Brian L Christner

Separation

2010-08-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t have to be in a conservative church very long before I hear comments about how awful it is that we can no longer have prayer in our public schools. I have always been mystified about why prayer in the public schools is even an issue that Christians care about. I have always believed that God’s presence can come and go as it pleases him regardless of whether there are laws that prohibit his children from talking to him. I believe that the laws against prayer in the public schools are passed more as a protection for students against some of the crusader, win/lose, evangelism tactics of the religious right rather than an attempt to keep honest seekers from talking with God.

Again I am mystified by the furor over the president’s support for the right of Muslims to build a house of worship wherever they want as long as they conform to local laws. The president’s statement about his support for the Mosque was a principle about the separation of church and state that has nothing to do with what radicals did on 911. Can you imagine what it would feel like to Christians if they were held accountable for what KKK members have done in the name of the Christian religion?

The fact is that when the church finds its place, an entity totally separate from the government it can become the salt of the earth. In order to do its work the church needs freedom from government in the same way that the government needs freedom from religion. Contrary to what some contemporary republicans would have us believe this nation was never Christian. It was the church that first brought our nation to awareness of the evil of slavery and by the time our nation got upset enough to end slavery we nearly lost a generation of soldiers in the war it took to end slavery. The church did not send soldiers to fight in the civil war it was the government that fought the war. Later on it was the church through Martin Luther King Jr. that helped us rid ourselves of some of the outward signs of discrimination that continued to plague our county. But it was not the church that passed civil rights laws it was the congress along with President Johnson that ended up getting credit for the civil rights movement. It continues to be the church that leads the fight against hatred for gays and for undocumented immigrants. The church does not need laws in order to serve this nation’s immigrants with respect and humility. If the church does its job maybe we will get a more comprehensive immigration law. But if just laws do not come to pass the church can continue to lead out in doing what is humane for our Mexican neighbors.

To me, it seems like a lot of this debate over the Mosque in New York City is politically motivated by republicans. But it also seems so hypocritical to lament about taking prayer out of the schools or to insist that God’s name be kept in the pledge of allegiance, while we try to stop someone from building a mosque at 911’s ground zero. I continue be thankful for our laws that help us remember that there are boundaries between church and state.

Certainty

2010-08-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Personal Responsibility

I first began taking personal responsibility for my life and some mistakes that I’d made late in 1994 when I had the good fortune of experiencing some deep life changes. There were many things that happened to me prior to 1994 that helped to soften up my heart that had become hardened through many experiences with personal failure coupled with the realization that there was very little redemptive value in much of the theology that I had been raised with in the church of my childhood. Not the least of these things that happened to me was the reading of Steven Covey’s book about the habits of successful people. Covey’s book helped me begin to believe that taking personal responsibility was essential for success in my life.

Many other people were also reading Covey’s book at about that time and the idea of taking personal responsibility became a popular idea. Some twenty years later I have begun to feel that taking “personal responsibility” for ourselves is taking on an entirely different feel and moving toward something that I call “self determination”. There is nothing more refreshing than when I begin to handle my own affairs with care for others and with integrity; it feels good when I figure out how to take personal responsibly for myself. But when does taking personal responsibity for my past and my present take on the air of self determination? What is wrong with self determination anyway? I think that self determination begins when I try to project myself into a future that is beyond my control. When being saved from the consequences of my sins is no longer a free gift but an obligation on God’s balance sheet because of a contract that promises to pay off in the end if I say or do certain specified things. In order for self determination to survive over time it must demand absolute certainty about many of the tough questions in our lives. But I wonder if that demand for certainty is consistent with the way that Jesus spoke in the New Testament? It seems to me there were many questions that Jesus just plain refused to answer. At other points he answered a question with a question. Many times he just told stories that can be interpreted in different ways depending on my point of view.

This demand for self determination not only permeates our churches but our politics as well. When Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh trumpets the values of our Constitution aren’t they saying that if we do things exactly the way we did them in the past then we would not have the problems we face today? Are they forgetting that our constitution has had to change and be amended throughout the years as we discovered the error of our ways? I am not saying that the church needs to rewrite the Bible as time goes along just as the US has had to ammend its constitution; I just feel like we don’t have all the answers yet and that we need more openness with our theology.

The more that members of the church demand absolutes and certainty around many of the issues we face daily the more credibility the church will lose with those that need the church the most. I pray that I can begin to demand less certainty from the people that I look up to and begin to place more faith in what I believe to be true. One of the things that I believe is that I will have a more enjoyable future if I take personal responsibility for myself today.

Saved

2010-08-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have copied a story written by my brother, Marvin below. The event took place at our family reunion held last month.

Saved

Sunday, the 4th of July, 2010, of our family reunion, was a memorable day for me. Brian had asked me to have a meditation with the family. I was delighted, surprised and petrified all over the same thing. If I am too churchy it will be met with a stiff arm. If I don’t have the meditation theologically correct, it may turn into an argument over a misspoken word or two. Yet, I felt honored that I was chosen to give the mediation for two reasons. One, I felt acceptance in spite of my past self-righteous attitude. And, two, maybe some of the inner changes that have been going on in me are being felt by others.

Well, enough framing of my story. I will just tell the real essence of my memory of Sunday, July 4th 2010, our Independence Day. All I really wanted was for our family to experience God’s presence at our reunion. Not ideas about the formalities of God’s routines, not how wonderful we project Him to be, and not how many misrepresentations there are of Him. If we could experience Him as a family, maybe “a rest”, would come to us that is unattainable by other means. Maybe you recall our prayer after my mediation. It went something like this; Father, we know you are here all around us. We know we have a hard time seeing you as you long to be seen. Would you please open our eyes so we can experience you in your world today?

Now, I haven’t heard yet how the day went for each of you. Maybe nothing out of the ordinary fascinated you and that is fine. I know much of my life I have limited God’s presences to the exceptional experiences and have missed Him in the ordinary things. Any way, I had an ordinary urge shortly after that prayer to take the boys fishing. So I asked Brian if this was a possibility and he set the time from 7 P.M. to 9 P.M... At 6:55 the boys pulled me from a discussion with Sheldon and Nate and we set off with high hopes of experiencing under water habitat tugging on our fishing poles.

I asked Trey to navigate the boat and as a result Caleb wanted to get off the boat because he was concerned about Trey’s ability to maneuver us safely. After a few well chosen thoughts Caleb decided to stay on board. Trey, Tyler, Trent, Caleb, Asher, Cade, and Jack were all anticipating at least one nice catch as we motored through the channel out into the larger lake. As we began to pick up speed we noticed another pontoon boat that seemed to be following a swimmer. It seemed a little different but we were not going to waste our time figuring out what they were up to, so we passed by, but didn’t stop watching. As we looked, a second head appeared and then disappeared. Even now as I write this, a deep surge of emotion rises and I feel it all over again, “we can’t close our eyes to this and pass by!”

With obvious skill Trey, turned the boat around and headed straight for the drowning man. By now it was easy to see that the young lady on the other pontoon had very little control of her boat and was helplessly drifting away from the drowning man. She was frantically throwing a life vest toward the two men in the water but the wind made it impossible for her to hit her target.

As Trey zeroed in on the two men in the water, I dove in and crabbed the limp, grey/blue, glassy eyed body of a man, while his exhausted companion climbed onto our boat. We were all focused on the limp form of a man who was much closer to death than any of us were interested in seeing. I rested with him for a second at the edge of the boat wondering, “What are we going to do?” Then I asked, or rather yelled, I’m sure, for help to get him up on deck. As his companion started to pull him up, he breathed, and we all stopped and listened. It was an awesome kind of relief; the raspy/choky/struggling inhale. He was going to make it! We just let him breathe a few breaths then brought him on board.

I began to silently pray, “What do we do now”? This guy may still be in trouble and I have no experience other than some forgotten training from when I was in Junior High. He groaned, but did not move. Fear was much easier to find than the knowledge of how to help. We decided to get him to help. Again Trey came to the rescue and maneuvered the boat perfectly so both boats were together. We placed him as comfortably as possible with his air passages open and in a good position to vomit. He was now on his own boat with his companions speeding for wherever they thought it was best to take him.

When I stepped back into our boat, Asher was pumping his arm up and down shouting, Marvin! Marvin! Yes! Yes! You did it! I was in a daze. Then we noticed the folks on shore wondering how things had turned out. We gave a “thumbs up” sign to let them know the man had not drowned. They all clapped and I raised my hand toward heaven and silently said, “Thank you, Jesus”. At that moment he replied. “Marvin, you are right where I want you.” It was so clear I had heard his voice and, frankly, nothing else mattered. All the impossibilities in my life didn’t matter; I had heard my Father’s voice. This encounter was clearly messing with me. God was here even when I was not looking for Him. I was now blinded with tears, and choked with emotions that I could define. How close was God right now? Did I brush shoulders with Him? What a sacred life. Had he called us to be here at this moment so we could save a man? Was he saying, I couldn’t have done it with out you guys, or was he letting us see Him the way He longs for us to see Him? Was He letting us be a part of His normal day? Yes, I believe He was.

When this was all happening, I was all duty bound with adrenalin inspired energy flying all over the place. I had no thought of God then. I was like Trey who said, “I didn’t want to be in this. But we were called to be there, not because we were so powerful but because God wanted us to see Him.”

As we motored on to our fishing destination our moods were a mix of happiness and soberness. We went from feeling like powerful rescuers to feeling angry that alcohol abuse was a significant factor in this near death encounter. We talked about other rescues, about Uncle Darwin on the rescue squad, about the hundred and some pounder we all caught, and that this is the kind of story we will tell our grandchildren.

Trey, Tyler, Trent, Caleb, Asher, Cade, and Jack, though we did get to the fishing spot we had set out for, none of us got to feel the tug on our fishing lines that makes others jealous. But we did unknowingly join God that day. It was great fun, guys. I know I probably acted a little weird being choked up and all that, but there is no other group of guys I would have rather done that with than you guys.

I hope to see you all soon and am still praying, “Father, we know you are here all around us. We know we have a hard time seeing you as you long to be seen. Would you please open our eyes so we can experience you in your world today?”

Love,
Marvin

Caught

2010-08-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Caught

About a year and a half ago I joined a yahoo group for very conservative Mennonites and Amish people. I joined the group with good intentions. I have been deeply hurt by my conversion into the life as a young person. My experience with my conservative Mennonite church was quite negative and so I thought I could share some light with some of this group's participants on the controlling practices of insular groups like this one since it is my belief that they tend to prey on dependant families, and women and children using the dependence of their followers as a sort of human fuel to further their religious pursuits.

The emails that I received from this group took me back to my childhood where I grew up in a very controlled environment, fearing the wrath of God every day when I didn’t dress properly, worship God correctly, greet church members appropriately, participate in church approved activities only (which basically elimitated sports activities; the one thing that I loved most in my life) and the list goes on and on. The problem became that I began to hide real destructive behavior in an effort to conform to the church's standards while I was a member of a church that prided itself in its nonconformity to the world.

After about six months of reading emails from the group I had to stop the emails from coming into my computer because the experience was just too painful. But from time to time I would jump onto the web and read a group email. Without fail I would read and email and need to respond to it. Over the past year I submitted several emails to the group on subjects like modesty in dress, education, health care, the holy kiss, and probably other issues too. The group would lovingly rebuke me on a regular basis using Biblical passages carefully explain the error of my way on the particular issue. I had to ignore much of their responses because they were too upsetting to me. I could easily take over the group by sending just one dissenting email and then check back a few days later to read a few responses. But I could not read the emails every day because I would get so upset. I just wanted to give a different view in the hopes that maybe some young vulnerable girl somewhere might pick up on. It seems like most of the emails came from young women. I am not the devil. But I am someone that believes Jesus message is not always clear especially to people within strict conservative churches. Jesus many times answered questions with another question or a story.

Recently I began to care less about whether or not I got kicked out of the group. I started disagreeing more openly and writing more often. Of course I got caught! I have posted the email below that I received from the moderator of the group today. It is impossible for me to hate the people in the group even though I know that there is hatred in my heart toward the bondage that I endured for much of the time that I spent within system created by the conservative Mennonite religion espoused by this group. They tend to be a soft spoken, loving, people who say that they believe the Bible. It is so hard to find anything wrong with that; I was one of the unlucky people who came in contact with them when I was young and defenseless. Anyway when I tried to get access to the group this morning I was locked out and here’s the letter I received today from the moderator, Richard E. Mummau.

------------ Forwarded message ------------
From: Richard E. Mummau
Date: Aug 12, 2010
Subject: Brian Christner's blog
To: Brian Christner

Hello Brian,
Someone sent this blog to me. It is apparent that you have struggled with submitting to any church that has had standards for the members. You are not the first person who has gone though this. But it seems that you have the same struggles now. Some of your responses on the list also made it evident that you do not really appreciate the Conservative Mennonite Churches and what they stand for.
In one of your letters, you mention that you are part of the “Conservative Mennonite Conference”. I have a sister in the Conservative Mennonite Conference and it is anything but *Conservative*. In fact the Conservative Mennonite Conference is not much different than Mennonite Church USA in many ways.
The Question I have for you is this. What is your purpose for being on the Amish and Mennonite Group? We are there to help people find their way and to learn to understand what the Conservative Mennonites/Anabaptist believe and practice. But it is evident from your blog that you already know what the Conservative Mennonite Churches believe.
In one of your posts, you mention something about being sidetracked by the truth. Do you really want to know the truth? From what I have read, it seems that you *know* what the truth is, but you are not willing to accept it for yourself, and you seem to want to downgrade it in the eyes of other people.
We really do not want someone on the list who is going to be always finding fault with what the Conservative Anabaptists/Mennonites believe. We appreciate honest questions and want to answer them. You say “Now I’m going to have to figure out what to do with all of these poisonous emails streaming into my computer, at a rate of several per hour”;
What do you mean by “Poisonous emails”?
If you really want to learn, we want to be a help to you.
I will appreciate hearing back from you
My I send you my personal testimony on CD. I was a drunken bum for many years. The Lord saved me in 1973 and delivered me from a sinful life. I was brought up in a Mennonite home also, but left the church when I was in my teens.
Just send me your address and I’ll send you a FREE CD of my testimony.
You have a great day.

In Him,
Richard Mummau
Moderator

Principles

2010-08-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

Principles

Have you heard it before, “This is where I draw the line.” Coming from a Conservative Mennonite/Amish background I have drawn not a few lines in my past. But like lines in the sand they soon disappear with the next wave that washes over our over religious landscape.

Over the years I have watched a close friend give his child all space for growth and change he wanted until they found that one thing, in his case alcohol and drugs before he finally drew that proverbial line in the sand and set some boundaries. I have watched parents who are stricter set all kinds of boundaries and rules for living within their families. I suppose these good intentioned parents feel like they can save their children from the necessary pain of learning the hard way. Most often I have observed that strict parents tend to have more difficulty getting what they want from their children than more tolerant parents.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about rules as a young parent when my children were still strong believers in the regime set by our family. I would imagine what my children could do that would amount to the last straw. I would try to set up imaginary rules in my mind thinking about how I would feel if they were broken and how I would politely ask my children to leave our home if they were to behave in this or that way.

Fortunately as my children grew up I grew some more too. I remember sitting in a restaurant one time when the kids were being a bit loud. I looked nervously around to see if other people in the restaurant were watching this rowdy family of ours. Suddenly I looked at the kids and blurted out. “Hey kids you know that there is nothing you can do to embarrass me.” I don’t know where that came from and I don’t know if it is even the truth. It just came out in a restaurant in Middlebury. There it was; the kids had all the rope they needed to hang themselves and me too. And the principle just started working then and has worked ever since. The kids quieted down and became more aware of their surroundings, feeling the weight of the responsibility on them selves to have respect for the other people in the restaurant.

And so out of life’s experiences I kind of developed a principle of sorts to live by; a principle that I want to use to help me set boundaries and limits for the way that I treat my family and close friends. The principle goes something like this; “I will never let my principles get in the way of my relationships.” Sounds quite strange; maybe it amounts to relativism or worse yet maybe it is some of that dangerous new age thinking. I am quite sure you won’t find that in the US constitution or the Pledge of Allegiance. You would probably have to really do your home work to find it in the Bible; maybe even have to merge two verses together to make the principle Biblical. Just how does the principle work?

Take illegal immigrants for an easy example. Many of our Politians can win elections by railing against the people who have been driven into our country by poverty and unstable conditions in their society. But I can help and accept them as they are because of my principle. I don’t have to understand what kind of documentation a person possesses in order to love them; a person's past sins do not have to dictate how I respond to them right now. Another example would be the moral issues swirling around the gays and lesbians that are sometimes not so easily put to bed. Again I get out my principle to see how it can work now. I say to myself: “I will never let my principles get in the way of my relationships.” When my gay friend tells me about his life I accept him as he is. Of course I can’t participate in a same sex orgy even if I wanted to because that would certainly break the relationship I have with the woman I am married to. I don’t know why some people are created as they are and I don’t see the need for me to pretend that I do understand. I can simply be a faithful friend to my gay friend and wait for more questions to be answered down the road.

Money

2010-08-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

Money

I was watching an internet conversation from a distance last evening. A few people from the church where my family attends were participating in the conversation. I would have loved to participate in that conversation but I am quite certain that my views would have generated a lot more heat than light. The question for discussion was something like this, “Can you name anything that the government can to better than the private sector.” Obviously this was a softball meant for the Republican Party faithful who seem to dominate the Conservative Mennonite Church these days. And, you guessed it; the mindless chatter ensued, as people started hitting the ball out of the park. The most common answer was “I can’t think of anything.” There was one thoughtful person in the group who chimed in with a few things like national security, foreign policy, highway system, etc. The one that caught my eye was the comment, “spending our money.” And then another comment came along, “the government is good at stealing our money.”

That comment did it. It brought me out of retirement. I have not posted to this blog in over a year now. During that time I did not quit writing though. During the past year I wrote the rough draft of my memoir. I had a group of readers that helped me through the writing and some even appeared to be excited about parts of the book. I feel a lot of relief now that it is done. It is long probably over 150,000 words and drags quite a bit. I have given it to a couple of friends to read and they have not responded back. I think it takes a real dedicated soul to work all the way through it.

That comment though, really got to me. “The government is stealing my money.” Whose money is it really? Probably one thing that liberal and conservative Christians agree on: “The money belongs to God.” But my question is serious, and goes beyond the rhetorical. Who controls our interest rates and thus the value that our money holds? What is the name that is printed across the top of our dollar bill and I don’t mean “In God We Trust”? The dollar bill says across its top “The United States of America” of course. The fact is that it is not my money and it’s probably not God’s either. It belongs to the United States of America and I can use it if I want to.

I guess I am willing to say it out loud. I believe that there are many things that our government does better than any of us or our churches can. Until recently the government did a better job of delivering our mail than the private sector, for example. Now UPS, FedEx, and of course the World Wide Web are probably better at delivering mail. But what about Universities where much of the research and development is like throwing money down a hole? Much of the public money that goes into public education is wasted but you never know when a Bill Gates or someone like me will show up. I went to school on a Pell Grant and am now using my accounting education to pay for my own kid’s college education. I did use the public system to finance their pre college education though. What about roads and bridges? What about food safety? What about regulating wealthy corporate insiders? What about regulating oil companies? While most of us care about the price of gas at the pump do we really care about the environment? I think it is a shame that we need the government to do so many things for us. Why do we need such a big government? Are we the people of this great country more driven by greed and more short sighted than we would like to admit?

Efficiency

2009-05-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

I like things to go my way. I like things to be efficient. I never know when to quit. There is never enough of a good thing. Last weekend was one of those weekends, the weather was brilliant, spring is in full swing, I can feel the flowers growing and I can barely keep the expectations from bursting my chest.

I knew that this weekend would be an impossible one to manage our household so I had put in a little extra effort scheduling our only son’s birthday celebration for Friday night. He didn’t turn 16 till the next day on Saturday. This type of management is nothing new for me but it was an entirely new concept for Trey. I hope he understands why it was necessary to celebrate his birthday on a day other than his birthday. Trey did have a Special Olympics voluntary service project in the morning of his birthday and a soccer game in the afternoon. Besides our girls had a choir contest in the morning and a birthday party for a friend in the evening also. So we pulled off Trey’s birthday celebration at his favorite restaurant where he ate a full rack of ribs with one hand and opened his gifts with the other. We pulled it off without a hitch and then took him to blockbuster where he got to choose the movies.

We got home by 8:30 pm and I knew that I was way too keyed up to sleep. And I could not afford a sleepless night because of all the plans I had for the weekend. Before we started Trey’s first movie “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey, I slipped a couple of Tylenol PM Pills to ready myself for night fall. Shortly after the movie started I was able to sleep and slipped off to bed as soon as the movie was over.

The next, day Saturday, I actually had the morning free. I spent it weeding the flower gardens at our house. Lorilee worked steadily at my side. I was glad for the companionship. I knew why she was with me working so steadily by my side. She has always complained that I am always opening up new flower beds without helping enough with the weeding or even realizing how much time it takes to weed each new bed. We were able to get most of the weeds taken care of before I had to take off for my first destination of the weekend.

I had to be at High Dive Park in Elkhart by 12:00 noon sharp. This is the annual Dahlia tuber sale put on by the Elkhart chapter of the Dahlia Society. I have never been to one the Dahlia Society’s sales before but I have seen the flower show that they put on at the local mall each fall. I wanted to get there at the start because I figured there would be plenty new gardeners just like me ready to swoop down and scoop up any spare tubers the Dahlia growers had to offer. I left with plenty of time to get to my destination but unfortunately all the access roads to High Dive Park were block by road construction. I finally made it into the park and much to my dismay I saw several women filing out of the pavilion with their bags overflowing with Tuber’s. It was only ten minutes after noon and it looked to me as if most of the transactions for the day had already completed in the sale that was supposed to last until 3:00 pm.

But as I entered the pavilion I saw that I had the long table stacked with bag after bag of tubers almost all to myself. The society’s members were all busy eating the potluck dinner that they had provided for the event. I began carefully counting out tubers and placing them in my bag as I sifted through the picked over piles. Actually my excitement was growing as I had found treasure chest after treasure chest and no one around me seemed to be aware that the treasure was there for the taking. Eventually an elderly gentleman from Ohio came up along side of me and began showing me which tubers he had brought up from his green house in Ohio. He had carefully written the names of each tuber on its side with a magic marker. He couldn’t believe that I hadn’t labeled my other finds. But I was too excited to think straight let alone write down the extravagant names of the flowers. I explained to the old man that, “I don’t care about their names; I just like to look at the flowers or pick them and give them away.” Every once in a while the old man would slip a tuber in my bag saying, “You’ve just got to have this one.” Finally I asked one of the pot luckers what the cost was as she hurried by for another dish. “Two dollars each,” she called out over her shoulder. I continued along the tables with my new found friend pumping him for every bit of advice I could get about growing Dahlia’s. Finally I cornered another member of the society and told her that I have to get out of this place, “My wife will kill me if I stay much longer and pick out any more,” I said. “How many do you have?” the society member asked me. “I think 25,” I offered. “That will be $50”, the lady commanded. “Can’t he go back and pick out a few more for free since he is buying so many?” another society member who was listening called out. “No way,” snapped the cashier as she took my $50.00 and handed me a Dahlia growing brochure as I hurried out the door clutching my treasures.

I hurried to our cottage on Westler Lake where I would spend the next 24 hours of this glorious weekend. When I arrived I laid out the tubers in a dry sunny room in moist potting soil where they will wait a few more weeks until the soil is warm and dry enough to receive them. There on the table I laid out about 40 eyes not the 25 that I had estimated for the society cashier. I spent the rest of my day putting in a dock and mowing the lawn and just enjoying the lake. I went to Subway at 7:45 pm and bought my favorite 12” sandwich in prepation for the big game number seven (7) in the NBA series between the Chicago Bulls and the Boston Celtics. It was sure to be a great game since the series had already produced at least 6 overtime sessions. At 8:00pm I settled into my sandwich on the couch with the game just beginning. I fell sound asleep as soon as I finished my sandwich and didn’t wake up until 1:00 AM. In my daze I found the ESPN news channel and was relieved to find out that the game I had missed had been a boring one anyway.

The next morning I awoke bright and early thrilled to be ready for my now weekly tradition of gardening while the rest of my family does the church thing. I pulled weeds, spread Peat Moss, watered with miracle grow, and enjoyed one of the most beautiful, restful mornings I’ve had in a long time. At 10:30 AM my phone went off alerting me that the boat lift man was making his way across the lake in this pontoon especially designed for putting boat lifts in place in the water. He arrived and after about 30 minutes of adjusting and positioning we had the boatlift in place for the summer. Stan charged me $40.00 and moved on to his next job.

I quickly put my gardening tools away and headed for home. I had to meet my family for our days planned activities. I drove past the church just as its members were streaming toward the parking lot and had just a moment of wistful thinking. I arrived home and heard our now 16 year old son making a plea for a change of plans for the day. “No,” I thought to myself, “This has been a perfect weekend and nothing can be allowed to change that now.” I knew that everything had to go exactly as planned in order for me to get everything done on my list. Then I said aloud, “Trey, this is a chance for our whole family to spend the afternoon together. If we have to come home and get you before we go out to dinner that will cost us an extra ½ hour. If you multiply that by 4 family members you will be costing us 2 whole hours.” And so with this logic I persuaded Trey to join Lorilee and I as we watched Alisha and Dana win another soccer game down at Newton Park near Plymouth Indiana.

After the soccer game we headed for Lorilee’s favorite Chinese restaurant to celebrate her birthday. We toted her gifts into the restaurant in a brown grocery bag so that she could open them at a favorite round table in the restaurant. Sunday was a day early for her birthday also, but of course Monday just did not suit enough of us to have a birthday party. As the evening progressed I began to watch the clock knowing that it would be I tight fit in order for me to pull off the final coup d’ tat of the weekend. After Lorilee had opened her gifts and most of the partying had subsided I slipped in my first of foreshadowing of things to come. “Is anyone up for helping me with launching the boat yet this evening? The sun is still so warm and the weather so beautiful.” I tried to persuade. Both of the girls quickly offered up their excuses as if they had known this were coming all along; they are probably well ahead of me. I know better than to ask Lorilee for this kind of help on a Sunday evening; besides I could see her eying one of the gifts she had just unwrapped; David Baldacci’s latest novel, First Family. Trey gave me a slight nod of assent seeming to know, as usual, that it is his job to help when I need it.

As soon as we arrived home Trey and I quickly gathered the items we would need to remove the boat from winter storage and put in on its lifted perch for the summer. Then we jumped into the truck and headed back for the cottage. The suns rays were just beginning to slant as we pulled out of the drive, setting off a whole new wave of beauty for the day’s ending. For a brief moment as we drove away I knew that I was pushing this weekend just a little too far. The weekend had been so perfect; things had worked out so well just as planned. Would this need to be the time that the weakend headed south? I paused to take my foot from the accelerator just for a moment as the omen settled in, but then I pressed onward.

We arrived at the cottage with about an hour of sun light left. Trey hurriedly began cutting the winter’s plastic wrap off the boat and I prepared the trailer for transport. This took about 15 minutes and finally Trey directed me as I backed the truck into the boat’s trailer hitch. We hooked up the trailer and now we were ready to head for the boat ramp. We have had more than our share of rain this spring and the soft ground just would not support our plans. I began to spin the tires and in a moment we were sunk; stuck in the mud. I knew that my omen was about to come true; I had gone too far. I began mumbling under my breath to that effect and Trey asked me, “What do you mean? You mean working on Sunday?” “No,” I stubbornly explained to him, “I’ve just tried to get too much done today.”

Suddenly, as usual, our neighbor lady, named Janet, came to our rescue. She came out of her house, seeing our predicament, made that same call that she has made on at least two other occasions for me already this spring. Within 15 minutes Ken, Janet’s friend, and now mine, showed up in his four wheel drive jeep with a tow rope. There is now even less sunlight left but I am now in command again. Ken chided me, but just for a moment, “You’d better get this young boy home to bed, he has school tomorrow you know,” he said. Ken pulled us out of the mud in moments and Trey and I were free to head for the boat ramp.

We wanted to be as efficient as we could with what was left of our weekend. Trey scrambled up into the boat to prepare for launch as soon as we pulled into the ramp area. I backed the boat into the lake then barely noticing the blazing sunset all around. I too climbed into the boat now resting on the still water just above the trailer to see if it was going to start. I pumped the priming bulb about five (5) and then began to turn the starter over. We sat there cranking the motor for about 5 minutes. I had forgotten to take the battery inside for the winter and I was beginning to worry. Finally when the battery seemed to be on its last few cranks the 125 horse power mercury engine sputtered to life and began its low rumbling roar. The “sound of summer” I thought to myself.

I jumped up confident that I was getting my way after all. I gave Trey a last few launching instructions and sprinted out toward the front of the boat to pull the trailer out of the water just before dark. I swung my feet out over the front of the boat feeling with my feet for the trailer down below. My wet tennis shoe’s found the trailer footing and I released my grasp on the boat just as my foot touched the trailer preparing myself to make a second jump from the trailer over the water and onto dry ground. But the omen came true. My tennis shoe’s wet sole did not stick to the wet trailer surface. I slipped. Both legs slipped down inside the metal crossbars underneath the trailer as I fell from the boat toward about two (2’) feet of water. My mind race as I imagined my legs snapping against the metal cross bars under the weight of my 200 pound torso. I flung out my left arm and grasped the deck rail of the boat at an awkward angle just as I disappeared over the side of the boat. My grasp of the railing saved my legs and kept me out of the water but the awkward angle caused my shoulder to slip from its socket. I quickly reached up and grasped the railing with my other hand letting my injured shoulder slump to my side. I called out to Trey now desperate for more of his help. He came forward and I weekly yelled, “My shoulder is dislocated.” He is the only person who has been through his experience with me before. It happened one other time to me on a skiing trip to Colorado in April of 2006. No, we weren’t skiing some black diamond trail when it happened last time. We were at a miserable rest stop in an ice storm near Lincoln Nebraska.

Anyway, Trey helped me to the ground with my remaining good arm. He collected my tennis shoes that were now floating in the lake. I was struggling to remain conscience as I leaned over my truck hoping that no else wanted to use the boat ramp any time soon. Trey just looked on helpless as I struggled unable to get the shoulder to go back in its place. He finally blurted out, “Shall I call 911?” “No,” I shouted at him, frustrated that anyone would try to help me now. He just stood there watching me. I looked at him and said more weakly, “Go on, warm up the boat, and get ready to finish the launch.” Then I slumped back over the truck waiting for what would happen next. Trey warmed up the boat for a few moments but soon he was back standing beside me waiting for what was to happen next.

Then, as suddenly as it went out of its socket it slipped back in. I smiled immediately at Trey knowing that it was over and that we had survived. There will be consequenses though. The last time it happened I got an MRI after about six months of pain. It just takes a long time for the pain to go away. Dad and I will have to build our seawall this spring with me nursing a sore left shoulder. Trey and I finished launching the boat. I took pictures of the last of the sunset to show during my visit to JC and Rosie’s place next Sunday. As Trey drove us home I closed my eyes as he dodged Amish bikers and buggies on their Sunday evening drive home hoping that I learned a lesson that day, we’ll see.

Clutter

2009-04-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy some pretty bad music. In fact I was almost late for work the other day because one of my favorites began booming over my sound system as I entered the parking lot. I almost took off on a McDonald’s run just to have a chance to let the music play itself out. Sometimes I forget to cover my tracks when I borrow Lorilee’s car and she has to listen to my music for five (5) seconds as she quickly turns her radio down and changes her channel.

Some of the best Bible verses have been eternally marred, in my mind, because of a well intentioned friend’s interest in converting me. I guess I might not mind a person quoting Bible verses to me so much if I felt they were speaking sincerely about their own experiences and not masking some subconscious need to make me more acceptable to themselves.

And it’s not just Christians who violate my boundaries with clutter. A few years ago I stumbled on a long lost friend from high school while surfing on the internet. We talked and talked. We met even though we live hundreds of miles apart. We spent the night talking, had a few beers together, and filled each other in on the last 25 years. Then I made the mistake of exchanging email addresses. From that day forward I received at least one joke per week in my email. I also had the benefit of another biweekly politically conservative pitch about how taxes are ruining our society and about how trickle down actually does work. My friend had never even asked me about how my own political persuasion had developed over the years. The sad fact is that I looked at almost every email he sent to me hoping for some note of encouragement or a tidbit about what was going on in his life. But none came; after a year of disappointment I blocked him. Through it all I’ve forgotten many of the good things that I know about my friend but I do remember the hoards of cyber junk.

It happened to me again this week. I met an old friend through my blog. We exchanged pictures of our families through email although we never actually talked. Then I somehow got loaded on his email list. Now I will put up with a small amount of Christian talk because I know we, Conservative Mennonites, have been taught from little up that our highest calling is to be missionaries to the lost world. When we were young we even needed to explain to the world how the clothes they wear, their sports, their entertainment, even their talk needed changing. Now it’s not quite so bad anymore but we are still trying to get people to change what they drink and smoke.

Anyway, I started getting political emails from my friend. The first one said something about how President Obama wasn’t really born in Hawaii and that we needed to send money to their organization so they could fund a lawsuit against the president to get him out of office once they figured out where he was really born. They were sorry that his grandmother had died because she is supposedly the only one who really knows that he wasn’t actually born in Hawaii. I am sure I am misquoting the email, so if you want to check the facts for yourself let me know and I will send the email to you. :-) Then the other morning I woke up at 4:00 AM unable to sleep. I got up, turned on my computer and there sat another email from my friend. I searched his email for one personal comment about what he was feeling or how he was doing. Much to my dismay it was a dreaded forward. The forward was from Alan Keyes speaking in Fort Wayne about how this is the end of democracy as we know it. Mr. Keyes went on to say that we probably won’t have an election in 2012 because of what is happening in President Obama’s administration. I read every word carefully and then I wrote a short response to my friend saying how I had voted for President Obama and that I have been pleased on a couple of occasions during President Obama’s first 100 days in office. Then I crossed a boundary although I knew exactly what sin I was committing. Give me a break – it was 4 o’clock in the morning. I hit “reply-all” instead of just sending the rebuttal back to my friend only. By 8:00 AM that morning, when I turned on my computer for real, I had already received at least two personal emails from my friend’s conservative Christian cronies. Of course they are all interested in following Christ. My friend did send an email out to his mailing list asking everyone to “Respect” his mailing list by not using the “Reply All” button. I never did get a personal note which was probably what I’d been hoping for all along. I sent an immediate apology to my friend although I feel the unimaginably strong temptation to quote a Bible verse right here and now. Oh well, committing just two sins in one week is not so bad I guess -- here it is: Mathew 7:3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? By the way, I had to call my dad to check the facts on this verse.

I know I have violated a lot of boundaries in my life. I want to start fresh and do my best to keep my space clear of clutter and my best not to violate other people’s space again.

Book

2009-04-15T05:53:00.001-07:00

I have received some clarity about what I want to do with all this writing. I have decided to focus on the idea of writing a book. This project will take a few more years to come to completion if it ever does. I’ve thought about trying to write a book for years but I never could figure out how the book would end. I didn’t want to write something that would leave my self and its readers worse off at the end than they were when they started reading the book.

I feel some changes are happening in me that make the ending of a book about my life less difficult. Lorilee asked me again last night why I want to do this. That question has a thousand answers or, more simply put, doesn’t really have an answer. Fortunately Lorilee does not seem to demand an answer right now. I know that I do feel more alive when I take up a voice and I think that is what I am doing with the idea of a book of my life’s stories.

Anyway, because I may want to publish this book someday and also because of the private nature of many of the stories I want to put the rough drafts of each chapter as they come out into a more private forum; similar to what I have done with my blog to this point. It is really helpful for me to feel like I have readers who are willing and able to read what I write. The ability to read this stuff is no small feat and I appreciate very much what each of you is contributing to my life. Maybe the private forum will be more conducive for readers to critique and be more open with their feed back.

I have some experience with moderating a Yahoo Group and so I thought I would use this forum to continue with the chapters. I will keep my current blog public as it has been in the past. In case you hadn’t already figured it out I enjoy ranting and hopefully will be able to continue to do that in my blog. Anyway, over the next month I will recruit those of you who have expressed willingness to read what I write. You should receive an invitation to sign up for the private Yahoo group soon. If you would like to be a reader just send me an email at brianchristner@hughes.net and I will send you an invitation to the new private Yahoo Group.

Values

2009-04-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

My brother and his wife just picked up their kids one day and moved themselves from the Bible belt to a community near Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. I have been watching my brother let his values slowly change him for years and not without a lot of envy. But now he has gone and moved to the east. I have been able to divorce myself of a lot of excess baggage over the years but I've watched him move farther away faster than I ever did wishing in my heart of hearts that I could follow. But I am the older brother. I don’t follow. He follows me.

Anyway, I was the first of our family to make it out east for a visit after their move. I took the spring break advantage to bring Trey and come before they had even unpacked all of their clothes. We spent a day together in New York City and took Trey on a college visit to the Yale Library. Saturday came along, the day Trey and I would show them what real values are; Michigan State against University of Connecticut in a game of basketball. But as Saturday wore on and the game grew closer I felt an emptiness in my stomach that I couldn’t put my finger on. Then I figured it out. Something was wrong in the house. There was no processed sugar in the cupboards or caffeine in the refrigerator. I looked at my brother, Nate, and said, “Is their a convenience store around here anywhere?” He answered, “Sure,” probably thinking that I wasn’t satisfied with his selection of beers, and then said, “I’ll take you.” We all jumped in the car and he drove us to the local convenience store. As we pulled in Nate said, “I’ll stay with the kids.” I think he knew what I was going through and didn't know what to do. I felt my excitement rising, and motioned to Trey, “Come on Trey, let’s go and get the stuff.” As we ran across the parking lot I could already feel the sickness in my stomach dissipating and a relaxed feeling settling. As we entered the store I sensed something was wrong here too. The shelves were packed but there was nothing on them. Even Trey doesn’t who eats healthy and doesn't drink soft drinks could see what was happening to me. We walked forlornly through the isles and Trey weakly pointed out a few sports drinks that might help. The store didn’t have Oreo cookies either. They did have customers crowding the isles packing their carts with all kinds of food I didn’t recognize. I did see a lot of raisons.

We ran out into the parking lot as I explained to Nate. "This is not a store like the ones we have at home; what were you thinking?” Nate smiled as he started the car and said, “I think I know what you want.” We drove down the block and he parked in front of a different store. Trey and I went in much slower this time. Before I went looking through all the shelves I went up to the grocer standing behind the counter of his small shop to explain what I needed. He handed me his one case of Coke Zero he had stashed behind the counter like a porno magazine. He didn’t have any Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke in the store. Then Trey and I found the chips and Oreo Cookies on a rack behind us. We practically cleaned the store out of the stuff that you need to get through a basketball game.

I was much quieter as I sipped my diet coke as game time approached. I knew I had changed the character of the house even though I hadn't met to. The house now felt a little contaminated even to me the one who had gone searching for what was missing. It wasn’t the quiet voice of my sister-in-law that was helping me see things differently. It was the stuff on the shelves of that first convenience store. I watched the adds during pregame realizing that it is the food store chains and the corporate America’s advertising that has brought me to this place where I am today. As pregame ended and game time approached I arranged all the sugar cookies, pop, and chips but did not actively promote them to kids like I might have at home. I watched my brother and another father let their little boys take a sip of Heineken from their bottles as night approached and the boy’s energy started to peal away. But I never would have dared coax any of the little kids roaming the house to drink a sip from my can of Diet Coke as they raced around the darkening house under the watchful eyes of their protective mothers. I just knew they might have something. The natural course of the day was ending. That sip of the caffeinated Coke would have slowed natural processes that were occurring in those little boy’s bodies and those mothers know it; while the beer would simply add a sedative to assist the body as it shut down for the night.

I enjoyed watching Michigan State University knock off the University of Connecticut. I think it should be that way. Basketball was invented in the Midwest you know. After my short trip to Connecticut I do think that all good things probably didn't start in the Midwest. Maybe it would be okay for Trey to decide to go east for his college experience.

Trey, Nate, Cade, and Jack on the Staten Island Ferry outside of Manhatten.

Objectives

2009-03-23T07:06:00.001-07:00

I want to try to set some boundaries for myself. I suppose that will scare a few readers away. I know boundaries tend to scare me away.

As you may have noticed my blog has turned into a continued story that is working its way up into my life beginning with the younger years. The content will necessarily grow more mature as my age does. Also chapter five (5) will deal specifically with my father’s depression. As a result I want to make a move to provide a little more protection for myself, my dad and mom, and my immediate family. I did read all the words from the first six chapters to my wife and children several years ago. I also sent the words to my parents; my mom even provided some editing. Then I stopped reading to the children, to protect them. Eventually I stopped writing because I just could not go on with it. It just didn't seem like the Christian thing to keep writing. The next few chapters following chapter six (6) will grow darker as my life moves toward isolation. It will eventually emerge again into more light and certainly the last four or so chapters I've not even begun to write yet. Years from now I hope to present a more finished hard covered story set to my children; whether they read them or not is of course their choice; at least I’ve made a valiant attempt to lessen the number of family secrets perpetuated.

Back to those procedures that I hope don’t kill any interest that has managed to generate in my stories. I’d like to wait until April 15 (Lorilee’s last tax work day) to post chapter four (4). Then I plan to pause again until May 2nd (Trey’s birthday) to post chapter five (5). That will give those openly following the blog a chance to remove their names before it goes private. In addition anyone that may want to start following the blog as it goes private may add their names during April. As always, anyone who wants to receive email updates just needs to contact me via face book or my email address(brianchristner@hughes.net) and I will make sure that you get the updates when they come out. I'll have to figure out how the private blog thing works. I just think it will be easier for me to tell the stories that I want to tell if there is more control in the group of readers and I am actually able to envision more of who they are.

Actually I usually get consumed with living life in the present during the spring and summer months and so hopefully the chapters will begin to flow at a much slower pace until winter (death) rolls around again this year.

I hope to be able to continue to have readers; who will read what I write. I have tried to stop this process a 1,000 times since the writing started a few years ago. Then when I went public the 2nd thoughts of trying to stop the writing started again in full force, but I still did not have the energy to completely stop the writing. If it weren’t for readers my blog would be unfiltered and nothing more than a raw, angry, profane rant about the differences between the way things are and the way they should be from my perspective. Readers force me to filter and try to see things from a less selfish point of view. It is the readers that actually make the rant somewhat more palatable. I almost stopped again just last week but it was a public comment from my brother Sheldon that kept me going. Then last week I received a private comment from my sister Carla that will burn in me for a lifetime, probably never as strong as my anger for sure, but her comments will actually provide the light so that I can see my way through the darkness, even if it is ultimately the anger that gives me the unrelenting thrust. And last night my aunt Carolyn said three simple words, “Keep writing, Brian.” This compliment translates more as permission for me to push on. I trust Aunt Carolyn’s relationship with my mother enough to know that if Aunt Carolyn said “Stop writing, Brian” and I would continue on anyway the act would be similar to running through a stop sign in heavy traffic. That said I know that many are not as fortunate as me. One of my best friends will possibly never receive permission from his family to write. The breath to live must come from somewhere else.

Criticism is necessarily much more difficult to give and receive but I would like to try to handle some of it. I hope it comes from readers who have read carefully. Anything good can’t totally shy away from discipline. I know I struggle to give critique because it forces me to read not once but twice.

And so to summarize, after chapter four (4) posts I will pause for a moment to figure out how to take this blog private beginning May 1st 2009. Until then, give me a public or private comment if you want to receive updates.

Prayer

2009-02-05T05:44:00.000-08:00

Daaamm! I’m in; they let me into the Amish/Mennonite talk group. Here’s the welcome email I got to prove it:

Welcome five new members:
Welcome Angie from Alabama, Brian from Indiana, Christopher, Jana, and Melanie. Feel free to ask questions or join our discussion. A brief introduction would be appreciated. Due to the size and nature of this group, this is a primarily moderated group. Please do not post web addresses without permission from one of the moderators.
Kathleen
Moderator

I’m softening to the group a little already. I wonder if they’d let Kathleen(since she’s probably female) moderate our group on Sunday morning, or, even if our email group got together for a picnic on Sunday afternoon? On second thought I should remember to check the membership list, maybe I’m the only guy among 654 women. I guess Christopher is a man’s name. Now I’m going to have to figure out what to do with all of these poisonous emails streaming into my computer, at a rate of several per hour; I already got one on something entitled “headship” this morning, that should be real good. I guess it’s better than pornography.

Now I do feel a bit like a sheep in wolves clothing. But I guess somebody has to do it. I’ve vowed to wait at least a week to write my first email. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. Someone has to look out for the little sheep coming up. Someone has to say, “You know the world isn’t really all that bad, you can go out there and you won’t surely die.” Doesn’t that sound eerily familiar? I probably should not say that in an email since I think those words are already taken by somebody else, I think they were referring to some kind of deadly fruit.

Maybe I should use other words in my first email. Like, “If it looks like a wolf it is a wolf even if it carries a big Bible wherever it goes and speaks god speak with all the Biblically correct words.” Or, something like, “If it tells you how to groom or grow bodily hair (or not grow body hair) it’s a wolf for sure.” Or, “If it dominates the females of the species by telling them when to howl or what to wear, then it’s also a wolf.” Note that some might like their females to dress up in special, different, types of clothing around bedtime, I don’t think that is necessarily a characteristic of a wolf. Anyway, maybe I should not break all this stuff to our talk group right at first. Who knows maybe I’ll become a convert if I wait long enough.

Last night at the supper table I had an interesting thing happen. Prayer before meals was a practice that I think was started at Thanksgiving time several hundreds of years ago and has become sort of a ritual ever since. At least I have not been able to get it stopped in our home. It seems to fall heavily on my shoulders every night when we sit for our family meal. I used to look pleadingly at Lorilee whenever I was desperate for a break from the chore. Lorilee would then proceed to distribute the task evenly among the kids. I soon stopped giving her that look because I felt bad about asking someone else to do something that I didn’t want to do myself. Besides it seems way to hierarchical for her to be directing chores to the kids every time I give her that frustrated look.

And so I’ve fallen into a pattern over the years of saying exactly the same short, quick, prayer every night before we dig in. If one of us is missing I pray for that person too, and since Alisha is always at basketball practice in the winter she gets a mention every night lately.

“Dear God, I thank you for each person that is here. I pray that you will bless this food to our use. I pray that you will be with Alisha, In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Well, last night my prayer went like this instead:

“Dear God, I thank you for each person that is here. I pray that you will bless this food to our use. I pray that you will be with Jesus, in Alisha’s name, Amen.

As I looked up from my mumbling Dana had this big smile on her face. She does not have to speak because she communicates with her expressions. I went into my defense immediately, blurting out, “Why do I always have to be the one to pray?”

I wanted to continue with my defense and say all kinds of things about prayer and why one should not attempt to speak to God before one eats… especially if the food is good and they are hungry. But I could tell that my wife and son wanted to speak and so I clamped my teeth down on my laughter and listened.

Lorilee said, “Because you are our spiritual leader.” And then Trey chipped in with, “Because you are the Dad.”

I will have to find a way live with my family’s eloquent speeches, body language and all, for many years to come.

The fact is I know that I do pray and almost every day. When I see something beautiful I breathe something like this: “God, if you are out there, somewhere, thank-you.”

Actually, here are two very beautiful things:

The first is last summer’s Dahlia from our cottage garden and the second is Dana playing soccer last fall.

Anger

2009-02-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I really went and did it last night. No… I didn’t stop off at a strip club on the way home from work… although I may have been better off if I had. Addictions always seem to work their way in; this religious one has really got me handcuffed.

I feel alone with this. Lyle is off in Florida somewhere driving his brand new bus, Tampa I think. My youngest brother Nate is off to New Haven where he hangs out with his Yale buddies who call themselves Christians but don’t even go to church.

What did I do last night? I attempted to infiltrate an Amish/Mennonite talk group. I don’t know if they will let me in. They are probably pouring over my application right now. If they let me in I promise to keep my mouth shut for at least a week. They have 654 members with a 22 email per day average over the last 5 years.

The group has a Bible verse at the top of their web site. Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to the world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Why do I put myself through this? If God has prepared a hellish place for me I would prefer it to joining this talk group but there I went ahead and did it.

Oh well, they probably won’t let me in anyway. I did have to answer the questions listed below in order for them to process my application for admittance to the group. I feel slightly guilty about some of my answers to their questions.

Question #1: What is your name? (first name is fine): Brian

No guilt with that answer. Christner is a comfortable Amish/Mennonite name. I probably should have used my last name to help me get in.

Question #2: What is your age range?: 36-50

That is true. I don’t feel that old. I still feel like a kid every day.

Question #3: Are you married? Single? Widowed? Divorced? Married

Yes. Yes. Yes. That is the best thing I ever did.

Question #4: Do you have children? Yes, 3 teenagers

No guilt with that answer. That is the second best thing I ever did.

Question #5: Are you a born again Christian? Yes

Now there is the loaded question. I do feel some guilt about my answer. I’m not sure whether I lied with my answer or not. It’s a one word answer. If it is a lie I certainly did not embellish the lie. I could ask Nate, Lyle, or even Jim to testify for me before the group. Would that work to get me in? (To the group I mean) I’m not ready for heaven yet. Those friends have always been way too accepting of me as I am. Some people say that Jesus also accepts people as they are. I know I don’t, I wish I could. I guess I don’t have to decide right here, (in this blog) if I committed perjury since I am not under oath. I’m probably not a very good judge anyway. We’ll have to just wait and see what happens if my case ever comes up before a real judge.

Question #6: Do you attend church (or a home church)? Yes

Oops. I do feel guilty now. Although I did attend two weeks ago. And I do go every Friday morning. I hope that counts.

Question #7: What denomination currently expresses your current beliefs? Mennonite

Now I am quite sure that I answered question #7 truthfully. I have been trying to shake those beliefs my whole life, even the ones I am still not aware of. Poison doesn’t usually kill a person… just makes them feel awfully sick.

Angry? No I’m not angry.

This post is going south quickly. I can’t wait until spring. Actually March 13th is the first day of spring in my mind; only 37 days away. This year the 13th comes on a Friday. I take pictures every year of daffodils on March 13th. Here is one from March 13th 2008.

Here is a picture of Alisha playing basketball.

These pictures sure save me a lot in therapy bills.

Ice Fishing

2009-02-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

There really is very little to do that is worth while in January. The ground is frozen solid. The lakes have a 12" lid of ice on them. It seems like every thing in nature has just shut down to wait for spring. We are lucky enough to have a daughter willing to play the game of basketball and we have enjoyed watching her over the winter. We also have an undefeated Northridge boys high school basketball team. In the state of Indiana that is no small thing. But those things only keep my mind occupied for a couple of hours a week.

I suffered so much from cabin fever this winter that, on January 24th, Lorilee and I, together, attended the wedding of a daughter of a friend of mine at Lorilee's church. That took me back into church for the first time since Trey's Baptism almost a year ago, in March. The experience was good for me. Community is always a sight for sore eyes. And I saw that diversity is continueing to creep into the community, especially in the size and shape of the bonnets that the women are wearing now-a-days.

I coaxed a friend to leave the reception early and take in a Northridge boys basketball game. There, at the game, we sat behind one of the player's mother from a local conservative Mennonite church. Her son can shoot, NBA three pointers. This mother was having a really good time cheering for her son, standing up and shouting at the top of her lungs for her son. My friend leaned over to her and asked the woman if she cheered like that in church. "Of course not," I thought to myself, "Not unless they could find a way to play basketball on Sunday morning".

The wedding whetted my appetite for church and I attended again the next morning. I enjoyed talking to the people. The sermon was good, about money, since that is on everyone's mind these days. I thought it interesting when the pastor talked about people wanting everything when it comes to their health care. In my mind if a person wants everything the world has to offer when it comes to health care, the best doctors and the best facilities, the newest equipment, then they had better go with the best insurance company that has the best underwriters on their staff so that they can get the right pricing. I do wonder why God does not inspire some more contemporary writers so that pastors could safely use words like insurance in a sermon. On second thought I know what its like when a church trys to reach too far with its mandates. If mandates were appropriate I would certainly prefer a mandate for fuel efficient cars rather than a buggy with a horse power of two. I suppose it is a full time job for the church to keep its people sleeping with the right person. Anyway, I think that the Amish/Mennonite idea of sharing to pay hospital bills is a bit out of touch since there is no such thing as an Amish/Mennonite hospital. While our government has protected the right to freedom of religion I doubt that the government would stand by and let people of faith take their children to a medical facility that is sub standard. I wonder how hospital CFOs view Amish and even Mennonites who walk into these state of the art medical facilities making no apoligy for the fact that they do not have health insurance. Caring for a person's health needs has become a big business and it takes the best of business sense to properly provide for one's future health needs. Trusting in God to care for one's needs may be the preferred policy, its just not a policy that can be presented at the billing desk of Goshen General Hospital. If you want to read more about health care click here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_gawande

I was writing about cabin fever before I got distracted by church, one of my favorite subjects. Almost all of my free time, and there is a lot of it, in winter, is up for grabs and Holly Wood seems to know that. They sure have come out with a bunch of good movies for this winter. We started out by seeing “Valkyrie”, on the day after Christmas. It’s a historical movie about the assassination attempts made by the German army on Adolph Hitler during World War II. We saw it because Dana’s history teacher gave her extra credit for seeing it. It was a chance for me to go out with my brother Nate, and Cousins Richard and Wilson, and it really wasn’t too bad for a history assignment. Next, my whole family saw “Marley and Me” on the day after New Year’s Day. There aren’t many movies that Lorilee and I can agree to see together but there was one. I liked the fact that this movie was realistic about what it is like to own a dog. Those families who don’t already have a dog are not likely to run out and get one and those families who already do have a dog probably broke down in tears during the movie and now understand more about why they love their dog. We don’t have a dog. I want to get one when I am retired and can spend a lot of time with it. Somewhere during the Holidays our whole family also saw "7lbs" with Will Smith. Worthwhile... once you figure out what is going on. 7lbs of flesh is worth a whole lot if you can manage to give it away. The next Sunday on January 8th the rest of my family seemed to be having a lot going on but I had nothing to do. By mid afternoon I was bouncing off the walls. Lyle was on a road trip and Lorilee was refusing to go and see "Gran Torino" with me. She has seen enough Clint Eastwood movies for her life-time. I used to go to movies by myself a lot. Especially when I was a Conservative Mennonite and movies had to be seen in secret. Anyway, I was desperate to get out so I went to see the movie by myself. Boy, was that a treat. From the moment the movie began I knew it was a good one for me. It started out with an old man, Clint Eastwood, sitting there in his wife’s church. She had lived a long, fulfilled life, but now it was her funeral and Eastwood’s character found himself forced to go to church. The look on his face was priceless to me. His face revealed a lifetime of pain and anger towards his wife’s church and most of the rest of the world with the low growl emitting from deep in his stomach saying what the look on his face couldn’t. As it turns out the man had all the normal hurts picked up over a lifetime that he was nursing each afternoon while sipping cheap beer on his front porch. I enjoyed the movie; it has many themes including, family, aging, racism, religiosity, as well as the age old theme of violence and I hope to see it again with Lorilee when it comes out on DVD. On Wednesday January 11th our kid's church youth group came to our house for their mid week meeting. Lorilee and I wanted to make ourselves scarce so we decided to try to see a movie together. I was resigned to some chick flick or worse but I ended up being pleasantly surprised with the “Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” This movie is very long, we totally missed seeing the youth group, but the movie tackles just about all of the aging issues one can imagine since the main character, played by Brad Pitt, ages in reverse. Figure that one out. It’s hard to wrap your mind around unless you see the movie. Then the last weekend in January Lyle and I wanted to see a movie. We got lucky when we saw “Defiance”. I wish I had taken Trey with us. I usually don’t invite him to see an R rated movie but this one was worth while. This is a true story about four brothers, Jews, who find their parents killed in cold blood on their small farm by Nazi sympathizers. The brothers flee to the forest where they protect other Jews and fight off the Nazi’s for a couple of years until the war ends.

Whew… I am really ready for spring. The Super Bowl is finally in the past. Today is Ground Hog day. And so it can’t be too long. Trey and I did get outside this weekend for some ice fishing. We didn’t catch anything worth keeping but that was not the point of being out there. It is amazing to me how we walked around all weekend on the same lake that we swim in all summer. And sunsets were just as pretty as in the summer. Trey and I missed two basketball games in our Northridge boys basketball team’s run to 14-0 win loss record. But I’m glad we missed the games. It’s the principle of the thing I guess. I was proud of Trey for shutting off his cell phone and just sitting still in the ice shanty without the texts going off every few seconds. I refuse to carry a cell phone because of its invasion of my privacy but the rest of my family does not usually follow my lead. Trey and his friend Tyler, who also has the patience required for fishing, ended up staying out in the 5 degree temperatures til midnight on Friday night.

We were disappointed that we didn’t catch much of anything but being out in nature is much more valuable than catching hundreds of large fish. Ice is something that I can look at for hours without beginning to understand it. And to watch how plants and animals handle the change in seasons is also fascinating. We will have to try to figure out how to catch the fish some other weekend.

College

2009-01-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

Its Sunday again, January 18, 2009; our family is driving south to Muncie, Indiana for another Pizza King experience with JC and Rosie. Actually we are making the trip so that our daughters, Alisha and Dana, can visit Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), at Marian, Indiana. Dana volunteered to ride shot gun because she wants to drive back to the college in a couple of weeks for a soccer try-out. She does feel a lot of investment in this exploratory trip. Lorilee is driving as she feels safer behind the wheel when we make wintry drives. Trey has faded into his electronic world in the back of the mini van. Alisha is reading a book in the easy chair beside me. And me, I have a huge head cold. The combination of my buzz from the cold medicine, the warm sun streaming through the tinted van windows after reflecting off the mountains of sparkling white snow outside, and the low soothing beat of Nickelback, give me the relaxed feeling of a quiet day at the beach on an island in the Caribbean. I am relaxed. I know what my role is during these college visits. ”Back off,” I say to myself often, “Your role is to provide, emotional, financial and spiritual support; yours is not a decision making role.” And so I am enjoying the ride, the next couple of days should provide me with a lot of free time to write for my blog and on top of that we are headed for another visit at JC and Rosie’s place to boot. Since Muncie is only 17 miles south of IWU’s home town at Marian I used my influence as the Alpha Male in our family to get a night at JC and Rosie’s house while the girls spend the night with their cousin in her dorm room at IWU. Tomorrow we have a full day planned on the campus of IWU.

I do have reservations about IWU. People who have not walked for a year or two in my shoes would probably have a hard time understanding exactly why I could possibly have reservations about a conservative Christian college that is currently riding a wave of popularity, successful sports programs, and student growth. I suspect that it is very important how a father holds his daughter’s decisions about college and so I am trying to be careful to participate without placing much of my own bias into the college decision making process. I did tell both girls that I am not strongly encouraging them to go college at all. And further our support agreement for all three kids includes the same level of support during their first two years out of high school whether they go to college or not. If they do decide to go to college Lorilee and I plan to give them an additional two years of our financial support. Our level of financial support is the same for four years regardless of the college that the kids choose. Obviously this type of arrangement is designed to create a struggle for the kids during their junior year in high school, resulting in this type of an exploratory trip; the kids want to make good decisions.

For me the decision to go to college was a rebellious act against a culture that placed little value on education and a lot of value on working with one’s hands in the construction trades. By luck or maybe hard work my decisions worked out quite well for me but now it seems like everyone is going to college without struggling much with the decision at all. When attending my daughter’s church I quite often hear young people speak to their congregation saying, “I feel like I am being led by God, to attend this college.” Or, “I feel God leading me to this mission field.” Or, “I feel like God has brought me to this place to marry this man.” I am glad for kids who have the ability to speak like that; glad, for them that they can feel a calling from God to go to a particular place and do a particular thing at a certain point in time. Sometimes I do wonder what God thinks about though. I wonder if God ever wants to throw up his hands and say, “Don’t use me for an excuse for what you have decided to do.” Or, “I didn’t call you to do this or even that, I just want you to put your best foot forward in whatever you decide to do.” I suppose it is because I am not God, or at least have a lot less information than God, that I hesitate to provide a lot of direction for my girls as they begin their journey out into their world. I think my daughters know that their mother I love them very much and really want the very best for them even though we hesitate to give them a whole lot of firm direction. I think that knowledge will go a long way to help them make their own choices for life. I also hope they understand why I won’t be suggesting that they go to this college or to that university. I do want to be a responsible, participating, parent in the process though. I did have a hand or something similar to that, in bringing the girls into this world. I know that I don’t bear a lot of responsibility for much of the terrible stuff that goes on now that they are here; but since I am their father, I believe it would be irresponsible to leave them completely alone to fend for themselves now that they are through high school. And so I find myself visiting colleges with them and telling them that I will be here for them, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and physically no matter where they decide to spend the next four years of their lives. I do have my preferences for a large public University with its focus on purely academic pursuits, leaving the social, athletic, and spiritual/religious pursuits up to the student to work out. But I am confident that if I push that personal agenda I will get results that are not the best possible for any of us.

Again, I do have serious reservations about IWU; not so much because it is a Christian school, but more because I’ve heard a few things about the school’s rules for student behavior. I understand that students at IWU are subject to some of the same rules that I was subject during the teen years of my life. I don’t know what all of IWU’s rules are but I’m sure I will find out on our visit. I know some prohibited activities are drinking alcohol and dancing. I’ve often misread even the most reasonable rules and had the motives behind all sorts of rules explained to me in kind, patient, understanding ways by the administrators of those rules. And I still continue to view the nature of pleasure and pain, freedom and restriction, using the same map that has been so securely positioned into my subconscious since my own teenage years. I know that my reservations concerning IWU have little to do with the map with which my daughter’s are viewing the same landscape. I’ve taken a lot of time to tell my children stories of my younger years so that they can get a look at little pieces of the map that I am using that might help them understand more about where I am coming from.

My reservations about IWU take me back a long way to my home in Traverse City, Michigan, over thirty years ago, back to my junior year in high school. As our van points it nose south carrying our two 17 year old daughters, juniors at Northridge high school, onto I-69 toward IWU, I let my mind wander back to my own days in high school at Traverse City Senior High. I took school seriously because I felt that academics were one of the good things I had going for me. The academic work came easily and my mother really supported me in my work at school. I used that scholarly image to get my own way whenever the opportunity presented itself. My own way tended to diverge from the strict rules of the ultra conservative sect of the Amish Mennonites that I grew up with. My mother was in a tough spot because our church’s teachings prohibited her from speaking out much within the church about the rules. Her domain was in our home and I knew that she wished for me to be able to participate in high school sports and educational opportunities where ever possible even if those activities happened to involve infractions of the church’s standards for the appropriate behavior of church members. My family was quite dependant on our little church called Traverse Bay Conservative Mennonite Church.

My father had been the pastor for about four (4) years in another tiny Mennonite church about 50 miles south of Traverse City, in a community that, like Traverse City, knew nothing about the Amish Mennonites. When my father became sick and could not work the Traverse City Church took our family in, helped to pay our bills, and even helped our very needy family move to Traverse City where my father could receive the medical attention that he needed. Our family welcomed the much needed help and the tight community that the insular Amish Mennonite community provided. That was five (5) years earlier and now, at seventeen (17) years old I was caught between two worlds at constant war within me. I wanted to please the good people of our church who had done so much for my father and who held the keys to my understanding of God and my own spiritual life. But I also wanted desperately to find my place in the world. I could not seem to have both. If I conformed to the church rules I received approval and acceptance in the church but was not free to find a place in the world. If I participated in what seemed to me quite normal activities in the culture of my school I was considered rebellious. “The sin of rebellion,” our pastor taught, “Is as the sin of witchcraft.” While my father and our family needed the church and its support I needed freedom. These competing needs were destroying me.

Quite often during those teen years when I’d get caught doing something in violation of the church’s rules I felt my mother’s support even though that support was not worth much against the male dominated power of our church community. As a result I became quite manipulative and the truth about my life got lost somewhere between the details of the church’s rules for a life style of nonconformity to the world and my awkward attempts to find a place to fit in at school. I knew then and even more now that personal honesty is no small detail in the life of a maturing person. But as my desperate life slowly developed it became painfully clear that something was going to have to give. It was my own personal integrity, the single most important thing in the world that I gave up.

I would come home from school on a Friday night all pumped up about a high school football game that was to take place that evening between the Traverse City Trojans and another rival high school’s football team. I knew that I was good enough to play for our Trojans but church rules prohibited my participation in organized sports of any kind, except those organized specifically for our church members. Even though I could not play football I desperately wanted to watch the game. The glory of the Friday night lights was in my blood. I knew I was good enough to play because I could dominate the field in flag football during my physical education class at school. Of course the jocks who made up the Trojan football team did not participate with the gym class flag football games. Instead of playing with the gym class they lifted weights during physical education class. Sometimes the football players would gather at the field to watch our flag football game. They would laugh at our mistakes and make fun of me as I tore up and down the field scoring touchdowns almost at will. I didn’t hold anything against the players in my class for poking fun at me. I just wanted to watch the boys play football on Friday night.

I was a straight A student who seldom had to crack a book to maintain my grades. But I kept that my little secret. I would come home from school with an arm load of books. On a Friday night I’d plop the books down on the supper table right next to my plate so that my mother could see them. During supper I’d let it slip that I had a big project that I needed to work on at the library. Then, soon after supper, I would pack up a bag of books and walk out the door letting everyone in the family know that I’d be at the library working on my studies. With that, I’d jump on my bike and peddle across town to Thirlby Field where the Trojans would be readying themselves to do battle.

My school was big and had about 800 kids in each grade. So it was not difficult to disappear and remain anonymous. I’d buy my football game ticket and slip inside the gate. Then I would find a safe place under the bleachers where I could look out between the wooden benches onto the football field to see the game without being seen by anyone who could report my presence. There I’d hang out in anonymity, except for the occasional teenage smoker or kids looking for a place to make out, and enjoy the luster and excitement of the game in secret. The fear of getting discovered by my family was not that great; I could deal with my family. But I was afraid of the discipline of the church. And I did not want to risk losing the sense of community that I felt with our church.

My disregard for our church rules was discovered on one particular occasion in the spring of my junior year. And the activity involved was much worse than a mere football game or even a basketball game. It was dancing. I’d come out of my shell a bit at school. I was terribly backward socially. I was very embarrassed of the way my family and fellow church members dressed in outfits that included plain clothes with bonnets for the women and girls. Yet the loving indoctrination of the church had convinced me that the clothes we wore were one way for our church to bear witness to outsiders of a loving God who was reaching out to save the world. I was able to bracket the embarrassment and self consciousness long enough to run for a junior class representative seat in the student government of our school. I won the seat in the student government and hoped that this would help me find a place of acceptance in my junior class of 800 kids.

Toward the end of our school year the student council planned a fund raiser. Part of the money raised would go to charity and the other part would be used to fund student council activities. The fund raiser was to be an all night dance. Of course there would be plenty of parental sponsors at the dance but I was really in the middle of an internal dilemma. Attending a dance would be a serious sin and if found out would put me in serious jeopardy with my church community. Not attending the student council sponsored dance would erase the little status I had managed to achieve in my position on the student council. After much internal deliberation I decided to risk attending the dance. That Friday evening, without giving my mother any explanation, I drove across town to the student center where the dance was to be held.

I did not have anyone that I could really call a friend in my grade at school. I’d found that friendships were quite often found and developed on the playing fields of sport and of course I could not do that. I’d made some close friends in my neighbor hood playing sand lot baseball or just hanging out on the street but none of those kids happened to be in my grade at school. The kids I did know in my grade tended to be the nerdy type who’s good grades didn’t do them any good on the social scene. But now I found myself at a high school dance; a place where awful things happen to socially backward, shy kids, who just want to find their place among peers. I made a few attempts to mingle but spent most of my time sitting in the darkness beside the flashing lights of the dance floor enjoying the hard steady beat of the rock music played by the disc jockey. Rock music was the one thing that I had come to depend on.

I listened to hard rock music a lot. Another activity banned by my church. I learned to love the music by listening to it with my head phones on in bed at night and it was the music that afforded me the little comfort that I was able to find sitting there alone most of the night by the dance floor. By 2:00 AM most of the high school kids had scattered to their homes. I began to recognize a few of the kids still hanging around as student council members sponsoring the dance. Much to my surprise one of the girls approached me and asked if I wanted to dance. I felt embarrassed and awkward but I couldn’t say no. Here I was at an all night dance at two o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t bring myself to say that I didn’t have a clue about how to dance. I don’t think I’d ever felt so out of place in my life. I found it difficult to even look at the girl. I tried to mimic the movements of the other boys that I’d watched on the dance floor. I clumsily flung my arms out to the side of my body trying desperately to hear the beat of the music. Finally the music stopped, the girl disappeared and I was able to get back to my chair where I could just sit and listen to the music again. I did feel very proud of myself though for having been on the dance floor. I pinched myself glad that God had not struck me dead on the spot for my sin.

The night was finally through, the dancing finished, and nothing left but the mess left behind by the high school kids. I helped with the clean-up of the facility along with the other student council members and then headed across town for home. It was 8:30 AM by the time I arrived at home. My mother was waiting for me on the back step and I’ll never forget the scared and disappointed look on her face. For all she knew I had spent the night in drunkenness and sexual debauchery. I couldn’t tell her the truth about the school sponsored function and my new duties as a member of the student council because of the dancing and the repercussions that would cause for us at church. And so I just met her disappointed look with the hard sullen look of a rebellious teen. With all the strength my mother could summon she made it clear that I would not be going to bed until all the Saturday chores were done. And with out another word she gave me a list of tasks that I needed to complete. It was her way of saying to me that work is important and that even if a person parties all night the work still needs to get done. And all the work did get done, by me. I cleaned up the yard; then my room and then I washed the dishes too; far more work than would have been required of me had I spent the night in bed where I belonged. When my chores were finished I went to bed.

I awoke mid afternoon and came down to sit in our living room. We Mennonites did not have a TV. We used the radio to get our news and of course the paper. I set about reading the Traverse City Record Eagle that was delivered to our home each afternoon. I gasped aloud as I flipped the paper open to the third page where the local news items covering topics relevant to Traverse City were reported on. There in the upper left corner of the page was a picture of me and that nice, considerate girl who also served on the student council fund raising committee. In the picture I had one hand flung clumsily up in the air over my head and the other flailing out to my left side as though I were grasping for something that was just out of reach. I looked away from the picture, trembling, wondering where I could hide the paper. Then knowing when I looked back at the picture that I could not hide all of the copies of it that were filling the news stands around Traverse City. On second look the boy did not appear all that clumsy. Actually the picture looked like some normal teenager who was dancing. Dancing; my mind filled with terror again as I read the caption. Brian Christner, the caption read, and went on to explain the details of our fund raiser. There it was, in bold letters, my name and face, my sin, in bold print for the entire world to see. I put the paper away and tried to think of something else not wanting to consider the eternal damage that I was doing to my life, to my God, to my family, and to my church community.

Later in the evening we had a visitor. I heard our pastor come in the front door from my upstairs room. My mother had let me know in advance that the pastor of our church was coming by for a visit. We didn’t even discuss the nature of his visit; we both knew why the pastor was calling on us. My dad, mom, and the pastor had already taken up positions in three corners of our living room when I came down the steps from my upstairs room. I took the easy chair nearest the door. I was 17 years old but I felt younger, like an 8 or 10 year old. I knew what I had done was wrong. But I could not admit my sin. There were so many sins that would need to be confessed if I decided to start confessing my sins now. And so I sat there in silence with that sullen look pasted firmly on my face that I had used against my mother just hours earlier. The pastor began to talk of his concerns for my life. His voice did not seem caring to me even though he was obviously very hurt. I could not feel the concern in his voice. But he used all the words he could find to convey his concerns about the condition of my life to me. If I continued to live my life in rebellion against the church, he said, my life would be ruined. I feared all of the things he said already and being reminded of them only made my fears worse.

I struggled to speak but couldn’t. I wanted to explain myself but couldn’t. The lecture had taken on the usual tense high pitched tone. I had experienced this tone before when it became clear to the pastor that I was not going to break down in tearful submission and confession before God and the Church. Suddenly I began to hear something in the distance. as the pastor continued on, with his talk, about my necessity to have the peace of God in my life. He said that only in finding the peace from God would I be truly free to live my life as it was meant to be lived. The sound that I was hearing was getting stronger now. It had the slow steady beat of a rock song. It was music, some that I’d heard at the dance the night before. I recognized it as a track off Boston’s self titled new album. I heard the music loud now, and clear. I had to hold my foot still to keep it from moving to the beat. When I spoke; out of my throat came the words to the Boston song I was hearing. “All I want,” I said, “Is to have my peace of mind.”

When I’d finished my 10 word speech, I was so proud of myself. But then a competing voice came through my subconscious, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” The pastor went on explaining and using the scriptures frantically trying to get me to see how that “peace of mind” was not the same as “peace of God”. I didn’t have to listen to him anymore though. I had found the courage to speak back to him and that was enough. Unfortunately for me, while our pastor had correctly diagnosed and helped my father some 5 years earlier, he had failed to help me, the rebellious teenage son of my father.

I awoke the next morning and prepared for Sunday morning at church. I pulled on my black pants that had been altered to remove the worldly bell bottom flare. While the straightened legged pants were such an embarrassment to me at school they were a badge of honor at church. We were different from the world, set apart in order to honor God. Then I put on my black suit jacket modified into what we called a plain coat that looked quite like the collar that a Catholic Priest would wear when performing his priestly duties. I looked in the mirror and smiled. I was quite proud of my plain, clean cut, appearance when I was ready for church. Normally when I dressed for church I would select socks that did not match; as a small way of allowing myself to be different, in secret, from the sameness in our congregation. But not this Sunday; I didn’t want to risk sticking out in any way.

I entered the church that morning with much apprehension. On Sunday mornings about 35 people attended our church. Sometimes we would have visitors from another Mennonite Church in our Conference. But there was no reason for my apprehension as the members of our church reached out to me in love as they always did. Things didn’t seem that much different, maybe most of them didn’t actually know that I’d been dancing just a couple of days ago. The women, in their white bonnets smiled their usual approval of me, and the men gave me the customary holy kiss. Even though I was quite revolted at having to kiss the male church members I was happy to do it this morning. I was still accepted by the church and I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. But I knew that I was different. I had danced. Even though I hoped I’d never have to dance again I had done it once.

I awoke from my cold medicine induced dreaming as Lorilee pulled our van onto the campus streets at IWU. We found our way through the maze of campus buildings to Kem Hall where Melissa Mast, Lorilee’s niece, has a dorm room. After a few texts Melissa stuck her head out of the large new brick building and our girls hurried off to meet her. Many of buildings on Campus seemed brand new and with all the new snow piled around the campus made quite an impression on us.

Lorilee, Trey and I spent the evening with JC and Rosy. JC was not feeling well enough to go out for Pizza. Lorilee took Rosy out to do her shopping and they brought back two pizza’s with bread sticks from Pizza King. We enjoyed the evening immensely watching the Cardinals and the Steelers earn their places in the Super Bowl.

The next morning the three of us set off for the campus after Rosie had filled us with her breakfast of biscuits and gray. I had steeled myself for a full day of negative thoughts because of the Christian environment on campus. My cynicism normally raises its ugly head in the worst of ways when I feel trapped in such an environment. Chapel is a requirement for all students and since it was Martin Luther King Holiday we endured a stirring speech about civil rights and integration. Sitting there in an all white student body I waited for the cynicism to start rolling in, but the bad feelings didn’t seem overwhelming to me. Even though the thousands of students were careful to get there badges swiped so they could get credit for their mandatory attendance at the church service they did seem to want to be there. Later in the day they had a panel of administrators set up to field questions from visiting parents. One of the parents went right for the jugular and asked a VP if the chapel speech didn’t seem a bit out of place. I thought the administrator did a pretty good job of talking about the school’s failings concerning integration and what the school is currently doing with the hope that students of color will feel more at home at IWU. Also during the panel discussion another parent, obviously from the Wesleyan denomination, asked the administrators what they are doing to preserve the Wesleyan faith amid all the other faiths represented at the school. The administrator took the opportunity for a chance to break down walls created by denominations rather that focusing on the parent’s question. I came away thinking that if all the students and parents had the same spirit as the school’s administration then I would judge the school in a different light.

At almost every meeting the facilitator would speak about the fact that IWU is Christ centered. He or she would boldly say, “We make no apology for it, that our school puts Christ first.” But I could never really figure out what they meant by that. I suppose they would probably tell me that I can’t understand what they mean unless Christ is first in my life. I was not turned off by it though. The other parents and students seemed to understand what that meant or at least no one asked questions about it. They still talked about all the things that make a college experience great. Good food, good sports teams, excellent academic standards. I guess being Christ centered is different than it was thirty years ago when I was a teen.

I was still trying to figure out what it means to be Christ centered on the drive home with the kids. But of course they didn’t talk about that aspect of the school. They know that they need to find a way to get there ACT/SAT scores up in order to increase their chances for an academic scholarship. They know that they need to impress the IWU soccer coach if they want to get a sport scholarship.

What I want the most for our girls is the real feel of a calling in their life to a profession such as nursing, accounting or education. Things are different for my kids than they were for me. While my pastor knew exactly what the peace of God looks like in a teenager I didn’t get the feeling that the leaders at IWU have such a clear vision of what the peace of God looks like in their students. I sensed them holding their vision loosely enough that their school could be as good a place as any for my children to struggle.

I want to get better at separating my own experiences from those that my kids will have. Theirs will probably be as traumatic as mine but also a lot different. I heard one encouraging comment on the way home. One of the girls said that they want to visit Indiana University – Purdue University at Fort Wayne. They have a School of Education, School of Nursing, School of Business and a division II soccer team also. And so this morning I am researching that school anxious that the kids have the best information available to them to make their decision about where they will spend the next four years of their lives.

Waiting

2009-01-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

It’s Thursday, January 01, 2009. Lorilee and I are taking the opportunity to drive three (3) hours south of our home to Muncie, Indiana to visit our friends JC and Rosie. Over the years we’ve spent quite a few summer weekends together at the lake. JC’s health has left him shut-in at his home in Muncie. By the time we met them, JC and his wife, Rosie were already in their early 80s. JC’s eye sight has gotten worse every year and he finally gave up driving completely in 2002. He has had to rely on his wife, of 62 years, to drive their 1967 ford pickup the 2 ½ hour drive up I-69 to the lake. It’s a good day to get away while the kids are sleeping off their all night New Year’s Eve party that they had last night with their church youth group. Lorilee and I brought in the New Year with friends playing cards and watching rock bands on the tube. We did plan to bring it in with a bigger bang this year, but, like usual, the party never really got off the ground. We talked it up big though, and in the process assembled quite an array of various alcoholic beverages. This morning I placed two nearly full Amaretto Liqueur bottles away, into the cupboard, right next to the nearly full bottle from last year’s New Year’s Eve party.

I feel good this morning; not so much because I don’t have a hang over but because I am on my way to see JC. I first met JC on the first Saturday in September back in 2001, just before 9/11 happened. We had just purchased our little cottage on the lake and I was out in the yard raking those pesky little leaves that large willow trees give up in the fall. JC startled me with his booming raspy shout that demanded my full attention. “Hey you,” he shouted, “You, come over here.” I came over to him quickly not wanting to disobey his commanding voice and wanting to begin our relationship on a good note.

As I neared JC’s position in his yard he pointed to the newly placed surveyor’s flag nestled in behind his old tattered white metal shed. Our property had been surveyed so that a title insurance policy could be issued to us. His shed was a beat up rickety piece of junk that had white painted metal for both its roof and side walls. All of JC’s possessions were clearly precious to him. As I approached him, he explained to me with a guilty look on his face that he was going to have the shed moved 6” to the west so that it no longer encroached on my property. When I got over to him I reached out and shook his hand and simultaneously shook my head violently. I made it clear in my own commanding voice that JC should leave his shed right where it was. The corner of his shed was welcome on my property and if I had anything to say about it that that shed would stay put right where it was.

As it turns out my accepting JC’s encroachment on my property was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Things are very simple to JC and few things are more important than property lines. Property lines provide boundaries. People are free to do whatever they like as long as they do it on their own property. And property lines also draw the boundaries for feuds that existed quite often between JC and his neighbors. It also turned out that JC had been nursing a long standing feud with the lady that we had bought our new cottage from. And part of the feud was over the location of JC’s very own junky white shed. The husband of the lady we bought our cottage from, Fred, had been JC’s best friend for years until Fred died in 1998. When that relationship ended the feuding started. JC had bitterly refused to move the shed off of her property and I had unwittingly given him permission to keep his shed on her property. That decision started what became a long and deep friendship between JC and me. Kind of like father and son only we made a choice of it. And since JC’s shed was on my property we did not have the normal boundaries in our relationship that other people necessarily have to put up. As the normal boundaries collapsed we talked, about everything. And we made great friends. JC had abused his body and it was really worn out. He’d had both knees replaced and they were just not stable enough to bear the weight of his tall large frame for very long at all. But he liked to talk about the good old drinking days. And I enjoyed the listening. I’d bring up a couple of old empty bottles up from his shed, left there from more healthy days and we would sit on the bank of the lake pretending to drink while JC talked of his home days in the south of Alabama, about his short stint in World War II or about his 33 years as a union steward in the factory looking out for the little guys.

Over the years we’ve spent quite a few summer weekends together at the lake. As JC and I had few boundaries between us I could go over to his place anytime where he'd be sitting in his easy chair in front of the TV waiting for one of our talks. He couldn’t really see what was on the TV but he did like having the background noise. I’d walk past his cottage as early as 6:30 in the morning and hear him yell out in his raspy voice. “Brian, you there? Is that you?” I’d simply say, “It’s me.” And he would yell back, “Get your scrawny ass in here. Take a load off. You work too much.” And there I would sit and listen to JC’s stories about how things used to be. Then I would get up and go out and work around the place. It nearly killed JC to watch me work because he was too weak to help. JC soon gave me the complete use of his cottage and yard when ever he was not around the place. And I enjoyed the up keep work. JC would just have to sit and watch with a wistful look on his face. I wouldn’t let him pay me for mowing the yard. But he always gave the kids $3.00 and sometimes even $5.00. After the mowing was done we would fish from the banks.

JC loved to fish all his life but now he was too old and all he could was watch and listen. JC had collected 40 years worth of fishing gear. By 2005 he had given up the idea of ever fishing again. One day during the summer he just gave all of his fishing gear to my son Trey. We would sit on a bench watching Trey and his friends’ fish for bass, carp, or catfish. When Trey would catch a particularly big fish he would carry it over and show it to JC and me. And JC’s reaction was almost always the same. He would yell out Trey’s name in his gruff hoarse voice, “Trey, you are a good boy. I am so proud of you. I am so proud of you. I can’t believe how much you have grown. You are taller than your daddy.” And Trey would just stand there drinking it in sometimes looking sheepish and probably feeling a little foolish. I think I would drink the praise in even more than Trey. One day I kind of fell into a trance imagining the huge fish falling from Trey’s hands and Trey continuing to stand there before JC totally naked with the sun glistening down off his bare tanned back and shoulders. Trey, just stood there, totally naked, his skin soaking up the blessing; absorbing it through his skin, the loud spoken words of praise like a sponge soaking up water. “Trey, I am so proud of you! You are such a good boy. And so is your daddy. I am so proud of you.” And I knew the blessing had nothing to do with the fish or any other feats that we could possibly have accomplished. The blessing was just part of JC’s nature. He gave the blessing freely without even being aware that he was giving it.

JC got particularly sick during the summer of 2007. He and Rosie drove up to the cottage on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I met them at their cottage as they drove up. It was all JC could do to hobble into the cottage and collapse on his easy chair in front of the TV. Just walking into the cottage had taken all his strength. As he rested there, for a moment I could tell that something was weighing heavily on his mind. He looked at Rosie and asked her to find a garbage bag. She did and then he went on to tell me that he needed to get rid of some dirty magazines that he had in the shed so that Trey would not get into them. He proceeded to work his way out of the chair pulling his walker toward him. I told JC I’d meet him out at the shed. By the time JC had made it across the 200’ stretch of lawn to the shed he was completely out of breath. Rosie made her way around him and came through the overhead door where I was waiting. Rosie said, “Where, JC? Where do you keep the dirty magazines?” Lorilee, who had been putting fresh oil into the mower that we kept in JC’s garage, looked up as she heard Rosie’s question. Not wanting to be a part of this discussion Lorilee turned away and hurried from the shed. “Over there,” breathed JC weakly, pointing to a large white metal cabinet on the east wall of the shed. The cabinet was 6’ tall and almost as wide with full length metal doors. I moved over to it and so did Rosie. She was standing there holding the large black garbage bag firmly in both hands as I pulled open the doors. I few magazines sprang out and onto the floor as I opened the cabinet. It was stuffed, every shelf from bottom to top, with magazines. I immediately pulled out a few and dropped them between Rosie’s waiting hands and into the bag. The weight of just a few magazines weighed heavily on Rosie’s arms. I smiled at Rosy. She was a sight. JC had already gotten his walker turned around and pointed back toward the cottage, his mission completed.

Now the mission was mine as I looked down at Rosie. “This bag is not enough, Rosie. I’d be glad to help JC get rid of these magazines but I think I’ll do it tomorrow.” Relief crossed Rosie’s face as she let the weight of the bag sink to the floor. I pulled the overhead door shut and walked across the yard to our cottage wondering what I’d gotten myself in for. JC and Rosie were soon in their truck headed for home. The kids and Lorilee were in no mood to spend any more time at the lake and we headed for home that evening also. It had been a long hot summer. As I lay in bed that night I thought about the unexpected task I had received. It was something important that I could do for JC. But more than that the task was taking me backwards into a former life of mine; I knew this was a big task for me and was already weighing heavily on my mind. I’d guessed that part of the attraction between JC and I was our strong individualism, the shared distain for organized religion, and of course our vices. But I never could drink very well and certainly not as hard as JC did in his prime. I now knew the vice we shared; the penchant for exotic women and pictures of them.

The next day, Sunday, I made my way back out to the cottage to dispose of the task at hand determined to do it quickly and completely. I thought about the various methods I could use to get rid of the magazines. I thought for a bit about starting a bon fire but quickly discarded the idea. The thought of charred pictures of women in various poses and sexual gyrations floating about the neighboring barbeque pits and lake houses was too scary.

I started by sorting the magazines, hunting and fishing magazines in one pile, soft core porn in another and hard core porn in a third pile. But it was just too much for me. It was taking too long and I did not like where the task was taking me. I had to get some help and that help certainly could not come from anyone in my family.

I went home thinking that I would tackle the job again on the next day, Labor Day. I thought of my friend, Lyle. I called up Lyle, the next morning, Monday, Labor Day, to see how he was planning to spend his holiday. He told me that he would be home from his camping trip by 3:00 pm or so in the afternoon and that he would be free to take a ride with me. I didn’t tell him what I needed help with, just told him I’d stop in later in the afternoon to pick him up. I wanted to keep some of the demons in my past down and I knew that Lyle was just the person to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I’d gotten rid of sexual secrets in my past at least as much as they can be gotten rid of and I didn’t want a stash of some 400 exotic magazines to trap me again. Especially with a teenage son coming up; in fact it was Trey who had unwittingly helped me get back some of the freedom I enjoy today. When he was just an infant I decided that I wanted to be able to look him in the eye and swear to him that I was faithful to his mother. And now I could, look him straight in the eye and talk to him about anything that was on my mind. I’d talked to him about masturbation not too long ago. I wanted to be sure that he knew you won’t go blind if you do it. I supposed they stopped telling kids that many years ago but I just wanted to be sure that he knew. I told him that I hoped he didn’t do it too often though. I’ve heard that some men can do it 6 or 7 times a day and I know that can’t be a good thing. I’d ended up telling Trey that I hoped he could feel free to talk to me about sex or anything else. I didn’t have any high expectations that he would want to talk to me about sex though. It just makes me feel real good inside when he chooses to sit next to me at a basketball game. I did tell him that I liked the views of his youth pastor on masturbation even though I don’t know what they really are. I think I know his youth pastor well enough to know that whatever his views on masturbation are they will not permanately damage Trey’s life.

As soon as we got to the cottage I explained our purpose to Lyle and we both stood there trying to appreciate the huge stacks of magazines. I continued to develop the soft core pile noting that Lyle seemed to be having way too much fun with his stack. From time to time we shared stories or made a point concerning a particularly interesting magazine. I’d started a fourth pile for Play Boy magazines that were dated in the 1960s. On that stack I placed all magazines that were prior to 1970, that were in relatively good shape, and still had their centerfold in tact. Finally we were finished, but only after we had loaded all of five (5) bulging heavy duty garbage bags full of every sort of Men’s magazine into the back of my truck.

I’d also stashed my stack of Play Boys in the back seat before we headed for home. My task was not finished though. Lorilee wouldn’t hear of using our garbage service to haul off the magazines. I didn’t blame her for that. I could just imagine the talk among our neighbors if one of the bulging bags would happen to burst giving up just a few pieces of its contents. The next day I drove my truck into work garbage bags and all. I took a couple of the Play Boy magazines in with me just for a conversation piece. Those magazines were pretty tame but I didn’t feel real comfortable with them stuffed inside my executive desk drawer. But I had to do a little research on E-bay. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing out a magazine possibly worth 100s even 1000s of dollars into a dumpster even if it is a magazine that exploits or even degrades women. When I did get on E-bay I did find that there is a thriving trade in old Play Boy magazines. However, the old magazines are not that rare and can be obtained quite easily for $12 or even $10 a piece. The first issue, I think it’s June of 1965, is the really valuable one and of course I didn’t have it.

Feeling a bit relieved I placed the stack of Play Boys among the other magazines in the back of my truck in a garbage bag. I called a friend of mine in Elkhart who is single and has a garbage service. He completely understood my predicament and agreed to help with the disposal. That evening he helped me unload the bags into his dumpster. We had quite a time joking about it and I was glad when I had rid myself of every last magazine. It’s a funny thing how something as ridiculous as a $3.00 magazine could completely control my weekend.

JC and I never talked about the job I’d undertaken again except for the few seconds it took me to assure him that I’d done it completely. I think I have earned a special place in JC’s heart because I helped him tie up a loose end.

Lorilee and I pulled into a rest area as we neared Muncie. She had grown a bit tired of driving especially after having such a short night of sleep the previous night. We both feel much safer when she is driving and I did appreciate the time she was giving me to write for my blog about JC. However, duty was calling and I finished the drive to JC and Rosie’s place.

As we pulled into their humble dwelling they were both standing there at the large picture window waiting for our arrival. JC was standing without his walker. He could walk around the house quit well without it. We exchanged warm hugs. They were ready to get on with our traditions. JC was going to venture out of doors today. The snow had melted and so he was willing to take the risk. He could not risk going out in the snow. The doctor had told him that one more fall and he would lose his leg and possibly both of them. His body would not be able to handle another surgery. With such a big frame just a little misstep and JC’s frame would be toppled over into a heap; on this cold New Years Day though they were ready to venture out.

To JC and Rosie there is only one restaurant in all of Muncie. It has become so for us too. That restaurant is Pizza King. We ate our Royal Feast in record time with one order of bread sticks and plenty of spicy cheese. JC with three (3) cups of black coffee, Lorilee water, and Brian and Rosie diet Cola. After the dinner we set out to complete anther task that has become our tradition. We pulled into the local convenience store for lottery tickets. As we pulled into the lot Rosie saw, for the first time, that gas prices had increased from $1.61 to $1.85 overnight. “Sheeit!” exclaimed Rosie, “Them god damned sons of bitches are at it again. Hell, raising gas prices for no good reason.” I smiled to myself as I hurried through the cold and into the convenience store. Rosie, the feeble white haired little old lady, her ability to communicate her passion was so endearing to me, especially that part of my Conservative Mennonite soul that, even to this day, cannot communicate itself clearly for fear of choosing the wrong four letter word. I purchased the lottery tickets for Rosie using the $5.00 bill she had thrust at me. I used to brag to anyone who would listen that I have never purchased a lottery ticket. Now I can only say that I have never used my own money to purchase a lottery ticket. I do enjoy a good Texas Hold ‘Em game but I can’t bring myself to take the bad odds that the local government run gaming establishments offer. Anyway, that’s how I know I’m part of Rosie’s inner circle; when she buys a lottery ticket for me. Rosie bought, JC, herself, Lorilee and me a single ticket. She carefully distributed each ticket, costing $1.00, to each of us. Then she proudly declared; “Now you can feel like a millionaire every day till Saturday night when they list the winners in the paper.”

We drove back to JC and Rosie’s home to wait for night fall. It was approaching 6:00 pm and darkness was upon us. JC began to settle in for the night. There really is no difference between night and day for JC except for the behavior of his beautiful black stray cat. The cat’s black coat was not always sleek and beautiful though.

A few years ago Blacky was a wild neighborhood predator that the neighbors said JC could never tame. But over one summer JC would sit on his porch and pour out rough insults down on the cat that he is so good at. But that stray cat must have recognized the same things in JC that I did. Eventually the stray would get close enough that JC could reach down and almost touch it. Rosie was the one who would set out a dish of warm milk each day but Blacky would never let Rosie get even close, only JC. Eventually, toward fall, Blacky took up residence on JC's lap for its daytime naps. Finally, when winter came, the cat made JC’s little house, its home.

Blacky is nocturnal. As night began to fall Blacky began its prowl of the house. It circled the whole house sniffing out each room in its low crouch. It always ended up circling JC’s chair. JC always kept his legs elevated, propped up by the sturdy arm of the couch next to his easy chair. And he is always careful to wear a double pair of insulated socks. The toes need the insulation to protect them since the cat does not let JC dose off too long. Every time JC would fall off to sleep for too long a sharp nip on the toe from Blacky brought him back to reality.

We watched a few home videos that we had brought with us from past vacations. JC and Rosie really did seem interested in the pictures. JC was only interested in the music. From time to time he would get himself up out of the chair and lumber over to the TV and kneel down within inches to see if he could make out a shape or two. Once he even set too dancing to a CCR tune until Rosie’s profanity sent him back into his chair.

Each time the large clock on the wall tolled out a new hour JC would begin a low monotone count that would crescendo into a loud bellow by the time the tolls were complete. That was his way of telling time and making sure the rest of us were also aware of its passing.

I sat up with him counting out the hours until midnight. Waiting. Lorilee retired, then Rosie. JC never left his easy chair. That’s where he spends 24 hours of each day staring out the window at the shadowy movements of cars and trucks as the pass down the busy thoroughfare past Ball State University. During the summer months, he is able to spend the warmest parts of the day closer to the traffic, on the porch. He can tell whenever a neighbor that he knows passes by because of their sound and never fails to yell out their name and offer a wave.

We did have the TV on watching the Rose Bowl and then the Orange Bowl. JC could not make out the picture; I could make out the picture but it was so blurry that I soon tired of trying to figure out which was the offense and which was the defense. Forty-four (44) players on the field with no penalty flags is just too much work. From time to time JC would tune in his 1960 styled hand held transistor radio. I’d brought him a brand new 9 volt battery and so that the announcer could come through loud and clear.

JC prayed for me once around 10:00 pm. He is the only one who can pray for me that does not cause the terrible feelings of anger and cynicism to come raging through my being. Even a pastor’s prayer often feels way too presumptuous for my troubled soul. I feel the presumption a hundred feet away. The feeling that we have received an inside position on the track. That the person offering the prayer understands more about what is happening to me than I do. The feeling that God is going to do something special for them or even me while leaving the rest of the world to its horrible fate. But I don’t get that feeling when JC prays for me. JC the man who held feuds his whole life now prayed before my very ears and even for those who might be wishing him ill at this very moment.

Finally Virginia Tech had made its final interception sealing the Cincinnati Bear Cat’s fate. I asked JC through the darkness between our easy chairs. “What’s next JC? What are you waiting for?” And JC answered, “I don’t know Brian, I just pray that God will let me live one more day.” I asked JC to pray a final prayer for me. And JC willingly did. “O God,” he pleaded, is his huge broken voice, “be with Brian this night and help him to rest. Keep him safe and just be with him. Amen.”

I went to bed and rested for a while next to Lorilee. Really rested, feeling safe, in a house where everyone loved me and wanted the best for me; where the only demand of me is that I work to be myself. And it is here that I can forget who I am, what I am about, and especially what I am supposed to be. It is in this house that time actually ceases and the clock pauses from its tolling.

The morning came quickly after a restful night. I awoke to Rosie’s clatter in the kitchen. We always have exactly the same breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy with a few fried potatoes sprinkled in. As we began to dig into our breakfast JC interrupted again with his prayer of thanks to God. I chimed in with a hearty, “Amen,” with my mouth full of gravy as he finished. After breakfast Lorilee and I were ready to hit the road for home, anxious to get in some holiday activities with the kids before the old grind starts up again on Monday. We made our final good-byes hugging each other closely as we parted. JC broke into his prayer and Rosie gave us that knowing roll of her eye brows. JC prayed for our safety on the wintry roads. And I knew one of the answers to my question, “What’s next for JC?” A purpose of JC’s during his long wait is to pray for me.

Spring

2008-12-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

Today, Saturday, December 20th 2008, I find myself in my same old, comfortable cubicle, at the Wichita airport waiting for air traffic to clear over O’Hare. Tomorrow is the first day of winter, but winter has already hit this area early and hard. This year is less comfortable for other reasons besides the weather though. Each year comes with it a unique authentic stamp and this year’s stamp is engraved in bold red economic ink.

Yesterday, when I entered the Kansas plant for our year end inventory the production expanse loomed large and bare. There was the feeling that an invisible elephant was living in the wide open expanse of concrete that lay there naked as large as a football field. This is the first time that concrete floor has seen the light of day since the plant reopened in 1993 after it had been idled for (3) years due to lack of orders.

After walking the empty production line I entered the break room where the factory workers had assembled for their annual inventory instructions. There was a thick cloud of smoke hanging in the air. I’d thought that break areas were smoke free but obviously not this one. I found a corner where the smoke was particularly thick and sat down to take a few deep breaths, sucking in the second hand smoke, hoping that I could get some of the same benefits that the other employees were getting from it. Presently the production manager opened the meeting. He announced that the plant had just received orders for 20 homes and that they would be opening up for production after Christmas shut-down on January 5th. Here, in the bread basket of America, the economy is more based on a booming farm industry than on the RV industry like Elkhart, Indiana. The production manager further announced that corporate had cancelled plans to gift the usual Christmas Turkey for this year due to budget cuts. A cheer went up among the line workers when the manager went on to say that the foremen and sales force had taken up a collection of over a $1,000 to buy Christmas turkeys. Everyone, at the Kansas plant, would leave for Christmas break with a turkey under their arm.

I watched the workers during inventory and was impressed by their desire for teamwork. I’d seldom seen so many people so interested in working together. It couldn’t be only for the pay check. I think it probably has more to do with the attitudes of the people riding the desks of purchasing manager, production manager, sales manager, and general manager. That community spirit of, we are in this together, seemed to make its way from the foreman’s meeting and eventually onto the plant floor. I’d brought with me, from Indiana, six (6) watches in order to reward the recipients for 10 years, a small token of appreciation for their years of toil on the line. The General Manager was out into the plant to find his workers moments after he’d opened the box in order to give out the watches. He’d told me that several employees had asked about the watches and were waiting for them. They could continue to wait for their recognition and letter of appreciation but they did not have to wait any longer for their watches. I wished my life could be so simple. Tomorrow morning, Sunday morning, I imagined that I ‘d find it a whole lot easier to get up and bring in breakfast to our corporate payroll department as they labored to prepare paychecks for workers in Kansas; so that workers could receive their pay checks before Christmas.

The loud speaker jolted me back to reality as they announced the flight leaving for Las Vegas. Delays are always blamed on the weather and this delay is no exception. The weather in the winter is so much less conducive to life that it makes all the sense in the world to blame anything bad on it. I sat in my stall for a moment to dream of the changes the spring will bring. Actually, the Hutchinson Kansas economy has made a living off the winter roads and runways in Chicago since the 1930s. I’d spent this morning touring the salt mines of Hutchinson since I knew there was no rush to get to the airport. They have a tourist elevator that took me down the 650 foot below the Earth’s surface to the level where that salt mines are located. There the tour guide explained how the salt deposits had developed in one of the more recent eras in the Earth’s history some 225 to 275 millions of years ago. The mine has 67 miles of 50’ wide mined out caverns supported by 40’ square collums. The mine employs 4 miners and an 8 man maintenance crew on each shift. The mine has recently gone to two shifts because the price of salt has recently doubled. I did hear that they have stopped using salt on our roads recently but I didn’t know that it was due to price. The tour guide said that there is enough salt below Kansas to last for a million years at our current rate of use. The temperature in the mine was a constant 68 degrees with no humidity because the salt immediately sucks the humidity out of the air that is pumped in from the Earth's surface. As a result, Disney stores all of its old movies in the mine. Two truck loads of movies are shipped in each week from various parts of California. Almost every country in the world stores its old records in the mine. Maybe the tour guide was getting a little carried away, but this is Kansas. There is little chance of terrorists finding the secrets of imperialist countries if they keep them 650 below ground in a secluded salt mine. It was 21 degrees on top and 68 degrees at 650 feet. I wonder what the temperature is at 1000 feet down. Maybe winter isn’t so bad after all.

I sat in my airport cubicle continuing to dream of the changes that will come with spring. I always try to act like spring is here long before it gets here. Tomorrow, being the shortest day of the year, and the first day of winter, means that the rest of the world has a full three months to wait for spring. As you will soon discover I am not required to wait that long for spring. God and I have a little deal bargained out. Depending on the conditions on the surface of the Earth I am allowed to try to push the arrival of spring up 30, maybe even 40 days, if I am lucky. I remembered trying to bring spring in early about 5 years back.

It was a Sunday morning again, back when I first started sporadically skipping church. This was a brilliant but cold Sunday morning. The sun was bright though with the promises of spring. The day was March 9, 2003 and the ice was coming off the lake; I could not hold myself back. I headed off from the house about the time the rest of my family headed for church thinking that this was the day I would put my 26’ dock out into the lake.

This time of year there are no people at the lake. As I drove toward the lake I anticipated plenty of activity even in the absence of humans. The Canadian geese would be mating. And they really do make a spectacle of it, honking and snorting, dive bombing, and landing on the lake seemingly unaware of my presence. Now, since that time most of the geese are gone. I was present at the lake association meeting where 300 Canadian Geese got their sentence to be euthanized merely for shitting on too many neatly manicured lawns. The vote was nearly 100% in favor of rounding them up and killing them; I sure hope that my fate is never at the hands of the lake association as I’ve done much worse than any goose.

As I arrived at the lake I immediately went into the garage and donned my waders. The lake was far too cold at this early stage to enter the water unprotected. As I rounded the garage and headed toward the lake I immediately became aware that everything was alive with music. It was loud music that sounded like a pipe organ and then more like wind chimes on a windy day. Yet there was no wind this early in the day. I looked around angrily for the rock band or stereo system that had invaded my privacy. This was my day. Everyone else was supposed to be in church. But I could find no culprit to blame. Is this God? Is this in my head? The music was actually very nice when I stopped for a moment to listen to it. And so I just relaxed and let it go on in my head and continued toward the lake.

The last of the ice flow left on the lake had parked itself on the north shore extending 20’ and in some places 30’ into the lake; leaving the open water available for the mating antics of the geese. I stepped into the lake knowing that the ice would part to my touch been softened and made pliable by the warm spring sun. The ice did part for my boot but it was not soft or very pliable. I watched in amazement as I found the source of the music. The ice was uniformly divided into millions, even billions, of cylinders the diameter of a good sized tooth pick, each about 6 inches long. The cyllindars reminded me of the pick-up sticks I'd played with as a child. Since there was no wind the pick-up sticks stayed in tight formation all around the lake. There was just enough water movement to send up a roar of chimes as the little sticks of ice jostled easily together with the rhythm of the water. I gaped in amazement and reached down for a handful of the shining glistening chimes. One slipped from my grasp and I lunged for it hoping to save it from shattering on the ice. It did shatter into little pieces spreading and causing another level of harmony among the chimes. I realized I did have thousands, millions, even billions more chimes left and so I let all the cylinders slip through my fingers crashing like symbols to the ice below. Then I stepped greedily into the lake gathering handfuls of the little music makers flinging them up and into the air. I stood there for a full five minutes flailing about like a crazed director of a symphony totally lost in the magic of his creation. Then I became a rock star flinging the ice into the air watching it crash and explode into deafening prisms of bright lights as the crowds cheered.

Presently exhausted and wet from the experience I headed toward the pile of dock sections that had wintered in a stack along the shore line. There were three sections that had to be erected. The first section was 10’ long and 6 feet wide. The other two sections were only 8’ long. The three sections would afford a 26’ walkway onto the lake that little kids could fish from all summer long.

I pushed some of the ice out of the way and onto the lake and proceeded to screw the aluminum support posts into the soft sandy lake bottom. The first two sections of the dock went together quite easily in the space of an hour. From time to time I would sit on the newly constructed dock, the geese flying overhead and even splashing into the water close by, and dream of the summer’s activities that this very dock would participate in. Presently I man-handled the third dock section into a position on the outer edge of the second dock section. Then I proceeded out further into the lake to place the final aluminum supports. As I got to the spot where the supports posts could be lowered into the water, cold lake water began pouring over the top of my waders. The early spring rains had made the lake higher than normal and I just could not quite get out far enough, to the right spot, to lower the support posts.

Not to be put off by Mother Nature, I became more determined to succeed with my task. I went into the cottage and shed my waders. Took off my wet clothes and then dressed in layers so that I could continue to work in the cold. I put on an especially heavy coat in order to keep the chill out. Then I went to the garage and pulled out the bright green canoe that a friend had loaned to me. I loaded the 12’ aluminum dock posts into the canoe along with all my other dock erection tools. I even stowed a trusty, two ton, come-along into the canoe just in case the dock need a little persuasion before fitting together.

With everything that I needed to complete the task I paddled through the ice flow and into position to lower the dock support posts. The work proceeded much more slowly as I had to work, while doing a balancing act, in the canoe. But I knew the work was worth every bit of it. The spring and the lake were just too glorious to be without a dock for three or even two more weeks. Finally the hardest, most awkward task, of floating that last 8’ section out onto its supports was complete. I floated the canoe into position on all four corners of the dock and used my wrenches to tighten the bolts that hold the dock in place for the summer.

As the job was complete I felt a strong glow of pride at having been a complete master of all the natural elements at hand. A surprisingly strong wind had come up while I was working and so I let the canoe drift out onto the lake a bit so that I could gaze proudly upon my handy work. The treated lumber of the dock had aged nicely to just the right tone of gray. The six (6) foot wide dock was cumbersome and very hard to handle but it was beautiful now that it was set in its place. Soon we would easily fit two lawn chairs side by side to enjoy the sunset on a summer’s evening.

Suddenly I noticed that I’d drifted way too far out into the lake. I found the paddle on the floor of the canoe among the various hammers, wrenches, and other tools. With a firm grasp of the paddle I drove it deep into the lake pulling the front end of the canoe around and into the wind. My weight was already shifted to one side and way to the back end of the canoe, The heavy pile of tools came rolling back toward my position in the canoe, the come-along and all. As the canoe turned, the wind caught the bow of the boat and lifted it ever so slightly. The tools shifted again ever so slightly. The shift was enough, just enough that I slipped out of the canoe and over its side, and into the freezing water. The canoe did not capsize. I breathed a sigh of relief as the canoe settled back into the water with all my expensive tools safe in its bottom. I grasped the side of the canoe as the wind continued to push it farther out into the lake. I hurriedly searched the shoreline for another human soul but there was none. Then I noticed something else. My heavy coat and layers and layers of sweaters and shirts could not keep the freezing water out. I began to panic as I felt the water weigh my clothes down and my breath began to come gasps as I became too cold to breath.

And I was rapidly drifting out into the middle of the lake. I looked to the other shore where we appeared to be headed which now seemed miles away. If I hung onto the side of the canoe much longer I knew I’d end up as one of the tinkling chimes along the shoreline. I made a decision. I would swim to shore. Without much of a thought I pushed off the canoe with as much force as I could pushing into the wind and toward my shore line. After several strokes I began to panic again when I realized that I making almost no progress toward shore. “What a way for it to end,” I thought, as my life passed before me. “And on a Sunday morning," I mused, "God must be punishing me.” I did not think to pray. I just let my self sink, thinking, “I must shed this heavy coat and layers so that I can swim.” I sank further, grasping at my tennis shoes, but they were tied on tight.

And then I made a second decision. “I will swim to shore with all these clothes on my back.” And I did. I could hardly breathe because it was just too cold. I put my head down into the water and doggedly stroked and stoked heavy clothes and all. As my feet finally touched the sandy bottom of the lake my breath came back. It came in huge croaking gasps that echoed back and forth across the lake. The gasps were so hoarse and loud that I was sure alarms would be set off in Wolcottville. Fire trucks and an ambulance would arrive shortly for my rescue.

But not a person noticed as I dragged my frozen body over the glacial stone seawall and onto the shore. I scrambled across the yard shedding my coat and layers as I went. I thought of only one thing. Warmth. I was completely naked as I fell onto the couch inside the cottage, my chest still heaving and the air still making a loud wheezing sound as it entered and exited my chest. After 5 minutes of lying on the couch I was able to get up and turn the heat up in the cottage. It was at least an hour before I was able to drive my truck around the lake in my truck in search of the canoe.

Finnally that announcement for the O’hare flight came. A slot had been reserved an icy runway in Chicago for our plane. I hastily posted my blog and grabbed up my bags. Knowing quite well that spring can not come soon enough. I’m quite sure I will usher in spring before its time again this year. It just has to be done by someone. It just takes too long to get here by itself.

A Friend

2008-12-14T14:58:00.001-08:00

A Friend

Sunday morning rolled around again, December 14, the Lord’s Day. And this morning I didn’t dread it at all, not like I used to. I’ve kind of taken the day back and I sure hope the Lord doesn’t mind. It’s harder to find ways to use the day in December though. The ground is frozen solid and so there’s not much I can do to help the flower bulbs left in the ground until spring. I did think about going into the office to try to organize the stacks of paper lying on the floor behind my desk. These unprecedented layoffs that my company is currently experiencing are really not good for my morale. I do want a rest from all that. And so I decided to visit an old friend.

I say old; he is 39, that’s 10 years younger than me. He is old in the sense that my friend Lyle, and I have been through the wars together even though we’ve only known each other for about ten years. And so I threw on my favorite old sweat shirt and headed for the bus stop.

Lyle makes a bus run between South Bend and New Buffalo. There is a Casino in New Buffalo that finances the bus run so that people who don’t have the money for gas can afford to play the slots. I don’t have much money in my billfold so I don’t fear losing much. Actually, over my lifetime, I’m quite sure I’m up at the casino. I hate losing so much that I don’t play much at all. In my old sweat shirt the guards would want to throw me out anyway. This morning, it will be enough to ride the bus with Lyle.

As soon as I saw Lyle drive up in the bus I got what I came for. That warm feeling of acceptance that I always get when I see him. As I boarded the bus I told him that I was carrying my pen and paper because I was planning to write a piece for my blog about him. That kicked off a long, torrid discussion about all the nasty stories I’d probably include about him in my blog.

Lyle greeted each of his customers with the same accepting smile that he did me as they boarded the bus. The Casino goers, most of them elderly women in their 60s or 70s, each paid their $1 fair for the ride as they boarded. As we watched the late comers straggle in from all corners of the parking lot Lyle had a story to tell about each one.

Soon the trip got under way and I picked up the Sunday Goshen news that I’d brought with me to catch up on the local news. There, staring back at me, from the front page of the sports section was my daughter, Alisha. She’d had her first varsity start on her basketball team yesterday in a win against Concord. They rewarded her with a nice picture on the front page. I proudly passed the paper around the bus telling the elderly gamblers of my daughter’s success.

After that little excitement Lyle and I resumed our conversation sparring easily about the Detroit bailout and the crisis in the housing market. I was getting what I came for; a chance to rest and to forget about everything, to be myself. Lyle and I share a common history that we can bring into these conversations. Our stories are separate yet similar even though they did not merge until about ten years ago when we were introduced to each other by the pastor of our Conservative Mennonite Church.

Lyle has a way of bringing my stories out. He was so painfully honest with me soon after we first met that I became humble enough to take my own stories more seriously. The only stories I really know are my own. Lyle has a way of bringing those stories out of me. I’ve always viewed him as something of a hero. I’ve often wished I could be as open as he’s become in the ten years that I’ve know him. When our stories merged we were both trying desperately to fit into a culture where we couldn’t seem to fit. We both moved on from our common church experience but the friendship has grown. Lyle never has given up on me or stopped witnessing to me about Jesus and the value of a church community. Even though I make wild fun of him when he does it he just can’t seem to stop. I do suspect that he spends more time driving old lady gamblers up to the Casino than gathered with worshippers on a Sunday morning at his church though.

In the early days Lyle would often tell me of his struggle to find a place in the youth group of his childhood. As the bus cruised smoothly and quietly on toward the casino I dosed off and thought more deeply about our shared stories among the Amish Mennonite culture with its tightly knit youth groups. Lyle’s in Goshen and mine in Traverse City Michigan. I remember being 16 years old and taking 3 weeks off during my sophomore year to attend a Bible School in Carbon Hill Ohio. Our youth group, in Traverse was very small. In fact there were only 4 of us in the high-school of 3,200 kids. I longed to be around other young people who understood what it was like to be Amish Mennonite. Around other kids who understood why I dressed so differently and why my sister wore a bonnet with a cape dress dipping well below her knees.

I really felt at home during that 3 week term at Bible school in Carbon Hill Ohio. I took a creative writing class from an old man named Amos who looked totally Amish in his bushy beard and black hat. I learned a lot in his class. I still remember his instructions. “When you write, you must give up something of yourself.” “When you write, never use two words when you can use one.” “When you write, never use big words when you can use small.” He carried the simple life he lived into the creative writing that he taught. I got through the three weeks of Bible School without incident. I did organize one trip outside of the Bible School though. A bunch of us students went to a local ice skating rink under the guise of a shopping trip. At the rink we rented ice skates and spent an hour in worldly bliss ice skating. I can remember loosening the top button on my long sleeved white shirt and skating brazenly around the rink feeling the fresh cool air blow against my neck. I never dared to wear anything but black pants and a white shirt securely buttoned to the neck anywhere around the school though.

I remember the last day of Bible School. There was a huge crowd of people present for the final program. It seemed like thousands to me coming from a youth group of 2 boys and 2 girls but it was probably two or three hundred. I sang in the choir and was so proud to be a part of that community. And there was a girl. Her name was Cheryl. She was from Sheldon Wisconsin, an Amish Mennonite community that also sent a load of young people to the Carbin Hill Bible School. I’d found the courage to talk with Cheryl a few times between classes and the thought of getting to know more about her thrilled me. After the program Cheryl and I stood together on the fringes of the crowd admiring all the people. All the boys had gleaming white shirts and all the girls had on black dresses. Instinctively I reached out and found Cheryl’s hand. To my surprise she did not pull away but let me grasp her hand in mine. We stood there in the crowd, in the moonlight, and there I felt like there was no one else in the world at that moment, but us. I didn’t hear the excited voices of all the old aquaintences renewing their friendships around us. I could see was the sparkling glow of her bonnet strings against the rich black material of her cape dress. I could feel a commitment to this thing, whatever it was. I knew that God was smiling down on me.

We parted ways that evening. We all headed to our various small communities in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Our pastor, from the Traverse Bay Conservative Mennonite Church, had driven the 8 hours down to the final program in order to bring us home. As we drove home I thought about the letters I would write to Cheryl. Not a week had gone by before I was called down into the basement of our church by the pastor who had been at the final Bible School program. There was a grave look in his eyes and a high pitched tense tone in his voice as he spoke about the seriousness of the activity that he had witnessed between Cheryl and me. I felt at a loss for words as the pastor made a few other comments about the rebellious nature of my behavior. I could not think or speak as I meekly walked back up to the main floor of our church. I had never even thought of doing anything that would be offensive to Cheryl. She of all people would never be hurt by me. I did know what sex was and I was not as naïve as one might think. But I had never thought or even dreamed in that way about Cheryl. I did know about sex though and I did feel a lot of guilt. I’d for sure never let our pastor know about that. There were plenty of things that the pastor did not know about my life outside of the confines of our insular community. Lyle may have talked about things more openly when he was a kid but I had learned as a young person how to move in and out of our community and to keep secrets. I knew about sex because I had, on more than one occasion, slipped a Playboy magazine under my shirt. They had the magazines just down the road from my house at the local convenience store. I’d have been way too embarrassed to pay for them and I don’t think it was legal to sell the magazines to a 15 year old. But it was not beneath my dignity to slip one under my shirt. When I would get to a private place I could barely breathe as I’d look through the pages and pages of naked women amazed at their beauty.

But that was not what it was about for me with Cheryl. It was never about anything as dirty or nasty as sex with Cheryl. It was about the beauty and fulfillment of community and commitment. Never the less the pastor’s words weighed so heavily on me that I never got around to writing the first letter to Cheryl. She eventually drifted from my thoughts and I never did write a letter to her.

Suddenly Lyle coughed and I jolted up from my dreaming. I felt quite stupid that I wasn’t able to be a better friend. But Lyle did not seem to mind. He apologized for waking me up and we talked about mindless things and presently pulled into the Casino so that our passengers could get off the bus.

With an empty bus we drove back to South Bend listening to the radio as loud as it would play singing whenever we knew the songs. When Lyle pulled into his break area I even asked him for a cigarette. I smoked it with him even though I’m not a very good smoker. I sucked smoke in deeply and then forced it out through my nose like you see in the movies. I nearly died right on the spot as the smoke hit the tender nerves of my nostrils. I proudly watched the smoke drift away into the cold winter day and looked Lyle full in the face and probably felt like church people do when they share in communion on a Sunday morning.

Solid Ground

2008-12-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

The phrase “paradigm shift” became cliché twenty (20) or so years ago due to Steven Covey’s book “The Seven Habits”. Cliché or not, I like to think about paradigm shifts because these sudden insights can help summarize the gargantuan but gradual changes that we all have experienced over the span of our life’s stories.

One of those shifts happened to me as a young parent when I was still under the belief that I could usher my children into the world without making all the same mistakes that my parents made. I probably didn’t make all the same mistakes; mine are probably more specific to the desperation and vices of my times. The moment in time that I think about related to my participation with our kids came during Dana’s first winter before she could walk. We were playing on the new green carpet in our basement with some of the many dolls that she and Alisha had received as Christmas gifts. My wife, Lorilee called down to us saying that it was time to put the girls to bed. Even at this young family’s age I had already made a few rules. One of these rules went like this… NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR THE CHILDREN THAT THEY CAN DO FOR THEMSELVES! As their mom was calling, we quickly made a game of putting away their toys. When finished, Alisha scurried off in her sprint crawl toward the stairs. She knew by now that her Dad wasn’t going to carry her up the two flights of stairs to bed since she was perfectly capable of making the climb herself. Dana, not willing to obey quite so promptly, played a bit more with one of her dolls. I waited patiently at the top of the basement steps as she slowly made her way across the carpet and then sat up at the foot of the stairs.

Dana just sat there for a moment and then began to whimper and cry. I surmised that we were having so much fun with our play that Dana was having trouble obeying her Dad. I didn’t mind her disappointment but I didn’t like the fact that she was ignoring my calls to begin the climb up the stairs. Presently she started to come up but then stopped short. Now I was rapidly becoming impatient with her and told her in my commanding voice, “Dana, come up the stairs, now!” But Dana refused. I’d heard some things about his type of behavior before, on the James Dobson show. I thought to myself, “Here’s a chance to exercise some of the tough love of the Dobsonian variety.” I patiently and firmly explained to Dana that it was time for bed and the she must climb up those steps immediately. But now I watched as a different Dana transformed before my eyes. She was now red in the face, her strong will was flaring up and her defiant, stubborn self was coming through to me loud and clear. She would not budge. I held my ground at the top of the stairs unwilling to give in to her cry. I replied to her in a kind, caring, but firm voice, encouraging her from my perch at the top of the stairs. Dana was wailing by now probably trying to attract the attention of the neighbors or at least her mother.

After another 30 seconds of this I became disgusted with her refusal to obey me, and finally slid down the stairs toward her in preparation to give here a good paddling. As I picked her up I noticed that she didn’t come easy and there was a tearing sound as the bottom of her little jumper tore away. She was wet with sweat and her little legs did not stop pumping even after I had picked her up. I had just finished installing that new carpet and had left one of the nail heads exposed. Dana’s clothes had snagged on the nail as she was attempting to climb the stairs.

I sat their holding Dana for a long time as a few of the facts of life began to soak into my head. I am still learning the lessons of that winter night 17 years ago. Kids usually try to do what is best even though what they are doing doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Next time I see a kid do some of the crazy things that teenagers do, I hope I have the paradigm structure that allows me to look below the surface, one that attempts to see more of the good effort, before making all of the quick judgments.

Another paradigm shift is happening to me right now as I adjust to the new pricing levels for our homes, energy, groceries, and investments. I can remember last October watching the DOW Jones stock index fluttering around 14,000 points. I was feeling like a good investor who knew what he was doing. Over the summer when gas prices started to rise a coworker expressed worry about $5.00 per gallon gasoline prices. I couldn’t understand what she was worried about since she was riding her bike to work. And too, I felt I was smart enough to know that we would never see $5,00/gallon gas and so during all the frenzy I bet her that we would see $3.00 gas before we saw $5.00 gas. Boy, was I right, so right, that I ended up wrong. As gas prices tumbled I remember watching the DOW tumble too. When the DOW finally settled around 11,000 I breathed a sigh of relief. On that particular summer day, a different co-worker, whose judgment I would never bet against, suggested to me that the bottom for the DOW was probably somewhere around 8,500. That really put the fear of god into me; I was not ready to give up my dreams of early retirement. Never the less I resigned myself to his prediction and sure enough over the coming weeks the DOW index sank another 3,000 points. On the day that it dipped to 8,500 I was ready. I had heard other commentators agree that 8,500 on the DOW index was indeed our floor. About 9:00 AM on that day the DOW dropped to 8,500 the index kept on dropping until it hit 7,600. Then like it was a spring board it shot back up past 8,500 and settled on 8,600. “Hooray”, I shouted to myself “We have found a solid floor.” I proceeded to take all the money in my 401(k) that had held some of its value during the free fall and sunk the money into equities over the next few weeks. Each time the DOW fell below 8,500 I would buy. Now that most of my money has been invested fully into equities I am waiting expectantly for the miracles that our next president is sure to pull out of his hat. Every time the DOW falls below 8,000 which it has quite often I wonder why I ever thought 8,500 was a floor. And each time it raises over 9,000 like it did a few times today, I pat myself on the back and wonder how I got to be so smart.

The fact is I no longer dream of a 20,000 DOW index and the early retirement that might have gone with it. But I have not been naïve about this ride either. I’ve always felt like if I was going to invest in stocks I must be prepared for the ride. Prepared for a ride, like the one a cowboy gets on a bucking bronco, and that means staying on the ride until the bell rings and the ride is over.

Then, the other day, at noon, I had the paradigm shift that I never saw coming. It came when I was listening to an essay on NPR written by a local contributor. The writer likened his obsession with stock indexes not to riding on the back of a bucking bronco. He likened the obsession to that of riding out the storm in the belly of a beast. I understood my position immediately. I have been swallowed by the beast, by a huge whale floundering in rough seas. It is dark down here in the belly and I cannot see where we are going. Someday, if I am lucky, I will be puked up on the shore. But until then I will probably continue to hold on tightly to my investments and ride this thing out!

The last shift that I want to write about is one that I am still waiting for and have been for a few years now. Sunday mornings have always been a difficult time for me, throughout my childhood, especially so in my teen years and on into adult life. I am determined to wait for the shift to come and I believe it will, someday. At least now I am enjoying Sunday mornings though. I spent this last Sunday morning with some friends of mine who are in their 80s. They are not well enough to go out in the winter and so they watch Joel Osteen on TV. There’s a shift for you. Imagine being shut in for the whole winter. Then the thought of watching Joel Osteen for a whole half hour doesn’t seem nearly so much of a waste of time.

I had my annual December one-on-one breakfast with my daughter, Alisha, this morning. We met at the Essenhaus buffet and talked about all the usual stuff, SAT scores, potential colleges, and sports. I tried to get her to talk to me about any feelings of abandonment by me, that she might be having related to Sunday mornings. I have attended church with the family only once or twice since the day she was baptized almost two years ago. She brushed off my questions like teenagers seem to be able to do, but I do wonder what she will be saying about me in 40 years?

Growing up, I was taught that there are three things, not two. Death, Taxes and Church, are the three, and not in that order. We went to church twice on Sunday every Wednesday evening. Actually, if you count Summer Bible School and revival meetings we probably averaged four (4) times each week. As a teenager my family attended a church where the expectation was that members arrive at least 20 minutes before the service began. Everyone seemed to enjoy coming early and staying late. I had a sneaking suspicion though, that outside of my small, tight, Amish, Conservative Mennonite community other people were finding other things to do with their time. In my twenties the church Lorilee and I attended didn’t have regular Sunday evening services. That didn’t sit very well with my conscience but soon I was enjoying Sunday evenings at home watching TV, or playing in the yard, with the rest of the world. All during my 20s and 30s I never missed the Wednesday evening small group meetings that our church promoted. This duty was not nearly as hard as the one that I grew up with. And I enjoyed the comfort of peoples homes and the community that the people provided.

Then a couple of years ago I just got tired of my struggles and stopped going to church altogether. My brother had stopped a few years before me. But he has a community that is pretty tight. I think they call themselves the emerging church or something like that. Actually, I have begun to really look forward to Sunday mornings. I have enjoyed the great out-of-doors so much. People who go to church probably would say that I am working on Sunday but I have never considered gardening work. I still get quite a bit of guilt every Sunday when the rest of the family goes off to church. I have more one-on-one breakfasts with family members over the coming weeks and I will continue to try to get them to talk to me about my guilt. But they probably are smart enough not to take the bait. I have heard Lorilee and the girls practicing a Christmas song that they plan to sing on the Sunday before Christmas. I might go in order to hear them sing. I guess I will know that the paradigm shift is in place once I can feel more comfortable regardless of where I am or what I am doing on Sunday morning.

Roller Coasters

2008-11-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

We have been forced to ride a roller coaster that none of us would have chosen to ride over the last year. We’ve gotten a few good things out of the ride I suppose, a new president for one thing, but I’d just as soon get off the ride here, if that were possible. I remember taking our family to Disney, in Florida, over 10 years ago. I’m glad we went then because I don’t think we would want to spend the money now, after the year we’ve had. Back then, our kids were too young for Space Mountain – the roller coaster in the dark. I rode it by myself and remember that my senses had no chances to prepare for the next turn, rise, or plummet. All I could do was hang on for the ride. Sometimes the ride went up and sometimes it went down. I just sat locked in the seat, in the control of others, trying to get my senses to catch up with my body. I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot lately, with life in general.

Conventional wisdom is as strong and persistent as ever but probably as useless as it ever was too. I wonder where my roller coaster is going next year. The spiritual one, the financial one, the physical one, or even the relational one, all the rides seam to have lost there predictability. Can someone please bring up the lights? I do imagine that 2009 will bring with it much more pain than I ever imagined it would and in turn much more pleasure than I dreamed possible. I just hope that I can find the courage to stay in line so that when my turn comes I won’t miss the ride.

I helped my son, Trey; learn to ride roller coasters when he was around 10 years old. We had visited Wisconsin Dells in late summer just before the kids headed back to school. Trey watched the others ride, especially the kids younger than he, as they seemed to enjoy the thrill of the rides. He told me three times in five minutes that he was not going to ride a roller coaster that day. I knew that he was talking more to himself than to me. And yet he was probably testing me to see if I was going to push him toward the rides and in so doing help him conquer the fear.

I wanted to be a good father to this young boy. Being from Indiana I wanted him to be a star basketball player, a three sport athlete with basketball first of all. I wanted a lot of things for him and sitting around watching others ride roller coasters wasn’t one of them. I bit my tongue each time he told me that he wasn’t going to ride the roller coasters and assured him that there were plenty of other fun rides in the park, besides roller coasters. I wanted him to learn to rest with his fears and even accept them even if I couldn’t. Besides I enjoy the go-cart rides a whole lot more that roller coasters and I told him that.

After a couple of hours of racing and crashing go-carts we passed a roller coaster for real little kids. I took a careful glance at him and said, “How about riding that one?” He said, “Sure.”

After lunch the other kids we were with asked us if we wanted to try the next bigger roller coaster. I looked at him as he hesitated but then found the courage to say, “I might be able to try it.” As we waited in line he asked me if he could turn back. I think he wanted me to tell him that I wouldn’t allow him to go back. I told him he could go back if he decided to, but that I thought it would be good for him to learn to rest during the roller coaster ride he was about to take. He pushed on and got on the roller coaster and then shut his eyes tightly. While going up the steep incline we talked about a resting place for our self. My son kept his eyes closed during the whole climb and the decent. He did not raise his hands to the sky with the other riders or scream with them either. After getting off the roller coaster he did exclaim, “I didn’t get that feeling in my stomach.” I think that was what he was most afraid of was the flipping stomach feeling of the roller coaster ride.

I remember a sick feeling in my stomach when a girl I had dated all summer, back when I was 18, finally told me that our feelings weren’t mutual. I don’t think that was the feeling that Trey was trying to avoid though. The stomach has a way of reflecting what we experience. This was a roller coaster not a girl and Trey appeared to have mastered the fear. The other kids pushed on for a bigger ride and then the biggest roller coaster in the whole park. When I asked for a break from the roller coasters, Trey told me that go-carts are too boring. I couldn’t take the roller coasters any more and did spend some time feeling alone in the crowds of people, something I usually do whenever I don’t feel needed anymore.

I did get my stomach back for more roller coasters as evening came and dusk began to settle in. I took off with Trey for a few more rides. The evening lines were short on this August summer evening and we could ride to our hearts content. We looked out over the Wisconsin Dells, the river, the lake, and fields, from the top of the highest roller coaster, with our hands stretched toward the sky, our eyes wide open, yelling at the top of our lungs.

Tomorrow is another day. I kind of wish we hadn’t overcome the fear of roller coasters so we could have that one to tackle again. I know that it’s not that I need to learn to ride roller coasters all over again. I think I need to learn to rest all over again.

Witchita

2008-10-31T05:25:00.000-07:00

Travel does not always go the way you want it to. I am stuck at least for awhile in the Wichita Airport. I think the weather problems are more in Chicago than here. Getting to the terminal this morning was not as easy as it should have been. They had a great continental breakfast at the airport Holiday Inn where I stayed last night. I ate plenty… alittle of everything. The car was covered with snow and ice so I let it run for 15 minutes while I read the paper in the lobby so that I didn't have to cut the ice with a scraper. I had plenty of time anyway. As I was driving past the terminal I remembered that they give you a penalty at Hertz if you don't fill your car with gas. So I headed back out into the streets to locate a station. I found one at Wal-Mart. As I was filling up I started to feel a little sick for some reason. Being that I had that big breakfast there was plenty to go wrong inside once the upset stomach started coming on. I jumped up and down, then shifted my weight from side to side as I waited for the car to fill up. As I waited I used every bit of my reservoir of mental discipline to keep the stuff inside me stable. I spotted a McDonald's across the parking lot. I quickly finished the transaction and jumped in the car desperately hoping that the urge to empty out would finally subside. But not today. Things began to loosen as I shuffled and pinched my way across the parking lot, it was simply too late and I was out of control as I pushed my way into the McDonalds. The cleaning crew had thier mops and bucket in front of the Men's bathroom blocking the doorway. There were all of 3 McDonald's employees in that restroom cleaning. They were all young men but it wouldn't have mattered to me, at this point, if they were naked women. I pushed past the janitors and into the lone empty stall and plopped down on the seat to finish up. Then, as quietly as possible, I removed my clothes so as not to disturb the workers who were still cleaning. You never know these days if someone is working as an undercover law enforcement agent in the restrooms. If they were undercover I figured they would probably arrest me on something. My underwear was completelysoiled and so I carefully wadded them up and placed them behind the toilet. I cleaned everything up as best I could and quietly and quickly pulled my jeans back on. I wanted to clear out of the stall so the boys outside could finish their business. With one strong sure motion I pulled up the zipper to my worn blue jeans. Jeans have a strong zipper. Your mother probably taught you never to go without underwear. There is a reason she taught you that, I discovered the reason. You see there is quite a bit of loose skin down in that private area… at least there is for me. That skin got caught up deeply and securely in my zipper. Now I was in a fix… The zipper would not go forward or back and when I put any force to mytugging I felt sharp pain. Now I wasn't worried about the janitors banging around outside the stall anymore. I was worried about missing my flight; but even more I was wondering how I was going to explain to the manager that I needed him to call 911. Before I figured out whom to ask for help I decided to try to move the zipper one more time. I knew that I could stand the pain but I didn't want to bleed to death in a McDonalds bathroom stall, at least not before the cleaners came through. I cleared everything back out of the way like a surgeon would do if he were trying to save someone's life. Then I set my resolve, gritted my teethe, forgot to pray, and with the same smooth steady force that I had used 5 minutes earlier Iopened the zipper. The zipper's gears moved smoothly along their tracks and everything slipped free as if it were supposed to work that way. I anxiously surveyed the area and was relieved to see no blood, not even a mark. I remembered my stash behind the toilet and grabbed it as I hurried from the stall. The patient McDonald's employees moved into the stall as I deposited the item in the waste can and washed my hands. One of the janitors called out to me. I froze wondering what it was that I might have left behind me on that stall's floor. Maybe they were undercover cops after all. I was relieved when he said that it was just keys. I hurried off to the airport and now here I sit and wait for the snow delay to clear up. Next time, I might take the penalty and not fill up with gas.