The Drake Musing

Recap From a Season in Hell

2006-10-17T11:02:00.000-05:00

Today I stayed home from work to accomplish the following:

1. Open a new checking account.
2. Make a visit to the water company to track down a late payment and put the account in my name.
3. Buy groceries.
4. Conduct my traditional mourning ritual for a broken relationship (i.e. - get high).

What a strange and painful journey it's been since I drafted my last thoughtful blog entry at the end of Jan. In the 8 months that have passed, the following has occurred:

I was exiled from my children for about five months as a result of my poor judgment with my son.

D. and her boys moved back with me.
D. attempted suicide by eating nearly everything in the medicine chest. I initially thought it was about her finding my new stash, but she says it was about me pointing out to her the fact that if I really wanted to keep her from finding it, she never would have. This makes me think that she finally faced her utter powerlessness over me, and couldn't deal with it.
My visitation rights with my 4 youngest were restored, and we took a trip to Niagara Falls as a family - minus my oldest son. This trip was funded by a massive year-end bonus from my job.
D. agreed to stay home for at least the summer and try the stay-at-home mom thing with her boys. It was a mild disaster, from my perspective.
D. also attends about 3 meetings per week in Al-Anon, as well as a weekly counseling session, as part of her course of post-suicidal therapy. Results are mixed.
D. continues to go to church, but I stop. I am mad, and I am in no mood for sermonizing and pretense.
D. attempts to force my 17-year old daughter to attend church with her, after I'd given her a special pass to stay with me and work on a floor tiling job. The results of the encounter are disasterous after D. tries to physically pull my daughter out of the house, forcing me to intervene and tell D. that she has crossed the line.
I continue to get high on an average of once a month throughout. I also continue to smoke cigarettes.
D., on advice from her therapist, proposes an in-house separation and sexual abstinence for an undetermined period while we work on "our relationship".
Based on D's continued use of the word "relationship" instead of marriage, I point out that in order to honor God in any relationship that she could hope to have with me while we were yet unmarried (her position, not mine), she would have to leave. D. does not at this point have a job, but the stay-at-home mom experiment is now officially over.
D. and I agree to this separation, which for me is the end of the relationship. In my mind, no contact between us is advisable once she leaves this house. It is early September. I have set a hard date of 1 December for her to be out. In the meantime, we agree that she will cook and clean and do the grocery shopping until she finds a job or leaves. I will pay for her and her children's monthly expenses. This includes a student loan, insurance and trust policies. Several of these expenses have been set up online by D. to automatically deduct from my account. She purchases the groceries on her credit card and pays that expense off from my account online as well.
D. begins packing in earnest, having completely filled the front room of my home with packed boxes.
D. obtains a temp position with a large, international corporation in the area. She is making more than she did when she lived in MD. This is about 4 weeks ago.
D. and I spend about one full day every weekend arguing over the state of things. I find it very draining and unproductive, but I keep allowing myself to get sucked in. My overall assessment of the war is that she's fighting to be able to stay and dictate the terms of my rehabilitation, while I'm using every tactic I can think to speed her permanent departure.
This past weekend, after a business trip to Philly, I went over my accounts online. D. had a "bill" for 186.05, for which I wrote a check. I also deleted all of her expenses from the budget sheet I keep. I inform D., for the second time, that I prefer that she accept re-imbursement in check form rather than continuing to access my account online. D. has begun receiving paychecks of her own. This, in addition to having informed me several weeks ago that she has enough money to move into an apartment. A deposit and first month's rent. Assuming that she realized that she would have also needed to cover living expenses, utility deposits, and ongoing daycare costs, I now know that D. has more money at her disposal than do I.
D. takes great offense to my unwillingness to allow her continued, unfettered access to my money. She is insulted that I don't trust her not to rip me off. I do not believe that she will do that, however I feel it's best to make very concrete boundaries in accordance with the conclusions of the past six weeks. That is not enough for her, and she continues to harass me about it through Sunday evening, Sunday night with a written letter placed on my pillow, yesterday via email and in another hour plus conversation last night. Many tears are shed, many accusations flung, and my temper lost. It the end, we are still in the same, sorry place.

Much could be said to expand on any of the above summary points, but frankly, I've lost too much time living inside my head over this. It's time for positive action. I've no interest in casting blame here. The actions and choices of the individual players speak for themselves. For the first time since I married to D, I feel free. Even though my freedom cost me the comfortable respectability my previous attempts to salvage the relationship brought. In the end, I needed to confront my own desire to be rid of this woman's incessant barrage of neediness. I make no excuses. I could easily have chosen to play along. Quit smoking, go to meetings, sit in church with a stupid, vacant smile on my face. All to make her happy. But not to really deal with my own desires, and plead for the strength and willingness to conquer them.

I just decided not to continue to invest in someone who doesn't appear to be able to love ME.

My mourning ceremony is a celebration of my freedom, mingled with the sorrow of having been so wrong and having set the bar so low for myself.

of things left undone...

2006-10-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

Here is a draft I began for this blog, dated 1/30/06. Given what's happened since -- the subject of my current draft -- I wonder if not posting the following did more harm than good.

D,

It was so great to have you here again. To sweat with you as we try to work out what this thing going on between us really means was both invigorating and rewarding. I think that two of the things you said to me in the past 48 hours were the never nicest things I've ever heard. From anyone. The first you know about, but it bears repeating that the true admiration I heard in your voice and saw in your eyes when you complimented the new kitchen project and how much brighter the whole room was.

The other time I've kept to myself until now. It was when we went to sleep last night and you spooned up to me, gave me a nice firm squeeze, and said, "You know I really hate you... but I really love you."

Here's how I heard it:

"you know... I really don't like you sometimes, but I REALLY do love you."

Knowing how much you are struggling to make sense of the conflicts you are having between your feelings and the direction you chose to go in December, and recognizing that I keep doing things that make you doubt your feelings for me (or at least to wisdom in having them), I am suddenly seized with a pain that I don't often get. Regret. Shame? I've always had that, but it is so easily turned to anger when those you've hurt do their best to hurt you back. What you showed me in how you talked to me this weekend, was that you've begun to take a different path.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the courage it must take you to come back here and have to listen to me talk and yet have the courage to face these conflicts all over again. And to tell me that you really do love me in spite of it all? Priceless. Can't be bought at any price. The sex was great. I mean, really great. But this one simple act of laid out, boldly naked honesty is the best gift you've ever given me.

I know that you probably don't want to talk right now. You're exhausted from the vigorous marathon that was out weekend, and rightly so. Therefore, I'm choosing this blog as the forum to declare these things. First, because it's a suitably safe distance from which you can respond. Or not. Second, I want the world (at least my little blogging world) to know the following.

You, D, are the most remarkable woman it has ever been my pleasure to know. That probably sounds strange coming from me, and probably not only to you. But I really mean it. You needed to get your confidence back, and you took some aggressive steps to put yourself in the place to do just that. I admire you for that. Keep doing the things that you are doing there to remind yourself just how much of a kickass woman you are. Me likey!

Thanks for helping me with the drywall and the decorating ideas. I think that when we are done, we will have something for which can both be proud. Even if we never get back together, it will have been worth the effort, and nothing can take that away from us.

Take your time and space, my darling. I am busy with my own healing, and that of my son. I won't push, but I will -- as always -- leave my door open to you. I'm not going anywhere.

There's really nothing more that can be said, except to sum up all that's gone before and say,

I really love you, too. My darling.

Lured From the Shadows

2006-08-10T13:56:00.000-05:00

Nothing much to say. Or rather, too little time to say it and less inclination. However, in honor of the Unseen One's return to regular blogging, I will accept his tag and answer the following:

1. One book that changed your life: "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom. Reading this book was the turning point in my conversion from liberalism to conservatism.

2. One book that you have read more than once: "The Foundation Trilogy" by Isaac Asimov. I got a lot more out of it the second time.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: I'm going to agree with the Unseen One here -- The NET Bible. Everything else would lose its appeal after only a few readings.

4. One book that made you laugh: "Slapstick" by Kurt Vonnegut. I can't really remember anything about the plot, but I will never forget the classic line, "Why don't you go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moooooooon?" I was a serious Vonnegut fan in high school, but now I just think he's a cranky, old douchebag.

5. One book that made you cry: I know there have been occasions, but I've repressed them. I would guess that at least one of them was written by Graham Greene.

6. One book you wish would have been written: Any of the Harry Potter books. Then I'd be rich as fuck.

7. One book you wish had never been written: I believe in freedom of expression, so none. People who are stupid enough to be led astray by the Koran, Mein Kampf, or any other piece of shit to the point where they are inspired to commit atrocities deserve their judgement. Of course, there are a number of books I wish I'd never read. Time I'll never get back.

8. One book you are currently reading: "The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction" by Sinclair B. Ferguson. Don't ask.

9. One book you have been meaning to read: The Kama Sutra

10. Tag some others: Pass.

DaVinci Debrief

2006-05-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

With the movie opening tonight, I figured I'd weigh in on the whole "controversy".

First off, I've read the book, and I enjoyed it. As a work of fiction, and a mystery/thriller, I found it to be a page turner. As a Christian, I had a few problems with it. My biggest problem is not with the 'fictional' premise that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a son, but rather with the purposeful distortions of the historical backdrop. People have been speculating things about Jesus since His Resurrection. That's nothing new. Just as people have been demonizing the Catholic Church, and Christians in general, for centuries.

However, certain statements made against the backdrop of history are presented as, and assumed by the naive, to be authentic truth. Many of them simply are not. Take the specific claims that Constantine was not a sincere believer and was baptized on his death bed against his will. There is no historical evidence to back up those 'facts'. History clearly indicates quite a bit of sincerity in constantine's belief, as evidenced in the amount of time, energy and resources he invested in protecting, promoting and establishing the Christian faith as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Surely, history does seem to indicate that Constantine also had political and pragmatic motives for his advocacy of Christianity, beginning with the Edict of Milan in 313. The faith had spread significantly into the military, and popular sentiment against imperial persecution of Christians was threatening the stability of his empire. However, Constantine did far more for the Christian Church than was necessary to alleviate these political strains.

As for his deathbed baptism, it's quite true that Constantine was baptized at the end of his life, rather than immediately after his conversion as a result of his victory at the Bridge of Milvan. Taking as my source the well-received work from 1977, "A History of Christianity" by Paul Johnson, Constantine's decision to delay his baptism until death was based on the unbiblical, yet very popular, belief of the time that baptism took away all of one's sins, but that it was not effective to remit any sins that would accrue afterwards. Many people of the time, afraid that their inability to avoid sinning after baptism would forbid their entrance into heaven, waited until the end of their lives to be baptized.

This phenomenon underlies my other major point to this post. Less than 300 hundred years after the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, serious doctrinal error and extra-biblical superstition had pervaded the life of the Christian Church. The assumption of a clerical/laity separation was already deeply entrenched, and those who were entrusted with the leadership of Christ's people were more concerned about establishing a power base of 'orthodoxy' and control over the lives and thoughts of the 'common' man. Rather than correcting misconceptions about baptism, justification, and developing the character of Christ, they systematically locked away the source of truth -- God's Word -- and focused their energies on vicious debates over the specific details of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Constantine and the prominent clerics of his time, most notably Athanasius, probably did a great disservice to the cause of Christ in this world by encumbering the Message with the concerns of power, politics and wealth. Granted, it appears from the historical record that both Constantine and Athanasius were driven by relatively commendable motives to elevate the faith and protect the message from being corrupted by false teaching, particularly those who denied the deity and eternality of Jesus. However, it's also fairly clear from history that these objectives were also tainted by fear (i.e. - lack of faith that God is perfectly capable of taking care of His business) and self-interest.

Despite all of that, and the shameful history of abuses, lies and violence that ensued from the institutional Church (Catholic and Protestant alike), God's Word is preserved, the Holy Spirit is still active in this world, and Jesus Christ is still enthroned as the Ruler and Judge of Everything.

This is why I'm not too concerned about the impact of "The DaVinci Code", book or movie. I can see why the Catholic Church is bummed, however. This work represents a real threat to their hold on millions of people's lives, at least in their fearful perception. "Why?", I wonder. Could it be that the leaders of the Catholic Church realize, much as they did when Martin Luther began to proclaim justification by faith, that their hold is based on something other than the Power of Jesus Christ? Or is it simply that the Catholic Church's reputation is more important than the truth? The infallibility claim of the papacy is certainly a big bone of contention.

And what about evangelicals in America? Why are they so bent? For a lot of the same types of reasons, I suspect. There's a bit more diversity in the Protestant world, however. Some people are calling for a boycott, while others are actually encouraging Christians to read the book and go to the movie. Of course, most of these leadership sources are also telling their flock to buy their DaVinci "De-Coders".

The biggest problem here, in my opinion, is that most people who call themselves Christian are either too lazy or too committed to things other than following Christ to take the time to do the research themselves.

"The DaVinci Code" is one of the best opportunities Christians in the English-speaking world have to engage the non-believing world in an extraordinary way. Why is "The DaVinci Code" such a phenomenon? Because people are looking for answers, and because people who really know in their hearts what the answer is are looking for an excuse not to believe. Either way, engaging people in discussion over the historical claims and mythical propositions contained in this fictional work can be a great way not only to evangelize, but to grow in the truth.

I believe many Christians are actually afraid of history because of the enormity of wrongness in the actions of Christians and the Christian Church over the years. Just like we are so afraid to acknowledge our own wrongdoing. This is one of the reasons why churches are full, yet the world is filled with hate, violence and imminent destruction.

Denial. Not a river in Africa. The worst disease a Christian can have.

Guess what? We fucked up! A lot. We were wrong! Many times.

But Jesus Christ is the answer for all of that. He defends us with His mercy and compassion. It's time we stopped spending so much time justifying the unjustifiable.

Crawling Up the Rock-Strewn Path Dragging My Armor

2006-03-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

This is the image that best fits where I am in my life now. As I think on it, I am reminded of a scene from the 1986 Oscar-winning film The Mission where Robert DeNiro repeatedly drags his now-useless 18th-century armor up a rocky cliffside beside a majestic waterfall in the South America jungle in an act of penance.

Playing converted colonial slave hunter Rodrigo Mendoza, DeNiro's actions reflect what I now see as the all-too-human, horrified, and shame-riddled reaction to the realization of the depth of his own depravity. In Mendoza's case, the killing of his own brother in a fit of rage, a crime that was all too easy to commit due to his arrogant belief in his need to defend his "honor", was the catalyst which brought him to his knees.

As Mendoza bloodies himself on this arduous vertical ascent, starting over again and again each time he loses hold of his "baggage", the Jesuit priest Father Gabriel, played by Jeremy Irons, sits watching at the summit -- waiting for the penance to play itself out. Father Gabriel has become the spiritual mentor of Mendoza, intervening to prevent the man of violence from committing suicide in response to his fratricide. As the scene continues, another character asks Gabriel "How long must he carry that stupid thing?" "God knows", is the priest's only response.

Of course, Mendoza eventually lets go of his burden, collapses into submission, and begins his new life as a fellow servant with Gabriel in a mission to the Indian tribes in the jungle.

In evangelical Protestantism, we tend to neglect the value of this process, this mourning and self-degradation that comes so naturally in the wake of coming face-to-face with just how evil we truly are, outside of the atoning work of Christ crucified and resurrected. How that even then, we often are still not at the end of ourselves, as we try to make it right and atone for ourselves. This stunning and penetrating image of the both the necessity and ultimate futility of penance is revealing itself to me as a core reality through which I must navigate. In the Protestant church, acceptance of forgiveness and forgetfulness of how severely deficient we really are outside of Christ, all too often cheapens what redemption really is.

For me, I am still crawling along that rocky path. The rocks are all of the obstacles I continue to wrestle with on a daily basis. The fatigue. The temptations that flaunt themselves in front of my eyes no matter which way I turn. The difficulties of a life that simply won't go away just because I believe in Jesus Christ. The rocks stay. They are permanent, hard, jagged and cutting in places, smooth and slippery in others. They will draw blood and sweat and make a body sore. But they are also sure and solid, holding firm against the weight of our climbing and providing the traction to move forward.

I crawl because I continue to carry my own sack of heavy armor. My anger, resentment, lusts, and unforgiveness weigh me down and hinder my progress, causing stumbles and falls, bruises and cuts. Yet I continue to cling to them, either for fear of what will become of me should I lose them, or a prideful, stubborn insistence that I can conquer them through sheer will. Or perhaps negotiate a compromise that allows them to hang around and serve me, instead of me continuously serving them.

Consider Mendoza's sack of armor. In the quest to reach the summit above the waterfall, the weapons and protective articles are of no use whatsoever. They are extraordinarily heavy and bulky, creating substantially more opportunities for injury and delay and fail to provide defense against the perils of the journey. If the quest was to conquer, kill or defend against attack by sword and bow, then it would certainly be wise to bring them along, despite the hindrance they represent in the climb.

It's the same with my sack of armor. These things I carry are only intended to injure or protect myself from injury from similar weapons and attacks. However, if my journey is to be towards reconciliation and restoration, they are not only useless, but also injurious to me -- weighing me down as I seek to climb and dashing me against the rocks as I twist and reach for their comfort rather than maintaining my focus and balance on this cliffside sojourn.

It's so easy for others to say to me, "Just chuck it all and be done with it!", but such attitudes only serve to devalue the significance of the process and the permanence of impact, once the lesson is finally learned. Oh, that I had a Father Gabriel waiting patiently for me at the summit, surrending his own inclination to speed things up so that he could get on with his own agenda in the wise acknowledgement that only "God knows." Of course, it's the same old temptation, to long for the type of person that only Hollywood can create, instead of allowing the forging in myself of the type of person that only God in Christ can create.

What I am seeing is that it's not so important to focus on the baggage that I carry. Endless hours of therapy and attending recovery and support meetings have not produced the desired results. What's important is continue to stay on the path. Crawling, climbing, or leaping from crap to precipice like a mountain goat -- it doesn't matter. What matters is continuing to focus on getting to the summit, for sooner or later you realize that you don't get there at all until you stop clutching that heavy, hindering sack of armor and let it fall behind you into the abyss that was your former life.

May it be so!

Reaping and Sowing

2006-03-09T07:19:00.000-05:00

Blogger's Note: This post was written on 3/8/06, at around 2 pm, but Blogger was hosed when I went to publish. Also, they used to let me change the post date, but that's gone, too. Seems like Blogger is headed in the wrong direction.

One thing I really like about God, even though I'm still pissed off at Him, is that anytime I throw down the gauntlet, He's got a little something for me to chew on. I rarely like the taste, but at least He makes it impossible for me to sit here and bitch and moan about being ignored. Which, when you think about it, is pretty cool. After all, who am I to be busting the Almighty's chops the way I do on a regular basis?

Several things have happened in the past 24 hours or so to lighten my mood, although working with the IBM outsourced, offshored crowd has me in a major snit right now. But that's another issue altogether.

First, a guy from my church's 12-step ministry calls me out of the blue on Monday night, just because he had been thinking about me and wondering where I've been. Taking it as a sign, I invited him over to catch up last night. This poor guy's really been through the wringer. He works for USAirways, whose troubles have forced him to work 3-4 days a week away from his family in Philly, or be unemployed. His wife is addicted to prescription medication and relapses more frequently and severely than I do, going so far as to steal pain meds from her mother after surgery -- and her son's meds. Then there's the son, who is fifteen and has been involved in cutting and has flipped out to the point where hospitalization has been required. Yet my friend has stuck out the program, taking the whole weight of his family's strife on his shoulders, trusting God, staying the course, and keeping it together, where I probably would have killed them all. So....

humbling? yeah.

Then yesterday I get an email from V, asking me to drop off the boy's insurance card and other vital documentation because he has a couple of appointments to go to on Friday. On the way home, I called him just to make sure everything was OK, because it sorta struck me as odd that he'd be having two doctor's appts on the same day. Well, he freaked out and jumped to a conclusion that I'm actually surprised hadn't occurred to me. He's afraid she's going to get him drug-tested, a fear that I'm sure is largely fueled by the fact that he took the first opportunity he had to get high at his mother's house. I'm not so sure, though. It will be less than two weeks since he left my house, so most testing available wouldn't be able to differentiate the residuals from last weekend with those from three weekends ago.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if she is sandbagging him, and I'm guessing that the second appointment is with a counselor of some ilk. How has this contributed to my improved mood, you ask? I think it's funny how ridiculously clueless she is in dealing with this boy. What kind of message does she think she's sending when she let him out of the house the first weekend after 'rescuing' him from his unfit father? It just gives me the giggles.

Plus, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the inevitable collision that these two are heading for.

Lastly, this morning I heard a challenging message from James McDonald of the Walk In The Word radio show. He preached about the law of reaping and sowing. Two things challenged me. First, there is this whole concept of me having the ability to "respond" differently to my situation than I have. I'm not sure I totally buy it, and McDonald sometimes rubs me the wrong way with his chop busting. I still am convinced that I need something more to get me on the right path, other than my own will power. The other thing that got into my head is the whole sowing and reaping metaphor.

I've been doing quite a bit with houseplants and seedlings since the beginning of the year, and I saw the relevance of how you have to develop a longer-term perspective when dealing with plants. You put some seeds into starter pots, wait a week or two for them to sprout, then wait many more weeks for them to develop to the point where they add beauty, fragance, tranquility and cleaner air to your home. In the meantime, you have to tend them, but with the realization that trying to rush the process can end up killing the whole project.

I don't know if this is quite getting the picture painted, but it makes sense to me. If you put tender seedlings into blazing sunlight, they die. If you neglect to give them the right amount of water, soil, warmth, light, or humidity, they will suffer and die. If you try to force the issue and circumvent the natural patterns of growth, you risk ruining what you are trying to create. But if you exercise patience and pay attention to the signs they provide that tell you what they need, you will get the satisfaction of enjoying their gifts -- often for years to come.

Maybe I'm like that. It occurs to me that I can't just try and rip out all of my problems and try to 'be' something that I'm not. I can't rush the healing, or the growing season. But I also can't withdraw myself from the light, the quenching, root-strengthening water and soil I need to rid myself of the blighted infestation that has diseased my soul.

It'll do, pig, it'll do.

oh, and btw

2006-03-07T12:59:00.000-05:00

guess who told me they've been allowed out all week and smoked weed on Sat. night?

oh well! at least he was taken to counseling. that should make up for an absolute lack of parenting.

of course, this is all my fault anyway.

Hey God!

2006-03-07T09:59:00.000-05:00

So my last post was a bit of a digression from where I initially intended to go. What I've been thinking about for most of the past 24 hours is why I'm such a shitty example of living the Christian life.

What I've realized -- maybe for the first time or maybe just again, but in a different way -- is that God really pisses me off. Really.

I mean, when I look at the two major meltdowns I've had, there are several things in common. First, is the immediate preceding 'efforts' to find God's grace in overcoming the difficulties I face, whether it be addiction, anger, abandonment, whatever. My tears and prayers are fervent and heartfelt, my desperation is palpable. I sincerely believe I have come to the end of myself and utter reliance on God to save me from my own overwhelming sinfulness. Second, is a period of struggling with the 'burden' of trying to live the Christian life. I hate trying to plod through Bible study, prayer, and resisting temptation. I don't really know how to describe it, but I just become overwhelmed with depression and a sense of futility because I just don't really get a lot of joy or have a lot of desire to 'be with God'. At least as I understand it.

Next is the dropping of the other shoe. Despite my prayers and tears, I fuck up something, usually letting down someone who I really want to love and accept me. Then they kick me to the curb. Parents, wives, now children (sort of). Pastors, friends, pets. Total abandonment.

Finally comes my reaction to what I've come to expect as the inevitable, which is to basically tell God thanks for nothing and to go fuck off.

Why is it that that little extra conviction, desire, motivation, fear of the Almighty, whatever, doesn't come to me and help me not come to the point of utter collapse? Sure, I can look back on things and see where pride, selfishness, obstinance, or just plain meanness snuck in on me. I got sloppy or lazy, or just couldn't seem to find the drive to be a devout. I took a shortcut, indulged in a pleasure rather than abstaining. But really, come on! I mean, what the fuck? I get it, okay. I'm a sinner. I got nothing without you, God. But, shit! I'm getting real tired of not hearing from you when my back is up against it.

I realize that this is not 'proper form', but frankly, I don't give a shit. Why bother me with the knowledge of your reality, if my life is just going to continue to be this freakish, roller coaster of hope crashing into failure and abandonment? I think I would have preferred not to know, and let my evil consume me quickly.

Of course, there is always the hope that You will make it clear for me, give me what I need to live out my days with grace, peace, humility, and some real purpose.

So you toss in a timely phone call from a brother at Celebrate Recovery last night. Yet all I can think is, "Great! Here we go again!" I'll get a temporary boost, then find myself bogged down trying to live like Christ and failing, getting depressed, allowing new people into my life who will just end up hating me for being a fuck up and leave me alone all over again.

Is this what you call grace?

Obligatory Oscar Rant

2006-03-07T09:29:00.000-05:00

I've basically come to the embarassing conclusion that I am a typical, spoiled, whining, stupid American. Even worse, I've succumbed to the worst kind of spiritual arrogance, that of the rich, American evangelical.

What I mean by all of that is that I'm pretty much fed up with the pathetic emptiness and cliche-ridden approach of the conservative Christian movement in this country. While I do continue to hold to many of the political and cultural philosophies current within this segment of the American Christian community, I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the degree of divergence between the impact on culture that Christ has called us to have, and what the leading and most visible American Christian institutions are actually doing.

A recent example of this is what I heard on WORD-FM yesterday afternoon from Sam Siple, one of the rotation of insipid, afternoon talk show replacements with which we are again being inflicted, now that Jerry Bowyer has taken an indefinite leave of absence for health reasons. Like so many in the Christian media, Sam had dedicated his show to assessing the impact of the Academy Awards on Sunday night, primarily pontificating on the 'victory' implied by the fact that "Brokeback Mountain" didn't win Best Picture, or any of the Best Acting, Oscars. I can't really describe how stupid and inane I find such nyeh-nyeh celebrations, other than to wonder why Christian media doesn't have anything better to do than do a happy dance over some overly symbolic and overstated victory over the gay agenda.

How about this? Of all the movies that were nominated for major Academy Awards, only "Walk The Line" broke into the Top 20 of 2005 domestic gross dollars. The feared homo horse opera came in next at #26, followed by "Crash" at #49 and "Syriana" at #58. "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", on the other hand, currently sits at #3 in domestic gross for release dates in 2005, behind only "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".

Here's a few interesting facts related to TLTW&TW:

1. It opened the same weekend as "Brokeback Mountain" (12/9), yet has nearly 4 times the box office receipts.

2. It is poised to overtake "Harry Potter" in domestic receipts, despite being released 3 weeks later.

3. Most successful movies rake in one-third to one-half of their total domestic gross on opening weekend. TLTW&TW's opening weekend represents less than a quarter of it current gross, pointing to a steady and sustainable interest that is rarely seen in the movie industry, but was also recently seen in the box office numbers for "The Passion of the Christ". Coincidence? I think not!

4. TLTW&TW currently sits at #25 for all-time, domestic, box office grosses. "The Passion of the Christ", incidentally is #10.

Speaking of the Top 25 All Time Top Grossing films, they include all 6 "Star Wars" films, all 3 "Lord of The Rings" films, and two of the four "Harry Potter" films. No film in this list carries a rating worse that PG-13, and only a handful ("The Sixth Sense", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Forrest Gump") could be argued to have presented strong, anti-family, anti-traditional messages. Of course, I would argue that several more of them do at a much subtler level, but that's a discussion for another time.

So my point here is, "Why all the hysteria?" George Clooney basically made an ass of himself trying to portray his work, and that of his peers, as important counterweights to what they see as the evils of our culture. Yet the public is speaking loud and clear, with both their dollars and their attention to these wannabe leaders of our society. The Hollywood elite is not only 'out of touch', they're irrelevant. Ratings for last year's Oscars were down 10 percent, and there's no real reason to believe that they will do all that much better this year, despite having a new host and 'controversy'.

When you consider the spiritual messages behind "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter", and assume the overt Christian themes underlying "The Lord of the Rings", "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", and "The Passion of the Christ", the presence of these 13 movies in the Top 25 grossers pretty much says it all. Yet why is the Christian Church so fundamentally out of step with the culture's heartbeat, tilting at the windmills of the 'gay agenda', legislated morality, and liberalism? Aligning itself with a political agenda that pays lip service to Christian morals, yet turns a blind eye to gross injustice -- both here and abroad? Why, when these box office numbers clearly indicate that our culture yearns for leadership and direction into the reality that these films give homage to?

It baffles the mind how clueless we Christians really are sometimes in our drive to be right. When, in fact, it is God who is right, who has always been right, and has done all that needs to be done to give our country -- and our world -- hope.

We act like we are in a losing fight, instead of walking into our society full of the confidence that our victory has already been won with the gifts that so many people really are craving.

This country is tired to death of blowhards like George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Penn. But they are equally, if not more so, tired of idiotic windbags like Pat Robertson and find nothing of substance in the inane prattlings that occur within most 'Christian' media.

Wake up, people! It's time to get real.

The Ugly Truth Behind My Hiatus

2006-03-06T13:42:00.000-05:00

So how to begin this post?

Sigh.... OK, here goes...

My son has gone back to live with his mother. The reason why would most likely depend on who you ask and how much time you have. But fortunately for V, I've again given her an easy out and a cloud of cover behind which she can maintain her denial that she is a life-sucking, self-centered, self-righteous bitch. That being said, the official reason for the move is that I got high with the boy. No, wait, the real reason is because I TOLD her. This is what I get for having a conscience.

confused? Join the club! I'm still trying to sort it out, and I was there!

OK, here's the gruesome details.

A couple of weeks after the boy moved in with me, V calls me to tell me that my next-to-youngest had told her that some of his brother's friends (that would be the boy living with me) were smoking pot when he and the boy were hanging out with them and skateboarding. Earlier in the weekend, the boy had let slip the comment (on purpose, I'm certain) that it was difficult to find any new friends in the high school that didn't smoke pot.

At the time, I was content to just keep my eyes open, as I was still adjusting to this new role as single dad of the teenaged boy whose mother was at the end of her rope. When this all first came about, I was still dealing with the divorce from D -- in my usual manner. Getting myself on the straight and narrow was a top priority.

However, my thinking took a strange turn when V called me with her concerns. I had no real insight into the high school culture in the town where I live. The community is widely stratified along racial and socio-economic lines, but people like me (i.e. - white, educated, fairly well-employed) are definitely in the minority. So I became concerned that my son was getting in over his head, and I decided to talk to him about the whole 'doing drugs' thing.

What I told him was that he should stay away from it altogether, but that if he was going to do it anyway, I wanted him to be in the safe confines of our home with me. I was very concerned about his safety and the intentions of the kids he was hanging out with, but I also opened the Pandora's box on my own powerlessness against the lure of the ganja.

Within two weeks, I was asking him to find me dime bags. As an interesting aside, the best deals in pot are among the school-aged dealers. I was getting more product for half the price, usually at the same quality, as I had been getting from my 'adult' contacts for the past decade. Anyway, I began to see a real slide in his behavior and a growing obsession on his part for getting high. It's all the evidence I need to buy into a genetic argument for addictive tendencies. Then I went to a parent-teacher conference and discovered that his grades were in the toilet, mostly from not handing in assignments and making up tests in the most recent couple of weeks. That's when I faced up to my need to do whatever I needed to do to put a stop to the whole experiment. I needed to be the adult, to set the right example, to rid our home of this insidious evil.

Unfortunately, events were already set in motion that came to a head three weeks ago, on President's Day. My son spent his first weekend visiting his mother since coming to live with me during the holidays. Prior to his leaving, he had made it clear that he really wanted to go back to his mother's house, primarily because he was missing his old friends. A big part of this seemed to also be related to him having difficulty establishing solid friendships in his new situation. I believe he made some major miscalculations in his approach to kids whose parents were not providing the kind of upper-middle class lifestyle that is so prevalent in the district where his mother lives.

To complicate matters, he appears to have taken to making up stories to impress or ingratiate himself to a class of kids he believed would provide him with some protection. He was afraid of getting ganged up on, so he tried to get in with some of the toughest, street-wise kids in the school. That meant the dealers. Not having the same kind of cut-throat mentality, he ended up earning their distrust and was accused of being the person responsible for a rash of police searches in school that week.

A couple of these kids were going to come over to house that Monday night of President's Day, or so they pretended. One of them came to the house and took my son around the corner, supposedly to get a couple of the other kids. There were a half-dozen kids waiting, and they attempted to jump him. He was punched in the face, knocked to the ground, and kicked at least once before jumping up and running away. When he got to the house, he was in a panic. I was just going to take a baseball bat outside and take care of business, but he was petrified.

Then I became concerned because, as I said, I didn't have a real good feel for what was going on in the high school. I didn't know if there were gangs or guns or the type of violence that could have seen my son hurt very badly or killed.

So I called his mother, with the full intention of letting him go home. She wasn't willing to do this, which in hindsight was probably a good thing, as it let me do some digging into the landscape of the high school. After a couple of days of making sure he wasn't vulnerable to another attack and keeping close tabs with him on what was being said and who was emerging as potential allies, I became convinced that these kids might try to jump him again, but that the possibility of real serious violence was remote. Plus, new friends emerged that I found to be credible and sincere, and who were willing to stand up with him against the kind of underhanded cowardice that the dealer crowd seemed to prefer.

At the same time, I became very concerned that my son was not really getting the message about accepting responsibility for his actions and choices, even as I was feeling very uncomfortable about my own role in the way things had unfolded for him in his new situation. His mother was concerned enough to drive 45 minutes two days in a row to take him to school, so that he would have to walk alone in the morning. She also took the opportunity to talk to the guidance counselor, who informed her that word on the street was that our son was getting involved with drugs and violating social taboos about sharing his stash. When she asked him if he was using drugs, he said no, then bragged to me later that he technically didn't lie, because he was only using ONE drug.

That's when I decided that I needed to tell her the whole truth and accept whatever consequences came. It was suddenly more important to show my son that the truth was not a matter of convenience or semantics, and that owning up to one's mistakes was a sign of manhood and integrity.

What I didn't count on was his willingness to use this as an opportunity to go back to where he wanted to be, in spite of the conditions that he would face from a woman whose capacity for denial is amazing to me. At first, he balked at her conditions (going to counseling was really the only one). He even tried to get her to admit that this was all her fault for making him come to live with me in the first place! When she declined to do so, he got stubborn and said he wasn't moving back with her.

But after a day, he realized that he had a better shot of getting what he wanted out of the situation by going back to her than staying here with me and lying in the bed we'd made.

As for V, suffice it to say that her reaction to my confession was to take him immediately, as opposed to her reluctance to take him when I wasn't sure if he was going to get shot or not. Let's just say that it's much more justifiable to her way of thinking to just conclude that I am more of a danger to my son than a gang of juvenile drug dealers.

Me? I really fucked up by not accounting for my own powerlessness over my addiction when deciding how to deal with what I perceived to be immiment involvement by my son with drugs and untrustworthy people. I started out trying to protect him and ended up using him for my own purposes. I have never been more ashamed in my entire life.

However, I think that the decision to take him back to his mother's is an even bigger mistake, and I am powerless to do anything about it. My son has now been validated in his manipulations and has been denied the benefit of working through a tough situation with real consequences. Instead, he can now go through the motions of buying into his mother's faith in the psychological cure, while he perpetuates his lack of responsibility, integrity, and accountability for his choices and their consequences.

And me? At first I was so mad that the self-righteous bitch V didn't even take the time to try and evaluate what really happened, that I was ready to just go right back to the addictions, confirmed in my belief that it doesn't matter what I do, what I try, how hard I fight -- the curse of life will always win out. But D has been very supportive -- without condoning or excusing my choices -- and has caused me to step back from the abyss of my own bitterness. The Lord also intervened by allowing me to be sick enough for the past week and a half to not want any cigarettes, weed, or coke. Now I am feeling better, and am finding a reason not to give in.

Ironically, what I am discovering is the way that I've continuously set myself up for failure by acting out of guilt or buying into other people's idiotic definition of character. By increasing the pressure on myself to be more than is reasonable to my children in order to make up for the consequences of a choice that I didn't even make, but was all too willing to take the blame for, I was guaranteeing that I would screw up in a major way at some point along the line.

So now I've determined that, although I love my children and want to be a significant part of their lives, I need to stop overcompensating for the fact that their mother is unwilling to accept her own responsibility for the situation we are all in. Sure, I smoked pot and cigarettes. Yes, I called her a cunt and a bitch. And certainly, I have anger issues that resulted in more than one piece of broken furniture in the course of the ten years that we were married. But the last time I looked, none of that was a justification for divorce by anyone calling themselves a Christian.

I believe in grace, but I also believe that grace can only take root where there is truth. V made her choice, and now she has a new husband, a new job, a new home, a new life. Yet she is ready to latch onto any reason to make me the reason why the children who have lived under her care for the past decade don't live up to her expectations.

Looking back on this whole episode, I am convinced that I should never have agreed to take my son in the first place. I wasn't in the right place to take care of his needs, although I still managed to get movement in the right direction. But more importantly, this whole situation was not my problem. It was hers. She failed to establish her authority and credibility with him. But all I saw was a chance to make up for what I had lost -- to give him all that had been denied by not having me there for him.

Overcompensation fueled by guilt.

Now I have a chance to rebuild a life with D, or to reclaim my own life. Guilt free.

I did what I did, and I make no excuses.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to let it drag me down for another ten years.

It just makes no sense.

Minutiae

2006-02-17T07:36:00.000-05:00

What is your middle name? Michael
How big is ur bed? queen, and it's still too small when I have to share it.
What are you listening to right now? my iPod. The U2 mix, of course.
What was the last thing you ate? a bowl of Crispix with sliced bananas
Last person you hugged? my son
How is the weather right now? blowing the temp down from the '60's to the '20's
Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? my son
The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? eyes, ass
Favorite type of Food? steak
Do you want children? I have five, so I better damn well...
Eye color? brown
Do you wear eye contacts? yes
Favorite holiday? christmas
Favorite Season? fall
Last Movie you Watched? Lord of War
What books are you reading? Walk On: the Spiritual Journey of U2
Piercings? left ear
Favorite Movie? i don't do that. movies are disposable entertainment, and i watch too many to have a single fave. the most recent movie to earn my respect was "Two for the Money"
What were you doing before filling this out? driving to work way too early because i woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep.
Any pets? Miss Maddie the Shih Tzu
Favorite Flower? i don't do that, either. given my recent foray into in-home gardening, there are too many flowers i haven't yet experienced, but for now I'm digging on orchids.
Have you ever loved someone? yes, several someones, in fact.
Right-handed or Left-handed? left
If you could go anyplace right now where would you go? the Caribbean
are you hiding something from someone? oh yeah
wallpaper on your cell phone? some thing with a leaf dripping water into a pond. came with the phone.
did you get enough sleep last night? no, i woke up a 3 because I couldn't breathe, then proceeded to give myself a chemical burn in my sinus cavity with my decongestant nose spray. shit still burns like a mother.
first thing you thought about this morning? fuck! i wish my sinuses would stop burning. fuck!
what do you have handy at your bedside? books, chapstick, handkerchief, alarm clock, glasses, and... oh yeah, sulfuric acid in a plastic bottle labeled "Nose Spray"
favorite hangout? my kitchen in progress
what are you afraid of? failure, rejection, torture, most pain
are you a giver or a taker? a taker, i must confess
nicknames? The Drake, dickhead, asshat, motherfucker
cell phone provider? verizon
first thing you'll save in a fire? my kids
what are the things you always have with you? keys, chapstick, wallet, bitterness and sarcasm
color of your bedsheets? green and tan
general cell phone ring? U2 - I Will Follow

New kitchen pics

2006-02-13T08:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a glimpse of the progress I'm making on my kitchen project. Special thanks to D for all her help in getting the drywall put up.

Love you, D!

Low Rumblings Heard in the Distance

2006-01-31T08:12:00.000-05:00

1. I've been experiencing a new brand of sorrow over the past couple of days. It's differentiated by the utter lack of accompanying despair. Neither is shame a prominent feature in how I'm feeling. What I've come to is the naked realization that I need to re-orient myself back to the Lord in a new way. This is because, after allowing the disappointments of 2005 to discourage me and drop virtually all of my spiritual activities from my daily routine, my life has suddenly shown up.

And I'm just not prepared to fully enjoy all that it has to offer. I've been stupidly bitter and defiant, lashing out at God, D, and the church, letting the development of my friendships lapse, and compromising my health and effectiveness because I've been so pissed off that what I did in 2004 didn't prompt God to prevent my ongoing problems with D and addiction, or the death of my father without a reconciliation having taken place. I'm still not happy about any of it, and I continue to wonder why is it that I have to take such a hard road?

Then my son comes to live with me, and now I'm beginning to understand. After living fifteen years under the roof of someone who emphasized empathy over discipline, the kid is largely lacking in life skills. At the same time, I can't swing the pendulum to the opposite end of the spectrum and run a concentration camp for the boy. Neither can be emphasized over the other, but neither can either be left out of the mix. But I am finding myself unprepared to make the incessantly demanded decisions the boy is looking for me to make, so that he can have the base of stability and love to do well with this second chance.

Yet even as I reflect on the significance of him getting the best start on his second chance, I am comforted by the innumerable number of chances God has given me to start over and enjoy my life as His servant. If you just look at the number of times D and I have started over in the space of just over three years, we're close to double figures. My own personal tally has to be in the thousands.

So I begin yet again, wrestling with a renewed awareness of just how important the stakes are, and how short the time is, for staying the course day after day.

2. Li'l D (that's the boy) has begun to set his sights on playing football. He and a couple of his new friends are participating in weight training under the supervision of the coaching staff. It appears that Li'l D has impressed both his phys ed teacher and peers with his athletic prowess in gym class. A couple of his friends have personally told me that he's made some nice grabs playing football. In addition, our school district consistently makes the state finals in football, having won at least twice in the past ten years.

This opens up a world of opportunities for LD. Unlike his previous school district, which plays athletics in the largest classification, his new school is in the smallest, giving him and his unique abilities a higher visibility and desirability to the coaching staff. For such a small district to have had such success at the state level speaks to the quality of man running the program. Apparently, there are severe consequences for violating this man's work ethic. The word is out that if you're a discipline problem or aren't keeping up on your schoolwork, he's not going to waste his time trying to put you on the field. I've told LD that he needs to do all that he can to impress this guy, and he'll get his chance to shine. If he does, then he will possibly have the option to go to college on scholarship.

For my part, I am near overwhelmed with both the possibilities for him and the awesome feeling of responsibility for getting really involved in facilitating his development of work habits and team attitude. This gets back to the first item, which is why I'm obsessing so much over it. Again, the stakes -- my son's future -- are just too huge.

3. I've downloaded a U2 mix onto my iPod, which means I've been listening to about 2/3 of their catalog over the past two days. I'm convinced more than ever that this music should be played and sung in a worship/celebration of God context by people who just not content to fake it anymore. I order a couple of books that have been put out about them, including a book of sermons based on their music. I'm still not sure why so many evangelicals turn their noses up at them, but I am here to say that Bono is the Martin Luther of our time. In that declaration, I'm only speaking about his role as a hymn writer, not as a great reformational theologian. Athough I'm starting to believe that his work for Africa may go down as one of the great movements to inspire and motivate Christian compassion in action.

More to come on this subject. I am in the process of culling the U2 catalog for cuts that could be easily demonstrated to be worship tunes.

4. Until the USA demonstrates as much willingness to insert itself into the atrocities occurring in the Sudan, anyone who uses the 'just war' argument to rationalize our policies in Iraq, will only get a snort of disdain from me in reply. Not that I object to the war's objectives. Far from it. I just would prefer that we be honest and open up a debate about extending this policy to places, such as the Sudan, where the ONLY benefit of an American intervention would be the liberation of an oppressed people. The choice to act in Iraq is just as much strategic for us, as it is humanitarian for the Iraqi people. The proximity of Iran makes it vital that we establish a normative, diplomatic presence in Iraq while we have the chance. The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Christians makes it vital that those of us of faith continue to give them a voice in this world -- especially to our own government.

D,

2006-01-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

It was so great to have you here again. To sweat with you as we try to work out what this thing going on between us really means was both invigorating and rewarding. I think that two of the things you said to me in the past 48 hours were the never nicest things I've ever heard. From anyone. The first you know about, but it bears repeating that the true admiration I heard in your voice and saw in your eyes when you complimented the new kitchen project and how much brighter the whole room was.

The other time I've kept to myself until now. It was when we went to sleep last night and you spooned up to me, gave me a nice firm squeeze, and said, "You know I really hate you... but I really love you."

Here's how I heard it:

"you know... I really don't like you sometimes, but I REALLY do love you."

Knowing how much you are struggling to make sense of the conflicts you are having between your feelings and the direction you chose to go in December, and recognizing that I keep doing things that make you doubt your feelings for me (or at least to wisdom in having them), I am suddenly seized with a pain that I don't often get. Regret. Shame? I've always had that, but it is so easily turned to anger when those you've hurt do their best to hurt you back. What you showed me in how you talked to me this weekend, was that you've begun to take a different path.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for the courage it must take you to come back here and have to listen to me talk and yet have the courage to face these conflicts all over again. And to tell me that you really do love me in spite of it all? Priceless. Can't be bought at any price. The sex was great. I mean, really great. But this one simple act of laid out, boldly naked honesty is the best gift you've ever given me.

I know that you probably don't want to talk right now. You're exhausted from the vigorous marathon that was out weekend, and rightly so. Therefore, I'm choosing this blog as the forum to declare these things. First, because it's a suitably safe distance from which you can respond. Or not. Second, I want the world (at least my little blogging world) to know the following.

You, D, are the most remarkable woman it has ever been my pleasure to know. That probably sounds strange coming from me, and probably not only to you. But I really mean it. You needed to get your confidence back, and you took some aggressive steps to put yourself in the place to do just that. I admire you for that. Keep doing the things that you are doing there to remind yourself just how much of a kickass woman you are. Me likey!

Thanks for helping me with the drywall and the decorating ideas. I think that when we are done, we will have something for which can both be proud. Even if we never get back together, it will have been worth the effort, and nothing can take that away from us.

Take your time and space, my darling. I am busy with my own healing, and that of my son. I won't push, but I will -- as always -- leave my door open to you. I'm not going anywhere.

There's really nothing more that can be said, except to sum up all that's gone before and say,

I really love you, too.

My darling.

At Least I Get to Have Sex This Weekend

2006-01-26T09:52:00.000-05:00

So D and her boys are coming for a visit this weekend. I know I said it was over, but D called me late one night about two weeks ago, and it was obvious that she has been wrestling with the whole issue. I have to give her credit. She is at least open enough to continue wrestling with the long-term implications of the whole situation, even though she has already taken what most of us would consider pretty decisive measures to completely end it.

The house is a total wreck, however, and I'm starting to stress about not having more done by the time she gets there. Work on the kitchen project is taking way longer than I expected. I played hooky from work yesterday to take care of what I thought were little impediments to getting my tabletop tile laid. Turns out I spent all day working on just one of those impediments -- re-wiring two outlets that were exposed by my demolition of existing walls. What I discovered is that whoever wired that part of the house cared very little about keeping to code. If I had to have that work inspected, it would have to be re-done. Open junction boxes in the crawlspace under the main kitchen floor, 3 or 4 branches off a single circuit, each of which could have 3 or 4 branches of their own. Electrical tape connecting the wires, instead of the required screw-cap connectors. I spent the entire day tracing down only one of two circuits I need to re-work before I can proceed with the finish work. And cursing, in the most venomous terms, the woman who owned the house before and who seemed incapable of doing anything without cutting corners and causing me serious inconvenience when those chickens come home to roost.

On Monday, Jerry Bowyer brought up an interesting question for discussion on his program, and I'd like to provide my take.

He asked the listening audience to call in a relate if they had prayed for the Steelers to win the AFC Championship game. Bowyer being Bowyer, this had little to do with the Steelers or sports at all, but much to do with what we, as Christians, value by examining what we pray for.

For me, the concept of asking the Almighty God to lend a hand to my hometown professional football team is downright ludicrous. Even as an athlete, I would have been horrified to have asked God to help me win any sporting contest. Is anyone really as clueless as to think that God would regard any such prayer? That's not to say that God doesn't care about sporting events, or have His own purposes in allowing a particular team or athlete to achieve for a time.

But the conversation proved even more interesting when a pastor from Greensburg called in, claiming to have prayed for victory based on Jeremiah 29:7:

Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

This allowed Jerry to open up a can of economic whoop-ass on this poor, out-of-context, pathetic, schmuck. It also highlights a very big problem with the thinking in our area regarding the regional economy. Many people want to tie the success of our professional sports franchises to economic vitality. This is total crap and reflects the corrupt politics and unholy alliances between politicians, unions, the construction industry and other nefarious ne'er-do-wells who want to short circuit economic reality with quick-fix, fill-their-pockets, pipe dreams. Several years ago, the voters in this region told the professional teams of Pittsburgh to go fuck themselves on the issue of building new stadiums with tax dollars. So what did they do? The took the issue to the state government, who passed legislation authorizing construction of new baseball and football stadiums in both Philly and the 'Burgh. More recently, people like Mario Lemieux want to convince people that opening up riverfront casinos will be an economic boon, not to mention get the Penguins a new arena, having been left out of the rape of taxpayers by the state on the stadium bond issue.

And people are so stupid, that they honestly believe this whole line of garbage. Or at least they convince themselves that things will be OK, because they either want to gamble or sit in nicer seats at the hockey games. Jerry Bowyer was very eloquent in breaking down the fallacy of economic stimulation caused by gambling.

Here's how it goes. First, there is only a finite amount of disposal income available in the regional economy, and while more of it may get spent during the initial honeymoon phase surrounding the opening of any new casinos, eventually it will most likely be diverted from supporting other local businesses, some of which will go under. The nature of the gambling industry is such that in order to keep 'customers' (i.e. -- suckers) in their establishments, they offer reduced costs for food and drinks, preventing other businesses from competing and creating additional business closures and job losses.

Although Bowyer avoided making a moral pronouncement on the whole issue of gambling, there is more than enough evidence that gambling brings with it a whole set of problems, primarlily caused by the addiction issues brought on by the lure of easy moeny. People lose jobs, homes and families once gambling becomes the primary focus. Crime is drawn to the neighborhoods surrounding casinos, since those who are drawn to gambling are also going to be likely customers for prostitutes and drug dealers. Of course, they are also likely targets for robbers and thieves.

Getting back to the fallacy of justifying praying for the Steelers to win as a means to spur economic growth, let's step into the way back machine and take a trip to 1979. The Steelers had just won their fourth Super Bowl in six years, and the Pirates were the reigning World Series champions. If there was ever a time in which this theory should be tested, surely 1979 would have been the springboard for one of the biggest regional economic booms in the history of this country.

Not.

Instead, 1979 was the beginning of the worst recession in this area since the Great Depression. What happened during that time still has impacts in chronically lethargic areas, such as where I live. The steel industry was shutting down plants and laying off workers by the thousands, because both it and the automotive industry (steel's #1 customer) were losing ground on Japanese competitors. Did our status as the 'City of Champions' make a damn bit of difference? Hell, no! All it did, for some strange reason, was to entrench our entire region into a crybaby, why-can't-it-be-like-it-was-in-the-good-old-days mentality.

People still think they should make twenty-plus dollars an hour for doing simpleton work, that manufacturing, basic industry, and construction are the needed building blocks for a thriving regional economy, that the Steelers should win the Super Bowl every year. OK, that last one's probably just me.

In the meantime, our city has gone into bankruptcy, there are few new businesses willing to come here and deal with the taxes and the unionist mentality, and the people are easy marks for any politician who has quick-fix scheme to sell.

Honestly, I can see why people from other parts of the country laugh at us. We have to be some of the dumbest people this side of Appalachia.

Come back to me

2006-01-23T14:57:00.000-05:00

I've decided to remove the comments moderation and re-admit anonymous commenters back into my little world because it just seems that I'm getting a whole lot less feedback since I did those things a few weeks back. I did, however, turn on word verification because if I have to endure spamming one more time, I'll take to the rooftops with a scoped weapon to exact my revenge.

To all those who've left because of my recent restrictions, I love you and want you back.

Desparately.

Just Say No?

2006-01-23T13:25:00.000-05:00

It turns out the boy is now going to a school where a lot of pot smoking is going on. This isn't really a surprise, but it got onto his mother's radar by virtue of his poor judgement in taking his younger brother into his confidences and said brother's reaction and propensity to tell his mother everything. So, of course, now I'm being given a clear message that I need to make sure that the boy doesn't get sucked into a life of drug addiction and ruin -- with the subtext being that I should know how that feels, seeing as how I've fucked up my life so much with the evil ganja. Meanwhile, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, "Hmmmm, I wonder if one of his friends could hook me up?"

She doesn't want me to tell him that the brother has gone to her, or that she knows, but that's out. The boy knows all about my current state -- which is three weeks' since last toke, but ready to grab another pinch for stress management purposes -- so I'm not going to play the hypocrite.

Instead, we talk about things. I tell him that I don't want him coming back on his brother for going to his mother. He assures me that he's not using, and I believe him. He tells me about a drunk he had with two of his buddies while he was still living with his mother, and how the results were not worth the risk. I believe him, because he's not showing me any real signs that he's either using or trying to sneak around on me. I decide that's the best I can hope for in this situation and tell him that I have only one rule: if he decides to try it, he has to do it with me. At least we can talk through it, and maybe seeing me stupid will turn him off.

But I have serious reservations about this approach. I don't want to condone him using, because the risks of long-term issues are definitely there. My whole family tree is filled with addicts and alcoholics, so I make sure to tell him that he is at greater risk than the average person. That he has no idea what his first experience will trigger in him in terms of an uncontrollable desire to reproduce that feeling, and that he could be doomed to a lifetime of consequences and struggles wrestling with that demon. Just like me. But he's a teen-aged boy, and fears little, knowing nothing of loss and grief. Not entirely true, as I know he feels deeply the effects of my divorce to his mom.

On the other hand, knowing that he's going to face this temptation constantly over the next three years, I would rather be in the loop than fighting a losing battle trying to control his behavior, who he hangs out with, or what he can do socially. The key word here is control. I'm not trying to imply that I intend to wash my hands of the issue, but that I would rather figure out a way to influence his behavior in a way that is both positive and has a decent likelihood of succeeding with a teenager. To that end, I choose to trust him to operate within that single requirement on this issue, while continuing to try and keep the communication going. But I need to stand strong in my own battles with the lure to medicate, if I am to have credibility for making the case for him to abstain.

The Drake Learns About Tile - The Hard Way

2006-01-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

Much progress has been made on the kitchen project, but I'm getting impatient. Saturday saw the tabletop and supporting underframe go into place, but the efforts to install the tile top have been both tedious and, at times, comical. Saturday evening was devoted to mastering the wet saw, as it quickly became apparent that the tile I was using was too big to cut diagonally. Or, should I say, the wet saw cutting surface was too small. As a result, I spent the entire evening sitting on the floor, surrounded by now-ruined towels, turning seventy, 7-7/8" ceramic tiles into seventy, 6-5/8" tiles. Messy, tedious, neck strain-inducing work, I can assure you. Once completed, I found that I now had many more design options, as I had also created seventy, 1-1/4"x7-7/8" and seventy, 1-1/4"x6-5/8" border pieces.

It was my goal to be able to show the blogging world my masterpiece in place, but it was not to be. Turns out, it's real easy to fuck up setting tile, especially when you're in a hurry. And also, when you've got a fifteen-year-old son helping who's even more impatient than you are.

After it became clear that the Seattle Seahawks would be the Steelers' next victim on their inexorable rise to football greatness, me and the boy rushed to the kitchen to get the tile set, based on my dry run of the previous night. Working on opposite sides of the table, we wrestled with the white goo that would hold the tile secure on the tabletop and that goofy, notched trowel that you're supposed to use to get maximum stick. The crucial error came with the placement of the very first tile, which I guess is how it always goes. A single, tan-colored tile must be centered and squared relative to the tabletop in order for my design to be implemented. Drawing an intersecting cross from the parallel edges and marking the tile at the centerpoint of each of the four edges turns out to not be the best way to ensure correct placement. Nor is it a good idea to try and position the surrounding pieces until the (correctly) centered piece has been allowed to set.

After two hours of traipsing down this ill-fated path, I came to the sudden realization that my centered diamond pattern was not at all centered, and that my tile line was not going to line up with my tabletop edge. This led to a panicked call to the boy to get his ass back into the kitchen and help me pull up all the tile and scrape off the adhesive before it dried and turned my Saturday evening's tile cutting endeavor into the ultimate exercise in futility.

It was eleven o'clock at this point, and the boy was complaining loud and long about needing to go to bed, because he needed to get up for school today. It's amazing how important sleep and getting up on time for school become to a teenage, when the only other available activity is work. Equally amazing is how well it works. So after making sure that all of the tile was securely underwater, I sent him off to bed and spent yet another hour cleaning and drying off my rescued tile.

Underscoring my urgency on this point is the fact that I'm locked into this tile thing, by virtue of having enough tile laying around for free, having spent hours cutting it to fit the tool that cost me over a hundred bucks to buy for just this purpose, AND having witnessed one of the most horrific tragedies involving ceramic tile that could ever happen to a do-it-yourself-er with big ambitions and limited funds.

The boy and I were at Lowe's last Thursday in the garden center, buying seeds and starter pots for flowers and herbs, and chatting up the plant lady for tips on how to deal with some of our more troublesome house plants. On the way to the car, I observed a man tip over a shopping cart top-loaded with over a half-dozen boxes of ceramic tile -- a modest investment of at least two or three hundred bucks. It's one of those nightmarish, slow-motion, moments that people experience when they fully realize the impact of an impending, catastrophic loss and the simultaneous realization that's there's not a damn thing they can do to prevent it. For me, looking in from the outside, my attention was jerked towards this poor soul by the sudden going down of him and his cart, and the nearly instanteous sound of breaking ceramic and a fully-grown man screaming like a wounded animal.

Needless to say, I'm glad it wasn't me, but I sure am being damn careful with my mother lode of tile. It might take me the rest of the week to finish this part of the job, I'm so conscious of looming ceramic disaster.

Pittsburgh's Going to the Super Bowl!

2006-01-23T13:20:00.000-05:00

I was originally going to title today's post, "Quick Hits from the Weekend", but after typing well over 1,500 words, I realized that, brevity not being my strong suit, I'd have to turn each 'quick hit' into a post of its own.

My first offering:

Apparently, Bill Cowher reads the blogs. The whole of Da 'Burgh is basking in the glow of the Steelers' masterful domination of the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship game yesterday afternoon. I'm not yet ready to recant my previous statements about Cowher's status among the NFL coaching elite, but aside from a brief foray into "protect-the-lead" mode early in the second half, the Steelers were clearly in control of the game. I am fully prepared, however, to give Mr. Bill credit for preparing and building up his players to get some amazing play from a group nobody gave a chance to be where they are this morning -- on the brink of greatness. And, yes, that includes Coach Cowher. Troy Polamalu is a freak of nature, Joey Porter is finally inspiring fear in the minds and feet of quarterbacks everywhere (Matt Hasselback, you're next!), Ben Roethlisberger seems poised to be the kind of quarterback us Yinzers having been longing for ever since Terry Bradshaw traded in his pads for a microphone, and The Bus... what can you say, but who in this world not living in the Pacific Northwest doesn't want to see him go out on top in the Big Game in his hometown?

Way to go, fellas! You've done all that we could ask for, and more. Now go close the deal, send The Bus to Canton in style, and bring us home One For The Thumb!

By the way, I'd like my crow well done and marinated in jerk spices.

Kitchen pics

2006-01-20T12:11:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some pics of how the kitchen project is going. I've got the pedestal for the tabletop installed. I need to add the tabletop, tile, redo a little wiring, and drywall.

Looking in from the main part of the house. The sun room is closed off, but provides a lot of light, even on cloudy days like today.

View from the sun room looking into the main kitchen.

View from the main part of the kitchen. Breakfast nook (soon to be renamed pantry area) is on the left, and sun room on the right.

I'll be hitting it hard today and tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Obligatory Steeler Rant

2006-01-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

As one who was born, bred, and deep-fried in the 'Burgh, it's incumbent on me to add my contribution about this Sunday's victory by the Steelers over the Indy Colts into the blog stew. This post was inspired by Kelly's post over at Paradoxes and Problems. Thanks for the inspiration, Kelly!

Kelly described it the most exciting game she'd ever seen, but I can't legitimately describe my experience in those same terms. For me, a game such as this can only be described as exciting when I don't have a vested interest in the outcome. This year's NCAA BCS bowl games fall into that category for me, but only because I could genuinely appreciate fine play from either team, despite my individual preference. I was rooting for Penn State and West Virginia, who won, and Notre Dame and USC, who lost. The games where 'my team' lost where nonetheless compelling to watch. Not so with this week's Steelers' game. Words fail to describe the gut-wrenching experience of having endured the final five or six minutes of clock time, where defeat seemed to be snatched from the jaws of victory at least three times before one of the most accurate place kickers in the game pushed his game-tying attempt sideways to seal our advance to the conference championship game in Denver. It was neither fun nor exciting for me to contemplate another culmination of the NFL season with my beloved team sent home early with their tails between their legs.

Kelly also made the observation that the game put on display the worst sort of officiating ineptitude ever seen in the NFL playoffs. Right on target there. Considering that the lead official had to first pull his head out of his ass before he put it under the replay hood to review the Troy Polamalu interception, I'm guessing his vision might have been a bit blurred from the remains of his previous day's meals, to the point where his ability to see and think clearly were undeniably impaired.

Finally, I must continue to beat the drum in protest against the tendency of Pittsburghers to overestimate the coaching prowess of Crafton's own William Laird Cowher. There are some who insist on enshrining Coach Cowher into the pantheon of the football gods. While I believe firmly, and have stated so on this blog, that he will most likely end up in the Hall of Fame, history has given me no reason to utter his name in the same breath with legendary names like Lombardi, Brown, Halas, Shula, Landry, Noll, Walsh, Gibbs, Parcells, Johnson, and Bellichick. All of these men have a sustained history of winning in the NFL, like Cowher, but they also have won multiple league championships. Until Cowher puts at least two Super Rings on his fingers, he is -- and will remain -- a second-tier coach.

While those who must love the man or feel dirty and ashamed in order to be true fans of the Black and Gold, this label is far from a bad thing. There are plenty of current and future Hall of Fame head coaches with whom Bill Cowher can comfortably be named. Ditka, Holmgren, Dungy, Gruden, Switzer, and George Allen, to name but a few. Of course, with the exception of the honorable Messrs Dungy and Allen, all of these guys have also won a Super Bowl.

To put this past weekend's game into perspective, the better team on the field won. The coaching contribution was made well before kickoff. Great game plan, on both sides of the ball. No doubt. But what makes a coach a football 'god' is not their ability to game plan. Every coach in the NFL does that, or their careers have the same lifespan as a fruit fly. Sorry to have to continue to say this, but the reason why coaching greatness continues to elude Cowher is his historic inability to adapt to adversity in MID-GAME and successfully match wits with the greatest minds in the game.

Tony Dungy, as much as I love the guy, is also stuck with Cowher on the second tier of NFL coaches. I challenge anyone to name another coach in the past 15 years who has put their teams into the playoffs as many times as either of these two, yet has not won a Super Bowl. You can't, because there are none. Yet both have the same problem. Get up early on either of these teams, and victory is almost guaranteed. That's what happened here. Before Peyton Manning had completed a single pass, Big Ben had thrown two TD's, primarily because for once, Cowher didn't come and do what he always does -- and what Dungy and his staff undoubtedly expected. For that fact, he gets a tremendous attaboy from me for doing the one thing he needed to do to defuse the Indy offensive juggernaut. Get a big lead early and force Manning to step up to the plate and be a true great. Which, at this point in his career, he is not.

The fact that the Steelers only managed one other score for the rest of the game is a testimony to what I intensely dislike about Coach Cowher. He retreated into a conservative style to try and protect the lead, depending on his defense and time of possession to clinch the deal. Add to that an inexplicable, borderline psychotic tendency to greenlight risky play calls -- such as onside kicks to open the second half when your defense has been containing the opposition or running the Bus anywhere but straight up the gut on first and goal with less than two minutes to go, a 3-point lead, and Indy holding all 3 of it's timeouts -- that it makes you wonder if there's a bottle of unused medication laying around somewhere in the Cowher home.

And it almost cost us the game.

Never mind the horrible calls by the officials. Forget about the fact that the early defensive game plan kept Manning from getting comfortable until near the end of the first half. Don't even think about how 'uncharacteristic' Jerome Bettis' fumble on the goal line was, since that would be ignoring the fact that he did the same thing in the championship game against New England last year. Forget about all of that.

The difference between the Steelers teams of Bill Cowher and those of Chuck Noll's four championship teams of the 1970's is that when Noll and his staff found an opponent's weakness, they exploited it over and over again, pounding the opposition into a demoralized surrender, while Cowher tries to get an early lead and hang on, refusing to let his players gain confidence and strength by continuing to pulverize their opponents. What happened to Heath Miller over the middle? In the Cowher formula, an unnecessary risk with a two-score lead. Under Noll? Three more touchdowns and Peyton Manning crying openly while lying on his back.

While I desperately hope that Cowher gets lucky again with his opening game plan this Sunday at Invesco Field and builds a big lead early, he's facing a whole different animal in Mike Shanahan. Shanahan is at the top of the waiting list to join the pantheon to which the loyal, but misguided 'Burgh fans have already mistakenly enshrined Cowher. A quick comparison of Shanahan's record to Cowher's reveals that he is 26 regular season wins short of Cowher in 3 less seasons, making him pretty much as successful. Of course, then there's the two Super Bowl rings he gets to wear. In his eleven seasons running the Bronco's ship, he's produced one thousand-yard rusher after another. Running backs who were virtual unknowns before taking their stances behind one of the most successful run blocking schemes in the history of the game. Hell, I think I could rush for a thousand yards in that offense. This year, Denver came about 50 yards from producing TWO thousand-yard rushers, something that has only been done three other times, and NEVER by two backs who never appear on the field at the same time, both being tailbacks, whereas the other three combos have had one being the tailback and the other being a fullback.

That is the kind of record, my chipped, chopped, fellow Pittsburghers, of an NFL coaching legend.

Of course, Shanahan is being denied his godhood status by virtue of the fact that John Elway was his quarterback when the Super Bowls were won, and the failure in recent years to get beyond the Colts. Never mind that before Mike Shanahan showed up, John Elway was the losing quarterback in three Super Bowls, the same number as Fran Tarkento and one less than poster child for Super Bowl futility, Jim Kelly. Without Mike Shanahan, Elway may now be holding that dubious honor, assuming he had still appeared in five Super Bowls.

So this weekend is a pivotal one for both coaches. Will Shanahan cement his place in the NFL Olympus, or will Cowher take the first step to finally earning what so many of us here in the Steel City understandably want to give him?

Stay tuned, and pray that Bill finally decides to win and not just survive.

Oh, just to cement my own conception of myself as a football pundit, check out http://blogs.foxsports.com/Carnac/NFL_Bill_Cowher_Steelers_Jimmy_Johnson_Cowboys_William_Shakespeare_Henry_V.

My Old Home

2006-01-17T14:04:00.000-05:00

My taste for blogging has flagged a bit in recent weeks, mostly because I've just been too busy with muddling through post-divorce complications, becoming a single parent to my fifteen-year-old son, and trying to get my kitchen remodeling project completed.

With that said, I'd like to write about my little project. I live in a house that's over 100 years old, is seriously dropped on one corner of the foundation, and has numerous opportunities for improvement. That's where my kitchen project comes in.

At some point within the past 20 years, the previous owner put a single story addition off the back of the house. The addition basically doubled the square footage of the first floor, with full 3/4 of that space being devoted to the kitchen. The problem, however, is that the utilization of the space still made the whole thing seem small and crowded. My guess is that the reason for this was because of the inground pool that was also built. I've written some about that albatross in the past, having spent the greater part of the summer of 2004 demolishing and filling in the thing because the woman who had it built was too short-sighted and arrogant to realize that building an inground pool with concrete decking all around on top of a hill that drops a minimum of 15 feet into the adjoining lot would not work well without a solid retaining wall to keep the whole works from sliding over the hill and into the Ohio River.

This is relevant because the quarter of the space on the addition to my house that was not dedicated to the kitchen was partioned off into a narrow 'sun room', which must have originally been intended as the entry and exit to the pool area. The end result was to create not one, but two, areas that are too small to be of much practical use -- especially if the pool was not in use. Considering that said pool was not heated, and that the number of days in a year where swimming in such a pool can be counted using less than the fingers on both hands, this was a case of poor design.

So when I found myself single again, I saw a great opportunity to claim this sun room for raising a bunch of new houseplants I'd bought in a impulsive mood to try and cheer myself up. After putting up a makeshift window shelf and watching how my sun loving plants thrived in this room, I realized that the wall put up between the sun room and the breakfast nook on its other side was depriving the whole kitchen of the advantages of this wonderful, natural light -- even on the gloomiest of days.

Besides being morosely dark as a result of this wall, the breakfast nook was too small to seat more than two people comfortably.

So three weeks ago, I set about to cut a big hole in this wall, with the intent of creating a lunch counter in the sun room and letting more light into the breakfast nook. Actually, the project really started with me scraping hideous wallpaper off of the kitchen walls, in the hope that replacing it with a fresh coat of light-colored paint would create more reflected light and openness in the kitchen. This was going to be a small scale project that would cost me virtually nothing and make a vast improvement in the overall effect of the rooms. However, as often happens with me, I saw an opportunity to make what I thought would be just a small improvement for only a little bit more money. More on that later.

To try and give you an idea of how the space is laid out, the sun room measures about 15 feet from the back door to the doorway into the kitchen and is only about 10 in depth from the picture windows to the wall dividing it from the breakfast nook. Too narrow to put a table of that would seat 4 without severely blocking the throughway to the back door. The breakfast nook is smaller yet, measuring about 7 feet square, again making the use of a normal, 4-chair table a tight proposition at best. Those doomed to sit against the inner walls were virtually trapped there anytime others would sit in the chairs on the kitchen side.

As I ripped out drywall, insulboard, and 100-year old wood siding to make my whole, a brillant (at least, imo) dawned on me.

Instead of creating a lunch counter in the sunroom, while continuing to deal with the annoying space limitations of the puny breakfast nook, why not build a bigger 'table' that straddled the wall. That way, instead of creating seating for 7 people who would still be crowded and where interaction would be somewhat inconvenient between those who sat at the counter and those doomed to be crammed into the nook, why not create a table that would easily accomodate six people comfortably and would allow them to interact?

And so that's where I'm at. And the great thing about it is that I'm still not spending a lot of money, except on tools that I didn't have, but needed to do the job. I've been able to reclaim lumber and drywall, plus I had a bunch of lumber in the garage from a project to build beds for D's kids that I never got around to before she left.

Yesterday, I came to the point where I am ready to install the tabletop and drywall. The thing is frickin' awesome, I'm telling you. The tabletop is nearly as long as my 8-person dining room table, and a full 9 inches wider. Plus, once the basic framework is completed, I will be able to build a ton of countertops, cabinets and shelves for my beloved plants to beautify the whole area. And the effect of increased openness and natural light is just amazing.

Only one thing is missing. A woman's touch. I can build the stuff, but I sorely lack the domestic touch and feel for how to choose the right accessories to make the place truly stunning. When I am done with the basics, I will post some pics (if I can figure out how to do it) and elicit suggestions on how to really make the place shine. Who knows? Maybe wife Number Four will emerge from the chatter.

Sorry that this post wasn't more interesting, but I'm having a blast making my home into something unique.

Leave JoePa Alone!

2006-01-13T10:58:00.000-05:00

Right before my email fight with D prompted yesterday's post, I was going to write about a totally different subject. Today I will revisit that particular rant.

The national president of NOW, whose name is not worth remembering or mentioning, wants Joe Paterno's resignation from his position as head football coach at Penn State over a couple of comments he made at a press conference on the eve of his team's appearance at the Orange Bowl in response to a question about the sexual assault charges brought against one of the players on the team he would be facing the next evening. I won't go into what JoePa said, but it has created a totally unnecessary shitstorm that's tainting what has to be one of the greatest coaching comebacks in the history of NCAA football.

What really bruised my neck meat was coming across a sports blog on foxsports.com by a chick with a penis named Michael Rosenberg. I mean, what has this world come to when sportswriters jump on the feminist bandwagon? Basically, the point of Ms. Rosenberg's blog post was to contribute to the outcry against JoePa -- and other old-school, big-time coaches in the NCAA -- by insisting that the football loving public and media stop giving these old-timers a free pass for making comments and handling their teams in ways that piss the feminista off.

However, I've gotta say that using JoePa's comments to make that point and perpetuate what is little more than a tempest in a teapot is completely wrong-headed and displays an overt bias against a man whose record shouldn't be tarnished by what was really an honest answer to a loaded question.

I have several problems with the whole context surrounding this non-controversy:

First, what was the point of asking JoePa about the problems involving a player not on his team? Sure, the player, linebacker AJ Nicholson, was a starter for the opposing Florida State team and had been suspended as a result of the incident, and his absence from the game could certainly have been perceived as an advantage for Penn State. But Nicholson's exclusion from the game was a decision made by the opposing coach, Bobby Bowden, for unspecified rules infractions. Bowden wisely chose not to say any more than that on the subject, but the media needed more than that, so they turned to JoePa.

Second, the media completely ignored the fact that JoePa did all that he could to avoid impugning Nicholson's character or Bowden's program, and did all he could to empathize with the difficult situations that big-time college athletes face. Without any kind of reference to Nicholson's history of trouble with the law, including an incident this summer at an off-campus apartment complex under construction where Nicholson was Tasered by police for refusing to comply with their orders, after already having been ejected from a night-club for disorderly conduct and drinking violations. JoePa tried to take the high road, without fully comprehending the inevitable witch hunt that would result for his failure to fall all over himself decrying the sexual objectification and victimization of women that men's athletics naturally stands for.

Third, why is it that the world cannot accept a realistic assessment that successful college and professional athletes are targets for women whose own lack of self-respect has nothing to do with the nature and popularity of sports in this country? Does anyone in their right mind think that a fair number of these accusers of athletes are nothing more than gold-digging, opportunistic, and vengeful sluts? I'm not saying that the case shouldn't be fully investigated, and neither was JoePa. But the fact is, that the media at large -- and sadly, an increasing segment of the sports media -- is all too willing to ignore the realistic assessment that hooking up with a big-time athlete is all too often seen as the quick road to the good life for many of these female hangers-on, and that any kind of thwarting of this objective by said athlete is more than enough motive to screw him over big time with a false rape accusation. Instead, they are all too willing to jump on the feminist bandwagon and crucify the accused well before the full set of facts ever come fully to light.

Finally, it's a disgrace that the media so used an honorable man like JoePa to generate a controversy. At a time when he should be basking in his fantastic successes of this past football season, he has been made a symbol of all that is wrong with competitive athletics. That is so wrong. Take a long look at the list of men of honor and character produced by the Penn State football program over the decades Joe Paterno has been their head coach. Compare it to the same list produced by Bobby Bowden's FSU reign, and you will see a huge difference. Names like Franco Harris, Jack Ham, John Cappeletti, Todd Blackledge, and others have demonstrated the success of Coach Paterno's commitment to turning out quality, educated men of character who also happened to be great football players, many of them at the professional level. Now, long after hanging up the cleats, these men are civic leaders, successful businessmen and impeccable public figures. Can the same be said about Bobby Bowden? Deion Sanders, Peter Warrick, Lavernius Coles, and now, AJ Nicholson are about the best that can be expected from a program that's more about winning than character.

At least that's my perception.

In the Interest of Fairness

2006-01-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

D, knowing full well that I wear my heart on my sleeve in this blog, read my last post and had a few points to make. Because she did not want to get herself a blogger ID, thinking that I wouldn't allow her comments to pass through, plus the fact that I no longer allow anonymous comment, I thought I'd share a few of her more pertinent responses.

First of all, I cannot agree with NH's characterization of D as a hypocritical child/bitch. While her choices of late have me greatly angered, I actually still love her a lot. She may be young and confused and waffling, but I've never really known her to be malicious or childish.

Second, D claims to have known that I DID have the option of obtaining insurance coverage prior to my enrollment period. I believe her, based on her professional experience in payroll and benefits.

Third, D states that she pushed her job search ahead as a result of perceived threats by me to exercise my option to send the house into foreclosure and leave her with no place to go in the immediate aftermath of me signing the divorce papers. I have no recollection of making such threats, but do recall stating my intention to explore my options in the face of my own uncertainty about what exactly she was going to do. Certainly, I was in no mood to put up with any shit from her or her kids, knowing that they would soon be out of the picture anyway.

Fourth, D claims to not have thought about the diminishing threat on the foreclosure front when making and presenting her decision to stop making contributing payments. That I have a bit more trouble believing, considering how big of a factor it was in her prior decisions. However, realizations like that often come in a less-than-conscious way, and D definitely has locked into a perception that my financial situation is not as bad as it was when she made the commitment of a monthly payment.

Lastly, D made a fairly big deal about not getting any benefit out of the payments, since she was no longer living there, making comments about paying for heat and water she doesn't use and not getting any tax benefits from our mortgage payments. Of course, I was thinking that the likely benefits to her were more long term, such as a place to come back to that will be better than when she left it, considering the time we'd spent together since she left and the purported agreement we seemed to have regarding our true marital status in the eyes of God.

None of these arguments really changes my opinion or position regarding what has been taking place between us these past few weeks. In fact, it has only serve to crystallize my belief that despite her acknowledged realizations, desires, and verbal commitments, D's real commitment is to herself and avoiding the real issues and challenges that prevent her from finding the happiness she claims to want.

But I thought that it was only fair to present her point-of-view as best as I could.

The Final Act

2006-01-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

D decided to drop the final straw on my back this morning, and now it's over for good.

To briefly recap the sordid history of our breakup, when I agreed to sign the divorce papers this fall, D agreed to do the following:

1. Hold off on the divorce until the end of the year, so that I wouldn't lose medical coverage on myself and my children and could get settled onto my own company's plan during the open enrollment period that would take effect at the first of the year.

2. Stay in the house and continue to pay her part of the bills until sometime in the summer of 2006.

What did D do?

1. Took a job in the Baltimore area and moved out of the house on the First of December, losing her medical benefits until they kick in on the First of February and leaving me with none.

2. Filed the divorce papers and obtained the decree on Nov. 17 -- a full month and a half prior to our agreement.

3. Promised to send me money every month to cover her part of the household expenses until roughly the time when she had originally planned to leave.

Today, D informed me by email that she would no longer be sending me a check for those expenses, after only making one payment since leaving. Her reasoning behind this was that since my son has come to live with me, and I have been promised repayment by V of his portion of my child support payment, and that she expected that I would now be able to claim him as a dependent, that I no longer needed her money. More likely, D recognized that now that I have my son in school and have begun to invest myself heavily in home improvements, she was no longer in danger of having a foreclosure coming down on her head.

Regardless of how difficult it might be for me to make ends meet in the present.

In light of these facts, plus her completely insane behavior on New Year's Eve and so many other broken commitments over the past three years, I've just decided to let it go. Whatever God is going to do with her, I'm not going to be around. It's just one too many times that I've taken the high road while she breaks commitment after commitment in her insistence that there's something better out there for her.

All I can say is, "Good luck with that."

Penny Stocks, My Ass!

2006-01-10T09:32:00.000-05:00

It appears that, after several months of apparent immunity, my blog is now receiving spamming comments. If this keeps up, I will have to add the dreaded word verification to my blog to weed out these idiots. I would hate to have to do this, as it's a real PIA, so please don't fuck with me.

Also, anonymous posters are no longer enabled here. Get a blogger identity, or take your cowardly comments elsewhere.

That is all.

7 Bits

2006-01-10T09:17:00.000-05:00

1. I think I am in love with SLC Urban Princess. I have no idea what she looks like, except what I can glean from the Yahoo avatar she put on her blog. What I dig about the Princess is that she is very feminine, putting a lot of thought, time and energy into her shoes and purses. You women may not know it, but we guys really like it when you invest that much of yourselves in looking good. Beyond that, the Princess is a very good writer and displays a mirth that I find essential to any good relationship. Although she's a bit too liberal politically and theologically for my taste, she's young and will most likely get over it in time. If only I could find her Doppleganger here in the 'Burgh!

2. For those of you wondering what's happening with the D situation, especially in light of my confessed infatuation with SLC Urban Princess, I've pretty much decided to move on. With my son at home, all of the care and attention that that requires, and a newfound zeal for transforming my money-pit of a house into a home that expresses my personality and values, I have realized that all of my attempts to convince D to be in this relationship have been a waste of time and effort. Now, I simply have better things to do. I still miss D, and regret not being able to continue making progress with her boys, especially the younger one. However, while they still have a place in my heart, I am finding it harder and harder to see a place for them in my home, as it transforms under my blood, sweat and vision. This past weekend, I had 6 kids in my home, and it was a great time. In fact, they left the house cleaner when they left than it was when they got there. I truly believe that much of this has to do with being able to drive the activities and interactions based solely on my values, their needs, and a clear statement of exactly who was in charge. Not having my energy diverted and depleted by conflicts with D was a key part of being able to set the tone for the weekend and keep everyone playing from the same sheet of music.

3. Mario Lemieux is threatening to take the Penguins to Las Vegas unless he gets a new arena. I say, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way to airport, you French Canadian fuck!" While you're at it, book a seat for Kevin McClatchy and his minor league baseball team. Only the Rooneys and the Steelers have treated this city with the respect it deserves when it comes to putting a professional sports team out there with our name on it. They, and their team, reflect the spirit and personality of our city better than anything else out there, except maybe the Heinz companies. Only the Steelers have justified the expense of building a new stadium that was shoved down our throats by the criminals who we stupidly elected to local and state seats of government. I could care less if Pittsburgh ever fields another professional baseball, hockey, soccer, or basketball team. Pittsburgh first has to learn how to be a real city before it can possibly hope to support any other sports franchise besides our beloved Steelers.

4. To continue on the subject of the Steelers, why is it that they succeed, while the Penguins and Pirates continue to flounder on the brink of dissolution? Two reasons, I think. First, the Rooney family are real Pittsburghers. They are frugal, hard-working, competitive, unpretentious, and loyal. At a time when most other franchises in the league are in a constant state of flux, trying to buy championships via free agency and yearly changes in the front office and coaching staff, the Steelers are the model of stability and consistency. Second, they win. Consistently. While I think Bill Cowher is the least bright of all the top tier coaches, especially when facing in-game adversity, he is still in the top tier -- and deservedly so. I believe that he will end his career as the winningest coach of all time and wind up in the Hall of Fame. Why? Because Cowher is also a true Pittsburgher and gets what the Rooneys are all about. He too, is loyal, both to the Rooneys and to his players. The end result is that at the end of his fourteenth season with the team, he's averaged ten wins per season and is the longest tenured active head coach in the league. By the time he retires, he most likely will hold the records for most wins, have a Super Bowl or two under his belt, and will have set an unattainable standard for longevity in the head coaching position.

5. Tools rock. I used my Sears card this past week to buy a new shop vac and reciprocating saw for my kitchen project. This coming weekend, I will buy myself a tabletop wet saw to cut tile for my new countertops. Add in the miter saw I bought last summer, and I am kicking ass on my remodeling project.

6. I appear to have lost weight (about 10 lbs.), simply by not being at work. I guess not sitting on my ass all day and being forced to make my own food have benefits after all. Now, if I can just get myself back to the gym, I will be super hot by the time summer rolls around again.

7. Getting back into the flow of work after having two weeks off is more difficult than I expected, which is one reason why I'm blogging instead of getting work done. However, I am so thankful to have a job where my creativity and problem-solving skills are more important than face time. For the first time in my IT career, I have the freedom and flexibility to use my talents to their fullest, while being largely shielded from the political bullshit that exists in most of corporate America.

Life is good.

Holiday Debrief

2006-01-09T13:19:00.000-05:00

I've just come back to work after a two-week holiday vacation, which proved to be very eventful.

Here are some highlights:

Despite a late start and a nagging case of depression, I managed to pull Christmas together for the kids. They all got iPods, and I made a scrumptuous turkey dinner.

After five years of banging her head against the wall, the mother of my oldest son finally decided that he needed to live with me full time. This led to my second week of vacation, as I had to take time off to get him transferred to his new school -- no small task, considering the fact that no one from either district was available until Jan. 3rd.

D. threw a glass of champagne into my face on New Year's Eve because I bought some weed. This in spite of the fact that we had a wonderful day shopping for stuff for the house and my son's new bedroom. She got up and left first thing New Year's, depriving her sons of the chance to watch the last week of football with me. It just seems that her commitment to control overrides any commitment to the people she claims to love.

I got to watch the best holiday season of college football that I can remember. The National Championship game was awesome!

I began a remodeling project in my kitchen that is going to end up in Better Homes and Gardens.
I, along with the rest of the football-watching world, got to see a blatant demonstration of just how much of a bum Plaxico Burress is, as he just plain quit on his team and caused Eli Manning's third interception.

And, best of all, the Steelers kicked ass!

Tagged for the Fours

2006-01-09T12:31:00.000-05:00

I have been tagged for the Fours by The Unseen Blogger. It seems as good a way as any to get back in the blogging saddle.

Four jobs you've had in your life:
Waiter, Collections Manager (absolutely the worst job in the world), Technical Services Manager, Business Intelligence Architect.

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Galaxy Quest, Raising Arizona, Office Space, Napoleon Dynamite.

Four places you've lived:
3 distinct areas in the 'Burgh region: Wilkinsburg, Homestead, and Beaver County. I also lived in Colorado Springs for several months when I was 19.

Four TV shows you love to watch:
The West Wing, Smallville, Scrubs, CSI.

Four places you've been on vacation:
Myrtle Beach SC, Jamaica, Virginia Beach, the New River Gorge.

Four websites you visit daily:
weather.com, The Drudge Report, Fox Sports, SLC Urban Princess.

Four of your favorite foods:
Steak (Porterhouse or Ribeye), Peas, Bacon, Roast Turkey.

Four places you'd rather be:
Colorado, Hawaii, Jamaica, in a hot tub with at least two naked, hot, babes.

Four albums you can't live without:
U2's four best: How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, All That You Can't Leave Behind, The Joshua Tree, and War.

Four+ to pass this meme along to:
Not gonna do it.

Signs and Wonders

2005-12-20T18:26:00.000-05:00

D really impressed me today. She sent me an email titled "Background info", which was a synopsis of her online research regarding our true marital status. Conclusion? We are still married. She visited several different sites searching for Bible proofs on one side or another. When I replied and asked her she felt about coming to this conclusion, she impressed me yet again. She's still a bit day-to-day from the stress of her move and new job, getting the boys settled into a new school, Christmas, et al, so it was no surprise that she expressed feelings of reservation about adding our marriage to her pile of things to deal with. I think we both see the grace in being able to be absorbed in settling our own lives without having to fight over whose issues take priority.

She also admitted to feeling a spark of hope and expressed an eagerness to see me again. Soon.

So it looks as if I will be spending New Year's in suburban Baltimore.

Ex Sex is the Best Sex

2005-12-19T14:44:00.000-05:00

Obviously, the Drake has been in seclusion on the heels of his divorce from D. Tonight, I sit before my canvas tasked with relating what may be the most confusing part of my life to date.

D. and the boys came to visit for the weekend.

Yep, you heard right. Three weeks after she walked out the door, and into her new life, we were back in each other's arms. We went to a local farm, picked out a Christmas tree, and put it up together. We went Christmas shopping for my kids together. She took me out for a steak dinner to celebrate my 46th birthday. Hmmm... What else did we do? Oh yeah, we made some of the most passionate love in the history of our relationship. Frequently.

Yet on Saturday morning, I awoke full of misgivings. I had pretty much looked forward to the weekend as the event that would transition our relationship from that of a married couple in trouble to fuck buddies with no other agenda than mutual gratification. However, I found myself longing for more than a once-a-month fuckfest.

D herself began to experience problems yesterday morning, the result of her own surfacing emotions, which were released by our use of ganja as an aphrodisiac on Saturday night. Assailed by doubts on both sides of the argument, she couldn't stop crying for about an hour. I guess it didn't help that I smoked 3 cigarettes during the time she was there, despite the fact that I'm up to about 3/4 of a pack a day at the moment. Nor was she too keen to learn that I'd also scored some blow from the neighbor. Usually, I'm not too keen on the stuff myself, but I enjoyed the lift it gave me in the face of my lingering funk.

We also had some great conversations about things. We both agreed that this separation was the best thing for both of us. It gives her an opportunity to re-establish her own sense of life competence, without feeling like she has to have my approval over every little thing. It gives me an opportunity to clear out the cobwebs in my head and think about my priorities and the consequences of being an ass.

One of the best conversations we had was about whether this was just about sex. I'm sure that there's at least one reader out there scratching their head and wondering, "What the fuck are these two doing?" A question D and I were asking ourselves and each other all weekend. While it's obvious that the impulse that drove our decision to get together this weekend was predominantly sexual, the reality of the experience showed that there was more there for both of us than we had anticipated.

Here's my take on the whole dynamic. Men and women simply don't get together for any other reason than to have sex. Oh sure, there's this whole built-up infrastructure of dreams and expectations of "true love" or some other horseshit. And I believe that if a person is raised right, sex is the last-laid brick of a solid relationship. But whether you are a solid, raised-right Christian or a couple of wandering misfits recovering from the wounds of a dysfunctional childhood, sex is the super glue that binds couples together for a lifetime. It is the launching pad and foundation for a much deeper intimacy, one where the other person becomes indistinguishable from self, and the thought of being apart is painful to contemplate.

Without sexual chemistry and tension, men and women would really have no reason to hang out together. Politically incorrect, I know, but undeniably true. At least in my case. Most of the women I've ever known are people with whom I have nothing in common from which to build a relationship. There are exceptions, of course. There are a few that I've really enjoyed with absolutely no sexual context, but very few.

The Lord gave us the gift of sex as a means of comforting and pleasing one another, and the strong urge to get busy as a built-in motivator to overcome the inevitable frustrations, tensions and obstacles of dealing with another being who might as well be an extraterrestrial, for as well as we understand members of the opposite sex.

This situation also raises for us an difficult theological question: can reconciliation and restoration be legitimately available to divorced couples? What is the status of a couple like myself and D, who are legally divorced and living apart, but still in a relationship with intimate overtones and open to a reconciliation? Is it biblically wrong for D and I to even have sex because we are not legally married? Or do the facts of our relationship and sexual exclusivity negate the societal sanctions and dictates of marriage contracts and divorce decrees?

Let's get this discussion started!

taking care of things

2005-12-03T23:01:00.000-05:00

I may have already alluded to this, but I think that one of the great lessons that God is teaching me in these post-D days is to learn to care for other living things. There's Miss Maddie, she of the innumberable pee stains on the second floor carpet. Since D's been gone, Maddie has pooped inside the house twice and peed once. Now that may not seem like such a good tally for only three days, but I've just started teaching her how things are gonna be now that the clean freak is in charge. Now that her and I are the only creatures needing to be cleaned up after.

Continuing on that theme, I went out and spent $200 on houseplants. D took the kitchen table we used in the breakfast nook, so I had to move the one I was using in the sunroom over to the breakfast nook. I never liked it in there anyway. It took up too much room. I've wanted to line the front and back walls with countertops for quite a while, and this is my chance. The front window faces south, so it gets a LOT of sun. AND there's about 12 feet of window frontage, and two skylights.

So I am going to dismantle the humongous entertainment that D left and build countertops out of them. I bought about 10 plants from Lowe's, half flowering and the other half foilage. A couple of hanging plants, and I'm good to go.

Like everything I attempt to do, I'm hoping to do it big. Plants in every room. My grandmother did this, and she always had things looking healthy. She was also the matriarch of the angry branch of our clan. So I guess I take after her. Word is the it took her most of her life to soften to the point where other people could enjoy what she had to offer. She was 83 when she died.

I hope I'm a quicker study than she.

That's why I'm doing caregiving rehad. Taking care of simple things and not living in filth are my first steps. Maybe after I learn how to love and nourish simpler life forms, God will introduce me to someone that I won't push away.

Yo! Anonymous!

2005-12-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

anonymous,

first, i'd prefer that people who choose to confront me do so in person, or at least tell me something about where they're coming from by using a blog handle.

it's easy to sit in the shadows and take potshots. the only thing that I know about you is that confess the Lord, Jesus the Christ. This obviously is a good thing. In fact, it's the only thing. And why? Because everyone on this planet is so fucked up that God had to come here in human form and take care of it for us.

But once a person makes that confession, the rest of the people in this country seem to want to believe that we lose our demons. Not true. I've been battling anger, drug addiction and sexual impurity since my teens. Has Jesus helped me stop? Most definitely. The results were amazing, but the lure turned out to be too powerful to resist.

This is what comes of a child who is not cared for. I am such a child. A 46-year old child who just wants to be accepted and loved for who I am, not what I COULD BE. If you want to impact the world for Christ, take care of all the children you come in contact with. If they're yours, let them know that even if they turn out to be the next great serial killer freak, you'll be there for them. If they're not, make sure they know that you will give them refuge and advocacy, if needed.

It's a rough world out there, and for all of the so-called revival movement of the '70's and '80's, evangelicals have made much of a difference in the culture. Oh sure, we created a lot of wealth, but at what price? The church is as full of broken people as the culture, and these people are STILL being neglected.

Neophyte Christians are made to feel so afraid of transgressing against the Lord that they are faced with limited choices -- instead of limitless possibilities. They can leave and look for Christians with a clue. They can maintain their denial and learn how to act around their sibs, and then they're on their own to figure out how to conquer their demons.

I choose a third way. To confront. There are a ton of things wrong going on in the church, and it doesn't have anything to do with the divorce rate or premarital sex or addictions. From the perspective of the human world, these are the diseases, by in the eyes of the Father, they are but symptoms of a much graver disease.

We all know the cure, but do we spend enough time considering the cause? Christian churches are filled with people who have mastered the art of looking good, but precious few who have learned to love and extend themselves on behalf of others, as Jesus did for the whole world at Golgotha.

My friend Samson has a saying that Christians are the only ones who shoot their wounded when they've outlived their usefulness. This has pretty much been my experience. Honesty is practically non-existent within the churches. Secrets are rampant. Hope is scarce. Joy? Forget about it! We'll fight everyone we meet over abortion, while we actively kill the spiritual babies in our midst. Terri Schiavo's ordeal was nothing compared to the slow murder we endure all over this world from our 'shepherds'.

I realize that this painting with broad strokes, but I'm just tired of WASP Christianity. Give me a good Catholic, big family any day. You fight, yell, get evil with each other, but you also hug and kiss and say love each other.

You accuse me of fault finding. Guilty. Considering that for the third time in 23 years, a woman has agreed and sent me packing, you might just be right. Except this time, of course. But it's emotionally the same thing. This woman who just left me was an exceptional person who would have made an amazing wife. But she didn't want to be a Christian wife, and I wasn't always willing to be a Christian husband.

So forgive me if I continue to grieve and find my way through this. I've found THE PATH. I've even walked along it quite a bit, but it's a hard road to walk. Especially when you neglect asking your guide which way to turn every now and then. Or choose to ignore what you know for a more amusing detour.

But you know what bothers me most? The assumption you seem to have that I don't already know these things after 26 years of living with my faith. You know that faith is a gift, right? What that means is that it was given to you, and you can't get rid of it. You can try and ignore it. You can complain about it. You can try to drown it in self-destructive, defiant behavior. Or you can take care of it, and enjoy its benefits. They are sure nice to have around when you need them.

So I'll tell you what, anonymous. You get real with me, and then we'll be on the same playing field. I'm not going to stop expressing myself, but I do develop a more respectful tone when someone shows me that they're willing to put something of themselves out there as something more than a critic, or more accurately in your case, a well-meaning, but ineffective Christian cheerleader. Just ask Jeanne.

I know that sounds harsh, but we're called to more. The Master gave us tools that we ignore to play performance games. He said that the world will know that we are Christians if we love one another, not if we succeed in making sin illegal.

So man up, anonymous. Who are you, really?

Various and Sundry

2005-12-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

So I spent my first night alone in my big, empty house. Initially, I felt very lonely, but quickly diverted my focus on patrolling the place to see where I should begin my work. I picked up a new vacuum cleaner, which is a total piece of shit on the carpet, forcing me to go in search of parts for my old one. Miss Maddie enjoyed the greater degree of freedom of free roam of the house, since I no longer have to worry about her being with people who won't pay attention to her and train her. She also got to spend the night outside of her crate, which is a pretty good thing, except for the hour she spent between 4 and 5 am licking herself at the foot of my bed.

All in all, I am embracing a new routine of going to work, giving it my all here, coming home to take care of my little, four-legged princess, and organizing the tasks I need to start working on to get my house transformed into a home that will be a refuge for my family biological and in Christ. Room by room, I am hatching masterful plans to use my space to its best effect.

Projects that are at the top of the list:

1. Reconfigure the basement into a workshop for getting the other stuff done. I'll be moving walls, mostly, so it shouldn't be a big problem.
2. Setting up a second floor office for myself.
3. Switching the dining room and TV room so that I can fit more people around my table.
4. Installing countertops and shelves in the sunroom to start growing some houseplants. I love doing that stuff, and I have some literature for forcing bulbs to bloom inside during the winter. I will be growing daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.
5. Putting an opening into the dividing wall between the sunroom and breakfast nook to allow more light and interactivity in my kitchen space.
6. Setting up a workout room on the second floor.
7. Putting up hooks and shelves for coats and hats in the entryway.

Before I do any of that stuff, however, I need to clean, clean, clean. Nothing has been done for well over a month while the exodus of D was taking place. Now I am much, much more motivated to bring this dump up to my level of cleanliness.

Shifting gears, I wanted to write a bit on the Jerry Bowyer afternoon talk program on WORD-FM. When I first wrote about Jerry, my perspective was completely colored by my knowledge of the events surrounding his divorce and re-marriage. After listening to his shows for three months, I have to say that my opinions have changed quite a bit. Jerry is a very knowledgeable person in a variety of areas - politics, theology, church history - and is very capable of conversing intelligently with people from all sorts of traditions. Additionally, he's not as hostile to things going on as Minto was. That aspect is a bit of a double-edged sword for me, as he tends not to take real strong stands on significantly questionable theology that many of his callers seem to have, but that has also tended to elicit a much more varied response and open dialogue.

It appears that Jerry is now an Episcopalian, which tends to lead to a lot more discussion surrounding the history of Christian liturgy and the origins of various theological traditions and worship practices. Which I find intensely interesting.

As I've continued to tune in, I've found myself wanting to dig deeper into these things myself. For instance, although (like The Unseen Blogger), I could probably never become a Catholic, I am beginning to believe that many of the practices of the RCC and other liturgical denominations have major benefits for those who could implement them in their approach to God with integrity and understanding. Confession, for instance, is something that is sorely lacking from most evangelical contexts. Confession, as I understand it from Scripture, is BOTH to God and to OTHERS. The RCC practice of confession seems to take into account what evangelicals consistently miss. You can't just go around confessing your sins to everyone with whom you happen to enter into a conversation. Most Christians that I know simply can't be trusted to not use that information in some way that will come back to hurt me. Moreover, even those whom I do trust aren't getting the whole story most of the time because of the enormous amount of shame that goes along with having committed sin in the first place. And yet, the impulse to go to another person with my burdens can at times feel overwhelming. It almost feels as if I NEED to tell someone else. The RCC structure of confession takes those feelings of need, shame and mistrust into account by virtue of the priestly vow of confidentiality. Anyone who is burdened can walk into just about any Catholic church during confession times and have access to this gift. It gets a little squirrely for me when you get into penance, and I would avow that you can choose any believer as a confessor, as long as the trust and confidentiality are present.

There are a bunch of models within evangelicalism that seem to try and get at this. In our church, we have something called the Triple Cord program, which is really an accountability and prayer group of around three men. Some of my friends meet every week to hold each other accountable for being mentally faithful to their wives -- i.e. - not checking out chicks all day long, wondering what they'd look like naked, and focusing on the way other women arouse you when you're trying to make love to your wife. I think it's fair to say that this is a prevalent issue among any man with a pulse. I know it is with me. But what about those deep, dark things that you struggle with that may not be easy for others to hear and still maintain a loving attitude towards you? It's clear to me that Scripture teaches us that the only way to be free of these issues is to continually bring them into the light until they disintegrate in the Spirit's purifying fire like a vampire dissolves into a dust pile if they get caught outside at daybreak. Part of that process has to be confession to another person. Studies have shown that actually calling a thing what it is, without clarifying or rationalizing, is critical to breaking out of destructive patterns.

Anyway, I've become an interested listener of the Jerry Bowyer program and believe that there is a great potential to have certain conversations that need to be had within the Christian community surrounding the 'Burgh. I'd also be interested in starting some conversations about how sincere believers and followers of Christ can borrow and use traditions other than their own, as opposed to taking militant stances in attacking the things they either don't understand, aren't called to embrace, or reflect conclusions of practicality to which they've not yet arrived.

It's becoming very apparent to me that this is one of the biggest problems facing the church. Reformation is needed, but prior to reformation must come understanding, humility and submission to the reality that none of us knows everything.

The Splitsville Epilogue

2005-12-01T09:44:00.000-05:00

From the brightest star
Comes the blackest hole
You had so much to offer
Why did you offer your soul?
I was there for you baby
When you needed my help
Would you deny for others
What you demand for yourself?

Cool down mama, cool off
Cool down mama, cool off

You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table

U2 - Crumbs From Your Table

Last night was one I'll never forget. It started off with me, Samson, Bibby, John, Bill and B-Wag having lagers and eats at Applebee's. Except Bibby, that is. He started off strong with an iced tea and quickly moved down to water. Wuss.

This circle of men left their newborns, pregnant wives and domestic chores to spend an hour or more with me while D loaded her UHaul with a some friends from work. Each of these guys brings a different dimension of friendship to the table. Samson and B-Wag are the ones with whom I can talk theology, politics, and culture. Most of them golf. John is the ABF leader and has a real gift for preaching, if not for theology. Bibby is one of maybe 3 other 40-something guys in the group. And Bill is the guy whose private adoption fell through, only to have the birth mother change her mind again and give the baby back. I've had a unique beginning to my relationship with him. When the adoption fell through, I wrote he and his wife an email that conveyed -- somehow -- the depth of feeling I had for their pain. It is one of the few times I have felt that my writing has really succeeded in communicating my heart. It opened the door for us to open a dialogue, and he was the first one to step into the breach with me after I sent out the group email I posted yesterday.

These brothers, and a few other siblings, have materialized in front of me as a core group of leaders in our midst, whose hearts for God and others have encouraged me over the past week. I am not going to let go of this gift as easily as I let go of my marriage.

By the time I got home, D was fully loaded and putting her boys to bed. Seeing as her bed was in the truck, I quickly realized that the only Christian thing to do was to offer to share mine. And share we did. Three times, including this morning's wake up call. What I gave her over the course of those couple of hours was the best I could give in that area. Yet I felt no sense of loss this morning as I examined the dime-shaped love bite she laid on my left shoulder.

I honestly believe that I made the best possible choices in comporting myself through these last two days of our relationship. No recriminations, just the best I knew how to let her know that I will miss her and regret that she will miss out on the winter flowering of my restoration. But maybe it couldn't have happened any other way. There was just too much focus on the pain in each of us by ourselves and an unwillingness to set it aside to focus on soothing the pain of the other.

As she stood at the front door at 6 am this morning, ready to leave for her new life, things broke down a bit. Stiff upper lip, and all. A quick, but gentle kiss. A last look into each other's eyes, seeing the finality of it all and accepting it.

And that was it. No hug. No I love you's. Just the freedom to let go and walk on without either of us having the last word. Maybe it's a sign that the last word hasn't been spoken. Bridges intact and doors left open, but also no backward looks.

Time to get my feet back on the path.

Twenty Four Hours From Now

2005-11-29T21:20:00.000-05:00

I will be just coming home from having dinner, brews, and bitches (not the female kind) with 5 of my boys from ABF. That stands for Adult Bible Fellowship, in case I haven't mentioned it before.

I talked with one of them for about an hour earlier this evening. Samson -- I shit you not, that's his name -- was giving me a hard time about the email that I wrote to this particular group of people, explaining the situation between D and I. No, explaining's not the right word... OK, why don't I just print the message.

Dear Friends,

I've been feeling a burden to reach out to you all and let you know why you've not seen or heard from me lately. I regret that it has taken me this long to do so, and I ask for your forgiveness in advance for using email as the medium.

I regret to have to inform you all that my marriage to D appears to be irretrievably broken. Neither my efforts and prayers, nor God's unmistakeable acts of grace, have convinced her to stay. Certainly my many failures to bear spiritual fruit in the face of daily challenges and conflicts between us have not helped. At this point, D is in the process of negotiating an offer of employment in suburban Baltimore and may very well be gone as early as the first of December. She has also decided to finalize divorce papers she filed in the summer of 2004 by the end of this year. I decided to sign these papers last month after repeated requests over the past several months.

It's not my intent to cast blame, minimize my responsibility, or drag D's name through the mud, but rather to let you know what's going on. Each of you has a special place in my heart, as God has blessed me to share some small portion of fellowship in Christ with you. I just want to thank you for your friendship, support, concern and willingness to listen to me when I needed a friendly ear. I can't begin to express how much it has meant to me.

I believe that a significant part of experiencing the fullness of joy and contentment in God's grace lies in embracing one's circumstances as ordained in God's Sovereignty. I tried to encourage D to embrace our marriage and the events that led us to CEFC and Building Bridges as evidence of His encouragement to persevere in spite of our struggles. Now I find myself confronted with a new set of circumstances to embrace and in which I must persevere if I am to know what I only now believe.

An honest assessment of these circumstances, and myself, leads me to some disappointing conclusions. First, I am not convinced that CEFC is the right place for me to worship. There are a number of reasons I could cite for this uncertainty, but it really boils down to a basic personality conflict. I am just not a big church guy. I believe that we are called to live in community seven days a week and be a force for the Kingdom where we live. While there are no churches that I know of in my immediate area where the seats are as comfortable, or the sound system as crisp, or the music as professional sounding, or the people as cool as at CEFC, I know that there are people within spitting distance of where I now sit and type this email who both long for deep fellowship and the hope of the message of the Gospel.

However, there are also things that argue for me remaining. I have family members who attend CEFC. There's Celebrate Recovery, and an opportunity for me to use my gifts to serve there. And then there's you guys. I sure would miss seeing all of you and having the privilege of seeing how all of these babies turn out.

Anyway, that's where I'm at -- just so you know.

I'm probably not going to go to CEFC until I have a better idea how long D will be attending. I'd rather let her have the access to what God is doing there than bring a whole lot of discomfort into the mix. That's probably an excuse, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm not in seclusion, but I'm not real outgoing at the moment, either. Which, I guess is my way of saying that it's OK if you want to write or call or get together. What I'd really appreciate more than anything is your prayers that the Lord would help me get up out of this pit I'm in right now. And please pray for D and her boys. I don't want to see them suffer any more than is necessary for God to do His work.

Thanks again so much for your gift of friendship!

Your brother in Christ,
The Drake

Samson was somewhat affronted by my playing the martyr (really, it was just an excuse) to portray my choice to interrupt my fellowship with them. Good call, really. Although I really was hoping that D would be more freed up to have a chance encounter with someone who would have the right words, the right heart to let God use them to drive home the truth to her. Alas, it was not to be, as it seems that I had done such a good job of convincing her that everyone from the ABF would naturally agree with me, that she avoided contact with any of them for over a month. It's clear that there will be no changing of her mind, nor any opportunity to experience the embrace of a concerned brother or sister.

While I was talking with the long-locked one, D was apparently having a real bad night. Stomping up and down the steps with her last major packing area -- her boys' bedroom things.

Then, she found out that the littlest one had busted a dresser drawer. Big surprise there. I've done my time with little boys and cheap, build-it-yourself furniture. L braces, wood screws and glue must be in every would-be parent's arsenal.

While she was running up and down the stairs and into the garage to get those things, the dog shit on the landing of the third floor. D stepped in it. Then it was on. She stormed around the house yelling and bitching at me for sitting in the recliner with my hands down my pants while MY dog shit in the house.

Ha! Excuse me, but I think it's more like MY dog shit in MY house.

But old habits die hard, I guess.

Oh, and I'm stinking up the whole house with my smoking, even though I've not had a single one inside the house. I'm at least giving her THAT consideration.

Tomorrow evening should be interesting. D intends to work a full day at the office, then pick up and pack her rental truck before sleeping one final night under my roof. Thursday morning, she will be gone from my life... forever?

Rainy Tuesday in the Beaver Valley

2005-11-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

Today is a day of somber reflection. I've stayed home from work to observe a ritual I have when a relationship ends. I clean my space, start to think how I'm going to use the space that's just been vacated, get high, listen to U2 and cry.

This need for an impromptu mental health day began during the Steelers game last night. I will say that I didn't mind so much losing to Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning. They are just the kind of people professional sports needs to do well.

Besides, Tony started here in the 'Burgh, making him one of us.

Bill Cowher, however, continues to disappoint me with his rash, ill-advised play calling. The pathetic attempt at an onsides kick to start the second half is just the latest evidence of his continuing inability to win the biggest games. The defense was very effective in keeping Indy off the field, but needing a long field in which to lose a few battles while winning the war. Putting such an explosive offense on our own 40 after the defense had to suffer giving up points at the end of the first half because of Big Ben's turnover was just plain stupid.

Speaking of Roethlisberger, he's not right. He needs more time to heal and get his feet under him. The last thing we need is for Cowher to permanently transform him into a pocket passer because the kid is trying to 'man up' for this lisping hardass. Get an experienced quarterback into town, Bill. Ben's not ready, and you got no one else. We need a semi-mobile game manager. Stop thinking about the running game as a "line-up-and-ram-it-down-their-throats" proposition. Get Parker, Staley and the Bus into space. Throw to Kreider and the tight ends, for shit's sake. Then wait for your opportunity to hurt 'em downfield. 5 yards is 5 yards, dude. Two yards a carry isn't going to cut, and is going to get your quarterback killed.

Sheesh! Tough guys. You can't teach them anything.

I hope that doesn't hold true for me as well, but ya gotta wonder. One of my brothers at church once told me that if you continue to have problems getting along with people, maybe the problem is you. Certainly true in my case. I've been an arrogant, pompous, demanding ass.

But there is more to me than that when I keep my thoughts on what Jesus has taught me and given me. It's amazing how quickly I turn to complaining and criticizing, considering how good my life really is in the grand scheme of things.

I've decided to open my house to host a weekly Bible study. I think I want to encourage people to get on a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year program, but first I want to bring people into my home, and celebrate the Advent season by going through the Gospel of Luke. I'm feeling very liturgical right now, and I have come to see the value in following a Calender of Remembrance to keep the really important things in sight throughout the seasons of the year.

So I begin a time of being alone -- again. It's really not so bad, except for the missing out on sex part. But I guess it's high time I learned how to deal with that. It's certainly not been worth it to make it such a high priority.

Instead, I am going to work on my house. There are so many things that I want to do, but I think I am going to work on getting the sun room set up to have room to sit and chat, grow plants. I am going to probably cut a hole in the wall to connect the breakfast nook to a lunch counter in the sunroom. The major priority here is to create a place where a half dozen people can interact without violating personal space. I'm pretty excited about how it help create an environment of relationship, especially for my kids.

I'm done crying for now, although these last few days have been hard to endure.

Time to man up, bro.

Fourteen Ways You've Blessed Me

2005-11-29T08:54:00.000-05:00

Last breath: not yet

1. You helped me get back on track with my life.
2. You gave me the motivation to finally get a home of my own.
3. You were my best reason yet to learn how to forgive and forebear.
4. You forced me to face my own faults.
5. With your help, I've done my best work ever with my hands.
6. That thing that you do that I like. I REALLY, really LIKE it!
7. Your children have helped me find a calling to coach young boys in baseball.
8. They have also helped to make this football season the best since the Steelers were winning Super Bowls instead of losing AFC championship games.
9. Your financial gifts and knowledge has helped me learn to make the most of my resources.
10. The way that your poinsettas have flowered again this season blesses me. Please let me keep the red one!
11. The conflicts that we've had over living the Christian life have only served to solidify my commitments both to God and my children.
12. If it wasn't for your love of animals, I wouldn't have my Miss Maddie to cuddle on these coming winter nights. I will train her, keep her clean and groomed, and love her.
13. You made a lot of things possible for me, just by being attractive enough to keep me interested.
14. The tithe victory is one you should cherish for the rest of your life. You taught me something I didn't already know.

Hit the Reset Button

2005-11-28T16:47:00.000-05:00

Final toke tally: 123 days
Final smoke tally: 115 days

That's right, folks. The fast has ended. I guess my own evasive maneuvers continue. Oh well, I'll fall back on Luther's old adage: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world."

As faithful readers might have guessed, my new ex-wife did not respond well to my "fall from grace". It turns out that D had been a faithful reader of this blog until 18 days ago, when my tag line for the last smoke tally read "99 days (but I'm weakening)". She confessed to me last night that upon reading that, she felt a twisting in the pit of her stomach and stopped reading lest she encounter my eventual confession of relapse. For some reason, she held out hope that this would come after she was safely out of town.

HA! While the main driving force behind my loss of will -- that's what it is, not a fall from grace -- is undoubtedly my unvanquished demand for comfort in the face of yet another abandonment, make no mistake that I was going to make sure that she was going to know about it once I'd made the decision to give in.

That was actually after I'd already made arrangments to break my ganja fast, but after waiting all day Saturday for delivery, I decided to jump off the tobacco wagon instead. After coming back from Sheetz with my fresh pack of Newport Lights, she pursued me out into the backyard, demanding an explanation and seeking to convince to abandon my folly. One of the highlights of this particular conversation was her response to my reply to her wondering why -- which was simply, "Because I feel like it".

Unbelievably enough, she had the stones to tell me that just wanting to do something didn't make it right. Oh, really? So how are we applying that principle during our packing?

After fifteen minutes of communicating to her that her status as ex-wife-in-residence didn't entitle her to any more of an explanation than that, nor a hearing of her 'concerns', she finally went off to bed. I figured that was that.

Oh, soooooo wrong.

When I got home from church yesterday, it was to discover that the laundry was underway. However, my clothes were not included, despite the fact that I have spent every weekend for months doing laundry for her and her kids. After a pleasant little conversation regarding my feelings on this, D spent most of the rest of the day as a basket case, getting all worked up every time she heard me go out the back door to have a smoke. The bottom line is that she was lashing out at me for having the audacity to smoke again.

I wasted a few more hours trying to engage in rational discourse over this state of affairs, until I got the call from the neighbor that Ganja Claus had dropped down my chimney. In the interest of science, I offered to share my first bowl with D, an offer she predictably (and eagerly) accepted until she realized that she had to undergo a piss test later in the week for her new job.

After I had indulged and was feeling talkative and insightful, I engaged her in a conversation where I apologized for some of the ways I've treated her and tried to explain how what's really hurt and frustrated me over this past year is the utter lack of enthusiasm and interest in this Christian life and what God was obviously (to me, anyway) trying to do in our marriage. Of course, the conversation derailed onto its usual sidetrack about how she didn't feel 'safe' or 'good enough' to let herself share openly. At that point, I just gave up. I got more out of watching the end of the Saints/Jets game than I did out of all of the hours I spent trying to communicate with this woman.

Two more days, and it will all be over.

Ende

2005-11-22T22:23:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 118 days
Last smoke: 111 days

A single sheet of paper. A single sentence of no more than 30 words. One signature and three ink stamps.

That's all it's come down to. It has been 'ordered and decreed'. A mere three days. It took longer to arrive in my mail.

That's the pitiful summary of The Drake and D.

I'm a Geek, but a cool one

2005-11-21T14:46:00.000-05:00

You scored as Pavel Chekov. You are Chekov. You are probably young, with grand ambitions and lots of energy. You are headstrong and tend towards brash action. You can become quickly involved in romantic attachments, but aren't too heartbroken when they end just as quickly. You do have what it takes to be a leader, but first you need to learn some judgement and self-control. You most likely have many friends and few enemies, your basic outgoing nature makes social contact very easy for you.

Pavel Chekov

89%

Captain Kirk

79%

Uhura

61%

Hikaru Sulu

50%

Dr. McCoy

50%

Montgomery Scott--"Scotty"

50%

Spock

39%

Nurse Chapel

39%

Which Star Trek Character Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Personally, I'd rather test for a character from one of the newer shows. I believe that if I did, I would be, respectively: Jean-Luc Picard of STNG; Dax from DS9; Chakotay from Voyager; and Porthos from Enterprise.

The Splitsville 411

2005-11-21T09:49:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 117 days
Last smoke: 110 days

My very strange day on Friday got a whole lot more interesting after I got home.

One small detail that I forgot to mention about my day was that I had a couple of cologne samples from Kaufmann's-soon-to-be-Macy's in my shopping bag. As the come hither aroma wafted up into my nostrils during the ride home, I was suddenly insprired to have a little fun with my situation. D loves cologne. I really don't. It makes me nauseous most of the time, but I will wear it on special occasions. This out of consideration for my now fleeing wife. Now I had a new consideration. I was going to dab on some when I got home, dress as if I was going out, and wait for a reaction.

However, D was so fixated on her flight preparations that she didn't notice anything. Moreover, her unattended brats were bouncing off the walls. Being a Friday night, I decided that I didn't need to stick around and endure this shit. So I put on my coat and went out, having no idea where I was going or what I was going to do.

My first thought was that I would just go to a movie. I'm really interested in seeing Walk The Line, as I'm fascinated by the whole redemption story of Johnny Cash. It's one of those few stories that makes me think that there's hope for me. But there was not a showing until 10:35, and I'm just not a late night guy anymore. So I went to a bar/restaurant across the river where I hoped I might find someone I knew or could get to know easily -- just to have some human contact in the face of my impending abandonment. I was not disappointed, as a woman I graduated with and her older brother walked in and sat next to me about 15 minutes after I arrived. We had a nice little conversation, and the brother and I commiserated in our separate tales of woe with the opposite sex.

I half expected a phone call from D, who had surely noticed my unusual disappearance from my haven of domestic bliss. I wasn't totally surprised not to get one, however, as D is just as likely to stew and fret in resentful silence as she is to speak up about her feelings. Actually, that's pretty much the status quo.So when I came home a couple hours later, I was unsurprised to find the porch light I had left on turned off and the front door deadbolted. Laughing at the pathetic futility of the gesture, I headed around back, where I can't be locked out -- hoping she had turned on the alarm so I could let it go off and launch her leaving ass into the ceiling. No such luck, but the best was yet to come.

As I hung my coat in the front foyer and headed up the steps, I was greeted by D with a puzzled look on her face.

"What are you doing?", she asked.

"Coming home. I was out", I replied, instantly realizing that she had not known that I was out. She thought I had just gone to my bedroom early and was completely complacent in her belief that that was the best response I was capable of in response to her nonsense.

"Oh, really?", she said.

"Yeah, I figured it's Friday night. Why sit around and watch you pack when I could go out and do something for a change."

"Lucky for you", she retorted.

"I wouldn't say lucky. Just free."

And with that I went to my room and got ready for bed.

About 20 minutes later, I'm disturbed by muffled, unusual sounds. I can't tell if it's her kids goofing around with the dog, or her diddling herself in the next room, or... something else.

So I get up to investigate, and... it's something else.

D is sitting on the floor in her 'office', the one that used to be my office until I gave it to her so she could have 'her own space'. She's holding her head in her hands, rocking back and forth, and sobbing. Now I'm feeling kinda bad, since it's obvious to me that I'm dealing with more than just a willfully ignorant, self-deceived apostate. This woman is genuinely unstable.

I ask her what's wrong. She's says it's just her imagination running away with her, and she's just being stupid.

"No Shit!", I want to say, but don't. How fucking ridiculous to have this kind of reaction to me going out when you've being packing up your shit for a week, and working on this divorce for months.

She goes on a bit about how I could have been smoking pot and cigarettes, or even worse, could have had someone new already. Of course, I couldn't resist the impulse to ask her what business it was of hers. She agrees, but continues to practically hyperventilate, fan her reddened face with her hands, and say, "Calm.... calm.... calm...", over and over again like the sheer power of that word will take care of what's eating at her.

By now, my damned conscience is really starting to get the better of me. I have no heart to really lay into her now. This game is no fun anymore. What I see crumpled up in a fetal ball before me is a shell of a human being who has no clue why she is suffering so, nor any inclination to listen to the voice that is nagging her to stop the cycle of pain.

I help her a little bit with the spyware problem she's developed on her PC, tell her that I am just next door if she needs anything, then go to bed.

The next morning, I invite in to have sex, thinking that she could use a little stress release. She readily agrees, of course. Afterwards, I tell her that it's not too late to change her mind. I point out to her that the intensity of her reaction points to a bond and unfinished business in our relationship. I remind her for the thousandth time that her problems will go with her, because her problems are not my doing. At least not the ones that impel her to flee this situation, and God's obvious call.

It takes less than five minutes to recognize that I'm wasting my time. She doesn't have the courage to back out of a bad decision when she believes that other people will end up mad at her for it. The new employer, her father, the current employer, the babysitter, the moving company... Basically anyone who isn't God or me... God, because she's convinced herself that God's totally cool with her plan to get away to someplace where she can really 'work on herself'. Me, because I'm just an over-the-top asshole who makes her feel inconsequential and incompetent.

Despite the recognition of futility, we continue to dance the same old dance until lunchtime. Finally, I decide that it's time to get some things done and let her get on with her escape.

Sunday we both went to church. Separately. I had decided that I was going to go both hours this week, as I had written an email to four couples with whom I've developed relationships over the past year, filling them in on the situation. D only stayed for the service.

The sermon was taken from the Book of Acts, Chapters 8 through 12. The theme was one that I've been dwelling on for some time now -- trusting in God's Sovereignty in the face of tough times. For those of you who don't know these passages, I'll summarize it by saying that had these events not taken place as they had, Christianity would most likely have been relegated to the status of a minor Jewish cult, instead of the world changing faith it has become. But God accomplished it through pain, suffering and death of those who believed. Yet they experienced great joy and power in their faithfulness, trust and obedience.

As I sat there, two things kept swimming through my mind. First, how could D sit week after week in that church and be able to choose as she has? Second, and more important, what am I gonna do with this truth? As I sat, I decided that I was just going to have to let go of D once and for all. If God hasn't been able to convince her to trust and obey, what kind of chance do I have?

No, it's more important that I put an end to my own flight from God. D likes to counter that there is no difference in degree or scale between her sin in pursuing this divorce and my various sins of anger, bitterness, and omission. I both agree and disagree. While my failure to love grieves God no less than D's choice to divorce and ignore God's many interventions into our situation, there is a hardening that comes with taking a trifling stance with God that you can do your own thing now and repent later. We've all done it. Me as much, if not more, than anyone. But that just makes the path to restoration all that much more difficult.

But that's all irrelevant now. All that matters is that for which I have to bear responsibility. It's time for the anger and bitterness to end. It's time to travel the hard and narrow path to restoration and healing. I've always wanted someone to travel with me, but now I realize that everyone has to go this one alone. You don't meet God with your wife and friends, at least when it's time to take care of your business. Someone can take you to the door, but you have turn the handle and step into the audience all by yourself.

With God's grace and timing, D will come to her own encounter, or continue to suffer the mental, emotional and physical erosion of her self that displayed itself with such force Friday night. I can only commend her to God's care and discipline.

In the meantime, I have an opportunity to get rid of my own crippling self-protection and finally get a life.

I've Got Gas Pains!

2005-11-18T15:18:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 114 days
Last smoke: 107 days

Today has been a very strange day. Several weeks ago, I sold 41 cheesecakes for my daughter's fundraiser that is providing money for her spring trip to Boston with the high school choir. Today was the day to deliver them. In my enthusiasm to make my little princess the third place prize winner in the overall sales contest -- an achievement to which she contributed exactly one cheesecake sold to her best friend's aunt (which means her friend actually did the selling) -- I failed to recognize the logistical problems with ensuring delivery of 41 FROZEN cheesecakes.
Neither I nor my daughter's queen ____ (you fill in the blank) of a mother own a big enough freezer to store them until they were to be delivered. Nor was I 100% sure that there was enough freezer space in my office to keep the puppies frozen until work let out. This is not to mention that our employee parking lot is a fifteen minute walk from the office. No way I'm hauling 7 boxes of cheesecake that far!

Fortunately, the sudden cold snap allowed me to keep the cakes in my car overnight with no risk of thawing. Then I paid $17 so I could park right next to the building. Coming in extra early, I worked myself into a sweat sorting, labeling and stuffing the cakes into any available freezer space I could find on six floors. Finally, nearly nauseous from having sacrificed my extra large, morning coffee from Au Bon Pain, I sent out the emails to all of my now-satisfied customer/co-workers.

With that over, I try to settle into a normal workday and get something accomplished. However, I am still reeling from yesterday's disclosures from D that:

a) she took the job in MD, at $8K less than what she needs to maintain the standard of living her current salary affords her here;
b) her last day at work here is Nov. 30, meaning that she will not be fulfilling her promise to maintain benefits on me and my kids until the end of the year (I've already enrolled us at my work beginning in January);
c) she's already officially changed her name back to her first husband's last name. I guess I understand that it makes some sense, since that's the name her kids go by. But the guy is a total loser, and has had virtually no contact with his children in the three years that I've known them;
d) she's not sure where she's going to spend Thanksgiving. Hey, I've got an idea! HOW ABOUT IN HELL, BITCH!

The whole thing is sort of taking me by surprise. I mean, part of me is totally glad to be rid of her, but it's getting damn near impossible to endure the constant sight of her packing up her shit and scurrying around like her ass is on fire - she's in such a hurry to get away from me.

So I'm just about getting back on track, putting my domestic bliss out of my mind, when the fire alarm in the building goes off right in the middle of a meeting. We get these drills once in a while, and they usually come at a very inconvenient time.
This, however, was no drill.

Seems that we had a gas leak somewhere, and the geniuses in charge thought it would be a good idea to keep us standing out on the sidewalk in thirty-degree temperatures. One of the guys in my meeting didn't even have a chance to get his coat, as it was five floors up and the elevators were shut down.

After about fifteen minutes of freezing my nuts off, I decided it was time to go to lunch. Many of my fellow employees had the same idea, and I heard from the bartender at the cafe where I ate that the building was probably going to locked down for two hours.

Day shot.

So I went shopping. Got myself two nice shirts, two pairs of slacks and a belt -- all on sale -- at Kaufmann's-soon-to-be-Macy's. That way when D sees me getting dressed for church this weekend, she will finally see just how much she's going to miss the stud-muffin that is me.

Yeah, right.

The Plan

2005-11-15T16:22:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 111 days
Last smoke: 104 days

Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife.
--St. Paul (I Corinthians 7:27)

Admittedly, I'm a bit testy these days. I'm coming to grips with the reality that my efforts to convince D. to embrace God's Call in our circumstances have failed miserably. Now my circumstances are changed, and it's up to me to embrace a new set of implications in God's Sovereignty.

Barring any last minute miraculous intervention, I will again be a single man by the end of the year. From what I can tell, that's probably a good way for me to remain. This is not a prospect I relish, but I can't even begin to consider bringing another woman into my children's lives after all that's happened here. Nor can I easily just revert to my former level of promiscuity, simply to deal with my loneliness and sexual desires. When I say 'easily', I mean without huge amounts of guilt, regret and other, possibly unpleasant, consequences. I could very easily get drawn into doing the deeds, but I am too aware of the cost, at the moment, to do anything other than suffer as a result.

At this point, the only value I can find in a woman is for sex. I know that this is a wrong attitude, but it is what it is. So rather than screwing up my life any more than I already have, I think I'll just do my best to avoid them altogether. At those to whom I feel any sort of physical attraction.

I have somewhat of a desire to get back in touch with God, but not enough of one to actually get on my knees or crack open the Word. I don't know why, but it is growing. I guess maybe I'm not ready to give up my ranting just yet. I guess that's what unforgiveness feels like. I don't really know.

What I do know is that I will be lonely. That I will be horny. That I will be tempted to act out in anger at the unfairness of it all.

And I know that the only one that I will be hurting if I surrender to that temptation is myself. Maybe some others, too. But mostly myself. Either way, it won't be worth it.

So what are the five stages of grieving again? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance? Well, the denial's over, that's for sure. That ended the day I agreed to sign her stupid divorce papers. Anger? Check. We're in full swing here at the moment. Bargaining? Somehow, I don't see that happening this time around. Did that last year, and look where it got me. Hasta la vista, baby! Depression? That's an ongoing state with me, so I guess the only left is acceptance. I've done that somewhat already. I just wish she'd leave already. Going home to growing piles of packed boxes with her and her two spawn in the way all of the time is just really aggravating.

Yep, anger phase still going strong.

I've pretty much decided that I need to go back to church and at least let the people I know there that I'm not dead, terminally ill, off on a bender, or anything else dramatic. I don't know that I can continue in the fellowship in the same way that I have been over the past year. The group I got involved with is demographically incompatible with my new situation. They are mostly D's age, either busy with the responsibilities of young children, having babies, or looking for someone with whom to get started down that path.

I'm on the short side of 50. My kids are all teenagers. I have no wife, nor any real time obligations outside of work and weekend visitations. I feel the need to develop relationships with people who are more available. Problem is, most people within the church who are more my own age are still either married and dealing with at home teens.

So my preliminary plan is to start going to the class my uncle leads during the first hour. Most of the folks there are late-50's to late-60's. Maybe I can get a little perspective. And it's not likely that I'll find myself tempted to start up a relationship with any of the widows.

Eliminate the distractions. Focus on the essentials.

That's the plan.

Update from Splitsville

2005-11-14T11:28:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 110 days
Last smoke: 103 days

My weekend started with the revelation that D. had gone and got herself a job in Maryland, with a probable start date in early December. I knew that she had gone there on an interview, only because she wanted me to adjust my work schedule to take care of her kids while she was gone. As if.

This new job represents a significant bump in gross pay for D., probably about $15K. Unfortunately, I don't believe she is taking into account the differences between living 5 min. from your job in Beaver County to one requiring some sort of commute in suburban Baltimore. Based on my best estimation, she will require an additional $6K just to maintain her existing standard of living. That's not taking into consideration that she's promising to pay me an additional $200 per month to avoid me having to allow foreclosure on the house.

Of course, when one is so intent on leaving the difficulties of having a real marriage in the face of disappointed fantasy, I guess no price is too high. Besides, she will be living near her father -- a huge bonus, considering this is the guy who abandoned her when she was 9 so that he could continue on HIS merry way through 4 marriages as some sort of nominal Christian whose first drink of the day usually occurs before noon. Unresolved Daddy issues seem to be high on my list of things to look for in a potential mate.

So after letting me pick up her kids and feed them on Friday night, she proceeds to spend the rest of the weekend -- which happened to include my kids' visitation, along with one of my oldest son's friends -- packing up as much of her shit as she could with ten times more energy than I've ever seen her put into either her kids or this so-called marriage.

Yesterday, after enduring her in my bed because there's no place else for her when my kids are in town, she rolls over and asks me if I'm blowing of church again. Ever heard of the Theater of the Absurd? Any conversation I have with this deluded woman lately seem to take on that surreal tinge.

When I tell her that, yes, I am planning on not enduring two hours of hypocrisy and shame over this sad situation, I ask her if she's going. Oh yes, of course she is, as if that was the most ludricrous question I could ask. Of course, she's not going to have any meaningful interactions with anyone, nor tell a soul what it is that she is doing. I guess she's just going there to ask for God's Blessing on her flight plan, and pray that He will somehow compensate for her woeful lack of parenting and provision of things that matter in the lives of her boys so that she can get on with finding a life that's more to her liking.

My response? A snort and a smirk. I want nothing to do with this charade. I don't feel like having a bunch of well meaning brothers and sisters dig into this open wound. I don't feel like talking to God about it, so why should I bother showing up at His House? For some strange reason, I also can't just go and pretend and not talk about what's going on to those people with whom I've developed a bit of a relationship. I can't seem to quite put my finger on the reason why.... Oh! I remember now! Because it's what the communion of saints is for, among other things.

I figure that I'll just pout a little longer, and wait for her to go away without an explanation. That way, when I show back up, I can at least let them know why they'll never see or hear from her again.

Well, D. does not take too kindly to my little display of utter disgust with her hypocrisy, and feels the need to straighten me out. She believes in Jesus, she says, and that's why she continues to go to church.

Oh really? I had to bite down on my lip to keep from laughing right in her face. I did manage a spiteful comment about believing but not following, but it just felt mean and hollow. The same can most definitely be said about me. I can't really put it into words, but there's just something not right whenever she talks about her... Faith? No, I can't really call it that. She's been right there when God has done some pretty frickin' amazing things, but she just seems able to brush it off like it never happened. No, I guess what she has is some sort of religion built up in her mind that allows her to continue down this self-destructive path without any concern or fear about what it's going to cost her or her children. It's sad, really.

Mind you, I'm not propping myself up as some sort of model to emulate. Fuck, no. I've got consequences of my own on hand and up the road a bit. I guess the difference is that I realize that there's no way out or around the reality of God's Hand on my life. I just need to stopped choosing to let it rest so damn heavy.

The Babes

2005-11-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 106 days
Last smoke: 99 days (but I'm weakening)

OK, since no one else wants to play, I've found a couple of sitcom babes to take with me on my fantasy marooning.

First is Cousin Serena from Bewitched. All the hotness of Samantha with a bad girl attitude. Grrrrrrrr!

My second choice is Denise Huxtable, but from A Different World, not the Cosby Show. A young, nubile, multiracial, hottie co-ed with a serious wild streak.

Let's get this party started!

Swinging Fantasy

2005-11-09T15:39:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 105 days
Last smoke: 98 days

Some of my blogging peeps have recently published a quiz based on 5 'what if' questions from a blogger by the name of MCF. I liked one of the questions, so I'll answer it here, in detail.

The question is, "If you could be marooned on a desert island with three sitcom characters, who would they be?"

Segueing from my comment to Susan on my last post, my answer would be to have a swinging fantasy with two women and another guy. Tropical paradise, tanned bodies, sun, surf... What else would I do to while away my time?

The reason that there is a guy in this 'cast' is twofold. First, I'm realistic. I'd never be able to satisfy the sexual needs of three, hot, sitcom lovers by myself. I'm assuming that there'd be no pharmacy or mail order Viagra available, so there you have it.

Second, seeing as it would be physically impossible to have sex all the time and emotionally impossible to keep company with three women 24/7 because, well, they're women, I would need a bud to do guy stuff with. You know, someone with whom I could go fishing, build stuff, brew alcholic beverages from native fruits and grains, get drunk, belch and fart.

For me, the guy choice is a slam dunk. Chandler Bing. Even though he's not what you'd call a real "man's man", I think he and I would get along great. He's funny as fuck and not someone I'd likely to get into a pissing contest with. Plus, I'd get to be the dominant male, which I kinda like.

The women are much harder for me to think of right off the top of my head. In fact, I'm stumped.

I'm not sure if any of you really know my taste in women. Hell, I'm not even sure I do. But they need to be hot and slutty enough to do everyone else on the island, but also possessed of intelligence, depth and self-confidence. No one leaps to mind.

Any suggestions?

Feminista!

2005-11-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 100 days
Last smoke: 93 days

So yesterday's post seems to have created a mild stir. Cool. I like a good fight.

Although, to be perfectly candid, it was just a stupid rant. An excess of pressure built up from a lifetime of being discarded by women whom I loved and whom I felt should have loved me in return, but didn't.

So I focus on loving myself. Realizing that I am flawed like everyone else, I embrace that which others would rather not deal with. My view is that the very things that make me unacceptable now as they reveal themselves in 'defects' are the very same things that attracted these women intially and were revealed as strengths.

I am intense, so that aspect of my personality is what drove me to overwhelm these women with passion, confidence and the trappings of success. That aspect also spurs me on to vigorously defend my beliefs and values when they came in conflict with theirs.

I am wounded, which reveals itself at times in what has proven to be an appealing vulnerability to certain women, but which also can result in extended periods of depression and silence from me.

I am smart and eloquent, which can be appealing to women who are looking for security or intelligent conversation, but very unappealing when in the midst of a disagreement.

I am confident in most respects, which again offers the hope of security in some, but can be very annoying when it becomes apparent that I don't need their favor enough to become a lapdog or a doormat.

Yet I live paycheck to paycheck because I have four children with a woman who has very little ability to make a decent income on her own, but more than enough pride and vindictiveness to put me out because I didn't deal well with her unwillingness to keep a clean house and make dinner while I struggled to make enough money to keep us afloat.

Hey, I know that I'm an asshole. So what? If you get involved with me, I'm going to tell you what I think, what I want, and what I don't like. In no uncertain terms. I yell, argue, belch and fart. I also joke, laugh, tease and listen.

I love women. I'm just not interested in paying for the mistakes of their fathers, employers and ex's. I'll make enough of my own, thank you very much.

Ranting Miscellany

2005-11-03T15:14:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 99 days
Last smoke: 92 days

Being increasingly busy at work, along with increasingly not giving a fuck, my blogging interest has seriously waned.

However, a few rants that have been building up in me, and I've got a few minutes here to give them voice.

First, I am heartily sick of dishonest Christians and church by the numbers. Where is the depth? I am sooooo sick of The Purpose Driven Church, I want to puke. How about the Serving Church? The Caring Church? The Discipling Church? The Church that notices when you're gone and makes an honest effort to be a friend, not just another person telling you to just trust God?

The West Wing is another object of my increasing dissaffection. In the campaign to elect a new President in the America that Hollywood wishes existed, but doesn't, both candidates are pro-choice, the country is 60% pro-choice, and the pivotal issue in swinging the electoral balance is who the femi-nazis are going endorse as the best bet to keep Roe v. Wade intact.

What disturbs me most about this is the amount of people who will actually be influenced into buying this whole crock of shit.

Speaking of femi-nazis, you can all blow me. I am so sick of being made to feel like I am the sole reason for your misery. Take some responsibility for a change. You all wanted to be like men, so act like it.

One of the whole driving forces behind the women's movement was liberation from your status as second class citizens. From what I can see, all you've achieved is claiming actively what you decried passively.

BTW, my definition of femi-nazi is as follows:

1. They are vehemently pro-abortion, equating the ability to kill another human being with true freedom. Sort of like Nietzche.

2. They define abusive relationships as any in which they don't get their way. If a man raises his voice in an argument, he is abusive. If he reaches the end of his patience after enduring weeks/months/years of provocation and calls her a life sucking bitch, he is abusive. If he decides to deal with his frustration by diverting his seething desire to snap her neck and snapping a piece of furniture instead, he is abusive. If he dares to refuse to leave the home he pays for simply because she wants him to, he is abusive.

3. They view men as unnecessary impediment to their own happiness and fulfillments.

4. They view traditional marriage as enslavement.

5. They view having and raising children as a fulfilling experience, meant to be had on their terms, regardless of the needs of their offspring.

6. Sacrificing their own agendas, either for husband or children, is not an option.

7. They raise extremely fucked up children and set them loose on society.

They all need to just shut and go make me a sandwich.

What's My Motivation?

2005-10-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 84 days
Last smoke: 77 days

With this week being devoted to an offsite training class, my morning drive schedule has shifted back about two hours. That means, along with extra sleep in the morning, I am listening to different radio preachers. Chuck Swindoll is on at 8 and Charles Stanley at 8:30.

Stanley was finishing up a 3-day series on self-discipline. Needless to say, I found it very depressing, given my current situation and the fact that I have very little self-discipline historically.

This morning, however, he said something that caught my attention. He made the point that if people don't have any motivation, self-discipline for it's own sake is nothing more than legalism.

"Bingo!", I thought, "I have no real motivation." And it's true. There is nothing in my life that really makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. When I thought back to the few times in my life that I was able to exercise any level of discipline, I had some compelling goal or reason motivating me behind the scenes.

When I was in college, I studied and got involved in theatre because I wanted to pave the way for a future that got me free from my parents' meaningless, bourgeois worldview. I suspect that part of my motivation was also to show my parents that I was smart, talented and finally worthy of their acceptance and affirmation.

That worked out well.

When I split from my second wife, V., I was highly motivated to succeed in my newly found career in IT -- partly to get the income I would need to have a decent life while still supporting my children and partly to show her that I could be successful, motivated, prosperous and worthy of her acceptance and affirmation.

Once I got to a certain point in my career where I had shown all of those things and more, I got bored. And she barely noticed anyway.

A few years back, I got a bit motivated to lose weight and work out because I felt that would enhance my enjoyment of the swinging life. But that also depended on finding someone who shared that same motivation. And it also got old and tired.

Most recently, I was pretty motivated to get back into 'spiritual shape', but my motivation has been tough to maintain. At first, I felt that there might be a way for me to get connected, and it seemed to be working for a while. However, as my troubles in my marriage have mounted, and the same old failures keep besetting me, I find myself withdrawing in the face of well-meaning, but typically unsatisfying attempts to encourage me by my brothers and sisters in the church I attend.

Chuck Swindoll told a great story yesterday that I totally identified with. I've long suspected that either I am highly deficient with respect to my experience of the Christian life, or that most of the people I encounter in the Church either simply don't get it or are bald-faced liars and posers.

Anyway, Swindoll talked about a hiking outing that members of his church organized. After all the usual signing up, planning, organizing and scheduling, the group went on a hike up to a beautiful vista somewhere in Southern California. It soon became clear, however, that some people were less suited to this level of exertion than others. One woman, in particular, lagged far behind. Others, more fit and 'motivated', called to her from the summit -- regaling her with their impressions of the stupendous view from the top and telling her that she 'could do it'. Swindoll's point here being that it's probably not worth it to sprint ahead of our 'weaker' brothers, and definitely not helpful to offer that kind of disconnected 'encouragement'.

This is how I feel every time someone at church tells me that I just need to 'do it' or that they haven't 'given up' on me. People don't really want to come down where I am and get a clue on what it feels like, and I'm not particularly eager to burden them. I've been there, and the only thing that seems to happen is that whoever is stupid enough to try and walk with me ends up finally giving up on me.

So what is my motivation?

God loves me? My kids need me? Both true, but unfortunately not sufficiently penetrating, especially considering that my kids could do a lot better than me for a father.

I'm supposed to have a purpose, and that's supposed to drive me to deny myself, get up in the morning, forego my right to react to the numerous character flaws, overt sins, injustices and inconveniences that exist in my life like weeds on steroids.

Someone recently told me that setting goals based on avoiding negative consequences is a pretty piss poor way to live life. I'm inclined to agree. At the same time, about the only thing that I can do is just maintain and try to avoid having things get worse than they already are while I try and find something that can truly motivate me for the long haul.

Prelude to a Divorce

2005-10-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

After months of barely speaking, the beginning of the end came when she walked in the door Tuesday night after being out for several hours attending an after-work function at a local bar.

Vaporously fuming alcohol from her celebrations with her co-workers, she sat down beside me and within five minutes had spoken more to me than she had in the previous month.

Of course, she also asked for sex.

I think at some subconscious level, I must have known that this could very well be my last opportunity to have sex of any kind for a long, long time, I went to the kitchen and down three quick shots of apple schnapps and made myself a stiff drink to help me get in the mood. Basically, I needed to do something to negate the strong odor of her alcohol breath, which was unexpectedly repulsing me.

Afterwards, she began talking to me again. This was a verbal orgy for her. I became aware that her usual self-editing filter was off, so I decided to ask her what her deal was with our marriage. Her response was a roller coaster ride of conflicting emotions, beliefs and revealed choices.

First, she said that I was sexier that the day she met me. Big surprise, considering how little she has said to me over the past six months. Of course, that was followed up by several statements that let me know that her opinion of the long term viability of our relationship hadn't changed much since she left me eighteen months ago, only to return five months later.

Beyond that, it became obvious that her only reason for being here at all was to avoid getting fucked over on the house, which neither of us can afford on our own, but which is also under my bankruptcy. That means that it is probably in my best interest to give it back to the bank and move on. However, that leaves her liable for whatever they can't recover from the next mortgage they issue on it.

So here I am. Torn by my desire to get away from someone who can only bring herself to relate to me when she's drunk, and the competing desire to not unnecessarily cause her hardship. That last desire is some sort of vestige of a Christian conscience, I guess.

So what do I do? Live in the same house I neither need nor can afford with someone I am divorcing just to keep things from getting messy? Or do what it is in my power to do and let her fend for herself?

Time to Begin Again

2005-10-13T06:43:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 78 days
Last smoke: 71 days

my marriage is over. i have agreed to sign her papers. moreover, when going over some details on the tax filing implications, it's become clear that i can no longer maintain my living situation. you see, the only reason my 'wife' is still hanging around is because we are in a situation with the house. i lost my job right after we moved in, endured a couple of months of unemployment and had to file bankruptcy. Chapter 13, which means the court takes a certain percentage of my paycheck for about three years to pay back a portion of my debt to my creditors. i make too much money to just be 'discharged' under Chapter 7.

well, part of the way this works is that the court also pays the mortgage until the bankruptcy is over, which for me is mid-2007. Hopefully. However, without the extra income that my soon-to-be ex brings in, I can't afford to live there. plus, for some unknown reason, she claims that I will owe about $1700 in taxes. This despite the fact that my W4 has no deductions on it. Some kind of tax system where you owe money after your employer takes out the max from your check. There is also about $400 in local taxes.

so, my only real option is to ask the court to suspend the repayment plan for a couple of months to allow the bank to foreclose on the house. that will allow me to get some extra money to move and save for my taxes. who knows how I'm going to get the Christmas thing done this year.

from there, i hope to be able to find a cheap place to live near my kids, so that i can be more a part of their lives as they finish up school. since my job is going well, i should be able to float by, even after the court re-instates my plan to put me on subsistence living again.

the whole thing sucks, but it's simply my consequences. so i'll deal with it, and pray that God will be merciful. i'm approaching fifty, have no retirement plan, no real relationships other than my children, and very little meaningful activity in my life. everything has been, and will continue to be, about making sure that my children never know what it feels like to have their parents (at least their father) abandon them.

The Sevens

2005-10-11T10:48:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 76 days
Last smoke: 69 days

The Unseen Blogger has tagged me to play "The Sevens":

7 Things That Scare Me
Abandonment
Exposure
Torture
Vicious dogs
Bad things happening to my children
Drowning
God's Judgement (although obviously not enough)

7 Things I like most
Freaky, freaky sex
Golf
Watching thunderstorms roll in out in 'the country'
Laughter with friends
Reading a good book
Watching a good movie
Watching the Steelers kick butt

7 Most important things in my room
Pillow
Bed
Fan/AC
Silky quilt (which my kids stole)
Computer
The Bible
Decongestants

7 Random facts about me
I have Plantar Fasciitis
I have been bald since age 19
I am the oldest surviving male in my family (i.e. - the patriarch)
My left knee has no cartilage or ACL
I did not travel outside of the country or to Florida until I was in my 40's.
I learned to play tennis when I was 5.
I hate green peppers.

7 Things I plan(hope) to do before I die
Visit Ireland and Scotland
Break 80
Get back into shape
Learn Spanish and/or Chinese
Publish something
Know the joy of a real marriage
Truly follow Christ

7 Things I can do
Hit a 6-iron over 200 yards - high, soft and straight.
Cook an entire Thanksgiving meal from scratch
Write (although some have debated this claim)
Speak in public
Make people laugh
Make women hate me
Think well on my feet

7 Things I can't do
Run
Eat raw carrots
Lick my elbow (no one can do that)
Claim my children as dependents
Grow hair on the top of my head
Read music
Produce the fruit of the Spirit

7 Words I say the most
Fuck
Motherfucker
Motherfucking sonofabitch
Shit
What?
Whatever
No (I have 7 kids, remember?)

7 Celebs I find attractive
Claire Forlani
Condi Rice (i just can't help myself)
Salma Hayek
Michelle Wie (i thought she was 18, i swear!)
Renée Zellweger (although i think she must be crazy)
Jennifer Aniston (Brad IS crazy)
Lil' Kim

7 People tagged:
I don't even know 7 people who haven't already been tagged.

No Direction Home

2005-09-27T06:28:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 62 days
Last smoke: 55 days

Saw the last hour of the first installment of this Martin Scorcese-directed documentary of Bob Dylan. Utterly fascinating. It brought back memories of all things hippy and protest and conversion in my past. I remembered my best friend Bryan showing up at a party in our junior year wearing an imitation of the headdress Dylan wore during the concert in Colorado that was broadcast on TV as 'Hard Rain'. I remembered sitting in my bedroom talking to my 85-year old great-grandmother, who was staying with us while she recovered from a stroke, and asked me about my Dylan T-shirt.

"Who's that?", she asked.

"Bob Dylan," I replied, "He's a rock singer."

"Oh? What kinds of songs does he sing?"

"He sings about peace and love and protests against injustice in our society."

"Hm... Those sound like good things."

Grandma Murray could always cut to the heart of the matter.

I remember thinking how cool it was that 'Slow Train Coming' came out right at the same time I became a Christian. I listened to that album non-stop for about 3 months, thinking to myself, "How cool is God? First, He saves Dylan, then He saves me!" Wisdom, it turns out, was MY slow train coming.

Anyway, I was really struck by two things in the documentary. First, was how normally Dylan in the present was speaking, compared to his earlier interviews. Second, was how young and focused he was in his earliest recorded performances. He was so steeped in the folk tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, et al, that he was an enigma simply from the contrast of his baby-faced youth with his soulful, bluesy eloquence.

As always, I left the encounter feeling like I've become something less than I could have by comparison.

The second part is on PBS' American Masters tonight at 9. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get some insight into what started out as a vital counter-cultural movement and has now deteriorated into the whining, angry, purposeless left.

The Silver Lining in The Tarnished Black and Gold

2005-09-26T08:52:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 61 days
Last smoke: 54 days

Another loss to the hated Patriots in our house! Disgusting! Despicable! Unforgiveable!

Not so bad, on reflection.

While the Steelers coaching is still the ugly step-sister to the Bellichick brilliance, let's not forget what our young quarterback did in that last drive. Despite the fact that everyone in the stadium knew that 1:22 was more than enough time to give our dynastic foes a chance to embarass the vaunted Steeler 'D' once again, the coolness and poise of our young Ben to find receiver after receiver on the way to his second TD pass of the day was comforting. Granted, youthful mistakes are still being made, but they are noticeably diminishing -- even within a single game.

For the first time in a long time, the Steelers 'O' seems poised to keep them in games when our opponents possess any kind of legitimate passing game -- the inability of which to defend has become the all-too-evident Achilles heel that Cowher and LeBeau can't seem to correct. What that means is that the rest of the league has long ago figured out how to neutralize the 'Blitzburgh' overcompensation for the fact that we haven't been able to draft or develop defensive backs who can cover people.

At least it was nice to see Chad Scott's ineptitude hurt someone else for a change.

Distracted Friday Ramblings

2005-09-23T12:49:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 58 days
Last smoke: 51 days

It's Friday, and I am due to participate in a focus group to taste test chicken strips and sauce in about an hour.
Yay for my semi-obese self!

I'm totally disorganized and distracted after exerting a lot of energy 'managing' things here at work, so I'm just giving up and blogging.

BTW, I totally hate managing anything in the IT world. You spend all day in meetings, on the phone, getting status updates, resolving issues for people who should be able to do it themselves, all while the REAL work you should be doing piles up in a nauseating clutter on your desk.

Ah, well! I guess that's why they pay me the big bucks.

Anyway, a little status update about ME:

First, the lawn upgrade proceeds fairly well. The area where the pool used to be has grown tall enough to mow -- which I did two nights ago. I then did some overseeding to fill in the bare patches. Looking lush, though. The other 1/3 of this ridiculously tiny 'piece of land' is still barren whilst we clear out the remnants of the recently-felled cherry tree. Last night, I began the thoroughly demoralizing task of digging out the stump. It's amazing how thick cherry tree roots can get! I would have left it along and used it for a 'stump seat', but it was planted too close to the fence line -- meaning that I have to get it out before I can put the fence back in.

As brutal as this work is, I find it helps me feel as if I'm doing something more than just existing. Spending the last 10 years cranking out awesome system designs and code has done very little to compensate for the major emptiness and loss that I experience from having gone through my second divorce and become a weekend father to my precious and amazing kids.

It's also a relief to be able to spend time with D that's actually meaningful and satisfying on some level. We kicked some serious ass re-grading and leveling this yard, and it's going to be like a shag carpet next summer. Of course, being so small, we can't really do much but look at it.

The other thing that's been going on with me lately has been an interesting challenge to grow in my Christian walk. Or maybe more accurately to get a Christian walk.

Over the past many months, this blog (and Unseen Blogger) has been one of the places where I have been able to lay out, assess and affirm my faith and worldview -- to reflect on what Christ and the Bible have to say about my past and present personal struggles and what I have been called to be.

Much of this time has been wasted trying to convince people through reason, satire and wit (such as I possess) that Christ is Lord and that most of the populist ideals of this culture are pure death. Much of this effort has proven futile, since people are simply stubborn and sinful - me being chief among them. However, I've also gained from having been forced back to God's Word, the spiritual education of my past, the encouragement of others, and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit to affirm that He who saved me is real, true and powerful to effect real and lasting change.

The end result being that I care a whole heck of lot less about being right than I do about being changed. And change is required.

The cherry tree stump is my current object lesson. Last night, I dug around almost half of the radius surrounding it, and cut through at least a dozen very thick roots. Yet this stump is not yet loosened enough to even be moved. Over the course of the lifespan where it achieved about 50 feet in height, it anchored itself into the soil with a tenacity that it belonged where it was planted and that it's purpose in life was to produce sweet fruit in its season.

Now, however, I -- the master and owner of this tree -- have decided that its purpose is to give me not fruit, but rather firewood. As such, its place is not to be rooted into my yard, but to be cut and stacked neatly on the side of the house.

Unfortunately, this old cherry tree is pretty convinced that its self-conception is the right one, and its root system is putting up some serious resistance to my efforts to shape my yard to conform with my vision. So, I am facing a fairly long and messy process of digging up the yard, cutting through one root branch at a time, sifting through the layers of rock and topsoil to uncover more hidden roots, and prying that old stump out of the ground.

I see in this process a metaphor of what God must be doing with me. I've got some deeply set roots in doing and seeing things in my own way -- with a confidence in my own wisdom and vision. On a daily basis, however, I see and feel a gradual tearing away from these roots as God exposes them for what they are: sinful pride, a commitment to pleasure, avoidance of pain, laziness, failure to love or have compassion, and downright obstinance in the face of an all-powerful God.

When Jesus converted me 26 years ago, I believed that He would just take care of everything -- you know, snap His fingers and all of the pain, longing, confusion and bad intent in me would just vanish. After 15 years, I still hadn't really learned any differently and blamed Him for not making things in my marriage right -- for allowing me to suffer that agony of rejection and loss.

Only now, 3 years into my restoration to the fellowship of the saints, am I beginning to see that I have to surrender to this divine surgery -- painful as it might be. The only difference is that the roots have grown deeper and thicker and taken a much more tenacious hold than they had back in the day.

I still wish that it could be quick and painless, but all evidence points to the contrary. Here I am, settled into a life full of consequences. Married to a wife with whom I have virtually no connection on any level and who has no real regard for me -- or my convictions. Stepfather to two little boys who's own scarring has resulted in behavioral problems that try my patience and serve as a goading reminder of my sufferings at the hand of my own father and my failure to be much better for them or the rest of my children. Bitter, suspicious and generally misanthropic from years of unforgiveness and cynicism born out of the mistreatment, rejection and abuse I've both suffered and given. Heartily committed to getting mine, and to hell with everyone else. Spiteful, vindictive, and mocking of those whose views are malformed or lacking the benefits of my education and insight. Basically, at the end of myself and my ability to do a damn thing about it.

So in steps the Lord, operating in His mysterious ways, showing me that I've got to stop struggling in the quicksand of myself and cling to Him while he chops away at these pesky roots.

But, just like I am doing with my cherry tree, He is taking care to only expose what needs to be cut, but ruthlessly severing my connections to these idols of self-sufficiency and perversity.

Of course, the analogy breaks down in that my cherry tree can't run away to keep me from doing my work on it. Conceivably, I can resist this work of the Holy Spirit. However, I'm not so sure that I can really escape the Hound of Heaven. I am starting to believe that I am totally His, and that running will only increase my suffering and diminish my gains here in this life.

Even that is progress for me.

View from the Heart

2005-09-13T08:58:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 48 days
Last Smoke: 41 days

So it's been a while, eh? Well, I've been somewhat busy with some new project kickoffs at work, plus re-doing the lawn at home before fall fully sets in.

What I have been doing in blogworld has been going back and forth with Jeanne on The Unseen Blogger.

Apart from the usual futility of speaking the truth to someone who isn't interested in hearing it, I do find these online debates helpful in strengthening my faith as I remember and look up texts to respond to various arguments from the dark side.

All in all, however, I find debating these matters to be pretty useless, especially online. While many of my brothers and sisters tend to believe that faith in Christ and the Bible is a rational and logical thing, easily provable using classical apologetics, I do not. Faith in Christ's Lordship and the authority of Scripture is, at its core, irrational. While I can construct elaborate arguments from history and a study of systematic theology and logic, the power of the Gospel is in its ability to change lives demonstrably in the context of relationships.

So it gets a bit frustrating to try and convince someone who can't get a glimpse of Christ in you through interpersonal contact that Jesus is Lord -- and that they should entrust their lives and eternity to the propositions of the Gospel.

Furthermore, I am a presuppositionalist, which means that I approach evangelism and Christian apologetics not from a rational or logical perspective, but from a firm conviction that you have to understand what people's religious commitments (i.e. - presuppositions) are. For example, Jeanne doesn't believe in the absolute authority of the Bible because it tells her that people she cares about are most likely going to, or are already in, Hell. The concept of biblical judgement doesn't square with her presuppositions about God, namely that He is all love and wouldn't hurt a fly - let alone cast His 'children' into a lake of fire. Another of her presuppositions that I infer from our conversations is that people are basically good, thus not deserving of the judgement prescribed in the Bible.

So any attempt to persuade Jeanne of the rightness of my positions -- which, by the way, are built on my own set of presuppositions -- needs to attack the validity, reasonableness and essential truth of those presuppositions of hers which stand in opposition to submission to the Gospel Message.

This is a daunting task, given the fact that most of us are tenacious when it comes to our religious commitments. There is a place here for reason and logic, but simply providing evidence that these presuppositions are wrong won't do as long as the person's commitment to them remains intact. For instance, to point out the savagery among the New Orleans looters or the jihadi terrorists as sufficient evidence against believing in the inherent goodness of man only provokes a response that other people and circumstances oppressing them are forcing them to act against their natural instincts. Lost in this argument is the obvious conclusion that depravity and evil are universal, so that while one group of people do evil and violence to repress another, the others respond with evil and violence.

The power of the Gospel is in the effect of the Holy Spirit to prompt followers of Christ to break that cycle. When Rome persecuted believers in the times of the Apostles, they died with love in their hearts and forgiveness on their lips. And the Holy Spirit changed hearts and minds by the thousands!

So it is here. Only the Holy Spirit, acting in conjunction with the faithfulness of believer, can cause people like Jeanne (and myself, for that matter) to question and re-examine their presuppositions under the searching illumination of the Truth.

So what I thought I'd do here (besides praying that the Holy Spirit would do His work) is to lay some of my own presuppositions.

1. God exists, and is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
2. Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, by virtue of His atoning death on the cross and His conquering of eternal death by His Resurrection.
3. The Holy Spirit is the active force of God in the world today, convincing people of their sin and pointing them to Christ and His Word for reconciliation, joy, hope, peace and purpose in this life and salvation and perfection in the life to come.
4. People suck. They are inherently self-centered, evil, and unconcerned with the needs of others.
5. Being a people, I also suck.
6. Given points 4 & 5, life is, and will continue to be, extremely sad and disappointing.
7. People live in one of two states in response #6, denial or profound grief.
8. Faith in Christ is not a prerequisite for either response.
9. The working of the Holy Spirit IS a prerequisite for seeing life as it truly is.
10. Once given the insights listed above, Christians are enabled to come to God in complete and utter reliance and be truly transformed into the image of Christ.
11. The other choices are insanity or suicide.
12. God can, does, and will perform physical miracles.
13. Only God decides what, when, and for whom these miracles will be performed. There is no formula for unleashing the miraculous in your own life.
14. Even Christians are severely limited in their ability to understand and follow God, having to continue to struggle against their inherent evil nature in order to commune with the Holy Spirit.
15. Prosperity is a trap.
16. Poverty is not inherently noble.
17. Truly loving people is the most scary endeavor a human can undertake.
18. A person can only truly love under the influence of the Holy Spirit, using the life, ministry and death of Jesus as an example.
19. Relationships are the most important work that God has given us to do.

Well, that's a quick stream-of-consciousness attempt to get at my deep down.

What about you?

Dredging Up the Past

2005-08-29T21:31:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 34 days
Last Smoke: 27 days

Yesterday's radio subject during my ride home was "Do we as Christians participate too much in the media where tragedy -- like Hurricane Katrina -- becomes entertainment?"
I don't have a whole lot to say on this, other than, "Yes, of course we do!" I think that if most of us were really honest about it, we would recognize a morbid fascination with death, destruction and disaster -- as long as it isn't happening to us or someone we care about.

I have to confess that I found the whole destruction of the Towers on 9/11 fascinating. I wanted to see those towers come down. Big time. Now, of course, when I saw those pictures of people jumping to their deaths, it got a bit uncomfortable. I didn't want to think about how it would feel to have to make the choice between plunging 70 or more stories or being roasted alive.
I think that is what makes all the difference -- empathy. A concern for the suffering and struggles of others, as opposed to the enjoyment of sheer spectacle. When you realize that people are suffering and dying horribly, then maybe it's not so much fun to watch anymore.

Yet there is another side to this phenomenon -- that of a scary, evil glee in watching the death of another. Once upon a time, public execution of criminals was commonplace, even in this country. Hanging, stoning, burning at the stake, drowning, even crucifixions, were done with an audience -- women and children included. It's tempting to look at the accompanying fervor on the part of the public as a natural consequence of the serving of justice, but that's being naive.

When Christ was executed, multitudes came to mock, spit, revile, laugh and joke at his suffering. Scripture indicates that the majority of the mob that called for -- and rejoiced at -- His execution probably had no interest in the issues of the case. They were simply incited by the Pharisees and priests of Jerusalem to produce mayhem.

You see the same phenomenon in our society, from riots over the Rodney King verdict to idiots at WVU burning Morgantown over the football team's Homecoming victory. There is something in us that is all too willing to become savage and indulge in destrcution and violence with little provocation.

Of course, this is sin in us. What I often struggle to see clearly is just how bad it really is within me. Then I lose it over something so minor, and experience a murderous rage where I'd like nothing more than to end a life with my bare hands. It's scary, really. And I often wonder why it hasn't just been wiped out by the Holy Spirit.

I think there is a connection between the amount of time spent trying to pretend it doesn't exist within me (or to at least minimize it) and how bad it can get. I am becoming increasingly convinced that without a clear-eyed view of just how bad my sin is, the vigilence necessary to seek Christ's grace will be lacking, consequently affecting my ability to really care about other people.

On a different note, WORD-FM will be bringing one Jerry Bowyer in as the new afternoon talk show host, beginning Wed., Sept. 1. Mr. Bowyer is a staunch conservative politically and will most likely generate a bit of interesting discussion.

He's been around the local media scene for many years now, and is fairly well known as a free market conservative in the area. His biography states that he lives in Boston, PA (right outside of McKeesport) with his wife Susan and 7 children -- all of whom are home-schooled. Mr. Bowyer is an intelligent, energetic, assertive and committed individual, from all evidence. His show should be very interesting topically, doctrinally and intellectually.

I've crossed paths with Jerry Bowyer in a previous life. From 1989 through 1993, we attended the same RPCNA church. The RPCNA (Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America) is the only church that I've ever been part of that practiced what I consider to be biblical excommunication. In the four years that I attended, I saw one person excommunicated for unrepentant homosexuality, another restored from excommunication by virtue of a public repentance over his decision to divorce his wife and marry another (not sure how that worked, since the new wife came back with him), and a third who most likely escaped excommunication for the same adulterous choice by resigning his church membership rather than standing before the elders on this matter.

That third person was Jerry Bowyer. The current promos laud his role as 'a home schooling father of seven', which I don't doubt for a second. However, and I want to be careful here, I don't know if all seven of those children were born to Jerry and his current wife in the years since 1993.

What I do know is that his first wife was tossed to the curb in one of the most egregiously sinful family scenarios that I've ever witnessed in an evangelical setting. After working low paying jobs, giving birth to four children (are these included in the 'official' count?), and sacrificing much to be a 'supportive' wife, Jerry repaid her by beginning an adulterous relationship with a young, fresh-faced, very attractive woman (as I recall) who ended up living IN THEIR HOME.

My ex-wife was somewhat of a friend to the woman who would soon be the former Mrs. Jerry Bowyer. I recall her as an intelligent, funny and committed woman who wasn't the most attractive person on the planet. What emerged in the days following the disclosure of his affair and leaving was the picture of a man who embodied the worst sort of patriarchialism that is so often justified by men using passages like I Timothy 2:11-15, which I quoted in my last post, and was willing to just use this woman until he no longer needed her. Then he took up with someone younger, prettier, and less capable of calling bullshit by its proper name.

In the years that immediately followed, Jerry made the reputation on which he now stands as the new afternoon talk show host for WORD-FM.

Ironically, Jerry was on-air at WORD-FM in those days also. I can remember going to various people wondering how it was that he could be in that position within the Christian community without having to answer for his sin. I was incensed that this guy could just get on with his life, while my family and friends dealt with the wreckage left in his wake.

When I realized (sometime in the middle of last week) that he was probably going to be the new talk show host, that old indignation arose within me again.

Let me be clear that I do not, and have never, known Jerry Bowyer personally. I may have had a few isolated conversations with him during the brief time that we were both members in good standing with the RPCNA. I knew his ex-wife somewhat.

I don't know if Mr. Bowyer has ever publicly acknowledged his sin. I do know that while he was in the middle of it, WORD-FM did nothing to deal with it in any kind of biblical accountability.

So I guess this is more about WORD-FM/Salem Communications than it is about Jerry Bowyer. Jerry's deal is between him and God at this point. He, his wife (current and co-adulterer), his kids, and his ex-wife must bear the natural consequences of what went down over 12 years ago.

Maybe it's even wrong of me to bring this up after all of these years. I just feel that the listeners have a right to know. If this is something that he's already publicly addressed in a repentant way, then I am very willing to move on. Make no mistake, however. What happened in the early '90's was great wickedness on his part.

I don't stand as judge, either. I was a witness to it. That's all.

I certainly have my share of past sins of the same ilk. I've been divorced twice, guilty of adultery, verbal abuse, marital neglect and gross sexual depravity. I am no model of Christian conduct or virtue, and I have no interest in conducting a witchhunt here.

What I would like to do, however, is to make yet another appeal to those who seek to have influence in preserving the integrity of the airwaves to consider prayerfully what it means to support a media outlet like WORD-FM, which has no problem dismissing an unpolished personality for being consistent with his commitment to Biblical authority and replacing him with someone who has managed to play the media game very well in this town, but may just not be all that he appears, from a spiritual standpoint.

Will I listen to Jerry? Most definitely. However, I would like to see this issue addressed. If I'm going to call Pat Robertson to account, I'm definitely going to extend the same courtesy to Jerry Bowyer.

The Women's Issue

2005-08-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 29 days
Last Smoke: 22 days

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

I Timothy 2:11-15

The discussion topic on the radio today was "Should women be pastors?" I hate this subject, because it really pisses most women off, even if they are Christians. However, there it is, in black and white. And there really is no other passage in the Bible that contradicts it, or provides for an 'cultural' interpretation, in spite of how much I and others would like to see such wiggle room.

Even reading the passage above, I find it hard to believe that Paul could say things that seem so insulting and degrading to my 21st century, American ears.

However, I think we need to be very clear to keep the scope and context of this injunction clear. This is part of a longer passage instructing Gentile Christians in proper worship and church leadership structure. While I don't agree with 'Christian feminists' -- such as my second ex-wife -- that another part of the context has to be the consideration of the patriarchical society of the first century world and the totally subordinate role of women within it, I do agree that the limit of this submission does not extend beyond the context of formal worship and church government. Male chauvinists took the concept too far for far too long, and now women are taking it too far back into the realm of Christ's Body.

There were several callers today who refuted the authority of this Scripture by focusing on an individual's 'anointing' -- yet another indulgence in the subjectivity of spiritual giftedness over the plain words of God's Revealed Will in Scripture. Not even worth debating. Those who continue to choose to believe mystical tricks and games will reap what they sow.

Still others wanted to make a case that the experience of the three women at the tomb refutes this teaching because Jesus chose to appear to them even before the apostles, thus making them the first evangelists. Nonsense. The office of evangelist is a bit more than the ordinary evangelism that we are all called to do. Moreover, these women didn't call a worship service in order to make a formal announcement. They rushed to the apostles in their joy and excitement with wonderful news, bringing the pure light and joy of their feminine calling into the mix. Also, let's not forget that in Luke 8, three women are also mentioned explicitly as traveling companions with Jesus and the disciples, but very much in a supporting, behind-the-scenes role. Mary Magdelene is mentioned in both Luke 8 and the resurrection tomb scene in Luke 24.

Another, more compelling attempted rebuttal involved the episode in Acts 18 where Apollos came to Ephesus, preaching Christ, but the baptism of John, and was taught the more complete doctrine of the Holy Spirit and Baptism by Priscilla and Aquila. But hold on. IN THEIR HOME. Not in the synagogue or the meeting place of believers.

What this means is that certainly a specific woman can and will have a great deal more spiritual knowledge than a man, but based on Paul's teaching (which relies greatly on gender principles embedded in the story of the Creation and Fall that would have been well understood by Jews of the day), whatever knowledge or wisdom she has to give should be done privately.

Finally, a woman caller who had been in the mission field in the '70's made the best point I had ever heard someone make on this subject. She was taught that, even though she had mountains more knowledge and experience in the ways of God, her role was to equip men to fulfill their natural spiritual leadership role in such a way as to not compromise or discourage their growth in that role. She said she hated it at first, but once she began to see how God would move in these men's lives, she saw the wisdom of this teaching.

As I listened to her speak, I thought of how special it would have felt to have had that kind of loving, self-sacrificing encouragement and support. Men and boys are simply not cherished in this culture today. In fact, we are often made to feel as if there is something terribly wrong with us, as the sins of our patriarchal fathers are visited on us by hordes of angry, bitter women out to get their piece of the power pie.

How sad that when I needed so badly to be affirmed in my giftedness, the only adult around -- my mother -- was too busy getting her teaching degree and fending of my father's rage to be that kind of encouragement. How sad that so many boys are cut off from their masculine nature by embittered mothers who've been left, or have left similarly crippled men in disgust, not recognizing that the very thing they find lacking in their failed spouses is the kind of confident, assertive leadership that's been beaten or shamed out of us for the past two generations.

Women we need you. Badly. Not to tell us what to do, but to help shape our vision of ourselves as men of TRUE strength. MORAL strength.

Nice Recovery, Pat!

2005-08-24T18:22:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 28 days
Last Smoke: 21 days

Well, today's radio subject was a follow up on yesterday's Pat Robertson debacle. The topic: "What should the next step be for Pat Robertson and CBN?"

At the time, the host was unaware that Robertson had come out with a public statement. At the time, all I had read on The Drudge Report was that he claimed to have been misinterpreted in his comment stating that the U.s. had the "ability to take him out", referring to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He wanted us all to know that "take him out" could have a variety of applications, including kidnapping.

Smooth. I feel much better now, Pat.

He also issued an apology acknowledging that calling for the assassination of Chavez was wrong, and stating, "I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."

Well, he must have been REALLY frustrated for a long time, seeing as his comments were taped, not live, and the fact that it took him over two days to retract a statement that any baby Christian should know was wrong.

But back to the subject on the radio show. Again, the gargantuan lack of wisdom and discernment among the listeners was maddening. I know that I shouldn't be so surprised, seeing as The 700 Club maintains a viewership of over a million, despite the fact that this man has been preaching a false Gospel for decades. One lady was maintaining that Robertson was a lone voice of political insight and interpretation of world events for Christ, and that he "is pretty intelligent." Another woman wanted to try and make this yet another case of the liberal media distorting his comments to trounce on Christians and Christianity.

Sorry, but that dog simply won't hunt in this case. His words were all too plain, and his apologies were just lame excuses to hide his real agenda, which from what I can tell is to try and direct the political agenda of conservative Christians towards a new McCarthyism. The real goal here was to highlight the 'evil' of a little known Latin American thug dictator who Robertson believes is a threat to U.S. national security. More likely, he realizes that this guy has the biggest supply of available crude oil in the Western hemisphere, and is probably crazy enough to try and use it against us for political blackmail.

Is it any coincidence that Hugo Chavez was caught up in this newscycle during a visit to Cuba, and that Fidel Castro was predictably using the controversy to rattle his rusted saber at the Imperialist U.s.? I think not. And why is W so silent? Could it be that he'd rather let the focus of the coverage fall on Chavez, who he is, his antagonistic rants against the U.S., and his close alliance with Castro? I'm betting it is. Politics as usual, especially in the face of rising petroleum costs.

All Pat Robertson has done is to set up a straw man for the Bush Administration to use to counter the current downswing in overall approval and to set the stage for the next round of "Oil! Oil! Who's Got the Oil?"

Sorry to sound like a liberal here, but this whole situation just stinks, and I am looking for a voice of integrity to emerge from this political and religious posturing. Unfortunately, I am afraid that I am going to have to wait for things to get much worse before Christians as a whole begin to speak out.

Conservatism only works if there is a moral foundation to keep greed and corruption in check. Christianity only speaks to the culture when its followers obey the commands of their Lord.
So back to the question of the day. In my humble opinion, the next move by Pat Robertson is irrelevant, as he has declared himself an enemy of Christ by his whole corrupted participation in this political soap opera. George W. Bush has failed to make a move to distance himself from this by his silence, knowing full well that he had only 48 hours to weigh in on this news cycle. Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and their cronies are teetering on the precipice of making the next upswing of this controversy about them and the threats (perceived or otherwise) that they pose to the domestic tranquility of these United States.

The only relevant next move should come from obedient followers of Christ to wake up and denounce these kinds of geo-political games as outside the scope of our work for the Kingdom of God. Galatians 1:6-9 sums it up for me:

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!"

I'm feeling a little bit John The Baptist here, but sincere Christians really need to wake up and stop assuming that these self-appointed representatives of the 'evangelical Right' are the mouthpieces of Christ, and the Conservatism equals Christianity.
It simply ain't so.

Denunciation

2005-08-23T17:22:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 27 days
Last Smoke: 20 days

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36)

Today is the first day since the middle of last week that I've had a chance to listen to the Christian afternoon talk show, and boy, what a day to tune in!

Today's discussion centered around the comments made yesterday by the Rev. Pat Robertson on his 700 Club show publicly advocating the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Much to my dismay, but unfortunately not to my surprise, all of the listeners that I heard call in during my drive home failed to denounce this outrageous behavior from someone who postures as a Christian leader in this culture. Oh, some of them were critical of the statement, usually with some sort of defense of this purported man of God's history of integrity. More often, however, I heard support and even blessings on this travesty.

Let me be clear about my position. Pat Robertson has shamed the Name and Mission of the Lord Jesus Christ by making these comments, especially from a teaching pulpit. This type of invective is nothing short of pure evil, and the fact that there are actually people (perhaps even a majority) who call themselves followers of Christ and actually approve it scary to a surreal extent.

How is it that Christian radio and TV reflects such a poverty of spiritual understanding, in both its talking heads and its listeners?

My guess is that Hosea 6:8 provides the answer: "My people are destroyed by a lack of knowledge."

Too many people are counting on the likes of Pat Robertson to be vendors of truth, instead of taking to their knees and their Bibles for guidance. For several decades now, Robertson and his ilk have been at the forefront of worst kind of corruption of the Christian mindset -- one that elevates the personal revelations of those blessed with special 'gifts' above the revealed, infallible, reliable and unchangeable Holy Word of the Living God.

Why bother struggling with the genealogies, detailed descriptions of the ceremonial law, and prophecies of the Old Testament, or the difficult doctrinal statements of the New, when someone like Reverend Pat can just get the scoop right from the Holy Spirit?

Another aspect of what I heard on the radio today that really bothered me was the ease with which these statements were dismissed in the interests of 'national security'. What?!?! Leaving aside that Hugo Chavez is about as much of a threat to us as was Manual Noriega (remember him?), how is it that Christians DO NOT UNDERSTAND that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, first and foremost, and that a direct contradiction to Christ's command to love one's enemies, bless those who curse you, repay evil with good, etc.... cannot be rationalized away in the name of support of our national security! Jeez, people! Get a grip! Remember who you follow! Not some fat, rich, ego-centric nut job, but the Lord of Glory who died rather than assert His legitimate right to power in order to procure our eternity with Him.

Can you imagine what would have happened to the Christian Church if the Apostles had decided that Nero had to go? It likely would have simply become just another power faction in Roman society, instead of the world changing faith it is.

One final comment on the subject of tyrannicide. Is it ever justified to assassinate an evil ruler to protect other, innocent lives? Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought so, and died in a German concentration camp as a result.

But God took care of Hitler in His way, on His timetable, like He has so many others before and since, not allowing Bonhoeffer and his co-conspirators to succeed in saving what probably amounted to millions of lives (not sure of the timing of the plot or whether it would have stopped anything). This is one of the sobering truths about living in this world knowing God. He allows evil to rise up and do tremendous damage. His purposes for doing so are not always clear, but there is more than enough evidence in the lives, teaching and sacrifices of Jesus and the Apostles to indicate that sometimes we are called to be slaughtered like so much livestock in order to allow evil to be truly exposed and the Truth to be made clear.

This may ring harsh in the ears of we comfortable believers in the West, but God's ways are not our ways. Our understanding of things is limited by our desire for comfort and relief from suffering. The Book of Job is a good tonic for this mentality.

It will be interesting to see if W comes out strongly against Robertson on these comments. I will be very disappointed and concerned if he doesn't.

News from the Weekend

2005-08-22T16:48:00.000-05:00

Last Toke: 26 days
Last Smoke: 19 days

Well, the weekend got off to a bad start, as I injured both my groin and calf muscles (each one in a different leg) playing shortstop for the church softball team. I am still not able to walk normally, and I really need to get in some semblance of shape.

Tonight, I am going to see Styx and Kansas in concert with D and another couple from the church, courtesy of my employer. It's been a while since I've listened to either of them (like high school!), and it should be an interesting night.

Not much else to report, other than a growing preoccupation with taking those final steps towards utter dependence of Christ to provide all of my needs (emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial). This sounds easier than it is, since doing so will prohibit me from looking to anyone else, D in particular, for ANY source of contentment, satisfaction, joy, whatever. Instead, as I understand it, I will have to begin being less and less concerned with anything having to do with how I'M doing.

Christianity sorta sucks, if you happen to take it seriously and be an American.

Sabbatarianism

2005-08-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 23 days
Last smoke: 16 days

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the
sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:8-11

Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." Mark 2:27,28

I've not listened to the afternoon talk show for the past two days, owing to circumstances beyond my control. The first being having to share the ride home with my 16-year old daughter on Wed. Just try and win control of the radio dial against her! Yesterday, I worked from home, because I wasn't sure at 6 am if my building had re-opened after the water main break in Pittsburgh on Wed.

So today's subject is borrowed from a show broadcast last week with guest host Sam Siple, and is based on his conversation with Dr. Jerry O'Neill, President of the Pittsburgh Reformed Theological Seminary, on the subject of keeping the Sabbath.

Dr. O'Neill's contention is that we, as Christians, are still obligated to keep a Sabbath observance, setting the whole of every Sunday aside for resting, worshiping, and keeping our thoughts and activities focused on God. Here's what that means in practical terms:

1. Aside from gathering in our local fellowships for worship, study and prayer, we are to remain at home.
2. We are not to perform any work related to our occupations or household maintenance. This means that we should avoid doing things around the house like cooking or doing the dishes.
3. We are not to engage in any commerce or business transactions(i.e. - we are not to buy or sell ANYTHING).
4. All activities that are not sleeping should involve some sort of worship, prayer, meditation, teaching or reflection on God.
5. The only exceptions to the above restrictions are to engage in activities of mercy and necessity. You can feed and water your livestock and family, put out a fire, take care of patients, defend your country, property and family against violation by violence.

My initial reaction was to poo poo the whole concept, having been involved with the RPCNA during most of my second marriage, and finding them a rather legalistic bunch.

The typical modern evangelical rebuke to Christian Sabbatarianism usually focuses on the following arguments:

1. This injunction is part of the Law and invalidated in the New Testament covenant of Christ's Death and Resurrection.
2. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week (Saturday), while the Christian Lord's Day is on Sunday (the first day).
3. There is no NT ordninance instituting Sunday as the 'new' Sabbath, with the same obligation to keep it holy.
4. Jesus did miracles of healing on the Sabbath, and criticised the Pharisees for their insincere legalism in their Sabbath Observance.

However, there are several reasons why I have decided that Dr. O'Neill was probably right.

1. The fourth commandment, like all of the commandments, is moral (not ceremonial) law and binding for Christian behavior.
2. The day of rest is a creation ordinance, meaning that its implementation preceded the giving of the Law and points to a universal need for mankind to fully rest one day out of every seven in order to be fully enabled to honor God during the other six.
3. Taking the other two premises into account, it is contrary to Christian love to engage in activities which force others to work on the day of rest (i.e. - eating out, watching TV, going to sporting events, shopping, playing golf, or setting up booths at flea markets).
4. The Christian heritage of our nation has made the Lord's Day a perfect opportunity to engage our families in worship, study and meditation.
5. The observance of a day of rest sends a very strong message to the surrounding culture, which treats Sundays as just another opportunity to make money or get 'stuff' done.

I felt this very keenly when I was a waiter and required to work on Sundays, missing church, time with family and friends, and really refreshing naps. I feel it now, because D will use Sunday to 'catch up' on chores, instead of spending time discussing what she's learned from the sermon or Sunday School with me.

I'm not sure how I'm going to work this out in practical terms. I am already wrestling with wanting to re-instate my TV service for football season, and I love to play golf on Sundays. But I am becoming very convinced in my heart that this is a really good idea, especially as a way to strengthen myself emotionally and spiritually for the challenges of the coming week.

I'd really appreciate reader feedback on this one, as I am facing a real battle at home, should I decide to try and implement this.

Response to talk radio

2005-08-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 22 days
Last smoke: 15 days

Beginning today, I am going to blog about things I hear on the local Christian afternoon talk show that I listen to on my drive home from work. Recently, several shows have touched on subjects that I feel are very important for Christians to discuss intelligently. Since that rarely happens on the show, for a variety of reasons, including constraints of the call-in format, host bias and woeful lack of biblical knowledge in the listening audience. I hope to take things to a deeper and more honest level.

WORD-FM has been using guest hosts on the afternoon talk show since they disingenuously dismissed Marty Minto in the wake of his on-air criticisms of Catholic dogma in the days of the death of Pope John Paul II. Predictably, these hosts have been serving up mostly theological softballs that are barely worth the time to consider, although the amount of biblical ignorance displayed by the callers continually amazes me.

The guest host for the first three days of this week is a United Methodist pastor by the name of Eric Park. The predominant topic of the Monday and Tuesday shows was: Why is the church in the West losing membership?

The subject was stirred up within Pastor Park as a result of an article he'd read concerning the decline of church participation in Western Europe. Of particular interest to him was the apparent distinction between 'spirituality' and 'religion' among interviewees in the article.
Understandably, Rev. Park confessed great interest in the issue, owing to being a pastor within a denomination that is undoubtedly affected by this phenomenon. During Tuesday's broadcast in particular, he kept harping on a caller whose belief was that people were leaving the Church because of a 'watering down' of the message of the Gospel, particularly in its response to the epidemic of divorce among professing Christians.

Putting aside for the moment the unbelievable amount of denial implied in that statement, I'd like to focus instead on what Rev. Park did with the subject of divorce in the Church.

While acknowledging that there is inevitably a choice to sin involved in any divorce situation, Rev. Park decided to use two passages from the Gospels to present his own views. In the first example, he discussed the historical backdrop of divorce as practiced in the patriarchy of first-century Palestine when Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their question on whether it was permissible for a man to divorce his wife. I've heard this before, but apparently it was common practice for Jews of the day to dismiss their wives for what we would consider trifling reasons: burning the dinner 3 nights in a row, not providing adequate sexual satisfaction, or speaking 'out of turn' in a public gathering. Rev. Park asserted that understanding this exchange in its historical context makes all the difference in the world when understanding what Jesus meant when He said, "...anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Matthew 19:9).

In Rev. Park's opinion, this meant that Jesus was only attacking the specific wickedness of these men in disposing of their wives when they didn't please them, in order to be free to marry someone new. By contrast, he went on, Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well had a whole different tone -- one of compassion and empathy for her situation. Rightly observing that we, in our current cultural context, would tend to assume that any woman who has been through five unsuccessful marriages and is currently living with a man who is not her husband is probably a slut. This does ignore the revelation from the prior exegesis that she could very well have been a victim of the convenience divorcing practices of the men of her time. So, Rev. Park put forth the proposition that when Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." (John 4:17,18), He was actually saying something like, "You poor thing! You've had a tough time of it at the hands of these wicked, wicked pigs of men,"

Contrasting these two 'responses' of Jesus surrounding the issue of divorce, Rev. Park went on to make what seemed to be an argument that, despite his acknowledgement of the pain and sin surrounding divorce, there were numerous scenarios where divorce was understandable, even acceptable. These scenarios included spousal abuse and something he described as 'sucking the life out of one another' where married couples had spent years staying together but failing to work out their core differences.

In other words, Rev. Park seems to have responded to an allegation of watering down the teaching of the Bible by doing just that concerning the subject of divorce. Sorry, but I just don't see the whole 'context' argument in the woman at the well encounter overriding the very clear teaching of Matthew 19. For Christians, I believe that I Corinthians 7 teaches us everything we need to know about marriage and divorce. While this is hard stuff for a lot of us (and I definitely include myself in that number), it is nonetheless what we are called to do. The time to make choices about whether to be with a particular person is prior to marriage, not after. So if a Christian woman marries a man who ends up beating her, that is not Biblical justification for divorce. That doesn't mean she has to continue to put herself and her children in harm's way. Call the police, get a PFA, press charges, insist that he get help. But don't hinder the Lord's work. Not easy stuff, I know, but the Christian life is the hard road, the narrow path.

This leads me to my own response to the overall subject of why is Church membership declining. For me, the issue boils down to a complex interaction between what's going on in society and how the church tends to respond to it.

First, the culture we live in is so highly individualistic that most folks are totally convinced of their own ability to discern truth without exercising the disciplines surrounding teaching, study, and corporate prayer, worship and fellowship.

Second, the church itself has tended to become so influenced by the surrounding culture as to fail to provide a sufficient counterweight to this type of individualistic thinking. In the focus on church growth, there seems to be a corresponding loss of emphasis on the more grinding aspects of the Christian life: meditation, study, catechism and an emphasis on service. Church has become for many little more than the Sunday morning show which is designed to tickle the ears and provide an outlet for some superficial socializing.

Finally, we as Christians MUST recognize that the message of our Lord offer hope and comfort to suffering souls, not ease and leisure. The Bible has not promised us that we wouldn't suffer consequences for both our sins and our faith. Instead, Jesus promised that "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Too many of us have taken passages like this to mean that God will make it all better. Children will obey. Spouses will be satisfying. Money troubles will disappear. Our enemies will relent.

It's just not so.

Jesus overcame the world by voluntarily subjecting Himself to enoromous suffering on behalf of people who could have cared less. Most still don't.

That is the path that true believers are also called to, although we are very fortunate in this country that we don't wrestle with the type of dire trials that afflict our brethren in places like China and the Sudan. Nonetheless, I am becoming convinced in my own life, that I am guilty of expecting, even demanding, way more from God that He's promised.

Or should I say less.

It seems that my infatuation with mega, seeker-friendly, warm and fuzzy Christianity, I have lost sight of the true source of joy and prosperity for which my soul longs: a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. I, like many of us who profess Christ, talk an awful lot about the wonders and joys of being saved, while at the same time whining and moaning about the absurdly trivial disappointments. Yes, my marriage quite frankly blows, but how does that rob me of joy? Only when I make my happiness of more importance than my obedience.

What is church membership, after all? Isn't it simply a numbers games, consistent with the corporate American mentality that bigger is better? Maximizing profits? A way of making sure that your seats are the most comfortable? Your sound system the most clear? Your musical 'worship' the most affecting and touching among all of your competition?

Isn't church growth rightly thought of as the process by which those who belong go deeper and farther with Christ through the exercise of right teaching, whole-hearted prayer, a life of service and sacrifice to each other and their community?

I belong to one of the biggest churches in my area. Over 1500 people attend two Sunday services each week. And that number is growing. But is my church growing? I wonder. I've recently been approached to take over some teaching duties for adult Sunday school, and I wonder why. My life is not marked by any evidences of spiritual maturity other than the fact that I know more of the Bible than 3/4 of the membership. Not really good enough, though, is it?

Three weeks ago, I was smoking pot and hoping my wife would leave me, so I wouldn't be the 'guilty' one. I led a 3-week discussion on Christians and the media, and people enjoyed it. People didn't challenge the content, or question the theology. They focused on the fact that I was funny, that I knew a bunch of stuff from my studies in college and the Bible over the years. I've made no secret of my shortcomings, yet I'm entertaining and willing to use the platform to fulfill my own twisted need for attention, acceptance and affirmation.

Maybe God is calling me to this. I don't really know. But what concerns me more is the fact that no one is bothering to check my credentials.

So I've come to the conclusion that the churches are often empty, even when the seats are full.

Fall Ball, and other Sports Musings

2005-08-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 20 days
Last smoke: 13 days

Last night, I played in softball for the first time in about 15 years. This morning, my knee is swollen, and every muscle in both legs is sore. Other than that, it was a fun time. We played two, seven-inning games. I got two hits, made a couple of put outs, blew one fly ball over my head (fell on my ass, too), and made about three good stretches at first base to get outs.

One of the things that whatever readers I have may not know is that I really used to love playing sports, until my left knee blew out when I was 19. I really miss not being able to compete, but the risk of injury is just too great (certain would be a better word when playing basketball and football). So a relatively tame game of softball and golf is about the best I can do. I used to play volleyball after my injury with no problems, but I am really too fat now to play my game above the net.

Sports is something that I believe has a tremendous amount of value in the lives of our children, especially boys. However, just making that statement causes a collective shudder of wheezing outrage among so many in our current culture. Women of all stripes hate that statement because either they think sports are a complete waste of time, or because of the "especially boys" qualifier at the end. Personally, I wish there were a whole lot more women who grew up playing sports, because the effect on their bodies is simply awesome. There was a young lady playing second base on our team last night who's obviously been active in sports for a while. Simply put, I woke up in the middle of the night, and all I could think of were her tanned, toned legs and .... well, you get the picture. It's certainly burned into my memory.

But I digress.

Of my 5 children, only one has ever had any interest in playing organized sports, but that desire has not been nurtured or encouraged enough to give him the full benefits available to him. I got him started playing baseball at 8, and he played for the 3 years that I was able to get him to practice. Then my job moved into another county, and I couldn't make it home in time. His mother just simply wouldn't do it, and because I wasn't a 24/7 influence on him, he quickly lost interest.

My oldest is diligent about staying in shape -- working out and swimming. But it's not from a love of sport. My youngest two are GameBoy junkies, preferring to spend all of their time in front of whatever electronic entertainment is available at the moment. They are both overweight and lethargic much of the time, and I am beginning to become concerned for their health in the future.

All 3 of my boys have been declared ADHD by their school system, and are being fed whatever variation of Ritalin is currently in vogue to enable them to concentrate and focus in the classroom. I believe in my heart that this is directly a result of the removal of my influence from their home, and an overall antipathy to the traditional approach to developing the "All American Boy" in our social, spiritual and educational philosophies in this country.

Granted, there is a lot to criticize in that historical philosophy, but it is my contention that between feminism, the homosexual agenda, and the strategies of the entertainment industries to maximize profits, our country is being weakened through this decades-old attack on traditional masculinity.

Even though we are still a sports-loving country on the surface of things, it appears to me that fewer and fewer boys are actually coming into manhood without the benefits that participation in organized sports can bring. Rather, sport in our country has been co-opted by the entertainment industry and turned into little more than a twisted reality show where the antics of someone like Terrell Owens overshadow the beauty of the games that are being played. Meanwhile, the spectating youth of our land are either encouraged to become self-centered, under-educated, over-paid, celebrities of low character, or to simply find another way to spend their time because the athletic "ideals" of this age are simply and obviously beyond their reach.

I could build on this, but this post is already taking up too much space and time out of my day.

I think I can best summarize my position from my own life. I am almost 46-years old. I played sports from the time I was 5 -- either in organized leagues, on school teams, taking private lessons, or just with the kids in the neighborhood -- on a daily basis until my injury at 19. Despite my destroyed knee, I continued to attempt to make sports a big part of my life for the next 12 years, playing tennis, volleyball, softball, and the occasional game of basketball. Occasional, because just about every time I played basketball in those years, I blew out my knee. When I could no longer justify spending my life on crutches or in a wheelchair, I began working out, walking, and playing golf.

As a result, despite other not-so-good personal habits, most people are completely surprised when I tell them my age, believing me to be about 10 to 15 years younger. Trust me, I feel every bit my age -- and then some. But the years of exercise and competition has helped me to maintain a modestly athletic physique and a certain youthfulness in both appearance and demeanor. Some people will say that this is a result of genetics, but I have my two youngest sons to disprove that.

Beyond that, lessons I learned (often unwillingly) playing sports have helped me in my approach to the Christian faith. Cliches like "play through the pain", "no pain, no gain", "shake it off", "take one for the team", and "rub some dirt in it" take on a whole different meaning as I deal with the struggles I often write about in this blog.

Even Paul uses sports imagery in his epistles, comparing the Christian life to a grueling race and alluding to the punishing training regimens of dedicated athletes as a real-life metaphor for the discipline required to "be in the game" for Christ.

The human body is an amazing, beautiful thing, given by our Creator to exercise our dominion over the rest of His Creation. I think that too many Christians give short shrift to this gift by buying into the culture's beliefs that competition is bad, and that a traditional sports mentality does pyschological harm by making people feel bad about themselves. While it may be wrong to judge people by their external appearance, it is certainly not wrong to take pains to maximize one's physical potential.

I wish my ex-wife, for one, would get it. It sure would save her a lot of money on Ritalin and result in less calls from the school.

Or so I believe.

Mystery Solved!

2005-08-15T07:33:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 19 days
Last smoke: 12 days

Dan Piraro, creator of the Bizarro comic, was kind enough to reply to my email regarding the dual captions in his comic published last week. I submit the explanation in his own words:

Thanks for writing, Drake.

Here's the story behind the duel captions.

The cartoon with the "stupid rant" was my original submission. My editor at King Features, however, informed me that he had been getting a lot of complaints from various editors about my left-wing politics and that running this cartoon could result in some cancellations. King is totally on my side in these things, but always warn me when something can potentially affect my client list.
Not wishing to lose my voice entirely, I sent in a replacement caption for the same picture. Here's where it turns into a French farce.

I routinely send in the black and white versions of my cartoons a week before I send the color. When I colored that cartoon and sent it in electronically, I forgot to substitute the tamer caption. So some markets, the one's that buy Bizarro in color and any web sites where Bizarro appears, ran the gay spouse cartoon. The others ran the more tame version.

Based on your indelicate email I'm certain you are among those who support this sort of bigotry, so I won't bother defending my beliefs.

Thanks again for writing, hope this clears things up.

Cheers,
Dan

I appreciate Dan's willingness to respond, being a national celebrity and all. I'm sure it must be comforting to some of my other Internet contacts, that I am no respecter of persons when it comes to insulting and pissing off people of the liberal persuasion.

It's also good to know that there was nothing more insidious than a simple oversight by an artist who is truly gifted, albeit a bit misguided.

Why Aren't I Good Enough?

2005-08-14T07:14:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 18 days
Last smoke: 11 days

Just sitting here at the keyboard, having been up for the past couple of hours putting together my outline for Sunday School class. It's basically just a list of talking points that I hope will elicit spirited debate and challenge people to think Christianly about their media consumption.

Finally had the golf outing yesterday, and we didn't do all that well (3 over, horrible for a scramble). But we had fun. The guys I played with are not frequent golfers (nor am I, for that matter, although I'd really like to be), so we just were not able to put together enough good shots to get a lot of birdies. The winning team was 14 under, so it was never even a fantasy to be in contention. Although, I always hope for/expect the best. Which is probably why I've broken so many golf clubs over the years.

I was the go-to guy, and I just couldn't give them the shots they needed when everyone else blew up. I'd come close, though. I must've missed around 8 putts for birdie that just missed going in. What that really means is that I've gotten close to being good, but will most likely never have the time, money, or help to be anything more than a hacker.

That grates on me more than I can describe. I want to be good at whatever I do. Not just good. Exceptional.

Talking to one of my teammates, S, on the drive home, I realized that this issue has deep roots with me. Performance is the only way that I've really ever known affirmation, acceptance, and the feeling of being loved. With Dad's passing last month, this realization has come bobbing to the surface, bringing with it a buttload of anger.

Why aren't I good enough?

Trying is not the answer. Striving either. Following a program as a cookbook to arrive at change ain't working. I am smart, funny, not horrible looking, and I've even been losing a bit of weight. I quit smoking weed and tobacco. So what gives?

Why aren't I good enough?

More later. Must get ready for church.

They can't even leave the comics alone!

2005-08-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

Last toke: 16 days
Last smoke: 9 days

There was an interesting discovery made by a co-worker in the comics sections of the Pittsburgh Papers. The comic Bizarro, by Dan Piraro, is a single panel laugher in the school of 'The Far Side'. Yesterday, the panel showed a doctor in scrubs, fresh from the operating room, speaking to a man seated on a typical, hospital-style, waiting room bench.

In the Post-Gazette, known for its liberal editorial bias, the doctor's speech balloon contains the punchline: "She's going to be just fine -- she's quite a fighter. The anesthesiologist has a black eye, and I think she may have cracked my ribs."

Pretty funny, right?

However, the Tribune-Review, the conservative paper made nationally famous by Theresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" incident, had quite a different caption:

"Your husband is in the recovery room. You could go back and see him if you like, but our government-sanctioned bigotry forbids it."

Huh? Not at all funny.

Obviously, someone (not sure if it's the artist, the syndicator, or a homosexual Trib employee) wanted to not only lash out at the conservative readership, but also deprive them of a good chuckle.

I wonder if this happened elsewhere?

Anyway, it gives you an idea how low the liberals in general, and the homosexual lobby in particular, will sink to try and convince intelligent people to believe utter bullshit.

I wish I was nicer,...

2005-08-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sobriety: 15 days
Last smoke: 8 days

But I'm not. I've learned to accept it, why can't you?

Here are some things I've encountered today that make me go Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!:

1. Left lane vigilantes. Two kinds, actually. First, there was the bus that made an illegal left-hand turn at the Leetsdale light. I absolutely loathe PAT Bus Drivers! Between nearly causing an accident there and almost running me over in the crosswalk making a left turn onto Seventh Ave. from Smithfield, it would appear that these people are excepted from obeying all known traffic laws! Arrrrrggggh! Then there are the obliviots who seem not to notice that people are whizzing by them while they examine the scenery from the passing lane! Pull over and take pictures, asshole!

2. The latest 'Teamsters' strike. There are apparently some very ill-treated parking lot attendants here in the 'Burgh, so under the umbrella of the Teamsters Union Local ?, they have gone on strike. What? You're going to try and cull public sympathy over your wages and working conditions parking cars?!?! Sheesh! Get a real job! Or else be thankful that they have to at least pay you minimum wage for doing something that barely requires human intelligence.

3. Empty Suits. After shaking my head at how low the Teamsters have sunk and nearly getting hit by an above-the-law PAT driver (I can hardly wait for THEIR next strike), I walk into the Au Bon Pain across the street from the office for my carrot-nut muffin and coffee. There I encounter a group of obviously useless, overpaid, regional office types inspecting the premises and giving the junior shift manager all sorts of shit about stuff that none of us care about. Apparently, it's necessary for these self-important bastards to travel in groups of 3 -- one guy who's actually calling the shots, and 2 wannabes who's only purpose is to give rapt attention to kissing Mr. Big Shot's ass. One per cheek, apparently.

4. Being called ignorant. Unless you are a yinzer from the 'Burgh, you are really pulling at straws. I AM totally an ass, and quite often arrogant (which sounds like ignorant), but I rarely just jump off the ledge and spout uninformed or impulsive opinions. Unless, of course, you are a yinzer. Then you mean that I am rude, which is probably true in this case. But, of course, saying 'ignorant' when you mean 'rude' would be...ignorance.

Here's a Nut Buster

2005-08-09T14:02:00.000-05:00

One of the things I love most about being a blogophile is getting insight into other people's milieu. I particularly love listening to people describe what it's like to be a 'Gentile' in Utah. I can only imagine how simulataneously funny and frustrating it must be.

But I can only imagine.

Sure, I've been to SLC. Once. I took the tour of Temple Square, looked through the wrought-iron fence at the fresh-faced Mormons and their families waiting to get married, and thought to myself, "It would really be weird to live here." However, it never occurred to me to make ridiculous assertions about what it actually WAS LIKE to live there, being as I didn't.

Sure, the idea of this Mormon marriage mill was very creepy, but that comes more from studying what Mormons believe than actually living in SLC -- or supposing that my very limited view was authoritative.

Yet there are people out there in Blogworld who presume to know what it's like to live in America -- nay, that they actually know more about what's going on here than we do. This has an infuriating effect on me not unlike laying my nutsack on an anvil and pounding on it with a 4 lb. sledge hammer.

To all America-haters who don't actually live here -- SHUT UP!

I've been all around this country and have yet to see what it is about us that pisses these people off so much. Yes, there is poverty. Yes, there is racism. Yes, there is unbridled greed and widespread immorality. But there is also wide open spaces, amazing diversity (not imposed, either), tremendous opportunity, warmth, generosity, and tenacity of spirit.

Not having been many places outside of this country (except for Jamaica), I can't speak to your situations. However, I saw much more grinding poverty in a 2-hour bus ride from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios than I've ever seen in this country in my nearly 46 years of living.

These people bitch and moan about how we 'oppress' the rest of the world. Come again? When the tsunamis hit Indochina last year, who stepped up? Not the Arab world, even though more Muslims were affected than any other religious group. Happening on the day after Christmas, I can tell you what it felt like here in the heart of one American.

We are constantly reminded by this and other world events how blessed and privileged we are to live in such a prosperous and secure nation. Our hearts hurt for those who have to suffer because the concept of liberal democracy and personal freedom can't conquer the forces of tyranny and real oppression.

Granted, there are quite a few here who could care less about what happens in the rest of the world, but our CULTURE is COMPASSIONATE at its core.

So what's your problem with us, anyway? Are you afraid that we'll squish you? Don't fuck with us, and you've got no worries.

Are you jealous that you don't have the things we do? The most important thing that I have is freedom. My possessions and money come and go. Good times come and go. Opportunities come and go. My freedom remains. I can re-define myself at any point in time. I can work in IT or foodservice. I can get more education. I can live in the country, or in the city. I can play golf or pursue a threesome with my wife.

So what is your problem?

Really.

Getting Ready for the Fur to Fly

2005-08-09T06:28:00.000-05:00

Sobriety: 13 days
Last Cigarette: 6 days ago

This Sunday I am going to wrap up my series on Christians and the Media, and I am expecting (hoping for?) quite a bit of heated discussion.

My emphasis up to this point has been to challenge the class to 'renew their thinking' about their approach to and interaction with the various mass media. The teaser for this week's upcoming session is the assertion, made in an Internet article I came across last week, that the Harry Potter books are actually Christian in world view.

However, since this is going to be my last week on this subject, I am going to try and lead the discussion to Christian response to and participation in the various media.

My point here is going to be to hopefully raise peoples' consciousness that our current evangelical bent towards boycott activism and retreat into an alternate media is an exercise in futility and bad stewardship.

There are two streams of errant thinking converging to produce what I consider to be a horrendous waste of energy, money and gifts in the name of Christ. The first being the gross misunderstanding of what drives and motivates the operators of the various media, and the second being our irrational fear over the perceived damage being done to our society by the media.

To the first point, it's fairly obvious to just about everyone that what comes to us through the media, in terms of content, is driven by the perception of what will sell. For many in the business, it amounts to simply implementing the 'circus' part of the Marcus Aurelius 'give them bread and circuses' equation for controlling society. Christians rightly understand that this is an amoral (at best) approach to what service the various media could provide in an ideal society.

That's where most of us in the Church get lost. Seeing the depravity of content, and the greed of those who exploit the lowest common denominators in our culture, our response has been to rant and rave and threaten media advertisers with boycotts. Problem is, we're all to often tilting at windmills. We fail to recognize that our real power to effect change in the media offerings is woefully small. Granted, certain targeted boycotts might change some advertisers' behavior, but very little has changed from a global perspective. Take the KMart boycott of Don Wildmon's AFA as an example. The AFA boycotted KMart stores to force them to remove porn from their Waldenbooks subsidiaries. KMart relented and promised to steer KMart in a more 'family friendly' direction. The AFA has touted this as a huge success ever since.

However, a closer examination shows that what Wildmon's group did, and continues to do, is to target the weakest member of the herd for the kill. In the current marketplace, KMart is hardly a player, lingering on the brink of extinction until finally merging with Sears earlier this year. Waldenbooks is suffering a similar fate, being dwarfed by the mammoth success of mega-booksellers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Basically, the AFA forced KMart's hand by taking a very small segment of their customer base away for a short period of time. This tactic worked, since KMart was already reeling from losing market share to the WalMart and Target expansion. So it was unable to lose even the smallest number of customers over ANY issue.

And did the AFA membership reward KMart for its 'change of heart'? Hardly. You'll find them all at WalMart, a behemoth largely impervious to such puny railings from short-sighted prophets.

Conclusion: The number of Christians committed to sacrificing bargains (or luxuries) for the sake of changing advertiser behavior with a view to removing objectionable or offensive content from TV, radio, film and print is simply not enough to make this strategy viable across our culture. This tactic might work in certain local communities where Christians represent a majority or influential minority. But as a national blueprint? Forget it.

Also, is it just me, or does it seem distinctly un-Christian to pick on the weakest links?

My second objection to the typical Christian response to the media content and execution in our society is the belief that the media is somehow responsible for worsening the moral state of our society. Hogwash! I subscribe to the view that the media more reflects the condition of our culture than influences it. I'm not saying that there isn't an exacerbation effect, but whatever gets into vogue in our media offerings has to connect to its audiences on some level in order to push the envelope. If something in the content isn't resonating, the channel gets changed. Simple as that.

A corollary to this thinking is the assumption that we as Christians have to protect both ourselves and our children from being contaminated by what's being broadcast, printed and produced by the various forms of media. I agree, but it's a bit ridiculous to expect the rest of the culture to just go along with us to make us feel better. Moreover, there's something that's just a bit troubling about this mentality to me as a Christian. First, most of what's offered is just crap and is simply a waste of time. The answer here is not to watch, listen or read that which diverts us from our true purpose. And if we're not doing it, our kids will follow suit. Unfortunately, I believe the reality of the matter is quite different. It's just too easy to put the kids in front of the TV with a video so we can 'get our stuff done' undisturbed. So we are guilty of participating in the culture of convenience, but want to 'Christianize' it so we don't feel so guilty about neglecting our kids. Second, I fail to see how we communicate an attitude of humility and servitude towards our Lord when we're so busy complaining that our craving to be entertained without being offended is not being satisfied.

Moreover, where is the confidence and faith that 'greater is He that is in You than he who is in the world'? Don't we have a better message to deliver to our culture than this? Our children are precious to us, but are we really that worried that they will be corrupted when our God is alive and powerful? So what if their friends are consumed with video games? Who cares if pre-adolescent movies are rife with sexual innuendo? Do we really think that the homosexual lobby will lure our babies away outside of their own volition?

It's time to wake up, people. We live in a fallen world, corrupt to the core. The world system will not be run by the rule of righteousness and perfect justice short of Jesus' return. We will NEVER, EVER have the power to do what only our Lord can do in ruling this world. We can stand with integrity, and reach out in the media with compassion and a message of hope, redemption and repentance.

So why don't we stop bitching about those things we can do nothing about, and get started with the work that the Lord has called us to?

Weekend Update

2005-08-08T06:35:00.000-05:00

Update on sobriety: entering 12th day since last getting high and 4th day without a cigarette. Major crankiness this weekend, and coughing more now than when I was smoking. Also, eating everything in sight.

Ah, the joys of sobriety.

Have been playing quite a bit of golf lately, preparing for our church's outing next Saturday. Shot 46 on Thur, 39 on Sat, and 47 yesterday (on a strange course). These are 9 hole scores, of course. I've been walking these 9's in an effort to jump start an effort to get back into some semblance of shape - a shape that does NOT put one in mind of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Led my second of three sessions in Sunday school on Christians and the media. It went well, even though I didn't put enough time into the preparation. Big subject, this, and one that's difficult to lay out in the format. Turns out that several other people had also been tuned in to WORD-FM for the now-infamous comments made by a certain guest host on the afternoon talk show. In case any of her associates read this blog, public opinion in our neck of the woods was not favorable to her perspective. I think I shall have more to say on this subject when time allows.

Sneak peak into the wrap up session next week: we will be debating the proposition that the Harry Potter books are actually written from a Christian perspective, ala the 'smuggled theology' conceits of C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and the Inklings literary group out of Oxford in the 1930's and 40's. Stay tuned, as I'm sure the fur will fly.

Finally, I happened to hear a little blurb on the radio during my drive into work this morning about pending legislation in Spain which will require men to sign a civil contract before marrying which obliges them to split the 'domestic duties' with their wives 50/50. Failure to do so could result in unspecified 'penalties' should the marriage fall apart.

Well guys, brace yourselves. This judicial train has been steaming down the tracks for the past several decades. First, the completely unfair bias against financial support and legal custody of children in divorce. Now this.

So, if I understand this, a man in Spain will now be forced to cook, clean, do laundry and dishes, irrespective of the balance of time, money and strain it takes said man to contribute to the financial stability of the union. Moreover, it would seem at first blush that ONLY the man will be legally obligated to perform (and be able to prove in a court of law such performance) said domestic duties. This, I'm assuming, is because of the widely known, but seldom acknowledged, judicial supposition that women are morally superior to men and don't need the law to enforce domestic compliance.

Once again, the post-modern philosophy of Western jurisprudence has placed the blame for all of the ills in modern society at the feet of affluent, white, males. If only they could exterminate us, I'm sure the world would instantly transform back into the paradise inhabited by Adam and Eve in Eden.

Basically, what I keep hearing from the liberal judiciary is that we men are going to continue to pay dearly for being true to ourselves, while women (and I realize that this is a broad stroke not applicable to everyone) will continue to use the legal system to try and take by force what they've not been able to accomplish on merit.

Knowing that I've now successfully enraged every reader with a uterus, can we be serious for a minute? Why in the world would anyone with half a brain want to get married under such overwhelming oppression? It's been said that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, but aren't we assuming a bit much regarding a man's need for a woman in this milieu?

I mean, I'm just as guilty as the next guy of being a total horn dog, and I've sunk to desparate low just to get laid. But at this rate, the cost is just becoming too prohibitive.

Granted, this rant is based on a very sketchy story coming from a morning DJ who can't even pronounce Elgin, IL correctly. The 'G' is soft, dude! However, my own personal experience and the plethora of horror stories that abound all over the media make it all too plausible. Plus, since European law now has precedence-setting power in American courts, I'd be worried.

Or would I?

I predict a significant rise in prostitution, STD's, and sex-related crimes in Spain in the decades after this silly law is passed, as well as a sharp drop in the number of marriages. The last prediction probably won't come to pass, since we're pretty stupidly idealistic when we're young, but you get the point.

Breathe the Pure Air

2005-08-05T08:23:00.000-05:00

I quit smoking yesterday. Can't say that I'm overjoyed or anything. I can only say it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it.

I know that I will stay smoke free because I quit in anger and disgust. I'm not going to give D. the satisfaction or opportunity to slather me with her pathethic whinings on the subject any longer.

On another note, a couple in my church just had a private adoption fall through. You couldn't want to meet a couple less deserving of this injustice. They have been trying unsuccessfully for over 10 years to have a child, and had finally turned to the private adoption option. After spending who knows how much money, renovating their home to accomodate a newborn, and going through all of the paperwork and anticipation, they finally brought a gorgeous little girl into their home.

This couple attends the same Sunday School class as us, and we've been getting regular updates on their progress. I don't really know them that well, so I was just, like, "Oh, that's so cool. Good for them." However, something was mentioned this past Sunday -- almost in passing -- that caught my attention. The prayer leader announced that they had finally taken the baby home. I guess there is some sort of waiting period, since she was at least two weeks old. The leader put out the expected, "pray for X and Y that they would have a smooth period of adjustment", etc. Then she mentioned something like, "and pray for them that everything goes through."

What? I thought it was a done deal.

Apparently not.

I saw them both (and the baby girl) the next night, at a church softball game. It was the league championship game. He plays on the team, along with several other guys from our group. I wanted to go cheer them on. Better than sitting around in the deep freeze that MY home has become.

I talked briefly to both of them. Ogled the baby a bit. She IS precious! You may not know this about me, but I am a huge sucker for babies. It embarasses me, actually. AND I'm good with them, which may surprise you even more. I don't let anyone know, however, especially since one of D's many dissatisfactions is that we can't have any. Like we need any more!

Anyway, I could see how in love with this wonderful child they both were, and this thing started going off in the back of my head. X (the wife) said to me, "Yeah, everyone keeps saying that she looks like Y (her husband)", and something in my mind starts screaming, "Warning! Warning! Danger in your vicinity, Drake!". After the game (we won. because we rock.) Y comes over, takes the little cutie in his arms, and just basks in the glow. I congratulate him, and he says to me, "Yeah, God has blessed multiple times over." Again, "Warning! Warning!" By this time, my heart is hurting, but I'm not exactly sure why. I initially thought that it had to do with the X's whole, "She looks like Y" comment, since there is no shared DNA and I am an anal retentive stickler for the truth when it comes to stuff like that. Plus, I just get uncomfortable with what I perceive as obvious denial. Someone always gets hurt. But I figured, "Hey, it's just the kind of silly stuff people do when they're happy. No harm." Y's exclamation was really more to the point. That little comment in Sunday school asking for prayer that 'everything would work out' just leaped into my mind.

Coming from a family whose major legacy seems to be being bitter over the fact that life is just more of a bitch than we'd like, I sensed a huge trap. "Careful," I was thinking, "The deal's not done yet. Are you still going to feel like God's been multiplying your blessings if this thing falls apart?"

Two days ago, I was at a restaurant with another guy from our group, when yet another guy who happened to be there with two other guys from the group, stopped over and said, "Hey, did you hear what happened to X and Y?" The friend I was with had, but I had not. My heart just dropped.

Oh, no. God, not this.

Sure enough, it turns out that the birth mother had changed her mind, and X and Y had to turn over their precious little angel to her that afternoon. Just like that. After months of praying, pursuing, hoping and investing their time, money and love -- nothing. Worse than that. Returning to a childless home after experiencing the inexpressible joy of having a new life under their roof for a grand total of less than 5 days.

Digging a little further with my friend, I discovered that the laws concerning private adoption require giving the birth mother a period of time (he said 40 days) to reclaim the child. He further told me that this was no teenage or single mother pregnancy, but rather a 40-year old, married woman with 3 other children. In my indignation at the injustice done to my brother and sister, I imagine little baby Z being yanked from a life of comfort and loving nuture back into some grim, trailer trash struggle for emotional and physical survival.

Of course, I don't know the details of the birth mother's situation at all, other than her decision to go the adoption route had to do with financial distress. She could be a loving and giving parent. She could give sweet little Z a wonderful life. She could actually be something other than the trailer-dwelling skank who is either too ignorant or too careless to take advantage of modern birth control methods to avoid being in such a situation.

But the fact of the matter is that her situation and actions have ripped the heart out of two people that I consider to be people of the highest character and moral standards, and who would be the most awesome parents. So I'd personally like to track her down and yank the windpipe right out of her throat.

This raises a number of issues that I don't really have the answers to, but I definitely have a strong opinion about.

First, the legal bias that places the mother's 'rights' over the child's best interests rears it's ugly head once again. From abandoning crack mothers to whatever this particular woman's story might happen to be, our legal system punishes children for the fact that all too many mothers simply can't get their shit together. My opinion is that the bias should swing the other way. Children need to be protected, even if that means that they lose their birth mothers. Whatever this woman's deal, she made the choice to turn over the fruit of her body to total strangers rather than suck it up and care for the child it was her choice to conceive. I think once you sign the papers, you should go to the hospital as if you were having a minor procedure, get it over with and get on with your life. Looking back only causes pain and problems for everyone.

Second, it is a great injustice that a woman with an 'inconvenient' pregnancy can have access to another couple's financial resources to obtain better prenatal care, hospitalization and possible other considerations than she would be able to procure on her own, then turn around and renege on her end of the bargain. Even though no one on either side wants to hear this, private adoption is a financial arrangement to 'buy' a baby. Affluent couples with resources who want a baby, but can't conceive, find someone in a jam and basically pay them (in medical costs, mostly) to have the baby and give it to them to raise as their own. Again, I don't know the details here, but it's not unheard of for the pregnant woman to receive some sort of financial compensation, structured so as to ease the burden of enduring the pregancy and ensuring the resulting health of the newborn. My opinion is that once such a woman receives such compensation from the private sector, she enters into a contract to give up that baby. Period. This 40 days to change your mind thing is bullshit. Is she going to pay back all the money that was spent caring for her and her baby? Is she going to be held accountable for pain and suffering compensation?

Yes, this sounds cold and harsh. It is cold and harsh. But it's the reality of the transaction taking place. It's the typical, politically correct denial of our liberal court system that causes the real pain.

Which leads me to my last point, which is hard for me to have to say. When in the world are we in the Church going to get real about God's Sovereignty? All of us have circumstances in our lives that we don't like, and which cause us pain. But they are God's will, people! This woman, for whatever reason, found herself 40, economically challenged, with 3 kids, a husband (of what sort I don't know), and pregnant. However she got there, whatever choices, sinfulness or outright stupidity she may have been guilty of, God orchestrated events and allowed these circumstances for one reason only: that she might come to Him in reliance and surrender and watch Him glorify Himself for the awesome, unique God that He is. This perspective assumes, of course, what even our legal system takes for granted: that it is best for a child to be raised by the mother who carried it to birth. This assumption is clear throughout God's Word.

X and Y are also constrained by their circumstances. Sigh. This is the painful part.

While some of us can seemingly go and take from the Tree of Life whenever we want (I'm convinced that before I got fixed, I caused a least one pregancy just by sneezing too close to my wife), others like X and Y don't have it so easy in the area of procreation. This issue is addressed on numerous occasions in the Bible, most notably in the story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac. And Hagar and Ishmael. The teaching here is clearly to trust God in your circumstances, and to be very, very careful about trying to circumvent God's plan by pursuing other available, but questionable (i.e. - risky) avenues.

Oh Lord, please help me say this right. I certainly am not presuming sin on the part of X and Y's attempt to adopt, but it's clearly not God's will to answer their desire for a child through this avenue, at least not now. My personal opinion is that if God wants them to have a child, He will most certainly give them one or more. At the right time to serve HIS purposes.

My heart hurts for X and Y. I have nothing but compassion for them. I even have compassion for TTW (Trailer Trash Woman). Her situation, along with so many countless others in this world, deserves the attention, care and support of God's people.

But the one I feel for most is little Baby Z. May she never have to bear the hurt that's surrounding her now.

Am I Too Sensitive?

2005-08-03T16:27:00.000-05:00

I am majorly pissed off, and I don't really know what to do about it.

In my last post, I alluded to my life being a 'jumble'. I was being deliberately mild, but since being kept up past 1 am last night by D's latest threat to leave, I no longer fucking care.

My life is, simply put, a fucking cesspool of being rejected, abandoned, judged and severely conscious of my personal failings, character flaws and deep-seated anger.

It's been a while since I've blogged, so I'll have to give you a brief overview of what's been going on in my life.

Since my post of 5/26, I've:

1. relapsed into smoking weed
2. starting smoking cigarettes again
3. lost my father to a heart attack
4. allowed myself to be talked out of getting baptized by the pastor of my church
5. endured an ongoing meltdown by D over items 1 & 2.
6. stopped smoking weed for the past week. at least temporarily.
7. discovered that I enjoy my job and playing golf a great deal more than I do my marriage.
8. pretty much told God to fuck off and leave me alone.

In detail:

1. D, ever unsatisfied with something I'm either doing or not doing, suggested we get some weed from the neighbors so she could get a night of hot sex out of the deal. Disregarding the fact that I am a TOTAL addict AND that I had been straight for almost six months AND praying like a drowning man for grace to live alone in a marriage that she is committed to being unhappy in, she went for it. Three months later, I'd rather have a joint than have to deal with living under the same roof with her.

2. After D decided to tell one of my kids that I was getting high, AND having another one bust me in the act, I switched to cigarettes in an attempt to satisfy my oral fixation for smoking. This caused a shitstorm from D, who hates smoking more than anything, I discovered. She went so far as to ask me to go back to weed and stop cigarettes. She pissed me off so much, I did both.

3. Two Sundays after meeting with the pastor and elders in preparation for my baptism (a long story for another blog when I'm not in such a foul mood), I get a voice mail from my sister, who had not spoken to me in 3 years, telling me that my Dad (who also had not spoken to me in 3 years) had died. She went on to tell me that I was not to go to my mother's house (who had not spoken to me in about a year -- she's the forgiving one) and that she would call me when she had info on the 'arrangements'. Dear, old Dad, who spent the better part of his twenties and thirties beating me down, didn't like the fact that I'd emailed him in a group email including his sisters (who he also wasn't speaking to) to announce my engagement to D. Dad had trouble understanding why, after a lifetime of abuse, condemnation and overall withholding of love, I would not choose a more 'personal' method of communicating. And, of course, he needed to let me know that since I was living in sin, he could not offer any blessing or encouragement for my stated intention to marry.

At the time, we all knew that Dad had cancer throughout his body. I sent two emails in response to his response: the first basically telling him to fuck off, being as he'd never been anything other than a source of pain to me anyway; and the second apologizing for the venom in my first reply and stating my concern that if we didn't figure out a way to mend our deal, I'd have stand over his grave not knowing why I never had a real father.

Congratulations, Dad, you miserable fuck. Thanks for nothing. The strange thing about it is that people seem convinced that he's with Jesus now. I certainly hope so, because despite his total absence of any kind of tangible love for me, he's still my father and the only hope I have now for closure is to see him on the other side. Of course, there's more than a smidgeon of doubt on that score in my mind, seeing as it takes some kind of hardness to know that you're on the way out and yet ignore the olive branch I tried to extend in a Father's Day card.

It took 3 days for my family to let me know what the deal was with the funeral. My father has 5 sisters, two of whom go to my church. Yet I was expected not to tell them that their brother had died. "It was his wish that they not be told," my mother informed me when she called me a day and half later wondering why I didn't call her. Um, it seemed pretty clear from sis's message that you had no desire to have my sorry ass around, that's why.

I had to miss the whole week of work while she and my sister decided what they were going to do, which was to basically keep me at a distance and pretend like my father didn't have any other family.

4. In my desire to deal with the whole Dad thing like a real Christian, I put in a call to the church for prayer. When the pastor called, he asked how I was dealing with it. Being high, I told him I was high and struggling not to want to stay high through the funeral. At least. Two days later, he calls back to talk to me about whether or not it was a good idea to get baptized the next Sunday. Not because he was concerned about my emotional state, mind you. I had actually come to the conclusion that it would be a great opportunity to promote healing in what was left of my family. As if my mother or sister would have actually shown up. No, pastor was much more concerned that my active addiction might make a mockery of my public declaration of faith. So, I'm on the phone with him, my mind so consumed with all the shit surrounding Dad's death that I'm not really able to think straight, and he wants to know where I'm at 'directionally' with this whole thing. So I tell him I have to think about it.

By the time he calls back, I'm pissed. Why is it that some Christians can't see the forest for the trees? I mean, my FATHER JUST DIED. I told you that there were issues with the relationship. And you want to pin me down on whether my desire to get baptised is tainted? Fuck off. So I just tell him that I'm not going to get into all of that now. I can get baptized later. Maybe by someone who actually understands what it's supposed to mean. I've been a Christian for over 26 years, and I've just come to the conclusion that I should do it, largely based on one this guy's sermons. He presented it as an act of obedience, not as some sort of public dedication or commitment not to ever fuck up in your life. I wonder if he pays attention to what he's saying. Anyway, after thinking about it, I realized it was best not to stand up, give a testimony and be baptized by someone you're really pissed off at.

5. D. is a total basket case. Two weekends after she got her hot sex, she's up my ass to quit the weed. Now, at the time, I was having a really positive effect from using. After two months or more of praying through tears on my drive to work for grace to regain the will to live and be giving, selfless and Christ-honoring to this never satisfied woman, I was newly energized. I was getting work done around the house and garden, teaching her boys how to play ball and coaching their Little League team, and fucking her brains out nearly every night. I haven't been this productive at home in, well, ever...

But it wasn't working for her anymore. She was pushing me away, and nagging the living shit out of me about it. So I just kept on getting things done, leaving her to stew. She got so pissed off about me not doing things her way, she stepped up to me during Memorial Day weekend like she was going to throw a punch. Seriously. Then she wrote up a will and printed up the Separation Agreement she had done the year before and demanded that I sign it. As if.

Of course, my work around the office was suffering somewhat. That's when I started smoking cigarettes again.

Well, you'd have thought I spit in her face, cheated on her, slapped her around and emptied her bank account all at the same time the day she found out. It was during HER boys' last game of the season. She LEFT THE FIELD, missing the oldest's last nice hit (something I taught him how to do, btw) so she could go home and MOVE HER SHIT INTO THE BASEMENT. The divorce papers came out again, and she told me that she would leave if I didn't quit.

Now, despite my natural tendency to say "Fuck you", I did stop during a trip we took to Florida at the end of June. Yeah, I had a company-paid conference in Orlando, and decided to rent a minvan and take her kids and her to Tampa to see her mother. Because I was still very much into demonstrating love and commitment to the marriage. I knew how much it would mean to her to be able to take a trip. I spent over a grand that I didn't have to in order to make that happen for her and the boys. And I don't regret it. I did the right thing. But gratitude was not forthcoming. By the time we got home, I was ready for a smoke.

She did take a bit of a break during my week of 'bereavement'. However, that was made possible by the fact that only hours before I found out, I took a vow to go another week without cigarettes to demonstrate my commitment to her and desire to make her happy. Afterwards, I wanted a smoke so bad that I actually spent a few hours curled up in a ball on my bed, as if I was going through heroin withdrawal. My cravings were that bad. But I made it clear that I would not break that vow unless she released me from it. Which she was in no way willing to do. But I'm proud of the fact that I made it the full week (8 days, actually) without taking a single drag. Of course, I saw very clearly that I was only going to be loved and supported on a conditional basis by this woman.

Last night, she decided to put herself out there by offering to 'really' love me, if I would just quit. Otherwise, she was out. Again. Or still, depending on your point of view. I declined her kind proposal, unable to make her understand that her offer of love had absolutely no appeal with all its strings. Today she only loves me if I don't smoke. Tomorrow she only loves me if I never fail to mop the kitchen floor whenever SHE thinks it should be done. No thanks.

7. Despite the mountain of pain I've been in over the past month, yesterday I realized that my head had cleared up enough to really focus on my job. I really love what I do. I work at a decent company with generous benefits making nice money. I have a great boss, one who actually values something about me. And I get to work on new challenges every day, steadily building a reputation as the 'go to guy' in my area of expertise. I stand to make a 5-figure bonus next spring, with 3 weeks' vacation and 12 paid holidays. Why fuck with that? This is the best motivation I've had to stop getting high in 3 months.

Plus, I've been playing golf with guys from the church, and will be playing softball with them in a couple of weeks. Good guys. I like hanging with them. They think I'm smart and funny. They don't question my eternal destiny or turn their noses up at my smoking.

So, all in all, I'm doing OK. I could be better, but I sure as hell could be a whole lot worse.

At least I have stuff to do to compensate for the fact that I've got no marriage to speak of.

8. I didn't really tell God to fuck off OR leave me alone. But my prayers are a whole lot less frequent. I want to get back on track, but I don't want to live a joyless life of living just to keep other people happy. I'm not asking for pity, and I'm not giving any either. If God wants me to suffer, suffer I shall. But I'm through denying who I am. I'm pissed, and I don't care who knows anymore.

Diana keeps alluding to being suicidal over my smoking. You know what? Stop trying to lay your emotional instability at my feet. Get help. Get a clue. Get out. I don't care. You think killing yourself is the answer? No one's stopping you. It's time to grow up and realize that God didn't order the universe for your comfort. Or mine. Grab the good. Endure the bad. Nothing lasts forever.

Shalom?

Whatever.

I'm back, but I got nothin'

2005-08-01T13:56:00.000-05:00

OK, time to get back on the blogging trail.

Since my life is so much of a jumble right now, and I can't even think straight, much less describe it in writing, I've lifted the following questionnaire from the Urban Princess. I guess this is a tag game, but I don't really care. No one tags me anyway. I guess I have cooties.

So here we go.

10 years ago, I was sweating and crying in my newly rented, third-floor apartment in New Brighton, having accepted that wife #2 hated me enough to crush my hopes in a happy, Christian family life after 10 years together. I then embarked on the decade-long sojourn to deal with the pain, which I'm not quite sure has ended yet.

5 years ago, I was playing a lot of golf, starting the worst job I've had in the IT field, and enjoying a roommate with benefits.

1 year ago, I was separated from D, but getting very close to convincing her to come back. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I was also enjoying a period of spiritual growth I had seen in over 15 years. Does stupidity equal spiritual growth?

yesterday I taught the first of three lessons on Christians and the Media in Sunday School and played 18 holes of golf in blistering heat. I shot 91. Not bad for not having played in nearly a month.

tomorrow I will hopefully get more done at work than I did today, work in my yard, and maybe have sex.

5 snacks I enjoy: I not really a snacks kinda guy. I snack on appetizers, such as spinach artichoke dip, quesedillas, wings, spring rolls and pot stickers.

5 bands/artists that I know the lyrics to most of their songs: U2 (of course), REM, the Beatles, Neil Young and the Cure.

5 things I'd do with $100M: first and foremost -- RETIRE, build/buy a sweet, but modest, house nearer to my kids, set up a fund for all of the kids to get a decent start in life, play golf every day, and get back in shape with the help of a personal trainer and nutritionist.

5 locations I'd like to run away to: Colorado, Jamaica, Ireland, Arizona, San Diego.

5 bad habits I have: smoking weed, smoking cigarettes, masturbating, eating out when I can't afford it, getting involved with chicks with whom the only I have in common is the desire for sex.

5 things I like doing: smoking weed, smoking cigarettes, masturbating, eating out when I can't afford it, getting involved with chicks with whom the only I have in common is the desire for sex.

5 things I will never wear: a Speedo, a toupee, a thong, a trophy wife, bling.

5 TV shows I like: I don't watch TV since I cancelled satellite, but The West Wing, ER, Smallville, Buffy/Angel (I know they're both gone, but I like 'em, dog-gonnit!), ...er..., I can't think of a 5th. TV is such shit!

5 movies I like: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, A Very Long Engagement, Fargo, Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space.

5 people I'd like to meet: Bono, Bob Dylan, W, Condie Rice, Jesus (hopefully, I'll actually LIKE the encounter, seeing He's the only One I know I'm going to actually MEET, and I've got some 'splaining to do).

5 biggest joys at the moment: Their names are Brooklynn, August, Dechlan, Silas and Zeke.

5 favorite toys: my new, used 3-wood; my compound miter saw; my stash of illegal fireworks; my Palm Pilot (I play a lot of solitaire); and ... and... Shit! My life really sucks.

5 tagged (even though no one EVER tags me): Name Hidden, Willow, Thomas, Jeanne, and Sara Zarr.

Four Women (Part 2)

2005-05-26T09:02:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've blogged. It must be a seasonal thing, but with Little League, landscaping and new job duties taking up a huge chunk of my time, blogging has just gone to near the bottom of my priorities.

Today, however, my nose is running like a faucet; my head feels like a beanbag chair; I'm sneezing my face off; and I'm blowing my nose every ten seconds. So I'm pretty much bagging work and catching up on my blog until I decide to go home and go to bed -- which is going to be pretty soon, given how I'm feeling.

I wanted to get back to the subject of the 4 women in the genealogy of Christ, since I only got through the first one -- Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, patriarch of the tribe of Israel that produced King David, King Solomon and King Jesus.

The second woman whose name is in this significant genealogy from the Gospel of Matthew is the one I like to call the Ho of Jericho, or Rahab. I love the story of Rahab, especially her inclusion in the 'paternal heritage' of Christ, because I believe it gives great insight into the way God shows His mercy and chooses His people.

Rahab's story is told in Joshua 2, when Joshua sent two men from the army of Israel into Jericho to spy out the city, which was next on the Lord's hit list for Israel to conquer in taking over the Promised Land. These men were hidden by Rahab in her home, and she deceived the King of Jericho and sent his men on a wild goose chase by saying that the two spies were in her home, but had left the city at dusk. Before she let them out of her window to escape, she made the spies promise to spare her and her family when the armies of Israel conquered the city. They agreed, telling her to tie a scarlet cord from the window she was letting them out of as a sign to Israel to spare the occupants of that house. All whom she wanted to save had to be inside that room, or they were dead.

Now, Rahab was a prostitute, and I find it very compelling that God chose to single her out as the means by which anyone survived the sack of Jericho. First of all, anyone who knows the Bible can easily recognize that it was completely unnecessary for Joshua to send two spies into Jericho for any reason, considering that He knocked down the walls of Jericho supernaturally and that the people of Jericho were scared shitless already, having heard of prior supernatural conquests by the chosen people of the Lord.

There are two possible reasons that come quickly to mind in my reading of this text as to why God bothered to have Joshua send spies into Jericho. First, in making allowances for the doubts of Israel, God wanted them to know just how scared and vulnerable the people of Jericho were.

Secondly, he wanted to save Rahab for His own purposes, one of which was to be a progenitor of Joseph, the human father of Jesus.

I take great encouragement from seeing these kinds of stories in Scripture, but they also fill me with frustration at how little appreciation I see in other Christians for what's really going on here. God's in the business of saving morally bankrupt people. If He wasn't, I'd have no hope in this life. Here you have a whore, who sizes up the impending doom and realizes that she's on the wrong side. She seizes an opportunity to get in with the right people in order to save herself AND HER FAMILY.

Let me re-emphasize that last point. Rahab wasn't just engaging in a cynical act of self-preservation. She was a person who saw that her lifestyle, her culture and her leaders were all corrupt. Yet she had a concern for her family. Maybe she was doing what she was doing as the only available way to take care of her parents and other needy family members. Whatever the case might have been, she was willing to leave that life and start again among people with whom she had little in common. AND she was certain enough that this was the better path to take, that she chose it for her kin. Scripture doesn't tell us whether all of her people accepted this invitation to salvation from the army of Israel, but for sure Rahab didn't know how it was all going to turn out.

This is the essence of faith -- to throw away all that you have, to surrender your loved ones to the inevitable consequences of their own choices, and to trust that God will take care of you when the rest of your world is falling apart.

I also find it ironic that the color scarlet has come to be identified with prostitution, adultery and all manner of sexual sin in the lives of women. To my way of thinking, that is a perversion of its use in this story, which is to signal brightly to the conquering soldiers that those people covered under that symbol are protected from judgment and death. In my mind, this symbol has much more to do with the Passover blood that protected the Jews from the Angel of Death back in Egypt on the night Pharoah lost his first-born son.

Joshua 6 records that when Jericho fell, Rahab and her family were given safe conduct outside the city, but were camped in a place OUTSIDE the camp of Israel. We don't hear anything else about Rahab in the entire Bible until her name is mentioned in the Matthew genealogy. From these two facts we can infer that while Rahab started her new life on the outside looking in, she (and presumably the rest of her family) was adopted into the family of Israel in time to marry and have children -- particularly a son named Boaz who figures prominently in our next installment.

Love Abounds

2005-05-12T05:05:00.000-05:00

I fell in love this past weekend. This fetching woman showed up at my house on Saturday wanting to debate me about the validity of the tithe for the New Testament Christian. She came prepared, all right, a 34-page online white paper covering every explicit message in the entire Canon of Scripture regarding the laws, principles and ordinances of the tithe.

This woman had heard that I had begun to put 10% of my gross into my church's coffers, and she was concerned that I wasn't paying enough attention to more practical matters, like my retirement and the education of my children in the face of my Chapter 13 and at least 25% of my gross going into taking care of my children's immediate needs.

You see, my children now number 7. A and I, henceforth AI, were officially added to my brood this past weekend. Love abounds, people.

Love abounds.

The decision to do this has been gradually arriving for the past month or so. I've learned to harness the immense, destructive energies of these two for my own, pure purposes. They make their mother put on her seatbelt when she rides in my van, simply because I want it so.

It's so cool.

Two more male children abandoned by the father that looks like them, they cling to whatever form of male mentoring and affirmation they can get. They also adopted my eldest son, D1, so named because his name... No. Fuck it. I'm going to out my boy (and by extension myself) right now. By name. Because his name is the coolest male name in America, and I came up with it.

Dechlan Michael.

Both ch's sound the same. First's a variation on the Irish Declan. If you're Irish, you pronounce it slightly to the soft side of 'DECK lan', to where it almost sounds like 'DAY clan'. It's lovely to listen to in the native tongue, but we go with the straight hard version, because we're hard, American men.

It's the Gaelic equivalent of David, which ironically enough is the first name I share with my father, considering that we got into a ridiculous fight over the naming of my second son, Silas Rex. Si is named after Paul's traveling companion after his split with Barnabas over John Mark for the second (not sure on the number) missionary voyage. Rex is his maternal grandfather's name, a guy I really dug hanging out with.

Well, dad didn't like my tribute much.

For the uninitiated, my second wife and I did a naming thing with our four kids where their first name had to be unique. The standard was to ensure that they would be the only person in their daily peer group with that first name. And it had to pass the sniff test for artistry, meaning that we had to image it to a virtue or virtues that we, as Christians, espoused.

The middle name was always an homage to an individual whose life demonstrated those virtues put into practice. Our oldest daughter's first name was chosen to instill a sense of the majesty of life as God intended it. Her middle name was given in honor of my maternal great-grandmother, an saintly Irish Catholic woman born in Dublin, orphaned, adopted and taken to a life of wealth and prosperity in Woodlawn, Aliquippa, PA.

Sense a bit of an Gaelic theme here? You bet. Being almost a third Gaelic by virtue of Irish and Scottish ancestry, with the wife 100% Scottish, we were WASP's with an attitude. My great-grandmother must have been as well, defying her WASPish, adoptive parents to marry a working class Irishman steelworker. Not such a great decision, it turned out, as there was whiskey involved. The Murrays had 3 daughters, Patricia, Mary Agnes and Theresa, who went by Tess, and one son, the baby James.

While from all accounts, the children grew up well cared for, and safely. It was early adulthood that became the killer for the Murray children. It started when Tess had a nervous breakdown at age 19. I was never told the exact events leading up to this break from reality, but from the times I knew her afterwards, I could tell she had left something behind.

Patricia was next, following in her mother's footsteps and marrying a working man who loved drink a bit too much, despite the fact that his mother was DAR. There was a definite class structure in the Pittsburgh region back in the day, and my mother, the eldest product of this tragic union was always very proud of that.

But poor Pat would not have to endure the lifetime of trials with the wrong man. She died when my mother was 12, and the bereft girl was given over into the care of Gran'ma Murray because her father only wanted to raise her two brothers. More likely he couldn't stand the pain of seeing the emerging beauty that reminded him so much of his beloved.

Didn't matter, though. Not to her. She still needed his love and involvement, but he had his boys, his hunting camp, and his alcholism to soothe his pain in utter obliviousness to the pain of his own children. Children don't care about your issues, they need someone to be a grownup for them.

Anyway, my mom carried on the family tradition by marrying the next wrong man, my father, and I am the eldest product of that tragic union. Creepy for me, huh?

So my father was the wrong man, too. And stayed pretty much that way his whole life. Poisoned by anger over hurts too long gone and too trivial to cling to, my dad made me miserable.

There was no way he was going to make the list.

But back to Dechlan, the thing about his name is that I have been this huge fan of U2 since War came out in 1983. A huge part of my attraction to their music was, in addition to the obvious Christian worldview, that I perceived a deep, brooding spiritual ache in their very Irishness -- something with which I identified heavily. Therefore, I wanted to give my oldest son an Irish name that would set him apart from the crowd. His mom and I came up with the name Gaelen in the weeks before he was born, but I never really quite settled in on it. It seemed faux. Just the day before he arrived, I came across the name Declan in a byline from Hot Wax, an Irish rock journal that was all over the lads in the '80's.

See, I think that U2 is, and has been, the single, most significantly Christian, voice in popular music for the past 20 years. Their music is filled with rich, deliberate images from the Bible. The Joshua Tree? C'mon! Despite their public denials that it was a metaphor for the Cross, you'd have to be half brain dead to believe it's only a cactus from the American Southwest in their world.

So when I saw this name, I knew God had sent inspiration. I changed the spelling to look harmonious with the middle name Michael, which he shares with me.

So, dad, you got the left-handed honoring of having your name translated into Gaelic and used as a first name in the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son. Which I'm very cool with, because it's a metaphor for the transformation that's helped be from becoming the wrong man myself for the third time in my life.

Anyway, this mystery woman shows up this past weekend with her 34 pages of refutation for my decision to tithe. And, damned if she didn't convince me. At least in the aspect that obeying a purely Old Testament law is not an obligation laid on the Christian. Rather, God lends us His grace to give as able, with no pressure to drop our basic needs or neglect the financial consequences of past mistakes.

I do believe that the tithe is a standard around which Christians should order their finances and monetary priorities, but I saw that the stress of trying to give my tithe while struggling under the weight of bankruptcy, a too-large mortgage, and child support was robbing me of the joy of giving.

To the point where it was no longer giving, as I now saw.

This woman smiled at me with a warmth and kindness I have not seen in many a month. She sat straight with the dignity of a debate well fought and won, and the winning of a brother who began to recognize the real tithe of giving begins under one's own roof. As I gazed into her eyes and saw the gentle confidence and sweet concern, I fell through the ceiling and into the dream for which I've been praying for over a year now.

I looked up at this wonderful new woman with whom I had suddenly become smitten, there was something very familiar about her. When I rubbed my eyes and looked again, I realized that 25 months after the ceremony, my bride had finally shown up.

The next two hours were spent having the kind of fun we've been denying ourselves for what seems like forever. Let me tell you, there were some Hall of Fame moments this past weekend. I found myself lost in my mate, my partner, my best friend by the end of the day.

No one can tell me that God still doesn't do miracles. I found love with someone I wanted out of my hair only last week, and tender compassion for two boys who desperately need a man who cares for them, and will show them how to find their own love in this world.

I'm listening to "Love Rescue Me" from Rattle and Hum, and I can't think of a better thought with which to close.

Love has rescued more than one person in this house.

Shalom!

Four Women

2005-05-06T06:55:00.000-05:00

I had one of those moments last night that affirms my faith and the reality of my relationship with Jesus as I read Day 25 of The Purpose Driven Life.

Did you know that the Gospel of Matthew mentions four women in the human genealogy of Jesus? Rick Warren talks about it in the book, but it's something that's been an inspiration and source of hope to me for years.

Why, you ask?

Two reasons actually.

First, Matthew's Gospel is traditionally considered to have been written for a distinctively Jewish audience, often quoting Old Testament prophecy to prove that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Considering the Hebrew patriarchal culture of the time, including women's names in a genealogy would have jumped off the page. Part of that point doubtless would be to point out that although the genealogy of Christ had to be culturally understood from the paternal side, the great men in that line -- Judah, David, Solomon -- passed along absolutely NO DNA to the Lord's human incarnation. Furthermore, the participation of the men mentioned above in the paternal 'heritage' of Christ was not such as to be held up as a shining example of righteous behavior.

Which brings me to the second reason, which is how God placed these women and their messy situations into this royal bloodline. Prostitution, adultery, murder and mixed marriages marred the lives of these women, yet God chose to show grace, forgiveness and mercy to those involved as a foreshadowing and example of how He would reconcile the human race to himself.

Let's meet these women, shall we?

First is Tamar, who was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob (aka Israel). This head of the tribe destined to produce the Savior was not always the best moral example. He sold his brother Joseph into slavery, suggesting to his brothers that it would be more profitable than just killing him and lying to their father about it. Apparently, he wasn't the best father in the world, either. Er, the husband of Tamar was struck down by God because he was wicked. Onan, the second born, was required by law to do the nasty with Tamar until she gave birth to an heir. However, he didn't like that idea, so he pulled out before delivering the payload, angering God and being struck down as well. Judah, seeing that he was running out of sons, blew Tamar off with a perfunctory 'your child's in the mail'.

Tamar decided that was a no-go and disguised herself as a prostitute to take advantage of Judah's weakness in the wake of the death of his wife. She took a couple of personal items from him in lieu of payment for services rendered and got herself knocked up. Three months later, the village wags came to Judah saying, "Dude, guess what? Your daughter-in-law's been a ho and got herself knocked up. Judah said, "Bring the bitch here, and we'll burn her for bringing shame on my family name." So Tamar is brought up to Judah to get hers, and Judah demands that she name the father -- presumably to get some vengeance on him as well. Tamar smiles a little smile, holds up Judah's personal effects and announces to the bloodthirsty crowd, "The guy who owns these is the father."

Uh-oh. After Judah picks his jaw up off the floor, he tells the disappointed crowd that Tamar is more righteous than he is, and she is restored to her rightful standing in the family.

Well, I'm getting into this way more than I anticipated, so we are going to have to go the installment route.

Next: The Ho of Jericho

Blog Tag!

2005-05-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

The Unseen Blogger just tagged me. I have to complete 5 of the sentences below, and tag at least one other blogger I know to do the same.

If I could be a scientist...
If I could be a farmer...
If I could be a musician...
If I could be a doctor...
If I could be a painter...
If I could be a gardener...
If I could be a missionary...
If I could be a chef...
If I could be an architect...
If I could be a linguist...
If I could be a psychologist...
If I could be a librarian...
If I could be a lawyer...
If I could be an inn-keeper...
If I could be an athlete...
If I could be a professor...
If I could be a writer...
If I could be a llama rider...
If I could be a bonnie pirate...
If I could be an astronaut...
If I could be a world famous blogger...
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world...
If I could be married to any current famous political figure...
If I could be a dog trainer...

Here are my five vocational fantasies.

If I could be a musician, I would be the drummer and lyricist of the next band to continue in the tradition of U2, Jars of Clay, POD and Switchfoot, meaning that I would be the creative voice and driving rhythm of a band whose worldview is Christian, but whose art is relevant, topical, connective and plugged in to life as it really is. There is no such thing as Christian music, only music that lives and breathes the love, passion and purpose of our Risen Lord to a seeking audience. I love the drums. I used to pound on them with all the passion in my soul, building up the sweat of longing, aching and reaching out to tell the world what a great life God has given me. I really despise most Contemporary Christian music because it's so artificial and propagandistic. Jesus doesn't need a marketing campaign. He wants to draw people to Himself through the passionate, meaningful and loving lives of His disciples. I want to let people know somehow that my life is full of struggles, that I am hopelessly broken, but that I experience such hope and meaning because of the God who loved me to death (literally) in spite of my sad, pathetic state.

If I could be an inn-keeper, I would own a cozy, but upscale, bed and breakfast in the Laurel mountains southeast of Pittsburgh. This inn would be surrounded by breathtaking natural beauty on acres of wooded, mountainous land and set up so as to provide a porch view of a neighboring valley stretching for 10 or more miles on a clear day. It would be isolated, but close enough to the better resorts in the area. I wouldn't want to be a resort, however. I would want the ambience to be rustic and intimate, replete with fireplaces and gathering areas for conversation and games. There would be no TV's, but an atmosphere of Christian warmth, hospitality and humility in service. I would run the place with my wife and children, and ensure that employees from the area would be paid well and have full benefits. This would be a place of refuge, solace, rest and relationship building.

If I could be an athlete, I would be a professional golfer. Combining the work ethic of Vijay Singh with the athleticism and creativity of Tiger Woods. I would travel the world year-round to play the greatest test of individual character in the sports realm, and hope to honor my Lord with a gracious approach to the game. I'd also hope to win a lot of money, of course, but would be very happy to have played with dignity, grace and tenacity in the face of the inevitable adversity that the game brings. In fact, I'd be ecstatic to be able to do that on my home course right now.

If I could be a world famous blogger, I wouldn't be feeling guilty about doing this during work hours. Blogging would be my work, and I'd be engaging, witty and relevant to a generation of evangelicals struggling to be salt and light in a very troubled world during a very troubled time. None of which I am at the moment, unfortunately.

If I could be married to any current famous political figure, I'd probably pass. I just don't think I would be up to playing the games that political types have to play in order to get something worthwhile accomplished. It just seems like too much moral compromise would have to be involved. However, if the question was that I could only be married to a currently famous political figure or I would be married at all, I couldn't not be married. So given my limited knowledge of women in the political spotlight, my list would be as follows: 1) Ann Coulter, for obvious reasons; 2) Condi Rice, because she has style and an undercurrent of steaminess that makes me wonder...; 3) Laura Bush (er... Drake), because she's beautiful, loyal and faithful; 4) Ainsley Haynes, the conservative Republican White House Counsel in Jed Bartlett's utopian Liberal administration on "The West Wing", as played by Emily Procter (currently seen in CSI: Miami) because a) she's totally HOT and b) I loved the story about how she came to be an employee of the only really good media vehicle the Democrats have had in at least 30 years; and 5) Dee Dee Myers, because she was the first woman AND youngest person ever to serve as White House Press Secretary, because she had (or at least that's how I remember) a cherubic sexuality that I find hard to resist, and because she's a creative consultant for "The West Wing" -- the sum of which compensates for her being a liberal.

Now that I've bored you with this all-too-revealing look at my fantasy world, I tag slcurbanprincess, Sara Zarr, and Sam to carry on this little game. Remember to tag your blogging friends!

Even When I'm Right, I'm Wrong

2005-05-02T08:53:00.000-05:00

Ever experience this? It's a daily occurrence for me. My relationship with D. is where it shows up the most. D. and I have had almost daily conflict over our belief and worldview differences, and it infuriates me because her views are often not founded in the teachings of Scripture. But because I am frustrated and not compassionate towards her, I end up saying the right things the wrong way -- with condescension, derision and sarcasm. Then she ends up feeling bad about herself, angry with me and discouraged from following the path that I desperately want to see her walk.

I also had another experience with this phenomenon during the first service at church yesterday, where a member of my recovery group announced to me that I had hurt his feelings with comments I made about his use of 'The Message', and the use by Christians of 'The Message' in general.

I am very passionate about preserving the purity of the Word, and I believe that I am totally right in questioning the wisdom of using a paraphrase of Scripture as a teaching and/or learning tool for the Christian life. There are sermons, books and commentaries available to all to enhance their process of learning Biblical truth, but they all assume a basic accountability to a credible translation of the Bible. Users of 'The Message' are reading someone's interpretation of a Scriptural passage, often without realizing how different it is from the standard, accepted translations. For example, the Beatitudes become virtually unrecognizable in the hands of 'The Message'.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

becomes

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you."

You might call me a traditionalist, or even a legalist, but I definitely think something is lost in this paraphrase. Yes, the essential intent appears to remain, but just the fact that the verse is transformed from the third person plural to the second person singular (or plural, but I think the natural tendency would be to think singular) is just plain bad hermeneutics.

However, this brother's feelings were hurt. He felt as if I had attacked him personally and demeaned his spirituality. Bad for him, bad for me. And so I need to seek his forgiveness. Not for having an informed opinion on the subject, but for creating a stumbling block in his relationship to God and myself.

This humility business is tough work, I'll tell ya. I've got a long way to go.

Weekend Wrap Up

2005-05-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today is my first official day as a full-time employee here in Fortune 500 land. The morning got off to a rough start when my card wouldn't work at the gate of the parking lot, got a little bit worse when I found out that the vending machine on my floor that dispenses the nectar called Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice was out of order, and reached a low point when I realized that my HR orientation is booked through lunchtime. Hopefully, they will be supplying something, but something tells me not to expect it.

The weekend, however, was yet another huge example of God's grace working in my life. D. and I had been on the outs for well over a month now, ever since the debacle surrounding the paying of our (my) income tax, and which found me coming home to a roomful of packed boxes three weekends ago. I, in turn, responded by informing her that I would surrender the house for foreclosure in the event that she left -- my only real option in my current Chapter 13 state. She grudgingly stayed, but things have been horrible ever since.

This past week has been particularly difficult for me, as I prayed -- at times through tears -- every morning on my drive to work for grace to respond to D. in a Christ-like manner. And every night, something would push my buttons and I'd either lose it or go off and be by myself.

At the same time, we've been participating in the 40 Days of Purpose in our church. This week's readings have all been about being part of the Body of Christ and fellowship, with particular application to individual relationships. In addition to my constant failures to consistently apply these teachings, I've been very vocal with D. about the need for BOTH of us to get on board or continue to suffer needlessly. We had a couple of bedtime discussions where we took opposite sides of the arguments. No big surprise in my experience, but for us to disagree on these fundamental propositions was mind-boggling to me. The first night, I made the statement that we have to come to the end of ourselves in order to be truly changed by God. The second one was right from the book, A Purpose Driven Life. This is a paraphrase, but the gist of it was that conflict was the pathway to true intimacy. That one she really couldn't get.

Friday morning on the drive to work, I became convinced that I was guilty of unforgiveness towards D., and that much of my recent reactivity was a result of accruing a bunch of little hurts from her over the past several weeks. The teaching program I was listening to made the point that the only reason that Christians don't have abundant joy, zeal and energy for living the Life is sin, and I quickly realized that my biggest besetting sin was angry outbursts born of a prideful and unforgiving spirit.

So I wrote D. an email, reciting an example of a recent tiff we'd had, and had been going on with me prior to, during and afterwards. I asked her forgiveness, and told her that I forgave her and would continue to try and demonstrate Christ's love.

I also told her that my study, prayers and circumstances convinced me that I was on the right path with the Lord, and that I wanted her to walk with me more than anything.

She was unable to formulate a reply and wouldn't talk about that night.

Saturday we had a long, long talk where we went around and around the same old arguments about why she thought we shouldn't be together. But this time, I was doing more than saying that God hated divorce and that obedience was the only way. The Lord had convinced me to regard these trials and conflicts as a blessing and a challenge from Him. An opportunity to grow and truly experience His Grace. There were tears on both sides, and finally D. became so angry about the whole inescapability of the truth that she just shut down and left the house for an hour or so.

That night we went to our 40 Days small group, and heard testimony from other members about how God used their own trials to bring them closer to God and their spouses. D.'s face began to flush, and afterwards she asked me for a hug. Compassion and warmth flooded into me as I embraced her, and I knew that God's Hand was heavy on her.

Sunday morning we got into the 3rd Purpose sermon, which is that we are meant to be like Christ. At one point, the pastor said something that I knew would hit D. right where she was living. My neck muscles had barely twitched when I heard her whispering into my ear, "Don't you DARE look at me!" It was so funny that I had to control myself not to disrupt the sermon with my guffawing. It was then that I knew she was back.

When we can joke with each other about our own weaknesses and not keep trying to pick out each other's, we can be very happy together. The rest of the day was relaxed and fun. We went out the the new Red Robin. I played catch with one of the boys and did some work in the yard. We had steak on the grill and watched a movie together.

I woke up today tired, but grateful to have had yet another opportunity to see the grace and power of my God in action.

Shalom!

I feel good about myself

2005-04-29T06:35:00.000-05:00

I think the following is accurate, but find it interesting that my ex-wife would characterize me as an over-the-top Type A, while D. would classify me as bordering on being a lazy bum.

I guess it just depends on your vantage point.

You Have A Type A- Personality

A-

You are one of the most balanced people around
Motivated and focused, you are good at getting what you want
You rule at success, but success doesn't rule you.

When it's playtime, you really know how to kick back
Whether it's hanging out with friends or doing something you love!
You live life to the fullest - encorporating the best of both worlds

Do You Have a Type A Personality?

Today is Take Your Child to Work Day

2005-04-28T06:54:00.000-05:00

I'll bet the mother of the 5-year old Tasmanian devil-girl from St. Petersburg passed on that opportunity for parent/child bonding.

Assuming she has a job to lose, that is. Of course, she could always sue her employer for failing to make 'reasonable accomodations' for a person with the disability of brattiness.

Quickie

2005-04-28T06:41:00.000-05:00

I love Ann Coulter. She is my dream woman. Smart, conservative, eloquent and hot.

She's also a great writer and apologist for what's right about the Right. Here's a nice little summary paragraph from her WorldNetDaily.com column that puts the whole judicial controversy into a right perspective.

If the details helped liberals, I promise you we'd be hearing the details. Most important, if liberals could win in the court of public opinion, they wouldn't need the federal courts to hand them their victories in the first place. The reason liberals refuse to elaborate on "extremist right-wing ideologue" is that they need liberal courts to give them gay marriage, a godless Pledge of Allegiance, abortion on demand, nude dancing, rights for pederasts, and everything else they could never win in America if it were put to a vote.

Anyone who's ever spent time debating in the blogosphere knows exactly what she's talking about. Facts are irrelevant or biased to support the positions that libs cling to so desperately. Ann goes on to make the point that Republicans are simply wasting time and energy by focusing on the whole filibuster issue. Get the Dems on camera and make them put it to the people.

Politicians in general, and Dems in particular, live and die by the proposition that we, The People, are too stupid to understand what all the fuss is about. In reality, they all know that if they had give a real accounting to us for what all the fuss is about -- complete with detailed explanations and facts -- there'd be a whole lot of seat-changing going on in 2006.

And guaranteed that liberals of every stripe would be the losers.

For the rest of Ann's article, go here.

Shalom!

The Lessons of James

2005-04-21T12:09:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling with a few issues lately, mostly concerning my walk with the Lord. Circumstances have come up in my life to cause me to really focus on the teaching in James. The apostle opens up with this humdinger of a statement:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." (vv. 2-5)

Well, I've been having a few trials, but I've hardly been considering it 'pure joy'. D. and I got into it over the IRS tax bill to the point where she started packing boxes last Friday. The good people here in HR discovered a 'derogatory' flag during my employment verification process that threatens to rescind my job offer. This flag was placed somewhere out on the Internet where HR people do whatever it is that they do by my last full time employer, from which I was fired for not being a total suck up to a bunch of abusive big fish in a small pond. Which, of course, brought up the whole nightmare of that injustice which greatly contributed to my need to file bankruptcy six months later.

To top it all off, I have been so thoroughly fatigued that I can barely get out of bed or stay awake much past dinner.

So I find the words of James extremely compelling. One thing I know for sure, perseverence is being practiced. Joy? Eh, I'm working on it.

Then James goes on to say: "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires." (vv. 19,20)

There's a bit of advice I would have been wise to remember last week when D. sent me an email blaming me for our tax problem (mostly true) and deciding that she was being screwed in our division of financial responsibilities (definitely NOT true). But, instead, I went off about how if she was going to make the relationship about money and power, what was the point. Then I went on the next evening to correct her assumptions with the real numbers and proclaim myself the majority stakeholder in this 'partnership', with all of the decision making power over shared assets. That's when she started packing.

Also, "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (vv. 26,27)

If only liberals would get this concept, they'd have a heck of lot more to offer the country. But what gets my attention is the whole 'tight rein on the tongue' thing. Not my strength, by any stretch of the imagination. I just need to learn to shut up when confronting things that piss me off. When I'm indignant, anything is likely to come spouting out of my piehole. I've found it has a tendency to set a bad tone for any ensuing discussion.

And finally, "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (2:26)

This is the bottom line in my struggles. I do some things consistent with my faith, but am far, far, far from where I want to be. More embarassing is the amount of things I do and say at home and at work that make me indistinguishable from the pagan horde. Very depressing.

So I began to develop a habit of prayer during my ride into work each day. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life", devotes a whole chapter to the 'pray without ceasing' habit and 'practising the presence of God' throughout one's day. It's been pretty interesting to see how simply giving more time to just talking about what's going on in my life, my head and with those around me helps me be more focused throughout the day.

Although I still catch myself making the off-color joke, or checking out a woman's ass, I seem to be much more aware of God being there with me. This has the effect of making me think, "Oh yeah! Right! Probably shouldn't be doing this. Sorry, God."

This finds me still a long way off from exuding the Shekinah glory, but it feels like progress.

So I guess that I should consider this process 'pure joy.'

Lord, may it be so!

It's been 12 days since my last post!

2005-04-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

A lot's been happening in the life of the Drake. Busy, busy, busy. The new job responsibilities make daytime blogging impossible, and I am just too friggin' tired (not too mention embroiled in other stuff) to be consistent at night.

Anyway, I heard something on the radio yesterday on the drive home that I wanted to comment on. The Marty Minto replacement wanted to get the listener's take on the apparent discrepancy between the Liberals ongoing mantra that they are NOT in the minority, and the absolute utter failure of Air America and other new Liberal media projects to try and offset the plethora of conservative talk radio show successes.

He quoted Mario Cuomo as assessing the dynamic by claiming that Liberals are too smart to fall for slick media campaigns, even from their own side.

Hah! I think it's a little bit closer to reality to say that most Liberals THINK they're too smart to listen to anyone else.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Why else does every Democrat Presidential primary season look like a Chinese Fire Drill? By the time they settle on a candidate, they're so beaten down and tarnished by the depths that they've sunk to discredit their compatriots that the whole world knows that the Convention is really little more than the offering up of the latest sacrificial lamb to the Republican juggernaut.

The new pope made a comment about fighting against the "dictatorship of relativism", and it seems like that's really what's at the root of this sad, pathethic disintegration of what used to be a proud, dominant political party. When everyone's vision is just as relevant as anyone else's, and no common foundation can be found, then all you have is a bunch of wannabe emperors savaging the public's credulity just so they can be the next one to get blow jobs in the White House.

And everyone loses.

I pray that a new voice would arise in the politics of this country to keep the Republicans honest, because there's a whole lot going on in this government that gives me pause. Deficit spending, ill-advised and ill-timed stumping for issues that are probably not at the top of everyone's agenda, the slow movement towards ending judicial tyranny and the national stain of abortion on demand.

Heck, I'd like to see Bush take on the IRS before tackling Social Security. Seems like legacy building to me, and not a real working on the mandate that he was given in November.

Can anyone explain to me why this President is wasting our time trying to push SS reform when it ain't gonna happen? At least, not on his watch. Why isn't he stumping for term limits for federal judges and Supreme Court justices or Congressional override capabilities for dealing with bench legislation and arrogance?

Why is it that Judges Greer and Whittemore weren't arrested for defying a Congressional order?

Why is it that a final term President, who postures as both a cowboy and a righteous believer, isn't making the issues that got him elected his first priority?

I'd just like to know.

Lament for the Dying Hippies

2005-04-08T12:23:00.000-05:00

The first order of business in this post is to issue a public apology for some of my recent behavior on this and other blogs. I am an opinionated, critical, sarcastic asshole, and much of what I've said in my posts and subsequent comments has been demeaning and uncharitable. I regret any role I've played in inciting any feelings of animosity or hurt.

It is rightly said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My intentions in posting some of the things I do IS to incite debate, but civil debate. Furthermore, I strive to prod those whose misguided, but overall good intentions, are leading them down the broad, smooth way to their own destruction into a sincere reflection on what's really important in this life. God, family, country and service.

What I have lacked is compassion for the plight of these poor souls. For that, I am deeply sorry.

It was with the best of intentions that our fathers, fresh from the trials of the Great Depression and WWII, produced and indulged the largest, most self-centered and spoiled generation our country has ever known. As this generation swarmed into adolesence and young adulthood in the 1960's, our country was faced with a reckoning of the sins of our forefathers from generations past. And these youngsters, some of them now grandparents, had their idealism and energy harnessed into a vital and imposing social force. Like their parents, they had good intentions. After all, world peace, free love and getting back to nature all sound wonderful, don't they? And the institutionalized racism of Jim Crow was a great injustice, was it not?

I came into this world at the tail end of this population explosion, born into a moral vacuum of parental neglect and guilt-induced indulgence. Into this vacuum stepped the forces of consumerism, materialism and hedonism, all cloaked in the 'virtues' for which the '60's are nostagically remembered. My parents, like those of many of my peers, espoused a hollow morality, based on status, appearances and social graces. I, like many of my peers, took this all too obvious hypocrisy and used it as excuse to reject the Judeo-Christianity ethos out of hand. It was all about the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, baby.

Fortunately, God chose to have mercy on me, allowing me to come to the end of myself by the end of the '70's. Having stripped away the facade of my 'high' ideals, I was given the sight to see the reality of this world, my place in it, and my only hope to experience real love and peace. Not just some drug-induced fantasy, but deep, penetrating, restorative illumination.

It's hard for me to remember sometimes how radical was the change in my thinking. Like many of those with whom I debate in cyberspace, I bought unquestioningly into the whole liberal, hedonist agenda. I had no doubts or concerns about the life I was living until God starting dealing with me and putting situations and people in my life to get my attention.

It hit me hard a couple of nights ago as I was reading John 6. Verse 44 records Jesus saying, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him..." No wonder I've been feeling as if I'm beating my head against the wall and getting very little satisfaction! It's because I am!

I don't want to win debates here, or beat down and humiliate liberals. I want to see people get free from the anger, bitterness and demanding expectations that life be something different than what it is. I just need to stop trying to convince corpses to get up and live.

What I heard this morning on the ride into work from a guy by the name of Dr. Michael Yusef made much more sense. Apparently, there was a massive revival around about 1904 in the UK and US. Businesses would close in the middle of the day so that community leaders could gather and pray and weep over the sorry state of the nation. Newspapers began to publish the names of new converts. The city of Atlanta recorded over 70,000 such conversions. Can you imagine? The thought of a major metropolitan newspaper deeming Christian revival newsworthy is mind-boggling in and of itself.

So I'm asking my brothers and sisters who read and participate in this blog to join me in praying and mourning for those lost souls who stop by once in a while to denounce our beliefs and lifestyle. They really need us to show them the better way, and all too often I lapse into arrogance without realizing that they have no capacity to know what we know. Neither did we, once upon a time.

I stand ashamed to have forgotten how desparately I needed what I was graciously given, but did not earn.