Sunday, March 27, 2011
Spam
Well, you may wonder how I write these things every day. I do too. Often I am inspired by the beauty of life here on Tybee Island, things that I’ve done with my friends, things that I’ve been fortunate enough to do, travels, where I live, and my wonderful dog Goddess. Sometimes God tells me what I should write and it’s important to do what God tells you to do. Stimulation sometimes comes to me in the middle of the night, crawling into bed with me and filling my senses. So I write from the heart and a lot of people seem to like it. So I keep searching for the inspiration to write which comes from everywhere. Then there is Dedra. “What should I blog about today?” I asked her last time that she was here. “Grapefruit,” she immediately replied. “What?” She repeated herself and I closed my eyes and Jimmy Buffett’s song “Grapefruit Juicy Fruit” popped into my head. We’d been out listening to Sam and Gordo play damn good live music the night before so I wrote about that and a hangover cure. So I should have known better than to ask her a second time. But I did. “Spam,” she said. “WHAT?” “Spam,” she repeated. So, I first remembered the last time that I ate Spam which was multiple decades ago. I think that we fried it. Then I did a You -Tube search for Monty Python’s original “Spam” skit and laughed as much this time as I did the first time that I saw it in college all of those years ago. I made Dedra watch it too which got us looking at their videos of “Philosophical Football” and “The Philosopher’s Song.” So we’ve spent the morning on the Beloved Back deck laughing our ass’s off. Finally I did a Google search for the lyrics to the “Spam” Song. Lovely Spam, wonderful Spam Lovely Spam, wonderful Spam Spa-a-a-a-a-m-m-m Spa-a-a-a-a-m-m-m SPA-A-A-A-M-M-M SPA-A-A-A-M-M-M LOVELY SPAM, LOVELY SPAM! As you can see, a lot of research goes into these daily musings. After gathering all of the background information necessary to produce a thoughtful and inspirational musing that hopefully is meaningful to others, I write. Sometimes I need the help of others and can always count on Mitch for obscure Celtic nonsense; Bill Berry (not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one that I went to Seminary with) or I just flat out steal something that Guy Sayles wrote (which begs a question … in business it’s called gaining competitive advantage but in school it’s called plagiarism!) Well, I’m done. It’s time for breakfast. Spam, eggs, bacon, spam and spam. Dedra’s having two helpings. Damn Her!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Duct Tape
They’ve put duct tape over my name at Union Mission.
Pretty funny, huh?
I suppose it is akin to trying to blot my name out of the “Book of Life” and there is no doubt that there are those, including a former Board chair who chooses to remain anonymous, who would like nothing more than that!
But, seriously … Duct tape?
There is a sign in my old parking space. It was a gift of love of the Health Services staff and it had my name on it, proclaiming my parking space and that it was a gift of one of the staffs. It’s all still there except there is the Duct tape over my name.
It cracks me up!
I hope that whoever did it used their own Duct tape and NOT the stuff that Charles uses to patch his pants. For more than a decade I was the principal care taker of the six-foot-four, mentally ill, African-American former bank robber and I still love him still as much as I’ve loved anybody. Though Joy and I controlled his money he somehow had a never ending supply of Duct tape that he used to patch his pants, put Christmas decorations on trash cans, and leave notes for me on my door.
Then again, Union Mission is a much different place than when I was there. I would go nuts if I saw signs taped to anything! It’s just not professional. Even if it was the clear tape that grows yellow over time. You’d never see that stuff in bank. Well … maybe the one that the former Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous ran for eighteen months.
Though I must confess I’ve grown to appreciate Duct tape. It first happened in St. Martin. I forgot why but Conner and I were in serious need of the magic stuff. I think that we did a hostile takeover of the fitness center and needed to shut Nathalie up so we needed to Duct tape her mouth. Nathalie works at the fitness center even when she is hung over (see you in a couple of weeks!). I remember wine and cheese and a Norwegian being involved.
Now we’re in the Caribbean and Duct tape is hard to come by. Then Lynn O’Quinn says “I got Duct tape.” Then she goes through the forty seven storage bins that she had, one of which was filled with Duct tape and hands Conner and I roll still wrapped in the plastic stuff that it comes in.
We tell her thanks and then start to search for a knife.
“I got a knife,” she says as she opens another storage bin and pulls out a knife like the Jason used in those movies. “This is the one that I was planning to use on my husband but you can borrow it for a second.”
Conner and I both kind of just stood there … neither one of us wanting to get that close to Lynn who was holding a knife.
But we kept the Duct tape.
Now I make absolutely certain that I have Duct nearby at all times.
If you come to my house you will see my refrigerator which is covered with “Jesus” magnets holding up pictures of people whom I love, one wearing yellow boots for some reason.
Anyway there is one of Jenny Orr and me with Roma in the middle. Roma’s mouth is Duct taped shut. Jenny and I are smiling. It’s the only time that I ever remember that Jenny and I talked without Roma saying something.
So I’m done with this blog.
It’s kind of held together by Duct tape anyway.
My fingers are sticky.
Pretty funny, huh?
I suppose it is akin to trying to blot my name out of the “Book of Life” and there is no doubt that there are those, including a former Board chair who chooses to remain anonymous, who would like nothing more than that!
But, seriously … Duct tape?
There is a sign in my old parking space. It was a gift of love of the Health Services staff and it had my name on it, proclaiming my parking space and that it was a gift of one of the staffs. It’s all still there except there is the Duct tape over my name.
It cracks me up!
I hope that whoever did it used their own Duct tape and NOT the stuff that Charles uses to patch his pants. For more than a decade I was the principal care taker of the six-foot-four, mentally ill, African-American former bank robber and I still love him still as much as I’ve loved anybody. Though Joy and I controlled his money he somehow had a never ending supply of Duct tape that he used to patch his pants, put Christmas decorations on trash cans, and leave notes for me on my door.
Then again, Union Mission is a much different place than when I was there. I would go nuts if I saw signs taped to anything! It’s just not professional. Even if it was the clear tape that grows yellow over time. You’d never see that stuff in bank. Well … maybe the one that the former Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous ran for eighteen months.
Though I must confess I’ve grown to appreciate Duct tape. It first happened in St. Martin. I forgot why but Conner and I were in serious need of the magic stuff. I think that we did a hostile takeover of the fitness center and needed to shut Nathalie up so we needed to Duct tape her mouth. Nathalie works at the fitness center even when she is hung over (see you in a couple of weeks!). I remember wine and cheese and a Norwegian being involved.
Now we’re in the Caribbean and Duct tape is hard to come by. Then Lynn O’Quinn says “I got Duct tape.” Then she goes through the forty seven storage bins that she had, one of which was filled with Duct tape and hands Conner and I roll still wrapped in the plastic stuff that it comes in.
We tell her thanks and then start to search for a knife.
“I got a knife,” she says as she opens another storage bin and pulls out a knife like the Jason used in those movies. “This is the one that I was planning to use on my husband but you can borrow it for a second.”
Conner and I both kind of just stood there … neither one of us wanting to get that close to Lynn who was holding a knife.
But we kept the Duct tape.
Now I make absolutely certain that I have Duct nearby at all times.
If you come to my house you will see my refrigerator which is covered with “Jesus” magnets holding up pictures of people whom I love, one wearing yellow boots for some reason.
Anyway there is one of Jenny Orr and me with Roma in the middle. Roma’s mouth is Duct taped shut. Jenny and I are smiling. It’s the only time that I ever remember that Jenny and I talked without Roma saying something.
So I’m done with this blog.
It’s kind of held together by Duct tape anyway.
My fingers are sticky.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Lent
“I gave up candy for Lent,” Franklin says for no apparent reason.
“I gave up men,” Patti responds sitting on the other side of the counter.
“Patti’s a lesbian!” Franklin yells.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says in exasperation.
“I gave up giving up,” Nance says staring off into space.
“How else is Franklin supposed to take you’re giving up men?” Val asks Patti.
She shrugs her shoulders.
They all stop and look at me.
“I gave up religion,” I say.
“Oh Great” Franklin exclaims as he gets up from the stool beside the one that I’m sitting on.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before I asked for all of this advice?”
“Why God Why? …Why does nothing here make sense! … Why God why? … Show your hand?” are the very legitimate questions asked in the musical Miss. Saigon.
Well, I know the answer to why nothing here makes sense.
I’m at the Breakfast Club.
The “Why God Why?” question is a bit more difficult to answer.
I suppose that is why the Catholics invented Lent … so that we can position ourselves to ourselves for God’s answers which apparently come every Easter. So for forty days or thereabouts, we get ready … because we know God’s answers are the biggest answers! They’re the ones we want the most!
Then Hallmark bought the rights of Lent from the Catholics and it has become this broader tradition where even non-believers participate. (Hallmark can do most anything! They’re like Google and Wall Mart!)
I gave up giving up.
Sitting here in the afterglow of the caffeine and adrenaline rush that I get every morning at the Breakfast Club I think that Nance has it most right.
God would prefer that we give up giving up.
God gave us this life. It’s the ultimate present! Too many of us give up on it! Or pieces of it! Or we settle to be less than we are capable of being. Or we give ourselves away to others and let them determine who we are. We screw up God’s ultimate gift to us.
And that is life’s biggest sin!
As you can probably tell, I’m not into Lent all that much.
I think that God wants us to celebrate this life! She would rather us dance for forty days straight! And she’s probably making St. Augustine dance throughout eternity because he’s the one who thought up most of this depravity stuff. We should give up the things … and the people … who stop us from being … us.
“It’s tearing me apart to hold you tight. Let’s dance like it’s the last night of the world.”
That’s how I think that God wants us to spend Lent!
“I gave up men,” Patti responds sitting on the other side of the counter.
“Patti’s a lesbian!” Franklin yells.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says in exasperation.
“I gave up giving up,” Nance says staring off into space.
“How else is Franklin supposed to take you’re giving up men?” Val asks Patti.
She shrugs her shoulders.
They all stop and look at me.
“I gave up religion,” I say.
“Oh Great” Franklin exclaims as he gets up from the stool beside the one that I’m sitting on.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before I asked for all of this advice?”
“Why God Why? …Why does nothing here make sense! … Why God why? … Show your hand?” are the very legitimate questions asked in the musical Miss. Saigon.
Well, I know the answer to why nothing here makes sense.
I’m at the Breakfast Club.
The “Why God Why?” question is a bit more difficult to answer.
I suppose that is why the Catholics invented Lent … so that we can position ourselves to ourselves for God’s answers which apparently come every Easter. So for forty days or thereabouts, we get ready … because we know God’s answers are the biggest answers! They’re the ones we want the most!
Then Hallmark bought the rights of Lent from the Catholics and it has become this broader tradition where even non-believers participate. (Hallmark can do most anything! They’re like Google and Wall Mart!)
I gave up giving up.
Sitting here in the afterglow of the caffeine and adrenaline rush that I get every morning at the Breakfast Club I think that Nance has it most right.
God would prefer that we give up giving up.
God gave us this life. It’s the ultimate present! Too many of us give up on it! Or pieces of it! Or we settle to be less than we are capable of being. Or we give ourselves away to others and let them determine who we are. We screw up God’s ultimate gift to us.
And that is life’s biggest sin!
As you can probably tell, I’m not into Lent all that much.
I think that God wants us to celebrate this life! She would rather us dance for forty days straight! And she’s probably making St. Augustine dance throughout eternity because he’s the one who thought up most of this depravity stuff. We should give up the things … and the people … who stop us from being … us.
“It’s tearing me apart to hold you tight. Let’s dance like it’s the last night of the world.”
That’s how I think that God wants us to spend Lent!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Open
All of the windows in my house are open and the cross breeze from the Back River marsh rushing towards the ocean blows through it. There are 15 windows in the red room that allows it in, rushing through the yellow living room then into the purple kitchen and finally through the open sliding glass doors where it becomes concentrated hitting me sitting on the beloved back deck where. I may as well be sitting in front of a giant fan blowing on me.
I love it!
This time of year and into early summer I’ll keep the windows open. The outside becomes part of the inside at my house. It is hard to differentiate one from the other. Rooms literally spill into one another mostly distinguished by colors. The kitchen spills out onto the beloved back deck so it’s like one big room.
Fran is loving this time of year as she’s decorated her thousand shades of green with purple wisteria. It is beautiful just like she was so beautiful and I have a hard time not just staring at it. Celebrating it! Knowing that it won’t last … just like she didn’t last. Just like so many others didn’t last either.
Where I live is a pretty open place. I like it that way.
When it’s all closed up for winter it’s not as nice. The warmth flees. Cold descends. Hearts break.
As I sit here looking through three large rooms out of the windows in the front of my house I’m struck by something. I try to live my life like the house I live in … open.
Lots of color!
Lots of diversity!
Fun!
A celebration!
For better or for worse, that’s what I’ve done.
It’s hard to not think about worse first. Its human nature I guess … like slowing down to look at a car wreck. These images flash through my mind like the wind rushing through my house.
Then Fran bops me on the head with her purple wisteria and the beauty of things to come take over my thoughts. The beloved back deck is filled with color and loveliness. A Palm Tree sits close to me as I write. Behind Fran’s thousand shades of decorated green are trees of every kind … Palms and Pines and things I don’t know.
They’re all budding and blooming and spring has put the cold dark nights of winter behind me. And it was “a long cold lonely winter” to quote one of the hymns of my life. I feel a part of all of this be-birthing.
There is this one tree though. It is a hold out. There are no blooms. There’re not even any buds. It is cold and naked as though winter still commanded life.
I know a lot of people like that. They stay rooted in what is behind them. They remain stuck in the past. In spite of the beauty surrounding them, they stick out like a sore thumb. They are sore thumbs!
I was in Savannah yesterday, a rare trip these days. The first person that I met with remains stuck in the past so that’s mostly what we talked about and it was … sad.
The next person that I met with had one foot in the past and another in the future. It was a crazy conversation bouncing back and forth between … then … and now. It occurred in a happy place however where I was greeted with warm hugs and kisses.
My last meeting was about the future. Smiles abounded and were shared. Souls connected and words were not always necessary. The future has a way of pulling you along like that if you’re willing to give yourself to it.
The sun takes this moment to dance through the Palm Tree sitting beside me. I pause to watch.
Life is good today.
I wonder why?
Then I know.
It’s all about tomorrow.
I love it!
This time of year and into early summer I’ll keep the windows open. The outside becomes part of the inside at my house. It is hard to differentiate one from the other. Rooms literally spill into one another mostly distinguished by colors. The kitchen spills out onto the beloved back deck so it’s like one big room.
Fran is loving this time of year as she’s decorated her thousand shades of green with purple wisteria. It is beautiful just like she was so beautiful and I have a hard time not just staring at it. Celebrating it! Knowing that it won’t last … just like she didn’t last. Just like so many others didn’t last either.
Where I live is a pretty open place. I like it that way.
When it’s all closed up for winter it’s not as nice. The warmth flees. Cold descends. Hearts break.
As I sit here looking through three large rooms out of the windows in the front of my house I’m struck by something. I try to live my life like the house I live in … open.
Lots of color!
Lots of diversity!
Fun!
A celebration!
For better or for worse, that’s what I’ve done.
It’s hard to not think about worse first. Its human nature I guess … like slowing down to look at a car wreck. These images flash through my mind like the wind rushing through my house.
Then Fran bops me on the head with her purple wisteria and the beauty of things to come take over my thoughts. The beloved back deck is filled with color and loveliness. A Palm Tree sits close to me as I write. Behind Fran’s thousand shades of decorated green are trees of every kind … Palms and Pines and things I don’t know.
They’re all budding and blooming and spring has put the cold dark nights of winter behind me. And it was “a long cold lonely winter” to quote one of the hymns of my life. I feel a part of all of this be-birthing.
There is this one tree though. It is a hold out. There are no blooms. There’re not even any buds. It is cold and naked as though winter still commanded life.
I know a lot of people like that. They stay rooted in what is behind them. They remain stuck in the past. In spite of the beauty surrounding them, they stick out like a sore thumb. They are sore thumbs!
I was in Savannah yesterday, a rare trip these days. The first person that I met with remains stuck in the past so that’s mostly what we talked about and it was … sad.
The next person that I met with had one foot in the past and another in the future. It was a crazy conversation bouncing back and forth between … then … and now. It occurred in a happy place however where I was greeted with warm hugs and kisses.
My last meeting was about the future. Smiles abounded and were shared. Souls connected and words were not always necessary. The future has a way of pulling you along like that if you’re willing to give yourself to it.
The sun takes this moment to dance through the Palm Tree sitting beside me. I pause to watch.
Life is good today.
I wonder why?
Then I know.
It’s all about tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Pausing
So the guy beside me on the plane is having a bad day. When I strolled up to Gate 76 he was asleep with his mouth wide open surrounded by the other people waiting to get on Delta fight 1176. They were all staring at him. When I say his mouth was open, it was really open. It was hard not to notice. Like a train wreck.
He is Asian, wearing no tie, has leaned his chair back with his feet up (brown untied shoes with a grey suit), his fingers are laced across his belly and his mouth is open.
Wide open!
The plane could fly inside.
And his glasses are crooked.
This isn’t the only reason that I know he’s having a bad day. When we took our seats he was on his I-phone, as was everyone else around us, and I could see what he was writing to whoever he was writing to.
“It is not a happy day,” I saw then I tried to look away because I was invading his privacy but then it was like a Soap Opera and I was hooked. I had to know more.
Then the “Flight Attendants” were telling us how to fasten a seat belt and if anybody is caught in the bathroom “dismantling, disabling or destroying a smoke detector” then all of hell is going to break loose.
When I looked back, his I-phone was put away, he’s asleep and his mouth is wide open. He has five fillings. Not the gold fillings. The other kind.
I think that he also had Spinach Salad for lunch.
Either that or he is returning from working on the Nuclear Power plants in Japan though I’m pretty sure it was Spinach Salad.
So this has got me to thinking.
I remember one time I was driving along Bay Street in Downtown Savannah. It’s a beautiful street aside from the thousands of trucks that use it every day for some inexplicable reason other than people who were elected to public office spend all day long making decisions that have inexplicable reasons!
Anyway, I’m driving down Bay and I pass this other car. It was red. And there was this girl driving it and she had long dirty blond hair. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks. And tears were streaming from down her face which was twisted in agony. And I got all of this in less than ten seconds … from the time it takes to stop a car and look up and see something and then the light changes and then the world changes.
This occurred a long, long time ago. But I can still see her now just as clearly as when I was heading in one direction and she was heading in another and we both paused for a few seconds.
Whenever I drive down Bay Street these days and am stopped by one of the traffic lights she flashes through my mind. What was the agony? She left her husband or he left her? The doctor gave her the bad news? Something horrible happened to the kids? The boss abused her? Maybe it was the period from hell! I don’t know.
But there is something beautiful about simply being who you are … where you are … and not allowing anyone or anything to hold you back from … YOU!
I believe that God gave us life … to be us! It’s such a rotten shame that we spend so much time and energy trying to be what other people want us to be … husbands, wives, children, bosses, friends, clergy and those stupid people who run television.
We literally give ourselves away. We sell our souls. We try to make ourselves into what others want us to be. And we die a little every day when we do this.
So I’ve been on this journey for the past year. A Sabbatical. I paused from life though at a stop light. I’d given everything that I had to give to others and they sure as hell took it all!
And for the past year it’s been my time! For me!
And I’ve clawed myself back to me. There are people who I care about but that is different from caring about what other people think. Or want me to be! The rest of my life is God’s gift to me. And I’ve found my friends. And love has reclaimed my soul after it had been stripped, abandoned and left with no concern whatsoever by others. It was a barren place. Now after this visit to Pittsburgh I’ve suddenly got lots of stuff to do.
The Sabbatical is over.
The rest of my life has begun.
But that girl, crying in her car as we both paused for just seconds, remains a vision of pain and beauty to me all of these years later.
Unlike the guy next to me with his mouth wide open. Though I do hope his day gets better.
Like mine have!
And like I pray that yours do.
He is Asian, wearing no tie, has leaned his chair back with his feet up (brown untied shoes with a grey suit), his fingers are laced across his belly and his mouth is open.
Wide open!
The plane could fly inside.
And his glasses are crooked.
This isn’t the only reason that I know he’s having a bad day. When we took our seats he was on his I-phone, as was everyone else around us, and I could see what he was writing to whoever he was writing to.
“It is not a happy day,” I saw then I tried to look away because I was invading his privacy but then it was like a Soap Opera and I was hooked. I had to know more.
Then the “Flight Attendants” were telling us how to fasten a seat belt and if anybody is caught in the bathroom “dismantling, disabling or destroying a smoke detector” then all of hell is going to break loose.
When I looked back, his I-phone was put away, he’s asleep and his mouth is wide open. He has five fillings. Not the gold fillings. The other kind.
I think that he also had Spinach Salad for lunch.
Either that or he is returning from working on the Nuclear Power plants in Japan though I’m pretty sure it was Spinach Salad.
So this has got me to thinking.
I remember one time I was driving along Bay Street in Downtown Savannah. It’s a beautiful street aside from the thousands of trucks that use it every day for some inexplicable reason other than people who were elected to public office spend all day long making decisions that have inexplicable reasons!
Anyway, I’m driving down Bay and I pass this other car. It was red. And there was this girl driving it and she had long dirty blond hair. Freckles dotted her nose and cheeks. And tears were streaming from down her face which was twisted in agony. And I got all of this in less than ten seconds … from the time it takes to stop a car and look up and see something and then the light changes and then the world changes.
This occurred a long, long time ago. But I can still see her now just as clearly as when I was heading in one direction and she was heading in another and we both paused for a few seconds.
Whenever I drive down Bay Street these days and am stopped by one of the traffic lights she flashes through my mind. What was the agony? She left her husband or he left her? The doctor gave her the bad news? Something horrible happened to the kids? The boss abused her? Maybe it was the period from hell! I don’t know.
But there is something beautiful about simply being who you are … where you are … and not allowing anyone or anything to hold you back from … YOU!
I believe that God gave us life … to be us! It’s such a rotten shame that we spend so much time and energy trying to be what other people want us to be … husbands, wives, children, bosses, friends, clergy and those stupid people who run television.
We literally give ourselves away. We sell our souls. We try to make ourselves into what others want us to be. And we die a little every day when we do this.
So I’ve been on this journey for the past year. A Sabbatical. I paused from life though at a stop light. I’d given everything that I had to give to others and they sure as hell took it all!
And for the past year it’s been my time! For me!
And I’ve clawed myself back to me. There are people who I care about but that is different from caring about what other people think. Or want me to be! The rest of my life is God’s gift to me. And I’ve found my friends. And love has reclaimed my soul after it had been stripped, abandoned and left with no concern whatsoever by others. It was a barren place. Now after this visit to Pittsburgh I’ve suddenly got lots of stuff to do.
The Sabbatical is over.
The rest of my life has begun.
But that girl, crying in her car as we both paused for just seconds, remains a vision of pain and beauty to me all of these years later.
Unlike the guy next to me with his mouth wide open. Though I do hope his day gets better.
Like mine have!
And like I pray that yours do.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
No Socks, Nice Legs and the Underwear-less Congregation
I forgot my socks.
Wouldn’t you know it? I know a power meeting with a hospital President and her Chief Operations Officer and I won’t have socks on. I just forgot to pack them.
It doesn’t bother me as Southern boy to wear a coat, dress slacks and loafers with no socks. Everyone that my Dad ever hung around dressed this way. It is a southern thing and back home no one would give this any thought whatsoever.
Sitting in the coffee bar of the Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt I can’t help but notice that everyone else here is wearing socks. Like me they’re dressed for meetings with coats and slacks and stuff except their ensemble is complete and mine is … tanned.
My feet and ankles are sporting a rather nice golden brown and look healthy! I take care of them and rubbed Queen Helene on them last night. They are moisturized. And I’m sporting them proudly by sitting at a high top table with my feet on the legs of a bar stool so that my pants are riding high so that I’m showing off my legs.
Speaking of which, when I did Bar Church the other day as soon as I was introduced by Samuel Adams somebody in the congregation yelled out “Nice legs Preacher!”
I’d never had this happen before preaching a sermon before. Of course it was the first sermon that I’ve ever delivered wearing running shorts (check it out on the Tybee Church Face Book page to see for yourself!). That’s the great thing about Bar Church … it’s laid back and comfortable.
Once I went to a worship service on a nude beach. It was interesting though I don’t remember anything that the woman delivering the sermon said. She looked good though.
And when it came time to pass the peace I recall that it took a really long time! No body seemed to be in a hurry.
I remember my Dad telling me once that whenever I spoke in front of a crowd to just imagine everyone in the audience sitting out there in their underwear. Now that I’ve actually been a part of an underwear-less congregation I have surpassed his expectations.
Wait!
There’s somebody else here wearing no socks!
Damn he’s got some white feet!
Alright! It’s time to get my game face on and be prepared to stick my feet where the sun don’t shine if need be.
I got the feet for it!
Wouldn’t you know it? I know a power meeting with a hospital President and her Chief Operations Officer and I won’t have socks on. I just forgot to pack them.
It doesn’t bother me as Southern boy to wear a coat, dress slacks and loafers with no socks. Everyone that my Dad ever hung around dressed this way. It is a southern thing and back home no one would give this any thought whatsoever.
Sitting in the coffee bar of the Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt I can’t help but notice that everyone else here is wearing socks. Like me they’re dressed for meetings with coats and slacks and stuff except their ensemble is complete and mine is … tanned.
My feet and ankles are sporting a rather nice golden brown and look healthy! I take care of them and rubbed Queen Helene on them last night. They are moisturized. And I’m sporting them proudly by sitting at a high top table with my feet on the legs of a bar stool so that my pants are riding high so that I’m showing off my legs.
Speaking of which, when I did Bar Church the other day as soon as I was introduced by Samuel Adams somebody in the congregation yelled out “Nice legs Preacher!”
I’d never had this happen before preaching a sermon before. Of course it was the first sermon that I’ve ever delivered wearing running shorts (check it out on the Tybee Church Face Book page to see for yourself!). That’s the great thing about Bar Church … it’s laid back and comfortable.
Once I went to a worship service on a nude beach. It was interesting though I don’t remember anything that the woman delivering the sermon said. She looked good though.
And when it came time to pass the peace I recall that it took a really long time! No body seemed to be in a hurry.
I remember my Dad telling me once that whenever I spoke in front of a crowd to just imagine everyone in the audience sitting out there in their underwear. Now that I’ve actually been a part of an underwear-less congregation I have surpassed his expectations.
Wait!
There’s somebody else here wearing no socks!
Damn he’s got some white feet!
Alright! It’s time to get my game face on and be prepared to stick my feet where the sun don’t shine if need be.
I got the feet for it!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Giving Thanks
After giving Savannah passionate kisses, I’m back at the airport.
Waiting …
Watching …
It is a different type of contemplation than I have on the beloved back deck. Everyone seems anxious.
I’m off to Pittsburgh for meetings tonight and tomorrow with the goal of launching the International Street Medicine Institute. The Board of Directors, of which I’m one, is meeting with the President of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System. The last time that I was in Pittsburgh it was during the NFL playoffs and the Steelers were cruising towards the Super Bowl though they crashed and burned once they got there.
I know all about crash and burn. A year ago at this time I’d already passed burn out and when I found myself “suddenly single” I crash and burned in the worst sort of way.
But yesterday I had the opportunity to say “Thank you” to a collection of people who got me through that rotten part of my life. While several weren’t present at Bar Church, many were. So I told the story of my crashing and burning and then I moved to the incredible friends who rearranged their lives to take care of me when I wasn’t capable of taking care of much anything.
I don’t take much for granted anymore though certainly there were times when I did. Once you survive crashing and burning it leaves you changed. I’m told that I’m softer than I used to be ... humbler … slower …delighting in little things. Celebrating my friends!
I’ve learned a lot about friendship through all of this. After leaving a career that I’d given everything and then being left by someone I’d given everything to, yesterday I thanked my friends publicly. These are the one who refused to take “No” for an answer. They showed up, broke in, cooked when I wouldn’t eat, drug me out when I refused to go, made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry.
They are incredible people and they brought me back to life when I was long gone and buried in this tomb of loneliness.
I know a lot of people. Many of them consider themselves my friends. And I like most. But the ones who refuse to take no for an answer … well … they’re special.
So I’m raising a glass at the airport to some special people. Johnny O and Judy, Whitley of all people, Trolley Joe, Jenny Orr, my extended family at the Breakfast Club, Shirley, Stacy, Sarah, Dave and Sandy and this wonderful dog … Goddess.
Conner and Hania. (woo boy …Conner … I really do hope we get to stand before the Judgment throne together! If we don’t crack God up then we’ll be laughing all the way to Hell!)
Then there are these other friends who rose from the dead to be with me. Dedra, Mitch, Mark, Gyni, Linda and most of all … Fran.
And I’m blessed with children who turned into friends.
And a mother who won’t quit!
Now it’s time to fly.
And I’m looking forward to whatever is going to happen in Pittsburgh but I’m looking forward more to coming home.
To my friends …
Whom I love …
Waiting …
Watching …
It is a different type of contemplation than I have on the beloved back deck. Everyone seems anxious.
I’m off to Pittsburgh for meetings tonight and tomorrow with the goal of launching the International Street Medicine Institute. The Board of Directors, of which I’m one, is meeting with the President of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System. The last time that I was in Pittsburgh it was during the NFL playoffs and the Steelers were cruising towards the Super Bowl though they crashed and burned once they got there.
I know all about crash and burn. A year ago at this time I’d already passed burn out and when I found myself “suddenly single” I crash and burned in the worst sort of way.
But yesterday I had the opportunity to say “Thank you” to a collection of people who got me through that rotten part of my life. While several weren’t present at Bar Church, many were. So I told the story of my crashing and burning and then I moved to the incredible friends who rearranged their lives to take care of me when I wasn’t capable of taking care of much anything.
I don’t take much for granted anymore though certainly there were times when I did. Once you survive crashing and burning it leaves you changed. I’m told that I’m softer than I used to be ... humbler … slower …delighting in little things. Celebrating my friends!
I’ve learned a lot about friendship through all of this. After leaving a career that I’d given everything and then being left by someone I’d given everything to, yesterday I thanked my friends publicly. These are the one who refused to take “No” for an answer. They showed up, broke in, cooked when I wouldn’t eat, drug me out when I refused to go, made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry.
They are incredible people and they brought me back to life when I was long gone and buried in this tomb of loneliness.
I know a lot of people. Many of them consider themselves my friends. And I like most. But the ones who refuse to take no for an answer … well … they’re special.
So I’m raising a glass at the airport to some special people. Johnny O and Judy, Whitley of all people, Trolley Joe, Jenny Orr, my extended family at the Breakfast Club, Shirley, Stacy, Sarah, Dave and Sandy and this wonderful dog … Goddess.
Conner and Hania. (woo boy …Conner … I really do hope we get to stand before the Judgment throne together! If we don’t crack God up then we’ll be laughing all the way to Hell!)
Then there are these other friends who rose from the dead to be with me. Dedra, Mitch, Mark, Gyni, Linda and most of all … Fran.
And I’m blessed with children who turned into friends.
And a mother who won’t quit!
Now it’s time to fly.
And I’m looking forward to whatever is going to happen in Pittsburgh but I’m looking forward more to coming home.
To my friends …
Whom I love …
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Counting Sheep
“It’s Tybee Church,” Johnny O said for no apparent reason.
I looked at him as I took a sip of coffee. I’m never certain where these conversations are going to go. Once he called me just to tell me that he had soiled his pants in the parking lot of Chu’s convenient store. You get my point. Conversations with Johnny O are like roller coaster rides.
“You call it Bar Church,” he continued. “It’s Tybee Church.”
“Whatever,” I replied. “It’s church. It’s in a bar. It’s Bar Church.”
“It’s Tybee Church,’ he scolded.
I thought “Really? I’m being scolded by Johnny O?” The world is surely coming to an end. The moon’s closer to the earth than it’s been in 19 years. That was the last time the world was coming to an end.
“If you have 86 people there,” he continued, “you’ll beat my record by one.”
I thought back to my days as a professional Christian in Louisville at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel. I was always in hot water with the Baptists (which is another way of saying they are convinced that I’m going to hell on the express train) and the only reason that I never got fired was because my numbers were through the roof (or heaven bound as I told them). The entire time that I was at Jeff Street more people kept coming! It was a wild collection of little old ladies, homeless people, hookers, kids from the projects and radical Seminarians.
It was orgasmic!
Anyway I would stroll into the pulpit while Shannon Freeman played the dance music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and sit in the throne type chair that Southern Baptist ministers prefer. I would make certain that my socks were pulled up and wondered if I should shave my legs? Then knowing that I would be trouble for something that week, I would count the number of people who were there that day so that I could complete the form that the Baptist required me to complete each week.
How many came to Sunday School? How many came to Church? How many got saved? How many got Baptized? Did anybody dance? Did another Baptist see you in the liquor store?
You know stuff Baptists care about!
One morning I walked into the sanctuary to the throne seat and somebody had put a cartoon in it. Underneath drawings of sheep were the words “Jesus called us to count his sheep. Not to feed them.”
I busted out laughing in front of a room full of people which is not a bad way to start a worship service.
All of these images rushed through my head as Johnny O paid for his coffee and told me that he would see me at Tybee Church.
I shrugged my shoulders. Another image came to me from my days as a Professional Christian.
“Get up!” I would be commanded.
“No!” I would yell back.
“YOU HAVE TO GET UP!”
“I do not,” I’d bark with the pillow over my head.
“GET UP NOW!”
“Give me one good reason dammit!” I yelled with my eyes still shut.
“It’s Sunday and you’re the minister!”
“Oh yeah,” I’d said. Then I’d get up.
So I’m up and it’s Sunday and I’m preaching at Bar Church today.
Hmmmm!
I wonder if I’ll have any words?
It doesn’t matter. It’s Bar Church. It’s all good.
I looked at him as I took a sip of coffee. I’m never certain where these conversations are going to go. Once he called me just to tell me that he had soiled his pants in the parking lot of Chu’s convenient store. You get my point. Conversations with Johnny O are like roller coaster rides.
“You call it Bar Church,” he continued. “It’s Tybee Church.”
“Whatever,” I replied. “It’s church. It’s in a bar. It’s Bar Church.”
“It’s Tybee Church,’ he scolded.
I thought “Really? I’m being scolded by Johnny O?” The world is surely coming to an end. The moon’s closer to the earth than it’s been in 19 years. That was the last time the world was coming to an end.
“If you have 86 people there,” he continued, “you’ll beat my record by one.”
I thought back to my days as a professional Christian in Louisville at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel. I was always in hot water with the Baptists (which is another way of saying they are convinced that I’m going to hell on the express train) and the only reason that I never got fired was because my numbers were through the roof (or heaven bound as I told them). The entire time that I was at Jeff Street more people kept coming! It was a wild collection of little old ladies, homeless people, hookers, kids from the projects and radical Seminarians.
It was orgasmic!
Anyway I would stroll into the pulpit while Shannon Freeman played the dance music from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and sit in the throne type chair that Southern Baptist ministers prefer. I would make certain that my socks were pulled up and wondered if I should shave my legs? Then knowing that I would be trouble for something that week, I would count the number of people who were there that day so that I could complete the form that the Baptist required me to complete each week.
How many came to Sunday School? How many came to Church? How many got saved? How many got Baptized? Did anybody dance? Did another Baptist see you in the liquor store?
You know stuff Baptists care about!
One morning I walked into the sanctuary to the throne seat and somebody had put a cartoon in it. Underneath drawings of sheep were the words “Jesus called us to count his sheep. Not to feed them.”
I busted out laughing in front of a room full of people which is not a bad way to start a worship service.
All of these images rushed through my head as Johnny O paid for his coffee and told me that he would see me at Tybee Church.
I shrugged my shoulders. Another image came to me from my days as a Professional Christian.
“Get up!” I would be commanded.
“No!” I would yell back.
“YOU HAVE TO GET UP!”
“I do not,” I’d bark with the pillow over my head.
“GET UP NOW!”
“Give me one good reason dammit!” I yelled with my eyes still shut.
“It’s Sunday and you’re the minister!”
“Oh yeah,” I’d said. Then I’d get up.
So I’m up and it’s Sunday and I’m preaching at Bar Church today.
Hmmmm!
I wonder if I’ll have any words?
It doesn’t matter. It’s Bar Church. It’s all good.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Dens of Iniquity
It’s best to be honest. I like dens of iniquity. I always have. I’ve been to many. Often on multiple occasions! If Conner is involved we immediately become the most popular people there while deteriorating the property value at the same time (no small feat!). Just to be clear, a den of iniquity is “a place of immoral behavior, usually of a sexual type.”
The first time that I recall visiting one was in Washington D.C. where there are more whores concentrated in one place than anywhere in the world. I was in Congress. Talk about a den of iniquity!
Anyway I was on a bus full of Southern Baptists, I myself was a professional Christian at the time, and there was this big fat Baptist named Ed who was sitting beside me. The bus was in traffic on M Street and Ed and I could see down this alley that was full of hookers.
“Oh my,” he said in a soft tenor voice.
“What?” I asked staring at the abundant cleavages that I suppose was marketing, though I didn’t realize it then. (I have to ask my friend Jodi about this.)
“I could never,” Ed said.
“Never what” I asked? “Have sex?”
“No,” he answered still admiring the marketing tactics of hookers. “Go to a place like that,” he finished.
“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa,” I shot back holding my hand up in the air. “Doesn’t the Bible say that we’re supposed along the highways and byways and all that stuff …meaning everywhere to deliver the Good News?”
“Well, I could never be with ‘THOSE KINDS OF PEOPE.”
“Really?” I asked in Southern drawl English.
I stopped being Ed’s friend that day. Though in honesty we really weren’t friends anyway! He was a condescending prick. I never liked him.
So later that same day, I walked back to M Street and found the alley and made my way in. She was blond, wore a fur coat and these yellow rubber boots.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Coffee,” I answered.
“I could use some,” she replied.
“Come on,” I motioned.
“No this way,” she corrected my direction and led me to this coffee shop and we ordered. When we sat at the table I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing anything under the fur coat. It was really good coffee!
We spent about half an hour talking. She had a son who was five who she loved more than anything. She was from Virginia and was doing her best to get by. She’d gotten pregnant in college and I told her that I knew all about that. She asked me what I did and I told her that I was a Southern Baptist Minister.
“Yeah,” she said rolling her eyes, “we see a lot of those.”
“Are we nice?” I asked.
“Not really,” she answered taking a sip of coffee.
Then she told me that she had to get back to work. “A girl’s gotta make a living,” she sighed. “And I got my boy to take care of.”
So I walked her back to the alley and she asked me if I needed anything else. I told her no and thanked her for the coffee and gave her $20 telling her it was for her son. She smiled and squeezed my hand then positioned herself for marketing. It got my attention. But I walked away on the cold windy day.
That was the first time. Since then, I’ve learned that “these are my people.” Back home in Louisville I took to visiting the porn shops and met all of the dancers. Most were just like the girl in Washington. They had kids that they loved and were doing their best to support them and themselves.
They took to calling me “The Rev.”
Then homeless guys picked it up. Then it moved south to Tybee Island and I’m still “the Rev.”
I grew to love “Those kind of people.” Passionately! Deeply! They are honest and they are kind and if I asked to kill for me, they would.
I know worst people like bankers, clergy and elected officials but “MY kind of people” are just doing the best that they can.
Just like me.
And just like you.
The first time that I recall visiting one was in Washington D.C. where there are more whores concentrated in one place than anywhere in the world. I was in Congress. Talk about a den of iniquity!
Anyway I was on a bus full of Southern Baptists, I myself was a professional Christian at the time, and there was this big fat Baptist named Ed who was sitting beside me. The bus was in traffic on M Street and Ed and I could see down this alley that was full of hookers.
“Oh my,” he said in a soft tenor voice.
“What?” I asked staring at the abundant cleavages that I suppose was marketing, though I didn’t realize it then. (I have to ask my friend Jodi about this.)
“I could never,” Ed said.
“Never what” I asked? “Have sex?”
“No,” he answered still admiring the marketing tactics of hookers. “Go to a place like that,” he finished.
“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa,” I shot back holding my hand up in the air. “Doesn’t the Bible say that we’re supposed along the highways and byways and all that stuff …meaning everywhere to deliver the Good News?”
“Well, I could never be with ‘THOSE KINDS OF PEOPE.”
“Really?” I asked in Southern drawl English.
I stopped being Ed’s friend that day. Though in honesty we really weren’t friends anyway! He was a condescending prick. I never liked him.
So later that same day, I walked back to M Street and found the alley and made my way in. She was blond, wore a fur coat and these yellow rubber boots.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Coffee,” I answered.
“I could use some,” she replied.
“Come on,” I motioned.
“No this way,” she corrected my direction and led me to this coffee shop and we ordered. When we sat at the table I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t wearing anything under the fur coat. It was really good coffee!
We spent about half an hour talking. She had a son who was five who she loved more than anything. She was from Virginia and was doing her best to get by. She’d gotten pregnant in college and I told her that I knew all about that. She asked me what I did and I told her that I was a Southern Baptist Minister.
“Yeah,” she said rolling her eyes, “we see a lot of those.”
“Are we nice?” I asked.
“Not really,” she answered taking a sip of coffee.
Then she told me that she had to get back to work. “A girl’s gotta make a living,” she sighed. “And I got my boy to take care of.”
So I walked her back to the alley and she asked me if I needed anything else. I told her no and thanked her for the coffee and gave her $20 telling her it was for her son. She smiled and squeezed my hand then positioned herself for marketing. It got my attention. But I walked away on the cold windy day.
That was the first time. Since then, I’ve learned that “these are my people.” Back home in Louisville I took to visiting the porn shops and met all of the dancers. Most were just like the girl in Washington. They had kids that they loved and were doing their best to support them and themselves.
They took to calling me “The Rev.”
Then homeless guys picked it up. Then it moved south to Tybee Island and I’m still “the Rev.”
I grew to love “Those kind of people.” Passionately! Deeply! They are honest and they are kind and if I asked to kill for me, they would.
I know worst people like bankers, clergy and elected officials but “MY kind of people” are just doing the best that they can.
Just like me.
And just like you.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Ripped Open (Ocean Crossing)
Take my hand across the water
You won’t leave no tracks behind
Step all over the moon lit ocean
It’s only in your mind
All these thoughts just rip me open
Who can heal a heart that’s broken?
Like the winds that blow unspoken
Blew my love away
So sings Arlo Guthrie in one of the songs that has become a hymn of my life. When Julie left it was the first part of the song that I posted as a blog because I couldn’t find my own words to write.
Looked into your eyes this morning
You were far away
You knew that I was looking for you
You knew you couldn’t stay
I was in a cab in Washington D.C. with my heart being drug from behind as though tin cans on the back of the car of a newlywed couple’s car.
I was just numb.
Then Skip Eloge called and asked me what was wrong? Where are your words? You always write. So I told him in a numb sort of way. I remember staring at the Washington Monument as I spoke and it was a bright sunny day in D.C. And Arlo’s words kept ringing in my head.
My friend Dedra and I were talking recently and she asked how I kept using lyrics in my conversations. I told her that I think in lyrics. It may as well be a foreign language that I’ve mastered. My dear friend Mitch has also mastered it and he and I can carry on complete conversations with one another just quoting song lyrics.
Anyway, Julie knew she couldn’t stay. I don’t blame her. We’d been through so much. The weight of the world had become oppressive and it crushed us. She went off to survive and I send her the very best of everything.
And I’m still here! Though “here” is a much different place from then. Some things are the same. Goddess is still the most beautiful dog though she stays near me all of the time slamming herself into the sofa or the bed when she wants love. She knows loss too. Though she knows new loves too and gets excited when they arrive.
The house is the same then again it’s not. My Mom had all these dreams about what it should look like and she is a person who has always made dreams come true. So she’s working on it. And it is taking on a different look … a different feel … becoming the right setting for a very different …me.
The friends that I have are the same that I had before though the friendships are far deeper and richer…and fewer. Far fewer! This isn’t a bad thing, I’ve come to learn. Rather than trying to satisfy the masses, I have far more time to invest myself into the few and much more appreciation for what they have invested in me. These are the people who have gotten me through.
So this morning I sit on the beloved back deck with Goddess lying beside me. The choirs of birds are singing. Fran is showering me with love in her thousand shades of green. The newness of the back yard is warm and inviting. I hear the waves of the ocean slap the shore.
On the other side of Fran’s thousand shades of green, hidden from me, are three musicians playing their instruments, remnants of the St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah. A guitar, a violin and a cello sing to me through the trees. Fran has blessed this with purple wisteria shooting from the thousand shades.
And it makes me cry.
So I lean towards the ocean and reach out my hand to the future. Towards this hand that I know is reaching out to me.
I am scared.
But I believe that she’ll take it and we’ll step all over the moon lit ocean. And we’ll make it real. I’m already ripped open though the broken heart is beingl healed.
And there is no need for words.
They’ve all been blown away.
You won’t leave no tracks behind
Step all over the moon lit ocean
It’s only in your mind
All these thoughts just rip me open
Who can heal a heart that’s broken?
Like the winds that blow unspoken
Blew my love away
So sings Arlo Guthrie in one of the songs that has become a hymn of my life. When Julie left it was the first part of the song that I posted as a blog because I couldn’t find my own words to write.
Looked into your eyes this morning
You were far away
You knew that I was looking for you
You knew you couldn’t stay
I was in a cab in Washington D.C. with my heart being drug from behind as though tin cans on the back of the car of a newlywed couple’s car.
I was just numb.
Then Skip Eloge called and asked me what was wrong? Where are your words? You always write. So I told him in a numb sort of way. I remember staring at the Washington Monument as I spoke and it was a bright sunny day in D.C. And Arlo’s words kept ringing in my head.
My friend Dedra and I were talking recently and she asked how I kept using lyrics in my conversations. I told her that I think in lyrics. It may as well be a foreign language that I’ve mastered. My dear friend Mitch has also mastered it and he and I can carry on complete conversations with one another just quoting song lyrics.
Anyway, Julie knew she couldn’t stay. I don’t blame her. We’d been through so much. The weight of the world had become oppressive and it crushed us. She went off to survive and I send her the very best of everything.
And I’m still here! Though “here” is a much different place from then. Some things are the same. Goddess is still the most beautiful dog though she stays near me all of the time slamming herself into the sofa or the bed when she wants love. She knows loss too. Though she knows new loves too and gets excited when they arrive.
The house is the same then again it’s not. My Mom had all these dreams about what it should look like and she is a person who has always made dreams come true. So she’s working on it. And it is taking on a different look … a different feel … becoming the right setting for a very different …me.
The friends that I have are the same that I had before though the friendships are far deeper and richer…and fewer. Far fewer! This isn’t a bad thing, I’ve come to learn. Rather than trying to satisfy the masses, I have far more time to invest myself into the few and much more appreciation for what they have invested in me. These are the people who have gotten me through.
So this morning I sit on the beloved back deck with Goddess lying beside me. The choirs of birds are singing. Fran is showering me with love in her thousand shades of green. The newness of the back yard is warm and inviting. I hear the waves of the ocean slap the shore.
On the other side of Fran’s thousand shades of green, hidden from me, are three musicians playing their instruments, remnants of the St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah. A guitar, a violin and a cello sing to me through the trees. Fran has blessed this with purple wisteria shooting from the thousand shades.
And it makes me cry.
So I lean towards the ocean and reach out my hand to the future. Towards this hand that I know is reaching out to me.
I am scared.
But I believe that she’ll take it and we’ll step all over the moon lit ocean. And we’ll make it real. I’m already ripped open though the broken heart is beingl healed.
And there is no need for words.
They’ve all been blown away.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Happy St. Patrick's Day (or Not)!
I am standing under the spray in my outdoor shower washing my sins away and baptizing myself in Holy Water beside the sea. I am mesmerized at the moment. There is a hole in the wood and a brilliant beam of sunlight is shooting through as though it a laser. Molecules of water mix with the light and two of the four elements that make everything are dancing together in front of me.
Moving my hand through it, I capture the sacred mixture closing my eyes as I close my hand bathed in both water and light. Choirs of birds are singing hymns to God … or to me, I don’t know, but they are proud of their songs and sing them loudly. From the shower I see Fran’s thousand shades of green standing in erect attention not daring to move in the divinity of the morning.
I knew it was going to be a special day as I was running this morning. A red sun hung just over the calmest ocean and the breeze was light. Waves were acting up at the last moment, breaking just at the shore, playfully slapping it then rushing back to Mother Ocean. I kind of lumbered along, not really running … jogging, I guess … because it was all so … serene.
Tranquility is not something that I’ve had an abundance of so when it comes I slow down and take it in. There something about breathing deeply the things that you love…making them part of who you are … redefining your being …becoming who you are going to be.
I think these things as I stand in the baptism of the outdoor shower holding the blessed sacraments of light and water in my still closed fist.
I linger not wanting to move.
It is St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah. As I said last year, it is St. Patrick’s Day … the second highest holy day in Savannah after Christmas but before New Year’s and Easter (Easter would rank better were it not for the Baptist who refuse to participate with the other church’s in their sunrise services).
Flying in from Boston the other day into the Hilton Head International Airport located in Savannah, the plane was filled with people wearing green. They were pouring in for the party. A city of perhaps a180,000 will welcome 400,000 guests! It is something to see and before you die life, you need to see it.
When I was flying into Boston I sat beside a soldier returning from Afghanistan to his home. Next to him was a saleswoman from Albany, Georgia who was well traveled. As soon as the soldier sat down he asked if could borrow my phone.
I imagined he carried a gun, or was trained to kill with his bare hands and Delta does this “Hero Worship” military appreciation speech on every flight, so how could I say no? And he called his girlfriend of seven years. They had not seen one another in seven months. And they excitedly talked about … St. Patrick’s Day.
“Thank you sir,” he said handing me my phone.
“Yeah I appreciate you not killing me either. Oh yeah and for ‘everything that you do for us’” quoting the Delta speech.
He grinned and we got to talking. Most soldiers absolutely hate all of this adoration! It leads to bad things like homelessness, addiction, mental illness and such. I know.
Boston has the largest parade in the world but it doesn’t take place until Saturday. He starts off at a breakfast place on the parade route with his entire family. They start drinking early like we do in Savannah though they have to do it in private there. So they dart in and out during the parade so they can drink. After the parade there are parties everywhere, mostly in bars or backyards (though in snowing in Boston when I was there!).
Then I told him about Savannah. The girl from Albany confirmed my description.
“No shit!” he said repeatedly. “I gotta go!”
“Before you die,” I said. “As a matter of fact, skip this war and have some fun.”
“Yes sir,” he said and smartly saluted.
Still lingering in the baptism of the outdoor shower with the choirs of birds singing with a woodpecker now keeping time and Fran’s thousand shades of green perfectly still, I send him a prayer. I hope he’s having fun. He deserves it. We all deserve it.
And I send another to all of the hundreds of thousands in Savannah today. Y’all have fun too!
Life should be mostly fun.
Then I open my hand and the light mixed with the water resumes its dance.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” I say to no one.
Moving my hand through it, I capture the sacred mixture closing my eyes as I close my hand bathed in both water and light. Choirs of birds are singing hymns to God … or to me, I don’t know, but they are proud of their songs and sing them loudly. From the shower I see Fran’s thousand shades of green standing in erect attention not daring to move in the divinity of the morning.
I knew it was going to be a special day as I was running this morning. A red sun hung just over the calmest ocean and the breeze was light. Waves were acting up at the last moment, breaking just at the shore, playfully slapping it then rushing back to Mother Ocean. I kind of lumbered along, not really running … jogging, I guess … because it was all so … serene.
Tranquility is not something that I’ve had an abundance of so when it comes I slow down and take it in. There something about breathing deeply the things that you love…making them part of who you are … redefining your being …becoming who you are going to be.
I think these things as I stand in the baptism of the outdoor shower holding the blessed sacraments of light and water in my still closed fist.
I linger not wanting to move.
It is St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah. As I said last year, it is St. Patrick’s Day … the second highest holy day in Savannah after Christmas but before New Year’s and Easter (Easter would rank better were it not for the Baptist who refuse to participate with the other church’s in their sunrise services).
Flying in from Boston the other day into the Hilton Head International Airport located in Savannah, the plane was filled with people wearing green. They were pouring in for the party. A city of perhaps a180,000 will welcome 400,000 guests! It is something to see and before you die life, you need to see it.
When I was flying into Boston I sat beside a soldier returning from Afghanistan to his home. Next to him was a saleswoman from Albany, Georgia who was well traveled. As soon as the soldier sat down he asked if could borrow my phone.
I imagined he carried a gun, or was trained to kill with his bare hands and Delta does this “Hero Worship” military appreciation speech on every flight, so how could I say no? And he called his girlfriend of seven years. They had not seen one another in seven months. And they excitedly talked about … St. Patrick’s Day.
“Thank you sir,” he said handing me my phone.
“Yeah I appreciate you not killing me either. Oh yeah and for ‘everything that you do for us’” quoting the Delta speech.
He grinned and we got to talking. Most soldiers absolutely hate all of this adoration! It leads to bad things like homelessness, addiction, mental illness and such. I know.
Boston has the largest parade in the world but it doesn’t take place until Saturday. He starts off at a breakfast place on the parade route with his entire family. They start drinking early like we do in Savannah though they have to do it in private there. So they dart in and out during the parade so they can drink. After the parade there are parties everywhere, mostly in bars or backyards (though in snowing in Boston when I was there!).
Then I told him about Savannah. The girl from Albany confirmed my description.
“No shit!” he said repeatedly. “I gotta go!”
“Before you die,” I said. “As a matter of fact, skip this war and have some fun.”
“Yes sir,” he said and smartly saluted.
Still lingering in the baptism of the outdoor shower with the choirs of birds singing with a woodpecker now keeping time and Fran’s thousand shades of green perfectly still, I send him a prayer. I hope he’s having fun. He deserves it. We all deserve it.
And I send another to all of the hundreds of thousands in Savannah today. Y’all have fun too!
Life should be mostly fun.
Then I open my hand and the light mixed with the water resumes its dance.
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” I say to no one.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Health and Nazis
“Whose drunken bicycle is that outside?” Patti asked as she entered the door marked “Exit Only” now in multiple languages at the Breakfast Club.
She was smiling at me.
I pointed down the counter. “That would that drunk right there,” I answered.
She turned and, sure enough, there he was wobbling on a stool at 6:50 in the morning; un-kept blond hair, half-closed eyes and smelling of alcohol. He was sitting very close to the grill which had me worried…the whole place could go up in flames in a Nano-second.
Patti winced and said “Ouch!”
It’s Whitley’s bicycle’s fault. A couple of weeks ago at the Marlyn Monroe’s oyster roast his bike got wasted and got Whitley wasted too. I had to take both of them home in my car though they only live 3 blocks away. Nevertheless, Whitley’s bicycle has already had a tremendous negative influence on the island’s other bicycles. This is the latest example!
“Can I have a cigarette?” the blond wobbly boy asked.
“Stop mooching off my employees!” Jodee commanded as he pulled an egg beater affixed to a rubber tube, hanging from the ceiling and began to beat eggs.
I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to watch; wobbly blond boy or Jodee trying out his latest invention? You can easily lapse into sensory overload at the Breakfast Club!
Through I was only gone for two days, strange things have occurred at the Club in that time.
First of all, Phil has taken to wearing rubber gloves as he makes toast, puts pickles on plates, and butters English muffins. I assumed he was merely combining his lifelong dream of becoming a Proctologist with his love of cooking.
Then there are the hairnets! They appeared overnight and beg a very deep question. “Why do men with shaved heads wear hair nets?” I can’t figure it out.
Finally, I understand that a new dry-erase board will be installed at the end of the counter so that Franklin, who is brown, can write down the time that a dozen eggs are pulled out the walk-in cooler. This is so that customers, most of do not sit within view of the end of the counter, will know that the eggs have not just been sitting all day becoming chickens.
Now if you’ve been to the Breakfast Club, you know that they cook a lot of eggs! Crates each hour! Franklin, who is brown, is also responsible for getting everything ready for the cooks so that they can … well … cook! I think that he can write so maybe this announcement of the abortion of a dozen eggs will be meaningful to some.
But if Franklin, who is brown, will have to stop prepping every time a soon to be aborted egg comes out of the walk-in cooler then production is going to be significantly reduced and the lines at the Breakfast Club are going to get longer and then Tybee Parking Services will have to get involved and they are Nazis.
“So,” I ask in my never ending role as Chaplain of the Breakfast Club, “who thought of all of these bright ideas?”
“Health Department,” I am told.
“Hmm,” I reply. I have lots of good friends at the Health Department. Most are really good people. A couple are the dearest of friends.
“Really” I ask?
“Yeah,” I am told, “this guy with a clipboard comes in and walks around telling what is wrong and how to fix it. He just gives orders. We can’t talk to him. Then throws out scores and tells us that it better be fixed time he comes in. Then he leaves and goes and does it at another restaurant.”
“Sounds like Parking Services,” I muse. “Does he wear a hair net and rubber gloves?” I ask.
Blond, wobbly boy stands up and wobbles.
He had ordered an egg, cheese and bacon on a toasted English muffin. As I watched them prepare it … well…it suddenly seemed like NASA space experiment. Nobody could touch anything. The Chefs put on body condoms. Franklin, who is brown, was trying to write the time every time an egg came out of the walk-in cooler which was every 7 seconds.
Somehow they did it.
I was exhausted!
And I couldn’t imagine how much more protection we can stand. Government has turned into Nanies. I mean I understand that restaurants should be held to the highest of standards as they serve the public but … some of this stuff is ridiculous.
“Would you like a lid with your To-go coffee sir,” Daniel asked drunken, blond wobbly boy?
“No thanks,” he wobbled back. “I’m on a bicycle.”
And as I left, I couldn’t help but think that there is something strangely similar to both lines of logic.
She was smiling at me.
I pointed down the counter. “That would that drunk right there,” I answered.
She turned and, sure enough, there he was wobbling on a stool at 6:50 in the morning; un-kept blond hair, half-closed eyes and smelling of alcohol. He was sitting very close to the grill which had me worried…the whole place could go up in flames in a Nano-second.
Patti winced and said “Ouch!”
It’s Whitley’s bicycle’s fault. A couple of weeks ago at the Marlyn Monroe’s oyster roast his bike got wasted and got Whitley wasted too. I had to take both of them home in my car though they only live 3 blocks away. Nevertheless, Whitley’s bicycle has already had a tremendous negative influence on the island’s other bicycles. This is the latest example!
“Can I have a cigarette?” the blond wobbly boy asked.
“Stop mooching off my employees!” Jodee commanded as he pulled an egg beater affixed to a rubber tube, hanging from the ceiling and began to beat eggs.
I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to watch; wobbly blond boy or Jodee trying out his latest invention? You can easily lapse into sensory overload at the Breakfast Club!
Through I was only gone for two days, strange things have occurred at the Club in that time.
First of all, Phil has taken to wearing rubber gloves as he makes toast, puts pickles on plates, and butters English muffins. I assumed he was merely combining his lifelong dream of becoming a Proctologist with his love of cooking.
Then there are the hairnets! They appeared overnight and beg a very deep question. “Why do men with shaved heads wear hair nets?” I can’t figure it out.
Finally, I understand that a new dry-erase board will be installed at the end of the counter so that Franklin, who is brown, can write down the time that a dozen eggs are pulled out the walk-in cooler. This is so that customers, most of do not sit within view of the end of the counter, will know that the eggs have not just been sitting all day becoming chickens.
Now if you’ve been to the Breakfast Club, you know that they cook a lot of eggs! Crates each hour! Franklin, who is brown, is also responsible for getting everything ready for the cooks so that they can … well … cook! I think that he can write so maybe this announcement of the abortion of a dozen eggs will be meaningful to some.
But if Franklin, who is brown, will have to stop prepping every time a soon to be aborted egg comes out of the walk-in cooler then production is going to be significantly reduced and the lines at the Breakfast Club are going to get longer and then Tybee Parking Services will have to get involved and they are Nazis.
“So,” I ask in my never ending role as Chaplain of the Breakfast Club, “who thought of all of these bright ideas?”
“Health Department,” I am told.
“Hmm,” I reply. I have lots of good friends at the Health Department. Most are really good people. A couple are the dearest of friends.
“Really” I ask?
“Yeah,” I am told, “this guy with a clipboard comes in and walks around telling what is wrong and how to fix it. He just gives orders. We can’t talk to him. Then throws out scores and tells us that it better be fixed time he comes in. Then he leaves and goes and does it at another restaurant.”
“Sounds like Parking Services,” I muse. “Does he wear a hair net and rubber gloves?” I ask.
Blond, wobbly boy stands up and wobbles.
He had ordered an egg, cheese and bacon on a toasted English muffin. As I watched them prepare it … well…it suddenly seemed like NASA space experiment. Nobody could touch anything. The Chefs put on body condoms. Franklin, who is brown, was trying to write the time every time an egg came out of the walk-in cooler which was every 7 seconds.
Somehow they did it.
I was exhausted!
And I couldn’t imagine how much more protection we can stand. Government has turned into Nanies. I mean I understand that restaurants should be held to the highest of standards as they serve the public but … some of this stuff is ridiculous.
“Would you like a lid with your To-go coffee sir,” Daniel asked drunken, blond wobbly boy?
“No thanks,” he wobbled back. “I’m on a bicycle.”
And as I left, I couldn’t help but think that there is something strangely similar to both lines of logic.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Waking Up
Three young teens sat at a table with a smiling supervisor. Each was different. Long black hair spilled over the back of her wheelchair and a beatific smile of the whitest teeth greeted me as I entered the room. Her throat had a purple scar and when she said “Hello” it came out slurred as though she missed the “L’s”.
Beside her, a young chubby boy with thick black hair studied his work with deep concentration. Brown eyes sat deep back in the sockets and his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth. Using his good hand, he took the balloon and worked to affix it on top of the value. The supervisor was giving him undivided attention celebrating each time he was successful.
The last was a smaller boy with his back to me. His Red Sox cap was on backwards so I could see the dirty logo. His dirty jacket had the Patriots logo on it. He worked at lightning speed throwing completed balloons with values in the giant bag.
It filled me with emotion and moisture covered my eyes. I smiled back at the girl and told her “Hello.” Her smile grew bigger.
Later in the day I sat beside her at a table full of people with disabilities or self-advocates as they called themselves. With us were two parents and a few staff members of “The Triangle” near Boston.
“When I was growing up my mother would push me down the stairs,” a short plump girl with wild black hair explained, “she is a drug addict and calls me every day asking for money and I TELL HER NO.” The words came haltingly with the silence in between each word full of wet emotion.
A short man of perhaps 40 with a crew cut and eyes that looked in two different directions at the same time spoke in the voice of child. “My mother always protected me growing up and now I want protect myself.”
A young man who couldn’t sit still kept raising his hand then quickly putting it down again. His face remained devoid of expression and when he talked it was in a monotone voice and his eyes were looking past us into another universe. “What happened in the 4th grade will always stay with me,” and told us being attacked for simply being … different.
As each spoke the others at the table would smile and nod and mutter words of affirmation.
Then we walked into television production studio called “Ablevision.” Three people were working filming their own cable network show … One behind the camera, one at a computer working on sub-titles and the last holding the microphone talking. “We are people with ability,” he said in a loud voice.
And they are … in spite of the things that are wrong.
Finally we went into a cafeteria that reminded me of the Starfish Café that I helped to start all of those ago. Except this one was run by people with disabilities. Taking my tray down the service line each asked me with a broad smile what I wanted.
Soup? Sandwich? Salad? Cookie? Then the older man sat at the cash register at the end of the line. The room was filled with people, virtually all with … challenges that I don’t have.
Nine out of ten people with disabilities are abused in the United States. Sexual abuse is most common among the youngest of them.
I was there learning about amazing work being done teaching these folks how to be “self-advocates” and take care of themselves. They proudly demonstrated what they had learned. And I was doing my best to help them think through how to take all of this stuff to the next level.
In another meeting, a man in a wheelchair with one knarred hand spoke from a mouth that only one side worked. “There are two types of stories about us,” his slurred but passionate words informed us, “we’re either a sob story or we’re ‘Super-Crip’ throwing off our disabilities in a single bound.”
Throughout the day I kept grabbing my I-Phone to send messages to people about things that I was learning and that we’ll need as we establish an effort to help others make themselves better.
In the midst of this day something inside of me woke that’s been asleep for a while. I found myself missing … this.
And the passion that has driven me through my life is awake again.
Beside her, a young chubby boy with thick black hair studied his work with deep concentration. Brown eyes sat deep back in the sockets and his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth. Using his good hand, he took the balloon and worked to affix it on top of the value. The supervisor was giving him undivided attention celebrating each time he was successful.
The last was a smaller boy with his back to me. His Red Sox cap was on backwards so I could see the dirty logo. His dirty jacket had the Patriots logo on it. He worked at lightning speed throwing completed balloons with values in the giant bag.
It filled me with emotion and moisture covered my eyes. I smiled back at the girl and told her “Hello.” Her smile grew bigger.
Later in the day I sat beside her at a table full of people with disabilities or self-advocates as they called themselves. With us were two parents and a few staff members of “The Triangle” near Boston.
“When I was growing up my mother would push me down the stairs,” a short plump girl with wild black hair explained, “she is a drug addict and calls me every day asking for money and I TELL HER NO.” The words came haltingly with the silence in between each word full of wet emotion.
A short man of perhaps 40 with a crew cut and eyes that looked in two different directions at the same time spoke in the voice of child. “My mother always protected me growing up and now I want protect myself.”
A young man who couldn’t sit still kept raising his hand then quickly putting it down again. His face remained devoid of expression and when he talked it was in a monotone voice and his eyes were looking past us into another universe. “What happened in the 4th grade will always stay with me,” and told us being attacked for simply being … different.
As each spoke the others at the table would smile and nod and mutter words of affirmation.
Then we walked into television production studio called “Ablevision.” Three people were working filming their own cable network show … One behind the camera, one at a computer working on sub-titles and the last holding the microphone talking. “We are people with ability,” he said in a loud voice.
And they are … in spite of the things that are wrong.
Finally we went into a cafeteria that reminded me of the Starfish Café that I helped to start all of those ago. Except this one was run by people with disabilities. Taking my tray down the service line each asked me with a broad smile what I wanted.
Soup? Sandwich? Salad? Cookie? Then the older man sat at the cash register at the end of the line. The room was filled with people, virtually all with … challenges that I don’t have.
Nine out of ten people with disabilities are abused in the United States. Sexual abuse is most common among the youngest of them.
I was there learning about amazing work being done teaching these folks how to be “self-advocates” and take care of themselves. They proudly demonstrated what they had learned. And I was doing my best to help them think through how to take all of this stuff to the next level.
In another meeting, a man in a wheelchair with one knarred hand spoke from a mouth that only one side worked. “There are two types of stories about us,” his slurred but passionate words informed us, “we’re either a sob story or we’re ‘Super-Crip’ throwing off our disabilities in a single bound.”
Throughout the day I kept grabbing my I-Phone to send messages to people about things that I was learning and that we’ll need as we establish an effort to help others make themselves better.
In the midst of this day something inside of me woke that’s been asleep for a while. I found myself missing … this.
And the passion that has driven me through my life is awake again.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Doing Urban
Let me begin by saying that I like Boston. Actually I’m in Cambridge which is full of students and trendy places on MASS Ave spilling into Harvard Square. I’m staying at a funky Bread & Breakfast, the “Harding House” which used to be a grocery store in the 1860s and now boast 20 guest rooms. It sits on Harvard Street and is surrounded by student apartment complexes and old Cambridge homes. The streets are brick and naked trees line them. It is quaint.
Around 3:00, after checking in I went exploring meaning I walked outside realized how cold it was and immediately went back inside. Grabbing my coat I resumed my exploration. People were bundled up and most everyone wears black or grey. Right off the bat I noticed a couple of things.
First of all, I seemed to be the only person in this city who realizes that it is COLD!!! Everybody else seemed to be under the delusion that it’s spring. Evidently in Boston if the sun is shining that means it’s balmy.
Next I noticed that white people are a lot whiter here! I had to put on my sunglasses just to nod hello or ask for directions as the balmy sun glared off of their pasty white skin magnifying light to atomic proportions. We’re talking white people! Someone should be trying to figure out how to harness that energy!
So I did what I always do when I have a few hours to kill in a city. I found a local neighborhood pup which is one of the great things about urban living in old cities. “Callahan’s Down Stairs” is a one story building with a green façade with blackened windows. From the outside looking in it appeared to be an Irish Pup that had closed decades ago. But it was open so in I went.
Dark, musty with oak floors the bar ran from one end of the building to the other and the stools were filled with men. The bar itself took up a quarter of the room. A small dance floor was in the corner with band equipment set up for some time later. Real paintings of near nudes hung on the walls and were in sore need of dusting. Flat screen televisions showing basketball games were the only hint of modern anything.
Finding a stool I nestled in between two groups of men. Both groups were older and were drinking liquor in big glasses. Obviously friends, they slapped one another on the back, cracking jokes. One group talked news. The other watched basketball. Both sets were equally integrated.
When I ordered a beer and asked for a glass both groups stopped talking to watch Mike the Bartender serve me. They watched me pour in silence. The sound of the Miller Light hitting the glass was deafening. I looked up at them, shrugged my shoulders and took a sip. Several laughed and they all resumed what they’d been doing.
After a while I made my way back to the Harding House where I met my dinner mates and we walked to a trendy restaurant “Country Kitchen” which has nothing country about it. Another old store converted into an eatery the place was filled with students. Water was served in the tiniest glasses ever invented. Wine was poured into the largest goblets that I’ve ever seen. Organic food was piled in tremendous portions.
But it was a good place to talk and we did. Topics ranged from what’s been going on in our personal lives to opportunities for new things in an ever changing world. Afterwards I was reminded of another thing that I like about urban living. After supper you walk home or back to where you’re staying. It was a pleasant end of the day.
Then I went to bed. As night deepened, the freeze resumed its command of the city. I lay in a bed piled with comforters, warm and cozy but God forbid if I needed to get out for any reason. I must confess that this makes for good sleeping. The only thing that would make it better would be to have right person to cuddle with beside me.
It was a nice slide back into the urban life. In Louisville I lived in the inner city with my family literally alongside homeless people. In Savannah my entire career was working to enhance the downtown area. My work has taken me to most every major city in the United States, some in Europe and even Havana Cuba. I’ve seen a lot of urban in my life!
Today I will spend my time doing urban in detail again. There is this group that is working to develop curriculums to teach children with disabilities how to protect themselves against sexual assault. The rate of assault for kids with problems is twice as much as kids without a disability. Most often they happen in school or church.
Fun stuff, huh?
But important stuff!
Sipping coffee this morning I feel myself gearing up to dive back into it all. I’m still not finished with the self-journey to who I am but I understand that this is part of it. And while I miss the balmy eighty degrees of Tybee Island, I am glad that I am here today.
Around 3:00, after checking in I went exploring meaning I walked outside realized how cold it was and immediately went back inside. Grabbing my coat I resumed my exploration. People were bundled up and most everyone wears black or grey. Right off the bat I noticed a couple of things.
First of all, I seemed to be the only person in this city who realizes that it is COLD!!! Everybody else seemed to be under the delusion that it’s spring. Evidently in Boston if the sun is shining that means it’s balmy.
Next I noticed that white people are a lot whiter here! I had to put on my sunglasses just to nod hello or ask for directions as the balmy sun glared off of their pasty white skin magnifying light to atomic proportions. We’re talking white people! Someone should be trying to figure out how to harness that energy!
So I did what I always do when I have a few hours to kill in a city. I found a local neighborhood pup which is one of the great things about urban living in old cities. “Callahan’s Down Stairs” is a one story building with a green façade with blackened windows. From the outside looking in it appeared to be an Irish Pup that had closed decades ago. But it was open so in I went.
Dark, musty with oak floors the bar ran from one end of the building to the other and the stools were filled with men. The bar itself took up a quarter of the room. A small dance floor was in the corner with band equipment set up for some time later. Real paintings of near nudes hung on the walls and were in sore need of dusting. Flat screen televisions showing basketball games were the only hint of modern anything.
Finding a stool I nestled in between two groups of men. Both groups were older and were drinking liquor in big glasses. Obviously friends, they slapped one another on the back, cracking jokes. One group talked news. The other watched basketball. Both sets were equally integrated.
When I ordered a beer and asked for a glass both groups stopped talking to watch Mike the Bartender serve me. They watched me pour in silence. The sound of the Miller Light hitting the glass was deafening. I looked up at them, shrugged my shoulders and took a sip. Several laughed and they all resumed what they’d been doing.
After a while I made my way back to the Harding House where I met my dinner mates and we walked to a trendy restaurant “Country Kitchen” which has nothing country about it. Another old store converted into an eatery the place was filled with students. Water was served in the tiniest glasses ever invented. Wine was poured into the largest goblets that I’ve ever seen. Organic food was piled in tremendous portions.
But it was a good place to talk and we did. Topics ranged from what’s been going on in our personal lives to opportunities for new things in an ever changing world. Afterwards I was reminded of another thing that I like about urban living. After supper you walk home or back to where you’re staying. It was a pleasant end of the day.
Then I went to bed. As night deepened, the freeze resumed its command of the city. I lay in a bed piled with comforters, warm and cozy but God forbid if I needed to get out for any reason. I must confess that this makes for good sleeping. The only thing that would make it better would be to have right person to cuddle with beside me.
It was a nice slide back into the urban life. In Louisville I lived in the inner city with my family literally alongside homeless people. In Savannah my entire career was working to enhance the downtown area. My work has taken me to most every major city in the United States, some in Europe and even Havana Cuba. I’ve seen a lot of urban in my life!
Today I will spend my time doing urban in detail again. There is this group that is working to develop curriculums to teach children with disabilities how to protect themselves against sexual assault. The rate of assault for kids with problems is twice as much as kids without a disability. Most often they happen in school or church.
Fun stuff, huh?
But important stuff!
Sipping coffee this morning I feel myself gearing up to dive back into it all. I’m still not finished with the self-journey to who I am but I understand that this is part of it. And while I miss the balmy eighty degrees of Tybee Island, I am glad that I am here today.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The New Future
It is a typical travel day save that it’s happening on a Sunday. I have meetings in Boston tonight and throughout tomorrow then return on Tuesday. I walked Goddess and said goodbye to the marsh and Back River. It is going to be a glorious day on Tybee and I’m going to miss it to spend half the day in airports and then the rest in below freezing temperatures.
So I rush to the airport and because I go by my middle name “Micheal” instead of my first name “William” it can cause problems. You know how when you fill out most anything it asks for your first name, your middle initial and your last name?
Today it caused problems. Rather than booking my flight as I normally do, a travel agent did it. So when Delta tried to log me in with my frequent flyer status, Homeland Security caught the discrepancy in the names and immediately assumed that I’m a terrorist!
I’m wearing jeans, a black long shelve sweater and tennis shoes. I’m also carrying a brief case. This is apparently one of the profile pictures of terrorism. Maybe it’s because I haven’t cut my hair in a long time. Who knows?
Regardless the Delta agent and their T.S.A. representative spent about half-an-hour on the phone working everything out for me. I stood there checking on my friends on Face Book with my I-phone.
Then I made it through security who obviously did not get the memo that Homeland Security had just been checking me out. So I rushed to the gate to board the plane and of course it was delayed.
So I’m sitting here wondering about things. Airport contemplation is different from the island brand. I’m in transition from Tybee Island to Boston today. I’ve controlled a lot about how this came about but, as the above illustrates, there is a lot that’s out of my control. Ultimately I’ll make it where I’m trying to go.
It can be a metaphor for my life. The past year has been one of transition for me. Much of who I was is no longer the case. The family that I was part of is no more. Relationships continue but I am no longer defined as a husband. I’m no longer suddenly single. I live alone with a dog.
What I do no longer defines who I am. It defines who I was. Other people now oversee the things that I helped put together and in no time at all they split it in half. Even what I built is no longer defined as it was. I can’t even point to what I used to be.
What I’ve actually done for the past year is get back in touch with who I am through writing, reflecting, long walks, and circling myself with a small group of friends who took it upon themselves to define who they are.
I’ve been told this has led to me becoming a softer person, no longer relentlessly driven to succeed on saving the world from itself. I take my time now, delighting in nature, little things, friends and opportunities that come to me. Friends who love me bring me gifts of long conversations, laughter and are forever leaving notes and presents on my door, the porch, the beloved back deck and in my house. Yesterday I got home from marching in a parade and one was lying on my bed!
Transition means that we move from something towards something else. The past is being left. The future waits for us to grab and mold. We start to imagine it and then it takes hold of our heart and before we know it is the future we care about and not the past (Save perhaps as a celebration of who we used to be).
Unless we stop the transition by choosing to try our best to keep things the way that they are! A lot of what is wrong with the world, and the individuals who comprise it, is that far too many try to keep things the way that they are … scared of change and the cost that often goes along with it, not believing that things get better.
When this year of transition began for me I was tired and worn out of the way things were in my life. But I kept trying anyway. There were a lot of things wrong but I’m not a quitter so I kept at it until it all eventually came apart.
I gave it my best! I have no doubts about that. The only regret that I have is that I didn’t start this journey when I first began to imagine the possibilities of a new future. Instead I listened to the counsel of others who wanted to keep things the way that they were. And it ended up being at my expense.
I think about these things watching people wait on planes that are delayed. They are agitated and frustrated.
I don’t mind. A new future is being imagined that will be far better than the past and its already worked its way into my heart.
So I rush to the airport and because I go by my middle name “Micheal” instead of my first name “William” it can cause problems. You know how when you fill out most anything it asks for your first name, your middle initial and your last name?
Today it caused problems. Rather than booking my flight as I normally do, a travel agent did it. So when Delta tried to log me in with my frequent flyer status, Homeland Security caught the discrepancy in the names and immediately assumed that I’m a terrorist!
I’m wearing jeans, a black long shelve sweater and tennis shoes. I’m also carrying a brief case. This is apparently one of the profile pictures of terrorism. Maybe it’s because I haven’t cut my hair in a long time. Who knows?
Regardless the Delta agent and their T.S.A. representative spent about half-an-hour on the phone working everything out for me. I stood there checking on my friends on Face Book with my I-phone.
Then I made it through security who obviously did not get the memo that Homeland Security had just been checking me out. So I rushed to the gate to board the plane and of course it was delayed.
So I’m sitting here wondering about things. Airport contemplation is different from the island brand. I’m in transition from Tybee Island to Boston today. I’ve controlled a lot about how this came about but, as the above illustrates, there is a lot that’s out of my control. Ultimately I’ll make it where I’m trying to go.
It can be a metaphor for my life. The past year has been one of transition for me. Much of who I was is no longer the case. The family that I was part of is no more. Relationships continue but I am no longer defined as a husband. I’m no longer suddenly single. I live alone with a dog.
What I do no longer defines who I am. It defines who I was. Other people now oversee the things that I helped put together and in no time at all they split it in half. Even what I built is no longer defined as it was. I can’t even point to what I used to be.
What I’ve actually done for the past year is get back in touch with who I am through writing, reflecting, long walks, and circling myself with a small group of friends who took it upon themselves to define who they are.
I’ve been told this has led to me becoming a softer person, no longer relentlessly driven to succeed on saving the world from itself. I take my time now, delighting in nature, little things, friends and opportunities that come to me. Friends who love me bring me gifts of long conversations, laughter and are forever leaving notes and presents on my door, the porch, the beloved back deck and in my house. Yesterday I got home from marching in a parade and one was lying on my bed!
Transition means that we move from something towards something else. The past is being left. The future waits for us to grab and mold. We start to imagine it and then it takes hold of our heart and before we know it is the future we care about and not the past (Save perhaps as a celebration of who we used to be).
Unless we stop the transition by choosing to try our best to keep things the way that they are! A lot of what is wrong with the world, and the individuals who comprise it, is that far too many try to keep things the way that they are … scared of change and the cost that often goes along with it, not believing that things get better.
When this year of transition began for me I was tired and worn out of the way things were in my life. But I kept trying anyway. There were a lot of things wrong but I’m not a quitter so I kept at it until it all eventually came apart.
I gave it my best! I have no doubts about that. The only regret that I have is that I didn’t start this journey when I first began to imagine the possibilities of a new future. Instead I listened to the counsel of others who wanted to keep things the way that they were. And it ended up being at my expense.
I think about these things watching people wait on planes that are delayed. They are agitated and frustrated.
I don’t mind. A new future is being imagined that will be far better than the past and its already worked its way into my heart.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Tis the Season
“What’s that hat?” she asked
“It’s a covering for the head,” Daniel deadpanned in response.
I should have warned her of the incredibility witty sense of humor of the very sick people who work at the Breakfast Club but Dedra is from “up the country” and didn’t know any better.
It was one of those mornings when as soon as the doors opened the place was full. As soon as this happened, it was time to leave. “Tis the season” I said to myself. The season on Tybee used to be from June through August. Now there are a few weeks in February when things get slow!
I miss the old days.
In the old days if you drank too much you could call the Tybee Island Police Department and they would come get you and drive you home. Of course in those days the City Council would all gather at “Spankey’s” across the street from city hall for a few drinks before the meeting. Then they would all order one in large “to go” cups, walk across the street and call the meeting to order. Most of the people in the audience brought one too that they had fixed at home. City Council meetings were a lot more fun back then and it seemed like a lot more got done.
Then there was Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!!!, who arrived at the scene of the crime when Bruce ran into my car when my son Jeremy and I were leaving the Post Office when it was on the south end and knocked his truck through the front door of Kitten’s Korner, an alleged strip club. My car was in the middle of Butler Avenue.
So Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!!! arrived and asked what happened. I blamed Bruce. He blamed me. Jeremy broke the tie and it was Bruce’s fault.
Then Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!! asked for our license and if anyone had been drinking. Bruce said, “Hold my beer” and gave it to the officer while he got his license out of the truck.
That’s the way it was back then.
It’s different now. Though there are these pockets of resistance; The Breakfast Club, the Bored Meeting, Fannie’s-on-the-Beach, kids having sex on the Sally Pierce Nature Trail and adults having sex on the Sally Pierce Nature Trail.
The old vibe continues somehow. Last night at Bernie’s, where Sam Adams and Gordon play damn good live music, a bunch of bikers from South Carolina were having a wedding party. Hairy, long haired fat men in leather with women who had bathed in tequila is just not something you see every day.
Then there is today’s parade. Its Tybee’s St. Patrick’s Day parade though St. Patrick’s Day is not until Thursday. That is because the current Tybee Island City Council doesn’t drink. Nor do they do pot.
They do overdose on hiring city employees.
Anyway they decided that a great stimulus package would be to have a parade every week. The entire Island is overdosing on parades! Pirate Fest, Christmas, New Year’s, Mardi Gras, and now St. Patrick’s Day when it’s not St. Patrick’s Day. I understand that the current sober City Council is now considering a Streaker’s Parade in honor of the 1970’s epidemic and Condom week in promotion of safe sex while cleaning out the Sally Pierce Nature Trail at the same time.
I digress.
On Tybee Island, the mantra remains any excuse for a party. We keep having them. I’m marching in today’s parade as part of the O’Neil Big Unit Brigade. It’ll be fun.
Tis the season!
“It’s a covering for the head,” Daniel deadpanned in response.
I should have warned her of the incredibility witty sense of humor of the very sick people who work at the Breakfast Club but Dedra is from “up the country” and didn’t know any better.
It was one of those mornings when as soon as the doors opened the place was full. As soon as this happened, it was time to leave. “Tis the season” I said to myself. The season on Tybee used to be from June through August. Now there are a few weeks in February when things get slow!
I miss the old days.
In the old days if you drank too much you could call the Tybee Island Police Department and they would come get you and drive you home. Of course in those days the City Council would all gather at “Spankey’s” across the street from city hall for a few drinks before the meeting. Then they would all order one in large “to go” cups, walk across the street and call the meeting to order. Most of the people in the audience brought one too that they had fixed at home. City Council meetings were a lot more fun back then and it seemed like a lot more got done.
Then there was Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!!!, who arrived at the scene of the crime when Bruce ran into my car when my son Jeremy and I were leaving the Post Office when it was on the south end and knocked his truck through the front door of Kitten’s Korner, an alleged strip club. My car was in the middle of Butler Avenue.
So Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!!! arrived and asked what happened. I blamed Bruce. He blamed me. Jeremy broke the tie and it was Bruce’s fault.
Then Jimmy T, THE GREATEST TYBEE POLICE OFFICER EVER!!!! asked for our license and if anyone had been drinking. Bruce said, “Hold my beer” and gave it to the officer while he got his license out of the truck.
That’s the way it was back then.
It’s different now. Though there are these pockets of resistance; The Breakfast Club, the Bored Meeting, Fannie’s-on-the-Beach, kids having sex on the Sally Pierce Nature Trail and adults having sex on the Sally Pierce Nature Trail.
The old vibe continues somehow. Last night at Bernie’s, where Sam Adams and Gordon play damn good live music, a bunch of bikers from South Carolina were having a wedding party. Hairy, long haired fat men in leather with women who had bathed in tequila is just not something you see every day.
Then there is today’s parade. Its Tybee’s St. Patrick’s Day parade though St. Patrick’s Day is not until Thursday. That is because the current Tybee Island City Council doesn’t drink. Nor do they do pot.
They do overdose on hiring city employees.
Anyway they decided that a great stimulus package would be to have a parade every week. The entire Island is overdosing on parades! Pirate Fest, Christmas, New Year’s, Mardi Gras, and now St. Patrick’s Day when it’s not St. Patrick’s Day. I understand that the current sober City Council is now considering a Streaker’s Parade in honor of the 1970’s epidemic and Condom week in promotion of safe sex while cleaning out the Sally Pierce Nature Trail at the same time.
I digress.
On Tybee Island, the mantra remains any excuse for a party. We keep having them. I’m marching in today’s parade as part of the O’Neil Big Unit Brigade. It’ll be fun.
Tis the season!
Friday, March 11, 2011
Asking God Why
I suppose it’s one of those cases when if you say it then it happens. The other day I wrote about Psalms 47 where whoever wrote it says that God can cause “mountains to fall into the heart of the sea” which I surmised would cause a tsunami. Now we’ve got a tsunami that hit Japan and is now hitting Hawaii. My dear friends Valerie and Gordon live in Hawaii and they’ve saved my ass more than once so I checked her Face Book page as have other friends but there is no news save the gloom and doom of the news channels.
You have to ask yourself why?
Why do things like this happen? I mean I understand the science of it all. There is earthquake because the earth shifts itself and causes a burp under the ocean which makes a big wave. Living by the sea I notice waves eventually make their way to shore and there you have it. For the most part we love it! Especially the surfers!
Save when it’s a big shift, a big burp and a wave that is so huge than it’s given a new name. Tsunami!
We understand the how. It’s the why question that baffles us and it’s the one that we look to God to answer.
Why are there tsunamis that kill people who are just having a day at the beach? Why does a massive wave knock out the power of countries that are already struggling to survive or those that are abundant in wealth? Why do they cause the stock market to fall affecting people in Kansas who’ve never seen a wave in their life?
“Why” is the second holiest prayer that we send to God on an almost daily basis?
The first is the most basic of prayers. When we see a tsunami coming, or the power goes out when that’s the last in the world that we need or the stock market falls and we lose forty percent of our wealth overnight we utter the same prayer … “Oh God”!
Then we wait.
And we keep waiting.
God’s not big on direct responses when that’s precisely what we want the most.
So we wait.
Then other people start answering the question on God’s behalf. “Those people deserved it because they’re sinners!”
“God is sending a message that homosexuality is the cause of America’s moral decline!”
“It was bound to happen when women started taking birth control pills, put on shoes and abandoned the kitchen.”
And swear to God, there are these people who get television time to say stupid stuff like this! Pompous asses presume to speak for God. Then people desperate for answers to the why question believe them. That’s how fundamentalism, racism, sexism and discrimination are born.
But God keeps quiet.
So we ponder the answer to the why questions.
Why did she leave me? Why am I in a marriage that gives me nothing? Why did my son who I love more than anything grow up to be gay? Why did I lose my job when I gave them everything that I have? Why did I lose my house? Why is he so hateful when I’m just trying the best I know how to try? Why did she get pregnant? Why is this happening to me?
Why?
DAMMIT! WHY!
And God is quiet.
And the silence is deafening.
Then the answer comes when we least expect it.
It is what it is.
The bad comes with the good.
And there is far more good than there is bad.
But we focus on the bad because it stuns us. It consumes too many of us. And we all believe that God would never allow such things to happen.
But they do.
So I’ve come to believe that when God created life … it is what it is. There is good and bad. There is far more good than bad. But there is bad. I’ve had my share. You have too.
But it’s life we’ve got. I’m holding to this gift as long as I can! And praying for people who can’t! Or who no longer have it!
You have to ask yourself why?
Why do things like this happen? I mean I understand the science of it all. There is earthquake because the earth shifts itself and causes a burp under the ocean which makes a big wave. Living by the sea I notice waves eventually make their way to shore and there you have it. For the most part we love it! Especially the surfers!
Save when it’s a big shift, a big burp and a wave that is so huge than it’s given a new name. Tsunami!
We understand the how. It’s the why question that baffles us and it’s the one that we look to God to answer.
Why are there tsunamis that kill people who are just having a day at the beach? Why does a massive wave knock out the power of countries that are already struggling to survive or those that are abundant in wealth? Why do they cause the stock market to fall affecting people in Kansas who’ve never seen a wave in their life?
“Why” is the second holiest prayer that we send to God on an almost daily basis?
The first is the most basic of prayers. When we see a tsunami coming, or the power goes out when that’s the last in the world that we need or the stock market falls and we lose forty percent of our wealth overnight we utter the same prayer … “Oh God”!
Then we wait.
And we keep waiting.
God’s not big on direct responses when that’s precisely what we want the most.
So we wait.
Then other people start answering the question on God’s behalf. “Those people deserved it because they’re sinners!”
“God is sending a message that homosexuality is the cause of America’s moral decline!”
“It was bound to happen when women started taking birth control pills, put on shoes and abandoned the kitchen.”
And swear to God, there are these people who get television time to say stupid stuff like this! Pompous asses presume to speak for God. Then people desperate for answers to the why question believe them. That’s how fundamentalism, racism, sexism and discrimination are born.
But God keeps quiet.
So we ponder the answer to the why questions.
Why did she leave me? Why am I in a marriage that gives me nothing? Why did my son who I love more than anything grow up to be gay? Why did I lose my job when I gave them everything that I have? Why did I lose my house? Why is he so hateful when I’m just trying the best I know how to try? Why did she get pregnant? Why is this happening to me?
Why?
DAMMIT! WHY!
And God is quiet.
And the silence is deafening.
Then the answer comes when we least expect it.
It is what it is.
The bad comes with the good.
And there is far more good than there is bad.
But we focus on the bad because it stuns us. It consumes too many of us. And we all believe that God would never allow such things to happen.
But they do.
So I’ve come to believe that when God created life … it is what it is. There is good and bad. There is far more good than bad. But there is bad. I’ve had my share. You have too.
But it’s life we’ve got. I’m holding to this gift as long as I can! And praying for people who can’t! Or who no longer have it!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Members of the Elect
I was late stumbling into the Breakfast Club this morning because I didn’t want to get out of bed. It was warm and cozy and the weather is full of wet. The time that I normally get up passes by and Goddess rams her body into the bed. I’ve disrupted her routine and it is time for her morning belly rub she gets as I stumble from the bed to the shower.
Now that I think about it I seem to stumble a lot in the morning.
Backing out of the drive way I open the door and grab the “Savannah Morning Blues” at 5 miles per hour. At the Club everyone except Johnny O and Whitley are asleep. Whitley made the coffee this morning because nobody else seemed capable. This is probably a good thing as Whitley can now introduce coffee to his bicycle which is notorious for leaving him behind and getting my bicycle drunk.
I grab my coffee and open the paper. Then I sigh. Politics is the headline. Recently Savannah made racism front page news again in the hiring of a City Manager who is black by a black majority council with a vote split among racial lines. I know all of the players and shut the paper and handed it to Ryan so that he could do the crossword puzzle. Nothing else was worth reading.
“Same old…?” Johnny O asked and I nodded before he finished.
Most of my career I worked the political circuits…city, county, state and federal. They are all the same with the only real difference being the size and scope of the number of people who are impacted by their decisions. Politics have changed over the past few decades.
It used to be about balancing the budget, providing for the national defense, paving roads and keeping church separate from state. That’s pretty much all that we really need.
But politicians became pompous and starting believing that they know what’s best. So they started making rules which is the domain of religion so the separation of church and state went out of the window.
Let’s be honest. We got enough rules. The other day in paper I read that one of the members of the elect (a Biblical term) in the Georgia General Assembly introduced legislation that mandates children be kept in car seats until they are 8 years old!
Really?
Of course my first thought is that this member of the elect has serious personal investments in the manufacturing of car seats. You going to have to double the size of car seats and they will cost more and somebody’s profit margin is going to go up time.
And that seems to be what politics has become!
Oh I know, some good things happen because of a handful of good people in elected office but let’s again be honest. They’re the exception rather than the rule!
Members of the elect now define their constituents as the people who give them money and vote for them…not everybody that they represent. In other words, for the most part they represent people who look and think just like them. It doesn’t matter which party … Republican, Democrat or Tea! They’re all the same! A handful of individuals are different but they forever being voted down.
I have lots of stupid political stories in my 30 year career but one of my favorites occurred right here on Tybee Island (second only to “Camp Locklear” which also occurred on Tybee Island … you can search my old stuff to find it).
What is now the Rock House on the corner of Butler Avenue and Tybrisa Stree (which is between 15th and 17th but for some reason members of the elect thought it best that it no longer be 16th Street but Tybrisa …I should stop here as this is a silly enough example of what politicians do for a living …but I won’t).
Back then it was called “Kitten’s Korner” and one day my son Jeremy, my dear friend Bruce and I literally drove through the front door but that’s another story.
Kitten’s Korner had dancers and word got out that they were stripping after certain hour of night. Exposing nipples and stuff! So the entire Tybee Island City Council (all men at the time but on Tybee that really doesn’t matter) showed up to see them. This was a public investigation so the drinks were paid for with tax payer’s dollars. Everyone enjoyed the show but Kitten’s Korner was shut down a few weeks later for violation of moral codes (again the domain of the church not the government).
Then there was the rumor that there was prostitution occurring on Tybee Island. This was also discussed at a city council meeting. After heated debate, City Councilman Jack Youman uttered what is one of the all-time great political lines ever uttered.
“There ain’t no prostitution on Tybee. You can get for free!”
Ah…politics!
And the higher up the chain you go, the worse it gets.
I will not waste a day thinking about this stuff. I used to get paid to think about it but I don’t anymore. I want to do something productive. I’m going to dance in the rain.
Now that I think about it I seem to stumble a lot in the morning.
Backing out of the drive way I open the door and grab the “Savannah Morning Blues” at 5 miles per hour. At the Club everyone except Johnny O and Whitley are asleep. Whitley made the coffee this morning because nobody else seemed capable. This is probably a good thing as Whitley can now introduce coffee to his bicycle which is notorious for leaving him behind and getting my bicycle drunk.
I grab my coffee and open the paper. Then I sigh. Politics is the headline. Recently Savannah made racism front page news again in the hiring of a City Manager who is black by a black majority council with a vote split among racial lines. I know all of the players and shut the paper and handed it to Ryan so that he could do the crossword puzzle. Nothing else was worth reading.
“Same old…?” Johnny O asked and I nodded before he finished.
Most of my career I worked the political circuits…city, county, state and federal. They are all the same with the only real difference being the size and scope of the number of people who are impacted by their decisions. Politics have changed over the past few decades.
It used to be about balancing the budget, providing for the national defense, paving roads and keeping church separate from state. That’s pretty much all that we really need.
But politicians became pompous and starting believing that they know what’s best. So they started making rules which is the domain of religion so the separation of church and state went out of the window.
Let’s be honest. We got enough rules. The other day in paper I read that one of the members of the elect (a Biblical term) in the Georgia General Assembly introduced legislation that mandates children be kept in car seats until they are 8 years old!
Really?
Of course my first thought is that this member of the elect has serious personal investments in the manufacturing of car seats. You going to have to double the size of car seats and they will cost more and somebody’s profit margin is going to go up time.
And that seems to be what politics has become!
Oh I know, some good things happen because of a handful of good people in elected office but let’s again be honest. They’re the exception rather than the rule!
Members of the elect now define their constituents as the people who give them money and vote for them…not everybody that they represent. In other words, for the most part they represent people who look and think just like them. It doesn’t matter which party … Republican, Democrat or Tea! They’re all the same! A handful of individuals are different but they forever being voted down.
I have lots of stupid political stories in my 30 year career but one of my favorites occurred right here on Tybee Island (second only to “Camp Locklear” which also occurred on Tybee Island … you can search my old stuff to find it).
What is now the Rock House on the corner of Butler Avenue and Tybrisa Stree (which is between 15th and 17th but for some reason members of the elect thought it best that it no longer be 16th Street but Tybrisa …I should stop here as this is a silly enough example of what politicians do for a living …but I won’t).
Back then it was called “Kitten’s Korner” and one day my son Jeremy, my dear friend Bruce and I literally drove through the front door but that’s another story.
Kitten’s Korner had dancers and word got out that they were stripping after certain hour of night. Exposing nipples and stuff! So the entire Tybee Island City Council (all men at the time but on Tybee that really doesn’t matter) showed up to see them. This was a public investigation so the drinks were paid for with tax payer’s dollars. Everyone enjoyed the show but Kitten’s Korner was shut down a few weeks later for violation of moral codes (again the domain of the church not the government).
Then there was the rumor that there was prostitution occurring on Tybee Island. This was also discussed at a city council meeting. After heated debate, City Councilman Jack Youman uttered what is one of the all-time great political lines ever uttered.
“There ain’t no prostitution on Tybee. You can get for free!”
Ah…politics!
And the higher up the chain you go, the worse it gets.
I will not waste a day thinking about this stuff. I used to get paid to think about it but I don’t anymore. I want to do something productive. I’m going to dance in the rain.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Happily Ever After
In Stephen Sondeims’ magnificant musical INTO THE WOODS we learn about happily ever after. ACT I begins with the combined stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and a baker and his wife who are trying to start a family.
Everybody knows these stories, save the baker and his wife, so we get to witness how the wolf got butchered and spit up grandma, Rapunzel let down her hair, Cinderella finds Prince Charming, the baker and his wife have their baby and Jack tricks the giant and pleases his Mom.
We all love happy endings!
ACT I ends with everybody living happily ever after! There is much applause. The theme of ACT I is “I wish!”
ACT II describes what happens in happily ever after. It’s not a pretty sight. The baker and his wife need more room for their family but can’t afford it. The wife of the giant that Jack killed makes her way down another bean stalk and destroys the houses that they live in (along with a witches’ garden which is never a good idea). Rapunzel becomes hysterical and flees! Cinderella finds Prince Charming to be one boring dude but he does her too and seduces the baker’s wife. The giant’s wife then kills the baker’s wife.
You get the drift. Happily ever after is not all that it’s cracked up to be! ACT II ends with stunned audience. The theme of ACT II is “I know.”
Then a funny thing happens. After everything is said and done with destruction and unhappiness everywhere, Cinderella says, “I wish…”
And that’s how it ends.
“I wish” is followed by “I know” which leads to a more desperate “I wish.”
Unless we get struck in “I know” which is the reality of who we are, how we live our lives, our families, work and the people we choose to be with. Most of these things started out happily enough. Our parents wished for us to be in most cases, we wished for the spouse, the job and the friends that we have. And we got them!
And too often it becomes something less than a wish. It becomes I know that I’m not happy with who I am, what I’ve become or what I do. This isn’t what I wished for!
Husbands and wives no longer support the other but simply take instead most from the other. Unhappiness is born and it grows a bean stalk. Our families can drive us nuts. We become victims of the jobs and jobs can be abusive. People we love die when they shouldn’t. Bad things happen when we’ve just done the best that we know how. We’ve given everything only to find that our lives are messes of which we are desperate to crawl out!
It’s certainly applicable to my life! I had the life that I wanted; the wife, the career, the family, the house, and the friends. It was all happily ever after!
And then it wasn’t.
So, a couple co-existed which is not the same as living! The career became all consuming. The kids left. Friends began to demand more than any one person is possibly capable of giving. Life became oppressive.
I was lost in the woods and during the darkest of days that I lived through I can now see a few things that strike me. There are bad people who do bad things and really don’t give a shit, save for themselves (which is the definition of a bad person). Sometimes we happen to be married to them. Sometimes it’s us and we don’t admit it! But they’re here, lurking behind trees like wolves and often banding together to become giants who will stomp on you just as much as looking at you. It’s all about them (dedicated to a Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous).
There are also Saints who pepper our lives, showing up at just the right time to save us from it all … like Woodsmen who use their axes on wolves or witches who turn out to be good when we thought they were anything but. They are always unexpected and end up being the blessings that we need at just the right time! We are the angles that God has given us to help each other through it all.
You would think it would just leave us all cynical which is how the bad people get born. We’ve got every reason in the world to by in a world that is all about us getting by regardless of anybody or anything else. There have been days when I was so angry at it all that I wanted to damn others to hell and just take what I needed for myself!
But you know what?
I wish.
And I know.
One day I will have what I wish for.
And I’ll be out of the woods.
Everybody knows these stories, save the baker and his wife, so we get to witness how the wolf got butchered and spit up grandma, Rapunzel let down her hair, Cinderella finds Prince Charming, the baker and his wife have their baby and Jack tricks the giant and pleases his Mom.
We all love happy endings!
ACT I ends with everybody living happily ever after! There is much applause. The theme of ACT I is “I wish!”
ACT II describes what happens in happily ever after. It’s not a pretty sight. The baker and his wife need more room for their family but can’t afford it. The wife of the giant that Jack killed makes her way down another bean stalk and destroys the houses that they live in (along with a witches’ garden which is never a good idea). Rapunzel becomes hysterical and flees! Cinderella finds Prince Charming to be one boring dude but he does her too and seduces the baker’s wife. The giant’s wife then kills the baker’s wife.
You get the drift. Happily ever after is not all that it’s cracked up to be! ACT II ends with stunned audience. The theme of ACT II is “I know.”
Then a funny thing happens. After everything is said and done with destruction and unhappiness everywhere, Cinderella says, “I wish…”
And that’s how it ends.
“I wish” is followed by “I know” which leads to a more desperate “I wish.”
Unless we get struck in “I know” which is the reality of who we are, how we live our lives, our families, work and the people we choose to be with. Most of these things started out happily enough. Our parents wished for us to be in most cases, we wished for the spouse, the job and the friends that we have. And we got them!
And too often it becomes something less than a wish. It becomes I know that I’m not happy with who I am, what I’ve become or what I do. This isn’t what I wished for!
Husbands and wives no longer support the other but simply take instead most from the other. Unhappiness is born and it grows a bean stalk. Our families can drive us nuts. We become victims of the jobs and jobs can be abusive. People we love die when they shouldn’t. Bad things happen when we’ve just done the best that we know how. We’ve given everything only to find that our lives are messes of which we are desperate to crawl out!
It’s certainly applicable to my life! I had the life that I wanted; the wife, the career, the family, the house, and the friends. It was all happily ever after!
And then it wasn’t.
So, a couple co-existed which is not the same as living! The career became all consuming. The kids left. Friends began to demand more than any one person is possibly capable of giving. Life became oppressive.
I was lost in the woods and during the darkest of days that I lived through I can now see a few things that strike me. There are bad people who do bad things and really don’t give a shit, save for themselves (which is the definition of a bad person). Sometimes we happen to be married to them. Sometimes it’s us and we don’t admit it! But they’re here, lurking behind trees like wolves and often banding together to become giants who will stomp on you just as much as looking at you. It’s all about them (dedicated to a Board Chair who chooses to remain anonymous).
There are also Saints who pepper our lives, showing up at just the right time to save us from it all … like Woodsmen who use their axes on wolves or witches who turn out to be good when we thought they were anything but. They are always unexpected and end up being the blessings that we need at just the right time! We are the angles that God has given us to help each other through it all.
You would think it would just leave us all cynical which is how the bad people get born. We’ve got every reason in the world to by in a world that is all about us getting by regardless of anybody or anything else. There have been days when I was so angry at it all that I wanted to damn others to hell and just take what I needed for myself!
But you know what?
I wish.
And I know.
One day I will have what I wish for.
And I’ll be out of the woods.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
God
“Be still and know that I am God…”
I’ve been still a lot lately. Too much probably! It goes with the silence that has dominated my life. Knowing the God part is a little trickier!
On the one hand, according to whoever wrote Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”
That’s pretty heady stuff keeping God busy all of the time. There are millions of us needing ever-present help when we’re in trouble and I don’t know about you but when mountains start falling into the middle of the ocean it means tidal waves and tsunamis and if I’m nearby, I’m getting scared!
Then whoever wrote this goes say that God is spending all of her time making wars cease, burning swords, shattering spears and breaking bows. I think God’s done a very decent job in this department as I don’t see many of swords, spears or bow and arrows into today’s wars but she won’t get an “A” in the ceasing war department. New ones are breaking out left and right!
Of course God may be on vacation. I wouldn’t blame her. I needed one myself.
Anyway after all of this preventing fear while causing tsunamis at the same time (no small trick!) and breaking swords and stuff while forgetting about machine guns and smart bombs, whoever wrote this gets to the end and like most great writers writes a great conclusion!
“Be still and know that I am God. I shall be exalted among the nations. I shall be exalted in the earth.”
So in the still silence of the beloved back deck I ponder these things. God seems to have two preferred ways of communication. There are all of these big picture things like making wars cease and flexing her muscle when she wants to make a mountain fall into the “middle of the ocean” says whoever wrote the Psalm.
God must have a great publicist! This is Hollywood type advertisements!
On the other hand God is a master of understatement!
Over this past year few years I’ve had heaps of trouble in my life … divorces, a major career change, empty nest syndrome, discovering that there are a fair number of people out there who have absolutely no use for me whatsoever, hair that keeps getting thinner and these splotches on my chest that came out of nowhere. Major issues!
So I’ve been trying to cash in the “God is my refuge and strength” part of this and while I would prefer an intimate face-to-face conversation God doesn’t seem to be too big on them.
Then the wind picks up from the ocean and the thousand shades of green dance in the sunshine. Goddess lays her head on my foot. The sun shines brighter and the warmth grows with each passing minute.
“Hmmm!” I say to myself.
“Hell is portable,” my friend Guy Sayles taught me one time, “you take it with you wherever you go.”
Meaning you can run but you can’t hide! Whatever problems we got are to be faced in the here and the now. Which is another point that whoever wrote this Psalm was trying to make…in spite of all of the stuff going on like wars, mountains falling in seas, divorces, job loses or changes, thinning hair and unexplained splotches … we’ve got this refuge.
It doesn’t mean running from our problems. It means running into them! Where God is waiting to do her stuff!
If Guy is right, and I believe that he is, then Love is also portable. We can make it wherever we are; with whoever we’re with! Stephen Stills was right! “Love the one you’re with!”
And love seems to have this way of minimizing hell, war, breakups, the need for refuge in the first place and the assholes who cause these things.
I remain on the love side of the things though I’ve done my fair share of trying to run from the hell in my life. But if love minimizes the hurts and the frustrations then I think that God is with the love.
Oh wait! I paid good money to learn that in Seminary! God IS love.
I hope I get an “A”.
I’ve been still a lot lately. Too much probably! It goes with the silence that has dominated my life. Knowing the God part is a little trickier!
On the one hand, according to whoever wrote Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”
That’s pretty heady stuff keeping God busy all of the time. There are millions of us needing ever-present help when we’re in trouble and I don’t know about you but when mountains start falling into the middle of the ocean it means tidal waves and tsunamis and if I’m nearby, I’m getting scared!
Then whoever wrote this goes say that God is spending all of her time making wars cease, burning swords, shattering spears and breaking bows. I think God’s done a very decent job in this department as I don’t see many of swords, spears or bow and arrows into today’s wars but she won’t get an “A” in the ceasing war department. New ones are breaking out left and right!
Of course God may be on vacation. I wouldn’t blame her. I needed one myself.
Anyway after all of this preventing fear while causing tsunamis at the same time (no small trick!) and breaking swords and stuff while forgetting about machine guns and smart bombs, whoever wrote this gets to the end and like most great writers writes a great conclusion!
“Be still and know that I am God. I shall be exalted among the nations. I shall be exalted in the earth.”
So in the still silence of the beloved back deck I ponder these things. God seems to have two preferred ways of communication. There are all of these big picture things like making wars cease and flexing her muscle when she wants to make a mountain fall into the “middle of the ocean” says whoever wrote the Psalm.
God must have a great publicist! This is Hollywood type advertisements!
On the other hand God is a master of understatement!
Over this past year few years I’ve had heaps of trouble in my life … divorces, a major career change, empty nest syndrome, discovering that there are a fair number of people out there who have absolutely no use for me whatsoever, hair that keeps getting thinner and these splotches on my chest that came out of nowhere. Major issues!
So I’ve been trying to cash in the “God is my refuge and strength” part of this and while I would prefer an intimate face-to-face conversation God doesn’t seem to be too big on them.
Then the wind picks up from the ocean and the thousand shades of green dance in the sunshine. Goddess lays her head on my foot. The sun shines brighter and the warmth grows with each passing minute.
“Hmmm!” I say to myself.
“Hell is portable,” my friend Guy Sayles taught me one time, “you take it with you wherever you go.”
Meaning you can run but you can’t hide! Whatever problems we got are to be faced in the here and the now. Which is another point that whoever wrote this Psalm was trying to make…in spite of all of the stuff going on like wars, mountains falling in seas, divorces, job loses or changes, thinning hair and unexplained splotches … we’ve got this refuge.
It doesn’t mean running from our problems. It means running into them! Where God is waiting to do her stuff!
If Guy is right, and I believe that he is, then Love is also portable. We can make it wherever we are; with whoever we’re with! Stephen Stills was right! “Love the one you’re with!”
And love seems to have this way of minimizing hell, war, breakups, the need for refuge in the first place and the assholes who cause these things.
I remain on the love side of the things though I’ve done my fair share of trying to run from the hell in my life. But if love minimizes the hurts and the frustrations then I think that God is with the love.
Oh wait! I paid good money to learn that in Seminary! God IS love.
I hope I get an “A”.
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