Fur-furty

"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?

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.

Upon this Rock

The temperature was dropping into the single digits.  The wind was howling white.  The stars and their crescent queen shone weakly through a slash in the clouds.  There appeared to be more light coming from the glowing snow than the frozen sky.  For anyone fool enough to be out, exposed skin burned, eyes watered, breath froze.

i was in my element.  i stood at the highest peak of carcass basin and flabbergasped.  i had ascended to the edge of the precipice to test my courage against another drop into the basin itself.  Each descent was a near death experience.  A falling sensation, numbness, all going white, then there was a thump, temporal pain and fear followed by an out of body moment.  It was as if one was rising above the earth, weightless, a spirit free from both the mundane and the profane.  Then tumbling, smashing, crashing down again and there you are, in your sore, battered body again, gasping for air.  Not a run to be taken lightly.

That's what i had climbed here to do but before i could throw sled and body over the edge.  The wind took me.  It came blasting across the snow shrouded wastes, broken only by huddled and shivering houses.  Which is to say, laughing at man's foolishness.  It struck me and roared on and i was inside it and there was nothing to do but laugh with it.  It brought my head up to see the stars which seemed to have come closer, it pulled my head down to view Elwood station in it's entirety.  From fricken coop to mailbox and all trees in between.  Lit up like some ship in the dark sea, alight but only seeming to emphasize it's frailty before the infinite.  Beautiful, yet ridiculous.  All my earthly labor lay before me and i was not proud.  My mind and eyes ran to my sons.  One seeking shelter within my earthly labor, shunning our mad company and the other struggling to join me atop the hill.  i saw their differences.  i saw how one made my job easier by seeking me and the other made me seek him.  And yet deeper was my wife who was not even foolish enough to attempt our idea of fun.  What must i do to reach her?  How can i express this mad joy?  Not at the falling but at the elements forcing me to admit that i am not the center of the universe and yet i am a cherished member of it: a son who sometimes seeks and sometimes must be sought.  This glimpse of both my proper perspective before God and How he must see me at times.  In this momentary revelation i wondered at tomorrow.  Should i call another snow day and stay home or go to work?  Believe it or not, that was a hard decision that had been left utterly to me.  Mundane, Profane, Insane and Sacred all swirled in that wind.

Happ finally crested the hill and asked me what i was doing still standing there.  So i told him all the things that i had thought of, alas without the poetry of recollection.  

"That's a lot to think about in five minutes,"  He remarked.

"When you're an adult you have to do your thinking when you get the chance.  Cause most of the time people will be telling you what to think."  He merely hummed at this.  i don't know if he was thinking that adulthood sucks or that i'm terribly cynical.  "Most of all," i added, "i thought that the stars looked so close that i felt closer to God and then i remembered that He's not up there, He's here... with us.  And He wants to go for another run."  And i threw body and sled over the precipice.

Now i'm sure that the rock had lay under the snow there all along.  Yet somehow, despite our tracks being all around it, we had yet to uncover it's lurking dorsal ridge.  On this run however, my near death experience came a little nearer and i found myself, abruptly halted mid run, holding the sled by it's one remaining handle, the other being torn out by the impact and laying on my back, listening to the wind overhead and the snickering stars.

"Perhaps i heard wrong.  i think He may want to go inside and see what Mom and Rascal are up to."

"Praise God in the great congregation."

So here's what happens...

Sunday morning i wake up a little before seven.  Now i'm not a spring from bed at full throttle kind of guy.  i'm more of an ooze downstairs, osmosip half a coffee pot while reading blogs till i'm ready to ease her up to all ahead half-full.  So, somewhere around seven thirty i realize i've goofed off too long and now it's all ahead full or we won't make it as a family to church by nine-fifteen.

That's when the discouragement hits.  No one wants to get up for church.  i pretty much have to drag three quarters of my family, of which i represent a quarter, to congregate with fellow believers.  As the spiritual head of my household i see this as my duty.  But since it's been this way for so long, i begin to wonder if maybe i'm doing something wrong.  Church isn't a duty, it's a gift.  It's a reunion.  It's a redirecting of our priorities which have a tendency to reset to factory standard, that being our own lovely image in the slot labeled, "Most important person in the universe."  Now if no one in my family is getting this, if they see church as a drag and a burden then i'm not leading, i'm driving.  And while i might be a somewhat successful mule driver, wouldn't it be great if i could get the team to pull for once?

Told you i was a frustrated idealist.

And then there's the practical.  My wife, Mynnie, works six days a week.  Her body is habitually wracked with pain.  She would really, REALLY appreciate a day to sleep in.  So, do i just take the Ballyhoo Gang and let her rest?  Think of all the writing i could get done.  Heck, i just wrote this blog in the time i was supposed to be in the shower.  i have to write next week's service.  There's the irony.  The worship leader for next week is skipping this week's service in order to have time and rest to write next week's service.  Shouldn't entering into the presence of God the Almighty with my brothers and sisters give me rest and inspiration?

Guilt is the wrong reason to go to church.  The desire to be washed free of guilt is a great reason to go to church.  Sloth is a lousy reason not to go to church.  To be encouraged is a great reason to go to church.  These are things i learned in church.

But it sure is hard to get up.

Whole lotta hurtin'

The more people i know, the more i get to know them,

the longer my prayers get.

To all the souls i've loved before

She was eighty-five years old and she had no children of her own.  She did have thirty-five nieces and nephews.  And at one time, she and her husband had thought this might fill the void.

Only one stayed in touch.  Only one came to visit.  Only one could she call if she needed something.  

Now for all i know this woman is the bride of Frankenzilla herself when not in public.  Many people keep a face in a jar by the door but my wife told me about this customer of hers and i didn't think that.  Well, i did think that but only for a really, really brief moment.  My main thought was, "i don't keep in touch with any of my aunts and uncles."

And as i went to bed, in the forty-five seconds between becoming horizontal and the onset of catatonia, my mind started making a list.  A lovely list.  An adorable little list of all the people my mind, who apparently had been paying attention to these things even thought i thought i'd been ignoring...

• My grandmas, one of which is developing alzheimer's like symptoms.
• My father, who asked me to call him.
• My sister, who's undergoing psychiatric evaluations these days while her two remaining children hang with...
• My folks, who asked me to do a couple of favors for them that i keep forgetting.
• My brother, who just moved his family across the country and i never visited while he was in Washington, a state i really wanted to visit.
• My sister's other two kids who now live with their fathers.
• My old partner, Duke, who called me out of the blue yesterday and has been out of work for a couple of months.
• My best man, who i realized last night i never sent his family's Christmas gifts to.
• Panzer, who, like my partner Duke, calls me out of the blue every now and then.
• El Oso, who sent me a very nice Christmas gift himself.
• The Mighty and Glorious Garrett Jaxx, who, wrapped in golden chains, i had been meaning to see even before the king died and made it more of an imperative.
• Gosh, i'm glad this is not a numbered list.
• The aunt and uncle that leant Mynk and i their cabin for our honeymoon.
• The only aunt and uncle that stay in touch on my patri-side.
• Either of the two cousins i have on my matri-side.
• Any of full regiment of cousins from the other side, one of which adored me as she was growing up and had a baby who's name i can't remember.
• Moffatt, my brother in worship who moved on to another outpost of the realm.
• The Hawk, my brother in music who i've made several sad attempts to form a band with.
• Add to this the innumerable friends and relations i see once a week and act like that's enough.  Or the guys i see at work everyday but hardly speak to.  So many lives i rub up against.
• The homeless that i took blankets to once last year and haven't been back.

If you see yourself on this list, know that i haven't forgotten you but that to be remembered by me is little more than a line in my prayers.  If you don't see yourself on this list, then... damn.  Sorry.  Who were you again?

Will you tree my valentine?

There are a lot of trees here at the coop.  And i like them all.  It was really what i fell in love with that first time winding up the drive.  A little patch of forest struggling to survive in a suburban desert.  Take away the trees, like they did next door, and you uncover the ugliness of the two legged stink bugs living underneath.  Like peeling the bark back and exposing a colony of the six legged variety.  Just nasty.  Now, as much as i love this wood and these trees, i don't do anything to maintain them.  To me, God's system for forests seems to work best the less we interfere.  Death, fire, rot are not things to be fought, they're part of the system.  Like digestion, fever and excrement.  They're not pretty but without them we'd be poorer... and probably explode at a very young age.  Ewww.

So the trees i have are the ones that grow.  i love them.  i don't hug them.

Except for two.

There's a holly on the property.  So verdant, lush, green, vibrant at all times yet with berries of opposing hue adding such a splash of crimson that you know this is no one dimensional tree.  It may be a member of the forest, doing all the usual tree stuff: providing shade and cover and protection from the wind but it also knows how to party, it retains something, some secret that it only hints at with these scarlet sparkles.  This tree, i love.  This tree i want to see not just survive, but flourish!  i love to watch it grow.  i love how it hints of Christmas.  i love to just look at it.  

The problem comes when i try to get closer.  Hollies hurt.  They are fierce defenders of themselves.  Reminiscent of rose bushes.  They scratch and tear but i can't let go.  This is the tree i love.  Not an oak or a hickory or a cedar.  This tree, this holly has my heart.  

i've tried pruning back some of the sharper branches but i'm not an arboriculturist or even a topiarist.  i'm more of a ...not quite a lumberjack... um, what's the word, what's the word?  Butcher?  No, too artistic.  Barber?  Enh.  Too scientific.

Ah!  Axe Murderer!  That's it.  The poor critter just looks wounded for weeks till the bare spots fill back in.  While i fret that this time i killed it for sure.  God is gracious though and repairs the damage but... there we are.  Back to square one.  Tree and frick, unable to get closer.  Unable to be apart.  What's a poor hollylover to do?

Go to the other tree i love.  There are only four trees around the coop that i planted myself.  Three are dead, one, George, survives.  But it's not George i go to.  And it's not one of the other two Christmas trees i killed.  This tree i go to was dead when i planted it.  Yet it's the only one that can bring life.

Zwölf, Zwölf, Zwölf!

So here's the thing, no, here's a couple of things, but i'll start off with just one thing, otherwise my sentence structure will be more incomprehensibly convoluted than it already is.  And you, me and the two other people reading this don't want that.

Thingummy numero eins:  i stand accused of mopeyness.  Yeah, i know.  Hard for me to believe too.  But there it is.  Two out of my four comments prove it.  So what's a frick to do?  i'll tell ya.  Some serious drinking.  That's what.  And THEN he starts working on his life.  Analyzing it from every angle.  Getting outside opinions.  Self-help books.  Gurus.  Little old ladies with paisley scarfs on their heads and fake Bulgarian accents.  i mean, mopeyness.  This is serious.  This can't be allowed to fester into melancholy.  Next thing you know, i'd be writing poetry and wearing too much mascara.  

Though a little nail polish might make my crushed finger look less disturbing.  Anyway, that'll all have to wait as i'm still in the drinking stage.  

All dour solemnity aside.  There's two very good reasons why i'm accused of mopeyness.  Thingummy numero eins-point-one: i am mopey.  i don't really mean to be, it just sort of happens to happen.  Not that it's not my fault but here's the thing... thingummy-numero-eins-point-one-A: (you might want to make some sort of outline on a separate piece of paper) i have high hopes for life.  At the heart of every cynic is a disappointed idealist.  Which brings me to...

Thingummy numero eins-point-two: life sucks.  No really.  It's a raw deal.  You're handed a handful of puzzle pieces at the beginning and before you even know what to do with them, your family, guardians, friends and teachers are cutting them, scraping off the images, drawing on them, painting over them and basically making it impossible to tell what to do with them and then they shove you out of the boat and tell you to swim.  i'm not mixing metaphors, that's what really happens.  Nobody mentions swimming until you are out of the boat!  You would think that would come up, but maybe they are all just bitter about being shoved out of the boat themselves.  Or maybe its because of...

Thingummy numero zwei:  i just like saying "zwei."  The only thing better than saying "zwei" is writing zwei.  And the only thing better than writing zwei is saying "zwölf" and the only thing better than saying and writing "zwölf" is that i just now figured out how to put umlauts over the "o!"  You would think someone as easily amused as i am would be less mopey.  But i'm not and maybe that's because of ...

Thingummy numero drei: Which is that the world is messed up.  No, i mean it this time.  It wasn't supposed to be like this.  This is a really, really screwed up counterfeit of what it was supposed to be.  And when we're most clear is when we see it for what it is.  When we're "being all we can be" as an "army of one" and "just doing it" and being "driven" or "living life to the fullest" or " the extreme," we're just buying the lie.  Kidding ourselves.  And trust me, Satan's laughing.  We weren't meant to be wage slaves, that's part of the curse.  Work was supposed to be play.  We sinned, now it's work.  We weren't meant to seek identity, we were given it by God.  We weren't meant to seek validation and worth through relationships.  Relationships can't bear that!  They're with other people for cryin'owtlowd!  Those poor saps are at least as screwed up as you if not more so!  And they're just using you to fix them!  i can't even tell you what a true relationship was supposed to be because i'm so soaked in the muck of the mess that it is like trying to envision eternity, or the vastness of the universe or why peanut oil is more valuable than canola oil and so peanut butter doesn't have peanut oil in it.  Some things are just beyond us.  

So what happens is, i'll be there, worshiping God and it will be so clear.  Why Jesus came, why He said all those weird things and then died.  Why God raised Him.  Why we have to wait for Him to fix it and what we're supposed to live like now and that nagging little idealist in me starts thinking, "yeah!  This time it's going to be different.  I was blind, but now I see!  Life will still be life but armed with this good news, this gospel, I'll be able to truly live as follower of Christ, a person who knows his hope, lives!  This is something to be shared.  It's not babble, it's not theology, it's not religion, it's a love letter from God!  I can sell all I own and give it to the poor!  I can visit the sick, the prisoner, the outcast.  How can I not?"  

And that might last into Trusty the little, green saturn.  It may even make it up the driveway.  But then it runs right into the picture window of life, gets stepped on by negativity, chained back up to the millstone and made to pull for who knows what.  And i suddenly understand monks and nuns.  Who wouldn't want to stay there?  That's the party, the reunion, the kegger.  That's a taste of what's to come but that's not what this life is about.  And for my next trick i'm going to sum up all of what life and this horrendously convoluted post is about with...

Thingummy Numero Vier:  God's throwing a party, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe Dec 21, 2012.  Doesn't matter.  It's coming.  And a couple of our sisters and brothers haven't responded to the invitation yet.  Would somebody please conk them over the head and drag them in?  In love, of course.

Faith behind the lines.

This morning i was in the throne room of God Almighty.  Now i'm shouldering the debris of my life out of the way to find enough room to sit down.

This morning i was leading God's children in songs of praise.  Now i'm a refugee fleeing the television's blare.

This morning i knew my place, i had a home, i fit.  Now i'm stranger in a strange land.

This morning i knew my hope.  Now i'm staring down the barrel of another week and wondering how i'll make it through.

This morning i was in a family of believers.  Now doubters and mockers will be my constant companions.

This morning my purpose was clear.  Now doubt even creeps into me.

This morning the world made sense.  Now it's dark.

Belief isn't the problem.  Living the belief is.

Prick of pride by a proud prick

Pride.

Strange how one man's can so easily wound another's.

The temple of Goomu

The demon sandbox says "2." The one in Mynnie's car said, "6" and the analog one up on the back deck puts the temperature at ten. There's a paltry peppering of snow on the frozen face of the world and i lit the fire off the glowing memories of yestereve's blaze. Now i'm kicking back with a hefty mug o' joe and Buffett's Juicy Fruit on the iJukes. It's good for your soul.

Pointless homespun intros out of the way... Tuesday is inauguration day. The world's chosen messiah takes the reins. On Sunday, at the "kickoff" celebration, V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. He might possibly use the same phrase he tried out on the host of NPR's All Things Considered the other day: "The god of our many understandings." If he was running it up the flagpole, she not only saluted, she blushed, stood coquettishly and murmured something about having no plans for dinner. A bit of a wasted effort on the bishop but my point is clear. They started using this phrase liberally throughout the rest of the interview. They latched onto it like any fool drowning in his own sin gloms to a semi-logical argument as to why it's not his fault.

And why not? It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? The god of our many understandings. So open. So fair and equitable. So tolerant. It's inclusive. It allows all people to come and not have to conform. It tells no one they're wrong. It asks nothing of the listener. No inconvenient truths. Just blissful acceptance of all. Harmonious. Peace, love, you dope.

Here's the issue i take with it. Forget it being about God for a second. What if it were the Obama of our many understandings. The George Bush of our many understandings. Putin. Mao Tse Tung. Frank J. Applebottom. Adolf. There are empty headed, hate-mongers out there who think that the entire holocaust thing was fiction. They've convinced themselves that Hitler was maligned. That he was really a great leader who wanted more for his people and order for the world. You know, Hitler was after world peace too. Once every nation was under his shiny black boots, there'd be no more wars to fight. Harmony. Once all the malcontents were lime slathered ashes at the bottom of an abattoir's waste hole then there would be universal Freide, Lieben, du Rauscher!

There are six billion people in the world. That's six billion "understandings" of who Hitler was. And none of it changes the truth of who Hitler was. He was exactly the sum of his thoughts and deeds. There are six billion "understandings" of who Barack Obama is, from messiah to anti-christ. And only time will tell which are right. The point is, someone's going to be right and someone's going to be wrong.

V. Gene Robinson may or may not invoke his god of many understandings tomorrow but he did state clearly that he will not invoke Jesus Christ. His understanding tells him that is the right thing to do. He does not wish to exclude anyone from the festivities. He wants to throw this time, this event, this moment in history open to all Americans and indeed, to all the world.

Jesus accepted all who came to him. He forbade none: hookers, widows, children, lepers, the insane, criminals, tax cheats, rich, poor, heck, though it doesn't mention any specifically, i'd be willing to bet at least one homosexual approached him. He welcomed them all but made it fairly clear that no one comes to the Father except through him. No hoops to jump through, no laws to keep righteously, no baths to take first, nothing you have to do because nothing you could do would work. That's why He did it. All he asks is that you just believe. That's the Bible's understanding.

V. Gene's god doesn't sound like mine. There's no fair middle ground between them. One of us is right, the other is wrong. But which is which? i'm guessing you have your own understanding of that. Here's the kicker. It won't change the Truth.

Sins of the father

My eldest son, Happ, confessed to me last night that he has no idea what he wants to do with his life.  He's only fifteen and in ninth grade but i couldn't help but be worried.  

i try not to project my frailty onto my children.  i want the things i pass on to them, the lessons they learn from me to be God given, scripture based, Spirit breathed.  Too often i can see where others have given me "wisdom" or advice that was based more on mistakes they had made and personal prejudices they had developed from living here in the broken bracken of Adam's curse than from deep searches of the scripture and time spent with the Giver of Wisdom.

Yeah right.  i'm still a part of the brokenness.  F'rinstance, i didn't know that brokenness had two "n's."  Still looks wrong to me.  

i'm still broked.  i have extremely limited control over what my boys learn from me.  And that got me wondering...  y'see, Happ's confession sounded a lot like me when i was his age.  i didn't know what i liked doing.  i didn't do much.  i envied people who had their lives planned and a hobby/interest/passion to pursue.  As a result i survived high school.  Married a wonderful girl, had Happ and started making decisions based on semi-panicked expediency.  It hasn't been a bad life, despite what my whines and rants may convey but it hasn't exactly been, and this pertains mostly to career choices (i have to add that or my lovely wife starts getting upset, love you shnookums!), it hasn't been something i ached to jump out of bed in the morning to get started each day.  No, no it hasn't.  It's been more of the fall into bed with a sigh of thank-God-its-over-relief beaten together with (expletive)-it-begins-again-in-less-than-six-hours-dread.  This i would spare my sons if i could.

But now i wonder if i can?  Did i unwittingly raise my boy to be just like me or was he doomed to that particular ponderment anyhoo?  Is drifting aimlessly through life a genetic condition?  Geez i hope so, cause otherwise i'm going to feel really guilty.

God has a nosering

Naw, really, it's true.  i saw it.  A tiny little stud on the right nostril.  Coupled with the dimples and bored eyes it gave His smile a wryness that made me wonder what the joke was.

i saw Him a lot yesterday.  He was off-loading a truck and He looked disgusted with life while he smoked his cigarette.

He had a trusting, naive voice that might explain why His last contractor took advantage of Him.

He had red hair and looked really tired.

He was sitting in a tree on my way home and i have no idea why.

He was asian.

He drove a little red car.

He was putting out cones around His truck.

He was a pastor on the ipod reminding me that how i treat people is how i treat Him.  i wonder what He's doing today?

Mary and Joe's Tears

Christmas Eve is tomorrow and it's going to rain.

If I had been one of the seven dwarfs, my name would have been Mopey.  Or maybe Phlegmmy, though they already had a Sneezy.  

Just glad i don't live south of the equator.  i don't think i could handle Christmas coming at the beginning of summer.  i keep threatening to sell the station and move the family somewhere north where they still have winter.  Not just four months of March.  The missus don't hold to such talk.

Hmm, random interlude: preheated seat cushions are an outstanding idea.

It's just that Christmas in general is sort of a letdown.  There's all this build-up, all this anticipation, all this ceremony and in one short, busy day it's all done.  Nothing's changed.  Life grinds on as if nothing ever happened.  i wonder if Joseph and Mary felt that way the day after?  Did they expect the world to come bow at Jesus' feet the day He entered the world?  Instead of a handful of smelly sheep-rats.  i wonder if that was part of the reason for the stable?  So the shepherds would feel comfortable.  Mary and Joe must have had continual reminders that their son was not average by any means but did life for them really change?  Did the world?  No.  Joe went on being a blue collar schmuck and Mary kept a home in their hometown and the world went right on ignoring them.  Or more importantly, ignoring their son.

Just as it does now.  We carry around this knowledge, this gift: the son of God came to earth as one of us, took all the punishment for our sin and now we are free to have a relationship with God again, and the world acts like we're nuts.  God has done everything necessary to repair all the damage that we did when we rebelled.  And we give him the big cosmic busysignal and grind on with our pathetic attempts to find meaning in chaos.

No wonder it rains on Christmas.

Diary

Freezing rain.  Again.  Still hacking.  Snot production still at maximum discharge.  Third day off in a row.  Still no writing done.  Had two days off last week.  No writing then either.  Natives getting restless.  May have to offer Kenny as human sacrifice.

Hope ship comes in soon.

typical day at the station

It was not supposed to be my day off.  All my tools were still at work.  i wanted to take off tomorrow when she was coming home.  By ten o'clock i was bruised, bleeding, with arms full of fiberglass, had thrown out two deceased drills, borrowed a third with which i had drilled straight through a wire, arcing the bit and forcing me to try and repair it in the dark.  i only have one way of making sure it's the right circuit breaker that i have off, see aforementioned statement about tools being at work. i haven't gotten one thing done and this was one of the easy tasks.  i'm coughing up a lung, battling the urge for arson and curling up in the fetal position sticking one thumb firmly in my mouth and balling the other into a fist that i shake at the heavens, crying to God, 

"Why?  How in the name of all that's holy and good, does this enter into the Plan???"

Bullet holes along Ramble Road

i don't know if it's the white-noise jamming of life or the fractured state of my mind but i can't seem to form one coherent thought here.  My two readers can probably guess what that means...

• Bullet list!
• When did hunters go from the predominant species in Pennslobovia to a freakish curiosity that mothers bring their children outside to see?
• Relatedly, is our move as a civilization towards pacifism, anti-gun, anti-hunter, anti-fisherman a step towards perfection, presuming that Adam and Eve felt no need to kill, or a step towards feminization and are we losing something vitally masculine?  
• Speaking of emasculation, you're scared now aren't you?  Where's he going to go with this?  If i even see the word 'knife' i am out of here!  Fear not, hapless reader, i am feeling more metaphysical than that.  What i was going to say before i wandered down Ramble Road again, was that i really wish i had the gift of decisiveness.  i can never decide if my inaction is the result of a holy waiting on the Lord or a frightened staying of the course in order to avoid the consequences of stepping out.
• i think that's why i like Post-apocalyptic stories.  In my mind, the subterfuge and lies of civilization have been stripped away and life gets boiled down to a basic level of survival again.  
• In that vein, read the Road by Cormac McCarthy recently.  Loved it.  Man's a poet.  Disturbing, but great.
• And that's what makes me wonder... if life really was boiled down, stripped bare, hardened, would i still think it was so great?  When daily decisions have life or death consequences, when dinner isn't a question of what box to nuke but will we find something to eat if we travel in this direction or will we end up something to eat?  Would i long for these days when my direction is decided for me?
• Not that that makes strapping the workboots back on today for another nine or ten hours of mindless, friendless, rewardless labor any easier. 
• The key is to remember that it's not hopeless. 
• No really, it isn't.
• Honest.
• i hope.

Thank God for Spring

A smothered sun rises in a damp, gray sky.  Trees bare but for the moss, shiver in the cold.  A tailless cat huddles on it's perch and makes disturbing, human baby sounds for someone to feed it.  There's no fire in the stove.  His lungs are filled with sticky, yellow mucous.  He rasps, coughs, sneezes and blows into one tissue after another while sitting on an unsympathetic oak bench.  Life is grudgingly starting another day.  It has to but it doesn't have to like it.

Thanksgiving.  2oo8.

As is his custom, he composes a letter.  A letter to whomever cares to read it.  An open letter to God his father.  A letter of thanks.  This year it will be labor.  That makes it all the more important.  To thank in times of plenty, on rosy mornings when health, wealth and love greet you with a kiss is instinct, reflex.  Easy.  To find the blessings in the ashes of mourning, in the abscess of despair, in the full realization of the Curse, there, there are the times when thanskgiving is not an option but a need.  A rope to cling to.  A denial of aloneness.  A reminder that the dark, stones of the cell are not the extent of the world but that somewhere, love is desperately longing to be with you.  And walls of stone or despair while impervious to gentle touch, can do nothing to keep out love.

So while cat clings to it's hunger pains and cloud suffocates the sky, he looks beyond his mouldering, ailing prison to golden streets, crystal seas, palaces warmed and lit by pure holiness and one is never alone, not in body, not in mind, nor in spirit.  One is fully, completely, totally known.

And loved.  For though the eyes may not see, that has no bearing on it's certainty.  He cannot see Tokyo but he believes it exists.  He knows that while he shivers in Pennslobovia, another sweats in Peru, though he has no proof.  So it is with the New Jerusalem.  The new Zion.  It is as real, if not more so than the pain in his joints, the cold of his feet and the emptiness of his cup.  Autumn is upon us.  The Jack O' Lantern has trumpeted Winter's icy vanguard on the horizon.  The siege is coming.  With it: famine and pestilence.  Hard times, dark times are coming.  Persecution.  Suffering.  Death rides in that vanguard.  Men will become children.  Their bones turning to water.  Mothers will eat their young.  It will be a hard winter.  There will be days where it will be near impossible to find something to be thankful for but that will make it all the more necessary.  Thanksgiving in trial makes hope and faith into fact and truth.  In the dark, thank God for light.  In the cold, thank God for heat.  In the pain, thank God for healing.  Alone, thank God for being there.  

In Winter, of season, soul or history, thank God for Spring.

Quasimodo

Thanksgiving week.  Last year this time, i laid the tile floor in our upstairs bathroom.  Spent all weekend doing it.  Looked nice.  Was supposed to be the big push to get the bathroom done.  The last big hurdle.  

That bathroom has half-made cabinets in it with no sink, no countertop and incomplete wainscot half-way around.  Must have tripped on that hurdle.

Traditionally i try to think of things i'm thankful for this week.  Write some of them down.  Guess a patient, long-suffering wife is going to have to top that list this year.  

Forgotten's Lament

"Once there were two boys

one big and one quite little

Rascal were

the little cur

Plump around his middle."

from The Ballad of the Ballyhoo Gang

All Hallow's Eve has faded to unhallowed dawn. Princesses have awoke to their chores.  Traded their gowns for aprons.  Traded their dreams for yours.  The Weird and the Faerie take refuge in dream.  Goblins to their ghastly home.  Banshee and siren choke on their scream.  Ghosts retreat to chambers of loam...

All save one.

A wee spirit still haunts.  Tinkling chains in cobb-webbed halls.  A lantern, a single spark that stabs the dark.  A keening.  A child.  He calls.

Where is my brother?  Where has he gone?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my mother?  What'd i do wrong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my father?  Steady and strong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my night?  Where do i belong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.