"And so it begins..."

Actually, it's been underway for about a month - preparations to relocate to a new address have been going for a while, now.

Chris's job has been what one generous soul would call "a hot mess" for more than a year. It has been degenerating for at least a year, and he's been developing a case of "homesick" that's been getting more and more obvious over that same year. We had been looking at relocating someplace further south - Charlotte, NC was a prime candidate - but the "homesick" part started to grow, fueled in part by something not far from a miracle.

Chris and his parents have not had the best of relationships - a combination of old hurts and their resistance to his orientation. When he left his hometown to come to Toledo to be with me, the phone lines were silent from New Years' to Mothers Day, and even after that, there wasn't a lot of phone traffic between Mothers' Day and Christmas.

But things started to change last July when we went down to visit for his birthday, and the turnaround since then has been really miraculous. And when it was time to decide our new destination, Chris finally admitted that where he would like to go was back to his hometown of Springfield, MO.

So, after spending a bunch of time on Craigslist and surfing the property management sites in Springfield, we went down and found a great two-bedroom duplex with a two-car garage and a little deck on the south side of the city. A quiet neighborhood, but one pretty accessible to almost anything, about 25% bigger than the place we're in now, and about $50 a month cheaper. We got the approval on Monday, and the process has begun.

The word has been out before this...I let people in the recovery community know a month or so ago, and Chris had his notice given for him about the same time. He  made the mistake of telling one of his supposedly-trustworthy co-workers (on that person's last day at work) that he planned to be leaving also - which meant that in a flash, his whole department, including his manager, had the word also. Chris's co-workers are bumming, big-time - he's been a key-player there for more than a little while - but he's put the "going to be with my parents" spin on it, so they can hardly fault him. I would guess that if anyone else could come up with a half-way-decent job, they'd be out-de-door too...

It's harder for me...I've lived in Toledo for 17 years, and in Chicago for three, so the lack of scenery is hardly a new or difficult thing for me, as it is for Chris. Where I've been has largely been a function of the people, especially in the recovery community - so this is a kind of tearing-apart for me that Chris isn't experiencing, so much. I've just been here long enough to put down the kind of roots that hurt when they're pulled-up, so this is a different experience for me.

And yet, it's not so very different...I left a loving church and recovery community in KC when I went to seminary, and had some pretty solid roots in the Chicago recovery community when I left for Toledo. Looking from that standpoint, I was in KC for 12 years, Chicago for 3, Toledo for 2, and Champaign/Urbana for 2 (almost to the day). It feels like I've been saying "goodbye" and "hello" for quite a while. Not to mention that with Chris's move to Toledo, my move in with Chris, our joint move to C-U, and now the move to Springfield, we will have made four moves in 3-1/2 years...so I'm ready to be shut of moving-boxes, bubble-wrap and Penske trucks for a while.

The plan is to be 95-98% packed by Easter Sunday, April 24th, and to wrap up on Thursday, 4/28, have folks from "Two Men and A Truck" load the truck on Friday, drive down there by Friday night, have the "Two Men" folks unload us Saturday afternoon, and be residents of Springfield on May 1st. We'll see how it all works out. But for now, back to packing...

Outta my mind on a Wednesday moanin'

Yet another tribute to the late Bob Talbert of Detroit Free Press fame (1936-1999) - a Southern boy whose accent translated "morning" into moanin' and whose book, Good Moanin', is one of the unsung classics of life in Detroit (along with Richard Guindon's cartoons).

So today I divide my early-morning thoughts into Good moanin' and Jus' moanin':

Good moanin' - there is nothing like having a cat jump into your lap and start to purr and knead your tummy to prevent you from throwing a misbehaving laptop through a window. The wee beastie surely calms the savage beast.

Good moanin' - there is also nothing like having factory-service-critters come out and fix aforementioned laptop to cut off the savage beast at the pass.

(Helpful PC tip: if your laptop is a couple years old, and seems to be losing connections or periodically slowing down drastically or shutting down for seemingly no reason at all, it may just be (as it was with me) that the internal heat-sink vents had become clogged with dust, and the system is overheating just enough to make it "hinky." It also would have helped if my company's support center might have suggested the upgrade from BIOS 4.0 to 15.0... but my friendly service guy did that, too.)

Jus' moanin' - The silence remains deafening on the shortage of bankers' and investment-brokers' heads on pikes in the town square. This irks me more than the lack of progress on health-care, more than the partisan BS that passes for business as usual in DC, more than the war,l more than almost anything. These bastards helped eliminate multiple generations of savings and investment, and not one of them has been punished.

- My favorite quote on this topic comes from the sci-fi TV series Babylon 5, where Vir is asked by the evil Mr. Morden that favorite Shadow question, "What do you want?" Vir's response is exactly what I'd say to most people in the financial sector today:

I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike - as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this [waves at Morden]. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?

(But then, I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet, either. I'm sure I'll be better later on.)

Jus' moanin' - for the same reason, anyone who is thinking that we brought ourselves into this economic meltdown on $25-an-hour auto jobs but we will somehow bring ourselves out of the disaster on $7-an-hour McService jobs is on drugs. People who are struggling to keep their homes and buy needed medicines are not buying $25,000 cars.

Good moanin' - my family's '76 Chevette, my former wife's '82 Monte Carlo, and my '83 Celebrity broke me of ever wanting to drive a Chevrolet product - ever, ever again (the same way my '92 Ford Probe and my '95 Mercury Sable broke me of Ford ownership and sold me on extended factory warranties). The 2010 Malibu and Camaro make me want to be a believer again. I wish GM well; I really do.

Good moanin' - But if I won the lottery, and wanted to redeem my high-school muscle-car dreams with a 2010 model, a hot contender would be the Dodge Challenger SRT8 6.1. In either Hemi Orange (shown) or Detonator Yellow.

(And yes, I know exactly what a 6.1-liter Hemi engine would do to the environment, and how much I should be choosing some plain-vanilla hybrid. And yes, I know that I'd probably have my license for about, oh, 8 minutes with a 6.1 under the hood. Blah blah blah. It's MY dream, and I'll dream what I want to. I may be gettin' old, but I still have what the Top Gun boys called "the NEED for SPEED.")

Jus' moanin' - but the bottom line is that given the current jobs environment, I will be pretty unlikely to purchase any car except the ones with the "Hyundai Assurance Plan."

Good moanin' - After a long absence from reading non-fiction about faith, I have three titles on my desk: Bulletproof Faith by Candace Chellew-Hodge, A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren, and Losing Your Religion, Finding Your Faith by Brett Hoover. I've found good bits in the early going on all three.

- But I have to admit that I learned a lot of what I'm seeing in Hoover's book 15 years ago from Jesus for A New Generation by Kevin Ford, which I still believe ought to be required reading for all seminarians and people involved in ministry.

Jus' moanin' - and I'm not sure how much I'm really called to finish these books, to be honest. I find the ideas in each book interesting, but I am so post-church-and-denominations that I could almost hurl at the thought of getting-back-into-it. When it comes to organized religion, I have become the "Anti-Tareyton Man" - I'd much rather switch than fight.

Good moanin' - I love our church; I really do. But whenever I hear my recording of Marty Haugen's Holden Evening Prayer, my eyes tear up, and I am transported to a more naive, simpler time when I was surrounded by friends and family in a beautiful, simple worship service. I want to hear my friend Natalie playing the piano, I want to hear "Friends of Faith" leading the service, and I so very much wish I had a DeLorean with a flux capacitor. Not to stay, of course - but it would be so very cool to visit.

That's all for now. Let's all be careful out there, and try to play nice with each other. I'll try to do the same.

Changes in the air

Taking a moment to reflect on some interesting - and challenging - events out here in the slushy, mushy tundra of the Big Ten College Town in the Cornfields...

One of fun trips we allow ourselves is a trip to Indianapolis each year to see the AMA/FIM Supercross (indoor motorcycle dirt-track) races. Yes, I know, you'd never peg me for a motorcycle-racing guy - but it's a good time. The racing is the one "sport" I get enthused about, and it's something that Chris introduced me to that I really "get." The race is held at the reasonably-new Lucas Oil Stadium, downtown Indy, which is a really nice venue.

The racing has been particularly fun this year because the two "big-name" racers, James Stewart and Chad Reed, are both out with injuries. Without adding to the drama between these two, I would just say that the racing has been much more exciting without either of them - and it wouldn't bother me a bit if neither of them came back this season. A lot of younger racers have had a lot more chances to shine without them, and to be honest, it's much more exciting to me.

I could get into the other "dramas" - especially related to perennial bad-boy Jason Lawrence - but I put this kind of crap in the same category with People magazine and Fox News: "sound and fury, signifying nothing." The race was fun, with lots of switch-ups and battles going on.

The big stories, for us, came afterwards. Chris is a small-town guy, and had never seen homeless people as up-close as we did walking from the car to the stadium. Men and women, sleeping on the sidewalks under the railroad overpasses - it un-nerved him to see them that up-close. Chris had been less than happy about the way his week at work had gone - but he was a lot more grateful as we went home than he'd been in a while. Travel does open one's eyes...

I'd told Chris I wanted to stay overnight in Indy because I'd wanted to visit Jesus Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) on the east side of town. Their pastor, Jeff Miner, had written The Children Are Free: Re-examining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships, and had appeared on the Gay Christian Network's "GCN Radio" program. His book had been the first one to discuss the possibility that how I'd been reading the Bible regarding same-sex relationships might be off-base (long before I had a same-sex relationship, I should add), and I really wanted to see what JMCC was like.

So off we went - stopping at Hubbard & Cravens coffee-shop on Carrollton first. We got to the church, and were greeted by two people, welcomed, handed two "visitor bags," and pointed toward the refreshments and the sanctuary. Can you guess what happened next?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Now, I know - two gay men at an MCC church (made-up primarily of GLBT members) is not a rarity. But two people - regardless of gender or orientation - at a church carrying "visitor bags" should be a red-flag (or at least bright-orange) for a church to welcome the strangers in their midst. Yet not a single person welcomed us, introduced themselves, or acknowledged that we existed. We went through the service, and except for the prayers said over us by the person giving us communion (which I have always loved about the MCC), we remain untouched until the service end.

Pastor Miner was standing at the door at the end of the service, and I introduced myself and thanked him for The Children Are Free. When he was done greeting worshipers, he showed me the other resources JMCC had available. But other than the greeter and the pastor, not a single member of the church noted our presence.

I enjoyed the music (a blend of praise choruses and traditional hymns), and the sermon from their clergy intern. But the welcome at our home church (McKinley Presbyterian) 10 months ago has evidently spoiled us for life at other churches. We felt more welcome, and more joy at our presence, from McKinley in the first ten minutes we were there than we felt at this nearly-all-GLBT church during our whole visit. I'm glad we went (I got a couple great books from their resource area). But I don't think we'll be missing a Sunday "at home" to attend there again.

There were a couple of Taize' songs (which Chris recognized from McKinley) being sung that morning. I had the chance on the way home to explain more about Taize' and their tradition of meditative worship music, which Chris had been unfamiliar with before then. I have warm memories of Taize' singing, or our best approximation of it, from my "Friends of Faith" days in Kansas, and find it to be a great comfort to me.

It's funny, but having been (at one time) a big proponent of praise music, I've found some of the so-called "praise choruses" I've experienced lately to be quite empty, at times. Being a heretic, I find singing "You're WORTHY" repeatedly (OK, seemingly unendingly) to be one of the ultimate redundancies in the known universe. After all, folks, if God's not "worthy," we're pretty much screwed, aren't we?...

There's a lot more to talk about on that topic, but I won't digress much more for now.

I have been reflecting a lot about items of faith and recovery - about Lent and how twisted (or enabling) Lenten practices can be; about the supposed divide between spirituality and religion; about what makes "a church"; about calling and being called. Lots to write, lots to share. But for now, off to a meeting, dinner, and back to work, sadly. Peace for now.

A disciplined return

I found this in my inbox recently...a clear image of how connected I am, and how ripples in my life are detected by others...

~~~

Can't sleep. Up browsing.
It seems you haven't posted on the ragamuffin blog for a l.o.n.g. time.
Are you okay?
Are you blogging elsewhere?
Are you done blogging?

Perhaps none of it is any of my business.
I miss your words. your thoughts. you.
Still pondering deeply and praying for understanding.
Saying a prayer for you also tonight.

Love from Kansas.
Deb
~~~

Thank you for the wake-up call, Deb...and Michael...and others.

Yes, I am okay, overall - though it has been a bit of a roller-coaster. No, I am not blogging elsewhere. I did allow myself to get sucked into the catch-up-with-the-world-of-the-past of Facebook, for a bit, and I allowed myself to get wrapped up in the stuff of life for a bit. I have also been somewhat annoyed by technological issues - my 2002 PC has been dying a slow death, and I'd been trying to nurse it along. But all these things are just contributing factors.

Am I done blogging? That has been the big question that I think I've been avoiding over the last two or three months. I confess that there have been a number of "what's it all about, Alfie?" moments scattered over the last four or even six months. I wondered if I really had anything to share, anything new or worthwhile.

I found, in some introspection, that I had once again succumbed to an old, old character defect - being concerned about what other people thought, rather than just voicing my belief or conviction. That concern for the opinion of others, combined with my natural conflict-averse personality, made it more comfortable for me to simply withdraw.

I found, however, that my failure to write, even about the most mundane thing, hasn't necessarily freed me from anything, but seemed to have left me in some kind of spiritual sloth - not wanting to do much of anything. It hasn't helped, to be honest.

So I am going to work toward posting more regularly - catching up on some of the events of life over the last three months or so. And I'm making an effort to be more "present" in the community of friends.

There are more than a few topics to consider...

- Six months in a strange new land
- It's not perfect, but it's home - joining a church
- Hitting the "hide" button on Facebook
- If the phone ain't ringin', I know who it is
- Going back to roots of faith
- Is it worth arguing?
- Running from "the faithful"

And for those who sent the "where have you been" messages (and especially to Debby, whose message I quoted at the beginning), thank you.

Fall reflections...

It's October 1 - plenty of changes in the fall air...

A little known fact about me is that I have had an oldish Oscar Schmidt autoharp in my closet for about a decade. It's had a couple buzzing keys, and it was a pain in the nether-regions to tune (there are thirty-six strings to tune!), so other than using it for a couple of kids' sermons in the 1999-2001 period, I never really pulled it out much.

But something stirred in me when I found out about the Champaign-Urbana Folk & Roots Festival, and the fact that a couple ladies were going to be doing an intro-to-autoharp session. I also was astounded to find out that fully chromatic tuners are available pretty cheaply (thus easing the whole tuning-nightmare issue). They are basically a pocket-sized electronic gauge that shows whether a given note is sharp or flat). You pluck C-sharp, and if it's flat, the little red "flat" light shows, and a dial shows how far off you are. If it's flat enough, it shows up as C; you tune it up, it switches to C#. They've had them for guitars for years - but I'd never known they had them fully-chromatic for instruments like the autoharp. Pretty damn amazing....

It also turns out one of the ladies doing the workshop is actually involved in recovery in a nearby town, so we have a double connection. She's quite an enthusiast, and renewed a long-submerged desire to sing and play. She is also experienced in autoharp maintenance and repair - so she should be able to help me fix my buzzing keys. So I'm pretty excited about getting back into some kind of folk music again.

There was also a session by the C/U Storytelling Guild - a dozen or so folks doing storytelling in the area. This is another area that I'd never thought I'd get back into - frankly, I never was that good at it, especially since a large portion of the stories I told had been lifted from other tellers. But their story examples gave me some inspiration - so we'll see. I'm good when it comes to starting stuff - not so hot about follow-through...

This weekend is the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. I remember being appalled at how the weekend price had grown from $60-70 to $160 a person (and then reflected that I'd spent $50 a ticket to go to a Supercross race in Indianapolis, which was basically only 8 hours). So my attitude about Jonesborough has changed - although it probably won't happen next year, either - our travel budget will be stretched anyway because of the AA 75th-anniversary international conference in San Antonio next July.

I'd like to try it out on Chris at a couple smaller festivals first - I heard that the Fox Valley Folk Music and Storytelling Festival is a pretty good festival in the western Chicago suburbs (Geneva, IL) over Labor Day weekend. (I'm kicking myself about not knowing about the 2009 FV festival - Pete Seeger's sister, Peggy Seeger, did a workshop there!).

This weekend was also saying farewell to Chris' Yamaha WR426 enduro/dirt bike. We had tried a number of different riding areas, trying to get Chris up-to-snuff to get back into amateur motocross again, but Chris never really felt comfortable enough to do the kind of riding he needed to do. And any riding area for enduro/woods riding were an hour east, or two hours west. So he put it up for sale - and after a dozen false leads (including a couple different scams, and an offer to trade it for a set of AR-15 assault rifles!) he finally found a buyer from Chicago who came down to get it on Sunday.

Sunday night, seeing the dirt-bike riding away on someone else's trailer, was kind of a melancholy evening for Chris. For quite a while, he'd had the dream of winning one more race, even in the "seniors division," so this was a little bit of an end-of-the-era for him. But he's much more comfortable on his mountain bike (bicycle, not motorcycle), and he enjoys the exercise on that so much more. So he'll continue to do that at nearby Kickapoo State Park, and do some road-rides out in the corn-n-beans around Urbana.

And we had to postpone our trip to Kansas - we had put off getting our motel rooms to stay, not aware that this weekend is NASCAR weekend in the KC area. Every motel room in the area - even as far away as Liberty, MO - had their prices doubled. And while I love the folks in KC, the idea of paying $106 a night for a Motel 6 (!) was more than I could handle. So we've rescheduled for Oct 16-18, and will look forward to seeing folks then.

For now, I need to get things wrapped up at work, and get ready to have an enjoyable weekend. And, perhaps, more than one post a month here in the blogging world...

Thoughts on "holy unions" and same-sex marriage

Late afternoon, Saturday...

I am sitting in a shady spot at The Badlands Offroad Park in Attica, Indiana. All around me there are the rasps and roars of off-road vehicles - everything from the bumblebee buzz-whine of 125cc 2-stroke dirt bikes to the throaty roar of high-powered dune buggies, and everything in between. For folks who would forsake pavement to ride through the great outdoors, The Badlands is a mid-US mecca for off-roading (I forget how many hundreds of acres they have here). Today Chris is just doing a blow-the-dust-out and get-acquainted ride on his Yamaha WR426 (I mention it only because someone, somewhere, may want to know what he rides, I guess - and because I care enough to know, believe it or not!).

Riding a motorcycle holds no thrill for me - I have enough trouble balancing on four wheels - but I enjoy being outdoors when it's cool and breezy, and Chris has been longing to come to The Badlands ever since he first thought about coming to Champaign.

So here we are. It's cool, shady and breezy, and I have a sufficient supply of pretzels and Diet Coke, and about 3 hours of battery time on ye olde laptop. So as he's off on his first dream-ride, I have some time to catch-up, reflect, and ponder life around me.

For a number of reasons, my thoughts have been turning to questions of faith, and questions of church. One of the valuable lessons which the two decades have taught me is that questions of church are quite, quite separate from questions of faith. I will be forever grateful to the communities which helped form my faith - but I am also very glad that there were non-church communities that helped my faith survive when the church world failed me.

For many of my former seminary friends still in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), this is the weekend of several Synod conferences...gatherings of the regional governing conferences within the ELCA. It is a time when bishops are elected, and policy is either set (for a region) or recommended to the greater Churchwide Assembly for action. Synod conferences can be a time of stunning boredom, of great inspiration, or great frustration (sometimes in equal measures!), especially as the regional synods act on resolutions which can indicate an area's stand on certain issues.

It was out of these regional resolutions that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in 2007 took the step to "memorialize" (without getting painfully technical, to make a non-binding recommendation to the Church at large) that ELCA bishops did not have to enforce the rules on clergy in committed same-sex relationships. The rules still stood - clergy should be monogamous within traditional marriage, and celibate outside of it. Nothing changed there.

But up to that point, the rulebook essentially said that clergy found to be in committed, monogamous same-sex relationships were to be removed from the roster of ordained clergy, period - effectively defrocking them. What happened in 2007 wasn't a giant step forward - as I wrote earlier, the bishops still hold the gun, and it's still loaded - but the action two years ago allows the bishops to not have to "pull the trigger" and remove partnered GLBT clergy. The action of the ELCA allows their bishops to choose mercy (imagine that in a Christian organization!...), where there once was no room for it.

I've seen updates this weekend on Facebook from my former classmates attending their synod conferences, and some of them are hearing the same old language on same-sex marriage and partnered GLBT clergy - abomination, sin, death, rejection. But the joy, for me, is hearing them some of them angered by it, resisting it - and speaking out against it. For those of you who are in that group, and are reading this, my partner and I give thanks to you, and give thanks for God for you and your voice.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons I am "out" - not because I feel the need to convert anyone, wear a rainbow flag banner, or any of that nonsense, but to simply put a face (or a pair of faces) on this issue. My prayer is that men and women of faith, when they hear these discussions about same-sex relationships, will realize, "That's Steve they're talking about. My friend... coworker.... fellow student... church member... neighbor. We're talking about Steve, and his partner Chris. Not some fear-based mythical stereotype, but a person I've worked with, and laughed with, and prayed with, and lived with."

Several people have asked me if I want to have a "holy union" ceremony (the Presbyterian church we attend does that), and I think they are surprised by the answer. You see, anyone who spends time with us doesn't have to ask if we are a couple. It's not because we are some lovey-dovey, please-get-a-room kind of people, but because we care for each other, deeply - and I think that kind of love and care becomes obvious, even if you aren't used to seeing it between two men.

We are committed to each other. At one point near the start of our relationship, Chris said something like, "So...you think you'll keep me for a while?...." and I jokingly told him that we'd see how we do for the first forty years, and still occasionally tell him that he only has 38 years left before he can re-negotiate this deal between us.

To be honest, there is nothing that a church can do to legitimize our relationship that McKinley Presbyterian Church in Champaign hasn't already done. The pastors and members greet us as a partnered couple; no one bats an eye when we hold hands when we pray in worship; it's just no big deal in so many ways that I can't even begin to explain to someone who has not seen a truly open-and-affirming congregation. This congregation already recognizes our relationship; we don't need a ceremony or a party to get there. My family doesn't need a holy-union to recognize our commitment to each other, either. We celebrate that union every time we get together with them.

My dream would be to have a "holy union ceremony" where it would matter most - in Chicago, among my former seminary and AA sisters and brothers; or in Kansas City, among my former church members and AA friends who have loved me, supported me, and know my faith; or in Springfield, MO, among Chris's family and friends. It would be the chance for our family and friends to join us in celebrating a life-long commitment to love, to publicly affirm our belief that God says to Chris and I, "This love is good in My sight," and to build community as the early church did - with some really, really good food. (Wonder if Arthur Bryant's or Oklahoma Joes's would cater? Now that would be a "dream wedding"!)

It couldn't happen at LSTC in Chicago, nor at Atonement Lutheran in Kansas - the ELCA just isn't there yet, and won't "get there" for some years to come, I think. I don't think we could even do it at the Hollis Center, an ELCA-supported retreat center west of KC - too much church support would be jeopardized if the word got out. Maybe Arthur Bryant's up at the Casino wouldn't be such a bad idea, after all...at least we wouldn't have to worry about Fred Phelps picketing us there...

The only legitimacy that my relationship with Chris can gain is in legal and civil rights - rights of survivorship, joint property ownership, being treated as "family" in a hospital setting, and things like this. That's the reason why we are advocates for same-sex marriage - not for the cake and candles, or the chance to be his-and-his Bridezillas - but so this bond between us can receive the same legal and social blessing from the rest of the world that McKinley Church has already bestowed upon us.

Until that day, we will soldier on as we have, trusting in God's acceptance and love, and praying for the same from His followers. May it come quickly, Lord.

Restart/renew/reboot...

Starting over, nearly five years in...

It's been 65 days since I went into St Luke's Hospital in Toledo, complaining of chest pains. In that 50 days, a lot has happened, and blogging has simply been pushed near the back of the pack, so to speak. So now, as the holiday weekend ends and a new week begins, it's time to catch up, and reboot my blog.

A scant 38 days ago, Chris got the phone call he'd come to believe wouldn't come - a call from his dream employer with an offer for his dream job: doing product support for the second-biggest remote-control hobby distributor in the country, in Champaign, IL . The call came April 3rd, as we were leaving the Weak Signals RC trade show in Toledo - it turns out one of the biggest RC product gatherings in the country happens in Toledo the first week in April every year (and I never, ever knew that - even after living in Toledo for 30 years - until I met Chris).

His phone rang, he looked at the caller ID, and just registered this "NOW what?" look. As I watched his face, I could tell - like he'd been throwing himself against a door for a year, and when he turned his back on it, it swung open all by itself. The challenge, of course, was the timing: it was after the first of the month, our landlord required 30 days notice - and the New Job wanted him there by the 27th.

Twenty one days later, on April 24th, the 26-foot Penske truck, the Camry and the F-150 were loaded to the gills and we were on our way. A couple of retired AA friends were driving the Penske truck, so we could make the trip once. We had a late start - it is a moving truism that "90% of the stuff takes 90% of the time - and the last 10% of the stuff ALSO takes 90% of the time. " And we tossed some stuff that was marginal, that we ended up replacing when we got here - just because there was simply no more room anywhere to put it.

Six hour later, we landed in Champaign-Urbana, and checked into the motel for the night (the water wouldn't be on in the duplex until the following morning!...). We had a great meal together, and then my AA buddies and I went to my first meeting in "the new world." The next morning, we sent them home in a one-way rental car, and we started the task of unpacking and settling-in to our new world.

We've had 4 weeks here. The boxes are either put away or neatly organized in garage storage. Pictures are on the wall, Chris' workshop is in perfect order, and I am trying to keep my office chaos to a minimum in my new world. It looks, and feels, like home. One of Chris' employment benefits is cheap membership for himself and one other at The Fitness Center in Champaign - so he's become "a regular" and I'm working on getting to be a "periodic." And the insanity has come way, way down.

And we've found a church home - which will be a post in itself. Suffice it to say that McKinley Presbyterian seems, at first blush, to be everything we could hope: a friendly, welcoming and accepting "More Light" congregation.

We spent the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago - Chris flew his float-plane off the water for the first time, and I showed him around some of Chicago (you can't do much in one day, obviously). That trip will be yet another post.

Whatever happens - with my health, with my job, with the two of us - it seems we are in the best place for it. My prayer is that this will be a time of restoration and renewal for both of us. So far, it seems to be just that.

Thoughts from the body-n-fender shop

Thursday night, 9 PM.

I was at the Thursday night Men's meeting when I started to feel this twinge in my left chest, and a little numbness in my left arm. I thought back over the evening - Chris and I had been to two standing-room-only restaurants before settling on "comfort food" at Bob Evans, and my first thought was "...too much caffeine for one evening," and gave it no mind.

When I got home, the little twinges were a little sharper, but nothing to be alarmed about. I took an extra aspirin (just in case, you know) - and (since I have been prone to 3-4 panic attacks a year) a half-doze of medicine for that, just to be sure - and went to bed.

About 4:30, I woke up, fully awake and alert, and realized the twinges were now what I would call between "discomfort in my chest" and "chest pain." The left elbow still hurt, and the left fingers were still numb. And then "the debate" started...

From what I have heard, everyone who has had a heart attack has had this debate in their head. It starts off with, "Well, how bad IS this, really? It's not really THAT bad, is it?..." And then that thought is followed by...

- Nah, it's not really that bad...
- ...but it's not going away.
- And it's been six hours since you took the drugs.
- If it was going to go away, it would have, by now.
- But it's not that bad. It's not even painful, really.
- But - you're over fifty, over-weight, hypertense, and diabetic.
- A four-star risk-factor list, if ever there was one.
- And you're eleven miles from the hospital.
- And who knows how far the ambulance would have to come.
- But if you go, you're not gonna get out for at least a day.
- And it's gonna be a pain in the ass.
- You hate IV's worse than the prospect of a gasoline enema.
- And your partner has had a long day, and needs his sleep.
- He's had a hard week.
- And he's not an early-morning person - you KNOW that.
- And a trip to the emergency room will not help any of that...

But the deal-breaker always comes back to this: Are you sure - absolutely sure - that if something happens, you'll get him up in time? And how bad's his day gonna be if he wakes up and finds the love-of-his-life cold and dead next to him, or sprawled-out on the kitchen floor?

And the answer (for me, anyway) always comes back to Well, that would pretty much suck forever and ever, wouldn't it?

Talk about God speaking to you in a clear voice....So, off to the hospital we went, at 5 AM.

Thank God, St. Luke's in Maumee, OH had an empty emergency-room and a "chest pain to the top of the list" protocol. As soon as they had gotten the blood tests back, they knew I hadn't had a heart attack, which was good. However, since we knew that they would admit me anyway (the ER doctor said, "An admission of diabetes and a complaint of chest pain means an automatic 24-hour stay at Hotel St. Luke's, for monitoring"), I sent Chris home. No sense in two of us having to sit around, doing nothing...

Part of the ER protocol for chest-pain is administering a drug called Lopressor, to ease the load on the heart. That drug, however, also screws up the chance to do any kind of stress-testing for 24 hours. So my 24-hour stay got stretched to 48, by mid-afternoon. And the next morning, they told me that the stress-test would have to be done in two parts (the double-scan would pump too much radioactive tracer into me in one day).

So that's why it's 3 PM on Sunday, and I'm waiting eagerly for the results of the second portion of the heart scan, so I can get the hell out of here. So far the only real benefit of this stay (other than knowing that I haven't had a heart attack) is to catch up on sleep and to see the Battlestar Galactica marathon and finale on Friday night.

I've watched about all the Food Network and National Geographic I can stand. I've had it with 99% of the nonsense I've seen on SciFi, and more Catholic priests and black gospel preachers than I would have ever imagined I'd watch. I've caught up on my sleep, and am ready to go out and hit the YMCA and a Thai restaurant, each with a fervor I've not found previously.

And I'm damn tired of sleeping alone, to be honest. I've grown accustomed to the big ol' bear I live with, and I miss him terribly. (No matter how unnatural a couple of the Sunday-mornin' preachers would call it...) I've been hearin' Can't Help (Lovin' That Man o' Mine) more times than I choose to, and I'm ready (as Richard Marx would say) for him to be Back In My Arms Again.

It's been a blessing, though, to see how the community of recovery has rallied around me. I called my friend Red when it became clear I'd be here for a couple days, and he sent out an email to his list of half-a-bazillion people letting them know I was in the hospital, and my room number. About ten minutes later, I got a call from a buddy I used to go to meetings with in Kansas - who used to go to meetings here in Toledo - who got the email and wanted to know what was up.

I did the same thing on Facebook, and got a similar response. Dozens and dozens of messages, prayers, and "listen to your damn doctor" texts from across the country.

And that's the way it's been all weekend - call after call, prayer upon prayer. If ever I needed reminding how I'm blessed, I would certainly have gotten that reminder this weekend.

And I have to commend the nursing and dietary staff at St. Luke's for making the very best out of a bad situation. The dietary folks have done a wonderful job of making "low-salt, low-fat" seem tolerable, and the nurses and nurse-techs have done a great job of putting up with a whiner like me. They have made an unfortunate stay into a more-than-decent experience, and who can ask for more than that?

(Note to self: next time you have to do this, have them shave your chest AND your IV arm, right up front, in the ER. The absolute worst part about having an IV is dealing with the hair-and-tape nightmare at the end...)

I'm debating work on Monday - frankly, I could use a day of downtime after my "Less Than Excellent Weekend" here. And The Evil Empire will be there when I get back, for sure. (Well, that was a short debate, wasn't it?...)

For now, I'm just giving thanks for another day above-ground, and (as my friend Bob L in Kansas would say) "sunny-side-up, suckin' air and sober." For someone who briefly contemplated the possibility of "cold and dead on the kitchen floor" on Friday morning, that's a pretty wonderful way to be Sunday afternoon.

Thank you, to all who wrote and prayed. I know it's a gift from God that I get this day, and any that are yet to come.

Update: I am staying here another day - I now have a cardiologist, which I didn't have before, and a tentative date for cardiac catheterization Monday afternoon. Prayers would be welcome.

Not a record to be proud of

Twenty-nine days without a post.

Not a sign of spiritual or emotional solidity, to be sure. Which, I guess, is what a friend would call "the God's honest truth of the matter."

My blogging absence started with not feeling quite well - a winter cold that turned into a sinus infection, then into a series of bloody noses and all kinds of plague-like symptoms that even grossed me out, at times. Started right about the time I signed up for a year of YMCA membership - which really annoyed me, at times. Sadly, however, I literally was too exhausted to even care, most days.

And then the announcement that we've been afraid of for more than a year came out: The Evil Empire will be closing our office by December 31st, and will be outsourcing our operation to their operations in Mumbai, India. The original target for the "transition" was originally in the June-to-September timeframe. But our offshore operations ended up with a surplus of India folks who have "transitioned" from another team (one of our clients, a national department-store firm, went bankrupt and ceased operations in December).

So we are creating "standard operating procedures" or SOPs (euphemism for idiot-proof job guides at the "...and the monkey pushes the button..." level of detail), and have begun the process of actually training the men and women who will be taking our jobs. I wish that I could say that I have been a resentment-free, willing participant in this process, but I have found more than a couple days when it took every fiber in my being to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and sign on to the network at The Empire. (Could I call this chapter in my life The Empire Strikes Back, I wonder?...)

Then, my sister and brother-in-law have been even sicker than I have been - having both the respiratory and gastro-intestinal varieties of plague. Jeff is still without a job - although Sue has been sending out resumes and doing what she can. But she has been struggling with her own health, and both the advancing symptoms of fibromyalgia and the ongoing financial burdens of the now-abandoned condo (keeping enough heat on to keep pipes from freezing has still cost them almost $200 a month in this bitterly cold winter).

We do not have winters like my Canadian brothers and sisters - not even like br'er Ben up in Lansing. But the consensus of the long-timers here is that this has been the longest stretch of below-freezing weather that northwest Ohio has had in many a long year (some would say back to the epic Blizzard of '78). That has probably contributed to my bear-in-a-cave syndrome. Being sick and cold and cranky is not a pretty combination, even in a man of great character. In a whiney, self-centered bear like me, it's not been pretty at all.

But there is still much to celebrate.

Chris started his new job at a local hobby center at the end of January, and is vastly happier with his days and nights than he ever was with The Spawn of Satan Hotel. He has had a couple dances with his someday-future dream job in Champaign, but a recent trip there basically told him that the dream will still be deferred a while longer. However, our relationship remains strong, and I still thank God that this wonderful guy is in my life.

After a long-ish drought, a young man has asked me to sponsor him in the recovery process, and that has loosened some of the spiritual logjam in my soul. (I was beginning to believe that somehow I'd lost whatever it was that was attractive in sobriety, and nobody "wanted what I had." Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case...)

I wish I could find a faith community in which I could feel comfortable; partly I have resisted because of Chris' Sunday schedule, but to be honest, I just don't want to get into it, right now. But as Ash Wednesday came and went, I have to admit to missing the sounds of the "Holden Evening Prayer" and being a part of a caring face-to-face community of believers.

The liturgical calendar says that it is Lent - but it seems like the Easter Vigil - somewhere between crucifixion and resurrection. A time of waiting, a time of not knowing the answers, hoping for recreation, for new life. And, for now, a time for "trudging the road" - even when it seems like it is covered with cold molasses.

One day at a time, one trudging step at a time, trusting that we are moving forward - even when we cannot see the way.

Taking a breather...

Just a quick update from the frosty corners of northwest Ohio...

This week marks a series of changes. Friday the 16th is Chris' last day at Hotel Hell; a local hobby retailer had an opening for a remote-control sales specialist, and Chris jumped at it. His schedule will be a bit screwed for a bit - he will have to work Sundays for a couple weeks, which has been our only "full" day off together. But he will be working 12-8 p.m., instead of 3-11 p.m., so I think it will be much better for his mental health. And being away from the children-of-God who run the hotel and the local-yokels who populate it and the waterpark will do him even more good. So we are celebrating that a bunch.

On Monday, I am starting a course of a new diabetic drug, Byetta. For me, it will likely be a double annoyance - a morning and evening injection, plus low-level nausea for the first several weeks. But it's a "first-step" issue - admitting that I am powerless over my appetite, and doing badly at blood-sugar maintenance - and the drug is proven as an appetite suppressant (in much the same way that chemo patients don't want to eat much).

I'm trying not to project how things are going to be, but I am also realistic enough to realize that I hate being the size and shape I am even more than I hate the prospect of (a) multiple injections and (b) throwing up, dead sober. One of my good friends shared his experience, strength and hope with Chris and I before Christmas, and last week my doctor OK'd the treatment. It's closer and easier (and cheaper) than lap-band surgery, too. So if you are the praying type, pray for endurance for me, please.

Much of the world is investing in the new digital-television revolution by purchasing digital TVs. In our household, we are the proud owners of an old-style 27" tube TV - a considerble upgrade from the 19" antique we each owned - and a digital video recorder with which to capture the new Supercross season. (That, thanks to CraigsList, was the sum total of our investment in the economic recovery.)

A recent piece of good fortune forced me to another realization about myself. Chris has Saturday, Sunday, and Monday free - his stint at Hobbytown starts on Tuesday. And the extended insanity of holiday and year-end payroll processing at The Somewhat Evil Empire has wound down considerably. So we were presented with the unprecedented opportunity of three whole days off together. Woo-hoo!

Of course, the three days comes dead in the middle of the worst cold-snap we have had in three years. My friends Peter, Erin, and Hope will laugh, but -13 F (-25 C) comes under the category of damn, damn cold down here in Ohio. (My northern friends have endured weeks of that temperature and worse, over the last month - but we've had two relatively mild winters down here, and have gone soft, I guess.) So our plans to travel south a couple hours to Columbus (where it's currently only -9 F) are somewhat tentative.

But back to the self-revelation. I asked Chris what he wanted to do with the long weekend, and he turned it back on me: "Well, what do YOU want to do with the weekend?" And I was just dumb-struck...I had no idea what I would do with a whole extended weekend and no commitments.

Since New Years Day, 2003, I have been working toward something. In 2003, it was working toward getting ready to go to seminary. In late 2003 and 2004, it was getting relocated to Chicago and getting into seminary life. In late 2004 and 2005, it was trying to salvage school, and surviving financially however I could. Late 2005 and through 2006, I was a workaholic deeply immersed in trying to restart my career.

Starting in October, 2006, I was relocating here to Ohio, and trying to salvage my sister and brother-in-law's home and jobs. In late 2007, my focus was on a new relationship with Chris, and trying to prevent my sister losing her home. But by New Year's Day 2009, school and ministry are but a memory, the job is fractionally stable, the home is gone, the relationship is solid, and I am working on digging myself out of the financial hole that seminary sunk me into.

And so the questions of "What now?" and "What next?" seem to be focused on self-care - something at which we've both been historically and notoriously lousy. And what else, who knows? My friends in recovery have so far only suggested the phrase from our Big Book which says "More will be revealed to you and to us."

For now, we will see where the weather puts us on Saturday, and (in the words of an old song) cast our fate to the wind.

A time apart, to rest and reflect

As I write this, it's Sunday mid-afternoon. After a particularly hideous night dealing with local trash at the waterpark/hotel where Christopher works, and a week of dealing with the wreckage of the past at the condo on my part, we decided a rather-spontaneous "vacation day" was in order.

So we slept in, drowsing and listening to the excellent "Sunday Jazz Brunch" (8-12 noon Sundays on the local 101.5 - The River), then loaded up his mountain-bike and my PC and got in his truck to ride north.

We journeyed along the wooded areas around Toledo to see the beginnings of fall colors - to revel in God's magnificent skill with a color-palette. From there, we drove to near Brighton, MI to Island Lake State Park. There are a pair of particularly wonderful mountain-biking trails there, and a chance for me to sit down and just mentally detox. While Chris is off riding, I am here at the trailhead, writing, reading, and enjoying a beautiful day of "Indian-summer."

It's been a draining week.

Chris made his decision, last week, that he was just pushing too hard to try to get to his dream jobs - which are out there, sometime in the future, but not on the immediate horizon (pardon the pun). As I posted earlier, the dream is not dead - but the economy seems to have ensured that it is deferred, at least for now. So that was one emotionally-charged decision made last week.

In the midst of that decision, it became clear that we needed to make a decision about what we as a couple were going to do above our living arrangement. While Chris' one-bedroom apartment is comfortable for one, it's pretty close-quarters for two on an ongoing basis. But the lease runs through December, and the one lone nibble we had on subletting it crumbled about the same time we decided not to go to Champaign. But shuttling back and forth between the condo (where my internet connection was, thus where I had to work) and the apartment (which has become "the rest of my life") was getting increasingly obnoxious, now that Sue and Jeff are mostly out of the place.

So this week, it was my turn to start moving out. We got a larger storage unit - to store what I would keep once we had a 2 bedroom apartment, and moved from our former unit to the new one. I'm glad to see that the winnowing-down process we've been doing is finally showing progress - it only took us about 2 hours to move stuff out of the old holding-cell into the new.

I finally got new cable/internet/phone at the apartment on Friday. Once I knew the online connection was working, I started the process of changing his address to "our" address. We will stay in this place until springtime, and then start the process of looking for something more permanent - work and residence-wise.

(It's been pretty clear that the relationship had reached "permanent" status a while ago.)

A recurring theme over the last weeks has been to pick out the few books that I would want to keep with me during the five-to-six month stay in the storage-deprived apartment. Here's a few from my list:

• Wounded Prophet by Michael Ford - a excellent biography of one of my spiritual mentors, Henri Nouwen
• The Wounded Healer and Return of the Prodigal Son, the classic texts by Nouwen
• Ragamuffin Gospel and Abba's Child by Brennan Manning - number two in my "spiritual mentors" trinity
• Messy Spirituality and Dangerous Wonder, by Mike Yaconelli - with great thanks to Renee' Altson - completing my "earthly trinity"
• Gentle Closings: How To Say Goodbye to Someone You Love, The Gentle Closings Companion, and Where Is Heaven? Children's Thoughts on Death and Dying all by Ted Menten - better than most of the pastoral-care books I've read, so far
• In Ordinary Time by Roberta Bondi - a great one when it seems like God's voice has gone silent, and
• stumbling toward faith, a classic of faith despite every reason not to have it, by Renee Altson

There's more in the box, but they aren't leaping to mind.

I had to give up on the music-digitizing process, for now. At some point, I will have to replace the CD/DVD drive in the desktop - it's clearly starting to fail, because the error-correction routines are slowing the process way, way down. But there's four boxes of books to go, and a box and a half of CDs - 2 boxes of books and about 3/4 box of CDs each to the church and the local public library.

Interestingly enough, there is a large ELCA congregation in Maumee, to whom I originally offered my resources - but their education/library director never bothered to return my repeated calls. Epiphany Lutheran in Toledo is smaller, but hosts a half-dozen AA groups a week, and was the start of my journey back to faith - and their Christian education director was ecstatic when she got the last delivery. So, it's sad, but it's a case of "who loves ya, baby?"

The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library is one of the gems of living in Toledo. While I can't speak to their staffing situations (their management caused my former wife and a lot of library professionals unspeakable agony back in the late 80's), they seem to have come light-years in the collection and technology departments. The ability to browse their collection online, including ALL of their music and video offerings, and to request items to a local branch in a day or two, brings them right up there with library systems four and five times their size. (When we were looking at moving to Champaign, one of the big down-sides to the move would have been the differences in the public libraries). So I am very glad to be able to send some of my books home to them - either to their collection or their book-sale, I don't know (and don't care) which.

The thing that pains me is some of the big stuff, which is really worthwhile, which we can't sell because of the no-garage-sales clause in the condo association, and I really hate to just give away because they're too good NOT to get some value from them. And I can't bring myself to just give them away - although that may very well be what happens in the end, because I'm not moving this crap again.

I like the idea of FreeCycle, but getting a thousand emails a day (only a mild exaggeration) is a frustration. So we will start with CraigsList, and move to FreeCycle after that. We have two or three weeks to get it out - two would be preferable. It would be very nice to be done by Reformation Day, October 31st....

There are a hundred other topics I need (and want) to write about -

• the housing crisis (which has not stopped being a crisis, even though the stock market and credit crunch has vastly overshadowed it)
• the credit crunch - and how it may finally bring about the death of conspicuous consumption (albeit too late to really help anyone)
• how we are going to teach an entire generation (or two) the difference between "needs" and wants - and if it will take an honest-to-God Great Depression to make it stick
• why an awful lot of people of deep-and-abiding faith continue to ditch The Institutional Church; and
• living between Death and Resurrection - and why most churches don't recognize Easter Saturday when it happens in October.

On the first two topics, there are still an awful lot of people who are asking, "How the hell did we get here?" I'd like to recommend three very powerful, very informative stories - each will take about an hour of your time, and each one is absolutely worth it:

• Chicago Public Radio's This American Life has done two very insightful, powerful programs on the economy - "The Giant Pool of Money (talking about the fundamentals of the housing crisis) and "Another Really Scary Program About The Economy. Both should be required listening - especially if you think you know what caused the whole sub-prime crisis.


• Dick Gordon's The Story on NPR had a particularly powerful program called "Blowing The Whistle" (click on the link to go to the archive to listen). The second half of the program is an interview with Bill Thornton, a real-estate appraiser who had to get out of the business because his practice of giving reasonable appraisals didn't support the housing-market insanity. For 20 years, he was a home appraiser. But as prices climbed during the housing boom, lenders stopped calling him. Yet when he recently heard how Wall Street helped create the housing and financial meltdown, he realized that losing his business wasn't exactly his fault.

Powerful, painful, and yet so informative. I'd really, really recommend you set aside an hour to listen to the first two, and a half hour to listen to "The Story."

It might just open your mind to some new ideas about what's been happening...

Working at "not regretting the past..."

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

August 17, 2003. Atonement Lutheran Church, Overland Park, KS. My final Sunday at my home church - my sponsoring church - before I left for seminary at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). Dozens (if not scores) of people coming up to me, congratulating me and wishing me well. And pushing cards into my hands...

Prayers for guidance. Prayers for success. Prayers that the sender would live long enough to see my ordination. "What a wonderful preacher you are." (Lord, God, who were they listening to? I've had 0ccasion to HEAR some of those sermons since then...yeesh.) Oh, and my favorite: We so appreciate your openness, honesty and candor about your past life, and how God has worked in you. This, to a man who lived a lie as a deeply closeted gay Christian so he could go off and serve God in a dog-collar....

There was a moment today, re-reading all those cards, that I really just wanted to run off screaming into the corn and disappear. I haven't been involved in a church for a year, and haven't been in any kind of church-based ministry for more than 3 years. The people who I thought were the most unlikely to be ordained - the self-righteous, the control-freaks, the people who are only telling the truth when they are asleep - those are the people who The Church in Her wisdom ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. And here I am...

I almost wrote, "and here I am....vegetating, rotting away," but that would be a lie. I've worked hard at my work - a large part of which has been unofficial Morale Officer and Cheerful Charlie (along with Universal Fix-It Guy). I've continued to stay sober; I go to meetings, and I share my experience, strength and hope to anyone who will listen. I help out on Gay Christian Network, financially and online (when I can). And I've taken the time to get myself involved in a very vital and beautiful relationship, for which I have absolutely no regrets at all. I think I have been a good friend to some of my fellow advisors in DeMolay. So it has not all been a loss.

But the voices in the back of my head keep talking, anyway. After all, I came here to help, two years ago - and there are days when it surely looks like nothing I have done has borne any fruit whatsoever. My sister and brother-in-law still lost their house; my sister has never gotten any substantive kind of rehabilitation or therapy for her injury; my brother-in-law is still trapped in a dead-end job. I'm as broke as I ever was, and all of the money I've invested in any of these situations (as my British brothers would say) hasn't done a dickey-bird.

In the two years I've been active in the AA community here, I've only half-assed-sponsored two guys, neither of which really gave a rat's ass about staying sober. And I tried to help out my friends in DeMolay; the chapter has apparently ended up in worse shape than when I started supposedly helping them out, sixteen months ago. A month over five years ago, when I left town, there was a farewell party at work, a farewell party at the AA hall, and a farewell party at church. When I leave for Illinois at the end of October, I'm not sure that anyone outside of my family and those few very close friends will even notice....

Part of me knows that this is nothing more than seeking significance in the eyes of others, which is always doomed. But part of me is self-centered and human enough to want all this to have mattered for something. I don't think that's such a sin, but on days like today, I really wonder. About all of it.

So I go back into left-foot, right-food mode, and just keep on truckin'. Which is what I'm gonna do tonight.

So finding these greeting cards - and all the hope and promise and "God's got your back!" that went into them - has really put me into a phase of "what's it all about, Alfie?" How could I have been such an inspiration to so many people, and have my life seemingly have gone so far wrong?

...Update...the morning after....

Back story: so, about a month ago, I had gotten into the car a little too fast. My considerable bulk hit the back of the reclining bucket seat a little too hard, and something went crack. The seat seemed considerably wobbly in the back, and I resolved to get it fixed...

Then, getting carefully into the car on Friday, I leaned this way when I should have leaned that way, and whatever was cracked broke clean through - and the reclining portion of the seat flopped back like a visual-gag in a teen-aged make-out movie. I discerned (you learn things like discernment in seminary...) that this was a clear sign from God that the seat finally needed to be fixed.

So Chris lovingly got up early today (working nights, he almost NEVER sees two nine o'clocks in the same day) and drove me to the condo to work, and took the offending seat wreckage over to a welding shop in nearby Neapolis. On the way. we stopped at our favorite Blue Creek Coffee Shop for a Mud Turtle (chocolate, caramel and peanut butter in a blended iced coffee base - should be on an Index somewhere as way too sinful).

And somehow, life just looks better today.

Yeah, it could be the sugar-rush from the Turtle. It could be the caffeine kicking in. It could be hearing "Walking On Sunshine" on the radio. It could all be artificial, like the stock-market roaring back on the faintest hope of something bailing them all out. But I don't think so. I think life just looks better today.

I don't doubt that the doubts will be back; I tend to be a Pushme-Pullyou, looking backwards and forwards at the same time. Maybe this is the faint echos of whatever call I heard five years ago, telling me that whatever I heard is still not fulfilled. I know at least part of it is the recurring feeling of having failed the people who supported me from Atonement - and not being in a position to repay them yet. And maybe it's part of "letting go of the past, and not wishing to shut the door on it." Or at least getting there...

I would not have written the script this way - but I know that I am here for a reason. (I almost wrote "I have been put here for a reason," but that would be a lie. God did not teleport me here - I am here because of my choices, and my responses to the choices of others. For however it worked out, I am responsible for being here.) I am going through this sorting-out / downsizing / shedding of unnecessary stuff for a reason. The loss of this beautiful place is happening for a reason. I may not know it until well after the final trumpet sounds. But the direction of the movement has to be forward, that much I know is true.

At the top of this page, in the blog masthead that my friend Penni made for me, there is an image of a winding path - a picture I took at nearby Wildwood Metropark. It's there to remind me that I don't get to see around the corner very far to what's ahead - but that I have to keep moving forward. Someone Else is in charge of what's around the bend. I hear the truth of that quite frequently in meetings...

We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us... See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us.
(the closing to the text Alcoholics Anonymous, page 164)

Facebook-ing and tossing trash

I finally surrendered to Facebook yesterday.

I got an email from a fellow former LSTC student. As Eliza was filling me in on her life (which has been as crowded as mine over the last four years, in different ways), she said, "You know, a lot of people from our class are listed on Facebook," with at least the hint that I could be too.

So I went and I registered. Put up a reasonably recent picture, along with a "work in progress" disclaimer. While I can do all right in the mainframe techno area, I really haven't been drawn in as much to the "online communities" as many of my friends (especially the younger ones).

Part of that is simply that I spend all day in front of a PC - while I am fascinated with where and how people from my past lives are, I simply don't have the energy to deal with life in the real world and spend all day and all night connecting with folks in the virtual world. It's part of the reason I haven't been blogging much - life in the real world has been, well, busy. (To put it mildly.)

I had a flashback from high school - I can't imagine that my senior-year English teacher, Mrs. Bonash, could have ever imagined that the word "friend" would ever be a verb (I forget the term for when a noun is, for lack of a better word, "verbed"...sorry, Mrs. B., it's not comin' back to me...) But it's been fun to see the people who have "friended" me, and where/how they have ended up. It's been interesting too, looking at lists of the "friends" of friends, and seeing the whole six-degrees-of-separation thing playing out.

In a similar way, it's been strange seeing the ones who haven't responded. For some odd reason, my seminary roommate has not responded to emails or my FB inquiry. It makes me wonder what I did to deserve that... but I can't dwell on that kind of insanity. To paraphrase Richard Nelson Bolles, the world divides into two groups of people - the ones who want to be around you, and the ones that don't. To the second group, I have to say, "Thanks anyway," and then leave those to go find the first group...who, I'm sure, will be a lot more fun to stay in touch with.

It's kind of interesting, though - I've kept my blogs pretty anonymous, largely because of the connection with the community of recovery. AA's Eleventh Tradition states: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films, which is usually expanded to include "all broadcast media," including the Internet. So I've decided to keep my blogging links off my Facebook entry, for that reason and others.

In other news, the process of boxing up and tossing out has picked up a bit. Now that Sue and Jeff are out of the condo, there is more room to be stacking stuff, so it's a little easier to move around my room . (A little, I said...not a lot, just yet).

There are things I've kept for sentimental reasons that, looking back, I should have tossed. I made the mistake of listening to a series of sermons that I did while I was a volunteer lay preacher for a church in Kansas. Gadzooks, were they awful - I wonder how in the world anyone hearing those ever thought I was ministry material? So when I found my first-ever sermon tonight - proudly videotaped by a church member - I was torn between watch it in the secrecy of the condo and just throw the damn thing OUT!

I'm leaning toward the second option. Some boxes, like Pandora's, just shouldn't be re-opened, I think. The target is to have a garage-sale next weekend - which is going to require some significant work this weekend to get ready for it. And I've pretty much decided that the work of digitizing my CD collection isn't going to get done in time to move - and will probably require some additional disk storage (for the music AND the backups). So, that project is going by the wayside for the time being. I made a valiant effort, and the Toledo Public Library and Epiphany Lutheran Church will be the richer for it.

And, in the end, I will probably move some things that I will wish I hadn't - especially when I've had to carry them out of the condo, onto and off the truck, and into the New World Home. But I'm making headway - and I'm already sure that the move out of Ohio will be considerably lighter than the move in was.

Tomorrow, The Great Load-Out will be 34 days away. It will go by quickly...

Letting go of the past, one box at a time

What a challenge this is for me, winnowing down the stuff of past lives.

Doing this takes a certain willingness for self-revelation and self-acceptance that I've not found lately, but events are forcing me into action. Chris and I have resolved that we will not move in the winter-time (moving him here from Missouri at year-end in the snow was NOT a lot of fun...), so we have set ourselves a deadline of October 31 to be headed to Champaign. And Sue and Jeff are set to abandon the condo/boat-anchor by the end of this month, or the first week of October. (I'll keep my "office" here until the end of October, and hold whatever garage-sale we choose to have.) But the clock is running...

And so the questions that happen in any consolidation of households begins. Everything from furniture to table-settings to glasses and pots-n-pans: Yours, mine, or both? And what do we do with the leftover? Keep it? Sell it? Give it away?

Tonight, I went out to the storage unit, and started sorting through books - the theological library that would have gone with me into ministry. Books that I had duplicates of (one to keep and one to loan-out, like Tom Bandy's Coaching Change and Adam Hamilton's Confronting the Controversies). The songbooks that had one or two songs that I once had fantasies of singing at church, someday - even though my singing voice is not anywhere close to "solo" quality. There were half a dozen Maranatha/PK song books, the music to Keith Green's Ministry Years (companion to the two-CD silver set), and four different Steven Curtis Chapman song-books (each with one or two meaningful songs in them). I've got a box of books and music that will go to a friend's congregation in Maumee, and half a box (or more) that will go to the local ELCA congregation. A box of cookbooks (mostly untouched in the last five years) that will go to the local library, along with three or more boxes of fiction.

Going through these boxes has brought me to a couple unpleasant realizations - one of which is how intellectually stagnant my life has been lately. With the exception of the last couple Harry Potter books, I'll bet I haven't read ten new books in two years. I've tended to find "old friends" from my family bookshelves and re-read them, rather than exercise my mind all that much. I need to work on that...

I've also realized how little of my reading has been about my faith, too. Part of that is, I think, a kind of retreat from organized church in the whole. Reading Can Mainline Denominations Survive? and Helping Congregations in Decline just isn't appealing when I have no immediate desire to be part of a congregation in the first place. And books like Sharing the Word: Preaching in the Roundtable Church by Lucy Rose (while an excellent resource) just don't have as much pull when planning sermons is not on your horizon (near-term or far, for that matter).

And when 99% of my music listening is from my iPod or internet streaming radio, I wonder about the value of packing and hauling perhaps two hundred pounds of CDs that I already have digitized (and backed up). (My pile is not as bad as the picture, but it's still three or four hundred CDs...) There are some, like The New World Symphony, John Williams' Summon The Heroes and Rick Wakeman's Journey To The Center of The Earth that are just much better in their uncompressed, raw beauty. But other than their archival value (in case both the PC and its 250GB backup drive are lost), what do you DO with CDs these days?...

Even my fiction collection has come under close scrutiny. Yes, having a copy of The Unabridged Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galary is a beautiful thing - but even if we manage to find the duplex of our dreams, I don't think we'll have room for two walls of shelves being just my library. And to be honest, that thing could be one more "old friend" keeping me from fresh ideas, fresh fiction...

Some decisions are easy; some aren't. At fifty-one, what's really important in my life, materially? Will I ever again have the kind of dinner party where I'd use those glass platters with places for olives and pickles and such? Or will strategically-placed Corelle soup bowls do just fine for that?

It boggles the mind.

There were some tears tonight, too - fresh tears for ministry dreams that I'd been sure were dead and buried. Thoughts of what-could-have-been and what-I-would've-wished-for. Opportunities lost, others thrown away. And resolve - the songbooks from John McCutcheon and Peter, Paul & Mary went in the "keep" pile, along with Discerning Your Congregation's Future and other books I just might want if I ever get back "in the fold" again...

And let's face it: there are somewhere between two and three million people without power tonight, thanks to hurricane Ike. There are people who would be blessed to actually have options on where to go to live. So these are definitely concerns of a much higher quality than a lot of people in the world have to deal with. So I'm grateful - don't get me wrong.

But I don't want to squander what I have, either. I'm not running from a hurricane; I'm moving to the next phase of my life. But the question is, what am I willing to carry into my next life? Because in the end, it will be Chris and I unloading this stuff once we get to Champaign. I need to be willing to physically carry it, this time. And the companion thought echoes in the back of my head - what will I regret jettisoning, once I get there?

Time will tell. Prayers for guidance, discernment and endurance will be most welcome...

A simple meme, for a simple man

I have been overwhelmed - work, the challenges of finding a new home for my sister and brother-in-law, a potential move, and financial challenges have had me bottled up for a while. But I needed a way to break the spiritual blogjam, and this challenge seemed the perfect entry. The instructions over at Black Pete (formerly Poor Mad Peter)'s Red Wine and Garlic were simple: share seven things about oneself that are relatively inconsequential. So here goes...

1) I have two sisters who are fraternal twins; as kids, we hardly looked like we belonged to the same family, but the resemblance is getting better.

2) I have a fascination with glass - blown, cut, colored but almost never painted. Emerald green, ruby red, cobalt blue, and clear cut crystal are my favorites; either rich deep color or the absence, I guess. Two of my favorite places in the world are the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, NY, and the Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion.

(The Glass Pavilion alone is worth a trip to Toledo, although you'd really miss out if you didn't go across the street to the Museum proper, or downtown for a Tony Packo's hotdog...)

3) I am fascinated with the work of Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters. My AA sponsor gave me a copy of A Message to Garcia (which I later gave back, like a fool) and Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook, which is one of my more prized book possessions. I wish I could fully adopt the creed of the Roycrofters: A belief in working with the head, hand and heart and mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes for health and happiness.

4) I never knew that I was given to jeremiads, but thanks to Black Pete, who made me look it up, I know I'm pretty good at 'em. Jeremiad (noun) - a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint. [Origin: 1770–80; Jeremi(ah) + -ad, in reference to Jeremiah's Lamentations] (Thanks to Dictionary.com)

5) I also share a trait with Black Pete - I both very much enjoy cats, and am very much allergic to them. One gift given to me by my friend Ted (and a very lovely apple-headed Siamese of his) was overcoming my childhood fear of cats. One night Ted and I sat in blue armchairs in his living room, with a fire burning, just talking (as we are both wont to do). That Siamese just bounded into my lap, and with a blatant disregard for my discomfort, snuggled down between the chair's arm and my leg and began purring loudly. I never looked back. (It was preparation, I'm sure, for the procession of furry friends that my former wife brought into my life.)

6) Being a virtual employee (working from home, over the Internet) means that I have as many coworkers from Mumbai and Chennai (India) as I do in Lincolnshire and Chicago (Illinois). My most unusual location for a work day (at this job, anyway) was on December 28, 2007, when I spent 9 hours working in a coffee shop in Springfield, MO called The Mud House - a converted pottery studio. (I have been thinking I should do that at least every other week, just as a change of pace.)

7) I have seen one storyteller's performance that I have not heard. I wish I could remember the fellow's name, but he was a storyteller who was deaf, and who performed all his stories in American Sign Language (ASL). I saw him at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN back twenty-some years ago. If I remember right, his "interpreter for the ASL-impaired" was John Basinger. It took some forceful reminders to look at the storyteller, and not at his "speaking" interpreter - but it was a fascinating experience. (That was also the year that I was first introduced to the stories and songs of John McCutcheon, if I remember rightly.)

More thoughts that are mulling...
- the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in Beijing
- bellwether changes
- how many books do you need - really?
- revisiting a Labor Day tradition, after 20 years

I'll try not to make it a month till the next post....

News from around the countryside

It's time for a catch-up session, just to recap the many powerful events that have been going on here in northwest Ohio...

It's a time of growth and renewal, outside as well as inside. The corn here has benefited from the periodic rains (much less than in other Midwest states!) so it actually looks half-way decent here. Chris (who whimpered all through January and February, "Will there ever, ever be anything green here again?") has been marveling at the green-going-amber waves of wheat, the corn shooting up out of the ground, and the soybeans growing across the main road from the condo. Spring has been much kinder to northwest Ohio - to the point where we actually could USE some rain, here.

Chris is still working 5 days at the hotel/insane-asylum, and then Sunday afternoons at the hobby shop. Even so, we managed to get away to Muncie, IN for the day to see the Saturday session of the outdoor remote-control Extreme Flight Championships (XFC) at the headquarters of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. Their 1,000-acre facility is designed perfectly for model aircraft flight and competition. People from around the US and across the world (Germany, Spain, Mexico, Israel) homed-in on Muncie to see some great modeling and great flying. We had to double-back that night - Chris had to work Friday until 6, and then get back to his other job Sunday at noon - but the drive was worth it.

We also got to prove it - Michigan actually IS a third-world nation. All you have to do is look at their roads. Having gone up to Ann Arbor (cultural jewel of Michigan, home to a supposedly world-class university) and the area around Brighton, it only took 83 miles of US-23 to prove that we had entered third-world status. Of course, the fact that we were riding in a '96 F150 didn't help things either - but our trip two weeks later to the Red Bull Air Races in Detroit cemented the image (pardon the pun).

By comparison, the drive west through Ohio on the Turnpike to I-69 south to Muncie was an almost-pothole-free dream - smooth sailing for 170 miles or so. Where the heck is all of Michigan's road money going? People say to me, "But Michigan has always been that way," but they can't be getting any less road-money from the Feds than other states are... whose noses is all that cash going up?...

Chris went with me today to his first "real" AA meeting - the well-known "Raab Road Group" open discussion meeting outside Swanton, OH. We had lunch with my sponsor and his wife beforehand - it was the first time Brooke had met Chris - and it was a good time. And Chris got to see a classic AA meeting (there are people there from 2 days to 50-plus years of sobriety regularly attending), and he came away with a much better understanding of alcoholism and AA in general. I'm just so grateful that he took the time to use some overtime from earlier in the week and go into work a half-hour later so he could go with me. That says a lot.

I've had a couple nibbles on books I'm trying to sell on eBay and/or on Amazon. So far, it's pennies - I'm sure I'm probably ahead ten or fifteen dollars, after paying for shipping - but it's worth it to get these out of my hair. I need to reclaim my bedroom, and so whatever isn't sold by the end of the month is probably going to the local Lutheran church or the library. (I am one of those people who just can't bring themselves to throw out books.) If you want a list of what I'm trying to get rid of, I will send them to you for the cost to ship them...the primary goal is to get them a good home.

Next Friday, I will probably be presiding over my last official DeMolay event - the district Court of Chevaliers for two young men who should be named today as our newest recipients of the Degree of Chevalier. The award is given for outstanding service to the Order of DeMolay, a group of which I've been a member and advisor since the mid-70's. I gave up the job of chapter advisor a bit over a month ago, and though it's not been overly comfortable, I think it's the right thing. I was driving 200 miles round-trip to do much less of a job than the guy who was living right there in town, and it just made sense. Perhaps I will be an advisor again someday, but at this point in my life, it's just not what I'm called to do. I'm blessed to be able to preside at the ceremony this next Friday, though.

And Chris and I will celebrate his six-month anniversary as an Ohioan and nine months as boyfriends (though "partners" is closer to it, these days). I'm truly blessed to have him in my life - words don't even begin to describe how blessed I am. I'm sure we will have some challenging moments in the days and months to come. But that's the blessing of living "one day at a time" - the evil and blessings of each day are sufficient, to be honest.

There's lots more to write about -
- how the oil companies have finally tipped their hands about Iraq
- why I wish we could stop blowing crap up, and start rebuilding
- wondering how to pray for a gay man in the military going to Iraq
- considering the voices suggesting "lap-band" surgery for me
- why I'm both excited and not excited about Pride month, and
- an upcoming blogging anniversary.

For now, though, "th-th-th-that's all, folks!"