"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush."
"America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: “This country is not worth dying for. If we’re attacked, we would all go out...But we were not attacked by Iraq. {applause} We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if {applause}. 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant."
"I just want to say that you students, Students Against War, you have all my support and all my organization’s support. I told Kristen if you have any actions and you need a ringleader, that I only live about an hour away. I’ll be here. If I can sleep on somebody’s floor, we can have this, we can camp out, do whatever we need."
"If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go this war. They need to fight because a just war, the definition of a just war, and maybe you people here who still think this is a just war, the definition of a just war is one that you would send your own children to die in. That you would go die in yourself."
"We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."
These are all Cindy Sheehan's own words. They aren't "swiftboating." They are not a smear. She spoke these words at a rally in defense of leftist lawyer Lynne Stewart at the Universtiy of San Fransisco. She has also accused George W. Bush of murdering her son.
This is the United States of America, and Cindy Sheehan has the right to condemn Bush or praise him or anything in between. But if she chooses to make herself a public figure, she should also accept the scrutiny that comes with it.
The left would like to paint Ms. Sheehan as every mom, and there's compelling case to be made there. There aren't hard statistics, but anecdotal evidence points to a 75% divorce rate for parents whose child dies. There is no glee to be held at her divorce. It is not part of the story. And those who try to make it so weaken their cause. Her comments speak for themselves.
Cindy Sheehan is not the graceful, dignified woman of quiet conviction that she is portrayed as. She is a left-wing ideologue, and a rather radical one at that. That's okay. We have the right to do that in this country. If she wants to camp outside President Bush's ranch, God bless her. But let's not pretend that she is something that she is not. And let's also not pretend that she has some special deferrment that renders her immune to valid criticism.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Are you worth it?
Well, here I am with something to say. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, the world stands up and...
...runs to the bathroom while the commercial is on.
It's one of the hard things of Christian thought to marry the combination of God's omniscience (that's 'all-powerful nature' for those of you who like country music) and our free will. I think I have made a breakthrough in this area.
Okay, it is probably tremendously elementary thinking theologically, but I would like to pretend it is a massive new way of putting things together and it is, after all, my blog.
One of the things that Christians (and all people, for that matter) struggle with is the meaning of suffering. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the book of Job is among the hardest. Its answers don't make sense a lot of the time, at least not to me. But maybe if they did, I wouldn't think on the things that I struggle with.
When things suck, and they will in every life from time to time, each person, as a free agent, has a decision to make. Am I worth perservering through all of this? Am I worth doing the hard thing and taking the next step and the one after that and the one after that, even though I am bone tired and my body aches for rest?
On the surface, that question would seem self-centered and maybe even self-absorbed, but I'm not certain that it is. I think that faith plays a key role in the answer to that question. After all, so much of the New Testament talks about perservering and running the good race.
We're spoiled, maybe, by television race coverage. We see only the winners. The guys who break the tape or gallop into the winner's circle or drink the bottle of milk. Sometimes, the best race is run by the person nursing an injury or racing with a heavy heart, or just plain having one thing go wrong after another. These people don't get the glory, but they might have run the best race.
Running the race is hard work. It requires us, sometimes, to continue on though physical, mental, or spiritual pain that can be blinding in intensity. But if we are worth it, we can have the courage to continue. God made us. We are His, fearfully and wonderfully made. By definition of our existence, we are worth perservering.
In my estimation, that is part of faith: the idea that no matter how hard the fight might be, we are worth the effort because God has said we are. He loved us so much that He gave His Son for us that we might have the ability to hang with him sometime later.
Maybe that is what it means to have faith, is simply to believe that.
...runs to the bathroom while the commercial is on.
It's one of the hard things of Christian thought to marry the combination of God's omniscience (that's 'all-powerful nature' for those of you who like country music) and our free will. I think I have made a breakthrough in this area.
Okay, it is probably tremendously elementary thinking theologically, but I would like to pretend it is a massive new way of putting things together and it is, after all, my blog.
One of the things that Christians (and all people, for that matter) struggle with is the meaning of suffering. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the book of Job is among the hardest. Its answers don't make sense a lot of the time, at least not to me. But maybe if they did, I wouldn't think on the things that I struggle with.
When things suck, and they will in every life from time to time, each person, as a free agent, has a decision to make. Am I worth perservering through all of this? Am I worth doing the hard thing and taking the next step and the one after that and the one after that, even though I am bone tired and my body aches for rest?
On the surface, that question would seem self-centered and maybe even self-absorbed, but I'm not certain that it is. I think that faith plays a key role in the answer to that question. After all, so much of the New Testament talks about perservering and running the good race.
We're spoiled, maybe, by television race coverage. We see only the winners. The guys who break the tape or gallop into the winner's circle or drink the bottle of milk. Sometimes, the best race is run by the person nursing an injury or racing with a heavy heart, or just plain having one thing go wrong after another. These people don't get the glory, but they might have run the best race.
Running the race is hard work. It requires us, sometimes, to continue on though physical, mental, or spiritual pain that can be blinding in intensity. But if we are worth it, we can have the courage to continue. God made us. We are His, fearfully and wonderfully made. By definition of our existence, we are worth perservering.
In my estimation, that is part of faith: the idea that no matter how hard the fight might be, we are worth the effort because God has said we are. He loved us so much that He gave His Son for us that we might have the ability to hang with him sometime later.
Maybe that is what it means to have faith, is simply to believe that.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Why not privatize PBS?
Every few years, like clockwork, someone on the right says something about PBS. And every few years, a lot of people on the left react as if PBS were a sacred cow. This time, there are cries of illegality around a plan to diversify the viewpoints on PBS, which is long viewed as liberal by conservatives and mainstream by liberals.
The simple fact of the matter is that much of what PBS used to provide exclusively has been replaced by cable programming. But not all of it.
If you want documentaries, you have A&E, Discovery, and a host of others. But while A&E used to be about arts and entertainment, it isn't any more. Its once-unique programming doesn't stand out, at least not to me. The Learning Channel (TLC) may have once been about learning, but now it seems more about trying to squeeze the last ounce of juice out of the once-dominant "Trading Spaces" concept.
In other words, as competition has heated up along the cable/satelite spectrum, a certain boring homogeneity has descended. The sameness is threatening to make cable TV the same vast wasteland the broadcast TV used to be. How different are "Fear Factor" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"?
This represents a vast opportunity for the good folks at PBS. There are certain things they do better than anyone else. And as the satelite networks become variations on each other, those things will stand out more and more. Into this opening, PBS can charge boldly, or it can stay tethered to its current moorings.
Why not start by rolling out a commercial variant of PBS? Use the same programming, but sell ads. There are approximately 7000 channels on my DirecTV service that are devoted to things like ads for DirecTV or message indicating that the channel isn't being used. A commercial variant would make it possible to test market PBS in a commercial context, to see if it can work without pledge weeks and government funding.
If it works in a test, it can work for real. The niche that PBS can fill is that it could be the only network on TV that doesn't air a reality series or some kind of poker show. If the advocates of PBS are correct, there is a giant need for this kind of programming. If there is, and if the management of the new PBS can stick to their vision, then it should be possible to gradually move PBS to a less dependent state.
And if they are successful, and if they still seek out corporate partnerships, they could still offer some sense of the same programming in a commercial-free context. After all, it isn't Bob and Betty's hundred dollar gift that keeps PBS afloat.
In a world that features "The Real Gilligan's Island," something a little more substantial ought to be able to carve out a niche. Then we need not argue about it any more.
The simple fact of the matter is that much of what PBS used to provide exclusively has been replaced by cable programming. But not all of it.
If you want documentaries, you have A&E, Discovery, and a host of others. But while A&E used to be about arts and entertainment, it isn't any more. Its once-unique programming doesn't stand out, at least not to me. The Learning Channel (TLC) may have once been about learning, but now it seems more about trying to squeeze the last ounce of juice out of the once-dominant "Trading Spaces" concept.
In other words, as competition has heated up along the cable/satelite spectrum, a certain boring homogeneity has descended. The sameness is threatening to make cable TV the same vast wasteland the broadcast TV used to be. How different are "Fear Factor" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"?
This represents a vast opportunity for the good folks at PBS. There are certain things they do better than anyone else. And as the satelite networks become variations on each other, those things will stand out more and more. Into this opening, PBS can charge boldly, or it can stay tethered to its current moorings.
Why not start by rolling out a commercial variant of PBS? Use the same programming, but sell ads. There are approximately 7000 channels on my DirecTV service that are devoted to things like ads for DirecTV or message indicating that the channel isn't being used. A commercial variant would make it possible to test market PBS in a commercial context, to see if it can work without pledge weeks and government funding.
If it works in a test, it can work for real. The niche that PBS can fill is that it could be the only network on TV that doesn't air a reality series or some kind of poker show. If the advocates of PBS are correct, there is a giant need for this kind of programming. If there is, and if the management of the new PBS can stick to their vision, then it should be possible to gradually move PBS to a less dependent state.
And if they are successful, and if they still seek out corporate partnerships, they could still offer some sense of the same programming in a commercial-free context. After all, it isn't Bob and Betty's hundred dollar gift that keeps PBS afloat.
In a world that features "The Real Gilligan's Island," something a little more substantial ought to be able to carve out a niche. Then we need not argue about it any more.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Night Prayer
Father, watch over us and refresh us tonight. Please inject us with the peace that can come through only You and grant us a continual audience with the Advocate and the Comforter, that we may carry Your peace into tomorrow.
We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
You are not alone.
We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
You are not alone.
A really mushy wish for a better tomorrow
So I am going to be soft and mushy--almost chick-like--with this post. And why not?
One of the things that makes us different from most of the rest of life that inhabits this earth is our ability to quickly learn from what goes on around us. Yes, we can be stunningly blind to things, but if you think about it, the amount of information that a human brain processes in a single day is amazing. And our ability to pick out patterns and react to them, though it may seem mundane, is really nothing short of miraculous.
And yet look at all the crap we put up with on a daily basis. And look at the fact that most of the crap is made by us for us. Crap is the waste product of human interaction. It's that waste product that can cause us to go to bed bone tired when we really haven't been physically exerted all day. And it's the same waste product that can cause futile wishes that the night go on forever, just so we don't have to get up to face the day.
And like it or not, each of us has ownership of some percentage of the crap mountain. Lord knows, I own my share.
But it's so unnecessary. It's not enough to disagree. We have to follow it with "idiot" or "moron" or worse. Our skins have become collectively thin. It's not just the people who sue at the drop of a hat, it's also the people who will judge everything about a person's life based on a few hundred words in a news article, or a momentary encounter with them.
The result is a sort of psychic toxin that pollutes the lake we all swim in.
It's got to stop. It has to for me, at least.
So today, which the cereal commercial tells me is the first day of the rest of my life, is the first day where I try to make a more appropriate contribution to the world in which I live. I'm not going to do so by pretending that I like everything. That is intellectual fraud. But I'm going to do it through effort and a serious attempt to be more thoughtful in how I process and respond to things.
I am doomed to periodic failure, that is sure. But any process with a worthwhile outcome involves failure along the way.
Wish me luck. And join me if you want. We may fail together, but hopefully in the end, it will be worth it.
One of the things that makes us different from most of the rest of life that inhabits this earth is our ability to quickly learn from what goes on around us. Yes, we can be stunningly blind to things, but if you think about it, the amount of information that a human brain processes in a single day is amazing. And our ability to pick out patterns and react to them, though it may seem mundane, is really nothing short of miraculous.
And yet look at all the crap we put up with on a daily basis. And look at the fact that most of the crap is made by us for us. Crap is the waste product of human interaction. It's that waste product that can cause us to go to bed bone tired when we really haven't been physically exerted all day. And it's the same waste product that can cause futile wishes that the night go on forever, just so we don't have to get up to face the day.
And like it or not, each of us has ownership of some percentage of the crap mountain. Lord knows, I own my share.
But it's so unnecessary. It's not enough to disagree. We have to follow it with "idiot" or "moron" or worse. Our skins have become collectively thin. It's not just the people who sue at the drop of a hat, it's also the people who will judge everything about a person's life based on a few hundred words in a news article, or a momentary encounter with them.
The result is a sort of psychic toxin that pollutes the lake we all swim in.
It's got to stop. It has to for me, at least.
So today, which the cereal commercial tells me is the first day of the rest of my life, is the first day where I try to make a more appropriate contribution to the world in which I live. I'm not going to do so by pretending that I like everything. That is intellectual fraud. But I'm going to do it through effort and a serious attempt to be more thoughtful in how I process and respond to things.
I am doomed to periodic failure, that is sure. But any process with a worthwhile outcome involves failure along the way.
Wish me luck. And join me if you want. We may fail together, but hopefully in the end, it will be worth it.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Running the Race
Work has been a pain in the butt lately. It seems as if nothing works correctly, and even the things that do require two or three times the work they should. The things that should be perceived as positive and successful aren't. And it's starting to spill over into everything else. And I'm tired and cranky and just waiting for the wind to change.
In other words, I am alive.
The big things--the deaths and layoffs and the various dislocations of life--are typically very difficult. They are like a football team's loss on a Sunday, and they give you a whole week to sit there and comtemplate before the next big thing happens.
But there's also part of life that's like baseball. In baseball, if you get crushed, you have to play again the next day. And if you go into a long losing streak, the joy that you should get out of playing a game for a living evaporates into a burdensome grind.
And so it is. The big stuff is hard, to be sure, but so is the daily grinding sameness that can suck the initiative and life out of you. That's how most of life is lived, with little triumphs and endless grinding defeats. And though the defeats can numb you and take away the will to push forward, it is the response to that grind that is the real key.
It isn't easy. In fact, sometimes just getting up, just smiling when you feel like taking out your frustration on the nearest offender, sometimes these things are the hardest.
In one of his letters, Paul states that he has run the race. He has done his work and now he is content with what he has done. That contentedness, if you can achieve it, that's worth the price of the grinding, numbing, endless waves. It's worth hanging on for that brief instant when it all fits together and you realize that you have lived life well.
And it's the promise of that moment that can make it easier.
At least I hope it is.
In other words, I am alive.
The big things--the deaths and layoffs and the various dislocations of life--are typically very difficult. They are like a football team's loss on a Sunday, and they give you a whole week to sit there and comtemplate before the next big thing happens.
But there's also part of life that's like baseball. In baseball, if you get crushed, you have to play again the next day. And if you go into a long losing streak, the joy that you should get out of playing a game for a living evaporates into a burdensome grind.
And so it is. The big stuff is hard, to be sure, but so is the daily grinding sameness that can suck the initiative and life out of you. That's how most of life is lived, with little triumphs and endless grinding defeats. And though the defeats can numb you and take away the will to push forward, it is the response to that grind that is the real key.
It isn't easy. In fact, sometimes just getting up, just smiling when you feel like taking out your frustration on the nearest offender, sometimes these things are the hardest.
In one of his letters, Paul states that he has run the race. He has done his work and now he is content with what he has done. That contentedness, if you can achieve it, that's worth the price of the grinding, numbing, endless waves. It's worth hanging on for that brief instant when it all fits together and you realize that you have lived life well.
And it's the promise of that moment that can make it easier.
At least I hope it is.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
One reason married priests might be a problem
Here's our schedule for next year.
Sunday...slow day. Just baseball practice in the evening. Except the third Sunday, which is the scouts pack planning meeting for a couple hours in the evening. Oh, and then when the Bucs have a home game, we work it as a fundraiser for my daughter's swim team. That's a six-to-seven-hour commitment eight Sundays between September and Christmas eve.
Monday...Cub Scout pack meeting three out of every four Mondays. Thank God there are no Monday night home games.
Tuesday...Synchro practice from 5:30 until 7:45.
Wednesday...My son has religious ed from 5:30 until 6:45. My daughter has youth group from 7:00 until 8:15.
Thursday...Synchro practice from 5:30 until 7:45. And the third Thursday of each month is the Cub Scout Pack meeting. I have volunteered to be the assistant Cub Master because I am entertaining to children. There is also a Bucs exhibition game on a Thursday night.
Friday...we rest. Except when we don't.
Oh, and there's a baseball practice and game sometime during the week, but I don't know what nights those are yet.
Saturday...Synchro practice from 9-12. Baseball game in the afternoon. On the first Saturday of every month, we have mandatory First Communion classes for my son and my wife and/or me from 3-5. The there's church at 5:30. Also, there is a Bucs exhibition game on a Saturday night.
Also, the first weekend in August, we are trying to do a hot dog stand as a synchro fundraiser. And then starting in January, my daughter will have as many as eight synchro meets, which typically run the entire weekend.
And then there's four to six Cub Scout camping trips. And we have Universal passes in Orlando.
And it would be nice to get a weekend with the wife in there, too...Plus the miscellaneous crap that pops up here and there...
Fortunately, my company is into work-life balance. My job allows it. Being a priest does not. This is one of the reasons I am not so quick to jump on the married-priest bandwagon.
Sunday...slow day. Just baseball practice in the evening. Except the third Sunday, which is the scouts pack planning meeting for a couple hours in the evening. Oh, and then when the Bucs have a home game, we work it as a fundraiser for my daughter's swim team. That's a six-to-seven-hour commitment eight Sundays between September and Christmas eve.
Monday...Cub Scout pack meeting three out of every four Mondays. Thank God there are no Monday night home games.
Tuesday...Synchro practice from 5:30 until 7:45.
Wednesday...My son has religious ed from 5:30 until 6:45. My daughter has youth group from 7:00 until 8:15.
Thursday...Synchro practice from 5:30 until 7:45. And the third Thursday of each month is the Cub Scout Pack meeting. I have volunteered to be the assistant Cub Master because I am entertaining to children. There is also a Bucs exhibition game on a Thursday night.
Friday...we rest. Except when we don't.
Oh, and there's a baseball practice and game sometime during the week, but I don't know what nights those are yet.
Saturday...Synchro practice from 9-12. Baseball game in the afternoon. On the first Saturday of every month, we have mandatory First Communion classes for my son and my wife and/or me from 3-5. The there's church at 5:30. Also, there is a Bucs exhibition game on a Saturday night.
Also, the first weekend in August, we are trying to do a hot dog stand as a synchro fundraiser. And then starting in January, my daughter will have as many as eight synchro meets, which typically run the entire weekend.
And then there's four to six Cub Scout camping trips. And we have Universal passes in Orlando.
And it would be nice to get a weekend with the wife in there, too...Plus the miscellaneous crap that pops up here and there...
Fortunately, my company is into work-life balance. My job allows it. Being a priest does not. This is one of the reasons I am not so quick to jump on the married-priest bandwagon.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Hey, I'm back!
It's been a long time since I have posted here. I've been too busy with other outlets for my writing. So here I am. I've dropped my subscription as a Glenn Beck Insider, which means I can't post any more on their message board, which means I have to channel all the stuff in my brain someplace.
So this is the place.
And there's lots of stuff. Not just the Jesus stuff, but a lot of other stuff, too. Right now, I've just finished reading a book called Fun Is Good by a guy named Mike Veeck. His dad, Bill Veeck, was the one-time owner of the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians. When he owned the Indians, he decided to have a midget pinch hit for him, just to attract attention. It did. He walked on four pitches. But the lords of baseball decided it was a bad idea to allow midgets to pinch hit (and they were probably right), so Eddie Gaeddel's career lasted one plate appearance.
Mike Veeck had his own moment in history: Disco Demolition Night. Between games of a double header between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers, the younger Veeck offered that if people brought disco records, he would blow them up in a dumpster between games. They did. He did. And by the time the drunken anti-disco forces had left the field, the White Sox had forfeited the second game. He was fired the next day. Twenty-six years later in Chicago, people still talk about Disco Demolition Night. They do not talk about the '79 White Sox.
Veeck recovered from that to become successful at marketing, promotion, and running minor league baseball teams. It is not uncommon for his minor league St. Paul Saints to outdraw the major league Minnesota Twins. His book is a how-to guide about his life and how he implemented Fun is Good. In organizations that are open to it, Fun is Good is tremendously successful. In organizations that aren't...well, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are one of those organization. Let's just leave it at that.
I am working on Fun is Good at work. I am hoping it works for me, too. As I try, I will publish some updates here. I have some cool God stuff, too, like why it might not be a good idea for priests to marry. And other neat stuff about baseball, sex, beer, and life.
Y'all come back now, here.
So this is the place.
And there's lots of stuff. Not just the Jesus stuff, but a lot of other stuff, too. Right now, I've just finished reading a book called Fun Is Good by a guy named Mike Veeck. His dad, Bill Veeck, was the one-time owner of the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians. When he owned the Indians, he decided to have a midget pinch hit for him, just to attract attention. It did. He walked on four pitches. But the lords of baseball decided it was a bad idea to allow midgets to pinch hit (and they were probably right), so Eddie Gaeddel's career lasted one plate appearance.
Mike Veeck had his own moment in history: Disco Demolition Night. Between games of a double header between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers, the younger Veeck offered that if people brought disco records, he would blow them up in a dumpster between games. They did. He did. And by the time the drunken anti-disco forces had left the field, the White Sox had forfeited the second game. He was fired the next day. Twenty-six years later in Chicago, people still talk about Disco Demolition Night. They do not talk about the '79 White Sox.
Veeck recovered from that to become successful at marketing, promotion, and running minor league baseball teams. It is not uncommon for his minor league St. Paul Saints to outdraw the major league Minnesota Twins. His book is a how-to guide about his life and how he implemented Fun is Good. In organizations that are open to it, Fun is Good is tremendously successful. In organizations that aren't...well, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are one of those organization. Let's just leave it at that.
I am working on Fun is Good at work. I am hoping it works for me, too. As I try, I will publish some updates here. I have some cool God stuff, too, like why it might not be a good idea for priests to marry. And other neat stuff about baseball, sex, beer, and life.
Y'all come back now, here.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Jesus Isn't Available for Me
It was ten after six in the morning and I was listening to a Bible teacher streamed on the Internet. He was relating a story of how he was a toddler, sitting in his high chair. His father, dominated at the moment by his own demons, threw a plate of spaghetti at the wall. Even as a toddler in a high chair, he can remember saying "What do I do?" It was the beginning of a life in which he was manipulated by grief.
When he relates that story, it cuts me to the bone. Of all my legacies, the one that makes me blush and worry is the one about how my kids will probably carry guilt because of my failures to deal with my own internal demons.
Jesus wasn't around at ten after six to talk to about that. I wish he had been. But then again, maybe I didn't. My experiences with Jesus thus far had not been fruitful. He was very good at holding a mirror up that didn't allow me any wiggle room. And as much as I wanted to blame Him for it, I knew the mirror was accurate, more or less.
Of course, the accuracy of the mirror so far had also shown me good things. One of the things that was different about Jesus was that he seemed to know all the bad things, and yet, for some reason, He didn't run away over them. I would have. I would have run screaming for the hills, proclaiming to all who could hear me that this was one you needed to stay away from. This one was bad and he would make you sorry.
But Jesus saw all this stuff and made me see it and yet He didn't run away on me.
I got up from the computer and walked to my son's room. Since we'd put the loft in his room, I could look in on him sleeping any more. So I looked in on the room that represented him. It was less a mess than normal. My wife had spent time over the Christmas vacation weeding out the things that a boy doesn't need any more once he turns seven. My son didn't care about such an activity. After all, there were important things that a seven-year-old boy needed to do. Maybe more important, in the long run, than cleaning up his room.
I pulled the door shut and glanced in on my daughter. For once, her room was clean. It had been a battle for her. She'd started middle school in the fall, and it was academically demanding. On some nights, she'd do homework until after eleven. And she was still swimming. And she was going to youth group. And she was still involved a little bit in Girl Scouts. In the past year, she'd grown from a sweet girl to a blossoming young women, filled with doubts and confidence. She was learning what she couldn't do, but more important, she was learning what she could do.
She might have a chance, I thought, to get past her equivalent of the plate of spaghetti.
Then I looked in on my wife, sleeping soundly until the alarm sounded in a few minutes. She hated to get up early, and yet she did. Every day. And the first thing she would do is to wake up my daughter. I'd have told her to get an alarm clock. But my wife went in every morning and laid down on the bed next to her and eased her out of bed. In order to get the bus at 6:05, she needed to be up before 5:30. It was a heavy cross to bare for one so young, and yet she did it mostly without complaint. And my wife got up early with her, even when she was dead tired, mostly without complaint.
I went back in the room I use more or less as an office. A fortress of solitude is more like it.
I sat down and stared out into the house and thought "My God, what have I done? What have these people learned from me?" I put my head in my hands and I begged a God that I can't see for forgiveness. And before long, I could feel the tears rolling from my cheeks onto my thighs. And I felt alone and afraid and small.
And Jesus wasn't there.
I needed Him now, to help me deal with the mess I had become and He wasn't there.
Later that day, I went to the cafe in the ground floor of my building to grab some lunch. The morning had gone poorly, but then again, I would have predicted that, given how it started.
Jesus wasn't there, either.
So I grabbed a sandwich and went back up to my desk. I needed to get a report done, anyway. And I needed to call a radio station to set up a field trip for my son's Cub Scout den. And there was swim practice tonight and we still hadn't finalized the plans for the Winter show, which I was basically running because the president was out of town and so was the other person with the most experience.
By one o'clock, I'd at least found out who to contact about the radio station. It was a country station; my wife would be pleased. And I was just getting ready with the report that I needed to have done by the end of the day when my cell phone rang. Maybe this would be Jesus.
"Mr. Hamilton, this is Ms. Johanson at school. Your daughter is here running a fever. Can you come pick her up?"
"Yeah, sure," I said without thinking. "I need to tie up a couple loose ends, then I will be there."
"I don't think you understand, your daughter is sick."
"I understand completely," I said, trying to run the report as I spoke. I could run it while I was telling people I had to leave, then fiddle with the data when I got home. "But I can't just pack up and leave without telling people. I should be there within the half hour."
We argued some more and I hung up. The report had run by the time I got done notifying all the people I needed to notify. It was situations like this that justified the amount of money high speed internet service cost. I would work from home. And, even though my daughter was sick, I'd still probably go to practice, at least for a little while, to get the Winter show stuff ironed out. Within ten minutes, I was in the car, and within 45 minutes, I was carrying her backpack into the house while she trudged after me.
She drew herself a bath, which was what she seemed to want, and I hooked up to my company's internal network. There were a couple support calls I needed to fix, including one with someone who had obviously not taken the training we'd created for the procurement tool I supported. Still, I took the 20 minutes to guide her through what the training would have covered in ten. I got her to promise to take the webcast, then started the report analysis.
"Thank you from bringing me home, Daddy," my daughter said. She was in her pajamas and her voice was small and child-like. She wasn't the self-confident go-getter right now. She was my little girl. I got up and hugged her and walked with her to the living room as she got settled on the couch and turned on Nickelodean.
Then I finished the report, and got the call-back from the radio station. There were a few hoops to jump through, but the radio tour was probably a go. Then my wife and son came home and I shut the door and finished my work, sending off the report just in time to leave.
I knew I would catch flak from the people I needed to talk to about going to practice when my daughter was sick, but I needed to nail some things down.
As I was driving to practice, my cell phone rang. It was Jesus.
"You needed to talk to me," Jesus said.
To be honest, with all the stuff going on, I'd forgotten.
"I think I'm good for now," I said.
"Did your question get answered?" He said.
"Which question was that?" I asked. Though I knew. And I knew that He knew.
"The one about why you are in the family you're in, in spite of your flaws."
I thought about it for a minute. Then I remembered that I had to fix the synchronized swim team's website with the results from the first meet when I got home.
"Yeah," I said. "I think it did."
When he relates that story, it cuts me to the bone. Of all my legacies, the one that makes me blush and worry is the one about how my kids will probably carry guilt because of my failures to deal with my own internal demons.
Jesus wasn't around at ten after six to talk to about that. I wish he had been. But then again, maybe I didn't. My experiences with Jesus thus far had not been fruitful. He was very good at holding a mirror up that didn't allow me any wiggle room. And as much as I wanted to blame Him for it, I knew the mirror was accurate, more or less.
Of course, the accuracy of the mirror so far had also shown me good things. One of the things that was different about Jesus was that he seemed to know all the bad things, and yet, for some reason, He didn't run away over them. I would have. I would have run screaming for the hills, proclaiming to all who could hear me that this was one you needed to stay away from. This one was bad and he would make you sorry.
But Jesus saw all this stuff and made me see it and yet He didn't run away on me.
I got up from the computer and walked to my son's room. Since we'd put the loft in his room, I could look in on him sleeping any more. So I looked in on the room that represented him. It was less a mess than normal. My wife had spent time over the Christmas vacation weeding out the things that a boy doesn't need any more once he turns seven. My son didn't care about such an activity. After all, there were important things that a seven-year-old boy needed to do. Maybe more important, in the long run, than cleaning up his room.
I pulled the door shut and glanced in on my daughter. For once, her room was clean. It had been a battle for her. She'd started middle school in the fall, and it was academically demanding. On some nights, she'd do homework until after eleven. And she was still swimming. And she was going to youth group. And she was still involved a little bit in Girl Scouts. In the past year, she'd grown from a sweet girl to a blossoming young women, filled with doubts and confidence. She was learning what she couldn't do, but more important, she was learning what she could do.
She might have a chance, I thought, to get past her equivalent of the plate of spaghetti.
Then I looked in on my wife, sleeping soundly until the alarm sounded in a few minutes. She hated to get up early, and yet she did. Every day. And the first thing she would do is to wake up my daughter. I'd have told her to get an alarm clock. But my wife went in every morning and laid down on the bed next to her and eased her out of bed. In order to get the bus at 6:05, she needed to be up before 5:30. It was a heavy cross to bare for one so young, and yet she did it mostly without complaint. And my wife got up early with her, even when she was dead tired, mostly without complaint.
I went back in the room I use more or less as an office. A fortress of solitude is more like it.
I sat down and stared out into the house and thought "My God, what have I done? What have these people learned from me?" I put my head in my hands and I begged a God that I can't see for forgiveness. And before long, I could feel the tears rolling from my cheeks onto my thighs. And I felt alone and afraid and small.
And Jesus wasn't there.
I needed Him now, to help me deal with the mess I had become and He wasn't there.
Later that day, I went to the cafe in the ground floor of my building to grab some lunch. The morning had gone poorly, but then again, I would have predicted that, given how it started.
Jesus wasn't there, either.
So I grabbed a sandwich and went back up to my desk. I needed to get a report done, anyway. And I needed to call a radio station to set up a field trip for my son's Cub Scout den. And there was swim practice tonight and we still hadn't finalized the plans for the Winter show, which I was basically running because the president was out of town and so was the other person with the most experience.
By one o'clock, I'd at least found out who to contact about the radio station. It was a country station; my wife would be pleased. And I was just getting ready with the report that I needed to have done by the end of the day when my cell phone rang. Maybe this would be Jesus.
"Mr. Hamilton, this is Ms. Johanson at school. Your daughter is here running a fever. Can you come pick her up?"
"Yeah, sure," I said without thinking. "I need to tie up a couple loose ends, then I will be there."
"I don't think you understand, your daughter is sick."
"I understand completely," I said, trying to run the report as I spoke. I could run it while I was telling people I had to leave, then fiddle with the data when I got home. "But I can't just pack up and leave without telling people. I should be there within the half hour."
We argued some more and I hung up. The report had run by the time I got done notifying all the people I needed to notify. It was situations like this that justified the amount of money high speed internet service cost. I would work from home. And, even though my daughter was sick, I'd still probably go to practice, at least for a little while, to get the Winter show stuff ironed out. Within ten minutes, I was in the car, and within 45 minutes, I was carrying her backpack into the house while she trudged after me.
She drew herself a bath, which was what she seemed to want, and I hooked up to my company's internal network. There were a couple support calls I needed to fix, including one with someone who had obviously not taken the training we'd created for the procurement tool I supported. Still, I took the 20 minutes to guide her through what the training would have covered in ten. I got her to promise to take the webcast, then started the report analysis.
"Thank you from bringing me home, Daddy," my daughter said. She was in her pajamas and her voice was small and child-like. She wasn't the self-confident go-getter right now. She was my little girl. I got up and hugged her and walked with her to the living room as she got settled on the couch and turned on Nickelodean.
Then I finished the report, and got the call-back from the radio station. There were a few hoops to jump through, but the radio tour was probably a go. Then my wife and son came home and I shut the door and finished my work, sending off the report just in time to leave.
I knew I would catch flak from the people I needed to talk to about going to practice when my daughter was sick, but I needed to nail some things down.
As I was driving to practice, my cell phone rang. It was Jesus.
"You needed to talk to me," Jesus said.
To be honest, with all the stuff going on, I'd forgotten.
"I think I'm good for now," I said.
"Did your question get answered?" He said.
"Which question was that?" I asked. Though I knew. And I knew that He knew.
"The one about why you are in the family you're in, in spite of your flaws."
I thought about it for a minute. Then I remembered that I had to fix the synchronized swim team's website with the results from the first meet when I got home.
"Yeah," I said. "I think it did."
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Jesus Refuses to Tie My Shoe for Me
"What do you want me to do?" I asked Jesus as he sat next to me in a lawn chair in my front yard. My son and his friends were more or less playing basketball on the hoop my parents had gotten him for Christmas.
"What do you mean?" Jesus asked.
"I mean, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to be? What would you like me to accomplish before I die?"
My son took the ball, which my parents had also gotten him for Christmas and ran with it toward the basket, flooring one of his friends. He threw it up in the air in the general direction of the basket. It sailed past the backboard and into the driveway. I ran over and grabbed it, stepping around the Hit-away Junior, that Santa had gotten for him, and I tossed it back.
"What do you think I want you to do?" Jesus asked as I sat next to him.
"I think I'm supposed to be Mother Theresa, right? I mean, sell all my belongs and give the money to the poor and follow you, right?"
"Is that what your heart says?"
I didn't say anything. The Jets used to have a pretty good running back named Freeman McNeil. One of the things I remember being said about him was that he ran in such a way that defenders rarely got a square hit on him. It was always more or less a glancing blow. It seemed to me that it would have been frustrating to be a defending against him, if that were the case. Sort of like talking to Jesus.
"I don't know," I said. "That's why I'm asking you."
He looked at the kids playing. The kid next door dibbled off his foot and the ball rolled across the street, which he said meant that my son was guilty of a "pentalty." My son disagreed. After a few seconds, they were back to their hybrid game of rugby and basketball.
"I'm not going to tell you," he said.
I shook my head.
"You're God. You're supposed to answer questions like that when you're asked," I said. I was a little irritated. I mean, here was this guy who made me feel completely inadequate with his questions--a guy that when you talked to him, it felt like you were playing chess against a master--and he wouldn't answer a simple question.
"You're going to tell me what I'm supposed to do?" Jesus said.
"Why not, the fat lady who's the manager at the movie house does when you work there," I said.
"She is my boss," he said. "I could quote you Scripture about submission to authority and obedience, but I don't think you want to hear it."
For the first time since I'd met him, I was angry at Jesus. Here I was asking him about what he wanted me to do, and he was telling me that I didn't care about obedience.
"Sometimes I'd rather have a root canal than to talk to you, you know that?" I said.
He smiled at me. Chuckled a little. Which irritated me more.
"What, it's funny? Do you enjoy it when you make people struggle? Is that it?"
"No," he said. "My word tells you very clearly what you are supposed to do. It's all in there, and you don't spend very much time reading it."
I sighed.
"Why do I need to read it when you are right here with me?" I said.
"You are angry at me," he said.
"Active listening doesn't work on me," I said.
He nodded. My son ran to where we were sitting and held up his right foot. His sneaker was untied and he was breathing heavy, trying to make it look like he was about to fall over from fatigue.
"Hey, Daddy (gasp, gasp), could you (gasp, gasp) tie my shoe (gasp)?"
I sighed again.
"Daniel, you are seven years old. You can tie your own shoe. You know how and I shouldn't have to do it for you," I said. He scowled at me and walked over by his friends and squatted down and tied it.
We sat silently and enjoyed the warm sun beating down on us. Tomorrow, a front was supposed to come through, which would make it rainy and cool...or at least as close to cool as it ever gets in Florida.
"Let me ask you something," Jesus said. "You didn't tie his sneaker for him. Why not?"
"He's seven years old. He can do it himself rather than having me do it all for him."
"There you go," Jesus said.
"Where I go?"
"That's why I won't tell you what I want you to do," He said.
I glanced over at Him.
"When they say that you are supposed to be a good steward of your time, talent, and treasure, that is a good marketing approach, but it's really incomplete. You need to be a steward of your experiences and your intellect, it's using everything that God has given you or that you've gone through," He said.
I used to be on the Stewardship committee at my church, and at one of the meetings I'd been to, if I hadn't said that exact thing, it was close enough to make me blanche at my own words.
"What do you think I want you to do?" Jesus said.
"Get you a beer?"
"Stop hiding behind flippancy," He said, sternly. It was the first time His words to me had been less than gentle. "You are an intelligent, deeply insightful man sometimes. Why do you insist on projecting yourself as less than that?"
My first instinct was to cover His anger at my flippancy with more flippancy. After all, nothing worked so well as a one-liner to divert attention from things I didn't want to deal with.
"What do you think I want you to do?"
"You won't tell me."
"That's right," He said. "So if I won't tell you, what do you think that I want you to do?"
I sat and stared at the lawn. St. Augustinegrass is evil. It isn't really grass, but a crawling weed that would grow really well if you didn't want it to, but given the fact that you want it to, it doesn't. Oh, wretched weed it is, who will save me from its irritating ability to not grow in my front yard?
"I suppose I need to do the work myself," I said.
"I suppose you do," He said.
"Listen to me," Jesus said. "You are 41 years old. And you have come so far in the past three years. You are so much closer now than you were then. Because you looked and you tested and you decided to take in what you have found. How has that process been?"
"It's a pain in the ass," I said.
"Yet you do it," Jesus said. "Why?"
"I have to. I can't not do it. I am compelled to."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Not an acceptable answer. You know. You just need to figure it out. I can't tie your shoe for you. You have to figure out how to tie your own shoe."
We paused and I felt the breeze against my face.
"You have given your children a good home," He said. "You and your wife. She is a wonderful mother and you're a good father. But you can't give them everything. You give them enough that they are in position to figure out what they need to, right? And you are there with them when they mess it up, not fixing it, but holding them and telling them that they aren't alone, right?"
"Yeah."
"That's what I want for you, both as a parent and a child."
"What do you mean?" Jesus asked.
"I mean, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to be? What would you like me to accomplish before I die?"
My son took the ball, which my parents had also gotten him for Christmas and ran with it toward the basket, flooring one of his friends. He threw it up in the air in the general direction of the basket. It sailed past the backboard and into the driveway. I ran over and grabbed it, stepping around the Hit-away Junior, that Santa had gotten for him, and I tossed it back.
"What do you think I want you to do?" Jesus asked as I sat next to him.
"I think I'm supposed to be Mother Theresa, right? I mean, sell all my belongs and give the money to the poor and follow you, right?"
"Is that what your heart says?"
I didn't say anything. The Jets used to have a pretty good running back named Freeman McNeil. One of the things I remember being said about him was that he ran in such a way that defenders rarely got a square hit on him. It was always more or less a glancing blow. It seemed to me that it would have been frustrating to be a defending against him, if that were the case. Sort of like talking to Jesus.
"I don't know," I said. "That's why I'm asking you."
He looked at the kids playing. The kid next door dibbled off his foot and the ball rolled across the street, which he said meant that my son was guilty of a "pentalty." My son disagreed. After a few seconds, they were back to their hybrid game of rugby and basketball.
"I'm not going to tell you," he said.
I shook my head.
"You're God. You're supposed to answer questions like that when you're asked," I said. I was a little irritated. I mean, here was this guy who made me feel completely inadequate with his questions--a guy that when you talked to him, it felt like you were playing chess against a master--and he wouldn't answer a simple question.
"You're going to tell me what I'm supposed to do?" Jesus said.
"Why not, the fat lady who's the manager at the movie house does when you work there," I said.
"She is my boss," he said. "I could quote you Scripture about submission to authority and obedience, but I don't think you want to hear it."
For the first time since I'd met him, I was angry at Jesus. Here I was asking him about what he wanted me to do, and he was telling me that I didn't care about obedience.
"Sometimes I'd rather have a root canal than to talk to you, you know that?" I said.
He smiled at me. Chuckled a little. Which irritated me more.
"What, it's funny? Do you enjoy it when you make people struggle? Is that it?"
"No," he said. "My word tells you very clearly what you are supposed to do. It's all in there, and you don't spend very much time reading it."
I sighed.
"Why do I need to read it when you are right here with me?" I said.
"You are angry at me," he said.
"Active listening doesn't work on me," I said.
He nodded. My son ran to where we were sitting and held up his right foot. His sneaker was untied and he was breathing heavy, trying to make it look like he was about to fall over from fatigue.
"Hey, Daddy (gasp, gasp), could you (gasp, gasp) tie my shoe (gasp)?"
I sighed again.
"Daniel, you are seven years old. You can tie your own shoe. You know how and I shouldn't have to do it for you," I said. He scowled at me and walked over by his friends and squatted down and tied it.
We sat silently and enjoyed the warm sun beating down on us. Tomorrow, a front was supposed to come through, which would make it rainy and cool...or at least as close to cool as it ever gets in Florida.
"Let me ask you something," Jesus said. "You didn't tie his sneaker for him. Why not?"
"He's seven years old. He can do it himself rather than having me do it all for him."
"There you go," Jesus said.
"Where I go?"
"That's why I won't tell you what I want you to do," He said.
I glanced over at Him.
"When they say that you are supposed to be a good steward of your time, talent, and treasure, that is a good marketing approach, but it's really incomplete. You need to be a steward of your experiences and your intellect, it's using everything that God has given you or that you've gone through," He said.
I used to be on the Stewardship committee at my church, and at one of the meetings I'd been to, if I hadn't said that exact thing, it was close enough to make me blanche at my own words.
"What do you think I want you to do?" Jesus said.
"Get you a beer?"
"Stop hiding behind flippancy," He said, sternly. It was the first time His words to me had been less than gentle. "You are an intelligent, deeply insightful man sometimes. Why do you insist on projecting yourself as less than that?"
My first instinct was to cover His anger at my flippancy with more flippancy. After all, nothing worked so well as a one-liner to divert attention from things I didn't want to deal with.
"What do you think I want you to do?"
"You won't tell me."
"That's right," He said. "So if I won't tell you, what do you think that I want you to do?"
I sat and stared at the lawn. St. Augustinegrass is evil. It isn't really grass, but a crawling weed that would grow really well if you didn't want it to, but given the fact that you want it to, it doesn't. Oh, wretched weed it is, who will save me from its irritating ability to not grow in my front yard?
"I suppose I need to do the work myself," I said.
"I suppose you do," He said.
"Listen to me," Jesus said. "You are 41 years old. And you have come so far in the past three years. You are so much closer now than you were then. Because you looked and you tested and you decided to take in what you have found. How has that process been?"
"It's a pain in the ass," I said.
"Yet you do it," Jesus said. "Why?"
"I have to. I can't not do it. I am compelled to."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Not an acceptable answer. You know. You just need to figure it out. I can't tie your shoe for you. You have to figure out how to tie your own shoe."
We paused and I felt the breeze against my face.
"You have given your children a good home," He said. "You and your wife. She is a wonderful mother and you're a good father. But you can't give them everything. You give them enough that they are in position to figure out what they need to, right? And you are there with them when they mess it up, not fixing it, but holding them and telling them that they aren't alone, right?"
"Yeah."
"That's what I want for you, both as a parent and a child."
Friday, January 14, 2005
FCC Member Right to Urge Armstrong Williams Probe
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050113/D87JBUQG0.html
Okay, first off, the law being applied was intended to stop payola...but isn't that really what this was? Sure, it didn't help a record company make money. What it did was more important than that.
Over the past year, when you factor in everyone's agendas on issues, it has gotten to the point where you just don't know what to believe any more. On several occassions, I have been able to take a single story and apply both sets of spin to it, and to be honest, the truth and the facts don't really matter any more.
The result is an increasing amount of boutique news...news just for conservatives, news just for progressives, news just for gay, paraplegic, six-fingered librarians. And people increasingly hear what they want to hear instead of being challenged. As a result, everyone's beliefs become rigid and inflexible and the divisiveness increases.
If Armstrong Williams is right, and this practice is going on throughout newspapers and radio stations, then there's a definite need for investigation and disclosure.
Okay, first off, the law being applied was intended to stop payola...but isn't that really what this was? Sure, it didn't help a record company make money. What it did was more important than that.
Over the past year, when you factor in everyone's agendas on issues, it has gotten to the point where you just don't know what to believe any more. On several occassions, I have been able to take a single story and apply both sets of spin to it, and to be honest, the truth and the facts don't really matter any more.
The result is an increasing amount of boutique news...news just for conservatives, news just for progressives, news just for gay, paraplegic, six-fingered librarians. And people increasingly hear what they want to hear instead of being challenged. As a result, everyone's beliefs become rigid and inflexible and the divisiveness increases.
If Armstrong Williams is right, and this practice is going on throughout newspapers and radio stations, then there's a definite need for investigation and disclosure.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Criticism of Bush Inauguration Borne of Hatred
The newest, worstest scandal of the Bush administration is the amount of money that is being spent on his inauguration while people suffer because of the tsunami. Among the left, this proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Republicans have a cold, calloused heart and care about no one but themselves. After all, the $50 million they are spending on a party...a party!...could make a huge difference over there.
Problem is, the majority of that money came from private sources. It's not like there is a $50 million line item in the federal budget for the inauguration. And besides, if it weren't the tsunami that would cause them to make this observation, it would be the troops. And if it weren't the troops, it would be the victims of the Bush economy, which continues to be the worst in the history of the world (except for that blissful time known as the Carter administration).
If the inauguration were cancelled at this point, the Federal government would either have to pay the vendors anyway, in which case, most of the $50 million would still be spent, or it would have to spend a fair amount protecting itself from lawsuits. Not only that, it could severely damage many small businesses. Given that the inauguration is being held in Washington, at least some of those businesses would be run primarily by minorities.
But there is a deeper arrogance here. It is that the critics are the ones who know how money should be spent. A free economy disappears in their eyes, replaced by a carefully planned economy where money is dispersed based upon perceived value. The Mets, for instance, would be prohibited from spending $172 million for 11 combined years of Pedro Martinez's and Carlos Beltran's services. I mean, how can you pay that much money for that when teachers only get $45,000 a year?
Mel Gibson would be forced to give up much of the money he made from The Passion of the Christ so that social workers could be more handsomely rewarded. No word on whether Michael Moore would have to give up any of the money he made on his "documentaries."
The fact of the matter is, we probably could and should give more to the victims of the tsunami. And perhaps President Bush should pressure his donors to make contributions to tsunami aid in addition their donations for the inauguration. But those decisions are for the people who have the money. It is no more appropriate for the government or some conscience cabal to give someone else's money than it is for me to give one of Reggie Jackson's cars to the Salvation Army to sell. The changes these people want are changes of the heart that cannot be mandated by legislative fiat.
Hollywood spent a fair amount of money last night on The Peoples' Choice awards, which starts the annual spring throng of vapid awards shows. If Bush should give inauguration money and cancel his party, why should Hollywood not do the same? Why should the NFL not be shamed into cancelling its party scheduled for Jacksonville next month. After all, it's just a football game. If it were played at a high school stadium someplace, think of how much money could be give in tsunami aid.
But those suggestions are rarely made, and that is the ultimate hypocrisy. Many of the people making this criticism would not be had John Kerry won. After all, it is appropriate to have a big party after you dispose of a Republican. It is only celebrating a Republican victory that is repugnant. And as a bonus, you can use that victory to portray people as evil because they dare party while someone suffers.
The criticism is not about the tsunami victims--they are convenient pawns; it is about hatred.
Problem is, the majority of that money came from private sources. It's not like there is a $50 million line item in the federal budget for the inauguration. And besides, if it weren't the tsunami that would cause them to make this observation, it would be the troops. And if it weren't the troops, it would be the victims of the Bush economy, which continues to be the worst in the history of the world (except for that blissful time known as the Carter administration).
If the inauguration were cancelled at this point, the Federal government would either have to pay the vendors anyway, in which case, most of the $50 million would still be spent, or it would have to spend a fair amount protecting itself from lawsuits. Not only that, it could severely damage many small businesses. Given that the inauguration is being held in Washington, at least some of those businesses would be run primarily by minorities.
But there is a deeper arrogance here. It is that the critics are the ones who know how money should be spent. A free economy disappears in their eyes, replaced by a carefully planned economy where money is dispersed based upon perceived value. The Mets, for instance, would be prohibited from spending $172 million for 11 combined years of Pedro Martinez's and Carlos Beltran's services. I mean, how can you pay that much money for that when teachers only get $45,000 a year?
Mel Gibson would be forced to give up much of the money he made from The Passion of the Christ so that social workers could be more handsomely rewarded. No word on whether Michael Moore would have to give up any of the money he made on his "documentaries."
The fact of the matter is, we probably could and should give more to the victims of the tsunami. And perhaps President Bush should pressure his donors to make contributions to tsunami aid in addition their donations for the inauguration. But those decisions are for the people who have the money. It is no more appropriate for the government or some conscience cabal to give someone else's money than it is for me to give one of Reggie Jackson's cars to the Salvation Army to sell. The changes these people want are changes of the heart that cannot be mandated by legislative fiat.
Hollywood spent a fair amount of money last night on The Peoples' Choice awards, which starts the annual spring throng of vapid awards shows. If Bush should give inauguration money and cancel his party, why should Hollywood not do the same? Why should the NFL not be shamed into cancelling its party scheduled for Jacksonville next month. After all, it's just a football game. If it were played at a high school stadium someplace, think of how much money could be give in tsunami aid.
But those suggestions are rarely made, and that is the ultimate hypocrisy. Many of the people making this criticism would not be had John Kerry won. After all, it is appropriate to have a big party after you dispose of a Republican. It is only celebrating a Republican victory that is repugnant. And as a bonus, you can use that victory to portray people as evil because they dare party while someone suffers.
The criticism is not about the tsunami victims--they are convenient pawns; it is about hatred.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Jesus asks why I don't go to church
"So how come you don't go to church?" Jesus asked me. He'd come over last Sunday morning and was watching Sunday NFL Countdown on ESPN with me.
I said nothing, instead paying attention to what Chris Mortensen said about my beloved Jets. Quarterback Chad Pennington's recent spat with the media were the focus of his report, along with an indication that the Jets really needed to win this week's game against the Rams, if only to break the pall that was cast over the team.
"Stupid stinkin' Jets," I said. "They'll lose today. What a bunch of idiots!"
"I thought you liked the Jets," he said.
I shrugged.
"I do, but they are a joke this year," I said.
"They've won ten games and odds are they are going to make the playoffs. A few years ago, they won just one game and you ragged on them, too," Jesus said.
"They haven't beaten a decent team this year. They've had an incredibly easy schedule--"
"And they made the playoffs," He said. "In fact, they've made the playoffs, what? Three of the last five years? There would have been a day when you thought that was the promised land."
I glanced over at Him from the couch. I really disliked Him sometimes.
"They have no shot at winning the Super Bowl," I said. "They're a joke."
Jesus looked at me and shook His head. It was something I had gotten used to.
"So why don't you go to church?" Jesus asked.
"I used to."
"I know."
"I don't any more."
"I know."
I sighed and tried to pay attention to Chris Berman. I really wished He could talk about something nice, and comfortable. It was Sunday, afterall, why can't He talk about football.
"They pissed me off," I said.
"Why?"
I sighed. I was hoping for a news bulletin about the impending end of the world or anything else that would allow me to not continue this discussion.
"They crapped on me, rather."
He nodded, then looked at His knees for a minute, then looked up at me.
"I'm sorry to hear that," He said. And He left it at that.
I hate it when people play that quiet card, when they shut up and let an uncomfortable silence descend and sit there until I have to say something.
"I worked pretty hard for them. There were some weekends when I would be involved in four, five, even six ministries in the course of a weekend. It was like work."
"And what happened?" He asked.
"They started pushing me, sometimes aggressively for more. I'd tell them I can't go to a meeting, and they'd push me to go, too. Sometimes, they'd basically say that Gawdd wanted me to go so that His glory could be properly honored in the Mass or the bulletin or whatever they wanted me to work on."
He nodded.
"What happened then?"
"Then, they started telling me that I wasn't good enough. I wasn't thinking right, or that my efforts as an usher weren't professional, or that they just decided that it would be better for the parrish if I were to find another ministry instead of the one that I was on."
He looked at Andrea Kremer talking about the Vikings. I wondered if He found her attractive. I wondered what she looked like in a bikini.
"They made me feel like I was an embarrassment to the parrish," I said.
"They made you feel that?" He asked. "Aren't you giving them an awful lot of power over you?"
"I suppose so," I said. "Our church is organized in the round. That's so we can all sit around the table of the Lord and come together as a family. It felt more like a weekly performance appraisal than a meeting with my Father who loves me."
He nodded.
"I don't need a weekly performance appraisal before the Lord," I said. "If so, I fail. Just send me to hell now."
He nodded again.
"How much of this is you and how much is them?"
"They are so concerned that the liturgy be perfect and that all the rules be followed and that everything look pretty for Jeesusuh that they have no concept that they are crapping on people to make it so. They don't give a rat's ass about the people they might run off. After all, it's a brand new Gawd Palace and if the white trash doesn't like it, maybe as the area grows, they will get some decent people who will replace them."
Jesus pulled his head back. His eyes widened.
"Don't mince words, Chris. What do you really think?"
"I think they are more concerned with being important through the majesty of the liturgy than they are about loving Your people."
He nodded again.
"That's a pretty heavy accusation."
"I have felt the back end of their concerns," I said. "And I'm not the only one who thinks that the parrish feels corporate since we moved into that damned showplace. I liked it better in the old place. It was tight and old and looked like hell, and it was home. I could be comfortable there. Now it's all about projecting the right image for our new building. They're selfish, arrogant, self-righteous sons of bit--"
Jesus leaned forward.
"Careful," He said quietly, "those are my people, too. And they need me as much as you do. And in some very powerful ways, they are better than you are."
I shook my head.
"So what? I should go submit and let them crap on me and other people because they are more important to You than I am?"
"I didn't say that. I said that in some ways, they are better. In some ways, you are, too," He said. "But yeah, to some degree, the Bible says you have to submit and obey. Paul is pretty clear on that."
"So you're mad at me for getting mad."
"I didn't say that, either," He said. "Except for the hyperbole, you have some valid points."
"So what do you want from me?" I asked him.
He looked over at me. I wasn't looking at him as I spoke to him any more. I was looking at the TV, but had no idea any more what they were saying.
"What do you want?"
"They hurt me. And some other people, too. I want you to fix it."
"I can't," He said.
"Or won't."
He nodded.
"Or won't," Jesus said.
I sighed.
"I want you to go be part of church. I want you to go and participate even if it hurts you right now. I want you to not be so easily swayed about where you stand in from the Father based on what people say. It is hurting you at least as much not to go as it hurts you to go."
I pursed my lip. I'd have said something, but I couldn't figure out what to say.
"Do you remember the conversation where I said that I like you?" Jesus asked. I nodded. "I really do. And that's not going to change, even if allow other people to make you feel differently. Your standing in front of me is not predicated on their feelings."
"So I can go give them hell," I said.
"You'll do what? Say that they are failing my Father? That they are daring to push people away from Him and that they'd better get it right, or God will be unhappy with them?"
"Well, uhhhh, I..."
Damn Him and His perfect logic. It's like trying to hit a tennis ball through the garage door. No matter how hard you hit it or what you do to the ball, it keeps coming back. I hate that.
"Do you really want them to feel the way you feel now?"
I sighed. He had me.
"They are leaders because My Father either put them there and allowed them to be there. It is yours to honor that leadership, even if you disagree with it. And as you struggle against the situation you are in, you might learn something that you can use later on to help someone to see My Father better."
I said nothing.
"You are rather good at that," He said. "You are certainly not the holiest person there is, but you do a good job taking your experiences and molding them into things that help people see the Father."
Damn right, I thought briefly. About damn time, He said something good-- Then, almost immediately, I knew it was wrong to think that. It was me making myself into something that needs to be honored. And I felt very small in front of Him.
"Relax," He said. "I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere."
He leaned back on the couch and made Himself comfortable.
"And most people take a long time to get that point. Some people never do. It's a hard thing to understand and deal with," He said. "It is an accomplishment that you have understood it."
For a flash of a second, I felt proud, then I felt guilty and ashamed about being proud. Then, as the pre-game show continued and ended and the game began, I felt humbled, but honored that Jesus would complement me. And I felt good...not exactly good, but somehow I felt more than I had earlier that He cared enough to take me through this and help me to see the other side.
"Oh, by the way," He said. "Andrea Kremer is attractive. And it isn't wrong for you to think that, but it would be best if you left it at that."
I said nothing, instead paying attention to what Chris Mortensen said about my beloved Jets. Quarterback Chad Pennington's recent spat with the media were the focus of his report, along with an indication that the Jets really needed to win this week's game against the Rams, if only to break the pall that was cast over the team.
"Stupid stinkin' Jets," I said. "They'll lose today. What a bunch of idiots!"
"I thought you liked the Jets," he said.
I shrugged.
"I do, but they are a joke this year," I said.
"They've won ten games and odds are they are going to make the playoffs. A few years ago, they won just one game and you ragged on them, too," Jesus said.
"They haven't beaten a decent team this year. They've had an incredibly easy schedule--"
"And they made the playoffs," He said. "In fact, they've made the playoffs, what? Three of the last five years? There would have been a day when you thought that was the promised land."
I glanced over at Him from the couch. I really disliked Him sometimes.
"They have no shot at winning the Super Bowl," I said. "They're a joke."
Jesus looked at me and shook His head. It was something I had gotten used to.
"So why don't you go to church?" Jesus asked.
"I used to."
"I know."
"I don't any more."
"I know."
I sighed and tried to pay attention to Chris Berman. I really wished He could talk about something nice, and comfortable. It was Sunday, afterall, why can't He talk about football.
"They pissed me off," I said.
"Why?"
I sighed. I was hoping for a news bulletin about the impending end of the world or anything else that would allow me to not continue this discussion.
"They crapped on me, rather."
He nodded, then looked at His knees for a minute, then looked up at me.
"I'm sorry to hear that," He said. And He left it at that.
I hate it when people play that quiet card, when they shut up and let an uncomfortable silence descend and sit there until I have to say something.
"I worked pretty hard for them. There were some weekends when I would be involved in four, five, even six ministries in the course of a weekend. It was like work."
"And what happened?" He asked.
"They started pushing me, sometimes aggressively for more. I'd tell them I can't go to a meeting, and they'd push me to go, too. Sometimes, they'd basically say that Gawdd wanted me to go so that His glory could be properly honored in the Mass or the bulletin or whatever they wanted me to work on."
He nodded.
"What happened then?"
"Then, they started telling me that I wasn't good enough. I wasn't thinking right, or that my efforts as an usher weren't professional, or that they just decided that it would be better for the parrish if I were to find another ministry instead of the one that I was on."
He looked at Andrea Kremer talking about the Vikings. I wondered if He found her attractive. I wondered what she looked like in a bikini.
"They made me feel like I was an embarrassment to the parrish," I said.
"They made you feel that?" He asked. "Aren't you giving them an awful lot of power over you?"
"I suppose so," I said. "Our church is organized in the round. That's so we can all sit around the table of the Lord and come together as a family. It felt more like a weekly performance appraisal than a meeting with my Father who loves me."
He nodded.
"I don't need a weekly performance appraisal before the Lord," I said. "If so, I fail. Just send me to hell now."
He nodded again.
"How much of this is you and how much is them?"
"They are so concerned that the liturgy be perfect and that all the rules be followed and that everything look pretty for Jeesusuh that they have no concept that they are crapping on people to make it so. They don't give a rat's ass about the people they might run off. After all, it's a brand new Gawd Palace and if the white trash doesn't like it, maybe as the area grows, they will get some decent people who will replace them."
Jesus pulled his head back. His eyes widened.
"Don't mince words, Chris. What do you really think?"
"I think they are more concerned with being important through the majesty of the liturgy than they are about loving Your people."
He nodded again.
"That's a pretty heavy accusation."
"I have felt the back end of their concerns," I said. "And I'm not the only one who thinks that the parrish feels corporate since we moved into that damned showplace. I liked it better in the old place. It was tight and old and looked like hell, and it was home. I could be comfortable there. Now it's all about projecting the right image for our new building. They're selfish, arrogant, self-righteous sons of bit--"
Jesus leaned forward.
"Careful," He said quietly, "those are my people, too. And they need me as much as you do. And in some very powerful ways, they are better than you are."
I shook my head.
"So what? I should go submit and let them crap on me and other people because they are more important to You than I am?"
"I didn't say that. I said that in some ways, they are better. In some ways, you are, too," He said. "But yeah, to some degree, the Bible says you have to submit and obey. Paul is pretty clear on that."
"So you're mad at me for getting mad."
"I didn't say that, either," He said. "Except for the hyperbole, you have some valid points."
"So what do you want from me?" I asked him.
He looked over at me. I wasn't looking at him as I spoke to him any more. I was looking at the TV, but had no idea any more what they were saying.
"What do you want?"
"They hurt me. And some other people, too. I want you to fix it."
"I can't," He said.
"Or won't."
He nodded.
"Or won't," Jesus said.
I sighed.
"I want you to go be part of church. I want you to go and participate even if it hurts you right now. I want you to not be so easily swayed about where you stand in from the Father based on what people say. It is hurting you at least as much not to go as it hurts you to go."
I pursed my lip. I'd have said something, but I couldn't figure out what to say.
"Do you remember the conversation where I said that I like you?" Jesus asked. I nodded. "I really do. And that's not going to change, even if allow other people to make you feel differently. Your standing in front of me is not predicated on their feelings."
"So I can go give them hell," I said.
"You'll do what? Say that they are failing my Father? That they are daring to push people away from Him and that they'd better get it right, or God will be unhappy with them?"
"Well, uhhhh, I..."
Damn Him and His perfect logic. It's like trying to hit a tennis ball through the garage door. No matter how hard you hit it or what you do to the ball, it keeps coming back. I hate that.
"Do you really want them to feel the way you feel now?"
I sighed. He had me.
"They are leaders because My Father either put them there and allowed them to be there. It is yours to honor that leadership, even if you disagree with it. And as you struggle against the situation you are in, you might learn something that you can use later on to help someone to see My Father better."
I said nothing.
"You are rather good at that," He said. "You are certainly not the holiest person there is, but you do a good job taking your experiences and molding them into things that help people see the Father."
Damn right, I thought briefly. About damn time, He said something good-- Then, almost immediately, I knew it was wrong to think that. It was me making myself into something that needs to be honored. And I felt very small in front of Him.
"Relax," He said. "I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere."
He leaned back on the couch and made Himself comfortable.
"And most people take a long time to get that point. Some people never do. It's a hard thing to understand and deal with," He said. "It is an accomplishment that you have understood it."
For a flash of a second, I felt proud, then I felt guilty and ashamed about being proud. Then, as the pre-game show continued and ended and the game began, I felt humbled, but honored that Jesus would complement me. And I felt good...not exactly good, but somehow I felt more than I had earlier that He cared enough to take me through this and help me to see the other side.
"Oh, by the way," He said. "Andrea Kremer is attractive. And it isn't wrong for you to think that, but it would be best if you left it at that."
Monday, January 03, 2005
A Complex Simplicity
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
It is really that simple? A friend of mine said that it is. I'm not sure that it is.
The words, on their face, are simple. God loved us and sent us His Son so that we might not enter into permanent death. Very simple words.
Very profound implications.
If this is true, what does it mean about aid to tsunami victims? What does it say about your conduct with the person who has seered your heart? What does it say about your relationship with your wife and kids? Or your conduct on the job?
That's where it gets complicated. It really is that simple, but the simple things are the ones with the most profound implications and that are the hardest to put into place.
I have evolved into a different person; almost everyone does. I understand things I didn't understand before. I have been remade. But I have more than four decades of habits to break, and that's hard.
My Father loves me, no matter what. And His Son does, too, and has called me His friend. The rest ought not to matter. The pain of the day and the slights of the past should not bother me because in the grand scheme, they can't hurt me. They just can't. When the day is done, I can come to Him and make my home with Him and abide by Him and He will love me.
Nothing else ought to matter. But it will.
It's just that simple.
It is really that simple? A friend of mine said that it is. I'm not sure that it is.
The words, on their face, are simple. God loved us and sent us His Son so that we might not enter into permanent death. Very simple words.
Very profound implications.
If this is true, what does it mean about aid to tsunami victims? What does it say about your conduct with the person who has seered your heart? What does it say about your relationship with your wife and kids? Or your conduct on the job?
That's where it gets complicated. It really is that simple, but the simple things are the ones with the most profound implications and that are the hardest to put into place.
I have evolved into a different person; almost everyone does. I understand things I didn't understand before. I have been remade. But I have more than four decades of habits to break, and that's hard.
My Father loves me, no matter what. And His Son does, too, and has called me His friend. The rest ought not to matter. The pain of the day and the slights of the past should not bother me because in the grand scheme, they can't hurt me. They just can't. When the day is done, I can come to Him and make my home with Him and abide by Him and He will love me.
Nothing else ought to matter. But it will.
It's just that simple.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Jesus Calls Me on My Cell Phone
I was out taking a walk on Sunday. It was beautiful, a day that was what God intended, I think, when he created them. I was walking along a road about two miles from my house, with nice upper-middle class homes on both sides and trees scattered here and there that were about six shades more vivid green than they should have been. I expected that it was a nice day where the houses weren't as affluent or the trees as well cared for, but it probably wasn't quite as pretty.
It was still cool enough that the humidity didn't require you to shower immediately on re-entering the house, and there was a pleasant breeze. In short, it was a day that the Chamber of Commerce would make a mint on if they were to bottle it and send it up to the snowy northeast.
I smiled at a lady walking her dog back by. It was a short-haired mutt that could have looked scary and mean, but was too excitable and too happy to see whoever happened to be closest.
"Herman!" she scolded at him, "let the man go by."
Herman looked sad as I walked by him and it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to play with him.
About five minutes later, as I rounded the corner so I could see the strip mall and the end of the street, my cell phone rang.
"Hello."
"Hi, Chris," Jesus said. "It's me."
"How are you?"
"I think I'm fighting off a cold. I'm tired and my throat feels a little raw and I've been sneezing up a storm."
"You ever try Zycam?" I asked.
"What's that?"
"It's like Coldeeze, but you spray it in your nose."
"I don't like nasal sprays," Jesus said. "I get all that gunk up in my sinuses and it drives me crazy."
"This just coats your nose. It gives you the zinc without everything tasting like crap," I said.
"Cool, thanks," Jesus said. It was somewhat surreal giving Jesus suggestions about how to fight a cold.
"I was thinking about what we talked about last night," Jesus said. "You were thinking about how you didn't want your son to go through some of the things you've gone through."
"Yes, I was," I said somewhat defiantly. "As you recall, I have depression issues. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."
"It's too late," Jesus said, "your worst enemy has suffered with depression for a long time and you have missed a lot of opportunities to reach out to her."
"Her?"
"Another discussion for another time," Jesus said. "But you know that your kids are going to suffer from depression or something equally as weighty in their lifetime. You understand this, right?"
"Yeah," I said.
There was quiet on His side of the phone. I looked up at the sun, so that I could bask in its warmth.
"If you prevent them from experiencing this stuff...if you hide it from them, they will never be able to deal with hard things."
"They're going to get enough of that without my adding to it," I said. It had been a nice day for a walk and I didn't really want to cover this territory now.
"Paul prayed three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh," Jesus said. "And it wasn't a typical prayer. He begged God to do it. He wept bitter tears and became angry. Some of those prayers lasted weeks. It ripped at his soul."
"And I am supposed to wish this on my children," I said, the edge of sarcasm creeping into my voice.
Would you rather have your children be happy here or after here?"
"I choose that it is not mutually exclusive," I said.
Jesus laughed at me. Always nice, when the Creator of the Universe laughs at you.
"That is not something even I was able to pull off," He said.
"I can't wish my kids the pain that I have had."
"Paul's thorn is the thing that drove him to My Father," Jesus said. "Without it, he would have never realized that he needed me. If it had been removed, he wouldn't have had to rely on My Father. Paul had a raging ego, you know."
I smiled.
"I noticed."
"I want your children to be dependent on Me," He said. "It's the best way for them to get to where they need to be in the Long Term. That's what they need to learn from you. Not about depression or whether you are good or bad, but that My Father loves them and will always provide them a home if they just ask. You need to worry about that, not whether they have pain."
"It's easy for you to say," I said. "With all respect, you don't have kids. I can't wish them pain and agony. Particularly not mine. You can't wish that on your kids if you love them. Especially if it comes from you."
"Whether it comes from you or them, it's going to come. You need to be there for them and let them know that they are yours no matter what, even if you disagree with what they did. You can't do that if you are getting wrapped around yourself and drinking too much."
I nodded, which, of course, Jesus couldn't hear on the phone.
"And I would say that you are on the receiving end, as well. Chris, you are going to do some incredibly stupid things. You already have. And you aren't bad or unworthy because of that. Because your Father will not walk away from you."
"Are my kids going to go to heaven?"
There was silence on the phone. I knew the answer, but that didn't stop me from asking the question.
"That's between them and God; you know that."
"Yeah," I said. "I know. But I love them and I can't think of them not being in heaven. "
"Now you know how He feels."
I walked for a while and didn't say anything.
"You like me," I said.
"Yes, I do."
I said good bye and walked and smiled.
It was still cool enough that the humidity didn't require you to shower immediately on re-entering the house, and there was a pleasant breeze. In short, it was a day that the Chamber of Commerce would make a mint on if they were to bottle it and send it up to the snowy northeast.
I smiled at a lady walking her dog back by. It was a short-haired mutt that could have looked scary and mean, but was too excitable and too happy to see whoever happened to be closest.
"Herman!" she scolded at him, "let the man go by."
Herman looked sad as I walked by him and it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to play with him.
About five minutes later, as I rounded the corner so I could see the strip mall and the end of the street, my cell phone rang.
"Hello."
"Hi, Chris," Jesus said. "It's me."
"How are you?"
"I think I'm fighting off a cold. I'm tired and my throat feels a little raw and I've been sneezing up a storm."
"You ever try Zycam?" I asked.
"What's that?"
"It's like Coldeeze, but you spray it in your nose."
"I don't like nasal sprays," Jesus said. "I get all that gunk up in my sinuses and it drives me crazy."
"This just coats your nose. It gives you the zinc without everything tasting like crap," I said.
"Cool, thanks," Jesus said. It was somewhat surreal giving Jesus suggestions about how to fight a cold.
"I was thinking about what we talked about last night," Jesus said. "You were thinking about how you didn't want your son to go through some of the things you've gone through."
"Yes, I was," I said somewhat defiantly. "As you recall, I have depression issues. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy."
"It's too late," Jesus said, "your worst enemy has suffered with depression for a long time and you have missed a lot of opportunities to reach out to her."
"Her?"
"Another discussion for another time," Jesus said. "But you know that your kids are going to suffer from depression or something equally as weighty in their lifetime. You understand this, right?"
"Yeah," I said.
There was quiet on His side of the phone. I looked up at the sun, so that I could bask in its warmth.
"If you prevent them from experiencing this stuff...if you hide it from them, they will never be able to deal with hard things."
"They're going to get enough of that without my adding to it," I said. It had been a nice day for a walk and I didn't really want to cover this territory now.
"Paul prayed three times for God to remove the thorn from his flesh," Jesus said. "And it wasn't a typical prayer. He begged God to do it. He wept bitter tears and became angry. Some of those prayers lasted weeks. It ripped at his soul."
"And I am supposed to wish this on my children," I said, the edge of sarcasm creeping into my voice.
Would you rather have your children be happy here or after here?"
"I choose that it is not mutually exclusive," I said.
Jesus laughed at me. Always nice, when the Creator of the Universe laughs at you.
"That is not something even I was able to pull off," He said.
"I can't wish my kids the pain that I have had."
"Paul's thorn is the thing that drove him to My Father," Jesus said. "Without it, he would have never realized that he needed me. If it had been removed, he wouldn't have had to rely on My Father. Paul had a raging ego, you know."
I smiled.
"I noticed."
"I want your children to be dependent on Me," He said. "It's the best way for them to get to where they need to be in the Long Term. That's what they need to learn from you. Not about depression or whether you are good or bad, but that My Father loves them and will always provide them a home if they just ask. You need to worry about that, not whether they have pain."
"It's easy for you to say," I said. "With all respect, you don't have kids. I can't wish them pain and agony. Particularly not mine. You can't wish that on your kids if you love them. Especially if it comes from you."
"Whether it comes from you or them, it's going to come. You need to be there for them and let them know that they are yours no matter what, even if you disagree with what they did. You can't do that if you are getting wrapped around yourself and drinking too much."
I nodded, which, of course, Jesus couldn't hear on the phone.
"And I would say that you are on the receiving end, as well. Chris, you are going to do some incredibly stupid things. You already have. And you aren't bad or unworthy because of that. Because your Father will not walk away from you."
"Are my kids going to go to heaven?"
There was silence on the phone. I knew the answer, but that didn't stop me from asking the question.
"That's between them and God; you know that."
"Yeah," I said. "I know. But I love them and I can't think of them not being in heaven. "
"Now you know how He feels."
I walked for a while and didn't say anything.
"You like me," I said.
"Yes, I do."
I said good bye and walked and smiled.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Jesus Hugs Me
I'd had two big beers and dinner and a bottle of champagne after and my eyes seemed destined to tear up as I typed. It had been a hard day.
You see, I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life and my kids...it breaks my heart sometimes to think about the example I have given them.
I listen to a man of God on the Internet. His father was an alcoholic. Alcoholism is not the root cause of alcoholism. You don't escape from yourself because you are an alcoholic. You escape from yourself because what you are hurts you. The alcohol just makes the pain go away for a little while. You become an alcoholic because you have a predisposition to it.
I don't. But I understand depression. My wife doesn't. I hope that my kids never do, either. But if they don't, they are going to have some difficult things to work out. And today, I understood the depth of some of those things. I hope they never understand, but I fear that they will.
Jesus stood next to me at the beer and wine department at Publix, a local supermarket chain. Cook's champagne was on sale and I was trying to figure out whether I wanted Brut or Extra Dry.
"What's up with you?" Jesus said.
"I want to get drunk."
"Why is that?"
"You're Jesus," I said. "You figure it out."
"You're kind of bitchy tonight."
I reached out and touched the champagne to make sure it was cold. Warm champagne sucks.
"Did it take your divine powers to figure that one out?" I asked him.
"No, that one was apparent to the person you yelled at for touching their brakes."
I chuckled in spite of myself.
"There was no reason to brake at that point," I said. "Though your point is well taken."
I smiled at Him. Not entirely happily. Sometimes I hate it when He is right.
"You have had a couple," He said.
"Yes I have, but I walked here."
"I know. It is good that you did."
He went though the checkout with me, talking to me. He made the cashier laugh, when he almost doubled over in laughter after she proofed me. I am almost twice the legal drinking age, though I don't mind people thinking I'm not.
Eventually, he wound up in my front room, which I have made my office, as I chatted on the Internet and drank what I brought home.
"Why are you so sad?" he asked.
"You're friggin God. You tell me."
He smiled and looked at the laptop where Game Six of the 1975 Series was playing. Bernie Carbo had just hit his game-tying home run on the second PC on my desk. I had the baseball package on the Internet and a laptop from work that I could use to stream things on while I did other things.
"Red Sox fans were in love with me after Fisk hit that home run," He said. "You should have heard them after Joe Morgan homered the next night...or Bucky Dent in '78. And if My Father were as mean as people think, half of New England would have been charred in '86."
I didn't chuckle or giggle that time. I outright laughed. As someone who had to deal with the slings and arrows of Mets fandom, I understood.
"You must have been popular last year," I said, referring to the Red Sox finally winning after 86 years.
"Yeah. Didn't have anything to do with the fact that they finally had a better team," He said.
"They had a better team in '78," I said.
"No they didn't."
I sucked down the last of my champagne.
"Is there a point you are trying to make?" I asked.
"I know why your soul hurts," he said, "and you ought to thank me for it."
"You're nuts."
He picked up the mostly empty champagne bottle, shook his head slightly, and put it down.
"Before you got laid off, would you say that you had substance?"
"Yeah, but not as much as I do now."
"And would you say that experience, and all the awful things you did during that experience helped you in the long run or hurt you?"
I picked up the glass and sipped.
"It helped me. A guy I know told me that I would be thankful for the experience when it was over and that I'd look at it as a good thing," I said. "And to answer the question you are about to ask, I do look at it as a good thing."
"Why?"
"Because I understand some things now that I didn't before and I can help people who go through those things."
He leaned back on the bed in my office and looked at me.
"Why are you drinking tonight?"
"I'm afraid of what I am doing to the kids," I said. "My son doesn't like me. He won't speak to me and when he does, it is often with contempt."
He laughed.
"You've been a parent for almost 12 years, with your daughter," He said. "You have to know by now that kids will do that. It isn't a reason to fall apart."
"He sees in me what I see...a man who...a bad example."
"In some things, you are right. But does he know you love him?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"And are you going to get loaded any more over this?"
"Maybe. Not any time soon though...new years resolution. I gotta cut out the drink and the junk food."
"How come?"
"Because it will eventually kill me if I don't."
He smiled at me. Broadly.
"Do you know what your son will learn from you tomorrow?"
"How to be a screw up?"
"No, he will learn that even when stuff hurts, you can go on and try harder and do the right thing. And that one bad day is not the sum of your existence," Jesus said.
"Pretty basic."
"Yeah, it is. It's also one of the things that people miss most often," He said. "Chris, I like you. I mean I like you. I enjoy spending time with you. I like these discussions because you don't run away from them when I bring up something difficult. In fact, you seem more determined then to understand it. I enjoy your company. Seriously."
I smiled at Him. His eyes were warm and seemed to soothe my anguish, but not take it away.
"It is not silly that you hurt over this," He said, once again answering something I thought. "It may be a little melodramatic how you play it out, but it's not silly."
I nodded.
"My father understands that pain. He understands what it's like when His child ignores Him and won't acknowledge His existence," Jesus said. "Hurts, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I guess I will try to do it less often."
"You are going to be tired in the morning. Go to bed. We'll talk more another time."
You see, I have suffered from depression for most of my adult life and my kids...it breaks my heart sometimes to think about the example I have given them.
I listen to a man of God on the Internet. His father was an alcoholic. Alcoholism is not the root cause of alcoholism. You don't escape from yourself because you are an alcoholic. You escape from yourself because what you are hurts you. The alcohol just makes the pain go away for a little while. You become an alcoholic because you have a predisposition to it.
I don't. But I understand depression. My wife doesn't. I hope that my kids never do, either. But if they don't, they are going to have some difficult things to work out. And today, I understood the depth of some of those things. I hope they never understand, but I fear that they will.
Jesus stood next to me at the beer and wine department at Publix, a local supermarket chain. Cook's champagne was on sale and I was trying to figure out whether I wanted Brut or Extra Dry.
"What's up with you?" Jesus said.
"I want to get drunk."
"Why is that?"
"You're Jesus," I said. "You figure it out."
"You're kind of bitchy tonight."
I reached out and touched the champagne to make sure it was cold. Warm champagne sucks.
"Did it take your divine powers to figure that one out?" I asked him.
"No, that one was apparent to the person you yelled at for touching their brakes."
I chuckled in spite of myself.
"There was no reason to brake at that point," I said. "Though your point is well taken."
I smiled at Him. Not entirely happily. Sometimes I hate it when He is right.
"You have had a couple," He said.
"Yes I have, but I walked here."
"I know. It is good that you did."
He went though the checkout with me, talking to me. He made the cashier laugh, when he almost doubled over in laughter after she proofed me. I am almost twice the legal drinking age, though I don't mind people thinking I'm not.
Eventually, he wound up in my front room, which I have made my office, as I chatted on the Internet and drank what I brought home.
"Why are you so sad?" he asked.
"You're friggin God. You tell me."
He smiled and looked at the laptop where Game Six of the 1975 Series was playing. Bernie Carbo had just hit his game-tying home run on the second PC on my desk. I had the baseball package on the Internet and a laptop from work that I could use to stream things on while I did other things.
"Red Sox fans were in love with me after Fisk hit that home run," He said. "You should have heard them after Joe Morgan homered the next night...or Bucky Dent in '78. And if My Father were as mean as people think, half of New England would have been charred in '86."
I didn't chuckle or giggle that time. I outright laughed. As someone who had to deal with the slings and arrows of Mets fandom, I understood.
"You must have been popular last year," I said, referring to the Red Sox finally winning after 86 years.
"Yeah. Didn't have anything to do with the fact that they finally had a better team," He said.
"They had a better team in '78," I said.
"No they didn't."
I sucked down the last of my champagne.
"Is there a point you are trying to make?" I asked.
"I know why your soul hurts," he said, "and you ought to thank me for it."
"You're nuts."
He picked up the mostly empty champagne bottle, shook his head slightly, and put it down.
"Before you got laid off, would you say that you had substance?"
"Yeah, but not as much as I do now."
"And would you say that experience, and all the awful things you did during that experience helped you in the long run or hurt you?"
I picked up the glass and sipped.
"It helped me. A guy I know told me that I would be thankful for the experience when it was over and that I'd look at it as a good thing," I said. "And to answer the question you are about to ask, I do look at it as a good thing."
"Why?"
"Because I understand some things now that I didn't before and I can help people who go through those things."
He leaned back on the bed in my office and looked at me.
"Why are you drinking tonight?"
"I'm afraid of what I am doing to the kids," I said. "My son doesn't like me. He won't speak to me and when he does, it is often with contempt."
He laughed.
"You've been a parent for almost 12 years, with your daughter," He said. "You have to know by now that kids will do that. It isn't a reason to fall apart."
"He sees in me what I see...a man who...a bad example."
"In some things, you are right. But does he know you love him?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"And are you going to get loaded any more over this?"
"Maybe. Not any time soon though...new years resolution. I gotta cut out the drink and the junk food."
"How come?"
"Because it will eventually kill me if I don't."
He smiled at me. Broadly.
"Do you know what your son will learn from you tomorrow?"
"How to be a screw up?"
"No, he will learn that even when stuff hurts, you can go on and try harder and do the right thing. And that one bad day is not the sum of your existence," Jesus said.
"Pretty basic."
"Yeah, it is. It's also one of the things that people miss most often," He said. "Chris, I like you. I mean I like you. I enjoy spending time with you. I like these discussions because you don't run away from them when I bring up something difficult. In fact, you seem more determined then to understand it. I enjoy your company. Seriously."
I smiled at Him. His eyes were warm and seemed to soothe my anguish, but not take it away.
"It is not silly that you hurt over this," He said, once again answering something I thought. "It may be a little melodramatic how you play it out, but it's not silly."
I nodded.
"My father understands that pain. He understands what it's like when His child ignores Him and won't acknowledge His existence," Jesus said. "Hurts, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I guess I will try to do it less often."
"You are going to be tired in the morning. Go to bed. We'll talk more another time."
Jesus, the Tsunami, and the Hawaiian Shirt
I ran into Jesus when I was buying another Hawaiian shirt the other day at Wal-Mart. I have several Hawaiian shirts, but they all need to be washed in cold water, so it's kind of a pain. So I figured I would buy one so I didn't have to do a cold wash as often. They're only ten bucks, unless I let myself get large enough to need a double-extra large, which I have avoided so far.
I was scoping out a black Hawaiian shirt with electric blue palm trees when Jesus came.
"You know," Jesus said, "those shirts are made in China."
"Last one I bought was made in Korea," I said. "And before you go off on the social justice tangent, if I don't buy it, someone else will. And also, if there aren't people buying these shirts, how are those people going to be able to afford to eat?"
He sighed and shook his head. He was wearing a U2 t-shirt and jeans and Reebok running shoes.
"We need to talk about those things," Jesus said.
"You gonna hit me over the head with the social justice mallet?" I said.
"No, I want you to think about what you are doing."
"That's fair," I said, as I considered a yellow and orange Hawaiian shirt. It was loud, which is pretty much the point with Hawaiian shirts, but it might have been too much. I work with accountants. And though the place in which I work is pretty open-minded about attire, I didn't think they were ready for shirts that came with optional sunglasses.
"I have a question for you," I said.
"Okay."
"Well, you're getting ready to get after me about buying stuff that enslaves poor people," I said. He bobbed his head a little to indicate that I wasn't quite right, but got the gist of it. "But what about that giant tidal wave?"
"What about it?"
I put the orange shirt back and mulled over the selection.
"Well, when someone flies an airplane into a building or feuding warlords cause a lot of people to starve to death because they don't let the food through, you can right it off to man's free agency. I mean, that's all free will. But the tsunami...there's no free will there. It's what the insurance companies call an Act of God.
"And though I'm not certain that God said, 'Hey, I know what will liven things up...I'll kill a quarter million people with a giant tidal wave,' He didn't do much to stop it, either. What's the story with that?"
Jesus said nothing. Instead he fiddled with the Bucs jersey on the stand next to mine.
"The Bucs are going to let Alstott go after this year," he said. "They have to, because of the salary cap."
"Probably," I said. I thought about pressing him for the answer, but decided instead to just see what he had to say. It was a technique that I'd read about from multiple people. Most people don't like silence and they will fill it, if only to hear their own voice. And they will answer questions they might not ordinarily answer, if you keep quiet.
There's only so much quiet in the middle of a Super Walmart, but the question was still out there, and it hadn't been answered. I almost told him that he was God and I wanted an answer.
"I'm not going to satisfy you with the answer," he said. "It's not going to make sense to you."
"Try me," I said. The defiance was more evident in my voice than I might have wanted. But the more I though about it, the more I thought the tone was proper. "What in the hell were you trying to accomplish with that?"
"How much have you given to help?" he asked.
"Some. Not everything."
"You are supposed to tithe. Hell, you're supposed to do more than that," Jesus said. "And you don't."
"No, I don't. Are you suggesting that if everyone were to tithe, this wouldn't happen?"
"No. It is what it is," he said. "God isn't Gepetto. He's not the Divine Puppetmaster, up there pulling all the strings so that Lassie always saves Timmy from the well. In real life, sometimes Timmy doesn't make it."
I nodded and slid the shirt back on the rack. I looked some more at the other shirts.
"You're being patronizing," I said. "I know that sometimes Timmy doesn't make it. I was unemployed for 19 months and I fight depression on a nearly continual basis. I know that God was speaking when Loretta Lynn said she didn't promise a rose garden."
Jesus looked up at me, almost with surprise.
"Wow," Jesus said, "you're old."
I thought about saying "bite me" but decided that wouldn't be appropriate. Just in case. Instead, I just kept looking at him. It was as if the people at Walmart didn't exist. It was like we had been transported to some minimalist stage someplace with three or four clothing racks, me, and Jesus.
And The Question.
Jesus sighed. And for the first time, He looked tired. As if the weight of a million broken hearts were baring down on him. For all I knew, it was. He looked old, and somewhat beaten down. And then the look passed. I made a mental note to ask about that sometime.
"There isn't enough time to tell you all the reasons that happened," he said. "One of the reasons is that if the earth doesn't periodically shift, it will eventually disintegrate. Earthquakes are necessary."
"In civil courts, they call that a design flaw," I said. "And companies often end up millions of dollars over it."
"You aren't being disrespectful," he said. His eyes were intense, but didn't bore through me like they had the previous day when we had dinner with Marty. "There are several hundred people who are in heaven now, who weren't before that happened."
"And there are several hundred thousand children without parents today," I said. "Is their pain really worth the joy of the people who are now in heaven?"
"Yes, it is."
I sighed. Pretty deeply. He was right. I didn't like the answer. I still don't.
"Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents would tell you not to do things, and how it would irritate you?"
"Father knows best?" I asked. "Please."
Jesus was really pissing me off.
"Not exactly. It's just that you don't understand. You can't see where it fits and that it really makes sense overall."
"So you are saying I just need to accept it as part of my faith? How can you say that when you bust my chops about the effect of buying a friggin' Hawaiian shirt?"
Suddenly, we weren't on a sparsely populated stage any more. We were back in Walmart and people were staring. Apparently, I had raised my voice more than I thought.
"I mean, if you want me to do my part to help poor people, how about not sending a wall of water over them and what little they have?" I asked. My volume was lower, but I believe that my tone was harsher.
"You're angry," he said.
"Don't try that passive listening crap on me," I said. "Man, that pisses me off."
I pulled the black Hawaiian shirt with the electric blue palm trees off the rack. I was going to buy it just to spite him.
Jesus smiled, in spite of Himself. His face was softer now, and felt warm and inviting. Which didn't make an awful lot of sense, considering the fact that I was yelling at him.
"It is good that you are angry about this," He said. "I like that you are angry about this. It is much more fitting than when you get angry at hitting five red lights in a row, or when someone does something you think is stupid at work."
I shrugged somewhat sheepishly.
"Bigger minds than yours have grappled with this question since the dawn of time. You can't expect to have full understanding in a few minutes at a Walmart when saintly people have spend a lifetime in prayer and contemplation and the answers have eluded them. All I can say is that eventually, you will know."
The answer shouldn't have satisfied me. It should have pissed me off. I should have been petulant and told him that I deserved an explanation. And I guess part of me felt that way. But a bigger part thought that maybe He was right. And though, as He had pointed out the day before, everything wasn't about me, this was.
I put the Hawaiian shirt back.
I was scoping out a black Hawaiian shirt with electric blue palm trees when Jesus came.
"You know," Jesus said, "those shirts are made in China."
"Last one I bought was made in Korea," I said. "And before you go off on the social justice tangent, if I don't buy it, someone else will. And also, if there aren't people buying these shirts, how are those people going to be able to afford to eat?"
He sighed and shook his head. He was wearing a U2 t-shirt and jeans and Reebok running shoes.
"We need to talk about those things," Jesus said.
"You gonna hit me over the head with the social justice mallet?" I said.
"No, I want you to think about what you are doing."
"That's fair," I said, as I considered a yellow and orange Hawaiian shirt. It was loud, which is pretty much the point with Hawaiian shirts, but it might have been too much. I work with accountants. And though the place in which I work is pretty open-minded about attire, I didn't think they were ready for shirts that came with optional sunglasses.
"I have a question for you," I said.
"Okay."
"Well, you're getting ready to get after me about buying stuff that enslaves poor people," I said. He bobbed his head a little to indicate that I wasn't quite right, but got the gist of it. "But what about that giant tidal wave?"
"What about it?"
I put the orange shirt back and mulled over the selection.
"Well, when someone flies an airplane into a building or feuding warlords cause a lot of people to starve to death because they don't let the food through, you can right it off to man's free agency. I mean, that's all free will. But the tsunami...there's no free will there. It's what the insurance companies call an Act of God.
"And though I'm not certain that God said, 'Hey, I know what will liven things up...I'll kill a quarter million people with a giant tidal wave,' He didn't do much to stop it, either. What's the story with that?"
Jesus said nothing. Instead he fiddled with the Bucs jersey on the stand next to mine.
"The Bucs are going to let Alstott go after this year," he said. "They have to, because of the salary cap."
"Probably," I said. I thought about pressing him for the answer, but decided instead to just see what he had to say. It was a technique that I'd read about from multiple people. Most people don't like silence and they will fill it, if only to hear their own voice. And they will answer questions they might not ordinarily answer, if you keep quiet.
There's only so much quiet in the middle of a Super Walmart, but the question was still out there, and it hadn't been answered. I almost told him that he was God and I wanted an answer.
"I'm not going to satisfy you with the answer," he said. "It's not going to make sense to you."
"Try me," I said. The defiance was more evident in my voice than I might have wanted. But the more I though about it, the more I thought the tone was proper. "What in the hell were you trying to accomplish with that?"
"How much have you given to help?" he asked.
"Some. Not everything."
"You are supposed to tithe. Hell, you're supposed to do more than that," Jesus said. "And you don't."
"No, I don't. Are you suggesting that if everyone were to tithe, this wouldn't happen?"
"No. It is what it is," he said. "God isn't Gepetto. He's not the Divine Puppetmaster, up there pulling all the strings so that Lassie always saves Timmy from the well. In real life, sometimes Timmy doesn't make it."
I nodded and slid the shirt back on the rack. I looked some more at the other shirts.
"You're being patronizing," I said. "I know that sometimes Timmy doesn't make it. I was unemployed for 19 months and I fight depression on a nearly continual basis. I know that God was speaking when Loretta Lynn said she didn't promise a rose garden."
Jesus looked up at me, almost with surprise.
"Wow," Jesus said, "you're old."
I thought about saying "bite me" but decided that wouldn't be appropriate. Just in case. Instead, I just kept looking at him. It was as if the people at Walmart didn't exist. It was like we had been transported to some minimalist stage someplace with three or four clothing racks, me, and Jesus.
And The Question.
Jesus sighed. And for the first time, He looked tired. As if the weight of a million broken hearts were baring down on him. For all I knew, it was. He looked old, and somewhat beaten down. And then the look passed. I made a mental note to ask about that sometime.
"There isn't enough time to tell you all the reasons that happened," he said. "One of the reasons is that if the earth doesn't periodically shift, it will eventually disintegrate. Earthquakes are necessary."
"In civil courts, they call that a design flaw," I said. "And companies often end up millions of dollars over it."
"You aren't being disrespectful," he said. His eyes were intense, but didn't bore through me like they had the previous day when we had dinner with Marty. "There are several hundred people who are in heaven now, who weren't before that happened."
"And there are several hundred thousand children without parents today," I said. "Is their pain really worth the joy of the people who are now in heaven?"
"Yes, it is."
I sighed. Pretty deeply. He was right. I didn't like the answer. I still don't.
"Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents would tell you not to do things, and how it would irritate you?"
"Father knows best?" I asked. "Please."
Jesus was really pissing me off.
"Not exactly. It's just that you don't understand. You can't see where it fits and that it really makes sense overall."
"So you are saying I just need to accept it as part of my faith? How can you say that when you bust my chops about the effect of buying a friggin' Hawaiian shirt?"
Suddenly, we weren't on a sparsely populated stage any more. We were back in Walmart and people were staring. Apparently, I had raised my voice more than I thought.
"I mean, if you want me to do my part to help poor people, how about not sending a wall of water over them and what little they have?" I asked. My volume was lower, but I believe that my tone was harsher.
"You're angry," he said.
"Don't try that passive listening crap on me," I said. "Man, that pisses me off."
I pulled the black Hawaiian shirt with the electric blue palm trees off the rack. I was going to buy it just to spite him.
Jesus smiled, in spite of Himself. His face was softer now, and felt warm and inviting. Which didn't make an awful lot of sense, considering the fact that I was yelling at him.
"It is good that you are angry about this," He said. "I like that you are angry about this. It is much more fitting than when you get angry at hitting five red lights in a row, or when someone does something you think is stupid at work."
I shrugged somewhat sheepishly.
"Bigger minds than yours have grappled with this question since the dawn of time. You can't expect to have full understanding in a few minutes at a Walmart when saintly people have spend a lifetime in prayer and contemplation and the answers have eluded them. All I can say is that eventually, you will know."
The answer shouldn't have satisfied me. It should have pissed me off. I should have been petulant and told him that I deserved an explanation. And I guess part of me felt that way. But a bigger part thought that maybe He was right. And though, as He had pointed out the day before, everything wasn't about me, this was.
I put the Hawaiian shirt back.
My New Years Resolution
My new year's resolution this year is to break all my new year's resolutions today by noon.
But if I break them all, then, by definition, I haven't broken them all. So by breaking all my resolutions, I haven't broken all my resolutions, which means that even if I do something, I will have accomplished nothing.
My head hurts now.
And I didn't even drink very much last night.
But if I break them all, then, by definition, I haven't broken them all. So by breaking all my resolutions, I haven't broken all my resolutions, which means that even if I do something, I will have accomplished nothing.
My head hurts now.
And I didn't even drink very much last night.
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