2010-08-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

The thirteenth Jester sweated in the center of the hall like a single rat in a room full of terriers. He removed his belled hat and mopped his bald head with a nervous jingle. It was a stalling tactic. Everyone over the age of seven probably knew that it was a stalling tactic but the Jester was only worried about the Prince.

The Prince was exactly seven.

"I'm sorry," the thirteenth Jester squeaked for his mouth was as dry as the firewood piled up around the stake that stood in the courtyard outside. He tried to clear his throat. Nothing happened. He tried again. Just to make sure, he gave it a third attempt but his throat was acting as if there was a rope already knotted to it. There was a long silence broken by a man chuckling. It was not a nice chuckle. It was the chuckle a man might make if he saw a bullfighter flying through the air in a fight where the bull won. The Prince scowled. The Jester sprang into action!

He dashed across the room like a man who ate footlong burrito and has just spotted the bathroom. The courtly crowd fell out of his way as if he were a man who had eaten a footlong burrito and will probably not make it to the bathroom. His path clear, he ran, skipped a step, stumbled just a little and then fell gracefully face first into the punchbowl. He drank like a lost walrus crawling across the desert who finds a fishbowl. For a few seconds all that was heard in the Great Hall was the sound of his mighty gulping. He drained the bowl and then smacked his lips with a relieved smile. His eye's met those of the royal steward. The Steward was not smiling. Remembering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, the thirteenth Jester slinked back to the center of the Hall like a puppy who had made a puddle in the kitchen but thought he might get away with it. His face and motley dripped crimson punch. His belled hat, hung limp and askew like a wilting flower. He cleared his throat, successfully this time, and in a bold voice that echoed in every corner of the Hall, he asked, "I'm sorry, sire. What did you say?"

The Prince squinted like he thought he was being stalled and said the four most terrifying words ever uttered in the kingdom of the Oaks. The last four words the twelve Jesters before him had heard: "Tell. Me. A. Story."

"Ah. A story. Of course. A story," the thirteenth Jester took off his hat and looked in it as if the story might be hiding there with the swishing punch. All his life he had loved, read and listened to stories but now as he tried to remember just one, all he could think of was what had happened to the the twelve Jesters before him. For the first time in his life he wished he had become a carpenter like his father and his grandfather and his grandfather's father and his grandfather's father's father before him. What made him think he could do this? Why had he not just stayed in his little village and learned to make cabinets? It would have been dreadfully boring but there was very little risk of ever taking off your hat one day and your head coming with it. What kind of story would the Prince want? His mind was as blank as an unmarked grave.

The Prince grew impatient. "Welllll?"

There was nothing for it. The Jester would have to tell the truth... sort of, "In the land of Pennslobovia, in the village of Chalfont-along-Neshaminy, there lived a boy who didn't want to be a carpenter," he began.

Scruffilosophy

2010-07-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

i don't know how profound it is,

i only know it's true;

it doesn't matter what you'd rather,

only what you do.

Who's steering this thing??

2010-07-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

Scruff Fricken sat on the bench in the back of his canoe and watched the Sun rise on his thirty-eighth year. It looked remarkably shiny and smelled fresher than he thought it would. The day that is, not the canoe but then, sunrises usually did. He liked sunrises. Better than sunsets anyway. They had such a hopeful tone to them. Of course he could safely think that because he had never been the victim of a dawn attack by raiders bent on pillage and rape. But then, the dawn probably looked pretty and hopeful to the raiders on those occasions too. So maybe it was just a matter of point of view.

Scruff Fricken was hopeful too. This was remarkable as well for in all actuality he had no concrete foundation for such an airy frame. He was unemployed for the first time in seventeen years with a family to feed. He was deeply in debt because of a house that he would most likely never be able to finish or sell. He was too old and too beat up anymore to continue in the only field he was trained to do and he wasn't particularly gifted at the management side of it. A man has to know his limitations and where planning and logistics were concerned, Scruff was a dog on a short leash. In short, he was in a leaky canoe at the top of the falls and he hadn't packed a paddle.

Scruff Fricken had other talents to be sure and maybe it was the chance to see what he could do with these that lent him his hollow hope. But the label, "starving artist," kept punching holes in his hull and the roaring of the falls made it hard to be creative. The reality of the situation was that he had no work ready to publish, no portfolio, no contacts, no prospects and no idea where to begin.

Scruff Fricken had a sunrise and he had Hebrews chapter eleven, verse one: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." There was some disturbing stuff around that verse about suffering, prison and confiscation of property so Scruff figured he was being warned this was going to be a bumpy ride. Going over the falls usually was, he reckoned. He supposed there was a chance that God would rescue him before the falls but that wasn't what he placed his hope in either.

Scruff Fricken was going over the falls but Jesus was sleeping in the front of the boat and the falls sure looked pretty in the morning Sun.

From the fricken on the roof

2010-07-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

Two things, no, make that three distinctly separate forces have driven this fricken to a roof top perch. An aerie of imagining if you will for i have come here with but one purpose caught in the craw of my kidney bean brain:

To write!

Three forces conspired to drag me from the breezy beachhead encampment i have occupied since our arrival here in the sun soaked lands of saute'd N'Yawkers. First came hordes of fearsome dark clouds from the west. Grim and laden with malice they swept over bay and the flimsy rows of homes between and reminded me that a beach is an awfully foolish place to tempt a storm. So with perhaps more caution than valor i retreated to the relative safety of the house. Frickens are big chickens.

There, in the cool but unreliable comfort of the air conditioning, i encountered the second force to move me heavenward. More of a shock than a relentless storm. More thunderbolt than wind. More fart than food poisoning. i was eating my lunch and wishing for bacon when it hit me. No, not food poisoning. The nasty realization that i was nearly done my thousand page book! With two more days of beach bummery ahead of me, this would be a tragedy! i might be forced into desperate action! To borrow one of the house books which i may not be able to finish (a small blessing since the vast majority seem to be romance novels.) But unless the novel be fetid drumfish then it is abhorrent to me not to finish it and i've even choked down my share of rotting fishflesh. My only other option would be to go get another book but that presented an even more abominable choice: a quest into Rehoboth! While certainly a step up from its vile cousin city Wildwood. They are of the same ilk and bear no joy for a fricken for whom filth, fools and frivolous frittering are fiends most foul. What loathsome lout designs a tourist city in a America with no parking? It boggles the imagination and that is but the beginnings of it's bilious boorishness.

No, drastic measures must be taken! i would have to ration my reading time. But what must i do instead? This is where the third force came. As is sometimes my habit, i looked over my blog. As a rooster inspects his hens to see how their getting along. In this way i decide whether i've been remiss in my writings. Usually i find there is a shortfall in the storehouse. Not much fodder for the flock. This is ordinarily the result of two other shortages: time and shmarts. But today i found, not a shortfall, but a windfall! Like a storm at sea that washed up all manner of refuse i found the Coop littered with lines, polluted with poesy, varnished with verse! Where had all these poems come from? Nearly a whole month's worth of it?! Was i going soft? Was there nothing to rail at? No humorous anecdotes to stretch into longwinded stories with no point? No aimless alliterations to assmeble? As i pondered these questions the answer rose like an angel from her nap...

nope. But that's never stopped you before.

Misnomer

2010-07-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

Dragonfly over a concrete pond

Chilly welcomes on sweaty days

the sweetest place on earth

Strangling the choking urge

Permissive peasant's child royalty

the sweetest place on earth

Locked doors in ugly walls

Acrid fumes in yellow air

the sweetest place on earth

Babble interrupting public address

Noise interrupting noise over noise

the sweetest place on earth

Savoring the magic moments means

Retreating into fair fiction's leaves

in the sweetest place on earth

The Fricken Blues

2010-07-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

(This took several days to thump out. Think i could have gone on writing this forever. For y'all's sake, i stopped;)

Oh, Jeremiah Fricken was a sad, sad chicken,

there was no one sadder than he.

He was bluer than the sky before a storm in July

He was lower than a worm's left knee.

No, no one could lament like old Jerry would vent

he was the king of melancholy.

There was just one hitch in this chicken's dark pitch

He had no cause for his malady.

He was married to a hen that was the envy of men

All over the vicinity.

Who thought she was no prize (but she was in his eyes;

Just cause she tried so hard to be.)

They had two fricks of their own, one big, one just half grown

they were proud of quite naturally

There were never two roosters ever more true, sir

Than ol' Jerry's fine, young pro-di-geny.

The Coop that they lived in wasn't that grand but then

It had spare room for company

So they shared it with a duck who was down on his luck

And his bevy of fair chick-a-dees.

Though his friends numbered few, in his heart Jerry knew

They were of a breed most trustworthy

And he could count on them all to come if he called

In blessing or adversity.

He worked hard for his money, gave it to his honey

And had enough for necessity

But what he could never find was a job that worked his mind

spirit and soul with vitality

All he does is survive, only one-eighth alive

dying incrementally

Trading in his health for a paltry sum of wealth

hoping someday to be free

Y'see Jeremiah Fricken is a praying chicken

to the God of Mystery

And he knows that he is loved by his Father up above

So he can wait for something he can't see.

But while Jerry waits for Him he's been growing kind of grim

patience ain't his speciality

and the tunnel he's going through has a light, that much is true

it's the gap before the next one he can see.

But he'll keep slogging on until this life is gone

With a heap of grace and charity

Then once he stops a kickin', Ole Jeremiah Fricken

Will find peace in eternity.

i'll have what the gentleman on the floor is having.

2010-06-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

i just read a couple of my posts from 2006. And you know what i realized? i haven't grown an inch. i am still complaining of the very same things that i was whining of then. And i'm willing to bet that if i could find some of the posts i wrote back when posts were sent to people instead of tacked up willy nilly on the easternet for any poor fly to get sucked into i would see that i have been runnin' this rut long enough for this to be considered a permanent condition.

And that's why i've decided to become a raging alcoholic. Y'see, i figure a downward spiral will at least be something different.

preachin' to meself

2010-06-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

Wrote this for a friend a while back. Found it today, kinda like my rock. Wonder if isn't what i need to hear right now.

Arise Ponderus!

Shake the dust from thy cloak.

Now is not time for sleeping.

Though the Sun set before the hours granted our grandfathers

And may not yet rise again

Till our children’s children be in their twilight.

Though the night may last our whole lives,

Let us keep to our watch

And never let it be said

That we were found shirking.

What news, brother?

What shivers thy shoulders,

And folds them towards the campfire?

Be it not tears moistening our eyes but dew preceding the dawn.

Let us not wail in the darkness

Like those who live without hope.

Though the night may last our whole lives,

Let us sing on our watch

And frighten the devils

That at our hems be lurking.

Look up, Ponderus!

Night spreads lies of isolation,

Yet can we see the stars.

We have not the eyes of the owl nor the ears of the bat

But let us share our lanterns

And hear again the truth of the Light.

Though the night may last our whole lives,

Let us shine on our watch

And be moons of our Son

From which all heat and light are drawn.

Well met, brother!

There are many camps

And a fire in the center of each.

Though the footsteps between them be many and the shadows deep

There is but one mission for us all

And only one East that we face.

Though the night may last our whole lives,

Pray we be the last watch

And until we bask in the Son,

Good night and God speed the dawn.

Raucus

i got a rock.

2010-05-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is the story of a rock. Maybe two, if you count the one in my head. It begins with a prayer meeting. A prayer meeting with visual aids. There were stations around the room and one station was a bowl of assorted rocks. The rocks, a 3x5 card told us, represented God's faithfulness. God's faithfulness is rock solid, his promises secure. We were invited to pick a rock and meditate upon these thoughts. As i did the rock in my hand became warm. i liked the imagery. i liked the physical token.

Some time later. i came across a smooth little rock at a time when the reminder of God's faithfulness to His promises, His trust-worth was a welcome and much needed thought. i took the little stone, smooth and black, nothing spectacular in itself, and put it in my pocket.

There it stayed. One of the four things i always carry in that pocket. A lighter- one must always have the ability to make fire. See Cast Away. Chapstick- if you work outside you go through a lot of these or you have bloody lips. A multi-tool- the swiss army knife of my generation. And a rock, smooth and black. Possibly the most worthless weight i could carry but in some ways, my greatest treasure. Whenever things get tough or the pointlessness of life becomes crushing i put my hands in my pockets and there is a warm, solid little prompt. A prompt to see things differently. To rest on something, Somebody else. To remember the promises and the Promiser and that i have a faith in something beyond my own skills, devices and preparation. Which is a darn good thing. Cause i'm a'lacking. That little rock is getting smoother.

The Memorial day party at the Coop. Darkness falls and somebody starts giving all the kids glowsticks. My nieces run around "selling" them. One of the blonde haired, blue eyed Sirens comes up to me, "we'ah sellin' gyowsticks, want wun?"

"Sorry, honey, i don't have any money." i fish around in my pockets to prove the point since she's not old enough to know that married men don't carry cash. "All i have is a rock." i show her my rock. The rock which has reminded me of my Lord's faithfulness since before Christmas. She inspects it, approves it as currency and peels off a glowstick for me. Then she skips away. i'm left holding a glowing piece of man's cleverness which will fade before the night is over, longing for the lump of earth i gave up. Oh well, i think. It was only a symbol. i probably should have taken the opportunity to explain the significance of it to her. Maybe she even would have gotten it.

Today. A day of rest. i decide that the best way to recover and relax is too spend hours working on the idea of going fishing. We haven't used any of our tackle since Canada, two years ago. i go outside to collect, repair and refit, a task more suited to a team up of Indiana Jones and MacGuyver than a grumpy little fricken. After the perils of the Temple of the Tastykake toolshed/truck, the excavation through two years of rodent scat, i finally have all the gear. The broken down, next to useless gear. Perseverance being an angler's only virtue i press on. As i finish stringing the last rod in the driveway. The rough, gray, stone driveway. i happen to look down. Naw. i bend down and pick up a rock. It's warm in my hand from the sun. Smooth and black. i had to laugh. i think somebody is trying to explain something to me. i hope i get it.

A gravedigger's thoughts.

2010-05-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

We all deal with grief in our own way. Some care for the dying. Some weep. Some get angry and then try to figure out why they are angry. Others feel nothing but a need to do something. Something necessary for those who died and for those who grieve.

So we dig the grave. And realize that our sin caused this. And that it didn't just bring death to us; it brought it to the whole world. All of life was cursed because of us. Plants die. Animals die. The Gulf is dying. A pet dies. Because we rebelled, innocents now die too. And the guilty dig the graves.

But not forever. One innocent willingly died to pay for that curse. All life will someday be free of death. In fact, is free of the real penalties now if they are willing to accept that gift of a death in our place. i don't know how to understand death, how to deal with it, but i do know it's helpful to do it in the shadow of a cross.

RIP Tobasco.

Leader or loner?

2010-05-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

How does one lead?

Sometimes i know what i want to do, but i don't have any compelling need to compel others to do it too. If you want to come, fine. If not. More for me. Sure, some experiences are better shared but only if those with whom it is shared want to be there. They come of their own free will. i also realize that in certain circumstances, certain folk need to be coerced into doing something good. i personally agonize over this. i don't like forcing people to do anything. i'd rather not have ye if ye don't wanna help. i've noticed a lot of other people don't seem to struggle with this. Many seem to have no problem telling me what to do or at least think they know better what i ought to be doing.

Looking at the big picture, i see there are some responsibilities i have to God, to my family and to my neighbor, but there really seems to be a lot of free ground in which to explore how best to do this. And what might work for me might not work for you or my neighbor. In fact, the discovery may just be part of the process. But i wouldn't throw a lot of what i do into the category of "redeeming creation for God." No. Most of it would have to go into the "keeping busy" file. i think that's what i'll print on the side of my trash can, "busy file." So how does one lead? How does one know that what one is heading for is so noble or true that others need to feel compelled to follow?

How does God lead? God took two perfect people. Put them in a perfect garden. Loved them perfectly and then .... gave them the choice to follow Him or follow their own path. Why? He could have left out the temptation. He could have locked out Lucifer. He chose not to. He chose to give us choices. God doesn't destroy the evil in the world until all we have to choose from are salad and bran muffins, Pat Boone and Sandy Patty, church and children's playgrounds with none of the really fun, injurious machines on them. He allows, tolerates all the wrong paths and just inserts one little, winding, slightly overgrown path and calls it good. Why?

Because that's the path that leads to Him... and He really want's us to choose it ourselves.

Dunno if i answered my question, but i know where i want to go now.

Hangin's too good for 'em.

2010-04-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

The theme of the day seemed to be justice.

My partner doesn't believe in rehabilitation. He's an eye for an eye kind of guy. i think if he had his way, any violent crime (and quite a few less than violent ones) would be punishable by death. Preferably to be carried out by the arresting officer right after slapping on the handcuffs. He spent a good portion of the ride home today yelling at the radio. Well, more the ex-con on the radio who committed manslaughter (shot three of his hostages during a hold up and one of them died) as a teenager, went to one of the worst jails in the country for forty-four years and completely rebuilt his life there. The man's free now, apparently a model citizen and that seemed to really bother my partner. He didn't feel that justice had been done. The man hadn't been punished enough. And that made me wonder? Why do we have jails? Can anyone be rehabilitated? How much is punished enough? How can we forgive?

Earlier in the day, i heard an interview with a man who had been sexually abused by a priest as an altar boy. He described how it would even take place in the chapel, at the altar. It was very vivid and for a moment, i was not driving in a truck going to work. i was held down, before the altar of God with all the sacraments and sacred imagery before me, being violated and i thought, what kind of monster? How does a child go on after this? That man took so much from him and then left him to find his way in life with the very thing that should anchor his soul tied to the very act that rent it to pieces. What kind of justice is there for that boy? What kind of punishment should there be for that man? i can't bring myself to call him a priest.

And then i knew. String him up, Wrath said. No, hangin's too good for him. Too quick. Beat him first. Beat him until their ain't a square patch of skin on him that don't look like hamburger. Beat him till his own momma don't recognize him. Flay him alive, truss him up and then drag him through the streets so everyone can spit on him and kick him and call him every vile name in the book. Drag him out to the highest hill, then nail him to a board and crank him up where all can see. And hang him in such a way that his lungs fill up with fluid and he drowns in his own spit and every last moment of his miserable, wretched life is pure, fiery agony! That's what his sin deserves!

Course, that's what all sin deserves. And that's just what all sin got. Once. And for all.

Why do we have jails? Can anyone be rehabilitated? How much is punished enough? How can we forgive? i don't think any society will ever be able to answer those questions unless they start from the foot of the cross.

Away message

2010-04-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

On safari, hunting down the elusive Timetowrite. Be back soon.

Pappy Fricken

Witnesses

2010-03-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

The children of God gathered in a musty, decaying hall but the lights were too low to see. Shadow hid what was undesirable and flashes of color sparkled in whirling, unceasing motion that made focus impossible. Conversation and communion were given up as the thumping music drowned out all but the shouted exchange. Alcohol dulled pain, lowered inhibitions and substituted for brotherhood. The creatures designed for glory chose to hide in darkness and noise and drunken revelry. The bride of Christ gave up her husband for a grope and bad dancing.

It’s their right to choose. A right they’ve been given. It just made the witness sad. So he wandered out into the night where the moon seemed bright in comparison and bird and frog spoke in more reverent tones. Away, away from the revelers, away from the noise, from the shouting, from the over-stimulation, from the false camaraderie, away from the bad dancing, he found a refuge beneath a great and ancient oak. Leaning back he gazed up at its proud height and strong, still branches and in its quiet way, it seemed to him that the tree was a wise old witness too. Here was a living thing that though without thought or self-awareness, fully knew its Creator, what He expected of it and its place in creation. That a tree could, in the very act of being what it was meant to be, shame those of us in rebellion.

Two thousand years ago, witnesses threw their clothing and branches before their King, their Creator, their Husband and shouted and sang his praises while they danced for joy in broad daylight even though they didn’t understand his Kingdom and that, in just a few days, he would soon hang on a tree for them. The grumps of their day told Jesus to make them stop their unseemly display. He told the grumps that if the revelers stopped, then the very stones would cry out. Creation was so intoxicated with the Holy Spirit that even stone witnesses would cry out. I wonder how often creation looks at us and just wants to cry?

first things first

2010-03-23T01:25:00.001-07:00

i got up to write at a quarter to four

but it turns out i had nothing to say

so i bowed my head and took it to God

and it turns out i had plenty to pray.

Something i lack the talent to say...

2010-03-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

From his lofty perch

in his tower of bone

He thinks he wields

power alone.

All that he sees

and all that he hears

is tested and weighed

against the wisdom of years.

His scales are just.

His vision is pure.

His library vast.

His verdict is sure.

Cold knowledge his counselor,

decisions of steel,

based on what's firm,

proven and real.

But alas, his nose tickles

with the scent of perfume;

A warm, rare aroma

rising up from her room.

A ballad of destiny

with a drumbeat for dance

of risking it all

on a sliver of chance.

Passion blind, she knows

only what she can feel.

Feathery touch, silken skin

quickly bruised, slow to heal.

She keeps the fire.

She feeds the fuel.

Hers is the longshot,

the feud and the duel.

Who rules the kingdom

will it be fire or steel?

What he can know

or what she can feel?

Peek-a-boo with Dad.

2010-03-06T03:41:00.000-08:00

It's a dirt road switchbacking through the besieged Pennslobovian wilderness. The last island of natural wonder in the Commonwealth Sea of Humanity. And even it has an old trainbed converted to yuppie bike trail snaking through it. Ease of access. It lowers, cheapens the experience. One no longer has to work just to get here. Daytrippers can cruise up, snap their pictures and leave in a carbon monoxide fog and say they've been there, done that. They can be back in a "quaint" (their code word for anything not a Starbucks) coffee shop in less than a half an hour congratulating themselves for experiencing nature AND alternative cultures in the same day.

The dirt road has a number given it by the state. It also has a sign warning travelers that the road is not "maintained" (their code word for occasionally sending some guy up there with a chainsaw and a winch to get the fallen trees out of the way) for three months during the winter.

It was winter. Rascal and i drove right in.

That's right, we drove. We daytripped through with our cameras out the windows, like gang-bangers on foreign turf. It was our last day of camping and we had to get home. There was no more time for nature, money had to be earned, state-approved lesson plans had to be learned, so fuel and film were burned.

But we went slow. Not just because the dirt road is one lane of potholes, downed trees, crazy hairpins and sloped to boot. We wanted to go slow. It was the four-wheeled equivalent of dragging our feet. We may have been daytrippers, but we were Sunday daytrippers. There was so much to see in the golden, stained glass glow of sunlight through the leaves. Actually, there was really only one thing to see: trees. i can be realistic. We were in awe of dirt and trees but maybe what we were really in awe of was the artistic arrangement. God's a florist.

Then it would happen. i would stop. Put the Tick (my name for my little, black blazer) in reverse, back up and just sit in wonder. There were tears in the veil. Windows where the trees parted enough to see the valley below and the mountains beyond and gain a glimpse of the deeper, wider story through which we journeyed. An oh, so, narrow window into how the beauty up close fit into a beauty all around. How the vignettes fit into the epic. Vistas that made your breath catch. God is a showman. How i longed to get out and disappear on foot into that wonder. To explore, not at thirty five miles an hour. But at a mile a day. Or maybe even slower. To sit in it and give glory to it's Creator.

It's a desk in our living room/foyer/kitchen/office. i wanted to scan something into the computer. Some artwork. Just a quick sketch, all i have time for but make time for every day. My life is a regimented repetition of requisite responsibilities. i need art.

Then it happened. i stopped. i picked up the picture that Happ the Elder had drawn and left. An explosion of weirdness that wasn't an aching attempt at something he thinks he should draw and struggles with but a free expression of just something he thinks is cool. Incomprehensible and complete, cute and cartoonish yet wicked and sinister. Marveling, i continued on. Then, astoundingly, it happened again. i reversed. Backed up to the frame on the computer where Rascal the Younger had written the beginning of a story. It was him but so much different. An uncanny voice that i at once recognized but didn't. It was so much more mature than my eleven year old. There, in my daytrip, glimpses of the wider, wilder, deeper stories that i was journeying through. Vistas that make me catch my breath and want to get out of the rut and meander, explore and savor these creations, their creators and their Creator.

Maybe we can talk about that sometime in a quaint, little coffee shop.

its the end of the world as we know it

2010-03-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

This is for anyone who ever attended Christ Church, Peace Valley Church, Peace Valley Community Church or New Life at Five Points. Alright, here's what you do...

Put on REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine). Don't have it? Go get it, it's worth it. Good song. Now, turn the sound down just enough that you can hear the beat but not so much the words and then read really fast.

God’s Great,

It starts with a Sunday, leap of faith, PCA,

Christ church is not afraid.

Plumstead Elementary, turn a gym into a church

Here to serve each other’s need,

Regardless of your own need

Barely getting up to speed

Oh no, gotta go

Getta pastor, finda pastor, New Life Sonship

Suddenly there seems to be Jack Miller’s whole family with an overhead projector and felt tip pen

Some Left, those that stayed

voted to change our name

and join New Life

Say Hello to Alan Lee, Now we’re called Pvc,

Worship goes to tennessee

What then…Uh Oh, Gotta Go

Finda building another school, but it’ll do

Blind side, lake side

Pine Run, Lenape, CB west, Unami,

Buy some land but lose it in a pyramid scheme-What?

Ran the Gamut, door slam it, shut, Trust Christ’s cross, Feeling punched in the gut

It was the end of the world as we knew it

And God is fine

Tabernacle – Blue Van.

Still trying to buy some land.

Funerals, weddings, Go to Landis cabin

Wexford, West Virginia, Team goes to Uganda

Saint James, Square the C,

Sherry bird is cancer free

Alan’s weary, Alan wants to

Step down, step down

Bought some land, lost some land

Alan comes and goes again, oh dear, Blair’s here, Why that sudden look of fear?

On our own, on our own, on our own again,

We need solutions, we need alternatives, two years go by

It was the End of the world as we knew it…

It was the End of the world as we knew it

God’s still fine

It was the End of the world as we knew it

God’s still fine

Bill Senyard, Movie clips

Kissing God on the lips

Sanctuary, Broken Bread

What the heck are pickleheads?

Have communion every week, N-L-F-P

Theater has comfy seats, Children’s pageant lost a sheep,

You Incendiary, Misfit toys, get slammed but Trust God, right? Right.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

But God’s still mine

Yes God is fine

From the skeleton collapsed upon the moldy laptop.

2010-02-26T10:10:00.000-08:00

i need lunch. i need sleep. The Ballyhoo need a push. The snow needs a sled. The house needs cleaned so badly that men in full biohazard gear are assembling in the driveway. My ipod needs the Christmas music taken out of it. And i am writing in a blog.

i think it comes from somewhere up the river of doubt. i don't know what i am. i have some clues. i have a wife but judging from our relationship lately i haven't been a good husband which is really too bad because i've been here when things were going well and she's really a fun person. There are some kids who live here that call me 'dad' so i'm pretty sure i'm a father. One is taking a nap and has a job at McGargleds and the other is in a Mario World induced coma, so i must not be a very inspiring one. i work as a carpenter but the thought of being a carpenter makes me want to weep. In fact, my stomach does this Bill-Murray-Groundhog-suicide thing from just writing the word 'carpenter.' Nng, there it goes again. They say you are what you do. If that's true than i am a Nauseator. Which sounds like one of Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc.'s creations. Greetings Perry the Platypus.

If, by some small chance, i am what i want to do, then i am a creator. Small "c." i love art. i love making things. i love crafting words, lines, notes and small plastic bricks into something they weren't before. i love telling stories.

And so i forget my stomach. i fight off the drowzies. i let my eldest sleep and my youngest bounce turtle shells into various cute little opponents. i listen to the snow melt. i watch, only mildly interested as the men in the driveway in the biohazard suits decide a frontal assault is too dangerous and call in an airstrike. i let another rendition of Little Saint Nick play and i write.

Maybe that's it. Maybe i'm a Hoper.

Mom, Dad? What's with the For Sale sign in the yard? Hello?

2010-02-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

The person stumbling through darkness has seen a great light.

With the juggernaut ferocity of a blizzard, God has broken into my world, stomped all around, knocked over my monopoly game and said, "Get your boots on, we're going on an adventure!"

My church is closing.

Sentences are funny things. That last one, four words long, sums up everything i need to say. It conveys all of the pertinent information. And yet, unless you've spent time in my moccasins, and i wouldn't recommend that; they smell like La feete vinaigrette, you would not understand anything i'm trying to say with that sentence. Well, you might, IF you were one of the following:

An astronaut who has ever had his tether come loose.
A diver who has looked up to see his boat leaving.
A Yonkers socialite, who after a great party, wakes up... in the Serengeti.
A traveller who arrives home to find their house burned down while they were away.
A Manassas farmer who realized the civil war broke out by seeing the opposing forces out opposite windows.
A child who came home from school to find your parents have moved. (man, that day sucked!)

Barring that or the vinaigrette, there is no way that those four words can sum up the fact that this has been my church since i was fifteen. i have grown up in this church. Grown in the Word in this church. Been counseled in this church. Wedded in this church. My eldest baptized in this church. Brought into the worship ministry in this church. Given a voice in this church. Given something to counter act the necrotic of my work life in this church. In essence, i have been shown how "in this church" means "in this family."

"True," Dad is saying, "and now, time for something completely different." Life is change. Change is weird. You want it when things are hemorrhagically boring. Then it announces that it'll be here on February 28th and you get a little tweaked. Faith gets tested. Will the shuttle get to you before gravity takes over? Will another boat come along? Are those lions? Where are we going to live now? This is just going to be a short little disagreement, right? Dang it! i hope the neighbor lady has good cookies. (she didn't. Just those stupid fake lemon oreos)

Oh, well. Dad knows best. Guess i'd better find my boots.

XVI

2009-12-22T19:32:00.000-08:00

i thought i knew what it was to have a sixteen year old son. i figured it was pretty much the same as having a teenager only with complications. Sort of like Hemorrhoids and a case of poison oak. Then Happ (the fashionable son) went and passed his drivers' permit test. i knew the Ballyhoo gang had to celebrate this rite of passage of it's most fashionable member in true Ballyhoo fashion. So i collected Rascal and we plotted to greet Happ in a manner befitting the occasion as soon as the conquering hero emerged from his motor chariot. As we prepared our arsenal of snowballs we fleshed out our plans. "After he yells at us for messing up his new clothes we can all go out to dinner!"

"Yeah!"

The vision of a break in the holiday madness with a family night together danced in my head as my cell phone rang. Mynnie, (the pretty one) informed me that she would be dropping off our new driver at the restaurant where he and his buddies get Cheesesteaks every Tuesday.

Oh. Of course. He wishes to celebrate with his friends. Perfectly understandable. i hung up the phone and my dream of a family celebration and a traditional Ballyhoo Snowball Huzzah with an audible click. That's when i decided that now i knew what it was like to have a sixteen year old. It wasn't Hemorrhoids and rashes. It's more like dreaming of a steak dinner and getting a steak dinner. A Salisbury steak in a TV dinner.

Broken dreams and eight inches of snow don't mix so Rascal and i took our sleds and re-inflated our spirits in Carcass Basin. The hill is perfectly groomed and the pond frozen and disappointment cannot survive in the harsh glee of high speed runs across a frozen pond.

Time slurps on into the future, it is time to pick up Happ, so i venture out in Mynnievan to fetch him. He, not unexpectedly but not anticipated with delightedly, asks if he can drive home. To his surprise, i unexpectedly but received with much delightedly say, "sure."

Riding home. Trying to unclench my hands and keep my voice calm with the sensation of sitting in the dentist's chair with the needles, knives and skewers all laid in plain sight, i chuckle softly to myself, "no dummy, NOW you know what it means to have a sixteen year old son."

Just like every year since year 34.

2009-12-19T04:51:00.000-08:00

In path of the Nor'Easter, the soon to be trampled discussed their doom...

"So they're going to decide tomorrow whether or not they will have to cancel church," informed the Informed.

"Cancel Christmas? Wow!" remarked the cynic.

"A year without Santa?" questioned the incredulous.

"No no," soothed the cynic, "it will just be a year without Jesus."

"Oh," sighed the much relieved, "that's okay then."

Happy Hunting

2009-11-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

The Plains of Sabbath. The wide open spaces between the thickly, prickly forests of Necessity, the foggy Deserts of Dream, the stormy Seas of Calamity and the hyper-bustling Cities of Man that make up the rest of the hunting range. Here a hunter can ease down in the tall grass, test the wind and relax a little, knowing that his quarry cannot pass by unnoticed. Like a lion surveying the savanna, all the herds must pass a nervous day under his eye, predator and prey in full sight of each other. There is nowhere to hide until you reach the other side.

Thanksgiving Valley is this plain's name. And it marks the mouth of the Advent Race. A peaceful stream that flows through this fruitful field gathers speed and power as it pours over the precipice at the end of the vale. From there it's down, down, down the mountains in a tumbling, pell-mell fury of thunder and chaos until it finally bursts over Christmas Falls and into the Pool where some drown and others bathe and finally it slips out the other side and the quarry will be gone, never to return. Another Year gone, another Yearling straining at the gates in agonizingly youthful exuberance ready for its hunt. Its chance to run the gauntlet.

But the hunter is still thinking about the last hunt and all the hunts before. How to capture a year? How to hold on to that powerful beast? How to best use every bit of the members he managed to pull down? What did he learn? What worked, what didn't?

For this hunter, this valley, this morning of Thanksgiving has been a good place to slow the critter down. It's the last good grazing spot before it's dash down Christmas Ravine. Here i can walk among the herd, even run my fingers through their wooly manes. It's a sacred spot. A place to count blessings.

Such as homes given...to us, to Clan Bubba, to the Cats.
The departing of a Shepherd and a partner, hopefully both to happier hunting grounds.
The arrival of a new partner and all the adjustments that means.
For a camping trip, a beach trip, a reunion with my brother's family.
For seasons of growth in the Ballyhoo.
For more proof that God will provide, even in recessions, democratic presidencies and swine flu pandemics.
Reconnecting with family, some i wasn't aware i had.
For sins forgiven.
For a few more sign in my larger hunt for joy and contentment.

And for knowing when to end a post that has buried itself in poetic metaphor without a single joke, laugh or snicker. Happy Thanksgiving to All and to All a good Hunt!

A Jeremiad.

2009-11-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, at work in a basement, stuffing puddy into a thousand thousand little nail holes, i had at least six ideas for art work, nine for a story and three for a post here on the Coop. Here i sit in front of a laptop and there's more action on the static screen than in the oblong pumpkin. (Calling it the squash would convey it's lumpy irregularity more efficiently but then i don't think folk would get that i'm talking about my head.)

i've been thinking about change lately. As in: Can people change? Specifically for the better. For you see, in my experience, people don't. Change for the better that is. Once they reach some semblance of something we can label cynically as "maturity," they're personalities are fixed. The ingredients of traits, quirks and habits that make them able to be differentiated from the other primates in the herd have settled into the shape that they will only harden around as they age. From there on until the Big Chemical Breakdown, they will take that palette of colors and let them dry and darken with age. The most change i can say i've witnessed is when one of the colors, usually a particularly dark one to begin with, starts to take over. But this isn't change, this is just a natural progression of possession. We sell our souls to something and sooner or later or in most folk, gradually, it takes more and more of that real estate. Until all that's left is the slave and the master. The fearful person becomes the shut-in, the party animal burns out, the cynical philosopher becomes a grumpy blogger. Slaves to their sinful addictions.

Now my problem with this is this: i believe in the God of change. The Father so loved the world (euphemism for all of the little yellow, brown, red, black and pink idi-ants running around on it) that He gave His only begotten son. That whosoever, (or who ever wants to) believe in Him, shall not perish (die a worthless life and then spend an even more tragic eternity) but have everlasting life (life here should be capitalized. Life. Not the life that we suffer through here and is but a pale shadow of truly Living as it was meant to be, fully in God and He in us. No questions about purpose. No coping mechanisms. No incessant search for love and fulfillment. No lies.) That God has told me that He came to free people from their sins. Those that believe are no longer slaves, they are truly free. One of the evidences of this is that they shall live differently, different from how they lived before and different from all of those who have chosen not to believe. They shall truly change! This is my hope. Or i hope to make this my hope. Being a cynic, hope would be a change. This is what i pray for everyday. For myself and for others.

So how come i'm not seeing it happen?

A country for cur-mudgeons.

2009-10-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

There was a man. He took a trip to a far off country and there he settled for a short while. While he was there he found a puppy. The puppy was starving, badly beaten, diseased and living on the streets. The man sought out the puppy's owner and stated his intentions to buy the dog. The owner demanded a high price and without batting an eye the man paid it, even though it was far more than the puppy was worth.

The man nursed the puppy back to health. He found him a home where the puppy would be looked after and gave him a name and a tag so everyone would know who the puppy belonged to. One day he took the puppy for a walk, told him how much he loved him, told him he was going away for a while and that when he came back, he would take the puppy to his new home where they would always be together. He told him that while he was gone, he wanted the puppy to be a good dog.

And then he left.

The puppy waited. And waited. And waited. After about an hour, the puppy realized that this was going to be a long wait. Puppy's have no real hard ideas about time. The puppy grew up. He did his best to be a good dog. He got along all right with the other dogs. He worked hard for the people who took care of him. He enjoyed walks and hunts and riding in cars with the windows open. He even settled down with another dog who had a tag as well and they had puppies of their own who he told about the master and country that they would all go to someday. And life went on.

But every now and then, the puppy would catch a scent of his true master. It might be on another person or another dog. It might be on something like a tree or wooded path. It might even be on the wind at sunset, as if carried there from some far country. The master's country. His country. At first the puppy would be excited. He would jump up and look, expecting any moment to see the master. And he would wait. And wait. And wag his tail. And wait. And sniff around trying to find more. And wait. And after about five minutes he would realize that this wasn't the time. The master wasn't coming. Again.

Then the puppy grew sullen. The puppy would retreat to dark corners and lie there. As he grew older, he grew less patient. No longer would he jump up. He would test the scent and if nothing changed he would go back to what he was doing. He still tried to be a good dog, but something had changed. His caretakers did not know what to do. His mate did not understand him. His own pups avoided him when they saw that familiar set of his jowls.

The other dogs made where ever they were at, their country. They dug holes and spread around smelly things. They lived in houses and acted like children instead of dogs. They chased their tails and bit whoever they pleased and barked and barked and barked. But the puppy thought they were all fools. He knew where he belonged and who he belonged with and this wasn't it.

Now is about the time in most stories that the Master should come or the puppy should take matters into his own paws and start off to find the Master or become a bad dog. But that didn't happen so i can't say that. The puppy is still working hard for the people who take care of him, he is still teaching his puppies about the Master, still trying to be a good dog. In short, he is still waiting.

Lately, he's been trying to wait in a more puppy like fashion. 'Cause puppies believe!

Teach your children well.

2009-10-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

Does the Holy God have specific plans for us or does Jesus not care what we do as long as we do it all for the glory of the Father?

i have two sons, the Ballyhoo, Happ and Rascal. They are both creators.

Happ is a philosopher. He has ideas that swirl on currents of emotion, they are ephemeral; solid in the moment and then fading before the strength of the next minute's passion. He is a drummer and it seems to me that music fits his building style. He has much to say, too much for static mediums. Paper lacks the acreage to contain his spiritual pilgrimage. Too many borders, too many boundaries. He is the cowboy and only the wind can encompass his art. And so i think he will most likely build with the wind and on the wind and the wind will take his creations to the world.

Rascal is an architect. Rascal builds ideas upon ideas. Carefully selecting the next stone, the next brick from among the pile. Then shaping it, knocking off sharp corners or fitting it into the construct. Rascal aspires to perfection and permanence BUT only what is perfect must gain permanence. All failed attempts must be learned from and wiped away. Only what is good, what is solid, what has obeyed and fit the design in his dream can be seen through and then seen by the world. Rascal is young, blocks are the mode for now but blocks are the foundation of the man he will become. It seems to me that he is methodically choosing and learning and experimenting with what will become the building blocks of his own soul, his own direction, his life.

As their father, i love seeing them grow like this. i love answering their questions and seeing what they choose to do with the things they learn. Do i care what they do with their lives? Hell yeah! i'm going to be a lot more proud of them if they truly follow their dreams whatever those dreams may be. i'm going to be a lot more proud of a musician and an engineer than a male prostitute and the front end loader operator down at the dump. They don't have to be famous or particularly successful. i just want to look down the table at Thanksgiving someday and see two guys who are living, not just surviving. Two guys who are pursuing something, not running from something. Two guys who are investing their time here and not burying their talents so as not to lose them.

But that's me, what does the Almighty Maker of the Universe think?

The Black Sheep Rebellion (or What the Flock?)

2009-09-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

"....and on the pastoral front, bloody fighting has again erupted in Cooper Nation. For more on that story we take you to our correspondent on the ground, Don Noemutch. What's the situation where you are Don?"

"It's becoming known as the Black Sheep Rebellion, Steve and up until this morning there was hope of a lasting truce, maybe even a return to the negotiating tables. But that dream of peace ended sometime last night when the shelling began and folks around here woke up to the war in earnest ..again.

Every year, many of the sheep in this wide flung flock gather here, in the traditional fold of the Cooper Nation to picnic, embarrass themselves at softball and horseshoes and do their patriotic part to deplete the local beer surplus. But it is not a complete gathering. Many of the flock could not make the annual pilgrimage. Scattered abroad, with young lambs being apprenticed to local shepherds, the diaspora quietly suffered alone. That is until the invention of the Easternet.

The information superhighway has brought millions of sheep together and that togetherness has brought something else... civil war.

Through a series of misinterpretations, hurt feelings and sidelong insults over the computer, a war erupted over the summer between the Cooper Nation sheep that remained in the fold and the many smaller, pocket flocks that lived in the surrounding hill country. These separate groups banded together and called themselves the Black Sheep due to the color of their wool. They rallied to the cause of having their own gathering in a place of their own choosing and had even formed a secret society to plan that new pilgrimage and it's meeting place. When the unexpected happened.

The shooting stopped. The two parties agreed, tenuously at first, to cease fire and start working through diplomacy on their mutual disagreement. This baby step was seen as a giant step forward and a welcome leap away from violence."

"What happened to renew the hostilities Don?"

"We can't be sure exactly but it seems, Steve, that the Nation sheep in the fold found out about the secret Black Sheep meetings taking place. Now the Black Sheep maintain that they had adjusted their plans to include the Fold Sheep since the truce but be that as it may, the shooting has started again anyway."

"Let us hope for another miracle truce, Don. Especially since I hear there's a bit of irony involving the name, "Black Sheep." Isn't that so?"

"It is Steve. The name Black Sheep is particularly an odd choice since All the sheep of the Cooper Nation are black."

"Haha. Will those sheep ever learn?"

"Only time will tell. Until then, there is very little co-operation in Cooper Nation. I'm Don Noemutch reporting from No-Sheeps-land. Back to you Steve."

Labor day strike

2009-09-07T04:52:00.000-07:00

Labor day. How aptly named thou art.

So much to do, don't know where to start.

There's wood to stain and walls to finish,

A mess to move that just won't diminish,

A staircase to build and bedrooms to paint,

A bathroom that would make a sewer rat faint,

Floors to patch, windows to mend,

A honeydoo list that never will end,

So much to do that i sit here not doin'

Cause i ain't doin' squat till the coffee's done brewin'!

This is the Promised Land???

2009-08-24T02:36:00.001-07:00

"You seem like you're in a really good place..."

My friend Panzer said that to me the other day.

Me. Good place.

If i was in the Hundred Acre Wood, Eor would tell me to lighten up. If i was one of the seven dwarves, the other six would trigger a cave-in and bury me alive and Grumpy would lead them. B.A. Baracus thinks i have a bad attitude. But enough about me.

Let's talk about Abraham.

Abraham got the direct word from God Almighty to up and move. "Go to the land I will show you." Not, go north on i 58 to the Mesopotamian Turnpike, hang a louie and head West until you see the sea, then bang South again on Egypt 501 through Palestine, Canaan and Assyria. Take the Mount Moriah exit and you're there! Just go. I'll tell you when we get there. Jesus would echo these words centuries later with, "you there, in the boat, follow me."

And Abraham went. And he got there... eventually but i'll bet there were times when he wanted to ask, "am I nuts?" And you know Sarah gave him crap every gosh darn day about listening to strange voices and uprooting the family and all and what were they going to eat and where would they live and how long would they live in a tent and did you just do this to get away from my mother and i'm tired of smelling like camel, when are we going to stop somewhere with proper facilities? And if Lot asked him one more time, "Are we there yet?" I kid you not! The boy is Lion chow! I will bury him up to his neck and cover his face with honey just to see what comes to lick his skin off!

Fourteen million bathroom breaks later, they arrived... dah-dah-da-dah-dah-da-DAH...big Charleton Heston voice over...which works even better cause he's dead...The Promised Land! Brass ensemble blows fanfare! Followed by kazoo solo. See, there were already people living there and it turned out to be sort of a future inheritance kind of deal. And the folk there weren't really Abraham's kind of folk. They were a touch sleazy. And then there were droughts and famine and they were still living in tents and there were well disputes and Sarah was barren and there was all the regular work involved in moving an army of sheep and shepherds from place to place. Oh, and then there was the little issue after Sarah finally did have a son, of God telling him to take him to a mountain, slash his throat and burn him, psyche. Get to know God, He's got a wicked sense of humor. You think following God means no troubles? Look at His Son Jesus. The guy was a homeless carpenter who willingly allowed himself to be tortured and executed. You think that if things aren't going slick as snot then you must be missing your divine cues? You better think another think, my buddly bud. God's replanting Eden. And all those fruit trees and jalapeño plants and flowers need soil that has all of its rocks dug out, its weeds ripped from it, its surface ground up, tilled, plowed over, rained on and guess what? We're not just the workers, we're the dirt.

"Lord?"

"Yello."

"Um, we're here."

"Yep."

"Um, here in the Promised Land."

"Yep, all of this, I give to you."

"Yeah, bout that, bit of a fixer upper, huh? Kind of a handyman's special."

"You should see it from my point of view."

"Yeah, did you happen to notice Sodom and Gomorrah right smack dab in the middle?"

"Yep."

"Right. You saw that. It's just that, there's a lot of work to do here."

"Why did you think I sent you here?"

"Well, i dunno, i just sort of thought .. that.. you know..."

"What?"

"That i was being rewarded or something."

"Rewarded?"

"Yeah, for being good."

"You should see you from my point of view."

"Right, touché. It's just that, i thought this would be a good place."

"It is a good place."

"How so? i mean, look around. It's falling apart. The taxes are horrible. There's mold, bugs, vermin and the neighbors smell of Rottweiler dung. The village wasn't happy with one idiot so they all applied for the job. There's poverty, lousy weather, over population, drunkenness, noise, pollution, wretched depravity, corruption, reality television. It's a flippin' mess! There's more work here than one man can do in two lifetimes! How, by any stretch of the imagination is this a good place???"

"I'm here. Here take this hoe, we got some work to do."

The story of the station

2009-08-08T04:25:00.000-07:00

July 4th, 1998-- The frickens move into Elwood Station. A sixty year old former summer cottage. Having gutted the upstairs, they are sleeping in the utility room. Mama Mynk gets the only bed as she is eight months pregnant with Rascal. Churchmouse and Papa camp out on floor. Their first house, delirious joy is evident.

July 4th, 1999-- Deliriousness still evident, joy, not so much. The frickens come to the conclusion that the cottage is in no shape to survive raising another family in. Papa and his pal Ballisticat take shovels and picks and begin digging foundation for a new Station. Aspirations are high. So are naiveté levels.

Thanksgiving, many years later (i forget how many but i have the post around here somewhere and can prove that it was many years later if i have to)-- Frickens finally get upstairs of old station fixed up enough to use as bedrooms. New station is a skeleton getting soaked in the rain. Aspirations aren't so high anymore but weekend work parties are thriving and consume much beer at end of each Saturn's day.

Thanksgiving, 2007-- The frickens move into the bedrooms on new side of station. Not whole house, rest of house is bare studs and insulation, but they have bedrooms. Joy returns, work parties-not so much.

Christmas, 2008-- Drywall throughout! Papa frick has finally shook delirium. Hires outside contractors to finish new station. Station starting to look like house, plans are made for kitchen. Aspirations are high again. End may be in sight. Plans to raze old station to ground before it melts into it are formed.

By Labor Day, 2009-- Frickens' friend Bubba and three Bubbakins will need home. Emergency plans are made to convert Elwood Station into twin. Tobasco the Cat, possibly in anticipation begins hiding in banana box. Despite insurmountable piles of detritus still in old station, Summer windows (Sum are fuctional and sum are falling out) and a severe lack of kitchen in new station, Papa frick's faith and aspirations are high.

Or has Delirium returned???

When did i grow a beard???

2009-07-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

i've been staring at the computer or "nothing box" (Mark Gungor, look him up, it's worth it.) as i will henceforth call it, for so long that when i looked up, everything around me was so bright and clear that i thought it was fake. That's what happens when you join facebook. You sign up one night in a moment of weakness, just curious to see what it's all about and two years later you wake up in a cesspool of your own filth sloshing around the sweats you now live in and clinging to your two hundred extra pounds you've put on by eating every snack food, condiment and end table in your house while you answered comments, looked at photos, posted photos, tagged photos, commented on photos, scrolled through lists looking for people you didn't really know but remember the names of to friend-request, confirm friend requests, do research on folks you don't remember but are friend-requesting you, answer chat balloons that pop up while you're checking your inbox, your wall, your profile, your homepage, your friend's homepage, wall, profile, all the while wondering what a HUG is, what Farmville is, why your friends are milking cows on it, why it needs to be able to see your friendlist, your profile, your bank account, your friends bank accounts and your closet all while trying to figure out how to poke, post and publish the minutia of your life and worrying over how much detail is too much and how much is too little.

Whatever happened to the good ol' days when there was nothing to do on the interwebs but surf for smut?

A muse moment.

2009-07-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

A dark, hairy, gnarled, gnomish runt of a curmudgeon showed up last night. He nearly walked through the screen, he was so drunk. "Oh, you've come back," i remarked. He made a rude noise followed by a downright inappropriate gesture and then laid out his case in language that would offend a a particularly affable rock.

"Look, you (expletive deleted)! I give you idea after (colorful metaphor) golden idea and what do you do? You (completely impossible sex act with a mollusk) it up! You are so (hyperbolic reference to mental deficiency based upon location of cranium) that you (unhygienic practice yourself) no matter what I do for you, you (very, very, very stupid person)! So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to give it to you. The (fantasy night with famous celebrity) idea of all (nearly impossible sex acts with famous celebrities) of ideas. This is it! You (anatomical region specific to males nurse sharks) this up and I'm through! You understand, you (unwanted relative of a member of the bovine order)? This is it! Last (sex act between a non-consenting primate and toaster) chance you (rare spinal disorder contracted from inbreeding). You (...um, not sure..?) this up and I quit being your (i'd rather not say) muse! Got it? Hey, where are you goin', you (superfluous member of a large factory device)? I offer you fame, a chance to get out of your (fairly accurate description of my) rut and you walk away???"

"i'm gonna go see what my kids are doing." Feeling smug in my sense of values, i descended the stairs to find my family...

...watching teevee. Little (unclaimed orphan) couldn't have got far on such stubby legs, maybe i can still get that idea.

Oh, cause you're the mayor.

2009-07-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

The breeze blows gentle in the trees. The charcoal is alight and better than any incense save the prayers of the saints. The wicker could use a cushion and the teenager could use a place-putting-punt-to-the-posterior and a cold shower. i am sitting in aforementioned wicker and waxing nostalgic about a scene out of the weekend last.

There too the breeze and i enjoyed the long rays of the sun. Though it were more the time of anticipation than reflection. There too, i sat. There too, there were teenagers in need of place-putting-punts. And that brings us to our story...

Lacrosse, like most sports, Carlin be wherever he's at, it is a sport and as such, is played by the young. And though the modern world seems to think them passé, the young often have fathers, for good or ill. Fathers who often, God bless 'em, think that their progeny, most of whom are walking upright, potty trained and old enough to shave, could not successfully make themselves a glass of chocolate milk without their fathers bellowing at them from the sidelines if it were to be accomplished on a playing field. You've heard these men. Everyone within a five mile radius hears these men. Berating their beloved sons in a spray of spittle laced fury like the slave drivers in Roman galleys during a losing battle.

There i and the breeze and everyone within a five mile radius sat, unwilling audience to a master slave driver practicing his craft. For fully thirty minutes of a thirty-five minute game he paced the sidelines as if he were the reincarnation of Vince Lombardi himself, telling every boy on the field where they should be, how they should play and asking in his best pleading martyr voice, why, o why were they not listening to him and trying to win the game??? So fanatical was he, i began to watch in the morbid fascination that he would soon have a massive coronary right there on the field and never having seen such a thing and being ambivalent to the outcome, i thought it might prove more entertaining than the game. Maybe now would be an opportune time to say that my son was not playing in this game so i had no personal stake. Insert joke about my own massive coronary here. i don't mind. i am not one of these fathers.

i save my wrath for the refs but that is another story and we're not talking about me.

We're talking about this guy... and the guy twenty foot down the line. The guy who looked like a retired teamster. Who talked like a retired teamster who did strong arm work for the Union back in the day. Who had apparently had his fill of the slave driver's vitriol.

"Hey (we'll call him Creo Sonitus, Soni for short) Hey Soni! Why don't you shuttup!" says, retired teamster knee breaker.

"I'm oveh heeya, (helpfully points to where he's standing) i'm not botherin' you!"

"You're bodderin' all of us! You're making us all nauseous!"

"And you're de mayor."

"You're out of control, you're makin' us all sick!"

"Oh and you're so loved!"

There followed after this exchange, five minutes of blessed, if somewhat strained silence as the game wound to it's inevitable conclusion and kneebreaker's and Soni's sons' defeat. And that would have been the end of it. There would have been no story except for the origin of why i will now refer to anyone who tells me what to do as, "the mayor."

Except that's when the real story began. For at that point, kneebreaker came over. He shook Soni's hand and gave him a one armed man hug. They made up and apologized and were both gracious in defeat. Now, for all i know, they do this every game. It could be ritual for them. But that one act of restoration and forgiveness, that picture of redemption, that holy moment almost made up for the fact that i had to drive to blinkin' Jersey three days in a row to watch my son's coach snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory five times in a friggin' row.

Almost.

The Two Rules extrapolated.

2009-06-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

Y’see, the problem isn’t that I don’t have good ideas. I have great ideas. I just ignore them.

Wayward and I were in high school when the amazing, binary switch moment came. (I like that phrase, ‘binary switch moment.’ Got it from a book about robotics scientists. I’ll have to look up the guy to give credit where credit is due. Though it’s probably anecdotal in Geek.) Wayward and I were two of a kind. That kind being the kind of kid no one cares where and what they’re doing as long as they’re not in trouble. It had been that way more or less all our lives. Or at least since we had been able to change our own diapers. But the moment came when we realized that that not only applied to the few hours after school but it could be extended out over an entire weekend. Couple this epiphany with the fact that we had cars and like teenage boys had since Noah’s boys blew off the Ark, Ararat and Authority figures, we rediscovered the Road Trip. Oh yeah, we were flippin' geniuses.

Now, despite meticulous planning and packing Rachel, my Ford Bronco up to the windows (two kitchen sinks, just in case the first one broke) we soon learned that the quest to escape all rules, rites and regulations came with a few rules, rites and regulations of its own. You never, apparently escape societal constraints; you merely trade one culture’s for another’s. We learned this in less than thirty miles. At our first rest stop to replenish the coffee tanks and pump the bilges we returned to my lil’ mule to find that I had locked the keys in the ignition. After acquiring an expert in all things automotive with a slim jim and giving him a half an hour, I took the implement and opened the door myself. It was a pan of life’s mud that when sifted gave up a priceless nugget of experiential wisdom. And thus the two rules were born.

Rule one: When traveling, everyone has a key to the car.

Rule number two: When traveling, EVERYONE HAS A KEY TO THE FRIGGIN’ CAR!!!

Now it wasn’t learned right away. It was created right away but it wasn’t driven home until my lovely fiancée and I and again Wayward went to see Bad Company and Damn Yankees down in the city one night and it happened again. This time costing ninety dollars and a chunk of my evening to the nice locksmith. After THAT time we started making sure that Everyone Has A Key To The Car.

Now maybe it was the point that my son Happ doesn’t drive. And maybe it was because i’m no longer in the habit of locking cars. But for whatever reason, Happs or habits, I found myself in Piscataway, New Jersey this weekend, (yeah, I know, New Jersey.) peering through the windshield of my Chevy, looking at my key in the middle console. It was only then that I considered the two key fobs that I don’t use that were also locked safely away in the console. It took longer for the nice locksmith to verify my credit than it did to break into my truckette. You may think that hyperbole. And you’d be grossly mistaken, my cynical friend. The fobs went into Happ’s lacrosse bag and the knob went into my sleeping bag to wonder again at the fact that I carry around this heavy old brain that I never use. I wonder what they’re fetching on the black market these days. If I trade mine for a motorcycle I’ll never have to worry about being locked out again.

the two rules

2009-06-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

the first law of travel is...

everyone has a key to the car.

the second rule of travel is...

EVERYONE HAS A KEY TO THE FRIGGIN' CAR!!!

Nomadittidy

2009-06-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Pick up my spirit as i pick up my pack

i get lighter as it goes on my back

Slip the shadows as i slip my roof

Climb out of my rut and onto the hoof

Wastes of Jersey, wilds of the West

My native place is the perpetual guest

Earthbound, waterborne, Heaven sent

Motion is my element

My, how things change

2009-05-31T05:13:00.000-07:00

The man strode through the garden taking in the particular beauty of it all. He had never been here before and the animals came to him to introduce themselves and see what he would call them. The small chattering gray ones made him laugh. Their furry tails were ticklish as they climbed his naked legs to perch on his shoulder and soon he was covered in them and not just grays he saw. Black and red cousins had joined them and the man found himself tickled all over until he could stand no longer. He fell over and the furry living coat leaped and bounced around him as he tumbled down the springy slope to rest in a warm, sunny glade. The sleek black birds that he had named a few weeks ago followed and joined their laughter to his. These were funny little creatures. The Father told him much of them. How they would help the trees to propagate by hiding their seeds and forgetting where they hid them. The man chuckled and told the Father that only He would think to make a creature useful predominantly for it's silliness. They spoke of many other things, the man thanked his Father for the sleek black birds that had kept him company that week. The sun was warm and his skin still felt alive with tiny toenails as the plants caressed his bare backside and soon without a care in the world, the man was asleep.

The man trudged up the hillside, having to pull himself much of the way with roots and small branches. His boots slid on the slick leaves and he plunged his gloved hands into the mud to find a rock or purchase to keep from slipping all the way back down to the river below. Torn by thorns, cut and bleeding he crawled the last few yards of incline to a natural bench filled with golden weeds of some sort. He rolled over and propped himself up on a rotting deadfall. A few feet from him, his buddy plopped right down in the leaves and stared. They were exhausted. It had taken two days of constant paddling, battling the current to get this far and they had no strength to go any further. A lost paddle had decided this stop and both of them had walked away from the canoe as if it were some tormenting devil. He sat there trying to catch his breath in the pollen soaked air that burned his nose. The forest was as still as a tomb, nothing moved. There was not even a breeze to stir the skeletal trees. Somewhere far across the valley a crow cawed it's mocking laugh and he cursed it right back. His back hurt, his arms hurt and he eased himself back until he lay right down in the moss and goldenrod. His long underwear was sweated through and he would probably catch his death of chill but the sun seemed to promise otherwise. He was warm for the first time that day and he closed his eyes, he didn't even have the strength to move the rock poking him in the back. He just thanked God for chance to come out here where he didn't have a care in the world and fell asleep.

Fur-furty

2009-04-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

"Why do you wake up at four fifteen?"

A mumbled something that sounds like bricks or sick or i like to listen to Styx.

"What time do you have to leave?"

Fy-furty.

"If I had to leave at five-forty, I would wake up at five."

Ahdon waykup n' shtrt rummim.

"What?"

Ah kann jesh waykup ang moof.

"I can't hear you."

Ah suk.

"Well, I guess I just think sleep is more important."

Funny thing about the importance of sleep is that the really important part must happen in the morning before we wake up. People guard this half an hour jealously. The two or three hours we should have been in bed the night before but were watching teevee, doing laundry, chasing kids down, staring at computers or picking our nose are apparently optional.

It was an accidental typing class, taken to fill out requirements for graduation, where i discovered my love of the typeset word. Sure, i'd written before but there were two problems with longhand: 1. i write slow, thought outstrips deed to the point that i'm writing the beginning of thought one and the end of thought two down in the same babbling sentence. Sort of like...

It was an accidental problem with long hand: write slow babblung shetensh (dammit! scribble, scribble)

And 2. when i write longhand, my artistic side wants to make the letters pretty and illuminate the borders and illustrate the thought and pretty soon the writing is a second class citizen in its own country.

But typing, typing keeps up. There is no prettiness outside of an illegible font and my mind is constrained to make it's pictures with words. Since that discovery, and the addition of computers, email and blogs, i have sought out writing time. Waking up earlier and earlier, strip mining sleep mountains for quiet time to focus. And four-thirty used to do it.

Then the world caught up or on, i'm not sure which. It's like someone was watching and realized that i was up and said, "well, sheeeooot. If that boy's got so much energy he should be here at work building my dreams and not wasting time on his! Yoder! Move the start time up to six." "Yes, boss."

Which reminds me. It's now five oh five, i gotta go.

Sigh.

Three thirty is gonna suk.

To be a jalapeño or fishflakes?

2009-03-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

The problem that i see with bludgeoning someone with a point is that there comes a moment when you have driven the point home perfectly, they get it, no further shillelagh work is necessary, message received, please stop. But unless the subject cries "uncle," or "aunt" or "mom" or "total stranger who i just met at random due to a Google search!" The point maker is likely to continue the battering well past this all critical moment and with each subsequent blow actually degrade their pupil's ability to retain knowledge. It's a philosophical conundrum, that's for sure.

So, as i look around for my tomahawk, if your skull's feeling a bit like a brown banana you might want to duck into some LOLcats or iTunes or something. Or better yet, try some reality television, that stuff is guaranteed to calcify the interior of the old brainbox. Sort of your noodle's natural defenses taking over.

i have spent a large portion of my life wondering what i'm for. Since i have no trouble believing that there is a God, He loves me and has a purpose for my life as well as everything He does, it seemed an appropriate use of my time and energy. The problem is, it isn't.

All that time thinking about my purpose became time thinking about me. i became the focus. In short, because i wasn't doing something i wanted to do, i assumed i was doing something wrong. And i was, but the wrong thing i was doing wrong wasn't the right thing. You see? Why do you look all bruised and mushy? As i've chronicled here ad nauseum, i was waiting for a change in circumstances. A change in environment to lift me out of the malaise i was in and transport me to some higher ground and some Fricken shaped niche that i was designed to fill and i would suddenly blossom like Baryshnikov discovering ballet, into who i was meant to be. And more importantly, start enjoying this life i'd been given.

Well, if you take that thought and plant some peppers, frijoles and corn with it, you should get some real good chimichangas by fall. God has planted you, my hot little jalapeños, in exactly the garden he wanted you in, all we have to do is stop spewing fertilizer and bask in His light and soak up His Living Water. 'fore you can say, "yo quiero Taco Bell," you'll be spicing up whatever batch of chili life whips up. i guaran-fricken-tee it. How can i be so sure? One word:

Jonah.

It's a familiar story, even pagans can summarize it. But in case there aren't any pagan's around to explain it to you, i'll sum it up real quick.

God said, "Go here, do this," to Jonah.

Jonah said, "blow it out your ear." Then he went down dockside, found a boat going to edge of the known universe and he was out of there. Along comes a storm. Now the sailors in this boat, they knew how to handle this situation. They threw everything overboard to lighten the ship, did all their sailor-y stuff, battened some hatches, furl't the mains'l and all that. When that didn't work and it became obvious the ship was in danger they started praying to their gods, the gods of their own understanding. No atheists in foxholes or foundering ships apparently. When that failed to appease Triton they searched the ship and found Jonah sleeping. "Dude! Wake up! Pray to your god, maybe he's got some pull with the mountains of water trying to bury us!" They drag Jonah up on deck and they determine that someone has truly teed the gods off. So they cast lots, draw straws, roll dice, flip a coin, play a quick game of hackey-death and surprise, surprise, hello Jonah.

Jo 'fesses up. The sailors ask, "alright, cool, what do we do to make this stop?"

"Simple, throw me in."

Now, i dunno about you but i chalk being swallowed up by the sea right up there with falling backwards off the slide, being caught in a bear trap in bear country and slowly being compressed into a jello cube on my least favorite ways to check out list. i don't think Jo would have gotten past the word "throw" before he was practicing his doggie paddle had i been there. But these sailors were actually pretty human dudes. Even after he told them this they went back to trying to muscle their way out of the storm to shore. As we know, it doesn't work, the sailors reluctantly toss him overboard and Jonah gets to be grouper chow. The storm stops and the sailors convert to Judaism on the spot, offering sacrifices and vows to the God of the Hebrews.

So the Moral of the Story is…do what God tells you to do or He’ll kick your butt. Yeah, maybe. But recently he gave me something else to chew on. He told me that He loved a bunch of scruffy sailors. And that he used Jonah to present the Gospel to those sailors. He showed them that they needed to be saved. He showed them that their gods couldn’t do that saving. He told them that someone had to die for them to be saved. Still they tried to do it on their own, well-intentioned works! "No God, killing is wrong! We can try harder! We’ll get it right this time!" But in the end, someone had to die. Someone willing and those sailors got it. And He got all that done, not with some great champion of the faith who lived a blameless life, but with a grumbly, disobedient, self-centered jerk who didn't want to go where God put him and do what God told him to do. And I find that very encouraging.