Spit in the Eye

If you own a tv you've seen it.  I don't even watch mine and i've somehow managed to catch it a few times... a commercial for the Spiderwick Chronicles.  In it a nameless hog-something, that's the official name of him, i asked my son Rascal who, since he saw the movie, is as close to an Expert that we have here at the Coop, this nameless hog-something spits a coffee can's worth of mucous into some lad's eyes and and says something to the effect of, "I have given you the Sight!"  After this the lad can see all kinds of little goblinny and trollish critters that have been running around his world all the time without his knowledge.  It opens his eyes up to a world that has always been and yet he lived in total ignorance of due to his "blindness."  

i have met up with one of these nameless hog-somethings.  

The one i met had a name though.  His name is Don Miller.  And you need to meet him too.  Though after reading this you may chose not to.  And that's fine.  The Sight ain't for everybody and it brings it's own troubles.  

For the germophobes out there, fear not, his spit is metaphorical.  He spits in the same way that the Apostle Paul did...in letters.  It started with a collection of letters to America called Blue Like Jazz.  This book pulled the scales from my eyes.

You see, i am a christian.  Though i was not living like one.   Oh, i went to church, even led worship.  i guess you could say that my eyes were only partially open.  i was like another blind man.

Christ hisself came across this one.  So i guess, Jesus is a nameless hog-something too.  Cause he was moved to help this poor beggar who was blind.  Not metaphorically, but really.  Jusus is not a germaphobe.  Jesus, knelt down, took up some dirt, spit on it and made mud.  He then rubbed this on the eyes of the beggar.  The funny thing is that the guy's eyes were opened but only a little.  When Jesus asks him how now, the beggar says, "I can see men, but they walk around like trees."  The guy's vision was still imperfect.  

Now Jesus is perfect and so we must assume that He meant to do this.  This partial healing.  He then rubs a little more saliva pie on the guy and sho nuff, sight.  Full and clear and in fabulous Smell-o-vision.  

So, i was a christian but my sight was like stage one, there.  i could see but i couldn't see clearly.  i was still dragging around a lot of baggage that had nothing to do with Christ or the life He has for His children.  i was still doing things and doing them in ways that did not honor Christ or the God I serve.  i was fighting all sorts of goblinny and trollish critters that i could barely see but sense their pricks and pokes just fine.  i prayed all the time for the Spirit to live and work in me and yet i was the biggest impediment to Him.

The really weird thing was, i was miserable.  i had all the signs in front of me, banging against my shins, that i was living wrong and yet i couldn't stop trudging onward.  i was a victim of my own dogma.  That all i needed to do was persevere.  And since perseverance wasn't working and making my life better i assumed that life sucked.  If you haven't met a christian who has determined that he has proof that life is a big sham designed to burden the living then thank God right now, cuz they are a plague worse than locusts and blood for water combined.  They consume all the joy in a room and spew nothing nourishing in return.  

But Hallelujah, i was blind but now i see!  Nothing looks the same anymore.  Not relationships, not work, not my home or my kids.  i have no idea where this is all going and that's fine, cuz finally, i feel like the Spirit is able to work without my interference.  Instead of blindly marching onward with my bloody shins and my gritted teeth and my sledgehammer of joyless faith, i am skipping along holding the hand of the Father and waiting to see what's next?

Here's spit in your eye!

the Revelation

I’ve been thinking a lot about occupations.  Occupations occupy a big chunk of our time and energy.  They are often how we define ourselves.  What are you?  I’m a carpenter.  You’re a printer.  A tax preparer.  A plumber.  A salesman.  An engineer.  Whatever.  And since the majority of us work in secular fields, I kind of operated under the notion that occupations were evil, that they were a way of Satan keeping us down, keeping us from what we should be doing, keeping us occupied.  And for me that was true.  I don’t like my job.  Loathe it in fact, it’s not what I want to be doing with my time.  I spend a lot of time hating my job.  I think, man, how much writing could I be getting done, how much work on the house, how much time does this take from my family?  Hating my occupation occupied a big chunk of my time and energy.  Hating my occupation had become my occupation.

In my mind, losing my job was a lot like winning the lottery.  Lord, if I only had a million dollars, what amazing stuff I could do.  I know so many people I could help with that kind of money.  I could give to the church.  I’d be free, so I could volunteer more. Think of all the good I could do.  Have you ever thought these thoughts?  When you put “lottery” in there, I understand the reasons that these are all wrong-headed thoughts.  God has all the money He needs, it’s us He wants.  He wants us to help the poor with the resources he has already given us.  He wants us to give to the church what we already have.  He wants us to volunteer the time we already have.  He wants us to do good now.

But when it came to my occupation I couldn’t see that.  Not until this week.  I had been complaining to God that I didn’t have the right occupation.  That I was misplaced, overworked, underused for the kingdom.  When in fact I was missing a very alarming point. 

 

A long time ago, there was a comic strip called Arlo and Janis.  Arlo is shown working at his computer in his little office when all of a sudden he gets this revelation.  He jumps up, runs out into the main floor and yells at his coworkers, “They lied to us!  These aren’t careers!  They’re jobs!”

 

Arlo is right!  You’re occupation is not what it says on your tax forms, apologies to my wife, the tax pro.  You are Christians!  You are disciples of Christ, the Son of God.  You are His representatives to a fallen world.  You are here to show everyone you meet how much God loves them!  God has given us jobs to do while we’re here, yeah, but that’s not our career, that’s not the path of success we follow.  Serve your coworkers, wash feet, pray for everyone you meet and demonstrate how much Christ loves them by loving them.  No matter how unlovable, no matter where God puts you to do that, that is your occupation.  I know, it's not much of a revelation but it was exactly what i've needed to know.

Spiritual Weirdness

So i done something last week that i never done afore.  i fasted.  

i'd always thought fasting sounded weird.  What did not eating have to do with anything?  It sounded kind of shamanish.  Like going on a visionquest or something.  Or at best, smacked of works.  Look God, look how pious i am, i'm fasting!  Aaaaabaloney.  

But i'd read a book by Don Miller that got me thinking.  Not about fasting but about how i was living my life.  i needed time to pray, i needed time to go up on the mountain and consider this God i claim to love and serve.  Unfortunately i've never been able to make time stop and/or my boss spontaneously give me time off for spiritual renewal.  So i had to somehow take the time i had and use it well.  Also, not a speciality of mine.

Enter fasting.  I was skeptical but it really helped me focus.  Whenever i thought about feeding my fat, MnM eating arse, i would pray instead.  It was so simple that it was almost elegant.  i stopped thinking about me so much and more about prayer.

i did that for two days when i took a gift of an oatmeal cookie as a sign that it was time to end the fast.  i guess at that time i was kind of getting superstitious about this, cause i started kind of looking for some kind of revelation.  Some kind of nut to take away from all of this.  Some kind of change of scenery or kind of a metamorphosis in some kind of me.  

i kind of didn't get one.  So i kinda got a little grumpy.  

Yeah, very Jonah of me.  Didn't get the answer i wanted so i pouted and kicked stuff and went to bed all down and depressed.  Felt bad about that, prayed about it the next morning, which led me to pray for all sorts of people and that led me to ....ta dah!  A revelation!

Flu Diary

Day four

Head pounding, eye's watering, coffee tastes bad, running low on V-8.  Dunno how much more rest and relaxation i can take.  Worst part of four days off is no real writing accomplished.  Irony is settling in, making itself some tea and smirking.  Irony's gonna get backhanded.

Just when it seemed God was telling me that my mission, my purpose, my occupation in life was to love people the way that Jesus loves me, the way that Jesus loves them: unconditionally and all the time; He goes and quarantines me for four days.  Something in all this i ain't getting.  And i don't think it's just the snot interfering with reception.

Alright God, you lead me into this desert, guess there ain't much to do but wait for the explanation.  Sure hope it comes soon, i'm out of tomato soup.

Four Months of March

It's raining.

Again.

In the four months of March we now have instead of winter here in Pennslobovia, rain seems to be the dominant weather.  That is, if you discount wind.  For when every other day is approaching sixty and all the days in between are near freezing the air masses have to trade places in a bit of a hurry.

i spent all last week looking forward to the weekend and then friday night came down with the flu.  Going on three days of just loafing around in my sweats without enough gas to get to the starting line.

It was just me and Ballyhoo Gang all weekend and i spoke to them all of four sentences.

Wrote what felt like an inspired worship service for church and didn't even get to go.

Read a great book that i'll probably have to reread cuz i was so muzzle-headed i only understood maybe half the concepts.

Slept and dreamt i was at work.  Went to work but got sent home to sleep.

I've been given a thousand reasons to complain and yet all I want to do is praise my Savior.  

Must be some grace in that rain.

Veritas

i am a carpenter.

This is an oversimplification, of course.  But i don't think we have time right now to philosophize out my whole identity and issues regarding such.  For now, suffice it to say, that whatever i really am is not as important to the story as the fact that for some fourteen years now i have engaged in swinging a hammer for my bread, bed and britches.  

Don't say that last bit three times fast unless you are fully comfortable with cussing accidentally.

i don't particularly like being a carpenter but i find it more rewarding than being ... well, than a lot of other things which are just fine for the fine folk that do them but wouldn't suit me very well.  One of the things that i do cherish however about being a carpenter is the hammers.  i like hammers.  They're like coelacanths or better yet, sharks.  Ancient monsters from the medieval period that haven't lost their power or relevancy.  Hand to hand combat weapons that somehow hang on into the age of gunpowder.  Since this is how i view them, it should not seem odd that i collect them as well, or would if i could justify spending money on more tools than i have a justifiable need for.  i am also searching for the perfect hammer.  One that is exactly the right length, the ideal weight: light enough to be fast and easy to swing but heavy enough to do violent, permanent alterations with said swing, balanced, graceful in flight, terrible in anger, precise, ruthless, crushing, relentless.  If the weapon is the soul of the warrior then the hammer is the soul of the carpenter.

i tend to idealize hammers.  Or is that idolize?

Potato, PotAHto, hammers are cool.

i started with some wooden handled models, around twenty, twenty-one ounces and this worked for me for some years while i used them mostly for striking and building but when i became a remodeler i started using hammers as tools of prying, breaking, hacking and demolition just as much as the striking and building.  The wooden handles became something of a weak link.  So one year for Christmas, my boss bought me an Estwing.  

Now, Estwings, so you know, are the industry standard.  Walk on to any job site, anywhere and guaranteed, if there are three guys there, at least one of them has one of these distinctive blue handled, slender necked critters hanging from a loop on his belt.  They come in all sorts of weights and lengths but the most common seem to be the twenty-one or the twenty-four ouncers, about seventeen inches long.  My boss at the time had several.

Now, i dunno if it was a joke about my size or insecurities, an insult or an honest attempt to find something i liked but my boss got me the only thirty-two ounce, eighteen inch Estwing i have ever seen.  He dropped it in my belt and it nearly pulled my pants off, as it was i fell over to that side.  Which was bad, because i was on a scaffold, two stories up.  As soon as i was able to right myself, i climbed down the ladder, tossed that unwieldy, clunky monster as far as i could which nearly pulled my arm from it's socket and picked up my own hammer out of the mud where my boss had casually let it drop.  i did all of this in a blizzard of curses and epithets about how i didn't want an Estwing, didn't like Estwings and was perfectly happy with my own wooden anachronism, thank you very little.

i was a bit of a jerk.  But it was the truth.

i think i hurt my boss's feelings.  Though he would never have said so.  In all honesty, i think he was making an awkward attempt at being my friend.  He wasn't the most social guy and we were not really too friendly at that time.  He just left the Estwing where i had flung it till he had a chance to pick it up and said he thought it was a fine hammer and would keep it himself.

A long while later, my wooden handle broke again and so had something in me.  i went out to the truck and found the unwieldy, clunky monster down in the bottom of the truck box where it had languished since that day and i took a few test swings with it.  Alright, hammer, look, i don't like you and i'm pretty sure you don't like me but we gotta work together now so let's just bury the hatchet and go bash some plaster, what say?

Turns out there is a certain ornery and perverse pride in being the smallest guy with the biggest freaking hammer on the job.  That monster would pound a nail with a sidelong look and could reach out and touch one on the other end of a sheet of plywood.  But it was demolition work where she really sank her claws in and showed her true metal.  She didn't bend, she didn't break and she never met the structure, joinery, material that ever won an argument with her.  It wasn't long afore she was more mascot than tool and she earned her name...

the Truth.

The Truth and i had a rather long and enjoyable career together.  i hated what i did for a living and she provided an outlet for my frustrated wrath.  i only cheated on her once, when Estwing introduced these supposedly ergonomic hammers that looked more like long necked rabbits in a high wind.  But it wasn't long before those went in a tool box and the Truth slid back into her rightful slot on my hip.  

i don't carry the Truth anymore.  i lost her a year or two ago.  i know not where.  That saddens me, though i think her love love was killing me.  My whole right arm feels torn in several places along its length and i'm not sure that will ever heal.  But i miss her anyway.  She deserves a hanging display on my wall with a single lamp shining on her scarred body.

i'm reading a book that i highly recommend by Donald Miller called Blue Like Jazz.  Don't worry, the jarring juxtaposition is intentional and will hopefully be resolved shortly if not satisfactorily.  Donald Miller's book is full of truth.  Simple, elegant, well said truth.  Donald Miller's truth is wielded not with violence and anger and self-righteousness but with kindness, humility, love and a childlike wonder.  i was reading his book and i was suddenly struck and convicted with the truth he reveals.  i was struck with the way i had been using truth: to make others feel small, to make myself seem smart, to be right.  Even when i have tried to follow Christ i have picked up the truth and swung it with uncaring force.  The truth hurt me.  i wanted it to hurt others.

Don didn't use the truth.  He just real carefully, gently led me to it.

As a remodeler i can tell you that before you take a thing, whatever it is: a deck, a bathroom, a whole house, whatever, before you can take that thing and make it something beautiful you have to tear away all of the useless vestiges of what was there before, gut it down to what's real, what's solid, what's useful and from there and only there can you begin to build.  The truth is good for that, the truth is good for building also.  It is also a good thing to build on.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No man comes to the Father except through me."  This verse has been used as a hammer.  To exclude.  A hoop to jump through.  A harsh truth that has beaten down many who wished to have someone love them as they are.  Which is exactly what Jesus wants to do.  This verse isn't an exclusion, it's an invitation.

i think i got some apologies to make.

Sunday without Football

i've got to stop this.  i can't keep writing.  

i think i just heard a collective cheer from the peanut gallery, otherwise known as the two people who subject themselves to this blog regularly as a form of self flagellation.  Well, stow it peanuts!  This isn't for you, you just might reap the reward anyway, that's all.

Incidental reward-reapers aside, the reason i must stop writing is the same reason i must stop doing anything that i actually like or enjoy.  It bums me out.

Let me explain, no, there is no time, lemme sum up.  Here's what happens.  By some miracle, i come home on a Sunday afternoon and find that there are no pressing demands on my time.  Meaning: my wife is at work and is not there to force me to acknowledge all of the pressing demands on my time.  So i ignore the laundry, the dishes, the house, the addition, the heater that doesn't work right, the grocery list i need to write out for the rest of the week's dinners, the ironing and the house (yes, i know i said it twice but there is a lot to be included in "the house" and it bears many repetitions.)  i don't ignore the kids, i check on them and find that they got their playstation working again and are happily selling their souls to Sony.  So, i grab the laptop and a glass of water and head out into the addition where, due to the broken heater, it is conveniently cold enough for a fricken who always dresses for the outdoors and i plant myself in my favorite rocking chair and spend the next two or three hours just writing.  If this blog doesn't satisfy all of your masochistic needs for self penance you might head over to the Journals and read the rancid raisins of my labor.  But that's not the point.  

The point is this: i had a great time!  i love to write, i love to create, i love to tell stories.  The world just won't let me.  Now that those two or three halcyon hours are history it has been back to the gristmill.  And my name is Gristom G. Gristle.  And when i realize that and that there is no actual point to my raisins, they will never get planted and grow into vines of their own, the world sort of gets a little grayer.  The edges lose focus and i lose a lot of the will necessary to put the next foot forward.

Call it lack of faith and i'll say, "true."  Call it manic depression and i'll say ,"possibly."  Call it life and i'll slug ye but the sad fact is that i think, the next time i have two or three hours to suppress the pressing demands on my time, i'll just watch tv.

Where's the remote?

Like Winter Without Snow

The little key in my back is starting to slow down.  The cup is getting dangerously close to only an eighth full.  Been living my life in one hour increments around all the duties and diligence and i'm having trouble enjoying it.  Now, i don't blame anyone, living or metaphorical.  i don't think They did this to me, nor do i blame Life.  i'm guessing that if i ever meet They and Life, they'll be complaining of the same thing.  i keep finding moments that make it worthwhile.  Precious little nuggets stuck in the cold, clamp of black earth and i dig them out and treasure them but as with most things, their gleam is truly only appreciated where you find them.  Like taking a shell from the ocean.  It never quite looks as shiny and perfect on your bookcase as it did right there in the tumult of the waves.  So i stagger along, with a weather eye out for more but is that living?  Could there be more?

i'll have to ask Dad and get back to you.

from boxes to bedrooms

We had a blessed event recently here at the Coop.  No, no new frickens.  Heaven's forfend!  Can't handle the two we got now.  Any more and the monkey-to-handler ratio would be screwed.  We'd be outnumbered.

No.  No new monkeys.  (kinda sounds like a slogan, hmm, could be taken as racist though.  Not good.)  No, what we got, was out of the monkey motel and into a monkey heaven!  Yep, i finally finished the bedrooms in the addition.  

For the first five years of our journey of enjoinment, the Mynk and i rented a succession of cardboard boxes that more or less fit the criteria of "living space."  Mostly less.  For a year and a half or so, as we were looking and saving for a Coop of our own, we lived in a couple of bedrooms in the asylum that i was raised in, with most of the inmates still there.  i do not recommend moving one's family into the dwelling of and under the umbrella of their own parents.  That's one umbrella too many.  In our case it worked, incidents involving the police were few and far between and probably would have happened whether we were there adding to the chaos or not.

Then, on Independence day, we moved into the Coop!  Our own little wooden tent.  A rather drafty, painfully small, barely plumbed, ant infested, hardly insulated, frighteningly wired, scarcely kept-up, mouse house of a wooden tent.  We started gutting and remodeling on almost the first day.  On the second day the children of God ceased to remodel for it was bad and started laying plans to build a new dwelling altogether.  Remodeling the original coop is like restoring a LeCar.  You can, buy why would you?

Eight years, several fifty-five gallon drums of elbow grease, a couple of strained friendships, a broken down grandfather or two later, we have finished the two bedrooms.  Not the whole addition mind you, but just the two bedrooms.  So on Thanksgiving, the children of God blessed turkey and real, painted, trimmed and gloriously mouse free drywall and moved into rooms that actually hold whatever temperature you set the thermostat at without the heater running like an alcohol burnin' funny car doing the Paris/Dakar rally.

Yep, i designed a double envelope into my house.  Two layers of R-13 insulation with an airspace in between that actually lends some R factor by being trapped.  Double wrapped house wrap on the outside, solid spray foam in the ceiling.  This puppy is air tight.  If you fart with the windows shut, your ears pop.  As my old boss said, "you could heat that place with a candle," and he wasn't off by much.  

i hate it.

Here's the rub.  Over the years, i've gotten used to living in a thru-way for the local winds and breezes.  We've always slept under a pile of blankets to rival the thickness of our mattress.  Like pulling a nice soft, fuzzy bear on yourself every night and listening to the sounds of the woods and the wide world without, which is almost within due to the breezes whistling through the broken windows on their way to the rotted ones.  i was lulled to sleep by the sounds of katydids and hoot owls, fighting cats, skunks, cats versus skunks and chirping, whistling and beeping, booming frogs.  Leaves rustling was my lullaby.  It was like camping.  i love camping!

Now i hear the dust settle.

And it's warm.

Really warm.

Powerful warm.

And sometimes, someone farts.

Careful what you wish for.  Somebody open a window.

Christmas from the well.

Had an eye opening experience lately.  Was muddlin' through life like i always do when i fell into an old well.  Now i've fallen into this well afore, honestly, i thought i had the lid on it.  Apparently not, either that or some swell individual of questionable moral character slid the lid off when i weren't looking.  

Hmm.  Weren't looking.

Well, it took a little while to climb up outta there, like it always does.  S'pose i could'a called for help but it's a wee bit embarrassing to be in it at all.  And the bottom's all mucky and the sides are all slick and you get covered in ooze and sulfurous slime from head to toe and no one really laughs but they all kind a shake their heads in a real sad way like their looking at turkeys drowning in the rain by holding their mouths open to the sky.  So, yeah, i always try to scratch me way out unaided.  i think i've actually widened the hole a bit over the years.

Now, the thing about climbing out of this here well is that i might make it all the way to the top, have my head out in the clear and be breathing air at last that don't taste like a dead skunk floating in Kentucky Fried Chicken's grease trap.  Heck and Hackensack, i might even be up and walking around again, stretching the kinks out when, whoops!  Hello!  Darn me.

This could go on for a week or so.  Extricate, slither, ascend, descend.  Climb, scrape, scrabble, sliiiiiiiiiiiide.  Claw, dig, cuss, slip.  Kick, yell, hate, laugh in a bubbly, mucky sort of way.  But in amongst all the furious activity and it's stellar lack of results, there is time to think.  Now thoughts at the bottom of a well are not particularly bright and full of cheer but they can be accurate interpretations of recent events and in this case i think they were.

What i thought about was the nature of holiness.

Maybe it was the play on words, i'm in a hole.  i'm not holy.  Could have been, but since i don't write much when i'm in the well, i sorta doubt it.  No, i think it had more to do with being covered from pumpkin to piddies with the accumulated filth of frickens immemorial.  And the accompanying shame and guilt.  Yeah, guilt.  When we were little fricks, with eggshell behind the ears, Ma would'a wore the feathers off of our fannies if she caught us playing round the well.  Well, i still have this superstitious belief as a full grown fricken that i'm gonna get a comeuppance for falling in it today.  God is gonna getcha.  That was the first realization that dawned on me in the dark.  That i had a really messed up view of God.  

Holiness is one of those words that is usually defined by what it's not.  Holiness is moral purity.  It is the state of being without sin.  It is "CLEAN."  Now i know that only God is holy but pre-this visit to the well, i had been walking around thinking i was holy enough!  Now that i was down in the sleaze i thought i was somehow unapproachable, untouchable.  Unholy.  i couldn't come to the throne, i was cut off from my Father God.  He would get that turkey's-in-the-rain look.

Down there in the hole, covered in shameful snailsnot, i realized that to God, that's how i am all the time!  To a being who is truly holy, any sin is damning.  Now, you may think that's grim and heavy but it was actually a beautiful thing to be thinking at Christmas time.  

God knows that we're all in the well.  A well that we dug.  We're all unable to climb out and we're all drowning in the nastiest, nauseating naphtha that ever flunked a fricken and He didn't balk a bit at it.  He came down into the very hole with us, just a slob like one of us and He who never took one spade to the hole nor added a single drop of ooze to the pit drowned in it for us and then climbed right the hell out cuz the slick can't stick to holy.  He's the Teflon God!  So that now we don't have to struggle to get out or not to fall in.  Nothing i do is gonna work anyway.  Only one person has ever escaped from the well.  He didn't show us the path, He didn't set the bar, He was the bar.  All our striving is our attempts to be Him, to be God.   All we gotta do is take His hand.  

Which brought me to me third realization.  i didn't fall in the well the other day.  i just opened my eyes and realized where i was.  Where i'd been all along.

When am i?

The cat's pooping tinsel.  The checking account is empty and we're going to church twice in one day.  Can only mean one thing...

It's Christmas!

You might think that it should have been obvious before now but then again, ye don't live at the Coop.  Here the changing of the holidays is marked with a little less punctuality.  Ye might say we're a might slow round here, that is, if ye was inclined to gross understatement.  F'rinstance, (that's a word, where i come from,) with the headless scarecrow at the end of the drive, the moldering Christmas lights from eight years ago still listlessly hanging from the sagging gutters and Easter candy in the cupboards, it's not always readily apparent what season it is round here, period.  Then again, with the weather obscenely streaking up into the sixties, how's a fricken to know what blamed season it is, if the doggone atmosphere don't know?

Guess we'll just have to keep checking the cat's stool.

Merry Christmas.

Don't ask

In all the wide world,

Nothing will draw the stares,

Like a Pennslobovian girl,

Feeding a plumpkin pears.

Chuckin' Nuts

It is a fricken coop tradition to write a Thanksgiving post. In fact, one could say the fricken coop began on a thanksgiving lost in the slurpy slime of antiquity. When Pappy sat his rheumatic rump down at a keyboard for the first time and flogged the easternet with the whip of his wit. With reckless abandon he flung his thoughts and thanks willy-nilly into the deep and found a few of them washed back up in his inbox the following day. That's not the first time he realized he wasn't the only castaway from society sittin' on an island of isolation, tending nothing but their own coconuts, but it is the first time he realized he had a way of launching his nuts at those other archipelagos. Sometimes he even gets a nut or two heaved back. For a while there was a brisk nut trade going on. Lately, not so much. Mostly he just sloughs around the trebuchet, loads in a few of his heavier nuts, the kind he couldn't finish by himself, and trips the trigger. He watches them disappear into the distance and says a little prayer that each one finds a home and a heart aching for coconut milk.

It is also a fricken coop tradition to let analogies spin off into a bizarre life of their own until they finally mutate into staggeringly irrelevant stories. For those of you suddenly finding yourselves in a freak barrage of coconuts, that is known as a "Voorlooper." We grow those here at the coop.

So, on an equally freakishly mild and beautiful Thanksgiving morn here in the Pennslobovian Archipelago, let's help Pappy chuck some nuts:

• i's thankeefull for this freakishly mild and beautiful morning.
• and that i am not standing in a near freezing river in New Yawk with the Duke of Fluke, with aching hands trying to catch a fish that won't bite while the sky makes up its mind whether to rain, freeze the rain or snow on me and finally decides on all three.  Happy hunting, Duke.
• i's thankful that despite nearly being a hostile, irritable fourteenager, i can still have a conversation with my son Happ.
• i's tankful for the talents i see's in ma boys.
• i's tankful for the talents finally being recog-i-nized in my wife.  Always knew she'd succeed.  Now if she'd just make enough so's i could retire...
• i's mighty thankyfull for sweet potato pie.  yum.
• i's tankfool for Morgan.  Cute lil' plumpkin.
• i's thankful that i finally have a callin'.  Now if i could jest hear better.

Hang on, there's one more and it's a doozie.

• I, Pappy Fricken, am most thankfully thankful that a couple o' thursday's ago, we finally finished the bedrooms in the addition i been building for nigh on eight years and can finally, after a lifetime of makin' do, can move into spaces created just for us.  Foretaste o' heaven is what it is and it tastes like sweet potato pie.  Mmmm.  That's good stuff.
• Lil bit of spin-off a that last 'un, i might get a Lego lab out of the old cave we vacated.  Maybe i'll call it the ArchipeLego.

Y'all have a good 'un too.

the Ballyhoo Belfry

It was one of those days, one of those rare, precious, chipmunk chirping days that one wakes up, goes outside, takes a deep breath with both the lungs and the eyes and says, "Golly gee, (No really, that's what you say!) What a great day to be in Pennslobovia!" It was the kind of day that makes a guy blow off football in order to be outside. Or just drag the tv out onto the porch, let's not get crazy here. Fortunately, i had pressing carpentry business to keep me from planting my posterior in the flower bed of lethargy.

The Ballyhoo Belfry needed a ladder.

The Belfry has no actual bells in it. It'll soon be home to a couple of ding-a-lings, but no bells. It is the sleeping loft for my boys' room. There being no ladder and gravity being a constant, the Ballyhoo have been sleeping on the floor of the main room, a spacious blank canvass now cramped up with a computer desk, a twin bed, a full size bed, a fusbol table and a full drum kit or as much of the full drum kit that Happ could shoehorn into the corner. Obviously, they are languishing under insufferable conditions and Amnesty International will be holding a concert for rich kids in France any day now to draw awareness to the problem. To avoid this and being villified by the eminent philanthropist Sean Penn, i spent my sabbath day of rest building a means of conveyance from one floor to the next.

The really weird thing is that i enjoyed it. Normally, working on the station in any form is the thirteenth hell. i have often been quoted as saying the station is cursed. That it is a sentient entity actually fighting against being built. That it is murdering me one Saturday at a time, punching a needle in and drawing a little more soul out with each passing week. That it is Sysyphus' labor, pushing forward through blood vessel popping effort only to see the rock roll right over me and back down the hill at the end and force me to start over with nothing but bone cracking fatigue and the whole job to do again tomorrow to show for my pain.

But all that changed a couple of Thursdays ago.

a bit o' stuff

So the coop was getting a bit run down. That might actually be a bit of an understatement. Sort of like saying Hiroshima got a bit blown up. To say it better, the coop is a bit like Shaq's movie career, sad and pitiful. To be honestly honest, the coop was already in this state when we stumbled up the drive for the first time. We were more interested in the poison ivy infested clay surrounding the coop than the actual structure. No one entertained notions of actually living in the coop for any extended period of time. The thing about notions, turns out they're pretty good at entertaining themselves. You don't have to invite them in, they just pick the lock, bribe the dog and set up a boutique for hard truths.

So for a bit of time now i've been building a bit of an addition to the coop. Yeah, it's taken a little while, the Taj Mahal wouldn't have taken longer if it have been built by a blind carpenter and his deaf laborer. You would think this was a union job. Or that i was getting time and materials instead of paying time and materials. And maybe that's been the problem, outside of a cool place to barbecue and practice the art of drunken monkey philosophy when we finished the veranda, the rewards have all been of the vague, spiritual kind. A bit on a par with building character. Only not as rewarding. In fact, at times, it's been a bit of a drag. In the sense that the black plague was a bit of a cold going around.

But all that changed a couple o' Thursdays ago.

Drei Fragen: part 'ew'

There are times when i stray so far from the point that i actually circle back around to it...

this is not one of those times. i actually had to go back to the beginning of this thread and remind myself where i was going with all this scruffilosophy. To quickly review, no, to sum up, we discussed why God made us, we briefly touched on why he made us two genders, we went back to why God made us and now here we are, outside the castle guarded by thirty men and all we have is a Fezzik's strength, my sword and your brains. Oh yeah, and a wheel barrow and a holocaust cloak.

So, two genders, man and woman, why? i can almost hear Larry King interviewing God. From the number of divorces he's had he may really want to know. But think about it. What's the practical purpose behind splitting us up? It's like a built in fault line. Maybeit it is inseperable from the third question: why did God create sex? When i put the question to Happ, he supposed that procreation was the idea. We're two different genders with sex so that we can keep making more of ourselves on our own. But why? There are other ways. He just grew one of us from dirt, why didn't he make more like that or teach us to. Nice field Adam, real bumper crop of youngin's sprouting there. He pulled Eve from his rib. We could have sprouted little pods and divided like amoebas. Don't 'ew' me, if that's all you knew, you'd think it was cute. The idea of a person growing inside and squishing out in a gush of blood and amniotic fluid isn't gross? C'mon!

No. God, who for the sake of argument or lack of argument, we are presuming is flawless, created two genders and gave those two genders sex. Go play.

Two people, separate, different, yet the more they learn of each other, the less separate they want to be. Time passes and their desire to be together increases until they are willing to commit to it. To commit to loving and being with no one else. They become naked together, exposing themselves, making themselves vulnerable, helpless, completely at the other's mercy and they come together and in their desire to meet the other's needs, to fulfill the other, they find their own needs met, and somewhere along the line, they become one, comfortable, secure with each other.

Naked. Known. Accepted.

Loved.

You can't reach this state by yourself. You can't be loved by a stranger because they don't know you. You can't love someone who exposes themselves as part of a financial conract or a power struggle. You can't find love and security by flitting from one bed to the next. You can't maintain an intimate relationship by guarding yourself or ignoring the other or dividing your affections. You can't serve others if serving yourself is your highest priority. You will have good times. You may enjoy these things and you may even work out a system that works for you but you will never know the intimate love of another and you will never understand how God loves you. And without that relationship with Him, it might be very easy to reject him and find god in cold strangers or contracts or power struggles or magazines or serving yourself for in the end don't we all serve the god of our own will?

We don't just reject God. We divorce Him.

Drei Fragen: part drei, part two

tomorrow, tomorrow, i love ya, tomorrow, you're only a couple of days baaaaack.

Time moves in jerks and spurts here at the Fricken Coop. Some days last a week, some weeks last a couple of minutes, you learn to work with it without ever really getting used to it.

This is a continuation of Drei Fragen, part drei or part "why" as i over dubbed it. i'm gonna see how confusing and cumbersome i can make the titles. Cuz that's fun to me.

Why, why, why did God, holy and infinite make people? Cuz He wanted kids and He loved us. This was never a mistake, He knew exactly what Adam and Eve were gonna do the moment he "turned His back," so to speak. He knew exactly what kind of life i or you would lead long before He said, "Let there be Light." My own kids aren't always angels, in fact they can be insufferable twits but i would never choose to have not made them in the first place. He wasn't making a zoo or a terrarium to scientifically experiment with little pink, yellow, black, brown and red lab mice. He was making a nursery where he could raise His kids.

Yeah right. So explain Noah. We're not even out of the first book of the Bible and Dad is slaughtering nearly the whole brood. Some dad, huh?

Okay, here we go... first thing you gotta know bout Dad is that He is perfectly fair. That's a difficult concept for those of us who have only ever dealt with really, horrendously, imperfectly fair people for our short durations. Dad knows that all things, all choices have consequences. Dad knows that there are only, really, when it all boils down to the salt and minerals at the bottom of the pan, two choices. Black and White. No gray. Either you accept that He is Holy, another difficult word, either you accept that He is Good, Clean, Pure, Unalterable, Unchangeable, Without an Evil Notion or Intent, Perfectly Fair, Perfectly Correct, Really, Really Cool...you accept that He is Holy and the only source of mercy to you...(believe me, when you finally confront a Holy being you will not have to wonder about your own condition anymore. Imagine crawling out of the Great Dismal Swamp after seventy years without a shower, deoderant or a dentist visit and stumbling into the penthouse suite of the Waldorf-Astoria. Trust me, you'll know the difference between Holy and blameless and your own condition, noooo problem.) Sloppy, drippy, dirty meets Holy and either accepts His Mercy as He offers it or doesn't. That's it. Your choice. He holds out Mercy and you can either accept it or walk away. All those folk that didn't get on the Ark with Noah, they said, "no thanks," and God the Father loved them enough to honor their choice. Knowing God, it wasn't just the one time he asked either. He tends to give us lots of chances to choose. If my kids ever got so bad, that i seriously thought they were a danger to other kids, i would take drastic steps too. There are parents who have had to turn their children over to the powers that be for justice and punishment. God IS the power that be, so He has to do it Himself. i'd be willing to bet that rain that fell was mingled with His own tears. i'd also bet that you wouldn't want to be living with those folk or a few thousand years of their progeny.

i have no proof for this outside of Him telling us so through the Bible and my own observations. Obviously that means it's just taken on faith and you may have a problem believing it. That's fine too. But if you don't want to believe that God is a loving father that knows you and loves you anyway and pursues you and your love i'd kind of wonder why? Whatcha got that's better than that? i'm curious.

Drei Fragen: part why?

Somehow, some way, some why God the Father saw and knew us and loved and likes us anyway and so he made us. So here we are, ta-da! So why did he create us in separate genders?

This question seem especially poignant as i sit and hear the gentle strains of Seether coming from Happ's radio singing, "[have sexual intercourse] me like you hate me..." With all the problems inherent in relations between the genders, why did an omniscient Father create two genders in the first place?

Dismissive, cynical response: to let us feel His pain.

Hoping for a more hopeful answer we shall forge ahead past all common sense and flippant inner voices. According to Genesis, God made man and then made woman as a helper to him. Important to note, this was not a subservient position. She was his equal until the fall when God said, "your desire will be for the man and he will rule over you." Men trying to lord it over women is part of the curse, not the blessing.

Another part of the curse is painful toil in order to eat. Which i must attend to now.
Until tomorrow...

Drei Fragen: part zwei

So yesterday's homework was to find out why people have kids. So what did we learn? i myself work with a confirmed bachelor and in the evening accosted my thirteen year old son, Happ. i learned exactly squat. You see, this is why i philosophize. There's a blight on hard evidence around the coop.

In his defense, Happ did try to answer. Happ likes babies, thinks their cute and fun. Happ is obviously suffering from dementia but since he's the only witness we have we shall continue. Happ's guess was that folk have kids so that they can have someone they like around. Or at least that's my best attempt at summarizing what he mumbled. It's been a while since i translated teenish. To which i asked him, "well, how do you know you're going to like them before their born?"

(shrug)

i couldn't tell you why people decide to have kids and i have two. Humans being inherently selfish, i would guess that most of our reasons for having them are as noble and romantic as shoplifting. But somewhere in us there must be the kernal of the right reason to procreate. i think i've felt it when i'm having a pretty good discussion with the Ballyhoo gang, my own progeny or when i see them do something amazing or cool or when they make me laugh or when Rascal comes down stairs in the morning and wants to snuggle or when i watch Happ draw. In those moments, i can see how God the Father might have wanted to make us, selfish ingrates that we are. Particularly since He did know us before we were born!

Yeah, yeah, i hear the naysayers with their, "Why did He make Hitler then?" Once again, stating the obvious disclaimer: 'that i don't actually know' but i'd have to guess that Hitler made the rest of us what we were too. The greatest generation couldn't have been the greatest without something to test themselves against. Sometimes i think you gotta take a big picture view.

So, a human or in most cases, a pair of humans decides to have a child in the hope that said red, wrinkly poop machine will be someone they can like and love and might just like and love them in return. Acceptable? Which brings us to the original question, "Why did God make us?" While i'm sure there are myriad and vague answers i think the simplest is that He already knew and loved us. Too bad we so rarely return those feelings.

Drei Fragen

Alright. Standby for some heavy-duty scruffilosophizing. Got some major league questions to pondificate today. Before you may pass by me, you must answer my questions three...

*Why did God make us? ("us" being used here to encompass all humanatees)

*Why did He make us two distinct and different genders?

*What is the capitol of Assyria? No, wait, aaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Why did He create sex?

Now, if you don't believe in God then i guess you could still play along but i'm not sure it'll have the same ring to it to say, "Why did an indifferent and uncaring universe evolve a species of satient beings? Why did those satient beings evolve into two separate and distinct genders? And why did they evolve a method of procreating that could also be used recreationally?" Kind of different questions but you have fun with those. i'm not making fun of you for believing that, i just wonder why you would want to?

Today maybe we could just delve into the first one. ("Today" being used here to denote the thirty minutes before daylight and merciless whip of the world coming down on the scruffy puppy.) Why did the Lord God, the Autonomous and perfectly complete King of the Universe decide to make peops? i haven't done a scrap of actual research, this is philosophy after all, but i'd venture to say that we'll never have the answer to that until we can ask the Man his own righteous self. But! We may have many of the clues we need already.

Why do people have kids? Go ahead, ask some parents why they decided to have wee bairns. i'll wait. i guess you'd have to find folk who made the conscious decision to have the tricycle motors in the first place, unlike the Mynk and i who sort of got a surprise a couple of months into the grand adventure. Once again, i haven't done a shred of research here but i'm guessing the answers are all myriad and vague. In fact, that can be our assignment for the day. ("Day" being used here to refer to a period of time marked from now to whenever i can get my lazy butt in gear and write the next post in this series.)

Go forth and ask why we multiply!