jBearBlog

Rude People

2009-10-12T11:05:00.004-04:00

Rude People
A 2000 word essay written to the 8th grade level so even this guy can understand it!

Maybe it's just me but when I was a kid in grade school - it seems like all of us kids were told it was rude to push your way to the front of the line or bully your way around the playground. I guess there were always some people who weren't gonna get the memo.

We were taught, "No jumping in line, no crowding, no talking over people... be polite, ask permission, let others go first" Now that is the instruction we got in Kansas.

Then I moved to the Deep South - where "Southern Hospitality" sometimes takes on a completely new meaning. Generally, people everywhere are really polite - decent individuals. Sometimes you run into real jerks.

This last weekend, I had a double-header at an air show I attended.

As a part of the media, I get in early and stake out a spot along the flight line - usually with a few other photographers. We watch each other's backs and each other's equipment. There is a lot of money laying at the feet of three or four photogs at any given show and we don't need to chance an unnecessary repair.

So as usual I found a spot along the line, six or seven other photogs show up and we are relatively safe between the rope and a nice Stearman parked between us and the crowd.

To my immediate left was a super nice family who also wanted an unobstructed view of the show, a husband and wife and their three precious children. All of us sorta became friends as we baked in the morning sun and waited until the show started at 1:00.

Now - as working pro - even with friends watching our backs - we tend to not wander off to eat, visit the port-o-lets or meander through the crowd. It’s just not in the job description. We’re here and this is where we stay.

About 1/2 an hour after the show started, a guy with a nice Canon camera and a short (useless) lens, pushed his way around in front of the kids to my left, put his chair down on top of the lady's foot and called for his family to do likewise. As they pushed their way into the small area between the family that had been there all day and the rope line - I stood up and told the guy he had to move. Of course he didn't want to and said as much... not politely either! He said it was as much his right to be there as anyone else.

Of course, it is his right to be at the air show as anyone else... but not crowding in front of people to do so.

After a few words were exchanged, he moved his family back behind the people who he had rudely jumped in front of - and that was the end of it. The woman thanked me for standing up for them and I said it was the right thing to do. She said she felt helpless and didn't know what to do. It angers me when people are rude and these nice folks didn't deserve this guy's rudeness.

Fast forward about an hour. The wife needs to take the kids to a party, so the dad asks me to save his place while he walked them to their car safely. It's nice to see a gentleman taking care of his family! so I said "sure - not a problem."

While he was away... and while I was preparing my cameras for the next performer, a big guy (taller than me by at least 6 inches) - sorta dumb looking - pushes his way to the rope line in front of the chair my new friend had left and since I wasn't facing forward, he even started encroaching on where I had been standing. This guy was there with his six or seven year old son and the two of them took up some space on the flight line.

Now normally, I don't say much to kids who crowd in - I figure they are just products of bad parenting and since they are short... and I'm pointing my lenses into the air... it's not that much of a problem. Its a bit dicey in that they don't understand the concept of a $10,000 camera rig or what it would do to one if it were knocked over, but so far I haven't had to deal with that.

This guy though was old enough to know full well he was selfishly pushing his way to the front and picking a spot where he thought he wasn't going to get much resistance. ... Me!

You have to understand - the other photogs on either side of me were taller than I am. This guy didn't want to take on anyone who he couldn't look down to. Another factor I believe played into this scenario - was his apparent latent racism.

You see - bullies are also usually cowards. This particular coward looked at the three guys I was shooting with and decided he wasn't going to push his way in front of three black guys. There it is - the guy wasn't going to take on any of these guys, when a perfectly good short white guy was available. So here we have, standing in front of me, a racist, rude, obnoxious, tall, stupid looking white guy with his son in tow.

So I told this jerk he needed to move - that it wasn't right to push his way in front of people who had been there all day and that he was blocking their view and in my way as well. All of the guys shooting with me stood shocked that this guy was such an obnoxious jerk... they also didn't know how far I was gonna go to defend our turf.

This jerk let out a barrage of whining unlike anything I've ever heard a mature adult ever utter. It was obvious from the first sentence he'd used this excuse before and that his mama had let him get away with it. We've all heard whiners like this since grade school and this guy was in his 40s! He finished his diatribe with "I have as much right to be here as you do so leave me alone!"

I told him he needed to leave and I didn't want to hear any more of his Bull Shit. He wouldn't budge.

While all of this was happening, I was missing the FA/18 series - particularly the portion I was there to shoot - the high-speed pass with vapor bursts. Needless to say, I was pissed! But resigning myself to the fact this jerk wasn't leaving - I went back to shooting what I could when his head wasn't in the way.

Did I mention he complained I used the BS word in front of his son? Did I mention his son was begging his dad to leave because it was too loud and it was scaring him when the FA/18 would go by? The dad ignored the constant pleading of his son - by this time he was there to make a point and his son didn't matter to him. Poor kid held his fingers in his ears and stared at the ground for the whole show. Maybe the kid inherently knew his dad was being an ass and couldn't bear to watch.

When the FA/18 was done, the kid kept begging to leave while the jerk said they were going to stay and see what was next. The good thing is - the kid begged long and loud enough to start to make a scene in front of everyone else so before the guy put his camera away, he took the opportunity to try to pick another fight with me - trying to justify his actions and ended it with telling me I had no GD right to tell him he couldn't stand anywhere he wanted.

Now - I think the F-bomb is bad... but the GD bomb is nuclear! I immediately turned to the kid and told him to remember his dad in church the next day and remember his actions today.

The jerk went ballistic. He said "OK - that's enough, you're gonna pay for that, I'm gonna get someone over here to set you straight, you aren't going to talk to my son like that."

and he and his son left...

All of us standing there, along with all the people around us who heard what went on, breathed a big sigh of relief that he was gone and everyone commented on what a jerk he was.

and we all went back to shooting the air show...

About five minutes later, the jerk was back, with a big uniformed officer of the law at his side. The cop was visibly upset with me due to what the jerk had told him.

I looked the officer in the eye and told him exactly what had happened, pointed out all of us photographers were credentialed media and had been there all day long when this guy pushed his way in front of us. The cop looked at all of us and everyone nodded to the veracity of what I had said. The cop took his hand off his holstered gun and proceeded to tell me this jerk had every right to see the air show too. I agreed with him but pointed out he should have gotten to the air show early enough to stake out his own spot on the flight line and not crowd into people who had been there all day. He said he understood my complaint and that he just wanted everyone to have a good time at the show. I acknowledged his good wishes - and he took the jerk off about 20 feet away and started to talk to him. I suppose he was explaining to him that he was in the wrong and that he shouldn't have bullied his way in front of other people.

While the officer was explaining all of this to the jerk... the kid started crying - evidently thinking his dad was about to be arrested. Interrupting the officer - the jerk started yelling at me that I had made his son cry and that I should really feel good about doing that to his son. I turned around and just looked at them as the officer tried to finish what he had to say to the guy.

And I went about my business shooting the air show. A line from an old movie came to mind - "what is behind me, is not important".

It still bugs me that this guy did what he did and tried to justify himself for doing so. It is outrageous behavior and embarrassing at least. The race card being played subtly and the bully persona combined with a whiny "victim" mentality reeked of spoiled mama's boy.

And there you have it - the composite of a rude person.

Maybe I should have been more gracious. Maybe after baking in the sun all day - I should have been more patient. Maybe after giving up the freedom to get lunch, buy some water, take a whiz or look at the static displays - maybe I should have just cowed down and let this jerk run roughshod over everyone there.

All of the other photogs just shook their heads at his belligerence. One even said that this was typical of the people who live in the area... redneck rural Georgia. I think he may be right - but I’ve seen similar behavior at other events across this country...

Viktor E. Frankl said in "Man's Search For Meaning" (page 136-138)
'From all of this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the "race" of decent man and the "race" of indecent man. Both are found everywhere, they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people."

Silly Love Songs

2009-05-14T10:01:00.002-04:00

You know, something I've been thinking for a while now... every song about love - whether current or lost (i.e.: blues) is a reflection of the bridegroom calling out for his bride (be she faithful - or be she Gomer) - those He has called to Himself. The essence of the message one brings in a love song - is the same as His invitation back to relationship with Him. In that - i can find great inspiration even in secular songs - 'cause they reflect the author of love - even in the limited understanding of the writer.

Think about it - when someone sings "love will keep us alive" - how much more true can that be? The author of love is also the author of life. Look at these lyrics by the Eagles rock band - I bet they had no idea they were basically giving the gospel - the very essence of the call to relationship with God...

I was standing
All alone against the world outside
You were searching
For a place to hide
(was this not what Christ did? stood against the broken world we now live? Hasn't mankind always looked for a king, leader, messiah, strongman, superman, Savior)

Lost and lonely
Now you've given me the will to survive
When we're hungry...love will keep us alive

Don't you worry
Sometimes you've just gotta let it ride
The world is changing
Right before your eyes
Now I've found you
There's no more emptiness inside
When we're hungry...love will keep us alive

I would die for you
Climb the highest mountain
Baby, there's nothing I wouldn't do

(again - did not Christ go to the top of the mountain and resist the temptations offered Him? Did He not die for you?)

I was standing
All alone against the world outside
You were searching
For a place to hide
Lost and lonely
Now you've given me the will to survive
When we're hungry...love will keep us alive
When we're hungry...love will keep us alive
When we're hungry...love will keep us alive

While I admit freely - every line in every love song doesn't apply. But listen to a few songs - even listen to the heartbreak and misery of a real blues ballad - and you can hear the Master calling for the restoration of the broken relationship. Its there - just under the melody - or floating just above it. Listen carefully - you never know where you will encounter that which you most desire. The fulfilling relationship of the Bridegroom who loves you and would rather die than be without you.

Living Sacrifices

2009-04-19T22:15:00.001-04:00

This is a message given by a dear friend of mine - please read and give it some thought.

LIVING SACRIFICES
BY
JONAH OF NINEVAH

I bring greetings to you from a distant land in the name of The Living
Lord, the only hope for our dying and hopeless world. My special thanks
for the pastor and the mission committee for their kind invitation for
me to come and speak to you this evening. After watching video, all
memories have become real alive to me - each time I watch and go through
this pain. But this evening we want to focus our attention on those who
have paid very heavy price and are still paying. Perhaps you do not
realize four hundred people are dying every single day - four hundred of
them. So today you saw the curtains are drawn and we are so privileged
to come here and worship openly with so much light, but then there are
people who are praying and worshipping in darkness - because they are
afraid that somebody may come to know who these people are who are
sitting and praying. Would you please stand in their darkness with me?

Our Gracious Heavenly Father, as we stand - one family - before
the throne of our Living God, in the righteousness of Our Lord, we stand
and approach your throne, knowing that there are so many people who are
not as privileged as people of this land are - we want to return thanks
for many blessings that you have given to us, blessings that we are able
to count and blessings that are hidden from us. And, Lord, there are so
many things that does not make any sense, and as we stand in this
darkness with our brothers and sisters around the world, I pray that we
will be sending a strong message that we are one, we have one Lord, we
have one Baptism, we have one Hope, and we are all saved by the same
Grace by the same blood which is shed on the cross - so we are
blood-related brothers and sisters. As we focus this evening, I pray,
Father, that you will speak to each one of us, help us to understand
what it means to take part in your suffering. In Jesus' most precious
name - we offer our evening prayer - Amen.

Before I go and share what I believe the Lord has put on my heart, I
have to share a very personal thing. I just got news about - as you can
tell I am a very emotional person. I know in your country you say that
only weak man cries - the strong man should not cry, and I think the
other way around, and I justify my tears differently because I say only
strong man can cry - weak man knows how to hold his tears. Jesus was
not a weak man, yet he cried. It takes a strong man to cry. When you
hear the news that your brother's daughter is raped, gang-raped,
teen-age girl. Rape takes place all over the world, my friend, I know
that - you know that. But nobody rapes you because you are Christian -
because you believe in Jesus - that's why you are raped. So when you
admit terrible pain that your own brother's teenage daughter is raped,
because you are actively involved in evangelism - in outreach to Muslim,
then it becomes very painful. You leave the phone down and there's
another phone - another brother is kicked out from his job because they
said that he is very actively involved in evangelism - he should not be
here. And when he reaches home, he discovered that somebody came and
burned everything - whatever belongs to his house - so his wife and
children were waiting outside, waiting for their comfort. When you are
finished with this news, another phone call comes and says one of your
close friend, a medical Dr., while he was operating, trying to save
somebody else's life, the fundamentalists came and put 35 bullets in his
body. And whatÌs his crime??? because he has put his life in the hands
of The Lord. And I can go on and on and share many stories.

There are people who are meeting in the darkness, as I said before,
because they are afraid. Each Friday when we meet, my mouth is dry - I
don't know who is there. And I don't know what will happen in the
middle of the meeting or in the end of the meeting. But you still
preach Christ. In my country 30 - 65 thousand - (the video said 30
thousand, but the real news is over 60 thousand) people attacked two
Christian villages, and they burned everything that belongs to
Christians .
We learned some new methods of evangelism that Muslims are using to
spread Islam. They took their wives and mothers in front of their
children and their husband, pulling their breasts, biting their lips and
their cheeks, and forcing them to become Muslim.

That's not easy to witness on daily basis!

They burned 1,500 Christians homes and 15 churches, Salvation Army
center, one medical clinic, Bible, songbooks, instruments and whatever
else was in these churches. They take young girls and then they kept
them for many days. My friend, 100 million Christians are martyred. In
20th century - this is the biggest crime that we know! Whenever we
think of martyrism, our mind goes to the first century Christian, and we
always think that the Christians were martyred at that time and that is
true. But what if I tell you this? More people are martyred in this
century than put all the nineteen centuries together!!! Is that
difficult to believe? Everything is documented, all you have to do is
go and check the sources - and not just the Christian sources. Even the
secular media is now crying - ReaderÌs Digest and other newspapers and
not the Christian or the Jew, but also the Muslim is saying what is
going on with the Christians - in the last seven years - it's
unbelievable. But on the other hand, if I tell you that more Muslims
have become Christian in the last 25 years than put all the 1500 years
together - so you can see - both things are going side by side.

It's a heavy price - pain is real. But who said there would be no
pain? Pain is very important for our growth - let me remind you of the
situation. Our Lord has said to many people - "Don't be afraid".
Remember these words? Different individual - different people - he said
"Don't be afraid". Come with Dr. Luke - according to his gospel. I am
saying from his gospel so you know who is writing what - Dr. Luke says
when our Lord was in the garden, His sweat was turning into drops of
blood - The One who used to tell other people - Don't be afraid. You
see how real the pain is, my friend? What was the whole purpose of Our
Lord coming to this Earth - crucifixion, redemption, and how many time
did He talk to His disciples, about the crucifixion, about the suffering
and about the pain that He has to go through? And when He was in the
garden, what was His prayer - "... if this cup can pass away..." - One
who used to tell other people - "Don't be afraid".

You see the pain - you see the reality of pain? It's real.

But then how do you respond when you are in that kind of a situation?
There is one American way - and that is, why me, Lord? If I was in my
own country I would say - why me, Lord? Perhaps you have heard these
words before. Maybe with your own lips. I want to remind you as we are
going to focus on the suffering church around the world, this is not the
right response to pain.

The real response to pain is, "Not my will - your will".

But you see, we want our will to be done on earth and we want other will
to be done in Heaven. Although we pray "that your will be done on Earth
as it is in Heaven", but sometimes the words we utter are a little
different. For us, we are still fighting the same war - we are still
fighting the same idea. Nothing has changed - we are still asking the
same question, brethren, should we decide - should we obey God or
should we obey man? The choice is not any difference. If I was present
when the Lord said... and believe this account in the Acts of the
apostle, Chapter 1- verse 8 - you are very familiar with the word in
this verse - Lord is speaking to His disciple and saying, "You will be
my witnesses..." and then He gave the list - "... Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, end of the Earth", remember that part? And, by the way- the
word, which is translated in English language - the "witness" comes from
the root word - the Greek word, which means "martyr". So, when you are
witness, then you are martyr. That is the word and that is the meaning
it carries. And at that moment if I was present when Jesus gave this
priority list, and if He put Jerusalem on top of the list, I would have
interrupted Him by saying this, "Lord, with all due respect, I love you
and I trust you, and I have to ask you for your forgiveness because I
never believed anybody would crucify you, even though you have talked so
many times that I would go through this pain and agony, but when I saw
that you were able to bring sight to the blind - when I saw your great
hand touching the leper and instant healing took place - I never
believed anyone can lay hand on you and will get away with it - because
you are powerful. You have amazing teaching and wonderful power - no
man can lay hand on you - but then I saw that they came and they
arrested you, they made you naked - they put lashes to your body - they
spit on your face - they rejected you - they nailed you to a cross and
you did nothing - I was amazed. But then I also remember you said that
you will come back to life. I never wholeheartedly believed that, till I
saw the mark, I put my finger there. Then because it was so real I was
able to see and believe. And then from last forty days we are meeting
often, so many times you have given us instructions. You have prepared
breakfast for us, you have done so many things for us and it has given
me a lot of hope and strength. But due apology to you Lord, have you
forgotten what the people of Jerusalem have done to you just forty days
ago? Or is your memory too short? In spite of you doing everything good
for the people of Jerusalem - in the town, what did you get? They
rejected you. They nail you to the cross. You want us/ me to go back to
the same city of Jerusalem? Come on! Don't joke like this with us! Send
me to America, I am willing to suffer the cross of luxury. But donÌt
send me to Jerusalem. You know why? Because people are so cruel, they
have no head on their shoulder, they are so fundamentalist, they will
never believe us."
How many people came up with that argument? Nobody - do you know why?
Because they knew what Jesus has just said. Everyone understood the
price tag and they went back with great joy. Because they knew the price
tag. My friend, for martyrism is not new to us, we are used to it, but
the problem comes when other brothers and sisters do not care! Four
hundred people are getting killed every day - women and children are
sold in slavery, gang-rapes are taking place, people are crucified. Who
cares?! We have our own stress, we are so busy. We have learned our
golden principle to mind our own business. We will mind our own
business when people are going to hell??? Are we not part of the same
body? Are we not brothers and sisters? When are you going to break the
silence? My friend, it is time to break the silence, it is time to
speak up both to the Lord, by applying the ground rule of The Kingdom of
God and that is to ask. Moses must learn to keep his hands up, and if
his hands get tired, somebody must hold his hand, why? Because the
victory will come, but Moses must ask for it. Fire will come from heaven
and will consume the sacrifice, but Elijah must ask for it, why?
Because it is ground rule in The Kingdom of God and that is to ask, and
I can go on and on and on.
When our Lord was here, even He was not exempted by that rule - even He
has to ask. So who are you and who am I? We have to apply the same
rule of The Kingdom of God and that is to ask on behalf of our suffering
brothers and sisters.
I would like to close this time with a verse from Romans 12, the first
and second verses. It says, "Therefore, I urge you, brethren, in the
view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and
pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform
any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then, you will be able to test and approve what
GodÌs will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will."
You are Christian for so many years, perhaps, or maybe you are new
Christian. If somebody ask you what it mean, why Paul had this idea to
present your body as "living sacrifice". Because sacrifice to my mind -
they are two opposite word - One is sacrifice, another one is living.
If
I have animal or goat or sheep or lamb, and if I am going to sacrifice
that lamb, what do I have to do? I have to use a knife, and when I cut
the throat the blood is out- the animal is dead, but the sacrifice is
performed. But if I keep the animal alive, then sacrifice is not
performed, so what is our brother, Paul, having in mind when he said, "I
urge you..." (in my culture when somebody use that language, the
picture that comes to my mind - Brother, I have a very clear image in my
mind - I beg you, I fold my hand, I go on my knees and I request you
whatever I am going to say, please pay attention and listen to this, and
that is that "You must present your body" and it is the word "presenting
your body as living" and then yet "sacrifice" at the same time. Paul, I
cannot understand this. What do you mean by living and yet sacrifice?

If somebody asked you this question what would you say? You know, in
the East, we have story for everything. Whatever question you ask, I
will tell you one little story before I come to the real point. Because
we are always accused, in the East, we beat around the bush. And you
have the bottom line, you come straight to the point. You know what you
are saying and what you are doing, because you have the daytimer - you
can read it and you can just talk it. We have no notes - we have no
daytimers, and we just beat around the bush. And we learned that art
from Jesus - believe me. Each time the question was asked to Our Lord,
he never, ever answered the American way. He always started beating
around the bush. Remember one time the question was asked to Him, "Is
it lawful to pay tax to the Roman government?" I truly feel that the
church has never understood that answer from the last so many years. I
sometime, in love, jokingly say I have moneyback guarantee that you have
never understood the answer that Jesus gave. That was 2,000 years ago.
I am cutting all other details because of the time factor - that is
another thing that is culturally very different - everything is
according to the time. Jesus said, "Show me the coin". When the coin
was shown to Him, remember He never answered by itself. Again, He
started beating around the bush. And He said, "Whose image is that?"
Don't tell me that Jesus had no idea whose image is that. He asked
them, so I ask you. Whose image was that? And what did Jesus say after
that? "Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give back to God
what belongs to God". What do you think He was saying? You know the
story - you know the answers. He was beating around the bush, and I
want to read in between the line and put this statement in the cultural
perspective so these words will become real. Jesus is saying, "Whose
image is this?" And they came up with the correct answer. And they look
- and they thought, and they openly said Caesar's image. And what He is
saying, "Whose image are you?" He was not talking about 10% - He was
not talking about the money part. And could you help me to understand
whose image are you? God's! So, this is what I find - because it is
beating around the bush, you never saw that perhaps before, And Jesus
is saying, "...and whose image are you?" Give back to God what belongs
to God. Does that make sense? It is total surrender to Jesus. It is
total commitment to Him. You are the image of God - therefore, give
back to God what belongs to God. You know, Caesar always take more than
it deserves, and if you donÌt pay Uncle Sam, you know what will happen.
Uncle Sam always take what belongs to him, but it is God who is often
not fully paid. So, this evening my challenge to you is - you are the
image of God. In the view of mercies of God, what God had done for you
through Jesus Christ on the cross, that what He is with one sentence, he
is connecting us from the Old Testament all the way to the cross. In
the view of the mercies of God, I urge you, brethren, to present your
body as living sacrifice and the story part is - you remember Abraham.
And you remember his son, Isaac, and you remember God ask him, Abraham,
present your son, your beloved son, Isaac, the only son, Isaac, the
promised one, as a burnt offering. And now I want you to imagine very
quickly - I am going to unfold what Paul had in mind when he was saying
"living and sacrifice" and that is the secret that I want to share with
you by this story which is not a fairy-tale. It's a real story. We are
Bible-believing people. We believe that it actually took place. And my
friend, imagine even if you are a woman, imagine you are Abraham and
God's voice comes to you and asks you and then you take the name of your
son whom you love so much, the only promised son, and remember in what
age you have got that son - and now tell your wife what you have heard
from God. You know your wife more than I do. Can you hear what she is
saying to you? Let her talk to your mother-in-law over the phone, and
can you hear what your mother-in-law has to say to you, and your
father-in-law is going to place a call to your parents. And can you
hear what your own father and mother has to say about this wonderful
idea that you have from God? And let somebody inform your neighbor,
and then let someone call 911 - and see what sheriff has to say. I
place these things before you only so you understand that it was not
that simple - it is easy to read - it is very easy to talk, but apply
that to yourself and the living sacrifice will become real to you.
Where you do not question God, where you whole-heartedly surrender and
even believe that if I put my son on the wood, on the altar, and kill
him - God is able to raise him back from the dead. We need that kind of
a faith, we need that kind of a commitment - total commitment - to
spread The Gospel, in the changing world today. They take the journey -
three days, two servants. They reach place - that mountain, servants
are there - Isaac is going with the Dad, saying, "Dad, we have the fire,
we have the wood, we have the knife - where is the lamb?" He was so
excited we were going to worship, and you know what father said, "Son,
God will provide." Now I am not talking about Abraham - if I was
taking my son, I would burst into tears - I may even give the same
answer - "ÏGod will provide", but then the time comes. Abraham prepared
many altar before, but this was special. He placed every stone with lot
of respect and care - you know why? He was going to place Isaac on it
today - it was not just another offering. He was going to place his own
life on the altar. When everything was ready, father said to son,
"Son, remember so many time you asked "Where is the lamb'?" "Yes, Dad,
I wanted to know where is the lamb"
"Son, you are the lamb"
Now before you thought as Abraham, even if you are a woman, young boy or
girl - think like a son. Imagine your father has said this to you, and
be very honest- put you hand here and then answer. Will you not run?
Will you not struggle with your father? Will you not push your father
from the cliff? Will you not call 911 you know there are people down,
they love you more - and they will come and rescue you from your
father. It was not just the father - it was son, too. "Dad, why are
you crying?" It seems like he placed his own life on the altar. But
for his own convenience, father put rope around so the son would not
struggle. And then you know what happened afterwards - he had a knife
in his hands. And it was all out to slay his own son. When Isaac went
on the altar, like he was dead to himself - like he was dead to his
North American dream - he was dead to his Hebrew dream. He was dead to
his present, he was dead to his past and completely trusted his father
and placed his life in the hands of his father - what a worship! What a
commitment - what kind of a sacrifice - he was dead to himself! But as
God provided the lamb, and as Isaac climbed down from the altar, he
became a "living sacrifice". What was my promise to you? I will
explain by giving you story , what it mean to present your body as
living sacrifice. You see, sacrifice is accepted by God almighty. Now
I know that you love and trust me - I have accepted your son's offering
- do not lay your hand on the boy. And as he climbed down, can you see
the reunion and the joy? Are you there with your father as a son, and
are you there as father - in that fellowship? My friend, I can go and
explain few other stories to make the same point. But there is one
special thing- there were three things they were carrying - verse 6 -
of chapter 22 of Genesis - says that father cut the wood and he placed
on son. Son was carrying his own wood - there were two other things
that father was carrying - knife and fire - that father had. But son
was carrying the wood. Nothing happened to your system when you hear
this. No picture comes to your mind when you hear this - that son
always carry the wood? Son always carry the wood. Rather, does
Abraham's son or God's own son - you have to carry your own wood. And
even today in the midst of suffering, my friend - our challenge is,
"Don't be afraid of those who can just kill your body, but you should be
afraid of the one who can kill your body and soul. And He is saying I
am sending you as sheep to the wolf - what is your imagination to - of a
sheep and a wolf? Do you think they will have a red-carpet treatment or
the wolf will say. "Have a wonderful party"? We have a very clear
mandate - make no mistake. We are facing real challenge. We are
meeting real people - we are meeting the real danger, but that was from
day one. I hope, that you will be able to understand the persecution is
real.
I was standing absolutely naked in front of 15-20 people, all night.
And I was going through the kind of pain that I would not publicly be
able to confess. It took two months to talk to my dear wife of what
happened that night. I have gone through much pain and suffering, so I
know what I am saying. You have freedom here - will you still mind your
own business? Are you not your brother's keeper? Will you present your
body as living sacrifice that you would A"surrender all" to Him? It's
easy to sing - very difficult to carefully examine what you are about to
sing.
Let us pray. I know you will close your eyes, but would you please keep
your eyes open and look up and put your hands like this, I believe there
are many ways to pray. One way to heaven - many ways to pray. And I
hope you will accept my way of prayer.
Father, we come before Your throne. This evening we only heard
little bit, but there is so much more which is going on. We cannot
understand
what it mean to our brothers and sisters and children and women who are
paying very heavy price, and how can we even rest - we pray, that you
will forgive us for our selfishness, you will help us to focus on you,
that as family member, we will not keep quiet - that we will break the
silence. In Jesus' most precious name - I offer the evening prayers.
Amen

Living and Dying in Real Life

2008-08-30T22:27:00.002-04:00

I sat down to write a condolence note to a friend... it seems there is a lot to talk about.
It started like this:

"I am grieved to hear of the loss of your student. Either heart attacks are becoming more common - or else we technicians are just prone to them. Either way it is tough to go through....

As i said in a previous post, my dad had a massive heart attack that kept him in the hospital until he died last March. I understand the pain of losing someone close to me. In fact, over the course of the last 7 years... I've been being' schooled on losing friends and family.

A member of the Internet Dental Forum asked me once - just after 9/11 - and after he had lost a lot of friends due to war in the country where he lived "Where was God", How could a good God let this happen."

You must understand, those two questions are usually the toughest for an apologist to answer - not because the answer isn't there - but because it carries with it so much personal feeling and anger toward this so-called "loving God". It didn't help much that I had been fairly insulated from that kind of pain and I didn't want to answer with platitudes and grandiose claims (bible thumping).

OnTheJobTraining to the rescue!

Within a week, my mother died, her sister ( a favorite aunt when i was a kid) and my mom's cousin - another favorite all died within a day of each other. As i was preparing my answer to my technician friend, I had been reading an advance copy of Ravi Zacharias' book "Light in the Shadow of Jihad" that he wrote in response to 9/11. I had just closed the chapter on the Christian view of death, closed my eyes and thought a little and prayed - when the phone rang and my dad told me mom had died. Was I being prepared or what? What timing!

It took me a day or to to see it - but in that difficult question my friend asked me in the hope he could gain some relief from his pain, It was clear my Lord was also preparing me for my own ordeal that was just beginning. For me - a miracle that God could get through a hard head like mine and in such a personal way! I had been taught well how God is sovereign and everything happens within His providence. But did I really believe it - trust it. C.S. Lewis said this :"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? Only a real risk tests the reality of belief." People wonder how you can have a personal relationship with an all powerful being - pray to Him, He does answer. And begin first by praying that your spiritual eyes be opened.

Since that day, my wife and i have lost her grandmother who helped to raise her for a while, My old guitar player's wife committed suicide 3 years ago after suffering from severe depression for years - we loved her dearly and she was like a sister to Deb and I in many ways, here in the Atlanta area there have been something like 10 lab owners or technicians that have died from either cancer or heart attack in the last 5 or 6 years, Debbie's best friend committed suicide here in Atlanta last fall - Debbie was one of the last people she talked to before she shot herself in the head, she may have talked to her daughter - we don't know - and then my dad in March. Now we have just seen GC pass on and realize the loss of another friend that hits close to home here in this forum.

Right now, one of my best friends - who helped lead me to Christ - has a son out in San Diego suffering from a brain tumor that the drs gave him 2 months to live... 4 months ago. We are all praying for a miracle. Every day is a miracle at this point! And just 2 days ago my sister wrote to say she almost lost her oldest daughter last week due to complications from Cushings Disease and severe diabetes. In the last 7 years, it has been one after another, after another. I'm beginning to understand the pathos of my technician friend from overseas - it is starting to sink in - the depth of pain.

And yet we are left with two basic choices - there are more - but basically two. Either we throw up our hands, give up and say - that's life and then you die... and avoid the whole "God question" - or else you come to the realization this whole story is much bigger than we are, we are but mere players in the play, we have been given a part to play, to play it to our best, and it really isn't up to us as to how the play ends up. Our job is to do our part well, right now - and trust that the Playwrite knows the end from the beginning.

With every loss - over the last 7 years, there have been blessings too - that I would not have expected. Mostly for me in the Lord making me so aware of His part in all of this with the beyond co-incidental timing of that first emailed question wrapped up in the phone call of my mom's death. I have seen His hand in everything that has happened and it has done nothing but reassure me of my faith in a Sovereign God.

I wonder - had that question not come - what or who I might be today. How callous and uncaring and self centered would i be? C. S. Lewis is also quoted as saying "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world!" Would we even turn and shake our fist at Him when in pain like this... if this kind of thing never happened? If we were perfectly satisfied and had no wants or needs - would we even have personality? Needing nothing - we would not even need each other - much less a God whom we cannot see and would not even think about.

Yet we suffer - and only He can bring comfort. Only He can give us the answer to our destiny. Only then will the pain subside and the tears will be wiped away. That is where I find hope in all the darkness that surrounds us. There is a light.
Face the Light! Have Hope! Really "have" hope!

An Existential Relativist

2008-04-28T23:27:00.002-04:00

An Existential Relativist: One not bound by the laws of reality.

Existentialism: Makes no claim to know whether or not there is a "greater picture"; rather, they simply assert that the greatest truth is that which the individual chooses to act upon. They feel that to know the greater picture, whether there is one or not, is impossible, or impossible so far, or of little value.

Relativism: The doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture.

--------------
This is why one cannot be held accountable for their actions in our culture today. This is why they can believe they did nothing wrong. In their eyes there is no such thing as wrong. Instead their existential act of self validation may require not being held to any absolute standard of any kind. Knowing this, when seen hiding behind the needs or wants of another person or child or the demands of a rigorous job or profession, it is as if a safe haven has been established that is so unquestionable and beyond scrutiny by any other person that to do so would imply the questioner is being a brute, to think otherwise. Better to be bullied for standing up for someone else or for a difficult job than answer for a personal failing or weakness in a personal philosophy that cannot be questioned.

The problem with relativism is that there really are standards. To deny it so - is to say, "here is the standard by which relativism must be judged, there are no standards!" In other words, when one says "relativism is true" they then destroy their whole point - as if to say "it is true to say nothing is true". Doublespeak at best. Those who use doublespeak are unstable in their thoughts and ways and cannot rationalize their existence. There is nothing there to trust.

As they hide behind their relativism, they embrace the idea that since they have adopted this way of thinking and that it is impossible to know the big picture anyway, you may as well validate yourself relatively - since reality is uncomfortable. This being uncomfortable is an anti-existential state of self worth and purpose. Even if purpose itself has no purpose, being uncomfortable about it is intolerable.

So - one justifies themself in his/her rational mindset to allow any luxury or pleasure to validate their comfort, while using anything and everything to buffer themselves and be excused from being accountable.

What if existential relativism is coupled with any form of racism? What then? Does this not also give rise to allowing certain individuals freedoms that aren't applied to other individuals - based solely upon their race or ethnic background? If there are no real standards, why then must all persons be treated equally? Why be treated fairly - once one has cut themself loose from any standard or absolute form of justice. If we must be a people of second chances as some might say, and then not apply these second chances across the board to all - is this not a subtle form of racism? Is this not the root of the evil of slavery itself, or the evil of Hitler's cruelty or the brutality of the race-baiter's rhetoric.

Possibly this is why when some existential relativist are confronted by their inconsistencies, they simply throw up their hands, stare blankly at your face and walk away. They have no satisfactory answer and they know it. To admit there is truth to the complaint of inconsistency, refutes everything they believe in and allows them nowhere to turn. Confronted with reality, the existential relativist turns nowhere but to themself. It is after all, a self-validation. They are, "a victim" of X - why not allow the self enough leeway to never have to answer for their own actions..

Ayn Rand's "virtue of selfishness" in full force has no place in reality. There really is no virtue in selfishness at all. Nor any value to being selfish. Squandering a life lived selfishly is an utter shame. It is akin to holding a "private religion" as it is meaningless to anyone else - though much worse. Selfish living may not be totally embarrassing, but it remains shameful in all its ways.

So, selfish living as expressed in existential relativism boils down to nothing more than shameful behavior at best - and damaging denials and self preservation at all costs at worst. Who gets stepped on while on the road to self image preservation?

==============
What I would give to cut through this crap.
To get to the heart of the matter.
To act honestly and with honor.
To validate one's existence with truth.

Ahhh - but that might mean being real to each other.
That might cost us our pride.
It might make us vulnerable.
It might help make us good!

Good Grief

2008-04-01T03:47:00.006-04:00

It's a question more than a response. Is there such a thing as good grief?

Some might say there is, though I wish for the life of me that grief didn't exist.
I write tonight because it's time... grief is here... it doesn't seem to want to go away. Funny thing about real grief, it's easy to think "the blues" are bad - but real grief gives the blues a run for its money and the blues come up short every time!

I am one who enjoys blues music more than any other style - especially when it is fused with jazz. It just makes me feel good. I tell people; "the blues just makes me feel better - it brings me up!" They look at me like I'm crazy and say they don't like the blues 'cause it makes them feel bad. I don't get that.

I will tell you what makes me feel bad though - bad enough that the blues seem trivial by comparison.

A couple of years ago a very dear friend that my wife and I knew since we were first married 32 years ago, committed suicide. We've known her a very long time. Her sweet face and smile is ever present in my memory. For all her faults, she was a beautiful, sweet child of God. It was unbearable to see my best friend, her ex-husband, cry like a baby over her death. I love him as much as I loved her - and to have lost her this way was too much then. She decided it was too tough to go on and so she took too many meds and sat down under a tree in the woods where she wouldn't be rescued and died there - in the cold winter under a cloudy Kansas winter sky.

6 months ago, my wife's best friend and a dear sweet person we both loved a lot decided it was best for her to sit alone in a room and shoot herself in the head. She had suffered greatly over the years with ailments and pain many of us could not endure. She was divorced from the only man she ever loved and knew her two kids were grown and would soon be out of the house. She had come to a crossroads and decided to end her personal tragedy with a bullet. If you could only have known her, known how sweet she was, how caring she was of every person she met - you would never have thought she could have done such a thing. We still grieve her loss and wonder why.

While this may seem less important by comparison to the previous two examples - losing a friend can be just as traumatic. Maybe even more so. Especially when you know miscommunication and effort (or the lack thereof) and hardness of heart is all that stands in the way of restoring that friendship. About the same time as our friend shot herself in the head, I found a way to alienate another person I cared a great deal for - someone I envisioned as being one of our closest friends. My wife and I both knew this person and considered our friendship as valuable in the best possible way. The finality of death makes recriminations and regret a sort of moot point - but when you suffer a loss that could be restored and isn't - it is almost too much to bear. You know life goes on - but there is nothing you can do about it.

Fast forward 6 months - still no restoration of the old friendship. Not really anyway. We still speak - we're cordial. But nothing beyond that. An open wound that doesn't seem to heal - its just there - and I am convinced always will be.

...and then, this last week, I suffer the worst of many fates. My father died after a massive heart attack. Sure, we knew he was getting up there in age. But he was fairly healthy up until two weeks ago. He was independent, he was clear thinking and was quite spry, yet now he is gone. Nothing left but the memories of the good times and the bad times. Nothing left but grief.

After the last 6 months, which have been the worst months of my life considering all that has happened - I finally know what C.S. Lewis means when he says about grief - you want desperately to be left alone except for that feeling you couldn't bear for the house to be empty. If I keep losing friends and family members - I will certainly be alone anyway.

Alone with my blues records and my guitar. Will it bring me up then? I don't know. I doubt it. After my mother died a number of years ago - I took solace playing the blues until my fingers bled. Since there were no succession of deaths or traumatic loss of friends during that time, healing eventually happened.

At this point though, I'm thinking of dropping the "n" and the "erry" from my name. I'm beginning to feel like Job. What seems to be devastating losses - four times over - inside of two years is too much.

Today, Blues music is a quaint triviality. A grief observed from which there seems no end, is not comforted by any form of music.

I know God is there.
I know He is not silent.
I know His will is done.
I know He understands grief better than any of us.

Right now though - I need to feel better. I need to know what He has to say to me.

In any real measure of grief, only what He says is any comfort or understanding.

He says this: "Be still and know that I AM God".

He is - and I am not - and for me, for now, that will have to be sufficient.

Understanding the Revelation

2007-04-01T17:58:00.000-04:00

Back when I was in a band a long long time ago, we had a problem with song endings. All our music was original, as we thought it too ordinary to do covers of other peoples music, so every song in our three hour shows were written by Ralph, and then arranged by all of us together. We’d put the pieces together - add parts, take out parts, change the instruments that played the parts and figured out who best could sing the lead and who best could do the harmonies. Thankfully the other guys had the better sense to keep me away from the microphones!

Many of our songs had unusual endings. One more so than others. It was one we didn’t know how to end. It was called “The Last Battle” after C.S. Lewis’s last episode in the Chronicles of Narnia series. The book and the song were about the characters final days on this earth and the last battle that raged between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

How do you end the song? was the question - it was a harsh driving rock song with hard lead guitar all through it, divergent bass and rhythm lines and not too easy to play. It was also going to be a “last song” of the night. (we weren’t a dance band if this is any clue) The ending had to be coherent to the story, yet bring the message into the reality of our every day.

One day while at practice, I suggested we tack on a little short scripture song that Ralph had adapted called “I Saw the City“. It was a really nice little melody and it was coherent to the story… it just wasn’t the same style as the rest of the song going from hard rock to almost country pop. At first there was reluctance by the other guys - it didn’t seem to fit, then with time and trying a few different things… we got it to work. It came from John’s Revelation chapter 21

I saw the city in a vision
Coming down from God in heaven to us
Holy City New Jerusalem
And God will dwell with us forever

I heard a loud shout from the throne say
That the home of God was now among men
And He will live with them forever
And He will join with them forever

And they will be His people
And God will be among them
And He will wipe away all tears from their eyes.

I saw the City in a vision… (repeat to fade out)

For many years now, I have always thought that line about the tears had to do with things like who I will see once there - the family who has gone on before that I’ve missed or the friends who are in Christ whose lives were cut short for whatever reason or even the people I love that I won’t see there due to their own choices. These things would certainly cause tears of joy for some - but also tears of great personal pain. Still it says He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Certainly this is part of the understanding of this passage. The longer I am a Christian, the more aware I am of how much more there is to this little part of the Revelation. The longer I am a Christian, the more I recognize not only that I fall far short of every estimation of what it means to be a Christian - but that I see so many aspects of who I am personally that miss the mark.

In years past, I could go through life thinking that “everybody else doesn’t even think about these minor things - why should I bother?” The older I get, the more I understand the gravity of who I am and what I am not and what most might consider minor, I now consider major. It’s humbling. In fact, if you think about it, by then I believe we will know the true gravity of who we are and what price Christ paid for our sin. We can talk about it all day - we can claim we understand - but until then we won’t know it and I suspect the weight of the glory that God has given us won’t become real to us until we are there. And then - then - our eyes and heart will burst.

To have a Savior who understands us, loves us and has called us regardless of who we think we are, who has stood in our place for punishment and then will meet us and wipe away those tears for the final time and accept us. I am just really overwhelmed.

Not only overwhelmed by His mercy - but overwhelmed by the people who don’t have any desire to experience the joy of all that weight lifted from us.

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Revelation 21:1-7
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new " And He said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true." Then He said to me, "It is done I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

Take the Pledge

2007-01-25T08:07:00.000-05:00

Unless you like bowing toward Mecca - it might be a good thing to think about the consequences of losing the war.

No one is trying to limit free speech or thought. But the meaningless Senate resolution of non-support has serious consequences. If I elect Senators and send Representatives to Congress - they are there to represent me and my state - not ignore me and vote only their conscience. If they do - I can do as so many other people did last November and vote for an indistinguishably different person on the other side of the aisle.

The point is that until there is another opportunity to vote them out of office - I can certainly withdraw any financial support they may have counted on. That is exercising my last available free speech rights.

If the U.S. efforts in Iraq fail, you will have the enemies of freedom controlling billions of dollars worth of oil and able to finance any attacks they may choose to plot and carry out. They will be virtually unstoppable.

The will of the democrat party isn't strong enough to stand up to them (and they have said so) and the will of old, well entrenched republicans who think they are there for life in the Senate and Congress, who also don't have the political backbone to stand up to radical left wing pressure, certainly won't stand up to the enemy.

The United States are at war - it's not "Bush's war" it’s the war a very serious enemy has forced upon us. We are under attack!

Chavez is training Muslim extremists how to speak Spanish and sending them north to infiltrate the Mexican border. A large percent of illegals are "OTM" or "other than Mexican"

The sworn statements of radical Islamists are to destroy Israel and then the west.

If Iran gets nukes...

if Hezbollah overthrows Lebanon...

if Shiite Iraqis join Iranian Shiites...

if Iraqi Sunnis join al-queada...

and subsequently they all control the vast oil reserves and shipping lanes of the mid-east...

if the puppet monarchies in the Arab world fall under extremist pressure as in Saudi...

if nuclear Pakistan falls into extremist hands...

if all that happens - and it is precariously close to doing so - we have Armageddon and the tribulation right here on our doorstep.

Don't think that will happen? - remember their own words that say "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". They will join together long enough to defeat their outside enemy before they go back to killing each other.

We may not be able to stop the inevitable - but we can withdraw our financial support from those who don't "get it"! We are to restrain evil as long as we can.

Read the post from Hugh Hewitt and then if you agree with the sentiment - click on the link to take the pledge. I have - and am proud to say so.

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/

http://truthlaidbear.com/thenrscpledge/

This is the war we are in - cutting and running only gets us shot in the back!

The Outer Limits

2006-10-06T15:59:00.000-04:00

Imagine if you will a space ship - traveling as if out of control - to the farthest reaches of the known universe. The occupants must document their flight and return messages with their observations. Their mission: to find the edge - the end - the limit.

Now imagine if you will - their messages go completely unheeded. No one back home believes there is such a thing as an absolute end to the universe. They have completely abandoned the very concept of an absolute anything. Any discussion only receives blank stares - nothing said makes any sense.

When you cut yourself free from real meanings of the words we use - our language makes no sense. Yes, some words and phrases can have several meanings depending upon the context they are used. That is not what I’m talking about here. Take for instance the title of this month’s blog; “The Outer Limits”. Can anyone tell me what that means? ”The” isn’t too tough - neither is “Outer”… but what in the world does “Limits” mean in that title? “Limits” implies a plural since there is an s on the end of limit. With “Limit” - I don’t have a problem. “Limit” describes and end to something. “Limits” on the other hand describe multiple ends. How can our travelers find the “Limits” of the universe when they can only go in one direction at a time? Even multiple directions would conceivably yield only an equidistant limit - not multiple limits. Either you have a limit - or you do not.

But therein lies the rub - “either/or“. Aristotelian logic - the bane of relativists everywhere. Something can’t be nothing. “A” cannot be “non-A” One cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same sense. We all understand this - at least I hope we do. I came up with an illustration a while back that may help us understand what I’m talking about.

There was an imaginary rock band of the late 60s TV who were called “The Monkeys”. One of their “hits” was a song called “Shades of Gray” where they drone on and on about how there is no black and white but only shades of gray. But let’s look at that for a minute. My old art teachers used to tell us the definitions of the words we use to describe our art. Interesting enough - that which adds value to art (not necessarily monetary) is the range of lightness to darkness - or the words “white” and “black” and all of the graduations between the polar opposites. White is described as the absence of all color. While black is described as the presence of all color. The moment you add one speck of black - no matter how small that speck is - to white, you no longer have an “absence of all”. You then have a presence of black. Indeed that speck, or any number of specks may be widely dispersed black - but it is no longer properly described as white. Saturation of white with black is what we have come to use as our gray scale. White is not non-white however and you ultimately end up with nothing more than widely dispersed black. Thinking in the opposite, neither can you have widely dispersed absence either. You cannot have a value scale - or gray scale - without the polar opposites. To cut off either pole would be similar to describing a one-ended stick.

C.S. Lewis would say, “Nonsense is still nonsense, even when you speak it about God”. A world without any absolutes would be devoid of meaning and I would go so far as to say that life without an Absolute - would also be meaningless.

But we as a culture have become quite accustomed to all those gray shades where we find comfort and live out our lives. We hope - we pray God judges on a curve - if He judges at all. None of us wishes to think of a God who might actually be as harsh as “judgment day” implies. We don’t want compulsory anything… unless it is compulsory heaven for all. We give ourselves leeway in deciding what we will do or how much we will accept as a moral standard. We think of the Ten Commandments more as the Ten Suggestions. We have embraced the defense of “that may be true for you - but it’s not for me”. We have rendered any form of universal truth as meaningless… as if that were even within our ability to decide.

Whenever someone says, “there is no such thing as truth” all you have to remember is a simple response question - “Is that true?” They make a claim they assume is true for them that there isn’t any truth - It is a self-defeating argument. Same as if they had said “you cannot know reality” - the only problem is that you would have to have an idea of what reality is - in order to make any statement about reality. Again a self-defeating argument.

We can know something about reality and discover truth if we begin to apply a little logic to the truth claims we are confronted with each day. We can even confront the relativism we face every day.

The next time someone is looking for the outer limits - we can know 1) there is such a thing as a limit and 2) that reality can be found no matter how far out there we may have already gone, if we apply a little logic to our calculations.

Showdown in El Dorado

2006-09-05T22:43:00.000-04:00

*
Cole and Stony were more than just the usual cowpokes. Though they often traveled together, scouting for the army, escorting a wagon train or doing "hired work" for a local landholder - today they were to take time away from herding cattle and go into town to pick up supplies for the big drive that started the next day.
*
Moving a couple hundred head of beef to the Santa Fe railhead in Wichita was a lot of work and the men had to be fed and well supplied. There were always dangers of rustlers and Indian attacks and keeping all the trail hands in line sometimes proved a huge responsibility. But friends like Cole and Stony could handle just about anything that came their way - they watched each other's backs and saved each other from quite a few scrapes along the way.
*
That is until El Dorado...
*
The moment they rode into town, they caught each other's eye with that knowing experience that told them something just wasn't right. Nothing particular about the people in town - everyone was friendly - it was just the sense of foreboding that came with knowing the territory and the lay of the land. Something was amiss and they both knew it.
*
Cole had to go over to the livery stable to get his horse reshod while Stony was to go into the general store to start putting together the grub and supplies they needed for the drive. On this day, the store was packed with people - all clamoring for their own supplies for the farm or the ride west - whichever they had to do that day.
*
Stony picked up a big sack of dried beans and as he turned around, he bumped into someone who did not move. It was a big guy, in a dark rain slicker and a dark hat that shielded his face and shrouded him in the shadows of his own presence. Not the kind of guy you would want to get riled as he stood nearly a foot taller than anyone else in the store. This guy looked like death warmed over and just stared at Stony with a surprised and yet hollow look in his eyes - as if to say without speaking: "you shouldn't have done that - in fact you shouldn't even be hear at all!"
*
The look completely unnerved Stony - something that had never happened to him before. He had faced some of the worst outlaws in the street - but this one scared him like no other. He dropped the beans and backed his way out of the store and took off to find Cole at the stables in a run. As he ran around the corner of the building, he came face to face with Cole and that scared him even more. The jolt of running into anyone who stood over 6 feet tall and carried a 45 was enough to land Stony on his butt and looking about as disheveled as he could be. Cole helped his buddy up and asked him: "what's wrong, why were you running?" So Stony proceeded to tell Cole of the big guy in the store and their encounter.
*
Stony was convinced the big guy wanted to kill him right there but didn't - due to the number of witnesses in the store. Sometimes you just know there are fights you don't want and it's best to avoid them when possible. The dark guy in the black hat was one of them.
*
So a plan was devised by Cole to have Stony ride as fast as he could on to El Dorado. He could scout the trail and set up the arrangements for the sale of the beef and telegraph back to Cole all the info. It also afforded Stony the opportunity to get out of town and far enough away from this big guy so he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him in the street where they would have to face each other again.
*
Meanwhile Cole would find this guy in the black hat and call him out. He wanted to know just exactly what this guy was up to and why he had scared his buddy the way he did that afternoon.
*
Cole finally found him in the saloon. Just sitting there watching who came and went and holding a shot glass full of cheap whiskey the bartender gave him just to be on his good side. Obviously not one to gamble or be entertained by the ladies of the house, this guy was a loner and no one wanted to even walk by his table.

*
Cole walked up and leaned over, looking the dark guy in the hollow eyes and said: "Are you the one who surprised my buddy this afternoon and scared him half to death?" "Yeah" was the answer. Empty and short - without emotion - just the facts. Evidently a man of few words. Cole asked again: "why? - what are you up to?" This time the big guy stood up and looked Cole in the eyes and said: "It was he that surprised me! When he turned around and stepped into me, it was as if he was looking for a fight and I knew this wasn't the place for it. That's why I let him go."
*
"You let him go?!" Cole asked. "You obviously didn't know who you were up against", Stony has faced more two-bit gunslingers than most of the cowpunchers in the territory. Who do you think you are?"
*
"As you can see, Cole, I'm not wearing any guns. I was surprised to see Stony here today. You see I am the Angel of Death and I have an appointment with him many miles from here in El Dorado tonight and I best be on my way.
*
Cole looked bewildered as he watched the big guy mount his dark horse and ride away, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop this rendezvous in El Dorado.

----------------------------------------------
You see - there are some appointments from which you cannot run - and it's best you are prepared to face them. Are you ready to face your appointment?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This story is adapted from a much older story called "Rendezvous in Samara" as told by Ravi Zacharias in his book "Light In The Shadow Of Jihad"

A four letter word that ends with "Golf"

2006-08-02T09:51:00.000-04:00

"You can't par them all if you don't par the first one!" is what my golfing buddy Jackie always says after someone manages to par the first hole. When he is playing... you hear it almost every time... He's one of those guys that golf comes to naturally. His tee shots may not rival the distance his sons can hit them, but they are usually always in the fairway and well within range where he can hit his next club to within about 10 feet of the pin. He's got the best second shots I've ever seen among casual golfers. Exceptional is the best thing I can say about his playing.

For most golfers however, exceptional has way too many consonants to best describe our level of play! All too often, our tee shots fly long and far... into the right rough, behind some trees and dribble into a creek or lake that for some crazy reason the course designer decided was a good place to put it. On the other hand, if you try to avoid the lake it is often characterized by what Tiger Woods calls a "quacker" which is nothing more than a quick duck hook into the left side rough. The next three shots are usually tied up with some sort of effort trying to dislodge the ball from a tree root or fishing it out of the edge of the water... with our pant legs rolled up around our hips and our shoes filling with muck.

Five shots later... we're finally at the edge of the green - maybe 20 feet away from the fringe - where we proceed to chili dip our way onto the green with three more shots using a very inconsiderate lob wedge - only to be followed up by a putter that swings more like a dazed Mike Tyson than a grandfather clock pendulum.

"Jackie"? "a four", "Jerry?" "a birdie", "Jimmy?" "a par plus one"... "Jon?... "a very well earned 10!!!" (actually I lost count) As my dad always said: “At least you get your money's worth, son!"

Don't get me started on the money side of golf... I quit this stupid game back in the early eighties when green fees went from $8.00 to $12.00! Today you can't even get a bucket of balls for much less than $11.00. When I finally took up the game again five years ago, green fees were up to a minimum of $45.00 at the public dog tracks and if you wanted to play on a course that actually had grass on the fairways and sand in the bunkers, you're in for a walloping triple digit shellacking! Pebble Beach is over 4 c-notes and there isn't even grass on those fairways!

But that's not why I'm here - talking about this game that we have such a love/hate relationship we can't seem to end. Like a bad blind date... she just keeps calling back. ...somewhere playing in the BACKGROUND is the song by Steely Dan that says:

"Well the danger on the rocks is surely past..."

Surely not!

"Still I remain tied to the mast"

Allusions to any other ill odyssey aside - I have come up with what I think is the most sound and solid approach to golf there could possibly be. Guaranteed to reduce your scores by at least 50% in the first game... if you follow this very simple advice to the letter.

No longer will you have to worry about whether you are supinating or pronating, forget about how big your backswing is or whether you are "swinging the handle". Forget Pelz, ignore McLean, disregard Harmon! All you need to do is simplify your game in the following way.

"Stay focused like a laser beam and remember your #1 objective!"

That's it - there is nothing more to it. So you may ask, "How do I do that?"

Here you go...

Par 4s (the most common hole on any golf course)

The Tee Shot. #1 objective - hit it into the fairway (the short grass). If that means take a little off and don't swing so hard - then that's it. Aim down the middle and dish it out there in play. IF* it stops rolling and stays in the fairway - then it was a success! (*If frogs had wings - they wouldn't bump their butts when they jump...)

The Second Shot. #1 objective is to advance the ball toward the green, failing that, getting it close is good enough. Stay out of the bunkers and you're home free!

The Third Shot. #1 objective - advance the ball toward the pin. Whether it is a chip shot or a long putt, you should try to stop the ball within about a three-foot circle from the pin.

The Fourth Shot. #1 objective - the ball rattles into the bottom of the cup from your short little tap in 3 footer. Nothin' could be easier. If you're thinking about anything else... you're thinking way too much! ...this ain't Goofy-Golf after all!!!

"Wait" you say... "It's just not that easy, there are par 3s and 5s to worry about!" So here you go - think of it like this... on par 5s, you get an extra second shot to get the ball closer to the hole - nothin’ to it! Par 3s - shoot - they are nothing more than a par four without all the trials and tribulations of gripping and ripping the big dog and letting it eat... tree branches and fish trails. Piece of cake! "There's a new sheriff in town!"

When you think about it, (something you should do very little of on a golf course) most par four holes are somewhere between 300 and 400 yards. Most people can hit their tee shots 250 yards... shoot the average distance on the pro tour is only about 280 yards! That leaves at the most another 150 yards to the green. Learn how to hit your driver and your 8 iron and you're home free. Just two clubs will make you a better player! As Jackie often says... "It's an easy game."

Now that I have successfully made all golfers who read this blog into par golfers... you can send me 1 dollar every time you par a hole. Hey - that's fair isn't it? Golf is a game to be played fairly - right? It's played among honorable men and (ahem...women). What's a dollar or two between friends?

oh... and if you can't hit your tee shot 250 yards... you don't belong on the course anyway. Try spending some quality time on the practice tee - cause you're just clogging up the course for the rest of us triple digit ball strikers... ;-)

Background

2006-07-10T08:41:00.000-04:00

--Reader participation required--
iPod: on: music: Artists: Robben Ford:Keep On Running: Hand In Hand With The Blues

"I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument and an unsuspected yearning to learn to play on it, which are bound to wake up and demand attention some day. Therefore, you who rail at such that disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a guitar, beware! for sooner or later your own time will come." - Mark Twain ______________________________________________________

I watch the streets outside my window
I wait but I know you’ll never come

Time to burst a few bubbles. To all musicians everywhere…We are insignificant! That’s it… not much else to say about it… except to clarify what I just said, we are totally insignificant! Who says? you may ask. I say, I do - of course, I can’t offer anyone else’s opinion than my own so there you have it. In light of all that goes on in this world… we aren’t all we think we are… we’re just the background music that plays while life happens.

The world goes passing by
People laugh and babies cry

Now, what do I mean by that? Who is the “we” to which I am referring and what do I mean by “insignificant”?

Never knew I had so much to lose.
You introduced me to a new companion

I guess I have just enough experience and inside knowledge to make me dangerous - but not enough to be able to say this opinion holds true for everyone who ever held an instrument or performed on a stage. I’m NOT “all knowing“. But since I’ve never actually met a musician to whom this doesn’t apply… I’m fairly well convinced of its accuracy.

When you left me standing in the rain
Anyone lookin’ would have watched me go

The first statement of fact must be that we aren’t as important as we think ourselves to be. Sure we get to stand up on a stage and have people pay money to hear us. Some people sing along, some cry, some even ask for autographs when the music stops and all this does is further impress upon our egos that we are needed, that we’re important or that we matter. We don’t. If I were speaking to a musician right now, I’m sure I would hear some strong disagreement so let me open a window or two.

Walkin’ hand in hand with the blues
hand in hand with the blues.

Most of the time we play, we aren’t playing to the paying crowd. (that’s a shell shock to the “listeners” out there) We play to our peers. Who cares if the listener likes what we do, we only care what our well educated, astute musician friends think about what we do. It’s a big deal when a rival comes up after the show and says; “nice job”. It means more because you know they know what you just did.

I watch the streets outside my window
I wait but I know you’ll never come

The average listener (concert goers, groupee, fan, anonymous audience attendee) doesn’t have a clue how hard you worked or what trick you pulled out of your bag - all they know is that it sounded good to them. The very old inside joke has always been “it’s got a good beat and was easy to dance to, Dick”. Upon which we roll our eyes and walk away smirking at how stupid that really was to say - though it is said in many different ways, we know it immediately when we hear it.

Night falls and I draw the blinds
The will to live gets harder to find

Sure, we throw in crowd pleasers - but only so much as to get the job done. It would be a terrible misstep to go so far as to fill the show with them. From cliché riffs to covers of top 40 hits to bowing as if we were actually famous for something… a little goes a long way and too much will certainly draw consternation from our most hallowed peers. That would be a fatal misstep. Our peers would never let us live it down.

I can’t bring myself to face the truth
Enter the king of the broken hearted

When the band Kansas first hit it big, cries of “cliché riffs” were heard everywhere you went in Wichita, Kansas. If the local hayseeds pinned it, then certainly the biggies in the business did too. They went on to record a number of popular albums before they slid off into obscurity - I guess the record buying public can get its fill of clichés as well. While you may get signed to a big record deal by getting your crowd drunk on free beer and showing off your musical prowness to a record executive, as history has shown, it takes more than dust in the wind to sustain a long popular career.

Someone to share my pain
Anyone lookin’ would have watched me go

Now, before anyone thinks I am taking shots at the guys in Kansas unfairly - please don’t. I like their music, I like the tricks and I like the way they took their music - before the mindless listening tastes of the concert goers (from here on will be called “masses”) lost interest due to the difficulty in listening to more than a I, IV, V progression. Shoot, unless you’re over the age of 30 and under age 60, you probably don’t even know who Kansas was!

Walkin’ hand in hand with the blues
hand in hand with the blues.

Now, when the masses show up at the same time our peers are there… that ol’ ego thing really kicks in… especially if they’re not throwing tomatoes!

The empty hours they move so slowly
Cold sorrow sinks into my bones

But here’s the rub. They are there because you’re popular right now. You’re playing on the radio - right now. Your song is on their mind - right now. The masses are driven by one mentality when it comes to music - “what have you done for me lately”. They don’t care how many hits you’ve had. They don’t care to know your personal life, they don’t even care what kind of guitar you play or if you use Zildjians or Paistes! All they care about is “it’s got a nice beat and it’s easy to dance to, Dick”.

Night seems to never end
Pour a drink for my new found friend

They don’t listen to music the way we do. Its all just background to them. It is played in the hallways, it’s played in the bedrooms, the dens, the cars - but rarely if ever - loud enough to hear. Never and I mean never too loud that it can’t be talked over in common conversation. In fact, next time you’re in a car with a civilian, and a good song is on, wait and see what happens when the lead break starts… they turn down the volume and start talking as if to say - “OK, the words are over for now - now I can talk.” But when a musician listens, we turn the vocals down (sometimes) and NEVER talk through the break - no matter how long it goes!

Try to drown the pain of loosing you
We’re gonna go down that road together

Yep - I return to my premise - we are insignificant. We are the background to whatever else is going on in the lives of our listeners. Get used to it. The only significant listener is the peer to whom we desire their highest regard. Other than that - we are insignificant.

And I’ll never see you again
Anyone lookin’ would have watched me go

Don’t believe me? Go ask one of the masses what kind of music they like. 9 times out of 10 you will get this response; “I like all kinds of music.” Truth is they don’t like any kind of music - its just background to them. One style is as good as the next. Its just noise to play in the background so that they don’t have to really spend any time thinking about anything too difficult. Certainly not anything so difficult as time signatures or the value of a series of 1/64th notes and whether you’re playing a myxolidian or dorian scale.

Walkin’ hand in hand with the blues
hand in hand with the blues

Nope - you’re just background. Insignificant aides to the masses existential realities. Background - that is all.

Night falls and I draw the blinds… The will to live gets harder to find… I can’t bring myself to face the truth… Background!

hand in hand with the blues
hand in hand with the blues.

lead break to the end...

____________________________________________________
For my friend Gary
the best undiscovered guitar talent in America
he lost his wife - and then her life - and now he too goes walking with the blues...

Hand In Hand With The Blues by Robben Ford on "Keep On Running"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000C9JDJ/qid=1152509143/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-0166414-8747802?s=music&v=glance&n=5174

iHate Ann Coulter

2006-06-12T09:55:00.000-04:00

Not because she has gained fame and fortune on TV, talk radio shows and with her books - this isn’t a jealousy thing - its that she uses these platforms to promote ideas which offend so many who endure her constant rants. This skinny blond with the know-it-all grin and piercing eyes, uses her acerbic wit and sharp tongue to mercilessly destroy every idea that opposes her.

She has no patience for poorly thought out opinions and runs roughshod over them whenever they present themselves. Every time a progressive thinker faces her, she destroys them with her reasons for why their position is asinine. Compromise isn’t in her vocabulary. She talks constantly as if she has researched every angle and knows the end from the beginning on any topic a liberal may try to defend. That's irritating!

Ann Coulter stands for what she believes as if there is no possibility she could be wrong or you could be remotely right. That’s intolerance at best. Our culture has long known there isn’t any position, thought or ideology that can be allowed as some sort of absolute. The very idea of it is offensive. Ann Coulter has no such restraints. She is offensive. What right does she have to offend me - or you for that matter? Isn’t what she spouts just her opinion? What makes her think her opinion is any better than mine… or yours?

Does she expect us to think her superior intellect she so fondly wields like a sword is actually superior to ours? By what measure? Isn’t it just her opinion? So why then should I listen? Have you noticed how quick she is to refute someone with whom she is debating? She cuts right through their comments with a quick - and she would say - to the point rebuttal of whatever they are trying to say. As if to say, ‘there isn’t any room for movement here, you either agree with me or you’re wrong’. And she finishes that off with a laugh to say, “well, there you go again” quoting her hero Ronald Reagan.

She doesn’t even consider the other side has footing or could be even remotely right on a given subject. She plows ahead usually punching holes right through their arguments. This is an infuriating thing to have happen to you. She could care less for how you “feel” about your topic or agenda. Feelings don’t enter into her cold hard reasoning process. Feelings should be set aside for what is - not what we want them to be… or so says Ann Coulter and people of her ilk.

Yes, iHate Ann Coulter. She is everything I despise when I don’t like what I hear. I don’t want to change. I don’t want to adopt her point of view. That would mean swallowing my proud tradition of upholding the more sensitive progressive relativism we so dearly feel is the best way to compromise our way through life. How could anyone, Ann Coulter included, be so insensitive as to think her absolutist ideas would give anyone a platform or foundation by which they could stand for something?

Ann Coulter is tough! That’s why iHate her.

For the record, I know with absolute assurety that I have a hard time facing reality and I despise the truth for all of the same reasons iHate Ann Coulter.

As sheep among wolves!

2006-05-07T14:17:00.000-04:00

There they were the graduating seniors who happen to attend the church where I go every Sunday. The name of the church isn't important; it could be any number of churches across this country. They were being recognized for graduating high school and their choices of which college they planned to attend. All active in the youth group and various church functions, they were enjoying something they will probably never enjoy again - safety in numbers. At least with short-term mission trips they go out in groups. In just a few weeks, they will begin their trek into the world for the most part alone.

I hope I'm wrong. I know there are a lot of para-church groups on college campuses and the time spent in church over the last several years ought to count for something. The only question I have - well there are several - what will they do under pressure? They're certainly in for it. Today's college campus is the lion's den of Biblical proportions.

Many young people have an epiphany of some sort - whether by the prodding of their parents or through some sort of peer group pressure at a church camp or breakout weekend. They make a decision to become a Christian, rededicate their life or volunteer for strategic service. They are convinced of the validity of their "conversion". They believe the old church adage that "you and God are a majority".

Sure, they spent summers and weekends working with the kids in various Sunday school classes or short-term mission trips to Nebraska. But odds are good that many - if not most of them - haven't once been called upon to defend their beliefs, define their worldview or even give their "testimony". How many could do that - ad-lib, off the top of their head? Most? I doubt it! Even if they could, would those worldviews stand up under scrutiny? Under the pressure of an atheist professor, salivating over the opportunity to use well rehearsed arguments and class peer pressure to literally eat them alive.

How many of that recognized bunch of grads will still be standing after even two years of "higher education"? Sure - in the long run, we hope they all come back to the faith they once believed in - but what will happen in the interim?

Here they are, having survived Harry Potter in all his witchly incarnations, Star Wars in its Buddhist mind numbing "empty your mind, Luke" psychology and the Bravo channel's multi-cultural tolerance of all things abominable. Yeah, they navigated those rough waters - but what about the ones that aren't presented as fiction? What about "The DaVinci Code" that will play at the end of this month? Have they been prepared to answer the challenges this work of pure fiction makes to their "Christian faith"? Again this is nothing compared to what their professors will dish out.

Some parents answer the threat of the culture by shrouding their kids in church schools, all the way to picking out a good "Christian" college for them to go. If they only knew of all the pastors and grads who came back talking about their atheist theology Profs or the pressure to fit in with other students who have never even thought of having a conversion experience.

- Now for my two cents... as a non-parent -
I believe it would be wise to get your kids involved in a good program of apologetics. Big word - I know. Apologetics isn't apologizing for stuff, it's not even apologizing for your Christian beliefs. It is being ready to give a well-reasoned answer for the attacks that will certainly come their way.

One of the best ways to equip your kids for answering the attacks is a series of logical and well reasoned responses found in the book; Unshakable Foundations by Peter Bocchino and Norman Geisler. Its approach is to take many of the worldviews and ideas and distill them through the lens of logical thought. It helps to take them from the realm of how they feel or what they believe about their Christian faith to what they can know and how they came to such a well reasoned understanding that can withstand arguments from science, philosophy, law, history as well as the problem of pain in a world created by a good God.

I know those kids would be much better equipped and ready to face what lies before them if they had laid a solid foundation for their faith prior to entering the lion's den that will be the next few years of their lives.

------------------------
Unshakable Foundations can be found at: www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764224085/sr=8-1/qid=1147036674/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4044663-8652658?%5Fencoding=UTF8

or you can go to the website www.legacyoftruth.org

The Sound of Sirens

2006-04-04T07:18:00.000-04:00

In the 60's Simon and Garfunkel had a song called "The Sound of Silence". This is not about silence!

When you are four, loud noises scare you. Even though you’ve learned to be loud yourself by that time, large booms, bangs and the occasional peel of lightning and thunder scares you. You may not be terrified to the point of being afraid to look out from under the covers - but it’s scary - real scary. So finding yourself awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of the big siren on top of the elementary school became the most dreaded sound of all. It was a large rotating horn that when it was pointing in your direction was incredibly loud.

I grew up in Kansas. The first time I heard the sirens was long before I ever saw “The Wizard of Oz”. I didn’t know you could be caught up in a tornado and live to see funny little people and colorful characters who could talk. No, all I knew was there was a really big swirling cloud that was coming our way and it was going to kill us if it got us. Did I say the tornado sirens on top of the elementary school were loud - really loud? The school was three city blocks away from our house and I can’t imagine how loud they must have been for the people who lived next door. All I know is it sounded like they were blasting right in your ear and as loud as you could stand. Nothing at all like the wimpy little sirens we now have here in Georgia.

The first night I heard the sirens, the sound came around midnight. We were all in bed asleep and that sound woke us all up. My mom and dad were home - and that helped - but the fear of the unknown which included the not knowing when the tornado was going to strike, had all of us kids terrified. We lived in a house with no basement and nowhere to go for safety - although we were sure we would be sucked out of any basement anyway if it hit us even if we had one. My folks called the neighbors across the street to see if we could go over there. They were nice and had kids about our age so they understood and welcomed us with open arms. So packing up a little bedding and blankets we all ran across to their house.

Their basement wasn’t inside their house though. Again, we had to go outside their back door and go around to the corner of the house where two big double doors covered the access. When we got to the doors, Mr. Everett realized he had forgotten the key to the padlock and had to run back inside to find it while all of the rest of us had to stand outside, where the tornado could get us, and all the time getting drenched with the rain and hail.

Finally he came back with the key and the doors were opened and we all went down into the basement. The kids were all told to get against the wall and they covered us with a mattress - then we waited… and waited… and waited… it seemed like for an eternity. This gave my older sisters plenty of time to tell us stories about tornados and scare us younger kids to death. They talked about another neighbor who had been caught up in a twister and left hanging in a tree - alive - but messed up. At one point my dad and Mr. Everett went outside to look around. But being dark and in the middle of the night - they couldn’t see anything. This was long before weather radios existed.

I had no idea what a tornado could do. I’d never seen one or saw news reports of the damage. I was four - and I wouldn’t have understood it even if I had seen it. All I knew was that they would chew you up and spit you out in pieces. There were no fire breathing dragons in my childhood - only tornados and those awful sirens.

I am told that when I was two or three - just a year or so before this particular night - I had a real experience with that power that caused such unrelenting fear. My dad worked for MoPac railroad and was gone a lot during the week and since we moved around a lot to keep up with his job, we lived in a trailer. A trailer - in Kansas! One night, when my mom was pregnant with my little sister, I was put into the closet with my two older sisters while my mom stood in the hallway and wedged herself in such a way as to keep the door closed and us “safely” inside. We rode out a tornado that night while it shook the trailer with a vengeance. I don’t remember that night - I was too young - but it certainly was playing a part in my psyche that first night of the siren.

As the years went by, we grew accustomed to the sound of the tornado sirens - even to the point of amusement. We would hear the sirens go off and then go outside to see who could spot one in the distance. In fact everybody in our neighborhood seemed to do the same thing. You would see people all up and down the block sitting on the porch and watching the night’s entertainment.

In those days KFDI radio sent their reporters out to cover the storm and drive into wherever they were spotted. It was as interesting as a baseball game and a lot more fun whenever they would get caught in high winds or hail. You could hear the terror in their voice in the live reports as the hail and wind bounced them around. There is no radio coverage like that here in Georgia. Shoot - we just got sirens about five years ago. Of course in Kansas, it is open enough to see them coming. Here in Georgia you can't see past the trees and hills. Tornados here can sneak up on you!

When the movie “Twister” came out - we took my mom to see it. It was about a tornado chase team in Oklahoma. My mom was from Oklahoma and we thought she would be interested. She watched as the movie started - how the family ran to the storm cellar and how the dad tried to hold the doors closed. Mom nudged me and whispered - “papa used to do that”. Just then the dad in the movie got sucked out and killed. The movie went on to show the damage of a tornado that devastated a little town in Oklahoma. After it was over, mom said “that was nothing - you shoulda seen the one that hit Woodward back in ’47!”

She had grown up in Moreland about 10 miles from Woodward and had gone over with her family to help the victims. She spoke of widespread destruction, headless bodies impaled on trees that had no branches and weeping and crying at every turn. The Woodward tornado is rated the #6 worst storm of all time with 107 deaths and reports of either multiple tornados or one large funnel over 2 miles wide.

In all the years of tornado sirens and radio reports in Kansas - I never actually saw one. Not once. All the times we were terrified as kids, all the times I walked around outside looking for them - not once did I ever see one. Of course I’d seen the tornado on the Wizard of Oz - but that doesn’t count.

Before Georgia got sirens, we were working one night when the radio weather guy said there was a tornado on the ground not far from us. I thought he meant 10 miles away. It actually was across the street! It had dropped out of the clouds five or so miles south of us and continued to dance its way north until it hit our building with a direct hit. It continued past us a little - skipping and sputtering - but the real damage stopped at our building. My wife Deb and I were inside at the time and the noise sounded much more like someone throwing potatoes into a garbage disposal than the sound of a train. South of us and across the street, the whole top floor of the apartment where an employee used to live was torn off and thrown into the front of our building. When it hit, we could feel tiny little shards of stuff falling in on us and the air pressure changes. After the noise stopped, I stuck my head out the door and looked to the front of the building - only to see all the stuff blown down and blocking the doorway to the outside.

Funny thing about it though - I was disappointed I didn’t get to go outside and watch as it went by. That night was April 8th, 1998.

Interesting how our fears turn into curiosity over time. Must have been the lack of those sirens in the night.

In Concert

2006-03-03T09:18:00.000-05:00

Today - I just feel like writing down some things I remember that I'll never forget. But since I haven't told these stories in a long time... you may have forgotten them... smile.

In the car club forum I'm in, we were talking about first albums and first concerts and it got me to thinking about all the different shows I've seen. I've thrown a lot of money away going to concerts to have only a handful of them I remember. You know what they say - if you remember the 60s... you weren't "there".

My first concert was in Wichita at WSU. I was about 15 I think. The sights of all those hippies on the floor, throwing Frisbees around the room, bouncing beach balls and the smell of some strange smelling incense wafting through the air. Jimmy Spheras was first to go on and the crowd summarily booed off the stage without letting him get through a single song. That opened the door for Canned Heat - the blues band that I had really liked for about a year or so. Followed by the James Gang. Unfortunately, Joe Walsh had just quit the band and the guy they got to play the songs just didn't cut it. We thought he was awful and we left pretty disappointed.
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Out of a long list between 1970 and 1978, I remember maybe three or four... Alice Cooper - Killer, Uriah Heep - Demons and Wizards, Joe Walsh - Leon Russell - and Reo Speedwagen all together for a 6 hour concert.
The Killer concert was the first and last Cooper concert I went to and the one where they hung him onstage to the modified tunes from West Side Story - bizarre to say the least. Uriah Heep was so loud I literally couldn't hear for a week. The drive home was a series of thumps and bumps that I could feel but not hear.
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About 1975 or so, while I was playing in the band Aslan, we had an outdoor concert in the spring in a small town in western Kansas at a college. It was a warm, beautiful day as we drove out and while setting up the equipment. The concert plan was disorganized at best and the people who invited us had another band there to warm up for us. The sun was shining and it was warm and a crowd had formed on the lawn in front of the stage while the other band did their thing. Then as we were tearing down their stuff and setting up for ours... we noticed the Kansas wind had brought in a few clouds. By the start of the first song the temperature had gone from high 60s down to mid 50s and it just kept getting worse. By the time we finished our set, it couldn't have been much above 45 degrees and the "crowd" had dwindled to the people we brought with us. We should have opened for the other group that day!
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One summer - I think about 1976 or so - my wife and I decided we wanted to see a Willie Nelson 4th of July picnic concert. That year he was throwing it at the Tulsa Fairgrounds. There were something like 80,000 people filling the fairgrounds - so you can imagine it was crowded. We usually always worked our way to the center front area of the lawn but the closest we could get that day was still about 50 yards from the stage. We were told that to get any closer we would be walking through the most dangerous biker club in the midwest and we would be taking our lives into real danger. So ... we found a nice spot some ten yards behind them and planted.
First thing we noticed was the total lack of any shade. It was about 105 degrees out there in the Oklahoma summer sun and nothing but sweaty people all around. Sometimes someone would take a shirt off and dip it into a cooler and then swirl it around spraying everyone with cold water. At first it was gross to think about - but an hour in the sun - and you change your mind.
About that time some nutcase decides he wants to hang a Texas flag from one of the light poles... only problem was, he wasn't wearing anything but the flag on the way up the pole. So sliding down the pole buck naked had to have hurt much worse than the beating he got from the cops who were there to greet him when he got down.

Jerry Jeff Walker opened the show - half drunk as usual at about noon. Yeah that's right 105 degrees at noon and the concert is just starting.

Following Jerry Jeff was a southern boogie band we didn't much care for - Lynard Skynard. As it turned out it was one of the last times they would play Freebird before the plane crash that killed some of them. They did do some outrageous jamming though. During their set, Debbie noticed a couple just behind us had taken off all their clothes and they were dancing right there in front of everybody. I guess it was one way to be cool... though i bet they regretted the sunburn.

When Asleep At The Wheel started their show we knew we were in for a treat. The summer sun seemed to melt away as we forgot about the heat and enjoyed their humorous stage presence. They were really a funny and fun band to watch. In those days they had all of their original members - including a guy named Lucky Oceans on pedal steel guitar. AATW was a big band type of music style - western swing - and they had about 12 or 15 players on stage at a time. They would play mock baseball during a song and run the bases and just cut up all over the place. Lucky decided to climb the light stanchions on the right hand side of the stage and "dance" his way all the way up. Then dance his way back down. The Oklahoma Sheriffs at the concert though he was just a fan so they were going to do to him what they did to the naked pole climber when he came down. Funny thing was just about the time they were about to grab his foot and drag him from the scaffold, the roadies grabbed the cops and pushed them off the stage. The crowd - now very drunk and very well baked loved it.

Jessie Coulter came out and sang about three songs and then her husband Waylon Jennings finished their set with another 45 minutes of his hits. Then Willie came out and they did all their hits and most of his.

By the time the concert was over, we were standing literally knee deep in beer cans for as far as you could see. The air reeked of beer, the flies had found the fairgrounds full of targets and the heat had somehow approached 110 - with no shade in sight.

We were so exhausted, we spent the night in a hotel in Tulsa and watched the events all over again on the news - it was funny to watch the roadies do their thing all over again.

On the drive home in our 68 VW bus, the wind was blowing us all over the road when a highway patrol car pulled us over for weaving... he thought we were hippies or something. I just explained about how the wind could make you change lanes with a single gust and he let us go.

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About a year later, again my old band Aslan was playing another outdoor concert in a small town - this time in the summer! - and since I hauled some of the equipment in my dad's pickup, Deb and I decided to take our Irish Setter Willie to the concert with us. Knowing I wouldn't have any time to change once there, i wore what i was going to wear on stage. I guess Willie had a little too much to eat that morning and he got car sick just as we were pulling into the park. He decided my clothes looked like a better target than Debbie’s, so he threw up all over me.
Not having a change of clothes - the official band decision was to hose me off back behind the stage and let me play the concert dripping wet. I'll never forget it.
Some time after that - the band broke up...

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I went to a lot of concerts over the years and The Eagles Hotel California tour ranks at the top. We had seen them in Wichita - Joe Walsh's home town - in the late fall of 1977 and they did some cuts from their new - as of yet unreleased album - to a sold out arena. They were... good... at best and while Joe got to do a little of his old James Gang stuff - it was pretty uninspiring.

So like dummies we drove up to Kansas City and bought tickets to the outdoor Arrowhead Stadium concert in June of 78. 70,000+ inside and we were about 20 feet from the center front on the lawn. Dan Fogelburg opened for an hour - then Linda Ronstadt for about an hour and a half with her crack session band (Leland Sklar, Kenny Edwards, Waddy Wachtel and Russ Kunkle) - then the stage was reset in the grand Hotel California motif. The Eagles came out and played almost an hour - then since so many of Joe's family was there, they let him have about 45 minutes where he just tore it up with James Gang and solo material. Then it was back to another hour and a half of Eagles hits. Then they started the encores... 6 of them.

The first two encores, it was just them -
then they brought out Fogleburg to help sing a song -
then they brought out Ronstadt and her band to jam on a couple more -
then they brought out John David Souther for a rendition of Seven Bridges Road and another song... the crowd went wild - it sounded like we were going to tear the place down
Then they all came back out - Eagles, Fogelburg, Ronstadt, Souther... and Jackson Brown to do Take It Easy as the drive out. The whole "out to lunch bunch" was there from Colorado.

Capped off the absolute best concert I've ever been a part of!

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Then there was the Paul McCartney concert here in Atlanta, where we got 6 third row seats - sold two of them which paid for the other four and we took our employee Margaret and her husband to see what was left of the Beatles for free. It was a great show - not quite as good as the Eagles - but very very good. Especially the guitar jam war they did on "The End". Which is a good way to end this months blog... with...

the end...

Goodness, me? Not really...

2006-02-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

After the last blog, I was asked why I would write something that was so far off from the real way people get into heaven. It was a funny story, meant only to be funny, but it implied people got to heaven based on how good or bad they were. Yes, the joke was a little mean, yes it was a total fabrication and yes it probably doesn’t at all fit how it really will be. It implies a sort of purgatory and I agree there are no Biblical references to any concept of a place of punishment or atonement in the afterlife except hell – from which there is no escape and even less chance of humor.

But that brings us to the point – if there is no purgatory – how do we become righteous enough to enter heaven? Is it really how good we are in this life? Is it how many acts of charity that we’ve done? Is it how we treat our family, or friends, our loved ones… our enemies? Is it our motivations? Our desires – or the desire to be without desire as some religious groups would say. Is it in how we worship? Is it that we have the right rituals?

The second hard question I was asked recently was a real zinger. In a discussion about charitable relief such as that done by Bono of the rock group U2, it also came up that there was a similarity to Mother Teresa in their desire to help the suffering. Surely it was said, that these types of efforts made evident the “fact” that they are worthy to go to heaven followed by the questions “don’t you think Mother Teresa was a Christian?” And “Don’t you think she is in heaven?”

WOW – what a stretch! From Bono, the self aggrandizing, egotistical, foul mouthed, self proclaimed “christian” new age rock and roller to Mother Teresa in the same breath. I have a problem with the comparison – but I could lose the topic by getting into a discussion on their differences – so instead, let me tackle the real question behind these assertions.

I can honestly - and properly ¬– say I don’t know! I don’t know if Bono is a real Christian. I don’t know if Mother Teresa was a real Christian. Thankfully that call isn’t mine to make. That call has to be made by the One who knows their hearts. I cannot do that. You cannot do that either. None of us can look at a person’s works and determine what was in their mind when they did it. It is wrong to assume you know based on their “fruit” – though their fruit is a good indicator of who they really are. But even then, as mere mortals, we cannot know for certain whether or not these two people or any person is or isn’t a “Christian”.

There is a huge misnomer in our culture today that basically says that if you are a “good christian” you will go to heaven. Or that Christians are “good” people – or that they must be good in order to be a “Christian”. Hence whenever you see one not being so good, they are often ridiculed as being phony or not worthy of even the slightest regard for their “Christian” faith. By what standard is “good” defined? Yours? mine? our culture? any other culture?

Let me suggest good – is perfection – in every possible way.

The shocking truth is this – no one, not even Christians – can be good! There is nothing in any of us that meets the standard of goodness. Jesus said, “Only God is good." That leaves us out of the equation. The prophet Isaiah said “All our goodness is as filthy rags”. I suppose he foresaw all the “good works” of Mother Teresa in that claim as well. Isaiah knew there are often ulterior motives associated to all of our acts of goodness.

This isn’t to say, we can’t try to be good or that goodness can’t be done at all. It’s just that we are incapable of actually being good.

And that is where the rub comes. If we cannot actually be good, we cannot be good enough to come before the God of all that is, with anything but need. Need mostly for mercy, need for forgiveness, need for love and yes – need for justice. If all our righteousness – or goodness – is as filthy rags in comparison to God’s goodness, where do we then stand?

Each person has to answer this – not to just themselves – but also to God. God has said we have all missed the mark or standard of goodness that would allow us entrance into His kingdom. Even more than that, God has said that for all our acts we deserve punishment. That our goodness is hardly a blip compared to our personal acts of badness. Even Mother Teresa – even Bono – even me. If we got what we deserved, well – let’s just say… it isn’t a pretty picture.

So how do God’s mercy, love and goodness coexist with His justice? He must be consistent. He cannot be inconsistent and still be God. Our missing the mark – or sin – requires justice. Yet He chooses to be merciful. The equation must be satisfied.

You see, we have fallen short of the standard or mark – we have sinned against an infinite God. We are temporal at least in our human life on earth and eternal at best in our spiritual life. We are not infinite. When we act in opposition to God, we are committing a sin against an infinite – or in other words – committing a sin of infinite proportions. Being temporal in this life, we simply just don’t have time enough to make up for even one act of sin against God – much less all of the sins we commit every day. Taking this equation to the next level – the afterlife, as some would do – doesn’t help the situation either. Since we have a beginning and then an eternity – we still are not infinite. If there were time in eternity, there still would not be enough of it to work off our sin debt. God being infinite was offended by our sin past, present and future. We could only possibly begin to work in the present and maybe – if so motivated – continue to work into the future. This leaves a balance – a debt that cannot be paid by our good works or efforts or purgatory or any other form of payment. If it were up to us – there would be no hope at all.

Thankfully, infinite God has made provision for our sin debt. He became a man, Jesus, who lived a perfect life in our place, and died a painful death in our place to pay the debt for us. Just be fore He died; He said “it is finished” or in other words “the debt has been paid in full”. How could He do that? How could He pay the debt in full?

Remember, He is God. God is infinite. Only God can pay an infinite debt! The required payment for sin has been met. God said that the wages of sin are death. Jesus took our sin upon Himself and died to pay the debt we owe. He stepped in and paid off our balance.

The really good news is this – He offers you the opportunity to accept His payment for your balance. All you need do is accept Him for who He said He was – the God who is there for you and loves you enough He would rather die than be without you.

There are certainly a few skeptics thinking “this is too easy”. Frankly there was nothing easy about Christ’s death on the cross. There was nothing easy about living among men and not sinning. There was nothing easy about it. There was nothing easy about proving He was indeed capable of standing in your place. His proof was His resurrection from the dead. Only God can give life. Only God has the power over life and death. Only God can make provision for your sin debt, satisfy His justice, show His mercy and offer His love.

So – is Mother Teresa in heaven? Was she a Christian? What about Bono? What about me? What about you? That depends entirely on if it is Christ’s finished work on the cross that is being relied upon – or if their works of goodness is all they have to go on. That’s between them and God. It is not for me to answer.

I Had A Dream (last night)

2006-01-02T11:57:00.000-05:00

Ok... so our flight out of Hawaii was delayed again - this time, after checking in at about 8:30PM, we were told we wouldn't be leaving until 3:00AM. Not only would we miss spending more time with new friends (hello Ian & Phe) and watching the New Years fireworks, but we would now be up all night waiting to ride on a plane for almost 9 hours back to Atlanta. I don't know about you, but I can't sleep in an airplane so when I got home last night and went to bed - i slept long and hard.

Now, I don't usually dream - period - end of story. I can count on my right hand how many times i've had a dream i remembered. But in those long hours of sleep i got last night - this one was played out in detail - in living color.

I dreamed i died.

As I was approaching the pearly gates - it occured to me that i was gonna want to see some old friends once i'm in. So when i met St. Peter i asked him a lot of questions. Trying to impress him with my knowledge of theology and all - and once i felt like we're old buddies - then i ask him if any of my old friends had made it in yet.

He looked a little worried and said "who did you have in mind"? I said " how about ol' Richie K?" St. Peter's face brightened up and he said sure - I'll take you to him. So we went down a couple of hallways, into an elevator then down another hallway where we came to a door with a window in it. He said you can look in but you can't disturb him. Inside the room was Rich, sitting in a chair and being forced to listen to one of the ugliest women I've ever seen, with the screechiest voice, read Shakespear to him. I said whats up with that? Richard was a decent guy wasn't he? And St. Peter said "yes - he's here isn't he? But he's done some awful bad things in his life as well."

Being totally bummed about Rich's temporary situation - i asked if my old golfing buddy Harlan was here too. St. Peter's eyes narrowed as he looked at me for a minute and then said "follow me" without making another sound. We must have walked for miles before we came to another door - on the same floor - but a long way off from Rich. Inside was Harlan. He was standing in the middle of the room and there with him was a woman who would have made the last girl look like a beauty queen. This girl was ugly to the bone - and mean! She was telling him stories like a stand up comedian and out of either fear or his natural politeness, he had to laugh.
I says to St. Peter - "this is all wrong - why is Harlan here?" and Peter says back - "It sure beats the other place!" "besides Harlan has done some baaaaaaad things in his life".

Now I'm beginning to get a little worried as to where I'm gonna spend my time - as I KNOW i've done some bad things. But before i ask to go to my room - i think of our friend Jackie - a pillar in the community and a great example to husbands and fathers everywhere. "Where's he" I ask St. Peter.

St. Peters eyes brighten up a little and a smile comes across his face and there is even a little skip in his step as he shows me to Jackie's room. Its a long way away from the other guys. Down three flights of stairs, across a courtyard, up four flights, down two more hallways and turn right at the corner.

There is a room - not just any room - a palatial presidential sort of room. It is plush beyond belief. Everything has jewels and gold everywhere. There are people holding platters of food, people serving all kinds of drinks, people fanning - its a party - or so it looks. I've never seen this kind of splender in all my life.

In the center of the room is a throne. On that throne is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. I mean absolutely perfect in every way. She is stunning - a real breath taking beauty of incredible perfection. She is like Catherine Zete-Jones, Shania Twain, Angelina, J Lo, Faith Hill and Halle Berry all rolled into one model of absolute perfection.
... and there... at the foot of the throne... was our dear friend Jackie... touching her toes and making her giggle.

I said "now wait a minute!" "Rich was a good guy and look where you stuck him... he never cheated, he never cussed, he never did anything wrong, and Harlan was a really cool guy as well - never harmed a fly - he was allright. What did they do to deserve that and why does Jackie rate this - I don't get it!"

St. Peter looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said: "you see that pretty girl in there? ... She did some awful baaaaaad things in her life."

and then i woke up... this head cold is killing me...

Friend(s)

2005-12-05T10:14:00.001-05:00

This blog is a little different. Not that I won’t ramble – I will almost certainly do that - I am going to name some names with this one and say thanks! In fact thanks almost seams like too small a word – but I can think of none better.

This goes back to the summer of 1973 – I was 16 years old and had some really great friends.

Keith and I were friends since 4th grade when he first started going to my school. Gary was a member of my Sunday school class along with Keith and a few others – but the three of us were the core of our class. Then there was Steve, Stan and Rick with whom I was playing guitars with and trying to form a band. Steve and Stan played guitar, I played bass and Rick played the drums – we had everything… well, talent might have helped – but that’s not for me to decide. All of us except Rick went to the same church.

At the time I was also playing bass for the traveling church youth choir. The church had a Silver Eagle Continental Trailways bus to shuffle us back and forth between the various trips and churches as well as the TV station where they had a “religious” variety show.

One nice thing about being a part of a large church is the opportunity to do things you wouldn’t otherwise get to do. One of those was playing bass for them and the really cool part of that was that they had some really cool equipment to use. Old Fender Showmans, Bassmans and Bandmasters they got from another friend of mine Tom Green. (www.guitarsandcars.com) That connection helped Steve, Stan, Rick and I to have the equipment to form a band. Not that it really makes that much difference, but playing guitar did seem to open a few more doors with the girls we knew and I guess at 16 that was one really big advantage.

So one day, Stan and I were riding in the car with Steve and his girlfriend Pam, when Pam decided it was high time she find me a girlfriend. I hadn’t dated anyone for a while and she was worried for me… what are friends for anyway? In her mind, it wasn’t healthy for a 16 year old guitar player to not be dating. So when she asked me who I liked or was interested in – I had no reply. Either all the girls I knew I thought were “out of reach” or else I hadn’t met them yet. The rest I had known for a long time or had dated and just didn’t hit it off with them.

Finally they wheedled out of me that I had noticed a beautiful brunette at church one day and that I’d kinda like to meet her. That was all Pam needed to hear. She enlisted her best friend Kim in the search for who this mystery woman might be and how she was going to orchestrate our meeting.

One Saturday evening, as the singing group was preparing for a trip the next day, Pam and Kim came up to me to tell me they had found her. Her family had just moved to Wichita and was joining the church the next day… and as my luck would have it, she was going to go on the trip with us in the bus. Here name was “Debbie”. She was beautiful!

You know that feeling when everything in your stomach turns over and things start flying around in there? Butterflies never happened the entire time I played guitar or bass on stage or on TV - but it did right then. The girl of my dreams was being ambushed by a couple of my friends and I was going to have to step in and meet her! Talk about being put on the spot!

I thought it better if I did it on my own and not in front of a crowd – especially friends like Pam, Steve, Kim, Stan and the others who would take the opportunity to kid me and give me a hard time of it. So after the morning service when new members are introduced to the church I got in the line to meet them and shake their hand.

I was in the choir that morning… sticking out like a sore thumb. Everyone else had on suits and I had on my “Jesus Freak” t-shirt with a cross and a one way sign rising up out of billowing smoke on the front, faded holey blue jeans and my flag tennis shoes that were more holes than shoes. I wanted to make a good first impression…

Of course Debbie’s father looked horrified that he was going to have to shake my hand and after doing so, I’m sure he was wishing he could go wash up – but that didn’t prevent me from meeting his oldest daughter. Did I mention she was beautiful?

We talked about where she was from and when they had moved to Wichita and that she was going on the trip that afternoon to Cherokee, Oklahoma where the singing group was doing a concert. We hit if off immediately – she was absolutely beautiful and warm without the slightest hint of conceit or snobbishness – which I had come to expect from some of the more well-to-do families at our large church. (Something I guess my hippie type appearance might have been a contributing factor)

So that afternoon as Keith, Gary and I were carrying band equipment to the bus, we were talking about the new girl, and who was going to date her first. Keith was a good looking guy with a big smile and almost Robert Redford/Jeremiah Johnson charisma and Gary… well Gary was the son of a barber if that tells you anything. Keith and I knew we were the only ones in contention.

About that time, Pam, Kim and Debbie walked by and got on the bus. Which continued to fuel our conversation. Of course Gary wasn’t going to lie down and let us walk all over his dreams – and said so – but that was a sad reminder of those puffing at the back of the pack trying to keep up. Keith and I had already staked out seats and unfortunately for Keith, he didn’t know Pam and Kim were already working on my side.

The trip down to Cherokee was fairly uneventful – except for the contentious nature of our discussion. The three of us, Gary, Keith and I, were plotting as to how we would succeed in winning Debbie’s affections. It was all good fun and once there we busied ourselves setting up for the concert and trying to look important.

After the concert – which went off well – the church had a dinner for us and so I invited Debbie to hang around with me while I stored the guitars and amps and then we’d eat together. I guess that’s another reason guitar players have an advantage that Keith and Gary did not – we had something to do during those awkward first few minutes while you’re getting to know each other.

By the time to load the bus and head back north, Debbie and I had hit it off and Keith knew his chances were fading like the distant western sky just ouside the window on his left. This time though, Pam and Debbie sat in the front row on the right side of the bus while Keith and I sat on the left. Gary by now was somewhere in the back of the bus flirting with the empty seat beside him.

The rest of this story is as they say “history”. Keith and I would go out to her house to visit her in his old antique Ford, but he didn’t know that I was using him – Debbie’s father and stepmother wouldn’t let just me come over – they must have thought there was some danger to the family to let a hippie in the house – and Keith was pleasant company.

That was some 32 years ago. Debbie and I continued to date for almost two years and were married on December 6, 1975 by Stan’s dad Dale. Steve was my best man, Stan was an usher and my new band, Aslan with Ralph Teran, Gary Fesler and Brad Carpenter, along with the pastor of our little hippie church, Tom Rozof, played guitar and sang all the songs. Many of the youth choir from the big church as well as most of our little hippie church attended… along with Debbie’s reluctant father and stepmother, some of her family and my folks and family and Debbie’s real mother Virginia.

30 years they say is a long time these days for marriages to last. Sadly, even marriages in the church have an equally poor percentage of success. Everyone said when Debbie and I met we were a strange fit – since we were so different. I guess that’s a measure of why we have lasted this long. She completes me as no other person could, and I give her a reason to have hope… that someday I’ll grow up.

We couldn’t have gotten this far in our lives if it had not been for the efforts of our friends. With friends like these… somethings are possibly possible.

But the one friend who has come through for us more often than any other is Jesus Christ. With Him, all things are possible.

The Question

2005-11-09T06:14:00.000-05:00

The Question

Preface
A good question always deserves a good answer. It is irrelevant that I might think the question is not a good one since it is usually thought of as a good one by the person who asked it. In any case, a question was asked and I believe it is important to answer. I must assume that the person who is asking - did so out of a genuine desire to gain knowledge.

Context
A friend, whom my wife and I knew well and loved dearly, successfully committed suicide last week. We were able to travel many miles to the funeral service as well as take time to visit my father who is getting old and see a number of people whom we haven’t seen in a while. We had planned a trip out there anyway and didn’t have a date set and as unfortunate as these circumstances happened to be, we were already prepared to go.

The Question
“Why did you come so far for a funeral?”

Initial Reply
She was our friend; we loved her and have known her a long time. She was the first death out of our core group of old friends and an original member of our church. We believe these things were important.

Personal Reaction and Internal Thoughts to the Question
Being asked that question was surprising considering how long we‘ve known her. Emotions were already quite high and the sense of loss very real. Seeing her loved ones distraught and her children alone and confused only added to our sense of compassion mixed with our own feelings of grief and loss. The reactive answer would have to be; “isn’t it enough to just show up? Do we really have to answer this?” However, that would show unnecessary disrespect to the questioner.

The conversation for the next half an hour or so seemed like a rapid fire Q&A - one question after another. Most could be answered with short to the point replies but I was not inclined to entertain this question without a fair hearing of my response. Too often conversations are sidetracked and spend too much time on rabbit trails and the original question never gets an answer. So giving only a short answer did not do the question real justice.

The Answer
Of course, she was our friend. Of course, we wished to pay our last respects, and in this particular instance, we had no other selfishly motivated reason for being at her funeral. So the answer to the question had nothing to do with what we were going to get out of being there - it had everything to do with three basic things that I believe every true believer in Jesus Christ must do to fulfill our responsibility to “bear one another’s burdens”. These three things are:
1) To minister if possible.
2) To support the concept of caring Christians in the event of death.
3) To do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Ministry
By this, I mean simply in the first instance that by being there, hopefully in some way, would show a sense of camaraderie and relationship that could be shared by those stricken with similar grief. Let me paraphrase C.S. Lewis when he said, ‘sometimes you don’t wish to talk or be talked to, but you dread the moments of being alone in the empty house’. There is some comfort in knowing someone is there and that talking isn’t necessary to feel comforted. There is an old saying that goes something like this: “Proclaim Christ loudly and sometimes only when you have to - use words.” In the second instance, we have attended several funerals in the last few years and it seems that almost every one has had an opportunity presented where a question was asked that for some reason, we were uniquely equipped to answer. To be available to help or minister in this way is more important than whether the opportunity is ever presented. Christians are called to be ready with an answer for the hope that we have - whether we get the opportunity to give it or not.

Caring Christians
Christians have the unique position of knowing that death is not the end of all things. Our perspective lends itself to being able to minister to hurting people in unique ways that no other worldview can possibly hope to imitate. For over two millennia, those in the Theistic worldview, Christians, Jews and Muslims have taken death seriously enough to mourn it - usually in great numbers for many days after the first memorial service had begun. Culturally the west has lost this sense of compassionate love and for as long as I can remember, seems to only be inconvenienced for an hour or two before heading off to our already too full schedules and commitments. What have we lost in this process? How are we being Christ like - if we do not show sorrow and compassion with those who are left to pick up the pieces of their lives?
When our Lord fed the five thousand, ask yourself - why were that many people there to feed? To hear the words of an itinerate preacher who at the time preferred to keep His whereabouts and deeds a secret? Or is it possible that the widely known and loved John the Baptist had just been beheaded by King Herod and those many people were mourning the loss of their teacher and loved one? I am told by a friend more closely related to that culture in the east, it was indeed probably the latter reason. This friend of mine had also been beaten and brutalized to the point of near death by enemies of the Cross - yet even he attends the funerals of his persecutors. Why, because he understands he is called to even love his enemies. By doing so, he has had unique opportunities of ministry, even to the very leaders of his attackers.
As Christians, our faith is meaningless if we cannot bring ourselves to ministering even in the simplest ways, where a prayer or a hug or a moment of holding ones hand is enough to share a bit of Christ’s love in a time of deep pain and sorrow. In the east, this kind of ongoing care continues for 40 days. Here in the west, little more than 40 minutes is all the time we have. It is vitally important that if the Christian west is to have an impact on our culture, we must show we care - especially at times of great loss when so many are grieving.

Doing Unto Others
While this last reason speaks for itself very well - let me unpack why I think it is important. For us, though we were not close to our friend over the last several years of her life and there had even been times of great disappointment in each other’s actions and words, it does not change the fact that we loved her. We will always cherish those good times we remember and all of the good things she said and did. She was indeed a special person with many qualities and uniqueness unrivaled by her friends. In reality all of her ills, all of her mistakes, all of her pain, all of her guilt - has now been finally put to rest, never to cause her any trouble ever more. Like the leaves that have fallen in the cool autumn air, they will never be returned to the tree, only new life can grow on that branch. All of her strengths - and there were many - all of her goodness and sweetness, all of her loveliness is even now even better than we can remember. She has passed from this life and its chains to the next life where she has been perfected in His loving care. He has wiped away her every tear. We remember her and honor her because we know she is a child of the one God who knows her and loves her and has shown He knows the way out of the grave. We choose to remember her in all of the good ways she was, knowing she is even better now.

As You Would Have Done Unto You
So there it is - finally the “ulterior motive”. It would be my hope that by the time my final day on this earth has come, there will be left behind those who will mourn with my loved ones - so they too will receive comfort, and rejoice with my eternal family - that I hope will have increased through the faithful witness of the Saints here in the unfaithful west and they remember the God who loves us enough to take us out of this world before we’ve had too much of it.

Conclusion
Why more people don’t come to funerals is a little saddening. Indeed, we all have such busy lives and the time is hard to come by, but why weren’t there a 1000 people at this funeral? Why did so many of her church family not be there? I can already think of a list of names who should have been there. The funeral home was packed for the funeral - but why wasn’t it overflowing? The Christian west needs to regain its sense of compassion and self-sacrifice, if it has any hope of reaching the postmodern culture that surrounds it. We don’t attend funerals to pray for the dead - their fate is already sealed. We go to funerals to comfort those who mourn, to express our sense of loss and to proclaim the Grace and saving power of Jesus Christ - who alone has the power over life and death. Even if you are uncomfortable sharing your faith verbally, just being there proclaims the truth of Jesus Christ. In this way, we are living sacrifices to the Gospel. Our world is broken, lost and hurting - we who have hope need to be ready to stand in the places where salt and light are needed. There is nowhere salt and light is more needed than the funerals of friends.

I'm Free

2005-10-09T14:25:00.000-04:00

My friends stayed up late last night. They were watching TV until four in the morning and I guess they decided to sleep in this morning. I was a little bored and had slept all night, so when I woke up, I was ready to hit the day. I made a lot of noise around the house until one of my friends came downstairs. We said hello and exchanged pleasantries before I headed off to spend the day outdoors.

These cool fall days are perfect. I’ve had a lot of them over my life and I wish they would never stop. The cool breeze brings fresh air, the warm sun keeps me a little toasty sometimes, but then it feels good when I’m laying on the deck and listening to the birds and watching the leaves fall.

I couldn’t have it any better. It is Saturday, all my chores are done for the week, I’ve had a good breakfast and I think I’ll spend the day exploring, maybe a little hunting this afternoon and then tonight I’ll plan on just relaxing. I guess I’ll have to pace myself, this getting old thing is bothersome to say the least. I remember when I was younger, I could run around all day and not get tired. Oh, the excitement of youth.

Now, I’m a little slower and have to take my time getting up and down the stairs, I don’t catch everything I’m told and I worry whether my friends are going to be alright. I love them so much, they have always been the best of friends. We’ve had our disagreements - as all friends do - but we always make up and we have a relationship few ever really get to know. I am truly blessed to know them.

Oh what a glorious day! The sun is shinning through the trees and the crisp air is invigorating. I think I’ll try to run a little. But I’m a little dizzy and my hip is acting up again, so I’ll try to take it easy. Ever since the Dr told me about my heart and lungs, I’ve had to slow it down a good bit. I’m not the young pup I used to be - so they say. I’m not sure what exactly “congestive heart failure” is but I know it doesn’t sound good. I took my pills this morning just like the Dr ordered and as long as I don’t push it, I should be OK.

Whew - what a run - I’m all out of breath! But it feels good to do it - in spite of what the Dr says. The freedom, the wind in your face, the goal attained. I love this time of year and I love my day.

I’m weak now though, so I better take a nap before doing too much. Seems like the older I get, the longer the naps seem to last. That’s Ok though. I could lay in this wonderful sun all day long. It doesn’t matter, my friends left a few minutes ago to do some shopping and errands. They’ll be back around suppertime and we’ll spend the evening together as we always do, watching TV and eating snacks. I’d like to go with them but they left in the sports car and there is only room for two… that leaves me out. But I wanted to do some hunting this afternoon anyway - so its all good by me. Sometimes its good for a man to be alone - especially on a day like today.

Wow, the nap lasted all day. Its getting a little chilly and my friends aren’t home yet. I didn’t get to spend much time hunting anything but maybe I can chase up a rabbit or a squirrel before dinner. I’m not much in the mood for anything larger and at my age - I would have to wonder who won the hunt!

What fun, what fun, I’ve been chasing that rodent all over the farm. I can’t get a good shot at them what with my age and poor eyesight - but the hunt is where the fun is anyway. That dizziness is back along with a headache. Maybe I’ll take a couple of aspirins when I get in - probably do my heart good as well. I hate it when the sickness comes on, I get real nauseous and I have to be careful what I eat. Sometimes the room just spins and I have to lay down and try not to move.

Well my friends are back, the day is almost over and there is a familiar autumn chill in the air. I was getting cold, so coming inside was a good idea. But the more I walked, the more I could tell I had overdone it today. It may take several hours to get over this dizziness this time. I’m feeling sick. Debbie offered me some cheese sticks but not the way I’m feeling right now. Maybe later, when my appetite returns. I just want to lay here and be left alone for a while. Maybe the room will stop spinning. I can’t seem to catch my breath. It gets harder and harder to get a full breath. I turn onto my side to relieve the pressure on my chest. They always say it isn’t good to sleep on your stomach anyway.

There - that’s a bit better. I can get a breath - but it’s still short. My nose is running and I think I may be coming down with something. There’s my friend Jon. He’s coming in to check on me. He gives me a little comfort but I wish he’d just leave me alone. I don’t feel like his usual banter, but its nice to know he cares. I just want to sleep, I’m so tired. I lay here and think of all the good times we’ve had, I try to make myself feel better. This time it isn’t helping, I really feel sick.

I remember the first time I met them - I was grinning from ear to ear, we were fast friends from day one. Uuughh, my head hurts. I’m going to close my eyes and try to sleep. If I could just get a breath of air. My breathing is shallow and it takes all I can do to just catch a little air. I wonder if I should try to get to the Dr or even the emergency room. I can’t do that by myself, but I don’t want to bother them either.

Maybe in the morning I’ll feel like going on that hunt. Right now I feel myself drifting off to sleep. Finally, I’m going to get some rest. My chest feels tight but I’m drifting now. WHAT, COUGH, WHAT? I can’t breath, COUGH, COUGH. UUUGH.
------v^v---v--^---v-------v----^-----------V V----------------V--------------------------------
What was that? I don’t know - but whatever I coughed up sure did me a lot of good. I don’t feel my chest anymore, I feel like a young man. The dizziness is gone. My head is clear. That nap did me a lot of good. I’m free. I’m free. The pain is gone. My hips don’t hurt. My back is healed. I can run, I am free. All Praise to my Creator for He alone is worthy. I am free!

The Doberman Pinscher Jazz
d: October 9 2005 12:05AM

Slaying The Dragon

2005-08-19T09:41:00.000-04:00

The tree of shame.

US 129 from Tennessee to North Carolina - Known as "The Tail of The Dragon" for its 318 curves in an 11 mile stretch of two lane blacktop.

It is one thing to come back from a weekend drive with the proud boast that one has slayed the dragon. It's quite another to have one come back having been slayed. Sometimes its the former - other times its the latter.

In cars like ours, it can happen as quick as the snap of your fingers. Even the most experienced of drivers run the risks and take their chances as you can only control your car and even then only a percentage of the time. No one controls their car or motorcycle 100% of the time. Sometimes the car is just so good that it allows driver error. Sometimes its abilities will spin around and bite you.

Younger drivers enjoy the wreckless abandon of having never been bitten. They often don't know they may actually not live forever. They may not know how painful recovering from a fairly small wreck with just soft tissue damage may be.

Whether we know it or not "Live for the now" is the existentialist motto. Our postmodernist culture which was heavily influenced by the 1960's existential call to personal peace and affluence gave rise to "if it feels good - do it" and "It's my call to make - who are you to say I can't?" kind of thinking. So on a daily basis we see the fruit of that thinking whenever one of us dies or gets hurt needlessly.

2 weeks ago, after seeing the result of a car that made a mountain twistie a little too fast and ended up buried in a tree with eyewitnesses crying with their heads in their hands - I have pondered whether to post concerning the voice that is - or should be - always there in the back of our minds. It says "slow down - you're not ready for this". But due to peer pressure or ego gratification we press on. Cutting corners, crossing the yellow lines, passing on a curve as if it were Indianapolis, scaring the locals while we blow by them on THEIR daily roads.

If you can't maintain your lane - you are going too fast.

If you can't stay off the yellow line - you are going too fast.

If you notice your cars traction getting loose in the corners when it wasn't your plan to do so - you're going too fast.

I realize these words will more than likely go unheeded. I realize the desire to not be known as a punk or a coward or a wimp is overwhelming for some.

I also know that driving these cars in the mountains isn't a video game. You don't always win a replay. You don't always get to hit the wall, spin out and then drive on as if nothing happened. Video mentality tells you you will live forever as long as you have another token in your pocket.

One time, back when i had a V8 Jeep Renegade, a "friend" offered to take me to his favorite four wheeling site. It was a powerline area where his cousin and he had gone many times over in Acworth. He, Debbie and I met up and ride together. For the most part it was a fairly easy trail until we got to one hill where the trail went almost straight up and had a 90 degree turn about 3/4 of the way up. Debbie took one look and asked to be let out - she wanted no part of that hill climb. My "buddy" sat in the passenger seat - and with a knowing eye, braced for what was to come.

I looked again and said - "lets go for it" and gunned the motor and headed up. At the turn there was a boulder sticking out on the left that could not be avoided which would bounce the top heavy jeep to the right and down the hill in a roll. A little bit past that boulder was another one on the right that would correct the pitch if you hit it in the right spot. It was the only way to negotiate that curve. I hit it perfectly and bounced my way on up the remaining 30 yards to the top where we parked and waited for Debbie to climb the hill.

My "friend" said after we were safely up there that "no one he knew had ever made it all the way uip the hill in a jeep" and that they usually had to roll their jeeps back onto their wheels to get home. From the top of the hill you could see something you couldn't see from the bottom. Along both sides of the hill were the stripped bodies of all kinds of 4wds. About that time, two all terain vehicles roard up to us and as they approached i could hear one of them say to the other "damn, i forgot my toolbox" as if to be vultures waiting for a carcass to scavenge.

Revenge was sweet - but i'll leave that for another time...

Let it be said that perspective was gained not only from the vantage point on top of that hill - but also by what was heard yet unsaid there as well.

All that to say that even if you aren't hurt, the possibility of contributing to the Honda salvage in Newport, TN exists. The odds your car will make it that far without a couple of guys rolling up in ATVs with their toolboxes is fairly good. Add to that - you don't know me any better than you know anyone else - even in our club. We all seem to be pretty decent individuals. But with that, don't be led into a situation you can't afford to lose. I too own a toolbox. I trusted my "friend" to take me to a fun afternoon of four wheeling - as it turned out he wasn't a friend at all and I was led into a situation that could have resulted in the total loss of my jeep.

Drive within your ability.

Drive within your lane.

Drive to drive again.

Drive to have fun.

As one who has hit the boulder - as one who has met a semi truck on the dragon - as one who has learned from life's curves - you won't regret using some common sense.

The Last Time I Was Arrested... and other short works of fiction

2005-07-14T07:42:00.000-04:00

The Last Time I Was Arrested
(and other short works of fiction)
By Jon Berry c

This is a lengthy story of the last time I was arrested - so bear with me.

This is not a spiritual journey nor a particularly uplifting story with a good moral message. It is just a recounting of one chapter in our lives, many years ago and many more miles away. Enjoy it for what it is - a short story that no one would otherwise know unless it had been written - just to pass the time away when there is nothing else to do.
It all started about thirty years ago when my wife and I decided to go to North Carolina to visit her mom and step dad. They lived in Cherokee North Carolina and the trip was a long hard journey from Wichita Kansas into the deep south in our old 1968 VW hippie bus that I had made into a camper by building a bed in the back and putting in some real camper windows I got from the salvage yard out of an old wrecked one. We had it all! There was room under the bed to put a guitar and a suitcase, 4 inches of foam to sleep on and the back shelf above the motor was still available to keep my tool chest and some extra parts - in case the thing broke down. (Something it did with precise regularity) Driving into the deep south with long hair and a hippie bus shortly after "Easy Rider" was an exercise in bravery that all my hippie friends thought particularly dangerous if not plain stupid. But "stupid" wasn't in my vocabulary then - I never used words that big in those days.

We took off after work on Friday night, loaded the bus and headed south on I-35, cutting over to Tulsa on the turnpike. Sure enough, just about midway through Tulsa, the first sign of trouble came to our attention when the generator light came on. So we pulled over into a K-mart parking lot to do a little engine diagnosis. Not being a whiz at auto repair - I deduced I needed a new regulator and went in and bought one and hung it on right there in the parking lot. Sure enough, the light went out and we went on our way.

Driving all night to get to Memphis had become a regular weekend outing for us, as Debbie's grandparents were always amused to see the dirty hippie that their sweet innocent granddaughter had decided to adopt. And falling asleep at the wheel was something I had to guard against with the utmost effort. In fact, I had gone to the greatest expense to avoid falling asleep and had installed a stereo and a power amplifier and built some speakers that would blow enough noise to the front of the bus to cover the drone of a VW motor running at full tilt. Cruise control in those days was a large brick on the gas pedal and with that and a downhill slope we could get up to - maybe - 56 or 57 miles an hour! The music was so loud that I often couldn't hear the fuzzbuster go off up on the dashboard - but that isn't part of this story so we'll let that one rest for now.

Along about Little Rock at about 2 in the morning, we noticed a noise coming from the back of the bus that sounded like thumping. We pulled over into a truck stop, looked at the tires, checked the engine, looked under the bus to see if we were still dragging the corpse of whatever it was I hit while I was dozing through Fort Smith but it was all to no avail. Nothing could be seen. We pressed on.

Driving into West Memphis on I-40 used to be a harrowing experience - especially in a VW bus. There were always semi trucks flying past us and blowing us off the road. We would change lanes without any effort or plan. It was particularly adventurous if we were in the middle lane and a semi came up on both sides. I could take the brick off the gas pedal and just float along on the air pressure for miles.

Sure enough at the precise moment that two semis passed me by, the engine started cutting out and it was all I could do to get the bus over to the side of the highway where I could do a quick engine tune-up and replacement of the ignition points. Whenever you replace the points in a bus, you have to also set the timing as well and you ought to let the engine cool and reset the valve gaps but we didn‘t have that kind of time at 4:00 in the morning on the side of a busy interstate and another hour or two before stopping. So there I am on the side of the road doing this tune-up when I realize I didn't have a new set of points. Good thing I never throw anything away! There in the bottom of my extra large tool chest was an old set of points that were burned but not completely destroyed like the ones I just took out. In they go and we're off again, rolling down the highway to the sounds of ZZ Top and honking the anemic little bus horn to the beat of “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide”.

Only to be pulled over by the Arkansas State police within about 5 minutes. The last thing a guy with hair midway down his back, wearing greasy blue jeans and a dirty t-shirt, driving a hippie bus with a very pretty and innocent young girl in the back - the last thing he wants - is to be pulled over at 5 o’clock in the morning by some redneck southern cop with nothing to do but harass him and cause all kinds of trouble. But pull us over he did. Seems that as I was "fixing" my bus, I had bumped a wire loose and one of my taillights was out. After explaining to him about taking my sweet wife to see her grandparents across the river, and the regulator and the points and the strange thumping sound in the back - he had mercy on us and let me go with a warning to fix the light. Which I did as he was getting back into his patrol car. I waved as he drove past and breathed a big sigh of relief.

I had been driving - or working on the car - for over 13 hours by the time we got to the bridge over the Mississippi river and I was exhausted. It was this way every time we drove all night to Memphis. I would find myself driving well enough, keeping it between the white lines - but for some strange reason, the sound would go off and I couldn't hear anything. No music, no wife, not even the drone of the bus engine as it roared into the eastern daylight. Then a Semi would push its way past and the noise from it flying past us and the bounce the bus would get - would startle me enough to make the sound come on - with unreal volume - I might add. The eyes worked fine - but everything else would be dead to the world.

After a long night and an early morning we finally pulled onto Danny Thomas Blvd and on into Frayser and found our way over to Benjestown Road where Mema and Pepa were about to sit down to breakfast. After eating a meal of homemade biscuits and syrup - I found myself wandering off to bed to get a couple hours of sleep before heading on to North Carolina.

======================================================

As you may recall, we had pulled into Memphis early in the morning and took the opportunity to catch some shut eye before heading on to our final destination. Let me tell you, Pepa was one of the kindest people I have ever known. He never had a bad word to say about anyone and in fact, all of his stories usually ended with the words “you know, I believe he was a good man”. He also knew a lot about cars so I took the opportunity to have him come out and look the old VW over to see if he could figure out what the noise was coming from the back of the bus. We walked around the old gray monster (it was painted primer gray for about 6 years and we had decided that it would probably live out the rest of its days as a rolling bondo advertisement.). Anyway, we walked around it, kicked the tires, looked at the motor and here was the diagnosis from a guy who had rebuilt engines and changed his own tires… off the wheels. “For the life of me, I don’t see anything wrong, but I sure don‘t know much about those German cars!” That was great help but the old guy was a good man so I thanked him, loaded up the bus and Debbie and I were again off to the destination that had somehow been planned for us… stopping by Tops bar-b-que over on Thomas St. so we could eat lunch and buy extra for the long trip that lay in store.

We planned to take the route that seemed safest - I-40 through Nashville and then down I-24 to I-75 - never mind we hadn’t ever gone through there before! Little did we know that by Nashville, the thumping coming from the back of the bus was growing worse with every revolution of the wheels. We stopped in Jackson and looked - nothing. We stopped in Nashville and looked - still nothing and the sound just got louder and louder. As we headed down toward Chattanooga, it was once again dark and the thumping had now grown to a pounding noise. Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam all the way down the road. Add to that the rain that hadn’t stopped most of the day had the busy highway slippery with a mix of oil and water.

Now remember, this is getting to be around midnight by the time we see the Monteagle Pass with this noise pounding away at our nerves. If you don’t know about Monteagle, Johnny Cash sang a song about it. It was legendary - this before they widened it into the incredibly tame superhighway it is today. We had taken the VW bus through the mountain ranges of Colorado and the foothills of northwest Arkansas and let me tell you, Monteagle blew them both away. We had never been so scared in all our lives. At the first curve, there were at least five cars that had run off the road or fallen off the edge of the mountain. State Police cars everywhere. The road was like a bad roller coaster trip with semi trucks blowing past or riding your bumper. Add to that a little fog, more than a little rain and oil and a little fatigue and you have one wild ride! And still that nerve racking pounding coming from the back of the bus. Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam!

By Chattanooga, we had had enough and decided to limp off the interstate and take the state road 64 east just to regain a little peace and quite. 64 was a winding little two lane that followed the path of a river from the mountains of the Carolinas. Rather than stopping and getting a motel room as my wife so strongly suggested, I chose to press on, hoping to get to her mom’s house by morning. Debbie, having more sense than me, wanted to get some sleep and a break from that pounding noise as it was getting harder and harder to ignore it and get any sleep in the bus as we rolled down the highway in the rain soaked night.

At about 2:00 in the morning, I decided she was right and started looking for a place we could pull over and rest for the night. The hope was to find one of those wide pullouts where there was enough room to park the bus off the highway. But as luck would have it, everywhere we pulled off, there was a sign that read “No parking during and after rain. River is known to rise unexpectedly. Flash flood zone”. We don’t have signs like that in Kansas. Sure it rains, but being flat out there - there is nowhere the water can rise to that would make it a surprise it was coming. But sure enough, it had rained the better part of the day and we weren’t going to risk being the first VW ark.

Bam- BaM, BAm, BAM, BAM went the noise and sure enough at precisely 3 o’clock in the morning, on a rain soaked highway with nowhere to park - that darn generator light came on again. The last straw, I thought to myself. If I had a gun, I would have shot the dang thing and rolled it off a cliff! Nevertheless, realizing it was our only transportation - and we were a long way from home - stuck in the Deep South - with a pretty girl on a deserted and potentially flooded highway and me with my long hair and beard and Kansas accent - I didn’t want to raise any suspicion… or have to thumb it back home.

Finally, there was a wide spot on the far side of the road where we could pull over and I crawled back to the bed for some sleep - knowing I had to once again spend some quality time with the engine the next morning. It was a fitful night of reliving every turn and noise through the pass, the rain, the poor visibility, the semi trucks that would run up on your bumper in the night. It was two hours of the worst dreams you could imagine.

By 5:00, I had had enough and got up. I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t go on. Helpless, hopeless and hippie - not a good combination in western North Carolina. While Debbie slept, I went to the back and began my search for the noise and the reason for the generator light, hoping that somehow the generator had been making the noise all along. As it turned out, the brushes on the generator had worn down to nearly nothing and the only thing I could do was turn them over and put them back in on the opposite side from which they came. I cleaned everything up as best I could and sure enough - all that generator dirt looked better on me than it did on the motor - or at least the motor thought so - cause the light went out and we were once again heading down the road in the crisp new morning.

The highway had become a series of rolling hills up one, down two, up one, down two and going uphill, the bus would maybe get up to 35 or 40 mph - but going downhill, we were flying! At least as fast as 60 mph on some of the hills. If it hadn’t been for that unending noise from the back of the bus - it would have been fun! As were just cresting the top of a hill and started down along a high ridge, Debbie now in the passenger seat and I with my eyes taped open, we were rolling along at a high rate of speed when BAM, BUMP, BOOM, GRIND, GROWEL BUMP,BUMP,GRIIIINNNNDD, STOP! The back of the bus dropped about a foot and a horrible scraping noise started grinding away from the back. Debbie look startled and asked, “Did the motor fall out” and about that time, something flew past my driver’s side window at a blinding speed. It was a tire on a remarkably familiar wheel. Not just any tire - a brand new tire - one from Sears auto. I could tell by the fine print on the sticker on the side… as I had just paid to have them put on before this trip. (that and a tune-up with points and ignition) I know, I know - that breaks the first rule of owning a VW microbus - never let anyone else do a tune-up. Déjà vu all over again!

But there it went, my brand new tire, bouncing past us with enough determination to bound over the guardrail and off the cliff on our right hand side. The bus had ground to a stop on its right rear shock absorber - nearly grinding it in two. And not only didn’t we have a way to jack the bus up - the spare was the wrong size. It seems that Sears hadn’t properly tightened up the lug nuts on the tire that came off and all the nuts were still on the hub. The wheel had just pounded itself off right over them.

With the help of a “good man” in a car full of kids on their way to church that Sunday morning, we picked the bus up high enough to put the spare on and I spent the better part of the day walking up and down that cliff looking for my new radial tire in waist high grass and who knows how many rattlesnakes and copperheads. Never did find it. It was long gone. But you could have started quite a beer bottle collection from the thirty years of bottles that had been flung over the side of the road.

Finally though, that awful pounding was gone too! We rolled on toward Cherokee in perfect silence… or should I say the drone of a purring VW microbus. Yes, the bus rolled along a little lop sided on that wheel that didn’t quite fit, but at least it wasn’t pounding away at our nerves. The only worry was how I was going to get the money to buy a new tire and wheel as well as a new generator.

======================================================

In retrospect, owning a couple of VW buses wasn’t too bad. Our 68 had the wheels come off twice while I owned it - this time with over 500 miles notice and once in traffic without a sound or any warning. Sears Auto really knew how to do their job! The 73 on the other hand poured oil from the day we bought it until I dropped the engine and replaced the main seal. Little did I know that the Porsche engine in the newer busses weighed ten times as much as the motor in the old 68 and laying in the heat of the summer Florida sun trying to wiggle that big monster back into place was not too fun. But Florida and big engines were a future I hadn’t even dreamed about yet. We were pulling into town in our 68 where everyone looked like extras from the movie “Deliverance” or were dressed up for a war party.

Cherokee North Carolina in the early 1970’s was not really a hotbed of organized crime. Instead, it was more disorganized crime than anything. With an Indian in full dress on every corner to have your picture made with or a dancing bear someone had brought down from the mountain. The “authentic” Indian gift shops with their trinkets made in China or Malaysia were the worst of the fraud committed. Now that they’ve gotten organized - Casino gambling has taken the lead. But the 70’s seemed to be a more innocent time in the land of tourism and evening buck dances down at the Dairy Queen.

For those of you who have never witnessed a good ol’ mountain buck dance, it is sort of like watching a bunch of people moving around on an outdoor “dance floor” with the top half of their body being totally still while the bottom half of their body was moving in every direction at once. A wonder to see and they say, a wonder to experience for yourself and “more fun than anyone should have a legal right to have”. You have to understand, the music wasn’t from some well known orchestra, but by two drunken Indians on guitar and drums and Debbie’s uncle Jimmy on bass guitar… or whomever they could get that wasn’t too drunk to play. Jimmy had played with Jerry Lee Lewis in the 50s and early 60s and even has his picture on Sun Records Hall of Fame wall in Memphis. He and his buddies were close friends with Elvis and spent too many nights partying with the king at Graceland and touring the country in the early 60’s - so by the seventies the various indulgements had taken their toll and the only work uncle Jimmy could get was this gig at the Dairy Queen.

But buck dancing only happens at night in Cherokee and we were limping into town early in the morning on a tire that didn’t fit and a generator that could quit at any moment. We needed cash - quick - or we’d be spending more time in this podunk little town than either of us wanted. If you knew my mother-in-law - you would certainly understand my desire to leave as soon as possible!

She and her husband Tony, owned a restaurant on the edge of Cherokee which she ran while Tony…ran around… town… doing odd jobs and construction work for a place called “Santa’s Land Park and Zoo”. Tony was a whiz with a paintbrush and as the story goes, painted most of the park - several times. In those days, Tony was connected to a bunch of friends - more “family” than friends really - maybe you could even say they didn’t much like each other and they just were “friends” in order to get jobs done and fulfill certain contracts. Tony always said they were a bunch of really good fellows - and who was I to argue - I didn’t know any of them. Tony was also some sort of hunting guide - one that made very good money leading one way hikes into the mountain forests for old acquaintances and former “family” members. He was a force to be reckoned with and no one wanted to argue with him or get him riled. He’s a lot different nowadays, he is older and much tamer - ever since those years in the penitentiary in Alabama he got for driving around in a “borrowed” car with a trunk full of “merchandise“. They say prison changes some people and it did for Tony. But in the early 70‘s, you wouldn’t want to stand in his way.

When we got to Debbie’s mom’s house, the whole place was in a mess. It seems the night before, she had been tied up and the house ransacked. I was a little surprised they didn’t gag her as in the 30+ years I’ve known her, she hasn’t once stopped talking. She has perfected the fine art of talking while breathing and not losing a single syllable.

While we were waiting for Tony to get there, I debated as to whether I was going to untie her or gag her myself. Well, whoever did this job was looking for large sums of cash that evidently they couldn’t find. Tony came home from a “business” trip to find his wife and the house and he was steamed. He had a pretty good idea of who he thought had done the job and kept talking about making a trip to Florida to see his “boss”. Now, I don’t know why he had to go to Florida to see his boss when he worked most of the time in North Carolina at Santa‘s Land, but I was a hippie then and didn’t ask too many questions. When spoken to, I mostly said “huh” or “say what” and “yeah man, far out” and that was the extent of my vocabulary.

Tony was an efficient man - if he was nothing else. Whenever he went on a business trip, he always did at least one other project or errand that would bring in a little cash and on the day we rolled into Cherokee, he had already been planning a trip to Seaworld down in Florida. So going down there to get permission (or whatever you call it) from his boss to do something else was an ideal setup.

Seaworld, as you may know, has a research center close by where they study marine life, mating habits and migration movements in the great oceans. If you had a problem or a question about aquatic life, the people at Seaworld are the place to call and that is exactly what the owners of Santa’s Land Park and Zoo had recently done. In those days, Santa’s Land had put in a large tank with some trained dolphins that were the hit of the park. People from all around skipped Gatlinburg just to go see the dolphins do their tricks. That is why Gatlinburg put in that fancy new aquarium - the competition from Santa’s Land was just too much. But as those fish got older, the owners knew they would have to replace them or breed them one or the other and they didn’t know how to get that kind of job done. So they called Seaworld and of course they had the answer. The dolphins needed a high protein diet made up of some sort of whey powder product mixed with specially fertilized eggs, so Tony was asked to go to Seaworld the next day, as they were the only ones on the east coast with quantities sufficient to produce the required results… very happy dolphins…!

Knowing I needed some cash to fix up my bus and get back home to Kansas, Tony asked me to “ride shotgun” with him in his large box truck he used for his painting business. “Tony’s Quality Paint” printed all over the sides let people know what business he was in. But riding shotgun was not a term I was particularly fond of - especially with Tony. It just had a bad feeling about it.

======================================================

So off we go heading to Florida and my fate with the law. Tony was a good driver, in fact as the story goes, he had won some cross-country races with some black and white cars over the years and driving that old box truck was no exception to his driving skills. In fact, we got to Florida in record time and loaded the truck full of eggs on one side of the shelves and whey powder in plastic buckets on the other. It was full to the roof and there was some concern that between the heat of the un-air conditioned box and the time it was going to take carting that many fertilized myna bird eggs back to North Carolina, we would have a time coming back with a full load. I guess any type of fertilized eggs would work but that was all they had at the time and we weren’t too picky - ignorance being the better part of valor. Not to mention we had the side trip to Tony’s boss’ office where Tony had an unusually long meeting while I sat in the truck and watched the eggs... and kept the motor running. It seems Tony didn’t want to spend a single moment longer than he had to, so he parked with the wheels facing out, the motor running and the door slid open so he could jump in and hurry on home. What did I know?

Florida heat is daunting and that big box truck must have been 140 degrees, I was beginning to think I’d be eating fried eggs before too long. But finally Tony came out in a hurry and we headed back north to the land of cool mountain breezes and peaceful streams.

So there we were, heading north out of Florida into Georgia with 357 miles to go and having a conversation as to whether Tony was 44 or 45 and how he wished he was still 22. I’m still not sure what in the world we were talking about, as he was fond of talking in some sort of code that only his buddies would understand.

Like I said though, Tony was not one to let anything get in his way and driving through Georgia at the speed limit was not something that set too well. The farther we got into Georgia, the faster he went - weaving in and out of traffic and generally trying to make good time. Tony was in a hurry to get home as he had a job to do when he got there and he had to “meet” some people before they skipped town. Not to mention that by now after hours of sitting in the heat, some of the eggs had already begun to hatch. That big silver box truck turned out to be the perfect incubator as it rolled down the hot Georgia asphalt. So before they all hatched, he had to get the bulk of the load back to the park in order to feed those crazy fish.

Nothing pretty much happened till we were well past Atlanta and into the mountains around Clayton when Tony noticed a couple of police cars had fallen in behind us on the road and were keeping pace. I went to the back and gave Tony an update as to the number of hatchlings and the cop cars and he responded by flooring the gas and taking off - knocking me to the floor and knocking a tray of eggs down on my head. We were only about ten miles from the state line when I noticed two more cop cars and a helicopter flying by. They were just pacing us - not trying to overtake us or stop us in any way. Then a state police car fell in beside us and ordered Tony to pull over through his loud speaker. Tony ignored him and drove on even faster. The cop cars were closing in on us on all sides and that old box truck was bouncing around the road like the bus in the movie “Speed”.

I didn’t know what to think. Were they after us because we had spent too long at Tony’s boss’ office and something bad may have happened there… or was it cause we were driving too fast, or weaving - or what… I didn’t know! I just knew I didn’t want to be there and didn’t even want to know this family I had married into. What was I gonna do? What would you do if you were a long haired hippie type in the Deep South being followed by who knows how many redneck cops that would make Buford Pusser seem like the Pope?

So we get to the state line between Georgia and North Carolina and the state police, the highway patrol a bunch of local cops and the state militia had set up a roadblock just to get us stopped. Tony said, “Don’t worry… for get about it” in his usual accent - but that was all I was doing. “Besides” he said, “ Once we’re in the mountains up there, I know some back roads I can take and they’ll never catch us.” Great - now I knew I wasn’t the only thing cooked in the back of that truck! That’s about when the tire spikes went up.

Tony hits the roadblock with the full force of that big truck and smashes through - eggs flying everywhere, whey powder filling the back as we tumble over the edge of the road into a ravine with whey buckets flying around like volleyballs and breaking open with dust billowing out the now sprung open doors in the back. I’m sitting there, coughing and trying to collect myself and as the whey dust clears, I see all kinds of guns pointed in my direction and SWAT team types moving ever so slowly into position. I was glad it was over and when they said, “come out with your hands up” it was much to my relief. I crawled out of the truck, which was laying on its side and was immediately tackled and handcuffed. Tony, bleeding from his head and limping was being led to a squad car and I heard him ask why they had stopped us? The main cop said, “Shut up - you’ll find out soon enough” as he pushed him into the car, bumping the other side of his head. I didn’t much want the same treatment so I stayed quiet and just got in on the passenger side.

Sitting on your hands when they are cuffed is not a comfortable position and the ride back to the police officer station seemed to take forever. We were fingerprinted and booked and given the opportunity to make our one phone call before being led off to join Bubba, Rosco and Eugene in the holding cell. Anyway, I called Debbie and told her the story of how we were just coming back from Seaworld and the heat and the eggs and the weaving and the crash until she finally asked me why they had arrested us. So I told her. We were being charged with transporting mynas across state lines for immoral porpoises.

What a long strange trip its been! Hope you liked it!

Some of the names have been changed to protect me from… my … “family”. Unfortunately, for me, much of this story is truer than it is fiction. You decide what you want to believe. That’s my story and I’m stickkin’ to it!

c jBearlyPublishing 2005

24 Hours

2005-06-19T12:43:00.000-04:00

24 Hours

It has been said that a lie, left unanswered, becomes true in 24 hours. A story whispered to a friend in private grows legs and learns to run before the truth has learned to crawl. Stories may have elements of truth - they may even be completely true when first uttered. But, because we are such poor storytellers, we tend to forget, we tend to fabricate and sometimes we tend to cover ourselves to the point that by the time the story has gone full circle - it is anything but true. We’ve probably all sat in a classroom in grade school where the teacher illustrated this point by lining up about ten kids and whispering something in the first person’s ear with the instruction to tell the next person “exactly” what was just said. By the time, it gets to the tenth child and it is repeated out loud, it is anything but what the teacher first told the first student.

Some people have become so accustomed to passing on what they believe to be true, that they don’t even think of the damage they may do to someone else. This damage is further compounded when it involves an online forum or discussion group where the only relationship one has with their counterparts is through their computers. Accusations left unanswered are soon assumed to be true and since no one is online all of the time, the potential for even reading a response may be slim to none.

Other people believe that the insulation the impersonal medium of compu-conversation gives them, they are free to say and do whatever they please with little more than bravado and what little they actually know, or believe they know about something.

Such is the case recently when for the second time on the dental lab forum, another person referred to me as an anti-Semite. This person went on to accuse me of hating Mormons and generally being an all around lousy bum for having differing beliefs than this person who so eloquently stormed into my email box and cussed me up one side and down the other with suggestions of physical impossibilities. The first time this happened a new member of the forum wrote and just simply asked if I was the same guy that was kicked off the IDF for being an anti-Semite. This second person evidently noticed I didn’t respond to the first guy and so assumed the accusation must be true enough to repeat the slander. I would only offer this challenge - show me any of my writings that could or would show I am an anti-Semite! You won’t find a word of it! Prove your case or else be silent! (and also for the record, I was never kicked off anything - I left the IDF on my own and can return at any time I choose.)

I responded to the first person privately and it should have been more than adequate to clarify my position. The second guy however, may not get it, even though I also responded to him privately. But a lie left unanswered…

So for the record and to say it publicly, I am not an anti-Semite. I have never been an anti-Semite. Nor have I had a strange conversion from anti-Semitism to fundamentalism. I have nothing to do with anti-Semites except in the opportunity to reason with them for the purpose of changing their confused minds. I have no respect for these people’s beliefs and in fact have utter contempt for their way of believing. I have had these people in my home and at the point where they began to spew their nonsense and disgusting filthy diatribe against the Jewish people - I have physically thrown them out of my house and told them not to come back as they are not welcome.

I am a Christian. I take that title to have real meaning. I do not pour into that title what I wish it to mean, I take from the title what its implied and real meaning suggests - a follower of Jesus Christ the King of the Jews. You see - Christianity IS Jewish. It is the fruition of Judaism’s Messiah that was prophesied of long before the coming of Christ. My respect for and love for the Jewish people comes from a sound understanding of who these people are and how much they mean to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God who sent His Son to teach us to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us. His Son who sent His followers FIRST to the Jews and then to the rest of the world to proclaim the good news of His salvation.

Those people who followed madmen like Hitler and Stalin, or who deny the reality of the holocaust or wish to claim the Jewish people are less than human, deserve nothing less than to be exposed for what they are - sick, low minded, disgusting individuals who cannot think for themselves and instead have succumbed to a form of group-think that will and should lead to their destruction.

I know that making any type of defense leaves open the possibility for misunderstanding and even once repeated enough may even give legs to a whole new version of the “truth”. It is virtually impossible to clear up the damage that a lie or untrue accusation makes upon an individual. This blog today does what little it may do to help in this regard and I would encourage anyone who wishes to discuss their concerns or questions to comment here.

If This- Then That!

2005-06-12T20:13:00.000-04:00

If This- Then That!

Black/White, Yes/No, 1/0, Good/Bad, Lightness/Darkness, Right/Wrong, On/Off, If this- Then that!

What is it about human nature that wants to avoid absolutes? Why do we go so far out of our way to avoid them? When we are looking for something solid to hold on to - solid ground to stand upon, why do we always desire another option when the facts seem too harsh to accept?
Every day our lives are filled with choices. Some of those choices are between two polar opposites, while others seem to be choices between the lesser of two evils. It is interesting however that we all too often don’t like the absolute choice we are confronted with and instead of accepting the reality of a given situation, we struggle to find a choice “less confrontational” or less demanding.

May I suggest it’s sometimes because we don’t want to be thought of as the bad guy in a conflict? It’s hard to take a stand for something. You are putting your credibility on the line. People depend on you and you don’t wish to be found wrong. Our pride gets involved and before you know it, we are searching for an out - a way around a tough decision.

Immanuel Kant gave us an understanding of situational ethics - where we are confronted by certain situations that seem to have no absolute right way of dealing with a given problem. Kant himself is a study in opposites even if only you look at his name. Immanuel - which means “God with us” and Kant which has become synonymous with the belief you “Can’t know God as He (or It) is impersonal”. Even though Kant said he knew he couldn’t know, Kant - can’t know that without knowing he can‘t know. He wrestled with the fact that he believed God was unreachable, yet he had to reach God to know God is unreachable. It doesn’t take rocket science to understand Kant really couldn’t know without knowing, reach without reaching or speak without speaking.

In the latest and hopefully last episode of extra-planetary Buddhism, Obiwon Kenobe tells the young Jedi Knight Skywalker that “only the Sith believe in absolutes”. Does anyone see the problem with that statement? We are expected to believe there is a more enlightened path than absolutes. A less extreme choice, a choice of compromises and less demanding decisions that lead to harm to no one. Yet, when you think about it, the very statement that “only this is true” is an absolute statement. It is exclusive by its very nature. “Only the Sith believe in absolutes” is an absolute statement. Yet we as an audience are asked to just go along with the flow and not question this little insertion of fuzzy thinking. We are to let ourselves be taken up by the force and moved along to the mindset the authors of this space aged fantasy desire for us to adopt. Ultimately, when given the hard choice to kill once and for all his old friend Skywalker, Kenobe instead chooses to walk away and leave him for dead on the banks of a lava flow. The choice to end it now was too hard - too harsh - too much against the Jedi way. In fact, this choice was ultimately his undoing. Skywalker lives and becomes an even more powerful evil that wreaks havoc on all that follows.

What choices do you have to make today? Which ones will return some day to bite you? Which choice will carry with it a lifetime of results? Let me suggest the choice to avoid absolute choices will do more damage, will cause more confusion and will bring about more despair than if you just make the hard choice you know instinctively is the right choice. Your choices have consequences. Your choices today will affect you, your family and your business for many years to come.

Hiding Under the Covers

2005-06-09T01:16:00.000-04:00

As I sit down to write there is a commercial playing on the radio for a Honda dealer with a music track specifically written to sound like the Beach Boys singing, “Help me Honda, help help me Honda, gotta get a new car.”

Now, its one thing to use Led Zeppelin to sell Cadillacs or The Beatles to sell sneakers or any number of original artists who have seen the popularity of their music wane and then squeeze out a few more bucks by selling the use of their recordings for commercial purposes. But it’s entirely different when producers bring in sound-a-likes to sing similar words - usually with enough differences in vocal inflections - to be an obvious and poorly done “cover”. It’s just too much like Muzak. Its only one-step above Karaoke!

I haven’t heard Muzak in a long time. In the 70s and 80s, it was used in offices and laboratories to promote a “more professional atmosphere” and a “more productive work environment”. I always wondered how that was - it always made me want to vomit, not work harder! The producers would hire third-rate amateurs to sing or play popular music so poorly, we welcomed the fact that it was played quietly enough to barely be audible. Why not just keep the professionals to play the music and leave the amateurs to do special music at churches and weddings? For the record - I am an amateur - and even I don’t want to play music at churches or weddings. Been there - done that - no thanks!

There were always certain taboos in live music. Either you played covers so well that you couldn’t tell the difference from the original artist - note for note - or else you so re-interpreted the music, you were able to make it your own. Any effort to do otherwise is an embarrassment if you are trying to a good job on someone else‘s material. The latter being the more preferable way, as "top 40" bands were always ridiculed for lack of originality. Whenever I hear someone do a Beatle song - I am embarrassed for them. Especially when their egos let them take a “Beatle bow” at the end of the song. Then I think they get the ridicule they deserve. Even the Beatles eventually didn’t do their songs live - why don’t amateur musician understand that?

I can see where doing a commercial has constraints where “good enough” is good enough considering budgets and studio time and available talent to sell a Yugo or a Civic. That is why we have Country Music - good enough is good enough. You figure cost verses return and before you know it, you have kids dressed up to sound like the Beach Boys and standing on a car platform at the grand opening. It’s not something I would cross the street to see.

On the other hand, I remember a band back in my home town, whose stated goal was to have as much fun as they could get away with. Reputations be damned. They were all excellent musicians, had the “chops” to play just about anything and did so without much in the way of practice. 634-5789, Mustang Sally, I Had Too Much To Dream, I Feel Good, Dancing In The Street, as well as about every song you heard growing up. In the case of “Dancing in the Street” they could play it like Martha and the Vandellas or they could play it like Van Halen and sound convincingly enough to make you enjoy their music either way. They never did a Beatles set. One night at the Red Dog Saloon they came back from break, dressed only in fright wigs, hefty bags and tights and did a whole set of Alice Cooper songs. It was a hilarious - spur of the moment - tour van haze induced madness. Alice Cooper deserved to have his work covered - especially by hefty bagged imposters. The Dive Kings as they were called then - had way too much fun… and so did all of us who went to hear them or spent the lost weekends at the parties they had after they got paid. The night they opened for John Cougar was a trip, they took all of the money they made and rented out half of one "party floor" at a big hotel downtown - only to find out the police had rented the other half for a dance and some sort of service recognition banquet - but that is another story. The goal of the Dive Kings was to have fun, not work too hard and get paid easy money. If that was their business plan - they were a success. It didn’t matter to them that they be taken as serious musicians - the last thing they wanted was to be serious. They just wanted to have fun.

It all boils down to this - The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Clapton all just did what they did - either being original or re-interpreting their music in a way that no one had thought of and making it their own. It took guts and determination and talent. Guts mostly though. They had to walk out on a stage and do “their own” songs. Originality carries a price tag. Either you end up with your ego handed to you at the door or else you are indeed a success. The middle ground is a no man’s land and you may as well be doing commercials for used cars.

When it comes to the internet and forums in general, one of the all too often repeated problems is the bad habit of reposting. Or in other words - excessive long quotes as a proof text for one side or the other in an argument. At least with proof texting with quotes - it is to make a point about something. Its not terribly original but it is to make a point. That in a way is akin to playing cover songs for fun and profit. To spend most of your time only contributing reposted news articles - without any originality to your message - is simply akin to selling used cars. Something not worth crossing the street to witness.

Be original. Commit to your vision. Take no prisoners. Have fun.

But most of all - “Don’t let anybody tell you, there isn’t going to be a judgment day”

Someone - or someone - will indeed judge your actions no matter what you do, that is inescapable - so make the most of your efforts.

Living Debt Free

2005-05-20T10:41:00.000-04:00

What do you suppose living debt free really means? Financial gurus like Clark Howard, Ron Blue, Larry Burkett And Dave Ramsey all tell us that the ideal goal in your life should be to pay off all your credit debts and learn to live from your own income, keeping a large portion of your personal wealth as savings instead of paying it out in interest. Dave Ramsey says we should “live today like no one else so later we can live like no one else”. What a novel concept!

But are financial matters all that are important in the game of life? Yes, they are important, but is it really the most important. How do we calculate the debts we have if we aren’t talking strictly about money. There are the “I owe you’s” for kindnesses a friend makes you. There is the gratitude a benefactor may have invested in your learning experience like a schoolteacher, professor or mentor. There is the appropriate debt we all owe our parents for their efforts to raise us “right” and provide for us for the first so many years of our lives. Then there is the level of love and commitment between our spouses - that we volunteer willingly to give during our wedding vows.

The wedding vow is a promissory note of a different kind. But do you approach this commitment any different from any other “debt”? Most don’t! Most - in some way - find a way to carry into their marriages a box full of desires and dreams, only to see those dreams turn into a box full of expectations. The new car, the big house, the wad of cash, 2.5 kids and add to those - the expectations of clean houses, tuned cars, mowed lawns, dinner on time and any number of things you could list if you thought about it.

Is it fair to put that on your spouse? Is it really fair to expect supper? Expect the new Lexus? Expect the big house on a hill? Think now - by expecting those things, all of a sudden you have turned something you both desire into something one expects from the other… and the treadmill begins. 50% + divorce rate and I’ll bet it’s more than just because they’ve passed the 7-year point. When it goes from “honey, here is a gift because I love you” to “I want, I want, I want” coupled with “you promised, you promised, you promised” and before long the pressure to keep up is overwhelming.

The equation is somehow wrong and most people don’t even notice that transition form love and gratitude to expectations and demands. It is more subtle than we might think. Pastor and author John Piper tells of the story of his anniversary when he came home with plans to take his wife to dinner, shower her with flowers and a nice gift. In general, treat her as if she were a queen. He then changes the story to just any day and not an anniversary. He comes home, walks in, gives her a bouquet of flowers, sweeps her into his arms, kisses her, and tells her to plan on dining out. She is surprised and pleased but a bit concerned and asks “why”. Tell me - what do you suppose her reaction would be if he looks sheepishly at her and says, “Because it’s my duty”. She would be floored; her feelings of romance and love would be leveled. The entire episode would leave a raw spot that could not be covered by a “duty”.

In many churches today - it is often abused whenever one tries to quote the scriptures concerning the role of husbands and wives. Women are tired of being subjugated and men are all too often willing to lord over their wives their expectations they then back up with a surface reading of the instructions to be submissive. Both men and women miss the context however when they skip over the opening verse and run right to the ones that apply to the other person. Here it is “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

That little phrase - often divided out of the passage - changes the meaning of what follows and how we interpret it. For the non-Christian - none of this will make much sense as the example Christ made is lost on those who do not see it. But for those who do - or want to - it is a golden principle. Christ out of love for His Father paid the penalty for all human sin and cancelled our moral debt for all time. Once one comes to the knowledge of what great sacrifice and love that was - we can only bring to our salvation the sin we turn over to Him and the gratitude of a gift that is totally undeserved. Something we should desire but not anything we could expect.

In the Christian marriage, our relationship is to be quite similar. Out of reverence for Christ, we are to show our spouse the love and gratitude we want to give to Christ for His work. Our spouse is the living human recipient of our devotion to our Lord. That takes the whole idea of “serving God” out of the nebulous realm of “appeasing whatever is out there” to serving and loving one another in a tangible, visible and personal way. It is how He wants His people to love Him - by loving those around them and showing their personal appreciation for His work through their kindness to each other.

Not only that - but just as the sin debt is cancelled between us and the Father, the whole debt/debtor relationship between husbands and wives is changed to no longer be one of “you owe me” and “you must fulfill my commands…expectations” as some would interpret “submission” - to a relationship that come from a tangible expression of loving gratitude for a kindness that is not deserved. The focus switches and is then centered on Christ.

In light of living with our debts cancelled - we are free to continue to live debt free in our relationships. All those expectations we have kept as leverage are then put back into the box of desires - hoping for the day that one of those desires is fulfilled. Only then is it appreciated to its fullest. No longer thought of as a duty - it is now an act of grace. Undeserved, unmatched and unexpected. That’s how gifts should be - else they are not gifts at all.

Learn to live debt free in your relationships and you will learn to live - and you will truly live free.

Fishing with your mind

2005-05-01T22:05:00.000-04:00

Fishing with your mind

a striped bass breaks the surface
as the sunset fades away
and our journey from the sea of storms
takes us home besides the bay
we go fishing in the ocean
we go traveling back in time
like the song says teach your children
to go fishing with their mind

That is an interesting way of putting it - fishing with their mind. Jimmy Buffett came up with that verse for his song Beach House on the Moon . The song is better listened to - than pondered for the depth of its meanings - but all the same, this gem resides about 3⁄4 of the way through. It is clear he means to teach his son to use his imagination.
The imagination is an amazing toy in the toolbox of life. Without it, you will be bored, dull and uninteresting. With it, you will always be able to find a way to overcome any adversity. Example: At the Masters Golf Tournament, Tiger Woods found himself facing a difficult shot on the 16th hole. The ball was lodged against the cut of the grass making it impossible to get the wedge down on the ball cleanly. Yet somehow, Tiger was able to hit the ball forcefully enough to pop it out of its tough lie, scoot across 1⁄4 of the green before it comes to a screeching halt, only to roll sideways down to the cup, pausing momentarily on the edge - just long enough for his sponsor, Nike, to get a commercial out of the deal - before it topples into the cup with its logo showing. If you are a golfer, you know that was an impossible shot. If you are not a golfer, trust me, it was an impossible shot. However, it couldn’t have even come close to that - without imagination.
Last week an old friend of mine decided it was time to end it all and try to commit suicide. A mother of two with a lot to live for, decided to just give up. She had always been one of those people who are constantly bored and had always tried to fill the emptiness inside with many diversions. Some of them got her into trouble and some that just incrementally damaged her relationships and the quality of her life. She is a sweet person and was always fun to be around. But she never knew how to channel her creativity or encourage her imagination. Another friend of mine back in high school was more successful in his attempt. He died in his car in the garage. Another died of a drug overdose - which is another form of suicide. In their own ways, each of these three are and were captives of minds that had a poorly developed imagination.
When books were the prime entertainment medium you had to use your imagination to visualize the events as they happened. Even as a child when pro baseball was played nightly only on the radio, you had to be able to imagine the plays as they unfolded - as Harry Caray would describe in detail the power of Bob Gibson’s pitch or the 6-4-3 double play as the St. Louis Cardinals marched toward their World Series with the Tigers.
Today, we have all the imagination wrapped up in celluloid boxes to be plugged into your xbox or play station. And your mission is to fix what is left of your imagination on what it would be like to take a head shot or splatter your enemy’s guts all over a wall. Is it any wonder our imaginations are fixated on death? Is it any wonder two teenagers can walk through a school in Colorado and ruthlessly kill kids that they deemed to be “the enemy”?
What happens when the imaginative generation finally passes away and is replaced by following generations of kids, raised on video games and Ritalin, where thinking has been turned over to drugs and computer technology and those smart enough to program them? Where will we as a planet be then?
Without hope? Maybe.
Without trust? Probably
Without Love? Undoubtedly
My cousin’s son was recently grounded from his xBox. It was taking too much of his time. Good kid - just lacked motivation to do anything but sit in front of the TV and play Halo. Now after a couple of months away from the TV, he has discovered baseball and wants to grow up to be a pitcher. He has developed friendships he never thought he had. He has begun learning to communicate with his family. He has even begun reading again. He has a bright future! He’s a smart kid. We can only hope more parents are smart enough to do what his parents did for him. They truly love him.
My friend will probably survive this attempt to kill herself. I certainly hope so. My wife and I have very fond memories of her and would hate to see this wonderful person’s life cut short. Even though we haven’t seen her in many years - our memory and imaginations make it as if she was just here yesterday. Same with John and Eddie. Our lives end far too soon - far too soon. Far too soon to help the death process along.
Encourage those you love. Right now! Don’t wait another moment! Praise them - even when they aren’t expecting it. Support them when they are in need. Never turn your back on them. Try to never let them down. Love them enough to serve them - even when it may cost you more than you expected. Most of all forgive them if they hurt you. Because if you don’t forgive, they will feel guilty and guilt will condemn you both.
Be imaginative. Think of ways you can participate in this most wondrous story we call life.

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You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis

What is the measure of a man?

2005-04-01T13:22:00.000-05:00

A while back something happened that should never have happened... A man made a woman cry.

Not just a tear on the cheek – she really was distraught. A single tear would be too much – a two-minute boo-hoo – would be way too much – but this person was really upset and cried for hours. Why? Because she valued her friends, she valued her friends opinions and she understood the sense of loss when a "friend" turns out to not really be a friend at all.

In this case, the man, was a dental "professional" – apparently with a huge ego. He did not like to be questioned or second-guessed. He was insulted she would go to a mere dental technician for advice about her treatment options. (Never mind that the technician is a nationally known technical "guru".)

This so called dental "professional" blew up and walked out on the woman at a social event – as if to say "you are not worth my time little one", leaving behind a trail of words that were said that should not be printed – only to echo through her memory for the next several hours.

My wife spoke to her for about an hour before handing me the phone and letting me talk to her for quite a few more minutes. The conversation left me angry and a bit embarrassed about my side of the fence. It also left me with questions about what has become of the man’s character and the meaning of being a gentleman in today’s culture.
In general, what has happened to men? Where did we lose the definition of being gentlemen? Is it possible the Women’s Lib movement allowed us to drop our guard and become the kind of slime they so often accused us to be? Or has it been MTV and popular shows like "Sex in the City" objectified all of us to nothing more than objects to be had for personal satisfaction and then discarded? Ultimately you have to ask yourself which side won in that debate!
I know – egos have always been egos - men will be men and men will be boys. It’s always been this way to some degree. Walking near a couple of guys (male sales reps) who were following a pretty female around the sales floor the other day, and hearing their comments between each other is enough to prove my point. But when men act below themselves – what has happened to their sense of shame? Men are called to be real men - which implies being gentlemen. This is whether a woman notices their effort or not. What used to not be discussed is now open dialog - even in the very aisles of a professional meeting.

What does it mean? What does it mean to be gentlemen? Do we know anymore? Have our culture and our relaxed attitude toward right and wrong given us the license to be nothing more than selfish jerks? How do we allow ourselves to demean the personhood of anyone when the purpose is only to save our pride or inflate our already oversized egos?

The Women’s Lib movement said "don’t open that door for me, I can get it myself!" in no uncertain terms and inflection. I still open doors – not because it’s my duty – but because I want to. This goes way beyond that. What is the measure of a man? Where do you draw the line? How could this dental "professional" have dealt with his bruised ego and anger so it did not transfer his personal feeling in a way that would not hurt his friend so terribly? How do you think she should have responded? Keep in mind - she thought this "professional" and his wife were close friends.

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First on my list is that you treat people with r e s p e c t. Aretha Franklin said it – I believe it – it must be true. You’re dealing with someone who not only has feelings that can be bruised but has the invested dignity of being a real person – created in the image of God. In that light, all persons have infinite value and have the right to command respect – whether or not "God" enters into their personal equations or not. (this is a lesson I too have had to learn)
We are to treat others as we wish to be treated – I’ve heard that repeated since childhood – we all have. In almost every culture that theme has been advanced regardless of the religion that promoted it. As a Christian, I am taught that there is no greater love than to lay down my life for my friends. My Teacher did just that and set the example and standard. I am also told to love my enemies with the same degree of depth. Not all of us will ever be asked to stand in the path of a bullet or be killed for a friend – but as with all of my Teacher’s lessons – they apply to my thoughts and responses as well as any possible actual event - even in "polite" conversations.

When given the option of being rude to save my own face or swallowing my pride and saying nothing – I am to swallow my pride and be silent. Humility always trumps arrogance. If I loved my friends, I would do anything I could to keep from hurting them… even if it cost me in some way. Even if it meant swallowing my pride. No tear should fall on my account. I cannot pay for pain already charged to my account – I must not cause a larger debt. By showing respect and loving someone else more than I love myself, I can overcome the temptation to be hurtful.

What other ways are men to show they are real men? How do we promote in our lives true character? What is character? How best is it defined? Do we settle for the "Boy Scout law"? – stop – I can see many of you smirking already… but what IS wrong with "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent"? Now that we are adults- are we excused from these basic standards of decency?
Here is another list of some ideas where to start - taken from Gene Getz’s book "The Measure of A Man":

Above reproach
Husband of one wife (faithful)
Temperate
Prudent
Respectable
Hospitable
Not self-willed
Not quick tempered
Not pugnacious
Uncontentious
Gentle
Not in love with money
Handles his own household well
Has a good reputation
Loving what is good
Just
Devout

Are we actively trying to incorporate these virtues into our lives on a daily basis?

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A while back, Bonnie Rait sang she wanted a "Real Man". Even before that Willie Nelson wrote a song called "Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" where he recommends women raise "doctors and lawyers and such" instead as if that is a better choice. Growing up in a household with three sisters and all of their girlfriends – even as much as I tried to avoid them – I heard their calls to each other to "grow up and one day marry a doctor".
Maybe that’s part of the problem. Mothers taught their daughters they could find happiness and love anywhere so they may as well marry a doctor or lawyer and be rich in the process. Sheer pragmatism leads nowhere. Having a professioanl degree does not assure character. Is it any wonder that the majority of marriages end in divorce these days? Is that what people want? In a way – I pity the woman who married this dental "professional" because it sounds as if she married his career and not his character. If he can step on a friend with such ease – as if it were nothing – easy to forget, I wonder how long before the wife is also under his boot. What are his values and whom does he respect if he doesn’t respect himself enough to be a gentleman?
We can only hope for real change.

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You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis

"I See Dead People"

2005-03-14T14:53:00.000-05:00

March 13, 2005

After what many would call a terrifying weekend, people in this town could go to sleep Sunday evening knowing they were safe. They would not have to face the ordeal so often feared and often rejected - standing their ground and sharing their personal beliefs.

Four dead, several injured, numbers of families hurt, justice unserved and the tragedy of a man overtaken with the lower nature of his psyche. As it unfolded here in Atlanta and ended just a few miles from this writers own location - you think back to the thoughts going through your head during that evening and day. "what would you have done? - would you have tried to run? - would you have looked the killer in the eyes and stood up to him? would you have tried to stop this madman ? - would you fight? - would you pray?"

For Ashley Smith - she chose to pray. When Brian Nichols told her to look into his eyes to see a "dead man" - she saw something quite different than he had expected to hear. She said he was very much alive and standing there with a choice to make. Would he give himself up - or would he continue his killing spree that would probably end with his own death?

Ashley Smith also shared her faith with the killer. She stood alone, in the face of death - just as the first century disciples stood alone as witnesses, knowing they were ultimately going to be martyrs - and she also stood her ground - knowing a private religion is a meaningless religion that couldn't help her and certainly couldn't help her kidnapper.

A few years ago when the movie "The Sixth Sense" came out - it told of a child who said, "I see dead people". Unsettling at best from anyone - particularly for those who didn't seem to understand why he would say such a thing. The Bible Ashley Smith read to Brian Nichols also says we are all dead even though we don't realize it - though it seems we are all alive and well.

From the story Ashley Smith related to the press at her news conference, she had the opportunity to see a dead man come alive. For anyone who has seen this happen - even if not under so dramatic circumstances - it is a life changing experience. Ashley Smith will never be the same. Certainly if indeed it is true - Brian Nichols will never be the same.

Justice must be done. Brian Nichols must pay for his crimes. His debt is huge. So big, even paying with his life will not repair or repay the awful damage. He has offended many in this life and he has offended an infinite God. No matter what decision he made in Ashley Smith's apartment - Brian Nichols will not pay the infinite debt he incurred or added to this weekend. He is merely finite - he doesn't have the time in this life or the next to pay this debt. He, Ashley, I and all of the rest of us must look to One who can pay our own infinite debts none of us can pay ourselves.

Ashley Smith says her trust is in Christ. Ashley Smith says she believes Brian Nichols is her brother in Christ. That is a hard thing for any of us to understand. Forgiveness is like that. It is overwhelming. It is undeserved. It is grace.

If there is anything good to come of this terrible weekend in Atlanta - it is Grace.

Though justice must need be done - Grace is eternal.

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"Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it has a God who knows the way out of the grave." -- G.K. Chesterton