A message from my Parent

As I was packing up to move last July, I was taking a lot of stuff to the trash. (None of the people who helped me move could have imagined how much stuff didn't make it to the new place!) But, of course, that meant a large number of trips to the community dumpsters.

On one such trip, early in the morning on trash day, I found a white framed canvas leaning up against the dumpster, onto which someone with a great eye for design had painstakingly lettered a message from God. Every word was in a different lettering style and color, mixing bold and italic and cursive and block, serif and san serif, outline and shadow with an amazing rainbow of color. And if the visual presentation was great, the message was pretty cool, too:

My dearest child,
I am constantly working in your life, adding this color, that shadow, this line. Like an artist with a paintbrush, I am making you into the very image of my beautiful and sinless child.

Don't constantly question what I'm doing. Don't struggle against my hand. Learn to trust the Artist who stands back and sees from his own perspectie what is needed in the portrait he is creating.

If you must question something today, ask this: "How will the circumstances of this day make me more like Jesus?" Then thank Me for the circumstances, and receive my grace to walk through them. I love you with a tenderness you cannot imagine.
Love,
God

Let's face it - how could I leave that kind of message (both in beauty and content) to go to the trash?

Recently, in going through some boxes, I found that canvas again, and ended up hanging it on the inside of my door, so I can read it everyday as I go outside. I can't help believing that my day will go better if I remember that my Creator really is constantly working in my life, working with color, beauty and design.

And it helps to believe that God loves me with a tenderness I cannot imagine.

My hope and prayer is that the person who crafted this prayer canvas did not part with it because they were tired of hearing it.

My place in the heavenly realm...

Said a friend to a friend one day,
Was a man who passed away
St. Peter met him at the gate
Pete said: Walk with me if you will
I'll take you to the house you built
Man said: I can't wait!

Passed a mansion made of stone
But with each new house he's shown
They get smaller by degrees
Stopped in front of a two room shack
Pete said hope you're happy with that
Man said: How can this be?
Pete said…
(Chorus)
That's all the lumber — that's all the lumber
That's all the lumber you sent
Looks like the Builder—Man, he's got your number
That's all the lumber you sent...
("The Lumber Song," words & music by Eli)

I heard this song on the Christian radio the other day, and it got me thinking.

About a year sober, I met up with this real Jesus-freak guy who also went to AA. He knew that I'd newly returned back to church, and was seeking to understand this relationship with a God of my mis-understanding. So he invited me to come to his pastor's house for "a bible study that will really open your eyes." I told him that I'd never studied the bible, and didn't think I'd fit in well. And he said (in words so familiar to addictive personalities) "Hey, just try it once. If you don't like it, you don't have to come back." So I went.

The home we drove to in Leawood (a ritzy neighborhood south of Kansas City) was beautiful, and the welcome I received was a warm one. But it didn't take long to realize that I was not in the right place at all...

You see, the topic for that week's "study" was this so-called pastor's interpretation of the various "levels" of heaven and the structure of the heavenly realm. In this particular pastor's view, the Kingdom of Heaven was like a cruise ship. Your place in eternity was determined by how the spiritual price you paid while you were still on Earth, it seemed.

The folks who were good and righteous, who gave considerably to this particular church and ministry, the folks who did right all the time, would be up on the 1st-class decks of heaven, dining on prime rib and French pastry. The folks who weren't all that perfect would be in the "second-class cabins," whereas the folks who just claimed Jesus as their Lord but otherwise didn't do much would be down in steerage, near the "bottom" of Heaven.

And one's role in the New Heaven and New Earth would be determined in the same way. The cherubim and seraphim would be made up of the truly righteous, and so on. Us barely-repentant critters would spend eternity living as the waiters and janitors for the rest of the holy and glorified assemblage.

It went on a lot longer than that - with lots of diagrams and hierarchical drawings - but you get the gist of it.

And then, as the pastor had completed his presentation, he tacked up a chart of the various levels and branches of heaven on the wall, and asked us to put a blue dot where we felt our lives so far would put us in the celestial pecking order, and then a green dot where we'd like to spend eternity. And he looked out at us with great anticipation.

It was all I could do not to laugh.

Remember - I was just a year sober..

A year earlier, my life as I knew it had ended. I'd been fired, divorced, cut off from my old friends, and contemplated suicide on a number of occasions. I'd been lifted from the depths of guilt, shame, and despair to a place of relative peace, serenity, and knowledge of the absolute love of God.

And this guy wanted to know if I was going to be happy with where my chair may (or may not) be in the heavenly seating arrangements?

I was the last person to speak, and I listened to the other 6 or 8 people rationalize about how they would be on this level, or that area or role. And it's been 14 years since that night, and I still remember the feelings of astonishment that someone would even bother to sit and study this stuff. I remember the pastor turning to me with this expectant air, and saying, "And where do you believe you will spend eternity, Steve?" As best I remember it, this is what I said:

I appreciate you all inviting me into your home, and your bible study group. And I appreciate your welcoming me into your group. But listening to you folks tonight, I have never felt more of an outsider than I do right now. Because evidently we come from two entirely different places.

For 17 years, I walked away from faith - not just away from church, but away from God. I lied, cheated, stole, and broke the laws of God and man. I knew there was a God, but I believed myself doomed to Hell and to be abandoned by God. And only in the last year have I come to understand about being justified by grace through my faith, not by my actions. So I'm a lot closer to the position of the 'good thief,' who simply asked, 'Remember me when you come into your kingdom.' That's my story.

I don't deserve heaven; I am not righteous, or holy, or good. Just being sober in this world beats the hell out of where I was; so to me, being the janitor in Heaven, in service of the God who saved me, sounds like a damn good deal.

It still does.

Back to the song that I opened this post with...I haven't sent much lumber up yonder, brother Eli, so there won't be much more than a fishin' shack for me. But I'm convinced that being in the presence of Everlasting Love will more than make up for that. Just hand me my broom, and let me sweep the streets paved with gold. After all, the only reason I'd be there at all is because Someone Else paid for my admission ticket...

"Just keep swimmin' "

That recurring theme from "Finding Nemo" has been my theme song, lately. It has been a whirlwind, for obvious reasons - but just "keepin' on keepin' on" has been the best I can do, for now.

It was an incredibly busy weekend, but also blessedly a work-free weekend. I was a cleaning/organizing tornado going through my apartment, and I can say (with a degree both of pride and of "Oh, thank GOD - finally!") that I have moved out of the "gee, does a crack addict live here?" mode into "gee, another week like this and I could actually have COMPANY over" stage of the game.

It's a good feeling - of course, my spare bedroom has now become the "junk room" - the place where I will be working through the winnowing process (what do I need to keep, what do I want to keep, and do I have any reasonable expectations of using this any time soon?). But it definitely was worth it to get through this.

A close encounter with my physician last Thursday pointed out the need for definite lifestyle changes - my lousy diet and lack of exercise are at the heart of them. The weekend didn't help much - I spent Sunday from 10 AM to 9 PM with one of my AA sponsees, which was mostly sitting, talking, listening and drinking herbal tea. But any time I get the chance to participate in a "fifth-step inventory" with a sponsee, it is an incredibly powerful and moving experience, and I'm always blessed by the experience, even if it can be incredibly draining for both of us.

This week we are attempting to change our processing schedule, to prevent us from being here until midnight Monday and Tuesday. I'm not convinced that it's going to work - nothing this team has touched has worked once since this implementation started. But we will continue to try. So I need to get back to the battle. To my friends in the blogging world, I appreciate your attention and your encouragement, even though I haven't seen hardly anyone else's blog in three weeks. I just keep telling myself, "This too (like gallstones) will pass..."

Averting a warp-core breach...

Warning: warp-core breach is imminent...warning...

For those of us geeky enough to be Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, we know that there are few crises more serious than the voice of the Enterprise computer announcing the impending catastrophic failure of the ship's engines. The resulting matter-antimatter explosion added a new definition to the phrase "big bang," and was the tragic fate of several of the Enterprise's sister ships.

The reason that all this geekiness is relevant (besides the fact that at heart, I'm a geek) is that the explosion results from the failure to contain powerful and opposing forces. Allowing the tiniest interaction between matter and antimatter allowed the Enterprise to travel faster than light and do all kinds of cool things. But when the containment between matter and antimatter failed, the result was a devastating explosion.

The alert klaxons have been going off at my (relatively) new place of employment, this week...and one could almost hear Majel Barrett Roddenbery sounding the alarms. (For the geek-impaired, she was the wife of ST founder Gene Roddenbery, and played the voice of the computer for both the original ST and TNG).

The containment fields are definitely weakening...

In our case, the two self-annihilating forces are the desperate need to produce at work, and the hope of things getting better. We easily have enough work to keep 16 people busy 60 hours a week - and with only 8 of us, it means that even at 80-plus hours a week, we're still going backward, fast. And the more people can see that we're going backward, the less hope there is of things getting better. The "just hang on, do your best, and things will get better" motto has been wearing a bit thin with my coworkers, causing a number of flare-ups throughout the last two days (complete with invocations of God's damnation on the technology and liberal dropping of the "F-bomb"). It was no wonder that several of my teammates started moving toward the life-pods about 4:30 today.

To my boss's credit, she sounded the general-evacuation alarm at 6 PM today - and then led the charge for the elevators herself. It was a good thing - tempers have been running higher, fuses have been shorter, and the software we're using for our daily processing is more full of bugs and "features" than a pomegranate is of seeds.

All this has produced a snowstorm of trouble calls and problem tickets, most of which we don't have the skills to resolve because our team didn't get to participate in the software build or testing - the implementing team basically "threw it over the wall" about 12 hours before we went live. Needless to say, every single thing we have touched - and some things that were never supposed to be touched - have all broken or failed badly.

The big difference between my life at the telecom-who-bought-Nextel and this operation is that in my former IT/accounting life, I had a group of managers, DBA's and programmers who wanted us to be able to get into the heart of the system and understand the data and the programming, so we could help diagnose the system when it died. The folks here, by contrast, as every bit as nice (most of the time), but 100% in the "there are no good users, only stupid users and stupider clients" mindset. So it's been especially hard to try and see "the soul of the new machine" to find out what makes it tick (or not, as the case may be).

But I, amidst all this, seem to be doing OK. My friend Wes D. reminded me recently of a fellow we worked with who would say, "If this stuff were easy, the Scout Troup would have already done it by now." Don't get me wrong - yeah, I'd like someone to buy me a life, and yes, no one will have to rock me to sleep tonight (good thing, too, since the candidates are few...). But it's still a remarkably good place to work, with a really good group of people that I work with. I just pray that they all got some high-quality rest tonight.

It's close to midnight, and I need to pull some clean clothes out of the dryer, and hit the hay. All I can hope is that tomorrow will be a a better day, and we can get less in the "fingers in the dyke" mode and more into the "proactive, building trust and relationships" stage of the game.

But for now, I'm going to bed and "let the world (and the job) turn without me tonight."

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening

The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." (1 Samuel 3:10, NIV)
---

The Revised Common Lectionary on the ELCA web site lists the readings for this last Sunday, and then has this brief notation for Sunday's worship: "Martin Luther King, reformer of society, martyr, 1968 (commemoration)."

Truer words have rarely been spoken.

It would have been very easy for Dr. King to stay at his pulpit, continue to preach heaven and holiness to his congregation, and to take no action against the powers and principalities of their world bent on perpetuating hatred and racism. Thankfully, Dr. King heard the calling of the Lord to do something more - and the world is a different place because of it.

It has been forty-plus years since Dr. King's famous "I have a dream!" speech. Yet that dream remains stubbornly unfulfilled in the early days of 2006. And I have to wonder how much we, as Christians, are responsible for that lack of fulfillment.

In the great commandments, Jesus calls each of us to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. There is no asterisk (*) next to the word "neighbor" saying "just the neighbors who look like us, sound like us, or believe as we do." Yet the 21st-century Christian church has been more well known (especially in the last years of the 20th century and forward) for judging others, rather than how it has been known for helping the stranger or the ones who are not like "us."

On this day, declared as a holiday to commemorate Dr. King's life, let us, as followers of Christ, resolve to love our neighbors, and serve them and their needs, and ignoring the reasons that "they" shouldn't receive our help (no matter which group we might happen to consider to be "them").

For myself, I look forward in anticipation to the days when "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." (That sure sounds like a description of the Kingdom of God to me!)

I too have a dream that the children of this land "will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I, too, dream that "one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

I too dream that "one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together (Isaiah 40:5)."

I have a dream today - that the Christian church in America will turn to their Lord and Savior and, putting aside all private or denominational agendas, they will all say, as Samuel said and as Dr. King's life and death testified...

"Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

Write-off weekend...

Well, this weekend definitely didn't go the way I'd hoped it would.

After the son-of-the-week-from-Hell at work, my plan was to make it to my Saturday-morning AA home group, spend some time cleaning my apartment, spend some time catching up on work, and then some more time cleaning and reorganizing my apartment.

With the exception of the Saturday morning gathering, nothing else happened.

Sometime Saturday afternoon, I came down with some kind of digestive ailment - not flu, because I'd had a shot for that, but every bit as vicious and draining. By two o'clock Saturday afternoon, I'd pretty well written off plans for Saturday, and by Sunday the only thing I'd accomplished was doing the dishes, taking out the trash, and finishing the last 8 episodes of Stargate SG-1.

I desperately needed to do way more than that - but it would have taken more power than God was willing to give me this weekend. So humility (or humiliation?) and surrender said, "Screw it - I'm done. Hopefully I'll be able to start again on Monday." I'm feeling better now - very late on Sunday night - but I'm not ready to go out and do Jazzercise anytime soon.

Those who know me also know there is not an athletic bone in my body, and have little or no use for football. Yet I actually tuned in periodically to see how "The Game" (between the Carolina Panthers and our own Chicago Bears, aka "Da Bears") was going. Tragically (though it was a tie-game a number of times), the Panthers beat Da Bears, quashing dreams of a Super Bowl victory for another year. Sadly, there was no gunfire in South Chicago this night... (at least not on MY street, anyway...)

I'd hoped to be able to install my company's remote-VPN software and work from home (assuming I had the energy or motivation to get off the damn sofa!) but I couldn't get the install program to do it's thing. I'm not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, looking back at my energy levels over this weekend. After all, I've got company coming in next weekend - so if I wasn't in shape enough to clean and organize for them, I probably wasn't in shape enough to do much of anything else, either.

So, in a few minutes, I'm going to bed - again - and I'll try rising early tomorrow and headin' in to do battle with our problem-child implementation.

Topics on the horizon that I've been meaning to write about...

- having a history of work excesses
- where I fall in the heavenly hierarchies
- the one thing I absolutely know I'll fail at, and my one guaranteed success
- prayer, and how qualified one has to be to be a intercessory pray-er

Peace, y'all...

Workin' for the man every night an' day...

I can't believe that it's Thursday night. (Well, OK, it's Friday morning, barely.)

I can't believe that it's 12:28 a.m., on a night that I got off work at 4:30 (only because I was going to a doctor's appointment) and I'm still freaking awake.

It's been a long week. A long two weeks, actually.

Without being hideously disloyal to my new employer (who I really, really love), the process of "going live" for our latest major client has been a minefield of screw-ups, and we've hit a whole bunch of them in the 10 short days since we cut live. Our small band of intrepid warriors have been battling bad converted data, bad software and systems interfaces, and a genuine lack of disseminated data about the client. Consequently, I've been at the office until 1 AM the last three days, and this weekend promises to be another long one.

There have been thoughts, especially in the last 24 hours, that I've given up one form of being half-alive for a slightly better-compensated form of the same condition. That there has to be more to life than this. That I did much better at this schedule at thirty-eight than I am doing at forty-eight. My info-technology skills picked up a lot of rust and barnacles over the last three years of getting into (and out of) seminary, and I have heard the voices in my head saying, "You're just not the right person for all this."

But the primary fact I learned from my 12 years at Sprint was that a sense of humor was critical to survival - even more critical than having the right data. And it's also important to realize what a "bad day" really looks like. As Robert Fulghum once wrote, "It's important to remember that a lump in your oatmeal and a lump in your throat and a lump in your breast are not all the same lump."

For now, I am grateful to have what I have - and more than ready to be "workin' for the weekend."

Hangin' in there...

Well, last week's 80-hour slide is likely to repeat itself - or worse - this week. So the weekend was 3 AA meetings (Fri. nite, Sat., Sunday) and mostly staying in bed Sunday trying not to be sick.

I had lots to write about, but to be honest, most of my time was either catching up on sleep or watching Roswell (which I finally finished) and Stargate SG-1 season 8, just as mind candy. I'm sure that getting back to meat-and-potatoes will come later this week.

My sister Sue's husband Jeff has been laid off for the month of January for the first time in 20-plus years - pray that he find the strength and the motivation to seek new employment. And my friends Sandy Motsinger and Jerry Amundson are both struggling with health issues - Jerry's actually in the hospital in KC. And my friend Eric Amundson is leaving for China for two weeks today. So lots and lots of prayer concerns...

It's an amazing thing

Price-tags for the last three days of insane working on a massive payroll implementation:

Dunkin' Donuts for twenty fellow team mates: $18.31

Parking the car at Union Station the last three days, because there was no way we were going to get out of the office in time to catch the last train to Pullman at 12:50 AM: $55.00

Getting a chicken caesar salad from the cafe' downstairs, instead of having free pizza with the team for the third time in three meals: $8.95

Walking with my boss to her car at 2:45 Wednesday morning, and hearing her say, "I'm so glad your path and ours crossed, Steve - because I don't know how we would have gotten through this week without you": priceless.

I'm too tired to even add up my hours over the last three days, so I'm just going to bed. Hugs, y'all...

A lull in the storm

Well, we are in the middle (God help us) of day two of our "go-live" project with my new employer's latest client. It has been what I would call a "mitigated disaster" - like so many technical processes that are long on promise and short on testing, we have had a series of crippling delays and technical FUBARs that made yesterday run until the crack of 2 AM, and promises to do the same or worse tonight. It's 7 PM now, and we are not anticipating being able to even start tonight's key-entries (preparatory to our evening processing) until about 8:30. That basically means that we may not be out of here until the sun comes up.

I know that this is temporary - and so it's easy to say things like "this, too, will pass - even if it will be like gallstones." To our credit, my boss says this implementation has been much better than the one from a year ago - the wreckage of which I am still helping them wade through. So I'm grateful for that.

And I'm greateful that my manager is one who's concerned about her people - they're paying for parking, lunch, dinner and pop. So they ask a lot, but they provide a lot. So it sure ain't as bad as it could be...

I'd love to share something smart, witty, or inspirational, but I think I'm going to go into a conference room and close my eyes for a few minutes. Hugs and peace, y'all.

New Year's ramblings

If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The gunfire started precisely at the stroke of midnight. In fact, I had dozed off watching the last of the Roswell episodes I had on DVD, and wouldn't have known it was midnight, except for the gunfire.

Happy New Years' from the south side of Chicago...

They do that here. Shoot guns off at midnight, that is. Oh, yeah, there's fireworks - firecrackers, M-80's (and bigger) - all illegal, of course. But I'm coming to be able to distinguish the sound of gunfire out here on the edge of the 'hood.

Depending on the weapon, I'll hear six or eight bangs in succession - not poppoppoppoppoppop, but slower and more deliberate - like pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. It's a little scary for me, actually - after all, each room in this apartment (except the bathroom and the front stairwell) has one or two very un-bulletproof windows. And while I'm sure the 100-year-old brick will stop good-sized slugs, my only protection really is that the line of fire from the street would probably hit me unless I was standing pretty close to them. I often wonder what happens to all those shells - and where they end up coming down. After all, it's not like the bullet-fairy whisks them off somehow - what goes up must come down, I guess. Thankfully, none came down in my place.

This is not the first time I've experienced this - there was minor gunfire in Hyde Park where I used to attend school (and an earlier display of firepower here in Pullman while celebrating the White Sox's World Series win), but last evening's display sounded more like a scene from the OK Corral...or Apocalypse Now.

Fortunately, gunfire was not the dominant theme this weekend. Sloth and entertainment were. From Tuesday to Friday I put in 60 hours at the new job; not unwelcome, just not expected. If I'd planned not to be home before 10 PM for a week, I'd have done things differently (like come home a day early from Christmas to prepare for it). But while it was exhausting (and promises to be so again this week) it really wasn't bad, compared to my former employment.

After all, I've been on the new job for nearly 2-1/2 months, and I haven't yet heard anyone say, "Gee - it really smells like dead mouse(/rat/varmint) in here." (Not an unusual occurrence in my former employment site.) In 10 weeks, I haven't yet come into the office to find out that the powers-that-be decided to turn off the electricity (or heat, or water) for long-overdue all-day repairs (without telling the staff ahead of time). No squirrels have chewed through the DSL line, cutting off Internet and email connectivity to the company. And even among the employees of color, there hasn't been nearly the overdose-of-attitude that was all-too-frequently the case "back there." So I'm still a grateful man.

About 12:45 AM Thursday morning, as we were preparing to leave the office, one of my co-workers came into my cube and said, "You don't even look pissed!" And she was right, thanks be to God. I was tired; I was disappointed (a goof on my part resulted in more than an hour's rework added to the long-day-and-night) but I wasn't angry. Gratitude was still very much a gift for me, because I knew (and know) what the alternative is. And thankfully I don't have to go there, today.

Friday night, I got to go up to the Improv Olympic to see one of my friends and his team in an improv competition final-match. It was pretty neat - especially when they won - but it was also just nice to be a part of the evening. He seemed appreciative of my coming out, too (especially since the show started at midnight Friday). So Saturday, and Sunday, except for the a couple AA meetings and a New Years Eve afternoon prime-rib dinner with friends, was basically spent in bed or on the sofa.

All weekend long, I've been seeing and hearing tragedies - just on the ride back from the Improv early Saturday morning, there were 6 car wrecks on the stretch of Lake Shore Drive and Stony Island between Belmont and 115th St. In addition, several AA friends had weeks last week that would have made Job himself wince. So compared to them I really, really don't have anything to complain about.

This afternoon, I heard that there was gunfire and explosions in Iraq - but they were much more deadly than anything that happened on the south side of Chicago last night. It reminded me yet again of how safe and secure my life is, compared to so much of the world.

Amidst the gunfire, Lord, here is a prayer for peace. That nations and sects and denominations might stop fighting (and killing) in Your name. That Your followers will remember that Your son prayed "that they might all be one," and not that each and every one could start his/her own splinter group. That this will be a year when the death toll from natural disasters will not be matched by sectarian and racial violence. That a quarter million people will not die in places like Darfour again, alone, barely noticed, and rarely mourned.

Help us remember, Lord, that no matter what we think about "just war" or same-sex partners or gay-lesbian ordination, the central fact of Christian faith remains what Paul wrote about 1,940 years or so ago:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one abnormally born, he appeared to me also. (1 Corinthians 15:3-8, NIV).

Help me keep my eyes on that prize, Lord. Let me be of maximum service to my fellow human beings, and as honest as I can be about who and how I am. That's probably the best I can do to do Your will - this day, and always. Amen.

Do you feel more caught-up?...

...because if you do, it's probably because according to the BBC, you're going to be one second closer to being on-time than you were on Saturday.

(If you're sufficiently geeky that you would even want to know the real, detailed reason why we need leap seconds in our lives, the answer can be found here at slashdot.org.)

Of course, for folk like me, who are living in a plus/minus 5 minutes world, leap seconds are in the "who the ---- cares?" category. But it's fun to mention, anyway.

Happy New Year.

A battle between faith and searching for proof

Ellie: "So what's more likely - an all-powerful, mysterious God created the universe and then decided not to give any proof of his existence; or, that he simply doesn't exist at all...and that we created him, so we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?"
Palmer: "I dunno - I couldn't imagine living in a world where God didn't exist. I wouldn't want to."
Ellie: "How do you know you're not deluding yourself? I mean, for me, I'd need proof."
Palmer: "Proof....hmmm...Did you love your father?"
Ellie: "What?"
Palmer: "Your dad...did you love him?"
Ellie: "Yes - very much..."
Palmer: "...Prove it...."
(Ellie Arroway to Palmer Joss, in Carl Sagan's film Contact)

I'm catching up on about a hundred topics I've wanted to post about - this one ties way back to this article in the December 20th Washington Post concerning the Dover, PA school board and a judge's ruling against "intelligent design" (also known as ID).

The article quotes U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican appointed by President Bush. In part, Jones said,

"The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote in a 139-page decision. "It is an extension of the Fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."

I not only think Judge Jones hit the nail on the head, he also names the black-n-whites of the battle - Genesis, or godless evolution.

Now I have to make an admission up-front: long before these battle-lines were drawn, I had problems with a literal interpretation of Genesis. After all, the first question is always, "Which Genesis creation story are you taking literally - Gen. 1:1-2:4, or Gen 2:4-24?" The fact that there are two - the first attributed to the P (priestly) source and the second atttributed to the J (Yahwist) source, (if you buy into historical-critical analysis of the Bible) - just points out that Genesis is much more of an analogy than a day-by-day description of what actually happened.

I've always put it this way - if God were to try to explain the process of creation to members of a nomadic ancient Near Eastern tribe, the Almighty would probably not choose to drop a pile of texts on organic biochemistry, physiology, and RNA/DNA replication. The explanation would probably be tailored to their level of understanding - much as a parent's explanation of sexuality for a four-year-old probably doesn't start with diagrams of tab-A-and-slot-B. The Genesis account of creation (and the fall) may have worked for the early Jews – but I don’t think it’s a clear description of what physically happened, any more than “the two shall be as one” means that a man and a woman get super-glued together in the act of sexual consummation.

The funny part is that I’ve heard otherwise sensible people try to tell me that the whole concept of evolution is anathema to them, because it reduces the all-powerful, glorious nature of God’s creation. For me, the idea of the “Big Bang” (a really, really, really big bang) is as God-like an act as I could imagine. I imagine the evolutionary process as particularly awe-inspiring - one cosmic cue-shot that sinks every single ball on a thousand-million pool tables, all in sequence. Because, you see, that’s the kind of “random chance” that would have to occur to get from primeval protein soup to mammals.

Perhaps it would help to use two images I have shamelessly stolen from the rooms of recovery. In the first, one man said, “Well, if you’re talking about random chance of things in the world just happening to come together, ask yourself this: how many times would you have to throw the parts of a bicycle into the air to have them randomly come down as a bicycle?” The second image is one I like even better – the idea that a tornado would rip through a junkyard, picking up things randomly, and yet depositing a fully-functioning Boeing 747 on the far side of it.

So if you ask me how strongly I support the Biblical view of creation as statements of fact, the facts that I hear from Genesis are that a loving, caring God was personally involved in the act of creation, and that the Creator was deeply concerned with the well-being of the created-ones. And not only do I not believe in a literal, done-in-six-days creation, I think that creation is still continuing…that “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22, NIV).

And if you want to call me a heretic, just get in line behind a long, long line of people.

But for me, it comes back to the opening quote from Contact - it’s a question of faith, not a question of proof. In many ways, I believe the religious fundamentalists are largely responsible for the deep rift between the communities of science and faith – by insisting that it has to be either/or. And as things stand today, we have two opposing hermeneutics (ways of understanding) that ultimately devalue the opposing side – if you side with faith, then there is no place for science in the study of creation (and vice versa). This does such a disservice to the hundreds (if not thousands) of prominent scientists who believed that God’s guiding hand was behind much of the process of creation and what we know today as science. Even Einstein is widely quoted as saying, "I am not interested in this phenomenon or that phenomenon. I want to know God's thoughts – the rest are mere details."

Ultimately, I think that Judge Jones was right. I just wish those who claim to be “on the side of ‘intelligent design’” would see that the quest to see God’s blueprints does not always equate to an assumption of God-less creation, and I wish those on the “science” side of the gulf will see that there’s an awful lot of order, rhyme and reason in the supposed randomness of the created order.

Naked Truth, wrapped in Story's robes

Rick Luoni's post about the naked truth inspired me to find and tell this story, which I have cleaned up as best I can. As best I remember it, this is an old Hasidic tale that I first heard from either Doug Lipman or Steve Sanfield.

Truth walked naked into a village, and almost immediately the local inhabitants started cursing at him. Spewing epithets, they chased him out of the village, and Truth walked along the road to the next town. But they too spit at him, cursed him and spewed epithets, driving him out of that town as well.

He walked, lonely and sad, along the empty road, until he reached the next town, still hoping to find someone who was happy to see him, who would embrace naked Truth with open arms.

So he walked into the third town, this time in the middle of the night, hoping that the morning would find the townsfolk happy to see Truth in the clear light of dawn. But as soon as the townsfolk's eyes lit upon him they ran to their homes and then came back throwing garbage at him.

Truth ran off out of the town and into the woods crying. After cleaning off the garbage, he returned to the edge of the woods, when he heard laughter and gaiety, singing and applause. He saw the townsfolk applauding as Story entered the town. They brought out fresh meats and soups and pies and pastries and offered them all to Story - who smiled and lavished in their love and appreciation.

Come twilight, Truth was sulking and sobbing at the edge of the woods. The townsfolk disdainfully ignored him, but Story came out to meet Truth on the edge of town.

Truth told Story how the folk of every town mistreated him, how sad and lonely he was, and how much he wanted to be accepted and appreciated.

Story replied, "Of course they all reject you!" Story looked at Truth, eyes a bit lowered to the side. "No one ever wants to look at the naked Truth."

So Story took pity on Truth, and gave him some of her colorful, beautiful clothing to wear. Then they walked into the nearby town together, Truth dressed in the beautiful robes of Story. The townspeople greeted them with warmth and love and appreciation, for Truth wrapped in Story's clothing can be a beautiful thing, and is almost always easier to behold.

And ever since that day, Truth travels best with Story, and when Truth is wrapped in Story's robes, he finds much more acceptance than the simple naked Truth would ever find.

Not the Christmas I would have hoped for...

God come to earth?
A virgin birth?
No! - How could anybody believe?
(Wayne Watson, One Christmas Eve)

Merry Christmas, everyone. And trust me, Wayne...I believe...I really do...

It's been an odd Christmas holiday, for a number of reasons.

First, my sisters and their husbands and I didn't buy a single Christmas present for each other. Third year running, in fact. One sister has been struggling with finances for years; I've been struggling with mine ever since my ill-fated run at ministry nearly 30 months ago; and one gets completely overwhelmed by the whole gift-buying-wrapping thing. So we haven't been able to find much involvement with the whole "Christmas-is-just-so-damn-stressful" thing...because we opted out of the whole commercialism thing. Felt pretty good, too.

There are two important caveats to that "commercialism-free" claim: the grocery store and the meat market.

Christmas is still a time of feasting in our family circles. Christmas Friday was a journey down to Tony's Ribs in Findlay (in lieu of making Sandy cook), and then an extended round of turkeyfoot and lots of holiday memories. Oh, and Magic Bars. You just can't have Christmas in our family without Magic Bars. Lots of them, actually.

Christmas Eve night, Sue and Jeff had sister Sandy, and Jeff's side of the family, over for dinner. Pulled-pork sandwiches, peel-n-eat shrimp, and all kinds of accompaniments were the fare on the eve. Unfortunately, something in the feast didn't agree with Sue & Jeff (although everyone else was fine) and by the time 9:45 PM rolled around, both of them were dealing with significant gastric distress. So for the first time in a long, long time, I didn't go to Christmas eve service, but stayed around with them, to make sure they were OK. I have to admit - that felt pretty weird.

It's not that I missed the particular service at the LCMS church Jeff's family attends - I've never been overly impressed with the pastor, his preaching, or the particularly cool reception I get as an outsider. And since I am not a Missouri-Synod-branded Lutheran (and don't subscribe to their particular interpretation of transsubstantiation, taking communion at their church every Christmas Eve has ended up being my one act of liturgical rebellion each year. So while it felt somehow empty to not be in worship on Christmas Eve, I didn't really miss being there, to be honest.

For Christmas Day, I had planned to attend Cedar Creek Church in Perrysburg, of which I had heard all kinds of good buzz in the local Christian radio and media. But lo and behold, when I checked their service times this morning, it turns out that they were not having services on Christmas morning. (Seems they were following the lead of Willow Creek and other Protestant megachurches in not offering services on Christmas Day - though they are offering New Years' Day services. Just forgive me, because I'm not even gonna pursue that little bit of market-driven insanity...)

Yeah, I probably could have found somewhere else to go. Yes, it was probably sloth and inertia on my part. But I didn't. And that felt weird, too...but not so terribly wrong as I would have thought it would have felt.

Back to Christmas eve morning, the 7:30 AM "Early Bird" AA meeting had about a hundred people - overflowing the room with people celebrating a sober holiday (some for the first time). The new folks were wondering how people actually made it through holidays sober - and the folks with some sober time were sharing their experience, strength and hope. It was an amazing, gratitude-filled time.

Christmas Day brought yet another feast with Sue's in-laws - plus calls from friends and family around the country - but yet not so many as in years past. And a number of calls I made to friends went unanswered. That felt weird, as well.

So I have to admit that while I'm grateful for my family, and for the gifts that God has put into my life, I feel more apart from what I've known as sweet fellowship in quite a while.

That dissatisfaction with the institutional church has been growing for a while - and it certainly wasn't helped by people who felt they could speak for the Church universal with statements like this one:

"Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable; more than enough reason for businesses to be screaming Merry Christmas." -- Bill O'Reilly, Fox Talk Show host who is leading the "Christian" defense in the "War on Christmas", The O'Reilly Factor, November 28

(If you really wanted to pursue this, my friend Tom posted this great item which says it better than I could ever say it.)

So the holiday scores a 10 on the "being connected with family" score, and a 3 on the "participating in the life of the faith community" scale. I'm grateful for what I have - and I'm not quite sure how to find my way back to what I missed this year. But I know I've got some miles to go on that score.

For now, I'll see my sister Sue off to work later on today, hook up with some old friends here, and then make my way back to the greater Chicagoland area in the afternoon. Hopefully the wet, slushy snow that's been falling will clear off by then, and I'll have smooth and safe driving as I head "westbound-and-down."

And I'll trust that "Emmanuel" is not someone who just shows up on Christmas Eve, but truly God with us who will be with us every single moment of today, and every day.

That thought alone is worth celebrating...

Traveling reflections

I started this post about 2:30 AM Eastern on Friday...I guess the Revised Common Lectionary would say this is the 4th Friday in Advent, or Christmas Friday, perhaps. (If the day Christ died is Good Friday, is the Friday before Christ was born Bad Friday?)

More to the point, when I started writing was about 8 hours after the start of my four-day Christmas break. Then my sister came in and found me asleep in the computer chair - so now it's mid-day Friday in Ohio.

There are people at my job who are going to be working over the weekend - either in preparation for one client's payroll year-end or trying desperately to prepare for the go-live week for another client. Some will physically be in the office; some will be dialed-in from home. But I asked if I would be needed - either in person or remotely - given that I'd planned to head to Toledo. And my new boss said, "No, we're not going to be working on anything you can help with at this point. Go ahead and go."

The growth in my life is that I didn't say, "Are you sure you won't need me?" Instead, I just said, "Cool...thank you," and went on my way.

I'm hoping that God will help me kill the part of me that is insistent on being the people-pleaser on this new job. I'm slowly "coming to believe" that they hired me because I'm acceptable, just as I am. I can do what I can do - but I'm trying to give myself the freedom to not have to be Superman or Dudley Do-Right for my employer.

In positions past, I have always felt like I was always playing catch-up - never quite sufficient to the task or the role. Today, I know that anyone who really did feel like they were "sufficient to the role" in whatever organization I was in would either be egotistical in the extreme or completely delusional. So today, when my inner insanity wants to ante-up to that table, I can simply say to that annoying voice, "Uh-UH...homey ain't gonna play."

"Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly..."

Last Thursday I gave a "lead" at one of my home AA groups. In the community of recovery, a "lead" is AA-talk for time when I can share my experience, strength and hope about my life in recovery. The AA text says that "our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now." It's not "a speech" or "a talk," not exhorting or evanglizing or promoting, but truly "sharing" where I am, and some of the high-points and pot-holes in getting there. I guess the easiest comparison is not "You shouldn't drink," but "here's how I live sober today...however broken that might be."

(An aside for the folks in recovery - I often hear this instruction from the "Big Book" said as "...what IT was like, what happened, and what IT's like now." When I hear that, I'm always reminded of a friend who says, "Hell, boy, it don't change. I can get a quart of it any time I want! Only the first half of it changes...I change, and as a result, living in a world with it in it is a much easier place in which to live.")

I try to do this close to my sobriety anniverary every year. But the process was kind of humbling this year, on a number of levels. After all, for my 12th anniversary, life was pretty wonderful; it was my last year at Sprint before heading to Chicago in August. I had a good job, a pleasant, warm, safe living arrangement with a dear friend, and all the benefits of a mid-size Midwestern city: free parking, cheap beef, available public restrooms, wide open spaces...in short, life was very good.

Year 13 was in the middle of my first year of seminary, and even though there was a question of whether I'd be able to go forward, life was good, for the most part. Year 14 was a time of desperation - I'd been emphatically told that I wouldn't be able to go forward in ministry, I'd finished the most devastating six months that I'd ever had in sobriety (financially), and I was reeling from wrestling with issues of self-worth, identity, faith, and what seemed at the time to be a spectacular failure of discernment. I had a new job (30 days old) after an extended time unemployed, and I was desperately trying to get them to like me enough to make me full-time (which they never, ever did). At that point, I had to be content with the fact that I was, as a friend says, "sunny-side up, suckin' air, sober" - and that for the forseeable future, that had to be enough.

At year 15 it was different. I'd hoped that by the time I was 15 years sober, I'd have had most of my past cleaned up, and be very solidly anchored in the career of my dreams. Having to truly come to terms with the death of my ministry dreams, with having to move (but not really having the money to do so), and that once again I was starting life over (and once again behind the 8-ball, cash-wise) was a series of annoyingly humbling realizations. I really, really wanted to say, "Hey, folks, everything's fine" when it was anything but.

Instead, what I remember talking about was gratitude, the 12th step, and the fellowship. How working with my three young sponsees has given my joy, hope and encouragement when I couldn't find it in my own living situation. How God manages to use me in seemingly powerful ways, despite not wearing a clerical collar. And how no matter how many challenges I get today, if I go to bed sober, I'm a winner. Because the simple truth is that drunks drink, and junkies use - unless there is a miracle.

So I left at 5:30 last night. I could have left straight for Ohio then; perhaps sanity would have encouraged that. But one of my sponsees was turning six months sober, and I wanted to give him a card and a hug and be there for the 7:00 meeting. So I didn't leave there until 8:15, stopped home and picked up the suitcases and packages, left about 9:20, and had a particularly slow but peaceful drive (darn them Highway Patrol folks...), and got here about 1:30 AM CT, 2:30 Eastern - safe, sober, undented...and now we're full circle.

So even though it's Friday morning, it's still Christmas Day for me. I've received a gift of life, of sobriety, and of love from my God, my family and my friends. And there's a whole bunch of people in palatial estates driving Hummers and dripping with "bling" that can't say that.

Topics that are half-started thoughts include Lutherans, Methodists and what "church unity" means; what it means to have a gift-less Christmas; and my Christmas-music playlist. But for now, we're having Tony's Ribs (yay!) in Findlay with both sisters and their husbands tonight, Christmas eve with Sue's in-laws, and a variety of options for Christmas Day.

Yup...life is good. Thank you, God.

Well, it's official....

According to the AWS Weatherbug location near my place, we are officially fresh out of Fahrenheits, at -1 degrees (-18.3 C for my Canuck friends). Don't know where they all went, but it's definitely time to bundle up...

The message comes to the outsiders

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. (Luke 2:8-14, NIV)

It's Monday of Christmas week...and echoing in my mind is a lesson that recurs in my mind every year at this time. It's a powerful lesson I learned about shepherds nearly 8 years ago, in one of my first ministry classes. Some who have listened to me for a while have heard this before...feel free to tune out. But I think it's an image that bears repeating...

I think it's especially important to repeat the image now...when a great deal of what society sees as "Christianity" comes down to pseudo-righteous people pointing fingers at other groups, and yelling "You're a sinner! You'd better repent or you're going to Hell!"

As if we all weren't sinners...as if, somehow, there were people who somehow didn't have lifestyles that were unacceptable to God in some way...

It's particularly appropriate to talk about this in connection with this passage of Scripture, too. You see, in Biblical times, shepherds were considered some of the most distrusted, dishonorable, dishonest, and lowly people of all the world. Listen to what professor of ministry Donald Messer says about shepherds:

Far from being a noble profession, the job of shepherd in first-century Palestine was one of the most despised trades, along with gamblers, usurers, and publicans. Contrary to our romantic images, shepherds were generally considered to be thieves. Far from being viewed as reliable and responsible, they were habitually known to graze on other people's lands and to pilfer the produce of the herd. Their social and religious status would not be much higher than pimps and drug pushers in our day. They, like the publicans and tax collectors, therefore, were deprived of their civil rights. They could not fulfill a judicial office or be witnesses in a court. It was forbidden to buy wool, milk, or a kid from a shepherd - because it was widely assumed that it would be stolen property. One ancient writing reports that 'no position in the world is so despised as that of the shepherd.'" (Donald Messer, Contemporary Images of Christian Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), page 172.)

Yet Luke reports that the first ones to hear of Jesus' birth were shepherds - among the most despised people in the New Testament world! Can you imagine their shock - to find out they were the first ones to be eye-witnesses of God's majesty? And can you imagine the people they talked to afterwards? No wonder Luke writes that everyone who heard of Jesus' birth from the shepherds "wondered at the things told them by the shepherds"!

When you read it that way, it's not a very pretty scene, is it?

No, it's not. And it's not meant to be.
God didn't mean it to be pretty. God meant it to be real.

Let's put it in today's words. Jesus could have come as a triumphant warrior-king, bristling with power, to smite the evil and establish a kingdom built on power. But that wasn't God's plan at all. There was no royalty, no engraved invitations for the rich and mighty to the arrival of God's son. Instead, there was an obscure town of Bethlehem, in the filthy corner of a barn, in a feed trough, where a confused carpenter was witness to the birth of God's son to his teen-aged wife-to-be. Wonder with me at how the despised and lowly men tending sheep felt as angels from Heaven give them the telegram: "...Born to you this day is a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." The news of God's son had come - not to those who felt they deserved to hear, sitting comfortably at the Temple - but to those who needed the news most! Creatures who thought that their sins had left them without a prayer were the ones who found that the salvation of the world had come first to them!

And what does it say of the one who becomes "the Good Shepherd"? Messer points out that this oxymoron is the equivalent to saying "I am the the Good Homosexual" to the religious right, or "I am the Good Fundamentalist" to the gay & lesbian community, or like saying "I am the Good Terrorist" - because in those days, shepherds were just that despised. Messer writes, "It is no wonder that after Jesus called himself 'the Good Shepherd' the Gospel of John reports, 'there was again a division among the Jews because of these words (John 10:19)" (page 173). Jesus identified with the lowly, and with the despised - and yet turned that despising description on its head, transforming the label as he did everything else he touched.

In these days of insanity - when businesses are encouraged to "keep the 'Christ' in Christmas" so they won't get boycotted - it's important not to lose the amazement and wonder of those who witnessed the birth of our Savior. And let me never forget that if God could be present and "with them" in the mess of the stable, surrounded by the disreputable and untouchable ones of that time, then God can and is surely with me, during the messes of my life, and when I feel unworthy and apart from the rest of the world.

It is in the most impossible of my own times and situations that I have to remember the amazingly unlikely people and places that were part of the story of God's arrival on earth. And I also remember that I am the unlikely - and undeserving - recipient of the gift of grace brought by Jesus to the world. May I continue to stand by the manger in wonder at the astonishing love of God for you, and for me!

Enjoying life, helping others

...We have been speaking to you of serious, sometimes tragic things. We have been dealing with alcohol in its worst aspect. But we aren't a glum lot. If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn't want it. We absolutely insist on enjoying life.
...So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness. Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past. But why shouldn't we laugh? We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.
(from the text Alcoholics Anonymous, page 132)
---
The book Alcoholics Anonymous is the only textbook about a progressive, fatal disease that contains the phrase "We absolutely insist on enjoying life."
(Scott R., Sherman Oaks, CA)
---

Today is a double celebration of sorts. This morning, I began my new career as an official employee of Hewitt Associates, a major human-resources consulting firm headquartered in the 'burbs north of Chicago. After my disastrous foray into theological studies, I am once again on the road to being (as AA's 7th traditions says) "self supporting through our own contributions." And today also marks my fifteen-year sobriety anniversary.

Neither celebration started off so well, however.

Somehow, in the process of moving this summer, I managed to misplace my "important papers" file - the one with my will, my birth certificate, and the original of my social security card in it. While my profound hope is that I won't need the will for a while, I desperately needed the social security card (or the birth certificate) in order to fill out my I-9 form for my new employer during orientation on Monday morning.

So I spent the weekend emptying boxes, sorting through papers that I swore I'd file or read or take action on someday (but never did) in a vain effort to find the critical documents. The result is that my apartment now looks like a drug dealer or mob enforcer came in and "tossed" the place. Not pretty. And certainly not what one might expect from someone sober that long.

Finally I just gave up late last night, accepted the fact that if it was a drop-dead fatal requirement, I'd just end up ordering the replacement documents and being a temporary employee for another month, and went to bed. I needed to get up very early on Monday to travel up to the company HQ up in Lincolnshire for the first day of orientation.

This morning, I was ready to leave the house about 5:25 AM when I realized that somehow, in the excitement of tearing things up to find my "important documents," I had somehow also managed to misplace my wallet. (You have to understand that I was still beating myself up for supposedly being a responsible adult, but nonetheless somehow managing to misplace two critical life documents. And there I was, with the clock running on my departure time, and once again I couldn't find stuff that was important to me.)

Let's just say that it wasn't exactly a spiritual high-water mark for me.

In fact, my language might have indicated that I was having a spiritual blackout (or at least "rotating brownouts") rather than a spiritual experience of any kind. And as I was tearing around my apartment, the recurring theme in my head was: People who are fifteen years sober aren't supposed to be having days like this. This is first-year sobriety nonsense. So what the hell am I doing here again?

(Trust me - I know better than that. I really do. I know lots of people who have had much worse days, with much more sober-time than I have. But I wasn't listening to me this morning.)

Now, the end of the story is pretty simple: About 6:00 AM, I finally stopped to breathe, and pray the only honest prayer I could say: God, grant me the serenity to be able to find my FREAKIN' WALLET before I break something! And shortly after that, I actually did find the damn thing, said about a hundred reps of "Thank you, God," then got in the car, and did deep-breathing exercises for about 5 miles up I-94. It took just shy of two and a quarter hours to travel the 50 miles to Lincolnshire by leaving at 6:15 instead of 5:30. But it was OK. Really.

And the day got immensely better. I arrived not only on-time, but calmed down and reasonably serene. I found out that just the application for a replacement Social Security card would be enough for the employment folks. And we got done early enough that I could perform some tech-support by phone for one of my coworkers on the drive back down from Lincolnshire.

And I got to go to my Monday AA meeting - and be reminded, again and again, just what an incredible gift this sobriety is for those of us who need it. I got to see the people who have so enriched my life for the last three years - and got to admit that while my day certainly hadn't gone according to my best-laid-plans, it still went OK - because I was sober.

At one of my first AA meetings, a man said to me, "Steve, drunks drink, and junkies use - unless there is a miracle. So if you qualify for this group, and you wake up sober, you're an absolute freakin' miracle." Like my wallet, I've managed to misplace that thought a bunch of times, but I've never truly lost it yet - for which I'm grateful.

I am not where I want to be - not by any means. In some ways, parts of the last year have been failures - financially, emotionally, spiritually. There is part of me that wishes that I weren't starting my life and my career over - again - on the low side of my half-century birthday. There are lots of things I wish were different...lots different.

But despite all the things I wish could be otherwise, I also can claim a whole bunch of real blessings this year. I know that I have family and friends alike who love me, and are grateful for my presence in their lives. That, by itself, is a huge gift. It is not good, as Scripture says, for this particular man to be alone - and so I have received incredible gifts of love, inclusion and friendship...many more than I could ever measure.

And I know that God has managed to use me, and my struggles, for good this year. I know that there are people who God has managed to "reach out and touch" through me. I know that over the last year, I've taken some actions to be more honest about who and what I am - steps that I have put off taking for decades (literally).

And I know where my wallet, my keys, and my phone are.

So as the young folk would say: "It's all good."

The last several days have not been fun, by any means. But I can honestly say that tonight, I am not "a glum lot," and that my goal for tomorrow is not only to "enjoy life," but to use both my blessings and my struggles to help others.

To the people in the community of recovery - my sponsors, my sponsees, and all the people who have made this journey possible - all I can say is thank you, and thank you, and forever thank you. I'll never be able to repay the gifts that each of you have given me over the last fifteen years.

But it will be my honor and my pleasure to try, nonetheless.

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny. May God bless you and keep you - until then. (page 164)

Comedy of errors, snowstorm-style

Well, it has been an interesting day here in the Windy City...

Good news - the official "offer letter" came from my new employers-to-be today. Orientation will be Monday through Wednesday - although in order to make it out to Lincolnshire, IL (where the corporate HQ's are) I'll have to be up by 4:30 AM, on the road by 5:30 AM to be downtown at Union Station by 6:15, to catch a 6:30 a.m. to Lincolnshire, to get there by 8:30. (I can just hear Stevie Wonder singin' Livin' just enough...just enough for the cit-aye...) But a boy's gotta do what a boy's gotta do...

For some reason, digestive challenges kept me getting up repeatedly through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning. Despite getting up earlier than usual, I still managed to be running out the door late. But I was encouraged, because I was going to be seeing my friend Eric from Kansas for dinner Thursday night - a long-awaited reunion. So that eased my frustration at getting to work late.

A series of technical FUBARs made the day at work a challenge - leaving me with half-a-dozen things half done, and only one completely resolved. I definitely opened more cans of worms than I managed to seal up. Of course, that's the nature of the work, too - but it was frustrating, nonetheless.

It was when someone walked back in from getting coffee that they said, "Look at the snow!" And snow it did - making the Chicago riverside walk look like quite the winter wonderland. I have to admit, it was pretty - snow falling pretty much straight down, in a relatively windless and warm day (well, 28F/-2C - warm for a Chicago day in December!). Not exactly a Kincaide painting, but close...

Of course, it completely scrambled Eric's travel - he got to take off from KC to St. Louis, then they delayed him 2-1/2 hours in STL, and then he finally did take off from STL to Chicago. Of course, no one could have known that Southwest flight 1248 from Baltimore would land in Chicago about a half-hour before Eric's flight, sliding off the runway, crashing through the barrier wall around Midway Airport and ending up in the intersection of 55th St. and Central Ave. (you'll have to do a free registration to read the article). Needless to say, they closed the airport, and that, as they say, was that.

So Eric's plane went back to St. Louis, and I started a two-hour trek from the office to the apartment in Pullman. I managed to connect by phone with several folks along the way - sponsees, friends - so it wasn't lost time. But the 6 blocks from the train to the apartment were long, slipperly, snowy, crappy blocks - so I was more than ready to get into the apartment and get dry...when I got to the door of the apartment building and realized that I had somehow left my house-key-ring at the office.

If there is anything more embarrassing than being locked out of your own apartment, and having to wake your landlord up to let you in dead sober, I can't think what the hell it might be. I blistered the air with more than a few oaths that you will never find in the pages of Scripture, you can be sure.

Of course, I had a spare set of keys - it's just what you do when you're a forgetful guy like me. But the night before I had dropped my wallet onto the bedroom floor, and a whole bunch of stuff fell out of it. I just threw it all on the desk, planning to sort it all out the next morning. (So much for good intentions...)

At any rate, my landlord is a much more gracious guy guy than I am, and gave me a loaner set of keys, and all has ended well. My pants are hanging by the furnace to dry out, and I have a cup of hot herbal tea with which to finish the day off. Eric's flight from St. Louis to KC should be arriving right about now, and I trust that he will be home safe soon.

So despite all that, I'm home safe, unbruised (except my ego), undented, and I'm going to get to bed and give it another shot tomorrow! (Or actually later on today...)