Is your life Heaven or Hell?

I think everything mostly works out the way it should.

That's not to say there's not crazy surprises, unexpected turns, scary moments and horrible falls along the way. But there's unanticipated delights, miraculous discoveries, wonderful things and exhilarating heights too.

At least that's my life so far.

It's probably yours too.

When the bad things happen ... deaths or divorce, friends who prove they're really not, car wrecks, broken promises and nightmares of the night ... we're naturally shocked.

Then it turns into anger because we rail against the injustice of life not being perfect!

Because we want perfect lives.

Yet none of us have one.

Though lots of people pretend to.

When good things happen ... love, marriage, friends who are consistently so,  disasters that are near misses, kept promises and dreams that come true ...we are ecstatic!

Then we downplay it.

We minimize the good and exaggerate the bad.

Why are we wired that way?

The other day Johnny O and I are sitting at The Breakfast Club having coffee and he says, "We've got six-and-a-half marriages between us."

I wince because, though it's true, it's not something I care to think about.

I'm the happiest I've ever been though Sarah would often shoot me if she didn't love me so much. Johnny O's the happiest he's been since I've known him, which is a very long time.

"We should start a business together," he continues. "Anybody thinking about getting married should call us first. We'll guide them through it all. I mean ... we've already experienced everything so others should benefit from our experience.  A small fee will save lifetimes of heartache or pave the highway to happy lives like ours!"

I can't think of anything to say.

"One call ... that's all," he says with a beaming smile.

It's hard to not love Johnny O.

"Hope for the best and plan for the worst" is something I used to say.

Now I try to simply take life as it comes. I try to help others do that too.

Taken all at once life can kill you and believe me, I've watched it kill lots of people I cared about.

Life's good and bad. It's not perfect. Concentrating on the bad leaves you dead even if you're still living.

Holding onto the good makes it more enjoyable and I believe life's to be relished because, either way, it doesn't last forever.

Even the worst times have silver linings of good and the best of times always boarder on disaster.

There's Heaven and Hell.

It's just a question of which are you going to hold on to.
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The Way we like our religion!

"Don't let me down," begged the Major Prophet John Lennon.

But of course they do.

Jesus put a positive spin on it when he said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

But we don't.

We've been burned too many times, giving openly and honestly to others only to have them not give back to us in kind. The result is we are taken advantage of, hurt and left to clean up other people's messes.

Every time it happens, we add another brick to the wall we build to protect ourselves from such things. The number of people we trust grows very small. We hoard our feelings for ourselves. Our community is tiny. The love we do give away is questioned, guarded and reserved for only a few. Most can count the true loves they have on one hand.

The "Golden Rule" is in every single one of the world's religions yet it remains the least practiced form of faith.

It ends up pissing everybody off so to hell with it. We take the rest of the world's religions except this part. It makes religion so much easier, leaving plenty of room for intolerance, bigotry, exclusion, hate and terrorism. Now that's how we like our religion!

If it weren't so then why is much of it in the world today.

Last night Sarah and I sat in the red room shell shocked for what others had done unto us that we hadn't done unto others.

After letting our anger out, continuing to say to one another "I'm not mad at you! I'm just mad and don't have anybody else to mad at right now!", we began to calm down. I grew contemplative as Sarah continued to process things that had been done leaving us with a great deal of unexpected things to do.

I had a hard time sleeping last night because of it all. Laying there staring at the ceiling fan, Goddess laid on my side of the bed licking my hand and John Lennon kept singing in my head.

"Don't let me down."

"Don't let me down."

It is a shame that we do let each other down as a daily practice of our faith.

It's more than a shame.

It's just another brick in the wall.

My Award Winning Church

The Church that employed me as its "Professional Christian" had won an award. Miraculously, the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel had morphed from a broken down, rag tag congregation of little old ladies into a vibrant, diverse, constantly-in-the-news group because we'd turned Sunday School rooms into apartments so homeless people would have a place to live and the Baptismal Pool into a bathtub so they would have a place to bath.

We reasoned that Church buildings are poor examples of stewardship. They sit vacate six days each week and we decided there was a better way to use a building to glorify God.

Having homeless people live in Sunday School rooms brought a life into the building that hadn't been there before. Before long, people who thought it was a cool idea began attending. Attendance went from 5 little old ladies to a couple of hundred.

Now as the Southern Baptist teach us, "Our Lord told us to count his sheep. Not feed them."

And someone in Baptist Corporate Headquarters in Nashville saw that our numbers were the roof!

Of course I was also counting every bath the homeless guys took as a Baptism and reporting that to sheep counters in Baptist Corporate Headquarters.

We'd received noticed that we were going to receive a trophy for shattering the Kentucky state record for Baptisms in a year AND it would be presented by the President of Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Obviously proud, we decided to spruce things up before they arrived on Sunday.

The building looked a little lived in and it needed painting. A group of church volunteers assembled and worked all Saturday to finish. Late in the day everyone was tired and ready to be finished. Besides we all wanted to be ready for Sunday morning trophy presentation.

So Bill Berry, not the former drummer for REM but the other one, "Brothers and sisters in Christ. Go home. There's only one wall left. I'll finish it."

We protested but he remained adamant. So we left.

Everything was perfect as I waited for the Baptist Ayatollah. The sanctuary was packed with proud members who I heard laughing and celebrating in anticipation of our award. When the Ayatollah arrived I proudly led him into the church.

His face went white.

In bold red letters on one wall of the sanctuary, Bill had painted the words "JESUS SHAVES!"

We never did get the award but we had one hell of a celebration.

Book Covers

"I'm a part time meat cutter at Walmart," he said in his country twang voice sitting on the stool next to mine at The Breakfast Club, "and a writer."

Everyone turns to look at him.

Short cropped white hair and a white goatee on a white face marked him his as a tourist.

"Any of y'all write?" he asks.

Johnny O, Whitley, Phil, Car Queer, and Caroline all point directly at me.

"He does," they yell in unison.

"I got 9000 followers on Twitter," he says looking straight at me. "You?"

"What?" I ask. There is no way in hell this country bumpkin has that many followers. "Couple of hundred," I answer with a shrug.

"I'm a poet," he continues. "You?"

"Ummm," I mutter, not really wanting to talk. "I'm all over the place."

"I've got one book published," he says plowing ahead. "You?"

"Eight," I answer.

He sits up straight exclaiming "Eight?"

Caroline places coffee in front of him and asks if he wants to order.

"Naw," he dismisses her, "we gonna eat at the Ocean Plaza where we're staying. My wife loves it. HEY, you work there!" he says to Johnny O. "Maintenance?"

"Front Desk Manager," Johnny replies.

"Y'all got pizza? My wife loves pizza."

Johnny gets up and leaves and Caroline jerks the menu from him.

"I've only made about $2 off my book," he says returning his attention to me. "You?"

"A little more than that," I tell him.

"You on Facebook?" he asks, returning his attention to me.

"Yep," I answer.

"How many friends you got?"

"Couple of thousand," I say.

"Couple of thousand!" he exclaims. "I want to be Facebook friends. You?"

Caroline immediately handed me a pen and paper with a devilish smile. I could kill her.

So we swap names and later in the day become Facebook friends. Sure enough, he's a poet and writes daily. He also has 9000 followers on Twitter which blows my mind. He manages a Facebook group called "Poetry Pad" of which I'm now a member. He has endorsed me on Twitter and I'm reading his poems every day. He and Sarah are now Facebook friends.

All of which goes to prove ... you really can't judge a book by it's cover.