A Simple Bike Ride

Face it folks. We are under the curse of entropy. One step forward and five steps back is nature’s resistance to betterment. Yet, we’re compelled as humans to fight against the inevitable pushback of nature.

I experienced this first hand as I rode my bike, hard-pressed, through a 26 mile course in New Jersey yesterday. I was still hanging on to a head-cold from the week prior and really wanted an excuse to back out of the ride but the weather was too perfect and we had already paid the registration fee so the combination of nice skies and my waste-not-want-not frugality bid me go.

I had to play all sorts of head games with myself to prepare for the journey. First, breakfast at Starbucks. I selected a spinach egg product expensively wrapped in healthy whole-grain cardboard and a cup of caffeine to give the nutrition a jolt.

Ha! Already I felt victorious in my denial of baked goods and syrupy java.

In my tempered enjoyment, I did what I always do at Starbucks. I perused the shelves for bourgeois novelty items cloaked in one-world-community outreach and my efforts did not fail me as I found the perfect

must-have. It was a square box made of wood with a transparent lid marked “MEMORY” in big white letters. Below it was the French branding: “Jeu De Memoire” and inside the box were four square compartments that held brightly colored artistic images stamped on thick cards of highly compressed cardboard impersonating wooden game pieces. And get this… it was on sale. Perfect!

Oh the accomplishments were piling up.

Belly full and purchase in hand, we made our way to Thompson Park. During the car ride, my next step in mental preparation was to imagine myself as a refugee on the run from a war torn country. I don’t know that it’s healthy to call upon the Boogie Man for motivational purposes, but right or wrong, this does it for me every time I need to pull off some ridiculous physical challenge over a long duration. However, this trusty button just wasn’t getting pushed properly for some reason. I think it was the gorgeous weather pouring out over the lush countryside. My mind wanted to bask in it regardless of the task ahead.

We pulled into the park, found a prime parking space and stepped out of the car.

While Andrew was unloading the bikes and getting our registration papers together, I made my way over to a fenced off area where I noticed a young deer was standing as we pulled into the lot. Upon my approach, I noticed it was a doe and she had not moved from her stance since I saw her a few minutes prior which made me think perhaps she was just a statue that the park people set out in anticipation of the day when deer become extinct from cars and overdevelopment. But since statues don’t breathe, I quickly discarded this notion and slowed down my pace until I came to a full stop within five feet of the creature. She was hardly impressed by my presence but I could barely contain my excitement for hers. Steadily and softly I made my way to the fence where she safely pressed her nose up against the chain link as if she were expecting a treat. I actually felt bad that I had nothing to offer other than a sole finger to nuzzle her snout and I told her this with apologies included. She seemed content with my index brush and she conveyed an air of confidence that food was more of a luxury for her than of any real concern; which consoled the guilt of my empty hand.

I stepped back and just looked at her and thought of various friends I have and how differently each of them would respond to that same deer. One guy I know would have no qualms about killing and grilling. Then there’s the guy who would want to pursue legal action to strip the hunter of his weapons and force the park to release the deer into the wild. If denied, he would sneak in at night, cut a hole in the fence and let the deer and her compatriots run free. Then there’s me, happy to see a protected space of land carved out for the deer with just enough domestication to accept a pat from my finger yet at the same time knowing I’d never turn down a steak from a hunter or deny an activist a get-away ride. So I asked myself “As a person befriending people who are opposites of one another, do I cancel out the effectiveness of one friend whenever I extend pleasantries toward another?”

This idea of me being entropy’s tool played in my head as I made my way back to Andrew and the bikes.

Fully awake and charged by a brush with fauna and a new thought to ponder, I climbed onto my Fisher, placed my feet into the toe clips and pushed off into the miles ahead.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

“In five years, this thing is going to make all kinds of money!”

I heard that from a close relative of mine a little over 10 years ago. At the time, I was a struggling single mom with two children living in a seedy apartment where second-hand pot-smoke wafted through the hallways on a semi-regular basis. My heart leapt when I heard those words but I tried not to show it. I didn’t want to exude hope that all of my problems could possibly be written away with a big fat check in the near future, so I just raised my eyebrows, gave my head an encouraging tilt and said “Really? That’ll be great.” and then I turned the conversation to our dinner by remarking how good it all tasted.

But that dinner sat like a lump of lead in my gut when I got back home.

I trudged through the door, put my 3-year-old daughter to bed, carried my 6-month-old son to the rocking chair and held his sleeping self in a clutched grab to my chest. “Please God, get me through these next five years. I can hold on for five years at the most but just please let that money come through for my family. Please!”

And then I cried...

I’m hardly the only person on earth who has ever begged for external supplies. Food, water, shelter, and safety are essential and if these necessities appear to be threatened, we instinctively panic.

Notice I said ‘appear’. That is because perspective is everything.

Looking back on that night in the rocking chair, my focus on money was robbing me of the peace I needed in order to find sustainable solutions for my life. In this instance, money wasn’t motivating me towards good answers. It was distracting me into paralysis.

I forced the chair back and forth into a controlled pitch as if the staccato movement would dislodge the perfect life formula. Nothing came to mind but a steady stream of lottery fantasies intermingled with unappealing options forged by my limitations. As my mind oscillated between extremes, my eyes were fixed to the air, and like a well-suited life-metaphor, stuck to nothing in particular. Then, all of a sudden, a distinct directive interrupted my fretful mind.

“Stop, breathe and look around you.”

I did just that. A question followed:

“Do you and your children have a roof over your head?”

Yes.

“Is your stomach full?”

Yes… but…

“Again. Are you full?”

Yes.

“You have provision. What is now is what is real. The worries in your head are not real.”

When I allowed myself to agree with that perspective, peace settled in and I was able to go to bed. However, what I didn’t do was maintain that sense of calm for very long. The material world fought hard to win my complete attention and it won more often than not. The reason for this is that I looked at life as black or white. Either life was a material truth, which demanded material efforts, or life was a spiritual truth that demanded spiritual efforts. As I see it now looking back, the peace I received that night was the result of a spiritual perspective focusing my attention on a material reality. The two went hand in hand.

I mention this point because I still have the habit of sticking to my hard-lined definitions. For instance, Dr. Brian and I held a discussion about Self Mastery vs Self Harmony. I kept utilizing the word ‘mastery’ when we talked about the path to fulfillment but he chose the word ‘harmony’ instead. That annoyed me until I realized the importance behind the difference. Without realizing it, my word choice kept us grounded in the corporeal. Contrarily, his word choice embraced both the physical and the metaphysical.

Let me explain.

I thought of self-mastery as ‘achieving your optimal self’. Embracing this definition, as many often do, is to embark on a pathway that’s grounded in the material world. The reason I say this is because the definition stipulates perfection; which itself is a peak measurement obtained by comparisons between idealized behaviors alongside efforts that are less substantial. Since measurement is used to quantify substance and substance is another word for ‘matter’, then the trek to perfection is indeed a material path. Granted, there are those who see self-mastery as nothing more than control over the self, in which case, perfection is not much of a concern. But even in this case, the desire for control is usually connected to governance over the external world. In either aim, whether it’s perfection or control, it makes sense that people pursuing self-mastery would expect material proof of the progress they’ve made while taking this journey. A list of such proofs include:

1. Money
2. Power
3. Fame
4. Pleasure
5. Ease
6. Safety
7. Intelligence
8. Beauty
9. Social Identity
10. Territory

The list itself is not bad. And despite what some may tell you, even the pursuit of this list is not wrong. However, it can certainly become the catalyst behind actions that are less than complimentary as a reflection of someone trying to achieve an optimal or controlled self. In fact, all of these items have addictive potential which is why the list can be a recipe for disappointment and shame given the fact that perfection is unobtainable and control is temporary at best.

I like illustrations so let’s use one.

Let’s say your fridge is empty, the roof blew off of your house and you’ve got a pain in your elbow. Certainly, you have real problems to solve but if you’re on a ‘path to perfection’ then you’re kind of committed to solving these problems in a way that keeps you on that path, right? I mean, you can’t steal for food, or break into someone else’s house to get shelter or drink yourself silly to numb your senses, right? Now you’d think that’s a good thing. You’d think the threat of falling from the path would be enough to keep away from such awful actions but alas, idealism tends to be the pressure that forces people to fall. Maybe not in such obvious extremes as stealing, or forming an addiction of some sort but without a doubt, a version of a vice will beckon you to wander and when you do, you’ll feel shame, failure, embarrassment and a desire to either run from the path all together or adopt a renewed commitment of rigid restrictions to keep you chained to the course.

So what am I saying then? Am I saying to abandon the list?

No.

Well, then am I saying to abandon ideals?

No.

Well then, what the heck am I saying?

It's simple. Put first things first.

Before approaching life’s externals, tend to the inward. This is called self-harmony and even though it sounds like religious mumbo-jumbo, it’s available to anyone regardless of theology or there-lack-of.

Here are the factors that it’s composed of:

1. Awareness
2. Compassion
3. Balance
4. Purpose
5. Flexibility
6. Relaxation
7. Optimism
8. Health
9. Creativity
10. Integration

Rather than thinking of this list as just another pathway to perfection, think of it as contentment achieved through a sense of perceived control. It’s what allowed me to receive peace that night 10 plus years ago when I counted my blessings instead of counting my lack. Of course, my circumstances didn’t change when I woke up the next day but at least I received the calm I needed to get a good night’s sleep. Had I continued to cultivate harmony, I could have used the peace and rest I obtained to consider external solutions that would have been both effective and satisfying for my life. Instead, I decided to enroll in the school of hard knocks. But, hey, I earned a PhD so I guess it all worked out.

Seriously though, can you sense that the self-harmony list is far more potent than the other preceding it? Mind you, I didn’t say it was better. I’m saying that it’s where the power for true long lasting change originates. It’s the source that brings quality and contentment to our material pursuits. Dr. Brian calls it the home of the Divine Spark. The origin of it lies within you, right now, and nothing external can control it unless you give your permission. In essence, this is how you become your true self. Do you know what is most wonderful about that? Your true self doesn’t need “improvement”. All you need to do is settle into it more and more often. As such, there’s no pressure.

Because this topic has so many layers to mine, you’re invited to contact Dr. Brian directly at brianh@excellencetree.com if you would like to know more about the self-harmony process.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read today’s entry. I’ve had the great pleasure of hearing from some of you directly and I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your input.

May the dialogue continue and spur us on.

MASTER OF THE INNERVERSE : A HARMONIOUS ACTION FIGURE

When I was about 7 years old, I distinctly remember having an existential moment. I was outside, looking at the world in my back yard and thinking: “What if I’ve already been here? What if my future-self found a way to travel back in time and is watching me right now?” My eyes scanned the perimeter of our property and peered into the yards surrounding it with the hope of finding a figure hiding behind a bush or a tree. Then I thought: “Maybe I’m my future-self right now! If I’m allowed to travel back in time when I grow up, I’ll need to remember this place so I can get back here.”

Then I went on to pick some poison berries from a bush, mash them up into a pretend stew and feed them to my imaginary friends.

I tell this story because I see it as an accurate distillation of the themes governing my entire life thus far: big questions in a small mind; a small boundary for a large exploration; reality poisoning the imaginary; and the imaginary giving vitality to the real. It’s also proof that I’ve had wrestling matches with the existence of God, the purpose of life, and the behaviors required to be ‘normal’ for a rather long time. This is the vita I offer you to substantiate my further ramblings. Hardly a solid premise, I know, but that’s what Dr. Brian is for. He has the résumé with academic punch. We’ll get to his work soon enough but for now, an exercise.

For fun’s sake, let’s pretend we could all go back to our younger selves and have a conversation. What would you say? Would you offer a road map full of warnings or a treasure map full of encouragement?

Think about it and decide what you would do.

Now here’s the tough question. Why? Why would you choose to say those words and what would you hope to change as a result?

What if I told you to consider the option of saying nothing at all?

Personally, I never thought of that as a legitimate option until recently. I spent way too many years trying to formulate the perfect conversation composed of carefully selected axioms that would satisfy the past while giving instructions to the present about how to carve out a faultless future. To say nothing would in fact be giving consent to everything that was awful about my life. Wouldn’t it?

Not necessarily.

Think about this: Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

This proverb nettled my nerve for quite some time because regardless of my efforts, I kept experiencing the same disappointing results. Depression, discontentment and anxiety somehow ran supreme. According to Albert, this meant I had been embroiled in the same routine all along. But how could this be? Long before the Obama Nation, change was my middle name. I changed my relationships, I changed my jobs, I changed my gurus and of course, various hair lengths to boot. Basically, I was committed to altering the hypothetical conversation with my inner child whenever necessary, which indeed caused a positive difference in my behavior. Positive actions bore positive fruit and so it only stood to reason that such appealing outcomes should ultimately translate into peace and contentment, but they didn’t. Inevitably, the fruit would rot and I’d go back to rethinking my approach. I see now that Albert was right and that changing the approach to my inner conversation wasn’t change at all. I needed to stop having the conversation all together and allow that little girl to go on with her life, bumps and bruises included.

This is the act of acceptance and acceptance is the mother of peace and contentment.

When I asked you to imagine what you would say to your younger self, I’m sure at least one regret popped into your head as the basis for your conversation. Or you thought of something horrible that was done to you, or some privilege that you frittered away or heaven only knows what else. Even for those of us who were taught in Sunday school that God offers grace laced forgiveness, even those people are tempted to allow their past to inform them on ways to construct immovable lives of certainty and perfection that bear no scars of a life once imperfectly lived. Where’s the authenticity in that and how can you possibly experience true peace and contentment living behind such a façade? The truth is, you can’t. The moment you try to converse with the past so as to effect change in your present, that’s the moment you’ve rejected yourself. It’s the moment you let shame dictate the constructs of your life. It’s when you create a list of obligatory ‘shoulds’ instead of a design of impassioned “wants”. It’s resignation to a prison cell of inauthenticity.

This realization about acceptance and authenticity has led me to a level of awareness that has finally connected my head to my heart.

Dr. Brian has a lot to say about the topic of self-awareness. He breaks down the phenomenon into three parts: the felt sense, the emotional sense and the rational sense. A healthy felt sense allows us to obtain positive experiences through our body minus the analytical interruptions. The emotional sense allows us to appreciate our feelings without judgments, and a robust rational sense enables thoughts to flow without censorship. When a person learns how to fully integrate all three areas in a working whole, self-awareness is at its peak. Being mindful of our relationship to the world around us is essential to moving through life peaceably. Will conflicts inevitably occur? Be assured! But when you cultivate awareness, you can make anticipations that allow you to adjust accordingly. This breeds confidence and permits contentment to rest heavy. It also becomes the conduit through which self-mastery can take place.

What is self-mastery? Is it some narcissistic endeavor for worldly success? Unfortunately, many people pursue it as such and inevitably fall into disappointment. The love of money, power, pleasure, acceptance and even security are all ill motives that distract humanity from achieving a true sense of mastery over the self; which is best defined as the ability to harmoniously influence yourself in the direction you want to go. Boy that sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, it is but it’s just not that easy to pull off on a consistent basis without good solid support. Next week we’ll take a closer look at the components that comprise a harmonized self as well as the structure needed to give it support.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, observations or insights you’d like to share, please feel free to do so. This blog is a trove of welcome for such treasures. Dr. Brian is also willing to make himself available to those who feel compelled to make direct contact. For those concerned about privacy, you are also free to send a message to us through Facebook.

Enjoy the rest of this week and may acceptance, authenticity and awareness mark your days ahead!

The Start of Something Excellent

Perspective and behavior have always fascinated me. Not just those belonging to others but mine as well. Because of this, part of my life journey has been to find harmony in thought and deed so that my days of satisfaction will outweigh the irksome. Like many, I’ve explored all sorts of “methods” to achieve this end. Buying self-help books is just one of them. On that front, I’m hardly alone.

Who hasn’t noticed there’s a zillion dollar self-help industry out there providing a great resource for inspiration but not much else? The industry has been rather pathetic in terms of actually creating independent people who can take care of themselves. I mean, isn’t that what self-help is supposed to do? Teach you how to help yourself? Why hasn't that happened on a large earth shattering scale? Where have the gurus, both religious and secular, failed? It has not escaped my notice that almost all of them employ some kind of metaphor to express their process but I truly feel their use of the metaphor is cursory and therefore lacking. Personally, when I encounter a metaphor, I regard it as a conduit that connects a universal spiritual truth to an exclusive finite reality. Like Mary Poppins’ magic bag: on the surface exists an agent of rules and boundaries, but when you open it up, inside there is an endless universe of interpretive possibility. Think of the power that unleashes! A figurative expression, whether religious or secular, becomes a passageway to receiving applicable insight for deep personal growth. It also means that people who differ in their interpretations no longer have to fight over them. I think that's the best outcome of a concept like this.  

I have been exploring these thoughts with a friend of mine who not only has a Ph.D. in psychology but also happens to specialize in the area of life satisfaction and excellence. Our time together has been very enriching as he has agreed to subject himself to my many questions about his research and ongoing work while I have agreed to explore a metaphor he has created called The Excellence Tree.

I will be posting every Monday morning to my blog about this journey of ours and would like to invite you to accompany us on this trek. Our first stop: self-mastery… or self-harmony as Dr. Brian likes to call it.

Together, we’ll explore the differences in their connotation under the canopy of the Excellence Tree. 

Review of Tortured for Christ

This review was actually written by Matthew Bell, Copy Editor of The Pittsburgh Standard. I was lured to the article because of the title "Tortured for Christ" which made my eyes roll. I couldn't help it. In general, I carry much chagrin for the mainline interpretation of Matt 28:16-20 and there's no end to the skepticism I have toward self-proclaimed martyrs. However, Matthew's review left me with much to think about; which is why I decided to post his article on my blog. 

Just prior to the September 11 bombings, a group of Christian missionaries and international aid workers were imprisoned by the government of Afghanistan, along with several innocent Afghanis.  The ‘crime‘?  They exercised the Christian faith, including the command to evangelize.  With the occurrence of the bombings, their case was rapidly forgotten, replaced by fears for our own safety here at home. This month’s book is selected in their honor. It was written in just a few days in the middle of the 20th century by an exiled Lutheran pastor, Richard Wurmbrand. Tortured for Christ, is his testimony.

The case of Tortured for Christ is a provocative one; Pastor Wurmbrand, one of those who suffered under the bloody regime of the Ceausescus’ in Romania, does not use normative human rights rhetoric. To explain, many say, when confronted by religious or political persecution, that the crime of the offending countries is one of harming others merely for having different ideas.  Persecution offends the western sensibility, not because of virtue in the persecuted, but because persecution is intolerant.  Pastor Wurmbrand hates persecution, but his stance against it is fueled not by this western sensibility.  For him, persecution represents an evil even greater than intolerance, and those who are persecuted represent a greater good than that of mere dissent.

When he tells the somber tale of Christian martyrdom in the 20th century, he paints for us the portraits of men, women, and children who suffer because they are doing something far too significant to have the adjective mere applied to it.  They are resisting the zeitgeist, the spirit of their age, which in Wurmbrand’s time was dialectal materialism taken to its logical conclusion.  They do this by promoting the Christian Gospel, which upon close examination is really the very radical idea that people are not clumps of chemicals, meaningless automata driven by hunger and sex, but creatures designed to be images of the Divine.  This image was shattered and fragmented by the willful choice to sin, to pursue mere hunger, lust, power — all partial goods — instead of the perfect good,  the Glory of God, with which we were designed to fellowship.  God, displeased by this broken fellowship has bent down to pour out not simply kindness, but Himself upon humanity in the form of His Son Jesus.  Those who come to Jesus become not mere men, but “partakers of the divine nature”.  For Wurmbrand, Communists persecuted this view not because they were intolerant, but because this Truth, and those who believe it, are not mere anythings.  God has come among us.  His message directly threatens our self-centered universe.

These are words only when they come from me, a westerner who has never suffered for this Truth.  “The Pastor“, as his people called him, however saw first hand the power of Christ at work in those who resisted the toxic ideology of the Stalinists in Romania.  He witnessed as he himself and his fellow prisoners resisted physical, psychological, and sexual tortures by the power of Christ, as He imparted His Spirit and Word to them.  His words tell it more honestly than I can:

We had to sit for seventeen hours a day — for weeks, months and years — hearing:

Communism is good!

Communism is good!

Communism is good!

 Christianity is stupid!

Christianity is stupid!

Christianity is stupid!

        Give up!

        Give up!

        Give up!

  Several Christians have asked me how we could resist brainwashing.  There is only one method of resistance to brainwashing: it is “heart washing.”  If the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ, and if the heart loves Him, one can resist all tortures.  What would a loving bride not do for a loving bridegroom?  What would a loving mother not do for her child?  If you love Christ as Mary did, who had Christ as a baby in her arms, if you love Jesus as a bride loves her bridegroom, than you can resist such tortures.

  Or consider this passage, even more representative of his ideology, and an even more lucid explanation of what it means to be spiritual:

In the prison of Gherla, a Christian named Grecu was sentenced to be beaten to death.  The process lasted a few weeks, during which he was beaten very slowly...He was beaten on the testicles.

 Then a doctor gave him an injection.  He recovered...and then he was beaten again until he died under this slow, repeated beating.  One who led this torture was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, whose name was Reck.

During the beatings, Reck said something to Grecu that the Communists often said to Christians, “You know, I am God.  I have the power of life and death over you.  The one who is in heaven cannot decide to keep you in life.  Everything depends upon me.  If I wish, you live.  If I wish, you are killed.  I am God!”  So he mocked the Christian.

Brother Grecu, in this horrible situation, gave Reck a very interesting answer, which I afterward heard from Reck himself.  He said, “You don’t know what a deep thing you have said.  Every caterpillar is in reality a butterfly, if it develops rightly.  You have not been created to be a torturer, a man who kills.  You have been created to become like God, with the life of the Godhead in your heart.  Many who have been persecutors like you, have come to realize — like the apostle Paul — that it is shameful for a man to commit atrocities, that they can do much better things.  So they have become partakers of the divine nature.  Jesus said to the Jews of His time, ‘Ye are gods.’  Believe me, Mr. Reck, your real calling is to be Godlike — to have the character of God, not a torturer.”

One great lesson arose from all the beatings, tortures, and butchery of the Communists: that the spirit is master of the body.  We felt the torture, but it often seemed as something distant and far removed from the spirit which was lost in the glory of Christ and His presence with us.

Once in a class a professor told us something that disturbed me.  He told us that with electrodes applied to the correct places in the brain, he could make you not simply hungry, or increase your libido, but that he could make us eat, or make us have sex.  He denied the will.  One day in class we were told that thought was random firing of neurons, and nothing more.  I did not believe him, but had no evidence to counter.  It didn’t occur to me that he, psychologists though he was, really didn’t have supreme evidence for his claim either. 

 Those who suffer for the right have experiential evidence that there is more to human existence and dignity than random electrochemistry.  They have found that the spiritual world is more than a fable told us to provide catharsis.  The persecuted, such as those heroes and heroines who suffered under the Ceausescus’ or under Stalin — or suffer under the Taliban — as such, are also soldiers.  They fight for the same cause as did their Lord: to save the soul, which they love more than life, from those who would enslave it to the ends of mere culture, tradition, empty political philosophies, and the tyranny of all that the Scriptures call sin.  Above all, they are winning, for the Lord is in them to work and will His good pleasure.

They are winning in a decisive sense.  There is only so much that military and police action, as important as these are, can accomplish.  If we strike down Osama bin Ladin, several more will take his place.  The situation, in that sense, is analogous to the danger faced in the Cold War.  A direct assault of the Iron Curtain would have brought about nuclear apocalypse.

The missing link in the new war, and the unsung heroes and heroines of the old Cold War, are those who suffer for the crime of opposing the toxic ideology of their own countries.  Those who fought oppression from within the old Soviet Union were, as such, unrecognized allies of the western democracies. Likewise the martyrs suffering in nations such as Afghanistan are the allies of democracy.  By telling others of the Peace of Christ, endangering their own lives, they combat the underlying cause of the new terrorism. Osama bin Ladin and his network know this. The Taliban knows this. That is why they arrested the  Christian relief workers and the Afghani Christians.  That is why so-called jihad groups in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sudan slaughter thousands of people.  It is this fact which makes Tortured for Christ, with its celebration of Christian martyrs and lucid, evidential attack against stripping humanity of its God and soul, so timely.  Richard Wurmbrand calls upon us to rethink the nature of faith, to reevaluate its role in the battle against tyranny.

Matt is a graduate student in the Intelligent Systems and Computer Science programs at the University of Pittsburgh.  He also is an active member of East End Assembly of God in Bloomfield and the Chi Alpha chapter on the Pitt campus.  Lastly, he loves books, and loves even more to talk about them.

On Your Mark Get Set Write

I'm always organizing thoughts. Not my own but other people's. A folder for conservative points, and a folder for liberal counter-points. A file for religious theologies and a drawer for secular wise cracks. Here a quote, there a quote and everywhere a hidden desire to have my own quotable quip embossed on a t-shirt that's sold for $19.99 in some catalogue for midwesterners. I ain't good at grammar. I'm worse with speling. So why do I think I should be writing? Where does that delusion come from? Just because a person enjoys an activity, doesn't mean a creator of that activity should a person try to be! To quote Nacho Libre, "Father, why did you give me this desire to wrestle and made me such a stinky warrior?" 

Do it scared.... that's what my friend says. So okay, fine then, I'll do it scared. I'll start writing ugly sentences and creating characters void of arcs and plot paths. I'll make-up dialogue that's clearly full of my agenda to change the world and to get free stuff from possible sponsors. I'll craft a baseless scenario or two and break a million literary rules while doing it. And I'll enjoy every bit of the treachery that will be my fingers on the keyboard. 

I draw the line at mawkish poetry though. 

Standards must be made. 

Here It Comes

It's the first week of December and it's almost here: Christmas, the holiday of holidays. I think back to a little over a month ago when the flowers on my balcony did not stand as tall and sturdy as they once did. Their petals were ever so subtly cast downwards as if to suggest a curtsy of their soon coming departure. At the time, I sighed heavily at the sign of summer's close and raised my head to the sky, narrowing my eyes in the glare of an Indian October sun. With hands on my hips, I audibly launched a terse memo to God: "Another holiday season is on its way. Same help needed!"

Why the exasperated plea?

Three words say it all: Divorced With Children.

Nine years ago, my divorce was finalized and though it would be nice to say that sharing our children over the holidays has become easier with each passing year, I'm not able to give that report.

Certainly, my ex-husband and I get along better than most divorcees, but even that fact has never softened the frustrations each holiday brings. I am remarried now, so not only do I have to accommodate my children's holiday schedule in light of their various blood relatives; I also have my second husband's family to incorporate as well. It's amazing but somehow all of us manage to make the chaos work and yet, without fail, I find myself dealing with depression at the close of what should be a jubilant season. 

I always feel like my efforts come up short and then I feel guilty for being sad because I know from living through my own parent's divorce that the holidays could be so much worse. 

With each pang I think, 'This is probably why my parents fought so much. Anger numbs you' and with that thought, I have to resist the urge to look for an excuse to pick a fight with my ex so I too can numb out from the sadness of our reality. 

Admittedly, there are times when I give in to the urge for battle. That happens for both of us on occasion but fortunately, our explosive confrontations are few and far between. We are quick to forgive, forget and move forward for the sake of the children.

I've noticed our efforts for peace increase between the months of October and January: like Homeland Security Code Orange, we are diligent to take every precaution possible in hopes of not tripping a nuclear trigger of insult and misunderstanding. I, for one, find myself exhausted when January arrives; which makes the doldrums of February look like a welcomed get-away vacation.

No, I'm not ashamed to admit it; I need supernatural power to fill the gaps of my human inadequacies. Fortunately, I believe in a God who promises that His strength is made perfect through my weakness and right now, I have no choice but to count on Him because Christmas is coming fast.