Art Gallery

Last year my daughter and I and maybe another person or two were batting around ideas and decided it would be cool to turn the hallway of our department into an art gallery to hang work done by our students. We thought it would be good to have more wall space for hanging stuff so we determined to paint our colors and design down around the corner and claim some more hallway that heads off to a stairwell and to a couple of other departments. We told any folks that happened by that we had been praying the Prayer of Jabez.

These kinds of ideas come in a flash of inspiration which takes only moments and in a few tens of minutes we had the whole plan sketched out with all kinds of “…and then we could…!” refinements. Accomplishing the work to execute the idea is a whole different thing. There is just never enough time to run after all the good ideas. But once in a while one just has to be done. Partly because it would just be so cool that you can’t not make it happen. Also because I need to occasionally put a large deposit of “This is so amazing! – You are such a valuable asset to this institution!” into my account which is continually depleted by minor irritation with my administration challenged, nebulous clock, artsy-fartsy wackiness that is wedged into academia at a rather odd angle. I consider it job security to occasionally tackle a project that nobody else around the place would ever think to do, let alone pull off on a shoestring, a wing, and a prayer the way we have to. It makes me more comfortable to once in a while kinda make up for the paperwork I get in late or the myriad other institutional stuff I’m terrible at.

So anyway, I have found myself the last week solid making this project happen that I thought would take a couple of days. (They always take several times as long as you think they will.) A large format printer was given to my daughter recently and we figured that we could afford to make the prints with it and thus get around the deal-breaking cost of having them done. But, of course, that added days of struggling with cantankerous computer equipment and software to the fun. It’s all basically done now, just short of 50 prints 13x17.5” or sizes close to that, mounted on foam core, edges blacked, and on the wall with separate foam core mounted names and majors of the photographers. It’s pretty impressive for our little college. As far as I know, there has never been any kind of art gallery on the campus and this is a pretty cool looking first effort. I have been collecting the better photos turned in by my students the last several years and had a nice trove to draw from.

Unfortunately, classes start the day after tomorrow and tonight at 10:00PM I found the surface of my desk for the first time since the middle of last semester. (It’s brown, by the way. I had forgotten.) And the editing room needs some major attention. And, oh yeah, I better get my lessons ready. Fortunately, I can pretty much pull the first few weeks worth out of the file and go. But it will be very busy. The ol’ blog here may get a bit quiet for a while. If you are a praying person, offer one up for me. Thanks!

Year 6

“Day after day up there beating my wings
With all of the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
They class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
Embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
It bites like a saw into white pine.
I communicate right; but explain to the dean-
Well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.”

-William Stafford, “Lit Instructor”

This coming Wednesday I will walk into the classroom and start my sixth year of teaching. I came to this from twenty years of schlepping a camera around the world and spending long days and weeks in darkened rooms editing images and sounds and struggling to write content nearly completely disconnected from the world of clocks and calendars except for the ever present, looming deadline. Now my deadlines are much smaller, but come several times a day at the top of the hour.

I was never trained as a teacher. In fact, when offered this job, my brilliant teacher wife laughed out loud at the thought. I walked onto a university campus a trench slogging production dog and was proclaimed “professor” by provostial decree. Kinda like being knighted, I guess. It felt good to have a new title, but I had no idea what it meant or how to do anything with it. I thought I was going to have some coaching from expert peers but it soon became clear that they all had their plates full keeping their own set of colorful and important balls juggling overhead. So I dove in and tried to learn as I went along. Considering that I have to be pleased with what I’ve been able to accomplish, though by any objective teacher evaluation I’ve only been fair to middlin’.

This year we have a new dean. Not really having any idea of what a dean is supposed to do, I have thought that the guys filling the post during my tenure to date have been doing a fine job. But this new guy, whoa! I didn’t know what we had been doing without. Yesterday he came into my office (in work clothes, having been helping new students move into the dorms) and sat down. I had just come back from my annual performance appraisal with the outgoing interim dean. He gently told me he had been talking with his predecessor about my situation, poured affirmation over me as had my reviewer – I was doubly blessed in the same hour – and handed me a book he thought would be helpful. It is called “The Courage to Teach” by Parker J. Palmer. This morning I started a new chapter called “The Culture of Fear,” (ironic considering my entry here yesterday, though this a different flavor from a different direction) and the first thing he puts in it is the poem quoted above. I think for the first time I’m going to get some help figuring out how to do this job. The book is like a cold glass of fresh spring water to a dehydrated soul. I think just maybe this year is going to be different and better.

Dangerous Drug

Metaphors, metaphors. Always metaphors. So I’ve been encouraged to just come straight out with things, but the metaphors just keep coming. Last weekend my longsuffering spouse and I started into another one of our perennial cycles of disconnect. My emotional intelligence quotient is sadly on the low side, so my response at such times is often confused and shot through with fear. Often I assume that the things I feel are things everybody feels. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. When things are off kilter between me and my partner, I can certainly feel hurt. But I’m realizing that even more strongly I feel fear. When the facts come out and the dust settles, I once again know that my wife truly loves me. The hurt is rarely intentional and even when it is it is almost always in the context of an overall caring and attempt at nurture. Why I cannot accept this and operate from this basic assumption when things get fuzzy I do not know. It is something at the core of my emotional pathology. Yes, I do need some professional help. But my past experience has my level of hope in such very low and my level of cynicism very high. Anyway, what made me start typing here, besides an effort to come “straight out with it,” was, of course, a metaphor. The fear works a lot like adrenaline. It’s something completely out of control. When the threatening crisis happens, the response surges through me with a suddenness and potency I can only compare to adrenaline surge. It’s different, but very drug like. And just like it takes adrenaline time to be metabolized and the effect to drain away after the threat has passed, the fear drug also lingers. But it seems to take a lot longer to metabolize. Adrenaline bleeds off in hours. The fear drug, my fear drug anyway, takes days even after all is well. It’s mildly sickening, very uncomfortable, and annoyingly, largely unnecessary. I’m considering that maybe the way this happens with me isn’t part of the human condition. Maybe only some of us respond to things this way. This is a huge crack in my armor. (sorry, there's another one. I really can't seem to help it.)

DNA library?

Ever notice that a piece of corn is structurally very similar to a human molar?

I used to travel a lot and it seemed not unusual to see someone of one race on the other side of the world who looked just like someone I knew of another race at home. They could be identical twins, except one was white and one Asian, or whatever. Made me wonder if God reuses DNA patterns except for changing up one really significant factor. I’m thinking that if I had the chance to make such creative decisions, I might do something like that just for the fun of it.

Cliff Hanger Exit

A plot device that, though time-honored, is way overused. And it wears me weary.

Flickering Candle Flame

Passion must be fed. But how to get the fuel to the flame in the right amount at the right time? Ah, that is the trick. The largest candle will get to the point where, even though there is lots of wax left, it just won’t burn anymore and it usually gets thrown away.

Clueless

I don't even know
if I don't know enough
or too much

Distraction

can't concentrate
the mind
pre-eminent
knowledge
the golden commodity
but feeling
ephemeral emotion
the throwaway card
trumps all

fractured thoughts
pieces of ideas
glimpses of insight
all flying around
in tongues
of flaming passion
how ever to
put the picture together?
and get back to business

Intentionality

Neglect can be born of distraction, stress, ignorance, carelessness, or stupidity. Cruelty is always intentional. The longer I live the more I find intentionality behind things that appeared random. Often this is a really good thing. Other times, it makes me very sad.

Earth and Water

I’ve been pondering some apologetics lately and the ones that seem to stick with me most are based on nature. I never cease to be amazed by the precision with which the earth has been placed in relation to the sun. All of us critters of every species, especially mammals, and even more especially homo sapiens, have an extremely narrow window of temperature tolerance. A few degrees above or below the mid 70’s Fahrenheit and we are either uncomfortably cold or hot. A few tens of degrees difference and we are in danger of hypothermia or heat stroke. A few thousand feet of elevation makes a huge difference. And even though the earth maintains a constant distance from the sun, the tilt of the axis, an amazing thing that gives us seasons, is enough to cause terrifically hot summers and frozen winters, neither of which are survivable for us without some kind of clothing and shelter. And then we just happen to be one of the few rocks flying around in space to have an atmosphere, which buffers the wildly fluctuating surface temps most planets endure between sun and shadow.

Here is a nice science project for some enterprising student: Figure out the effect on global temperatures if the earth’s axis was off one degree in one direction or the other. Or what would happen if we were one earth diameter closer or further away from the sun. I haven’t done this myself or seen the research that is probably already out there somewhere, but based on the extremes of our seasons, I would make an educated guess that either of these conditions would probably make life on earth as we know it impossible.

Then there is the issue of water. So far this most common of things in our existence hasn’t been found anywhere else in space in liquid form. It could be out there somewhere. I think it probably is because there’s ice in comet tails. But it would seem that it is as rare off this ball as it is common on it. The majority of the composition of our very bodies is of this stuff and it may exist nowhere else. The mechanism by which it evaporates up into clouds and gets rained down on us and gets purified by filtering through the ground and wells up in springs and flows down streams and rivers, around and around the cycle is sophisticated engineering on a massive scale. Water gives life to our bodies and sitting by a flowing river or watching ocean waves roll in gives nourishment to our souls. Pretty great stuff, H2O, even though I still don’t like rain when I'm on a motorcycle, ungrateful wretch that I am.

I was thinking about all this Friday morning while I was reading Psalm 104 that says, among other things, that “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment… He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains…” and it goes on about water. Then later in the morning my friend used this imagery while leading a worship time I attended. This is all such obvious God stuff to me. It helps me believe. If you think all this happened by chance, then you have far more faith than I do.

Sex

That should get some Google hits. If you are one, sorry to disappoint you, see ya, have a nice life.

Christians don’t talk about sex enough. Oh we do it all right. Check out any church nursery and there will be no doubt in your mind. But this beautiful thing at the core of our beings has been so co-opted by pornographers and Madison Avenue that we shy away.

So, anyway, I was thinking a little thought about sex yesterday. Not profound, but I thought I should be able to share it and why not? Mind you, this is from a guy who has been with the same woman for 25 years. Women don’t need to read this. All of you already know it. But guys, well it just might speak to that part of all of us that is brain dead.

I’ve been getting some cooking tips from my wife lately. She’s been working more and I’ve been trying to take some of the kitchen load off of her. But, she has this alchemistic ability to turn cheap food like rice and beans into delicious meals. It’s always seemed almost magic to me the way she does it. Well, I learned a couple of secrets the other day: turmeric and cumin. On their own they really aren’t that attractive to my nose. But you mix them in and they bring a zest that is quite amazing.

So my none-too-profound thought is that sex is a spice. A really, really tasty one, but a spice, not a staple. But it gets sold as an entre, the main dish. I haven’t tried it, but chugging down the whole jar of turmeric would be a pretty ugly experience, I think. Actually, eating potatoes or chicken completely dry would be bland, but better than the turmeric. I can live on sterile meat and veggies, but I don’t think I’d last long with nothing to eat but what’s in the spice rack.

Spice is wonderful. It turns the every-day into a delicious experience. But it only really works in the context of a tinge added to a lot of ordinary. And sex really only works in the context of the day to day stuff of life and relationship that has nothing to do with sex. If you go straight to the spice rack and chow down, you’ll probably ruin your taste buds.

Doodles

Last week I had some days with no words. Probably mostly because of busyness but also no doubt because of the general, low-grade depression I have to deal with every year for the week or two before classes start. I just never feel ready to stand there in front of students again. I do enjoy teaching, I just don’t enjoy not being prepared and it seems I always feel that way to some extent with rare exceptions. Another rather depressing thing is faculty meetings. Don’t get me wrong, I do think they are important, but they usually seem to be mostly about institutional survival and preciously little about teaching students. So I’m usually frustrated with them. But faculty meetings do give me the opportunity to get in some serious doodling. And then I have to start messing with them in Photoshop and, well, you know what happens. Hey, last night I rode by a field with some pigs in it. If I go back there, I might be able to get a picture of a sow’s ear. Mmmmmm… Maybe you can after all!

which version is better?

There's more where this came from.
And more still.

Artist

My daughter is an artist. We’ve known that for a long time, but it was emphasized to me in a new way recently. For those who haven’t read their way through this blog’s archives, we recently moved. My 19 year old daughter was a trooper throughout the process and was a huge help to me. But one afternoon she just stopped. She spent hours sitting among the stacks of cardboard boxes. She just had to create something. Next thing I knew, out of flaps from boxes, some rope left over from a settling-in project, a couple of photos, and markers we had used to label the cartons, she had made something beautiful. Then she hung it up on the living room wall.

A true artist has to create. They will go crazy if they don’t. And they will use whatever is at hand. They don’t wait until they can obtain the ideal elements, though they always strive to get their hands on those. They will take dirt and rocks if they have to and come up with something.

This also got me to thinking about tools. When I first started attempting to make moving picture productions, I was always running up against the limitations of the gear that was available to students. I would think that someday I’d have access to really good, precision gear, and then the process would be much more controllable, precise, and therefore, easier. What I learned over the passing years is that it really doesn’t matter what level of tools you have at your disposal, you will always push them to their limits and a bit beyond. An artist is somewhat like a test pilot in that he or she is usually eager to see where the edges of the envelope are. How far can I take this? Early work often goes to the max and can be way overdone out of this exploration of limits. Later work often is much more about subtlety and tone backed off from the radical. So whatever limits are there usually get bumped up against fairly early on. I guarantee you that every big budget movie ever made, though millions of dollars are being thrown at it and the very best gear that money can buy in use, all kinds of things are held together with tape and drywall screws, cameras are put in places the manufacturer never thought they’d go, and support equipment is pushed to function in ways it really wasn’t meant to. All that precision control, though very helpful, is often pushed to the point where the camera is in some, unlikely, unstable spot, just getting a shot as much by experimentation and luck as by engineering.

An art director on a movie I worked on long ago said something that I thought about this very day when tinkering with a project of my own. He said you have to not be afraid of taking the next step – of doing a bit more with it. The fear is that you will lose something you like if you go too far, but you have to keep going. Making art is precarious. Unless you are making something by formula. But in that case, you aren’t an artist.

Dinosaurs

Okay, this is just one more spoiled American complaining about the price of gas. And you friends in California will laugh at me and and our enviably "low" pump numbers. But we are out of control. Three days ago one of the stations I patronize regularly posted regular at $2.259. The next day it was $2.359. Yesterday it was $2.459. This morning it backed down to $2.419. I just passed there and saw $2.499. Has gas ever fluctuated 10 cents per day on sequential days ever before? I can't remember it. After years of only a bike to get me around on I finally have a car. And a convertible at that. But just like you, I may not get to drive it for long. A quick run of the numbers shows we're quickly approaching the point where we'll be money ahead to just quit our jobs and stay home. And the SUV still in the shop? Maybe I should just leave it there. Perhaps someone will come up with a way to make motorcycle fuel out of the rotting carcasses of cars and trucks.

btw, my bike ticked over 80,000 miles last night. At 60 mpg, just think of all the money I saved.

Feeling and Truth

I’ve been reading “Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of Christianity.” It’s a sort of Reader’s Digest condensed book of church history. I’m somewhere into the middle of the fall of the Roman empire now. I have been struck by the fact that even back to the first few centuries after Jesus walked the earth, various groups and factions have been splitting apart and fighting about some major issues and a plethora of minutia, some being of the exact same opinion but battling it out because of semantical disconnects. It’s a wonder that anyone would give Christianity any consideration at all as presented by the church throughout history. We’ve muddied the water with self-serving grabs for influence, power, and money from the beginning. Many, if not most, of our current day notables seem to be doing far more injury to the understanding of God and Jesus than good. Certainly the raving idiots on most of Christian television are by and large an insult to the intelligence of farm animals, let alone people. Even as a Christian myself, I often have to echo the bumper sticker Doug Pinnick displayed in concert (on one of his basses, if I recall correctly): “Jesus, save us from your followers.” And I know I have added to the problem with bigotry birthed from my own blind spots.

Some of the recent commentors have talked about doing good because it’s the right thing to do. I’m left with the question, what makes anything the right thing to do? Kate pointed out that some religion tells folks that killing infidels is the right thing to do. There are countless other less extreme examples that hit much closer to where we live. It seems to me that goodness and/or rightness has to be based in something. There has to be some reference point. It can’t be free floating. Unless you are willing to accept that everything is relative and exact opposites can be right depending on whatever. There are many great minds that argue in this direction.

I for one find this to degenerate into an intellectual dog chasing it’s tail. You can never pin it down. It may be that this is just a part of the human condition. But in Christianity I find a system that from my view is consistent with itself. As per my rant above, I am in no way saying that Christ-ians are consistent with themselves, but the system is with itself. This will probably stir up some ire, so I’ll prepare for the next salvo. But allow me to throw out a few things about my thinking to this point.

Most religious sales pitches, including those for Christianity, focus on felt needs. And as such, many can deliver some kind of balm to people in some kind of need. Community, relationship, and caring are vital parts of any life of faith. And few will ever care what you know until they know you care. Compassion is huge. And anyone who has paid even passing attention to the life of Jesus knows that he was all about it. But any thinking person has to admit that it’s possible to be passionate about something that is not true. Some will chase off after the nature of truth. I’m just going with the simple, straight forward definition: actual vs. fabrication, reality vs. fantasy.

It is difficult if not impossible to glean much truth out of the gobbley gook presented as the face of present day Christianity, or any other system for that matter. There are those who try to throw out the religious and supernatural altogether and place their faith in science. Just last week I caught a snippet of one of the Sunday morning political talk shows and a woman was commenting on the debate about teaching intelligent design in public schools – basically creationism without naming any creator. She said condescendingly, “we have enough trouble in our classrooms without teaching phony science.” Any junior high science student should be able to explain that the scientific method requires two elements: something must be observable and repeatable. Theories must be postulated and then proven. Since any theory of origins can be neither observed nor repeated, an appeal to the scientific method is laughably stupid. Come on people, what do you take us for? TV preachers?! We must observe the way things are, rather than some wildly speculative idea about what they may have been like, to even approach any reasonable support for any theory. Things like the fact that no two different species have ever been observed to be able to reproduce casts grave doubt in my mind about the possibility of evolution. And the entropy I observe in every single thing around me every day of my life tells me that things don’t get better when left alone over time, they always fall apart. (I have personally noted only one exception: dishes will eventually get dry even if you don’t dry them.) And we don’t often hear from the Christian scientists (I don’t mean the C.S. faith, I mean working scientists who are Christians), of whom there are many. Check out the Institute for Creation Research for a doorway into their world.

I could go on here, but my point is that one must live by faith. There is no choice. Our scientists that desperately want evolution to be true bluster on about science as if they are not selling a religion. Okay, so it’s not religion. Point me to one single experiment that shows observability and repeatability.

I was raised in a Christian tradition. It was easy for me to follow along as my family on both sides were believers for generations before me. But there comes a time in every person’s life, or at least there should, when one must ask the question, “is this actually true?” Some would say it doesn’t really matter, Jesus was a good guy and you can’t go wrong emulating his teachings. But the hard reality is that if Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, then he was not a good guy at all. He was a really bad guy. He was a seller of false hope and sent countless thousands on a path of hardship and martyrdom. C.S. Lewis points out that we really have only three choices concerning who Jesus was; either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord of the universe. The man was way smarter than me. I can’t find a hole in that.

Speaking of C.S. Lewis, it’s unfortunate that the Christians who seem to catch the limelight and sell books and such become popular for the same capricious reasons anyone becomes popular. Our thinkers who really have something intelligent to say are largely ignored, even by most Christians. I often hear in the media about how closed minded and stupid Christians are. Maybe this is your opinion as well. I’ll entertain that after you expose yourself to one of the following:

Josh McDowell, a brilliant intellect, set out to disprove Christianity. In the process, he came to faith and became one of the leading apologists of our day. His “More Than a Carpenter” is written on a popular level and can be read in an hour or two. His two volume set “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” and “More Evidence That Demands a Verdict” is an omnibus of ideas. I mentioned Lewis, the only really famous one. Besides the “Chronicles of Narnia” he wrote some of the most compelling arguments re: Christ ever. Francis Schaeffer and J.P. Moreland will have you running for your thinking cap. A couple of others of note: Ravi Zacharias and Norm Geisler.

What these guys have to say makes sense to me. All the pieces fit. Does this mean living my life is easy? Read a few random entries of this blog and you will know that is not the case. If anything, my faith makes things a good bit messier in the short term. I don’t think you’ll hear that much – doesn’t sell well. But have I found some truth on which to base my life and destiny? You will have to find that out for yourself.

An Hour Late and Twenty Dollars Short

Moved up one hour the dinner bell
A happy tale there'd be to tell
Or twenty bucks plus tax and tip
To buy what restaraunts have to sell
"Let's just go out," a pleasant trip
I'm sure it would have all been swell
But dinner time, it did not gel
With timing off, I broke the spell
And everything to pieces fell
Yes, everything was shot to pieces

Fake Convertible

I happened to pass one of those fake convertibles the other day. You know, a Buick or something like that with a vinyl or canvas top made to look like a convertible. But it doesn’t go down. It just has the look. That seems so ridiculous to me.

I really like our convertible a lot. But they do have disadvantages. First, they cost a bunch more money than an otherwise equivalent car. For that you get a vehicle that, all other things being equal, is noisier, looser, tends to flex and squeak and rattle more, often leaks, can be drafty, has higher maintenance, will probably need that expensive top replaced at some point, is more vulnerable to damage and theft, and oh, better not take that canvas top thorough a car wash. The seams could come undone. But, on a nice day or a starry evening, when you stow that top and roll down all the windows, there’s nothing quite like it. It’s so well worth all the little annoyances of convertible ownership. And though a sunroof is nice or T-tops, it’s just not the same. Rag tops are just cool. And fun. And they look great with the top down. But often the roofline of the drop-top just isn’t as pretty as the hardtop version of the same car. It’s what they do that’s great, certainly not what they look like with the top up. That’s why I can’t figure out why someone would want a car that looks like a convertible with top up. The fact that they exist tells me that there are significant things about human nature that I don’t understand at all.

That made me think of something else I don’t understand at all. Maybe you can enlighten me. I’m a Christian. I believe that Jesus is who he said he is. There are many fantastic benefits to being a believer in Jesus. But there are also some things that are difficult sometimes. The whole dying to self thing gets very involved. I hadn’t thought about this in years, probably, until seeing the fake convertible. But if I wasn’t a Christian, I think I’d be a guy you might not like much. I would be extremely selfish. The old Shlitz beer commercials used to say, “you only go around once in life, grab for all the gusto you can!” And hey, what reason would there be not to if this was all there was ever going to be? Why deny yourself anything? This might be your only chance. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

I’m quite certain that I would have been a diabolical criminal if I had not become a Christian. It never made any sense to me to “be good” apart from the context of trying to please God in response to the great things He has done for me. So, the thing I don’t understand is this: why would anyone who truly believes there is no God care anything at all about being good? I know many such people are around, but I don’t understand them. Perhaps it’s a desire for an orderly society or whatever, but at the heart of that would be wanting something for one’s self. So why go after it the hard way?

And people who go through the motions of being religious without actually believing and basing their innermost life on their beliefs, well, what a colossal waste of time. I’m living in the south these days and am blown away by the hordes of people who attend church every Sunday as some kind of cultural expectation. Good grief, if I didn’t believe it, I sure wouldn’t waste one day a week on it. But people do. And people buy fake convertibles. The look of all the inconvenience with none of the benefit. Give me the real deal or give me something else.

Okay, I’ve revealed my simple mind. Maybe a kind hearted, atheist, humanist will be kind enough to spend a few moments of his or her precious life to explain this to me.

Big Time Speakers

My work responsibilities have had me involved with some technical aspects of a conference featuring some well known speakers. Most of them have sold millions of books and are now wealthy. It may be my cynicism showing, but I’m always wary when a rich guy tells me what to do. But, (once again) that is beside my point. This event is involving some very expensive technology. Video is being bounced off satellites to scores of locations in many countries. I think it’s probably safe to assume that each of the speakers has been paid a healthy fee to participate. People at most of these sites have paid a significant amount of money and some have traveled significant distances to attend. The local MC at the site where I’m sitting spoke of “drinking from a fire hydrant.” There has indeed been a lot of good content and the overall vibe is upbeat and encouraging. The execution of the delivery has been top drawer. So I think most attendees would feel they are getting their money’s worth. But a couple of things occurred to me.

One is that the information flow is not insignificant, but it’s no fire hydrant. For the most part, each of the speeches has had one idea. That idea has been unpacked with illustrations and hit home with related stories and jokes. Not unlike a single blog entry of some of the better writers I’ve run into in the blogosphere. When I open my browser, that’s a fire hydrant.

The other thing follows on the first. Each of the speakers is older than me. And I’m pushing 50. What they have to say has been, by and large, distilled from their lifetimes of experience. Good stuff. But the mechanism of their ideas getting published in paper books, the time delays involved, and the many limitations, seem really ponderous to me. The fact that these guys have sold millions of units and the little spoken of windfall as a result of it has radically altered their financial status seems to me to be an anomaly. And I wonder if that mode will be sustainable at all. With the flood of ideas in this blog world and the immediate exposure to and interaction with them by almost anyone anywhere without having to spend significant chunks of money and time, I wonder how long selling books will make people rich.

Preferences

Rush hour traffic isn’t a great place to be on a motorcycle. This morning I got stuck behind a garbage truck for a while. Yech. I chose to get out of there as soon as possible. The “Serenity Prayer” talks about changing the things I can and accepting the things I cannot. But there are things I can change that I shouldn’t. That’s where I really need the wisdom to know the difference.

Restlessness

I woke
in the middle
of the night
you weren’t there
legs
bodies
minds
souls
thrashing about
is our restlessness
pulling us together
or driving us apart?

a quote:

just one day
just one second
maybe just a minute
feel no pain

- Kings X

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Timing is everything
Ten minutes early
What a guy!
Ten minutes late
What a looser!
Same effort
Same elapsed time
Same money spent
But the taste
Left in the mouth
Sweet
Or bitter
With a few moments difference

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. She turned… well, let’s say we’re both bumping up against the big five-0. Our bodies, which looked about the same for fifteen or twenty years, are starting to show the miles. But that’s beside the point. She is a year and thirteen days older, so now we’re in the couple of weeks where I give her a hard time about being two years older than me. That’s also beside the point. (Except that the older woman thing is pretty cool. Take note you single guys.) Anyway, a week or so ago we bought her something she has wanted for a long time. A pretty big item by the measure of our financial status. We agreed it would be her birthday present. And it’s great! And she loves it! Me too! Convenient for me as well. Can’t screw up and forget the birthday this year. It’s taken care of. But having fallen on my face way too many times in the past, I determined to get some flowers and a card just to make sure something nice happened on the day. This was duly noted on my long to-do list for the day. As it happened, I did utter the words “happy birthday” the very first thing out of my mouth in the morning. I was pretty proud of myself for that. But I didn’t get around to getting the flowers and card until late in the afternoon. I had to work all evening and so she had accepted an invitation from a friend to dinner. She had been working in the afternoon and didn’t get home until late in the evening. By this time, she was sure I wasn’t going to do anything. Not good. When she came in, there was a note from our daughter by my card and the flowers. Birthday girl thought our daughter had given the flowers, so I’m still in the doghouse. We had a good chat about all this early this morning. I knew she had forgiven all last night by the way she cuddled me as she fell asleep. (another tip for single guys: a scalp massage is hard to resist) So, it’s all good now. But I continually frustrate myself with my poor timing. I gotta get this right one of these days.

Is nothing sacred?

Yesterday, I had the fun experience of seeing hits from all over the world. Then this morning, for the first time, I had the depressing experience of seeing a spam message in the comments. Spammers are the new Nazis; a plague on the world. A pox on them!

Flying

It occurred to me that, though this blog is called “Airway” and I have revealed my predilection for feathers and birds, I haven’t shared much about a deep passion that it will be obvious has greatly influenced the overall theme of this blog. My third post the first week held some clues as did a few other early posts.

My dad had a private pilot’s license and did a good bit of personal flying when I was a kid. He never owned his own plane so our access to flying was limited, but I grew up around airplanes enough to have caught the disease early on. Flying was recognized as a disease by the very first pilots. In a 1900 letter to Octave Chanute, three years before the first successful airplane flight, Wilbur Wright wrote:

"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life."

It is akin to malaria or hepatitis in that once infected, you have it for life. There is no escape.

My dad was a good one really, but he was pretty distracted by his work when I was young. When I was almost grown he had some enlightenment in this area and he became my best friend during my young adulthood and until he died. But we had precious little in common when I was a kid. One passion we did share and it brought us together as nothing else did. We both loved airplanes and flying.


I was destined to become a pilot. It was an early ambition to become a bush pilot or possibly fly for the airlines. That was not meant to be and I ended up in the visual arts. Not such a jump, really, as many pilots are artists or writers or frustrated wanna-bes. Flight is truly poetry in motion. Airplanes have fabulous form-follows-function sculptural beauty. So aviation is shot through with aesthetics. Anyway, I did earn a private pilot’s license in my early twenties. For a number of years I was able to fly regularly. I was quite consumed with it. I read Flying magazine and Private Pilot, Sport Pilot, and Kitplanes religiously, cover to cover, every month. If you had known me then, you probably would have thought me one-track minded and even obnoxious about it.

Back when I was about ten years old I was taken by the idea of building my own airplane. In the 80’s the development of airplane kits in the experimental aviation world made this dream much more attainable. Though still very expensive, build time could be cut to hundreds of hours as opposed to thousands of hours for scratch building. For years I made my wife crazy with my fixation to do this. I was consumed with it.

I eventually came to the realization that it had become an idol in my life. It actually was my religion as it is for many. If you ever go up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the annual Mecca experience of the Experimental Aircraft Association, you will see what I mean. I had to put flying on the altar of sacrifice in order to follow God’s calling on my life and have a right relationship with Him. After much trauma, I finally got to the point of being able to yield this over to God’s will. I could (and still can) honestly say that if I never again got to control an airplane with my own hands, it was okay. I did get the chance to experience what few ever get to and I am deeply grateful for that. The memory is more than enough. That said, if God should ever provide the opportunity to fly again, I will certainly accept it! And I still hold on to the hope of building my own plane someday. That desire has never been taken away for even one day. It’s always there. But I bury it deeply.

There have been several periods of my life when I dealt with my airplane addiction by ignoring it. My financial status has precluded flying for many years now. I push down the desire and stay away from small airports so the jones doesn’t overwhelm me too badly. But it’s still there, an undercurrent of wonder, fascination, and desire. It seemed appropriate to make reference to it in this blog as there is a veneer here of anonymity and the fact that I’m truly an airplane person has been quite veiled in my current life. Very few people that know me in the state where I now live have any idea that I am a pilot. It’s a hidden part of me. And this blog has been a place where I’ve opened up some hidden areas of my experiences. So here is one more iota of information, a little krill of insight swimming in the vast ocean of the blogosphere. And now you know why all the constant references to flight.

dream

Exposure

Something different is happening with this little blog the last few days. I went from my usual hits from three or four people to 19 states and 11 countries. And the list bounces randomly around the globe:

Thailand
England
Puerto Rico
Canada
Mexico
France
Sweden
Denmark
Malaysia
Yugosloavia
Hong Kong


Whodathunkit? Does anybody out there in the big wide world care to let me know what brought you here?

getting closer

What Would Jesus Ride?

Got to thinking that most of my heroes are not people I particularly aspire to be like. They are heroes for who they are (or were), not for what I want to be. Except maybe in some particular way that is just a part of them. That’s not the idea that got me to sit down at the keyboard just now, but I was thinking about Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators organization. I am not a bit like him. And, though I admire him greatly, I think if I had actually known him, he probably would have irritated me. But something that attracted me to him was the fact that he hated the idea of the image of a Christian man being a quiet, sissified, limp-wrist, wussy weakling. He wanted to represent Christ as a virile, broad chested he-man. He rode a motorcycle and the image was an important part of it.

I’ve been in love with the idea of powered two-wheelers as long as I can remember. Way before I got my first grade school chance to sit on a mini-bike, twist the handgrip, and feel that mighty three horsepower Briggs and Stratton propel me into 25 mile per hour bliss, my imagination had me cruising along, wind on my face. Decades later I still feel it every time I fire up and pull out onto a road. There’s magic in it.

A few years ago after dining out with my wife, we were walking out of a restaurant in a trendy area downtown. Across the street there were a group of guys in white shirts and ties, standing in a circle on the sidewalk. They all had Bibles in their hands and one was waving his around, preaching very loudly about hell and damnation. Everything he said was true and I agreed with all the content with all my heart. It was terribly important information that everyone in that district desperately needed to hear, process, and accept. But the method being used was at absolute cross purposes to the desired outcome of the effort. Over across the other street, on a third corner of this intersection, was a gas station and parked about was a bevy of crotch rocket motorcycles. Their owners, seven or eight burly black guys, were sitting on them talking, occasionally glancing over at the wacko street preachers. They were basically out of earshot so no content was possibly reaching them. And in all likelihood, most of them had heard these truths in some little black church in their past, perhaps even last Sunday, being this was in the heart of the Bible belt. I was actually angry at the white-shirted sincere young men, even though I felt sorry for the youngest of them, especially, as you could read in their faces that they were uncomfortable but were doing what they believed was the right thing and rising to the challenge of their spiritual leader’s urging. I was thinking that if they wanted to have a ministry in this district, they ought to go buy some crotch rockets, learn to ride, cruise the area, and come hang out at the gas station. The dudes on the other side of the street (which that night might as well have been a literal ocean and a figurative one of language and cultural great divide) were beyond any conceivable hope of connecting with the street preachers. I was angry because it was obvious with one look that the event was actually driving them away from the Gospel. It was making Jesus onerous. I know the cross as offense can be a concept that can’t and shouldn’t be denied in one sense, but driving someone away from Jesus and making faith in him to be culturally exclusive is inexcusable.

If street preacher had exchanged his white shirt for a leather jacket and pulled into the gas station with a ridiculously overpowered motorcycle, there might well have been an actual conversation with tough looking, but nevertheless very human beings inside leather clothing. It could have predictably started with, “Nice bike, dude!” and soon moved to an invitation to ride together, and with a bit of time, compassion and intentionality, could have ended up about some reality of their lives, and maybe even about Jesus.

I’m pretty sure that if Jesus were bodily here among us today, he would ride a motorcycle. It might be a crotch rocket sportbike, but they are so flashy and overtly powerful, he might not go for that. They can be intimidating even to seasoned riders. I think traditional “bikers,” with their classic association as people of ill repute would be a crowd Jesus would go straight for. I mean, if Harleys had existed in Bible times, there is no doubt we would be reading about Jesus being slammed by the establishment for hanging out in biker bars. He would have loved these people. He would have seen through the leather and tattoos and toughness to the tender hurting souls underneath. So maybe Jesus would have ridden a Harley. But then there is that Harley pride thing. (“If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand,” says the T-shirt.) And there’s the whole “Live to Ride” thing that can be more accurately translated, “Live to Own,” according to my riding buddy. So the pride thing may have put Jesus off Harleys, as much as he would have loved Harley people.

Jesus’ motorcycle would have to have been big and heavy enough to take a man to ride. It would have been loud enough to be obnoxious, but not loud enough to stand out and attract unusual attention among other bikes. It wouldn’t have been a shiny show bike. It would have been old and beat up, maybe a dent in the tank, and lots of miles on the odometer. It certainly would have been laid down a time or two in the past. It would be solid enough to be respected when he rode up on it, no wimpy trail bike or scooter. It could have been a big motocross machine. That would have been appropriate for the desert around Galilee. And the lack of lights would have made him not street legal and unwelcome on the roads around Jerusalem. Yes, maybe a big ugly dirt bike.

Or maybe an old Honda cruiser. The runt of the litter on group rides. Nobody would have “oooed!” and “aahhed!” over it during pit stops, but they would have known of the precision engineering inside the motor and transmission and wouldn’t be able to not respect the quality and dependability. Metric cruisers are all about the quality and value of what’s inside way more than the image outside. Jesus would have liked that. I can’t help include this (please forgive me); Jesus would be quick to give a Harley rider a lift back to town when his shiny expensive mount broke down way out in the hills east of the Jordan river. And he wouldn’t rub it in. (I probably would.) So, would Jesus ride an old Honda? It does have the cross-cultural component going there. And he said the last shall be first. The cheapest bike will do that if it has the stuff to keep running after all the others have quit. I think it might have been his pick. I’d like to think so. That’s what I ride.

Threshold in a box

As much as an out-of-the-box thinker as I would like to be, I find my mind constantly running to the same thought patterns. Eight or nine times out of ten that seems to be dichotomies or metaphors attempting to express people using mechanisms. It’s a broken record, I know, but maybe, just maybe one time it could be helpful, so I write it down when it comes. The process seems to help me anyway. So, here we go again.

In thinking about the last post before writing it, I drifted over to thoughts of how I’m getting along with my wife after nearly 25 years of marriage. We have crossed a threshold it would seem, or at least I have. In our continual efforts to remedy our all too common default mode of disconnect, our communication (which comprises a mixed bag of talking to each other, interfacing with close friends, writing, poetry, imaging, and being in each other’s space looking at each other or just breathing the same air) recently got into some difficult truth telling. This is one of those healthy processes like aerobic exercise that isn’t particularly pleasant but does lots of good… eventually. Often, when on the receiving end of such truth telling, I have become wounded and the damage sends me spiraling down to a crash. This time, however, the hard-won understanding from past encounters provided me the ability to accept it and process it with hardly a burble of my wings and no loss of altitude. Turbulence, sure, but catastrophic loss of control of the aircraft? Not this time. There was emotional course maintenance all the way through. I was able to accept the facts about the bad things in the past that I was responsible for, gain value from the lessons learned, and address the current emotional needs in a way that actually connected and was effective and appreciated. This time, instead of veering off into emotionally reeling oblivion, I was able to see behind the words, understand where they came from, and recognize the current need they represented. My response was emotionally stable and spoke in a logic language that was actually understood and accepted. I was even able to interject a bit of humor which actually got a laugh. This was miraculous. A dramatic turn for us. What a great day we had. Early this morning I walked up behind her in the bathroom as she was fixing her hair and stood there for a moment looking at her as I often do as my first action of the day. I realized that after 25 years I loved her in a new way, at a new level, and told her so. Often we don’t recognize a threshold until we look back at it from a ways down the road. But when you realize it at the moment it happens, it’s magic.

Threshold

I was at my friend’s house the other day. We were looking at something on the internet via wi-fi using his laptop at the kitchen table. His wife was working on something on another computer upstairs and was having some kind of difficulty printing a file. The laptop had another version or something that she needed and she said “email it to me.” I realized that this was the first time I had ever experienced a situation where it made perfect sense to email something between two rooms of someone’s own house. It seemed to me that some kind of technology threshold had just been crossed; a glorious day or an unnerving sense of things having gotten completely out of control depending on how you looked at it.

A while back when instant messaging first soared in popularity with teens, my own kids were clackity-clacking away on keyboards with friends a mile or two away. It made sense to me to do this cross-country or cross-ocean in order to save a long-distance phone charge, but made no sense at all when the kids could just get on the phone and talk as long as they wanted for free. But it not only made sense to them, it was extremely attractive. It dramatically boosted their typing skills, so my reaction was, as they would put it, “whatever.”

More recently my wife has gotten way into text messaging with her cell phone. Again, this seemed more primitive than just using the same phone to simply talk. And, counter intuitively, it cost more. But looking at it a different way, I realized that there was a different emotional component to the process. It is a similar dynamic to what we used to experience before email when long distance phone calls were twenty five cents a minute or more and we were forced to write letters. The communication was completely different. The limitations of the system forced different thinking which added a dimension (often of depth) that didn’t exist face-to-face or on the phone. We didn’t like the limitations, but we liked that added dimension. IM and text messaging now become a choice because of the recognized emotional uniqueness and value that the style of communication stirs up. It’s a conscious decision to embrace the limitation because it just does something in you.

This self-imposed limitation goes further and becomes more important the more we become wired, or more currently speaking, wi-fi. (It’s ironic that “Wired,” one of the hippest tech magazines ever published now has a name that is completely obsolete.) We are long since past through the phases of information consumption, information overload, and even information management. Now there is too much to even manage, let alone consume. Now it’s all about drinking from the fire hydrant while trying to avoid having the torrent knock you down. It makes sense that self-imposed limitation is the mindset one approaches with when one has been bowled over by the data flood.

I recently read about a trend for corporations to declare Fridays email-free in order to encourage people to actually talk to each other and regain what has been lost when it’s easier to shoot an email down the hall than to walk down and stand in a colleague’s doorway and discuss. Some seminar speaker guru guy is encouraging people to observe a weekly “data sabbath.” I tried this one day last week and found it extremely difficult, but I think I’m going to do it some more. (Ironically, the guru had been interviewed at his beach house via cell phone.)

“Hi, I’m Wingman and I’m a dataholic.”

Dataholism is insidious because it gets you on many different fronts that you can easily fail to recognize as related. I use my computer to blog, email, write in a word processor, organize and store photos, manipulate images, read on the internet (which has all but replaced a former addiction of reading magazines), check the weather radar, fly a flight simulator, listen to music, watch video, edit video, record and edit audio, make labels, do financial planning, shop and purchase things, do my banking, and sundry other tasks. In my mind these are all distinct activities. I can “take a break” from working at my computer and then play at my computer. But to my wife, I’m still sitting here doing exactly the same thing. “You’re on the computer.” Now, she uses the computer for different tasks as well and, of course, understands logically. But there is a huge emotional dynamic that runs counter to the logic. And, as much as I’ve argued my point, I realize now what she has recognized for a long time: it does all have a commonality and comprises an overall, obsessive, compulsive, addictive dataholism. My wife is almost never wrong about these things. I should have listened to her sooner. I’m now going to push myself away from this keyboard and go outside and ride my motorcycle and feel the wind of the beautiful day on my face. Just as soon as I download some pictures out of my camera and get them emailed off.

IT

Some people have it. Most don’t. IT is what makes stars in Hollywood. You really can’t define it, but you know it when you see it. It belongs to beautiful people with natural charisma. The Bible places no value on it whatever. In fact, God goes in the opposite direction most of the time. But for some universal unknown human reason, we always go for it. It demands a second look. It’s just pleasant and winsome and we can’t help ourselves. Nobody has control over whether they have it or not any more than they have control over their race. God just put each of us together uniquely. So we nonits can’t begrudge the its at all. And the its would be advised to not look down on the nonits as without them their itness would have no context in which to shine. Acknowledging who made us the colors we are and allowing common sense to have sway would solve the racial tensions of the world since it’s not the result of anyone’s intention but God’s. But that, obviously, is way too simple for us to accept. Anyway, just as men and women can’t ever really, completely understand each other, so the its will never really be able to understand us nonits and we won’t ever really be able to understand them. There’s a mystery to it all around. Jealousy notwithstanding, nonits greatly enjoy the existence of its. I think God gave them to us to spice life and bring a little sparkle. It certainly sells a lot of movie tickets and tabloids and fashion magazines at supermarket checkouts. And we nonits have much to give to the its. But the gold isn’t sitting on the surface. It has to be mined. Every person has precious, irreplaceable value. In some cases we just have to look for IT a little harder.