Ice Shavings and Shinny

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

2012-02-12T22:31:00.000-06:00

Tonights show was wonderful!! You can catch the podcast here! DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

Sunday Morning in America...Thoughts on society, post-Dr. Falwell

2012-02-12T07:26:00.000-06:00

I am so sad this morning. This past week has been hard on my soul. This issue with Obama and the Catholic Church has broken my heart. It's because to me, we've crossed some line in our country now. A line where good is still clearly defined and where good still MATTERS. Where the average citizen has a working knowledge of civics and of what the Constitution actually says and where that is still held dear. It's where we still stand at the National Anthem and maybe get a tear in our eye. It's where we see injustice...REAL injustice not something that is painted as injustice because we need a victim to get behind so we can milk the system.
Am I already that old? Could it be that in my short lifetime (I'm 48) we have moved from a land where patriotism and right living was the expected norm, to a society where patriotism is mocked, and ignorance of all that made us great is the status quo? I knew what a Bicameral legislative branch was by the time I was in SIXTH grade! Ask a sixth grader this now and you get a blank stare. Ask his parents...probably the same thing.
I grew up in church. Church was where your sense of right and wrong was molded. Preachers preached about sin. Sometimes they went too far and they made EVERYTHING a sin...like the church I grew up in. But they meant well and they did, at least, provide me with some very visible boundaries. You don't hear that anymore. You have Mark Driscoll bastardizing Song of Solomon into pornography but you don't have a Leonard Ravenhill. You have Ed Young Jr. preaching from a bed...the John Lennon of our time! But you don't have a Dr. Jerry Falwell...a personal hero of mine...who would be on national TV week after week pronouncing the sin in our land and the need for God's folk to start being salty about it. Salt and light.
This morning in NYC, there are dozens of churches with no place to meet because Mayor Bloomberg has stopped letting them use school buildings for services. In America! See this is what happens when preachers get famous for writing bastardizations of Song of Solomon and not for standing up for something that matters. This is what happens when we harvest-out our field and don't look for another field to go to. This is the end result of playing nice and letting the world dictate our behavior because we want to be loved and highly thought of and accepted. Dr. Falwell faced death threats DAILY in the 80's. Now we have pastors clamoring to be invited to someones inauguration or to throw out the first pitch at the ball game. We have nationally recognized preachers whose biggest goal is to be re-tweeted and invited to be a guest on Sean Hannity. We have pastors who preach from a bed because their topic is sex. But we don't have one clear, clarion call above the noise that says "Stand for what is RIGHT!" We are a nation of preachers with not a PROPHET amongst us.

I'm a young man...too young to be this curmudgeonly already. But we need something that we haven't seen in about 20 years. I don't think it's revival amongst our sheep...I think it's revival amongst our shepherds.

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

2012-02-10T14:42:00.000-06:00

How divorce destroys a dad. This week on DadMatters Sunday at 9PM DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

2012-02-09T06:16:00.000-06:00

My live talk show for dads! DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

When your vision is right...you're seldom wrong. Lessons I learned from Dr. Falwell

2012-02-03T11:11:00.000-06:00

I guess maybe it's because I'm graduating this spring and I've been pretty sentimental about my years at Liberty University. Or maybe it's because my path to my Bachelors Degree was pretty difficult and lead me through many minefields. Maybe it's the wisdom that comes with being 48 and taking 28 of those years to get this beloved degree. I don't know.
One thing it has given me is a very unique perspective on my alma mater and the man who founded it. My college career spans four decades. I started in 1984, resumed in 1994 and now it's 2012. I remember when Liberty was Liberty Baptist College. I remember when we had about 1200 students and the mountain was mostly vacant.
Everything that is now Liberty University existed solely in the heart of Dr. Jerry Falwell as recently as 40 years ago. In the life of a University, Liberty is a baby. To go from a "Bible school" meeting in church classrooms with 141 students to a world class university with a Law School, now a Medical school, an amazing campus and the eighth largest student body of ANY US college in that time...that can ONLY be attributed to this being God's plan.
That's my point this morning. How really right Doc was. And how that was confirmation that L.U. was something very special indeed.
I remember in 1984 sitting in Chapel and hearing Doc tell us about his dream of a "Liberty Channel" where we could see Liberty / TRBC programming 24/7. How would this happen? Because there was this new thing coming called "Satellite TV" and it would revolutionize everything. Not those monster 6 foot dishes you see in rural areas...no Doc told us the new technology was an 18 inch disc you could mount on the corner of your house. Riiiight Doc! Like THAT'S ever going to happen!
By 1994 Dish Network and Direct TV were commonplace and by 2012 they are an afterthought. Nobody even thinks about satellite TV it's just there...like Coke or Pepsi.
He told us about online education in 1984 too. He called it "Distance Learning" and started a program called LUSSL "Liberty University School of Lifelong Learning". He trumpeted it loudly and clearly and we all thought he was joking...or at least had oversold the concept. And now...Your's truly is getting his degree 28 years after hearing Doc talk about this. In fact if not for LU Online there is NO WAY I'd be graduating from Liberty this year or any year. And to be honest...if I had to go to any other school to finish what I began in 1984 it would have been such a hollow victory. LU Online is the 3rd largest online school in the US now. And may I say...it has been one of the most seamless and smooth experiences I have ever had in my entire college education.
Yesterday I was thinking...as I was reading Tweets from Shannon Bream of Fox News, whom I follow on Twitter...that I remember Doc saying that they were going to use The Liberty Channel to expand the School of Communications so that one day there would be a Liberty grad on a major network reporting the news as an alternative to the liberal twist normally reserved for reportage. I watch Shannon on Fox and I realize how Doc was spot-on...again.
Doc saw an amazing an beautiful campus where we saw bramble and rock. Doc saw a church and a seminary and a law school where we saw the old Ericsson building. Doc saw D-1 athletics and Young Champions on and off the field.
Doc saw things that had not happened yet because Doc's vision was truly from God. Thats how you know if you're following a real leader who is really moving with God's blessing. He can truly "Call those things which are not as if they are" as the Bible says.
I am beginning to use this as a measuring stick for my own visions. There had to have been a moment in each vision when Doc got some sort of confirmation and he moved from "What if" to "When this...". Doc was never wrong about things! It's amazing. I want to try to say that about my own life and ministry. God knows I haven't done it very well until now.
The only big dream of Doc's I can remember that hasn't happened yet is that so far, we haven't beaten Notre Dame in South Bend. Doc always said that and we always laughed. Nowadays...it wouldn't surprise me.
I'm wracking my brain to see if I recall Doc ever saying LU would one day produce a NYT best selling author. That'd be nice...especially if it was my book that he was talking about.
Doc was more than a visionary, he was right about it!
That's how I know God was the source of his vision. That's the benchmark for us all. Where are we going...where am I going? If God is behind it...we'll be right about it.

Saying Goodbye to Joe Paterno...

2012-01-23T06:28:00.000-06:00

I'm not going to allow this post to become combative. I'm not going to use this sad hour to defend JoePa against the ridiculous things that have been attached to him. I will state here in the beginning, that my strong belief is that Joe did everything he could have done. I believe Joe was victim of a coverup that began over his head and extended to (quite possibly) the Executive offices of Pennsylvania. To go any further in my defense of this man would be pointless for the purposes of this article.
I love Joe Paterno. The loss I'm feeling this morning is palpable and tangible and barely describable. Another loss that signifies the end of an era. In the space of a one year, I lost a man I considered a true father figure in Poppa John Iorizzo, the most legendary member of the legendary E Street Band, in Clarence Clemons, and now a man I admired like a father in Joe Paterno.
I can't remember when I first became aware of this man. I think I was about 8 years old. Growing up in a house where sports was not only disliked but often used as an object of derision by my stepfather, I pretty much had to collect my sports memories for myself and keep them in a very hidden and quiet strongbox in my heart. All those magical father / son sports moments that you hear boys talk about when they reach a certain age as men and long to be boys again...those never happened for me. I'm not writing that to lament it as much as to explain. For me, growing up, I collected father-figures as much as I collected baseball cards. I seemed to gravitate towards men who were larger than life not just on the field...but especially in the way they lived their lives. It's no wonder my search lead me to Joe Paterno.
I never played football other than one year in 5th grade for coach Koveleski's CYO team-Our Lady Of Fatima-and that was only because I had a crush on his daughter and I was trying to curry favor. I didn't care much for the game in any context other than playing for hours with my friends on Monroe Avenue. Sandlot football was a lot of fun.
I grew up cheering for my Eagles, because I am a native Philadelphian. And I cheered for Penn State, because I am a native Pennsylvanian. ...and because of Joe Paterno.
I guess maybe the first connection was because he looked almost exactly like my neighbor, Mr. Ferraro. It was probably some Saturday afternoon and too cold to go outside. I'm certain my stepfather wasn't home because had he been, I wouldn't have been watching sports in the first place. But I somehow stumbled across a PSU game and probably lingered because it was PSU. That's when I saw the man in the khakis and thick glasses and that's when I got hooked.
I grew up a voracious reader and I vaguely remember reading about JoePa and his character and integrity and big-hearted generosity. I remember feeling a sense of pride when I read an article that revealed the secret behind the rolled up khakis and white socks. (When he was an assistant coach, he and his wife Sue were so underpaid that he only had two pair of those pants. He didn't want her to have to wash them all the time so he rolled them up real high to avoid getting the cuffs muddy, eventually the habit became a ritual) I would read of Joe's generosity on campus and it captivated me.
All my life...for as long as I can remember I've gravitated towards people who were genuinely good. People who were special. People who maybe did something amazing and important for a vocation but who also lead exemplary and amazing lives along the way. Joe's graduation rate, his demanding that his players carry themselves in a certain way, that drew me. The one thing that always came up in conversations with former players was "Coach taught me more about becoming a man than he did about football..."
I never played the game and never really wanted to...unless I could have played for JoePa. I sometimes imagined getting a scholarship to PSU and wearing those nameless, plain blue jerseys and dull white helmets. I wanted to be part of a family on the field and have JoePa as a father-figure, teaching me about manhood.
I grew to adulthood on my own, clinging to role models where I could find them and somehow arriving at the threshold one day bewildered and wondering how ready I was for the job.
JoePa never became my coach. I never played football and never went to Penn State. I attended Liberty University, largely because of yet another father figure who would shape my life in ways I only came to understand years later...Dr. Jerry Falwell. I was drawn to Liberty for all the same reasons I was drawn to PSU and to Joe Paterno. There was a giant of a man there who I felt the intrinsic need to emulate and learn from. Joe would have been a wonderful coach at LU. He held to a coaching philosophy that Dr. Falwell would have believed in 100%.
Although I never played for Joe, I learned from him. I would read interviews with current and former players and try to pull from their reminiscences of JoePa, anything I could glean as to what being around that man might have been like. Joe coached me from afar, and without ever meeting me.
In my book "Harry Kalas Saved My Life", I quoted Joe thusly:“Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.” it was a pivotal piece of wisdom and it was central to telling my story in that book.
I felt a connection to him. I felt a pride in the way he operated his football team, the way he took and held the moral high ground, and the way he lived his own life away from football. He was a godly man who held to his Catholic faith deeply and who lived it's tenets as a matter of course. He was generous. He loved education and art. He had a degree in English, which, as a writer, I appreciate to this day. He taught boys how to become men. I coached High School ice hockey for 10 years and I tried to do it the way Joe coached football. We got good at the basics, we played as a team, we won as a team, and I like to believe that the boys who played for me were all just a little better people when their four years were done.
I mourn the loss of Joe Paterno today. I will miss tuning in on Saturday's here in Nashville, where I now reside, and seeing that familiar face and those rolled up khaki's and those thick glasses. I will miss the pride I took each year when Joe's graduations rate was released and it was inevitably in the top 3...often it was number 1. I will miss seeing those nameless, blue and white uniforms and seeing what a real team looks like.
I will miss stories of Joe and Sue and their endless, tireless efforts to make PSU a wonderful place for all students, not just football players.
I will miss a very important father figure.
The central lesson to "Harry Kalas Saved My Life" was "Live your life every day as if someone you don't even know is watching...because someone you don't even know is watching." Joseph Vincent Paterno never met me. He never knew I existed on this sphere. But I was watching and he taught me from afar. Coach Paterno got me through to adulthood without my ever meeting him or even venturing to Happy Valley. His passing marks yet another marker along the highway of life that tells me I am not 8 years old anymore. His death makes me realize I am now being called upon to really live. I am being challenged in his passing, to step up and be someone that some 8 year old kid can look to and say "I hope I grow up to be a man like him". That,is what Joe Paterno did for me. That was his gift and that is what he poured into my heart from a place called Happy Valley.
So long Coach. You did well. You lived well. Your legacy goes so far beyond the football field. Thank you for coaching more than a football team.

Urgent letter to Bruce Springsteen concerning this "new song"

2012-01-20T11:03:00.001-06:00

Dear Bruce,
Some 11 year old kid has hijacked your website, your name and your studio and written this piece of garbage. As soon as I saw that pathetic chorus where this amateur actually rhymes "Flown" and "Own" I knew it couldn't be you. I was waiting for "Moon, June and Spoon" but the kid apparently got wise to me. Get your legal people on this right away before people actually believe you'd write something this bad.
Lovingly yours,
Craig Daliessio

...a lifelong fanatic who spent thousands on tickets and records and memorabilia only to be mocked with something this ghastly!

We Take Care of Our Own
by Bruce Springsteen

I been knocking on the door that holds the throne
I been looking for the map that leads me home
I been stumbling on good hearts turned to stone
The road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun shack to the Super Dome
There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home
There ain't no one hearing the bugle blowin'
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

Where're the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where are the hearts that run over with mercy
Where's the love that has not forsaken me
Where's the work that'll set my hands, my soul free
Where's the spirit that'll reign rain over me
Where's the promise from sea to shining sea
Where's the promise from sea to shining sea
Wherever this flag's flown
Wherever this flag's flown
Wherever this flag's flown

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

Seriously Bruce??? This crap is what happens when a formerly great artist forgets who he is and abandons his fans. You will NEVER convince me to vote liberal Dem / Obama. You will never convince me that socialism is better. (Capitalism is working pretty well for YOU old friend) You will never convince me that this twisted "American Dream" of yours is what the founding fathers had in mind.

Get back in the car, go back to the boardwalk, start drinking Bud again, and write like you are still a little desperate. Either that or run for office. But if this is all you have left in the tank, I'd rather you retire and leave me with my memories of a GREAT rocker!

Some Thoughts on Brennan Manning's "All is Grace"

2012-01-19T11:05:00.000-06:00

For the record, Brennan Manning is my favorite Christian author and one of my favorite authors of any genre. I am only marginally kidding when I say that I wish his classic; "The Ragamuffin Gospel" were canonized and included in the Bible. The book...and the concept, and Brennan's teaching on grace literally saved my life during a marathon 18 hour reading when I wept my way through it the night before, and into the morning hours of Thanksgiving 1993. I have never been the same.
Last year Brennan released what he himself proclaims is his final writing. His memoir "All is Grace". It is at once the most beautiful and yet the most tragic and poignant book I have ever read. I love this man. I have been influenced by him in my own writing, and while I try not to write "Craig-as-Brennan" it is true that he invariably influences me and his voice is heard sometimes as a whisper in my own.
Brennan writes in this book of his painful, harrowing struggle with alcoholism throughout his entire adult life...including the most victorious days of his writing and speaking ministry. He preached for 40 years about grace and mercy and the insult of trying to earn what God desires to pour out for free.
His signature phrase "God loves me as I am and not as I ought to be...because I will never be as I ought to be" becomes so much more powerful when you come to realize that Brennan himself was certainly not as he ought to be.
I was discussing "All is Grace" with a friend last night. It seemed like such a struggle for us both to reconcile Brennan's astounding ability to preach Grace better than probably anyone of his era, and his inability to beat the bottle and his wrestling with accepting the very grace he so wonderfully and eloquently preached. Then my friend and I suddenly realized, the very reason Brennan could proclaim the grace he struggled with accepting completely, the reason he was so vocal about it and so wildly passionate about proclaiming it, (Watch a Youtube video of him preaching sometime and you'll understand how passionate he was) was that he so desperately needed it to be true and he leaned on that grace so deeply. I told my friend, "Imagine the horrible guilt and pain during each of his conferences when, he dragged a huge burden of shame into another church, in another town, to preach another conference, while hiding the raging, blind-drunk battle he'd literally had the night before. Then imagine the moment during the conference when he spoke of grace to these new faces and the sound echoed in his own ears, the truth of his message was becoming truth in his heart yet again, and he found the grace for his own hidden wretchedness that he was so wonderfully proclaiming for these folks. Brennan never stopped preaching to himself!" Alan and I rejoiced at this thought. The very thing that drove Brennan to wildly passionate proclamation of God's love and grace was his desperate need for it to be true in his soul yet again...just one more time. I learned, reading this heartbreaking yet victorious book, that the most effective, most passionate, and in reality most truthful ministers of Jesus Christ, are the ones who realize and accept that they are first-and always-preaching to themselves. We are frail. We are fearfully made. We really are irretrievably broken this side of heaven. Brennan knew this. His thorn in the flesh was actually a spike. It kept him desperate for his own message and that made him believable to everyone.
I pray for Brennan here at the final curtain of his life. I love this man and I have prayed that somehow, some way, if a mantle falls as he rides the fiery chariot on his journey home, I pray it lands on my shoulders just a little. Because if anyone needed Brennan's message of grace it was me. And if anyone can proclaim it with zeal and passion it is one who embraces his own brokenness and imperfection. Which I am now doing more freely and openly since Brennan revealed his in this book.
All really is Grace

And Down the Stretch they Come...(My Last post about graduation until Graduation)

2012-01-16T20:33:00.002-06:00

My final semester as an undergrad began today. On May 12 I will put on my cap and gown, and walk across that stage at Williams stadium and get the degree that eluded me for more than half my life. I will finally be more than an alumni of L.U...I will be a graduate. I wish I had done it sooner. But I did it nonetheless. I plan on writing something in tribute to Harry Kalas on my mortar board. I will smile and wave at my daughter and at some people who love me and who are making the journey to Lynchburg to see me walk.
And at some point before the weekend is over, I'll pay a visit to Dr. Falwell's grave site. I'm thinking a picture of me standing there is a bit macabre. So I plan on doing two things. One...I'll make a pencil relief of the plaque by his headstone that reads "A Man is measured not by what it takes to knock him down, but by what it takes to keep him down" and then I think I'll quietly whisper "Thank you Doc". Because without this wonderful man of incredible faith and vision, I might still be homeless and hopeless.
Then I will ask God where my Liberty Mountain is. Where will Doc's legacy lead me?
...and I'll listen for the quiet answer.

A little note about Tim Tebow...

2012-01-13T21:13:00.001-06:00

Okay let me say right up front that I LOVE the guy. he is a truly godly, wonderful kid who lives it like few others. But I have been in the presence of an even greater man of faith and had this thought tonight...

"If bowing in the end zone and giving God praise after winning a football game is Tebowing, what do you call having amazing vision, uncharted faith that started a world-changing, life changing school, homes for unwed teenaged moms to have their baby AND get an education (for free) homes for alcohol and chemical dependent adults to find help, a TV program that reaches the world, a ministry that does every single thing it does as good as, or better than anyone else has done it, and a church that has affected its community so greatly that one in three people in the entire CITY attend? "Falwelling"!"

Hope...

2012-01-09T07:02:00.000-06:00

I have been asked by a few friends why my mood has been so different over the last few months and why things just seem to suddenly be (finally!) turning around for me.

I didn’t have a “come to Jesus” meeting. I didn’t change my attitude. It wasn’t positive thinking or the affirmations I read daily. (Although all those things work wonders and I believe in them and recommend them highly) For those things to work there has to be something to build on. You have to have one thing you can cling to that perpetuates the dreams and visions you carry in your heart. From January 2007 when I lost my house, to May 2008 when I became homeless and for the three years that followed as I was living sometimes in my car and sometimes in a bedroom or a basement in someone else’s house, I had nothing left to hold to. I had no home, no job, no routine, no escape from the grind of broken dreams and shame. Nothing but the fierce love I have for my daughter that kept me alive and enduring.

Well almost nothing…

What I was lacking was hope. Nothing was working. The plans I’d tried were failing. I put out 207 resumes and gotten ONE offer here in Nashville. It was for a part-time position at Publix. I began a move to Houston to take a job with an insurance company. I trained for three months. I took the Life and Health exam and scored the second highest score in the company history. Then Texas changed their licensing process and it was taking three months instead of three weeks to have my license. I couldn’t wait that long.

I drove back to Tennessee with my tail further between my legs and wondered if things would ever change at all. Life without hope is the worst kind of drudgery. I couldn’t point to one area of life that held promise. If you want to know how the class clown…the heretofore funniest guy in the room who never stopped making people laugh, can become an attack dog who prefers confrontation and harsh words over funny one-liners…take away his hope.

That was where I was when I got back to town in August.

The only constant I could point to during this prolonged period of loss (other than my stubborn love for my daughter) was school work. I had taken advantage of my destitute position and applied for grants and aid and returned to college to finish my degree. My alma mater has become the third largest online university and that afforded me the chance to complete what I’d started in 1984, and at the same school I’d attended without moving to Lynchburg Va.

So in August 2009 I began my studies again. I plodded along for two years while searching for a plan and a vision. Nothing worked and dreams continued to die while still in infancy. I worked odd jobs and lived in an embarrassing fashion. I studied at Panera or FedEx office or by flashlight in my car. I would love to tell you I made straight A’s but that would be a lie. Given the circumstances it was very hard to put forth my best effort day in and day out, but I did B / C work and I got through.

This past August 17 (2011) I was in FedEx Office uploading the last of my summer assignments and decided to run a Degree Completion Audit. (This tells you what you need to graduate, how much of it you have completed and what remains)

This was the day Hope arrived.

I need 120 hours to graduate. As of August 17 I had 100 with two semesters coming up. At 12 hours each, that meant I would graduate in May 2012.

I’ve recounted this story before so I won’t go into detail, except to say I had to run outside so nobody would see me crying.

What is it about a degree Audit that would drive a fairly large man to tears?

Hope…

Prior to this moment, it had been four years since hope had begun to diminish. It had been three years since it vanished altogether. Nothing was working. No plans would succeed. Nothing. Take away someone house and it hurts. Take away someone’s job and it hurts. Take away someone’s family and it hurts. Take away someone’s dreams and it hurts.

Take it all away and it will kill your soul.

That’s where the night of August 17 found me and where God threw me a lifeline.

Looking at that paper and realizing that for the first time in three years one thing I’d attempted was going to work was a steroid shot for me. Seeing a real, tangible, valuable goal in front of me and being able to see it and touch it for the first time in three years was like a heart transplant.

Hope is an amazing thing. If you have it…even a tiny bit…everything looks better than if you don’t.

Instantly I was transforming. I was softening and dropping my guard. Within a week I had decided to return to carpentry and doors flew open. I’ve been able to earn consistent (if not huge) money since September. I leave the job each day with more of that tangible accomplishment in my soul. It’s a job that gives you something to see every day that tells the world you just worked a good day’s work. Pride returned.

Last week I moved into a beautiful 2 bedroom condo…this weekend I spent with my daughter...overnight. I cooked her breakfast and tucked her in. We went to church together for the first time in almost three years. I felt like a dad again.

Hope does this. Hope has made me start being funny again. Hope has made me let go of being angry for angers sake. Hope has made me a nice guy again. Hope returned when I saw something actually working out. I instantly transformed from a survivor to an achiever. There is a lot to be said for that.

If you know someone struggling with defeat after defeat. Pray for hope. Pray for some sort of success to come their way. People don’t really want hand outs. People don’t really want government-created pseudo jobs that really aren’t careers or life’s work. They want hope. They want something to hold to that says “I can do this and this will open doors for me”. I always wondered what the guy who chiseled Lincoln’s nose on Mt. Rushmore would have done once that project was over had WWII not happened. Chisel another nose on another mountain?

Hope is everything when you are trying to build…or rebuild. Without it we are sad, miserable, scary people. We are hopeless. With it we love, laugh, smile, joke, forgive and ask forgiveness.

Pray for hope.

The rare breed...A tribute to Mr. Harry Flohr

2011-12-29T11:22:00.000-06:00

I'm reading the title to this post and thinking how absurd it really is. "A Tribute to Harry Flohr"
It's absurd because if you knew this man during his time on earth, you know already that there isn't a really good way to pay tribute to him. But I am going to try because he was a giant in my life and because he was--maybe more than almost anyone I have known--deserving of a tribute...deficient as it might be.
I started attending church with the Flohrs when I was 8 years old. It was a medium sized baptist church, maybe 400 members. It was the kind of place where you knew everyone very well. I have had...and still probably have...some issues and disagreements with the theology and the personal convictions, but one thing they did very well was they never let anyone slip through the cracks. They were involved almost to the point of being nosy. Right or wrong, if you missed more than 2 Sundays in a row, someone called you to make sure you were okay. They took you dinner if you were sick and they wept if you were weeping. One of the first men I met there was Harry Flohr. I remember him being tall, handsome, funny, with a warm smile and a laugh that made you want to join in. He was vibrant, and lively and you instantly felt the kindness that his huge heart possessed. The other thing huge about Harry were those hands. Mr. Flohr had hands like catchers mitts. Shaking that hand when I was 8 years old was like shaking hands with a giant. As I grew to adulthood and my own hands grew to X-L size, Harry's were still the benchmark. I'd shake his hand and still be amazed every time at how large and powerful they were. Handshakes were a big thing to Harry. He had a slew of funny gags he'd play when you shook his hand. He'd say "How does a cardiologist shake hands" just as he reached for yours. Then before you could even think of the answer, he'd squeeze your hand to mimic a pulse and he'd laugh at himself before you laughed with him. His favorite handshake was his tireless "How does a Christian shake hands?" Then he'd reach for your hand, and as soon as you clasped, he'd open his hand away from yours and your hands were connected at the thumbs and the open palms formed a dove....the symbol of the Holy Spirit. That was his favorite and he'd smile if he caught you forgetting to open your hand in unison with him.
More than anything--more than any words or deeds--Harry Flohr was consistent. If I were a pastor, I'd want at least one Harry Flohr in my church. Mr. Flohr was the most giving, caring, diligent, hard working, involved man I saw in all my years at that church and in the years after I left that church. Harry didn't just wait for the pastor to mention a need...this was his church too and he saw the needs and jumped in with both feet. He would be on his lawn tractor with a snow plow attached, plowing the parking lot so we could have church on Sunday morning. He would be the first adult to offer to provide rides to the youth group kids to go ice skating at University of Delaware or roller skating at Merryland. He cared. He loved everyone. He was blessed with a good job that paid fairly well and allowed him a few niceties and he never saw them as just his. He had a beautiful Boston Whaler boat that we all went fishing on at some point. He had a motor home that I would dare say saw more miles on youth group activities--often without him even being there--then it saw miles for Flohr family vacations. Everything he and his wonderful sweet wife Lucille owned was really God's and it was there for God to use whenever and however he wanted.
He was simply one of the godliest men I ever knew.
I could fill page after page with things he did. Acts of obedience and service. But that would be beating a drum that misses the point. So I'm only going to bring up two specific memories I have with Harry. One...When I was a senior in high school, we started our first baseball team. We were very very good. Being a small Christian high school, the budget was tight. Harry stepped up and bought us our uniforms and equipment for that first year. Nobody ever told us who the anonymous donor was. It was years afterward that I finally found out who had done it.
The other memory is the one I'll treasure most. About two years ago, I saw Mr. Flohr at the church he'd been attending for some time. Crossroads Bible Church in Elkton Maryland. It was a church that had a lot of folks from the original church we'd all attended. Harry and Lucille were faithful as always, even though his body had been ravaged by Parkinsons and he was confined to a scooter and slumped badly. It hurt me to see this wonderful man, a man who was playing basketball with high school kids well into his fifties, so bent and worn. This disease is brutal and it's taken it's cruel toll on several people I love.
I felt the overwhelming urge to tell him what he meant to me that particular morning. I couldn't think of the right words (imagine that...me!) but I knew I wanted him to know how he'd touched me.
I found him after the service ended and I bent down and gave him a long hug and finally the words came..."You are my hero
If you want to know what it was that made this man a hero...what made him a giant of the faith for myself and for about three generations of believers who felt his influence, it was simply this...consistency.
I was talking with Dave Lewis, our youth pastor back in those days, and one of my dearest friends now, and we were reminiscing about Harry. We talked about his qualities and his service and his consistency. We were both so moved by simply knowing this man. And I said something to Dave that struck me in my heart. I said "Harry was the most consistent believer I ever knew. He lived it the same way every single day of his life. Some of us try to do something huge for God with our lives all at once. Sometimes we make a big splash and pour a lot of water into the bucket at once. Some goes in but most splashes on the ground in wasted effort. Harry filled his bucket a cupful every day for every single day of his life." Over a lifetime he seldom ever missed the target and his bucket was overflowing onto us all right until the very end, and it will continue to fill us all until Jesus returns. That was harry Flohr in a nutshell. One cup at a time, well placed, carefully poured, never wasting a drop.
I'll probably never reach that sort of testimony, but I can try.
To honor Harry, I will.
Your work continues in Heaven Mr. Flohr...thank you so very much for the careful, wonderful life you lived. We will see you soon...you are not far from our hearts.

Just Leave Me Alone...

2011-11-20T20:30:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone...
It's been a while since I've posted on any of my blogs. I miss writing. Miss it very much. But I am so busy with school, and with my business, and trying to make a living and rebuild a life...something has to give and unfortunately it's the thing I probably love most...creating with the written word.
But here I am...it's been a most unusual day and I felt the tug of creativity and soul-bearing rising up inside me. God is...if anything...the greatest of laundry agitators.
Rich Mullins, (whose songs I quote more than anyone else except maybe my friend Rick Elias'), once wrote a song titled "Calling out Your Name". There is a wonderful line that says;

From the place where morning gathers
You can look sometimes forever 'til you see
What time may never know
What time may never know
How the Lord takes by its corners this old world
And shakes us forward and shakes us free
To run wild with the hope
To run wild with the hope
The hope that this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song
Not sung in vain
And I feel thunder in the sky
I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name
There is one line in this song that is my anthem today and tonight and will be for the week ahead I suppose...maybe longer. It simply says; "How the Lord takes by its corners this old world And shakes us forward and shakes us free..."
He does...He has...He continues to do so.
This week has been a torrent of his shaking me at my foundation. I could write a lot about what He has been up to, but I think I need to make this article more generic...more universal.
Who amongst us isn't caught up in inner turmoil sometimes? Who doesn't look at the content of our lives lived until this very moment and wonder about it's value...it's effectiveness...it's lasting impression and legacy? Who doesn't want more and better?
I wish I could examine my life until today and simply yawn and say "Yep...so far so good" but I cannot. As I write these words, tears form because I am listening to another of Rich's songs- "Hard to Get"- sung by my dear friend Rick Elias on the posthumously released "Jesus Record" that Rich was working on when he died and that his closest friends "The Ragamuffins" released as a tribute / closure a few years later. The line Rick just sang was "I'm reeling from these voices that keep ringing in my ears...all the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret..."
That is me tonight...I am there...right there. I'm reeling. Reeling from the losses of homelessness and failure and defeat. Reeling from the collapse of an entire industry that I thought would carry me into my retirement. Reeling at the loss of a house that I considered my home...my little 5 acre slice of heaven. Reeling from watching my little girl go from 10 year-old girl to 13 year old almost-adult without being able to spend the night with her daddy because for 3 1/2 years this economy has made it impossible for me to find a 2 bedroom apartment and rebuild our time together. I am reeling.
I am reeling from the loss of one of the two men I consider to be true father figures...Poppa John went to heaven in January and the hole he leaves is huge and palpable and I am empty because of it. I wish I could hear that distinct northern Virginia draw and silly laugh. I wish I could ask him just a few more questions.
I'm reeling because I have drifted...probably because of the pull of the hardship of these last few years...from the man I was to the man I am. Ask anyone who knew me as a kid or as a young adult or right up until I got married and then divorced. They'd tell you I was the funniest, most easy-going guy you'd ever meet. I'd choose to laugh first before I'd argue with you. In fact I was known for disarming a situation by making the other person laugh. That was me...me before I was reeling.
"reeling from these voices that keep ringing in my ears...all the words of shame and doubt blame and regret..."
I feel a ton of shame. Daddies don't lose their homes. Daddies don't sleep in cars, or basements, or rent single rooms that render it impossible for overnight stays with their daughters. Daddies don't fail. But I have done all that and sometimes the shame is overwhelming. I can joke about it. I turn it into a funny story about hiding my car in the weeds or a heartwarming story about hearing Harry Kalas' voice coming from my radio when the Phils won the Series in '08. I can try to wash it and clean it and spin it and be inspiring to others...and I have done that. But the truth is it still is embarrassing and sometimes I still feel ashamed. I doubt. I doubt sometimes that I'll ever be back on my feet. I doubt that I'll ever tuck my daughter in again under my own roof. I doubt my ability and my strength and my resolve. I blame myself. I blame the man who owned the company I once worked for who ran it into the ground with vice and excess and flaunting of the rules. I am broke and broken and he will probably pay a fine...not from his own personal funds...and walk away into the twilight years of his life. I blame myself for not seeing this coming somehow. Because dads are wise and they take precautions. Even though I know the economy was a lot more intricate than just my little piece of it. But I am intelligent and broad shouldered and darnit I should have known. I am reeling with regret. I regret the years I've lost with my precious little girl. I regret losing our pets and our home and our time together.
More than anything I regret the loss of the man I used to be. Before the pressures of adulthood and career and loss and embarrassment and failure and relentless hopelessness took their toll. The guy who made everyone else laugh and who did so because he was truly, deeply, happy and funny at his very core.The guy who came up with the name "Doe, Fluffy, L." for the "toe tag" on his Cat specimen in Anatomy and Physiology lab. The guy who once had Dr. Falwell booming in laughter with his commentary / jibes at the opposition during a hard fought battle against N.C. State. The guy who wept when his daughter was born and told her about 1000 times during her first 3 hours that her daddy loved her. Those were the only words I could form and the only phrase I wanted to say.
The years haven't been kind. Not entirely. But God is good.
This week...today especially...God was shaking me forward and free. Maybe to run wild with some new found hope again after 3 plus years of desert. I sure hope so. I miss the guy I was and lament that I likely will never be exactly that man again.
But I rejoice that God refused to just "leave me alone!" when I demanded He do so.
I am thankful that He never left me nor forsook me even when I thought he had...even when I told Him to.
I tried...God knows I tried to run Him off. I have had my moments of bile-spitting and angry screaming matches with The Almighty. He has always seemed to endure my tirades and then whisper; "I know...I know it hurts. I'm here..." Sometimes I hated Him for that. Why was He so patient? Why couldn't He have just sent a bolt of lightning, or a random semi truck, or a tidal wave, or a gnat that lodged itself in my windpipe? Why does He have to be so long suffering during my worst? I guess it's because when He says "I love you" and "I will never leave you or abandon you"...He means it.
I've wounded some people over the years with this hurting heart of mine. I've bitten and retreated to the darkness of my doghouse with the taste of blood on my tongue and sorrow in my eyes. The growl hid the tears and the hair-on-end was just a disguise for the brokenness and shame I was feeling. This has not been a fun ride. I've asked to get off many times but God in his infinite wisdom decided it wasn't time yet...there was still something to learn. If you're on that list of those whose flesh has broken in a tangle with a "biter"...please forgive me.
I wrote this to inspire...to encourage...and to tell the truth about the hurts we all carry. Sometimes just one person saying it out loud makes it okay for others to think about it too. If that's you...and if that is what is happening as you read these words...my goal has been accomplished. In the coming days I hope to explore some of the good that has come from this dark path I've journeyed. Because honestly I need to encourage myself as much as I want to encourage someone else.
God will not let us rest where we are and being who we are. I realize that and I am being shaken by my corners. I hope when this is done that I will run wild with the hope once again...because I still have some wild running left to do. I love you all, my dearest friends.
Peace...

Bittersweet...

2011-11-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

I’m in the process of filling out my schedule for what will be my final semester at Liberty University as an undergrad. I am graduating in May, 27 years and ten months after first arriving on campus as a 20 year old freshman.

I can hardly believe it’s happening. Since August 3^rd, when I did my degree audit and realized I was entering my last two semesters I have been excited, overjoyed, hopeful, and ecstatic. I have shed tears of joy and relief probably a dozen times since that night at FedEx Office.

28 years is a long time to wait for something. It’s more than half my lifetime. It’s hard to comprehend.

But this morning as I was planning out my final semester, I got a little sad. It’s finished. I’m done. The focal point of my life for the past two years is concluding. Since the day in 2007 when I lost my home do to the mortgage crisis, to the day in 2008 when my branch was closed in a downsizing and I couldn’t renew my lease and I became homeless, right up to today, it has been my return to school that has been the lone consistent good thing. That day in August 2009 when I was sitting in the parking lot of Panera Bread Company and I hung up with my academic adviser and I looked at the schedule I had just scrawled on an envelope is when the journey resumed. 15 credit hours. New Testament Survey, History of Life (A Creation class) Survey of American History, Theology survey, Philosophy and Contemporary Ideas. I sat in my car and cried for about 5 minutes. I guess I had forgotten how much this all meant to me. I had always longed to return to LU and finish what I’d started, but life got in the way and I stored that desire in a file cabinet somewhere next to my dream of hoisting the Stanley Cup and owning a Corvette.

But that stifling hot August afternoon, the events of the previous 2 years coupled with the lifelong desire to graduate from college came bursting out in tears of joy. I’m sure that having recently lost everything I owned and everything that identified me as a dad and as a man added to the emotional response to my fall semester schedule. It was the first good thing that I could point to in over a year. Maybe this would be the first step on the road back.

Two years later and I am in the homestretch. I don’t know the date yet for graduation but I know I’ll be there. I have an idea what message I want to write on my mortarboard and I know who will be there when I walk. I know whose smiling faces I will look out on and who will be beaming at me in pride. The people who’ve loved me and who always believed I could do this. Momma Jewell, Bob and Cathy, and of course my precious daughter Morgan, for whom I endured all I have so that she would still and always have her daddy nearby. I will see friends who still live in Lynchburg and who are still involved in events on LU campus.

The image I have in my mind is different from the one that would have taken place had I graduated on time in 1988. The school is bigger; the campus is so different now that you’d hardly recognize it from the “old days”. The online program has exploded so much that LU has moved into the top ten ranking nationally for all schools, public and private.

The changes haven’t been immediately welcomed by us “old guard” alumni. We balked at the thoughts that our school was “going digital” and becoming an online school. As it turns out…it’s not. The growth of one does not mean the sacrifice of the other. In fact residency at LU is going to be stronger than ever.

I was going to write a long expose about the changes on campus. I even approached Chancellor Falwell about it and we’d talked a few times about the content of what I wanted to write. (I’d reached out to him in an effort to be factual and fair) But I decided today that none of that matters now. Most of the bluster about the changes going on at LU has died down. The alumni feel very comfortable about the direction of the school. There isn’t a point in writing about it anymore. So I decided to focus on what this degree means to me. How it represents something more than a 28 year pursuit of a dream and more than a nicely framed piece of paper.

What this degree gave me…especially the last 2 years finishing up at LU Online during the hardest, most difficult phase of my life…was pride. It gives me self respect. It gave me hope. Each semester was a chance to do the only thing I had any sort of control over. I couldn’t find a job, I was sleeping in my car, and I missed my daughter because I could only see her for a few hours at a time. I shivered in the dark of winter as I studied by flashlight in that aged Volvo 850. I got an A, a B and two C’s that first semester. More than that I got a boost. I achieved something in the midst of a string of failure. I learned about the Faith I have entrusted my soul to. I accomplished a deeper understanding of the Bible and the elements of the Church body I am a member of. In the 24 months since that first semester began, I have been homeless for about 20 of them. To be honest I was homeless for all of them. Having a “place to crash” isn’t a home. Not remotely. I put out over 300 resumes in that time and found one job…in Houston Texas. I built chicken coops and roofed a house and detailed cars and painted a friends porch. I wrote four books and four blogs and made nothing on any of them. I ate Ramen noodles in Panera and laughed about it when in reality it was humiliating and made me want to cry. And I did a lot of that too. Being a dad who used to have a home and used to have pets and used to have a workshop and used to go on vacations with his precious little girl and used to look in the mirror with a sense of pride, is a crushing weight. I cried a lot. I missed my daughter so much some nights that I cried myself to sleep. I hid the truth from her as best I could but she knew. Being in school at LU was the one thing I could show her that was consistent and was progressing. It was the one promise I was able to keep. It was the only source of pride in my otherwise humiliating world.

This degree means more to me than simply an educational achievement. It was how I showed the world that I was still alive over the last two years. It was the thing that set me apart from an otherwise utterly devastated man. It sustained me.

I am blinking back tears even as I write this. I am thinking about the things I have endured until today. The losses that heaped upon themselves and bent my back until I thought I would break. The tears and the sadness and the shame and embarrassment. Completing a degree is hard enough without doing it without a home. But I am almost done and it is a feeling I have heretofore not experienced.

The one face that will be missing on that Saturday next May will be Dr. Falwell. He would have loved this story. I think he would be as teary-eyed as I will be, had he been alive to hand me that diploma. Doc loved stories like mine. He loved people who refused to quit. He loved the God who gives the strength it takes to endure the seemingly endless defeats that found their demise on the road to my graduation. He spent his life proclaiming the truth that faith in the God he served could truly move mountains. And…as that campus proves…faith can build mountains too. My life proves this. That degree…my degree…proves it too.

The pursuit has been what kept me alive over these last two years. The degree represents something more than simply an education. The pursuit was a lifeline to me.

All of this is only coming true because the school I love is in able hands. The vision that Doc had in his heart from day one, back in 1971, is alive and vital and it’s probably expanded beyond what even that man of gigantic vision could have ever imagined.

Liberty University is doing just fine. In fact it’s better than ever. Liberty University is alive and well, and because of that, so am I.

And next May, one very appreciative member of the Class of 2012 will walk across that platform, receive that long overdue diploma, and stand taller than he has in a few years. My diploma will have cost exactly the same as those of all of my classmates.

But maybe nobody in that stadium that day will value theirs more.

My thoughts on the "99%" and "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-19T14:01:00.001-05:00

I wasn't going to blog about this topic because to be honest...these people make me sick and I don't want to give them any space on a blog I've worked hard on, to develop a small following. But I have had enough of them and I have been in enough arguments with Internet friends about this "movement".
"Occupy Wall Street" is a farce. It's a joke and the perpetrators are frauds. You look at them attacking corporate greed and corporate excesses and they do so with their iPhone and iPad and wearing clothes made by the biggest corporations in the world.
Of course I could pick apart their hypocrisy for an hour but I'm not going to. The real reason I am compelled to write is the reasoning behind it all...and the lack of initiative these losers demonstrate.
First of all...Nobody earning $50,000 ever hired me for a job. They don't employ people. These protesters need to grasp basic economics. The rich are rich because they are good at making money. Typically they don't do that alone so they have employees. Most of the time they create whole industries that employ even more people. For that...for the burden and the impressive achievement of employing hundreds or thousand or tens of thousands of hard working people...these greedy selfish pigs are paid handsomely. They pay huge taxes on those huge paychecks. Those taxes employ the government employees who bitch and whine about everything, while having the best pay scale and benefits plan known to man outside of Congress.
You want to know why those people are worth all that money? Because if they don't do the job right, it's not just their own job they lose...it's all those "99% ers" out there who work for the companies that these brilliant minds manage. If they screw up, the result is exponentially bad. Now...you want to have the best and brightest running the company that pays YOUR paycheck? Or do you want some liberal minded moron who thinks he should run a Fortune 500 and be paid $250,000 for his efforts?
You let the rich do whatever it is that got them rich, (assuming it's not running moonshine during prohibition) and they will need to hire you and then you can put away your signs, take a shower, cut that dreadful thing on your head and go to work. But the truth is you don't really want that. You'd rather see yourself on the news crapping on the flag.
This is still the land of opportunity. If you want to improve yourself...you can. I know...because I have.
4 and a half years ago I was a successful mortgage banker working for the largest privately held mortgage company in the U.S. I was a multiple award winner and an achiever. I had a home and a life. I have a (now) 13 year old daughter that stayed with me every other weekend and who was, and is, the focal point of my life.
By May of 2008 I was homeless. The company contracted from 900 offices to 125. The entire industry collapsed. I had no money and no place to live after I lost my home. I refused to leave my daughter and move away to somewhere where there might be work. So I slept in my car at night, showered at the county rec center and picked up odd jobs. I am not from Nashville so few, if any, people reached out to me. I was isolated and alone and broken. I found one job, only to have that company go out of business as the economy worsened. I lived on unemployment for 6 months until that ran out, and I ate Ramen noodles that I snuck into local restaurants in my computer backpack and mixed with hot water that I told them was for a refill for the hot tea I had never actually bought. I shivered in the dark when winter got here. In 2009 I discovered I was eligible for financial aid and I decided to finish the degree I had started 26 years prior. I enrolled at Liberty University Online (I had attended LU as a resident student before) I lived off the extra funds I didn't need for school. I slept in a friends basement when winter 2009 arrived. I studied by the interior light in my 1995 Volvo and I uploaded my homework using the free wifi at Panera Bread Company. I worked odd jobs when my unemployment ran out. I discovered I am a very good writer and I self-published four books. I did anything I could do to survive, overcome and eventually rebuild. I missed my daughter horribly, seeing her only an hour here and there during the week. I have not had a place to live where she could come stay with me for 3 years now. I miss her more than I have words to express. But in all that time she never wondered if I would still be there if she needed me. I never missed a violin recital or a school play or a talent show. She knows what I have been through and she knows I did this...I endured this humiliation...for her.
I learned who my friends are...and sadly I learned who they are not. I learned who has real compassion and who only speaks of it. I learned that some people will not accept your suffering unless you suffer exactly as they think they would if they were in your shoes. ( I also learned that these people never really considered what my shoes might have felt like.)

I just filled out my Spring 2012 class schedule...the last one I will have to do. Because I will graduate in May. Against great odds and screaming resistance and isolating loneliness, I have finished this task. I could have gotten much better grades...I know I am capable of better. I could have finished sooner by a semester or two. But considering how I had to do this I am satisfied. Some efforts are more than the grade on the paper.
It was hell. It was hard work (it's not over yet, but it's all but final now) and it was mentally tough and it was demeaning to live this way. I wore out that Volvo after 250,000 miles.
I'm not making enough money to get my own place yet, but I am keeping gas in my truck and some food money and I can do something with Morgan on weekends. I am resisted by her mother on every turn because she somehow thinks this was all a result of some failure of mine...like I singlehandedly sank the economy. I have had friends abandon me because sometimes on my darkest days I vented and spit bile when they think I should have "had more faith". They said this, of course from the comfort of their homes, or in the comfort of their office, or while their kids played nearby, and after consulting with their loving spouse. Had they lost everything, as I have, they would have probably sang a slightly different song.
But I made it. I have begun looking at myself in the mirror, and seeing a real man looking back. I have soldiered on and remained there for my daughter when I was never afforded that blessing myself.
I will tell you it was the grace of God. I am a strong, stubborn man, but I would have broken long ago. God came through a million times in the wolf hour, when I was questioning the value of my life and not believing there was ever going to be anything good coming from this. There were times I thought I would die like this...in this state. Always God came through with some small wink or kind word from a true friend. And if that wasn't available...he merely flashed my daughters face on the monitor of my memory and that's all it took. I would die for her...and sometimes that required that I live...for her.
Some "corporate fat cat's" taxes paid on his greedy, overblown income was a portion of the financial aid I get that has enabled me to finish my dream. And it's not just the diploma...it's the hope. It's the knowledge that I am really going to see something good happen after 4 years of sorrow. it's feeling like a man again. Liberty University Online has not just been a means of completing my degree...it's been life support.
Those "occupiers" who whine about Wall Street and who embarrass themselves with their disgusting antics...try trading with me. Try fighting all the way back from devastation. Maybe "the whole world is watching" as you say...but that's nothing compared to knowing that my 13 year old daughter is watching.
Come May, you can have my spot in the humiliating pantheon of the wanderers. Because while you have been carping about what you think you were owed, I went out and got what was available. Just thinking about walking across that platform and getting that degree makes me weep. It's been a long hard road and the only reason there is anything at the other end...is because of those "1%" who make careers for people and who pay the bulk of the tax burden so that mid-forties dads who are hit with devastation can find the resources for a second chance for themselves and their child. I, for one, am thankful for them.

Coming Home...thoughts on homecoming week

2011-10-13T18:01:00.001-05:00

Friday is Homecoming at my alma mater, Liberty University

I won’t be going back this year…the first time in 5 years I won’t be there. But I’ll be there in spirit…because in a lot of ways my heart has never left. Because in so many ways, Liberty Mountain is home. I guess that’s why they call it “Homecoming”.

When I was in high school, the only college I wanted to go to was Liberty. The only degree I wanted was from Liberty. The only place that mattered was the mountain. In a lot of ways that hasn’t changed.

I was thinking about this post for a few days. I had written something different and wound up changing it this morning. I was thinking about the words to a song that a dear friend of mine, Allan Shamblin, wrote and that Miranda Lambert made into a number 1.

The song is called “The House that Built Me”

I know they say you can’t go home again

I just had to come back one last time

Ma’am I know you don’t know me from Adam

But these handprints on the front steps are mine

Up those stairs in that little back bedroom

Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar

I bet you didn’t know under that live oak

My favorite dog is buried in the yard

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me

Mama cut out pictures of houses for years

From Better Homes and Gardens magazine

Plans were drawn and concrete poured

Nail by nail and board by board

Daddy gave life to mama’s dream

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me

You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can

I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me

Allan didn’t know me seven years ago when he wrote this. And he’s never been to Liberty University and as far as I know he’s never even been to Liberty Mountain. But without even knowing it, he captured the heart of what LU means to so many of its alumni. It’s home for us. It’s the “House that Built Me”

I didn’t have a home like the one in this song, where character was formed and love abounded. There isn’t a house in my memory that calls to me from across the years and says “If you can just get back here you’ll figure it all out and be alright” But I have Liberty University.

In a lot of ways, that place is home for me. I met my best friends there. I slugged it out for the hockey team and made the “bad food” jokes. I was there when curfews were ridiculous and dress code was like a “Happy Days” wardrobe. I remember when the DeMoss building was a blueprint and when the Vine center was an overgrown ravine where we played capture the flag.

Liberty was where I was first challenged to really know what I believed and why. It’s where somebody knocked the kool-aid out of my hand and told me to drink beer like a grown-up. (Okay…not actual beer…you get the analogy) It’s where Jim Freeman and Greg St. Clair became my best friends. It’s where Cory Walyuchow and Justian Wylie and Craig Handwerker and Wade Burrows and a bunch of other guys became my team mates and my dream of playing collegiate hockey came true.

It’s where I first saw mountains. It’s where I first saw mountains move.

Most of all, it’s where Dr. Falwell was. I loved that man. I went there because of him. I would sometimes listen to his sermons in chapel and think “C’mon Doc! Seriously?!! A D-1 football team with our own first class stadium beating Notre Dame someday??” Doc had said this when Lou Holtz was coaching ND and they were unbeatable. 28 years later and five consecutive Big South titles in hand…I would dare say the LU teams from last year and the two years prior probably could have done the job. (Brian Kelly sort of changes that possibility for now) I remember one service at Thomas Road Baptist Church when Doc told us of his dream of Liberty having it’s “own channel for spreading the gospel” and it would come through some new technology called satellite. He told us the receiving dish would be “slightly bigger than a pie plate…maybe 24 inches in diameter” and you could hang them from the eaves of any home in the US. I remember sitting there thinking “Riiiight Doc…That’ll never happen” Then came Dish Network and Direct TV. Then came “The Liberty Channel” Doc was right…again.

He would lay out his grand dreams for the mountain and we’d sometimes sit there thinking “I love the idea Doc…but that aint gonna happen. A law School? A med school? Dorm rooms with only 2 people in each one? That will NEVER happen! (Those of you who are of my vintage remember being crammed 4 deep into dorm rooms built for two.)

Doc was larger than life. He was a cantankerous kid in a grown ups body who never lost sight of having some fun now and then. He had a passion for Jesus Christ that defied description. He had faith that literally moved mountains. He loved people. He had a knack for seeing people as Jesus saw them. It’s why he could reach out to Larry Flynt after Flynt had done his best to denigrate Dr. Falwell in the most salacious manner. When Doc died, Larry Flynt actually got choked up during an interview with Larry King, when he referred to Dr. Falwell as his friend. Flynt was always downplaying the fact that Doc befriended him and Doc took a beating for it from his contemporaries. But I thought it was genius. He reached out in love to an obviously bitter and hurting man and openly called him his friend. What could Flynt ever to against that kind of big heart?

I learned about loving people on the mountain. I learned about which battles were worth fighting and which were not.

Mostly I learned that with God, one seemingly unimportant preacher from a small town in central Virginia could be used to touch millions simply because he said “yes to God and dared to dream big dreams.

Two years ago, my daughter went to homecoming with me. She was 11 at the time. We had gone to an art exhibit and were crossing the road to go to the dining hall for dinner. Standing on the curb in a cold late October breeze on a grey overcast day, I stopped and looked around. Morgan was enamored with “SnowFlex” the giant artificial snowboard slope high on Liberty Mountain across from the campus. The day was a dark dreary grey so the lights were already on at the slope. I pointed across the street to dorm 22…my first dorm on Liberty Mountain. This was the room I shared with Jim Freeman, who would become one of the best friends I ever made and my defacto big brother. I told Morgan how there used to be nothing on that side of the mountain but brush that caught fire every spring. I told her how there wasn’t a Vine Center or a Demoss building or an ice rink when I first came here. Then I choked back tears and told her about Dr. Falwell. My daughter has wonderful, daring faith even at her young age. I knew she’d be impacted when I relayed the stories of Doc’s constant biting off huge chunks of this mountain and turning it into a tangible “home” for all of us…his “kids”.

I put my arm around my little girl and swept my hand across the view in front of us and told her; “All of this…everything you see here is because one man said “yes” to God and had faith that God had a plan. And God can do the same thing with you”. Morgan somehow understood the importance of what I was saying, and she had heard me talk about Dr. Falwell enough times to know how I loved him. She got a big smile when I told her, “Go ahead and dream big, honey. Jump in and do what God tells you because the same God that was behind Doc is the same God who will see your dreams come true.

My upbringing didn’t lend itself to great faith…I had to learn that on the mountain too. But I had a great example and over time I learned. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating…Dr. Falwell used to tell us all the time “You don’t measure a man by what it takes to knock him down…but by what it takes to keep him down.”

August 1984 was the start of my freshman year. I completed my last 5 semesters online, most of the time living in my car after losing everything I had in this economy.

Next May I will walk across the stage on that mountain and I will receive my long awaited diploma…because there at my home…in the “house that built me” I learned that I do have what it takes to finish what I began. I learned by watching that giant of a man and father-figure, that I will never be measured by what it took to keep me down. Because I watched a man who kept getting up. I have travelled back to the mountain many times over the years, probably, as Allan wrote because

“ I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself”

I think I’ve come home so many times looking to find myself. To find the young man I once was who first came here when there was little here to come to. I think I have travelled back to this house that built me because I knew instinctively I was still being built. Liberty Mountain has, in many ways, been the fixed end of my compass.

Now I will finally return as a graduate. In May I will come home to this house that built me with a little swagger, a little pride. I have some scars from the battles I fought just finding my way back here and I’m limping a bit from my wrestling matches with God. But I’ll be home again. Because this place built me and throughout life we all need to come back and remember who we were when we got here and who we were when we left.

Welcome home LU alumni…and I’ll see you all next year.

The Homeless Savior...Some thoughts on the life Christ chose

2011-09-25T10:19:00.000-05:00

It’s been a hard few days. The past few days…maybe two weeks…have been some of the most difficult of my life. This will be a very revealing post and I am doing it because the spiritual lesson is worth the cost of the openness it takes to express it. Deep down, I’m okay. So please, no concerned phone calls or emails. I’m really okay.

Four and a half years ago, in the height of the mortgage industry collapse, I lost my home. It wasn’t fancy but it was exactly the home I wanted. Large enough for me and Morgan, acreage, a large garage / workshop for my hobbies. A big garden like my uncle Franny has, a country setting 20 minutes from town. It was what I’d always wanted. We had two Springer Spaniels, and a cat, and Morgan had a pony. It was the only thing since my divorce that brought me some real happiness and a sense of achievement.

In my second book, “Nowhere to Lay My Head”…I answered the question “What is a Home?” in this way.

“Have you ever been on a vacation or an extended business trip and been away from your home for a long time? Do you remember that feeling when you walked through the front door after a long absence? The feeling that your home actually greets you somehow.

Later, when you turn down the sheets on your own bed and climb in and bury yourself beneath your covers, and smell the signature smell of your pillow, you know you are truly home. I lost that emotional connection when I lost my home to the mortgage meltdown.

It wasn’t an investment gone awry. It was my home. It was a safe haven for my daughter and me. It was where I could find my way around in the dark because I knew it so well.

It was where my heart could pull into a safe harbor and anchor until the hurricane passed. That is what I lost. …and that is what I hope to convey.”

I opened that book with that statement, and I am referring to it today because I am thinking about those days again. I lost that house on January 27, 2007. I had lived there almost four years. It was my safe place. It was where I could go to escape from the pressures of the world…and the memories of a broken marriage and the failed dreams that come with that. It was were I was rebuilding my life again. It was where I could hear the click of the latch when I walked in at night and the sound somehow meant the wolves had to stay on the other side of the door…at least for the night. I could sink down into my favorite chair, turn on the TV or read a book…or write one. I could tend my garden or tend the horse or photograph deer and turkey or go for a walk in my woods. It had nooks and crannies I could find in the dark. My kitchen smelled like my grandmothers “red gravy” and my clothes smelled like fresh air…because I am probably the only 6’ 4” 250lbs former college hockey player who likes to hang out his laundry.

It was my one special place in Tennessee. I have special places back home…Battery Park, The Vet, CBP, Beaver Valley, Ocean City MD, The Chesapeake…but in Tennessee, after (at that point) 10 years of residence…this home was my only “special place”. That was enough for me. I loved my workshop, where I made furniture or tuned up my car. I loved those two Springers dearly. I loved Giacomo…the cat that convinced me that cats were cool. I loved having Morgan there on alternate weekends and making popcorn on Friday nights and watching Cartoon Network, strawberry pancakes on Saturday mornings, and Nonna’s gravy on Sundays. The only time I didn’t love that house was Sunday night when I came back after dropping her off at her mom’s.

I loved spending two hours cutting the grass on my riding mower. I loved doing repairs and remodeling. I loved that garden. I think I’m a little like Uncle Franny in that way. Mostly…I just loved having a real home. A place where I was safe and could be myself.

That was gone on January 27, 2007.

In the four years that have come and gone, I rented for one year and then when my former company reduced their branches and I got closed down, I couldn’t renew the lease and I was homeless. That was May 2008. In the 3 and a half years since then…40 months…I have slept in my car about 20 of them. It’s more humiliating than I can express to you. It’s a wounding thing and it takes your pride and your self esteem. You pretty much have to lie about it to avoid the embarrassment.

It’s fair to ask “Where were your friends?” Well, it’s like this. (A) You’d have to tell me how you define friendship for me to answer that. As I define it, I don’t have that many here. I won’t even attempt to explore that. But it’s not strictly because people are unfriendly. (B) I had offers from people to “crash on the couch” but the problem is, everyone will tell you “You stay as long as you need to” but the economy being what it is, and jobs being impossible to find for so long…that can be a very long time. I knew I wouldn’t want someone crashing on my couch for months on end…so I politely refused the few offers I did get. If it was dangerously cold I would do it for a day or two. But mostly I just did what I had to do to get through it alone. I’m not going to be delving into this any further because this post isn’t about any of that. But I wanted to set the stage…

I returned to the carpentry business recently. It was out of necessity but I am very happy that I did. I love the craft. I am happy in a job where I can create and then see the finished product. I have been staying with a friend so I haven’t been truly “homeless”…not in the conventional sense. I am going apartment shopping this week. It’s not my house and five acres in the country…but it’s going to be home for the first time in four years. And that’s the real topic today…

Jesus said “Birds have nests, foxes have dens…but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head”. (Luke 8:9) That’s where I took the title for my second book from. I remember when I was first homeless and sleeping in the car…it hit me that Jesus was homeless too. Only He had chosen this lifestyle. His Father’s plan was for Him to be a wanderer and a vagabond. He was really homeless.

Go back and re-read my description of homelessness and then picture, (if you can) the Son of God living like that. Sleeping in a fishing boat shivering in the night, wrapped in stinky fishing nets to try to stay warm. Sleeping where he could, eating what He could, bathing when he could. That was God.

I don’t like to be where I am staying, except when I go to bed. I’m just weird that way…I feel like a guest and I don’t like that feeling. So I am up at 5AM, I go to the rec center to workout and shower, I go to Fedex office to do my homework and then I am on the jobsite by 8. I work until dark, go to the rec center to shower again (sawdust is irritating…but manly) and do homework until about 10PM. On rainy days…when I used to be sitting in my living room reading or writing or watching TV or even taking a nap…I drive around, looking for a place to go to kill time. I get homework done, but what I really want is to put my feet up, make a cup of coffee in MY kitchen, watch MY TV or do whatever. I want a safe haven. And I don’t have one.

Neither did Jesus. In his 3 and a half years of ministry, he had no place to call home. The verse I quoted translates “The Son of Man has no place to take His rest”. That’s what a home is. A place to rest. To recharge. To repair your broken dreams or celebrate your victories. A place to hear the snap of the latch and know in your heart you are safe for the night…the problems of the day can’t come inside. Home is the smell of your pillow on your bed. I haven’t slept in my own bed in four years. I don’t even own one anymore. I moved into my dorm at age 20, into my own apartment at 23 and never lived at home again, except for one 6 week period. In 25 years of owning my own beds, I never thought about it once. Now I think about it all the time. I was in Sam’s club about 3 months ago and they had mattresses on display right up front. Normally they are off to the side, but they were running a sale and they were moved to the front of the store. I was walking around just absorbing the air conditioning on a hot afternoon and I came across those mattresses and in a split second I had hot tears burning in my eyes. I was in tears before I even understood why. Then it hit me…mattresses. I want to sleep in my own bed again.

Maybe it’s knowing that I am almost in a place of my own again…I don’t know. Maybe it’s the feeling that some of this horrible nightmare of the last four years is finally ending, that makes it safe to touch the things I’ve buried in my heart since it began. But the past few weeks…maybe the past few months…have been overwhelming. I’ve felt all the losses I had been denying or ignoring. I drove past my old house a few weeks ago. I had to pull over and cry. That was my home. I don’t have one anymore. I haven’t had a kitchen in 4 years. (It’s one thing to rent a room and have “kitchen privileges” but it’s another to be a gourmet cook and have them. It’s like owning a boat and having “bathtub privileges” you can take a bath but you cant put your boat in there) I haven’t had a refrigerator or that Bunn coffeemaker I keep in storage. I haven’t seen those dogs since August of 2008 when I gave them up along with the cat. And I haven’t tucked Morgan into a bed in my house since then either. I feel so lost without a home base. It has made me miserable and grouchy and sometimes even vicious. If you got caught in that grinder I apologize. If you are one of those who would try to spiritualize the way I handled my suffering, and told me I was doing it wrong…I have words for you that I can’t print here.

Now that I’ve painted this picture for you, let’s return to the unbelievable, incredible, unfathomable fact that Jesus chose to live as I have lived. And while I spent four years trying to find my way out…He purposefully remained there. He lived this lonely, isolating, tiring life. Make no mistake…there is no rest when you are homeless. There is truly nowhere to lay your head. You drift and wander and it is tiring, because you can’t stop moving. Jesus lived like that. Jesus…God in the flesh…roamed and wandered and survived. When he needed friends, they mostly failed him. When he needed solace and solitude, He was hemmed in by the crowd most of the time. When He needed sleep, He collapsed in the bow of a boat and was so tired he slept through a turbulent storm that had his disciples…all experienced fisherman…scared out of their wits. He was often hungry…often dirty…probably smelly from time to time…and He was restless. He had no “favorite place” No comfortable chair to sink into at the end of a tiring day. No favorite glass for his iced tea or mug for his coffee. He couldn’t get up in the night and get some food from the refrigerator. He couldn’t stay inside on a rainy day and think and rest and recharge. He had to roam and wander and keep moving…because He had no home.

Before the more spiritual amongst you reminds me “He had a home in heaven…” I will tell you that is true…but Jesus was a man as much as he was God. And the man Jesus needed a home like we all do. That’s why he referenced his homelessness to that rich young ruler. Brennan Manning calls this “The loneliest verse in the Bible”, and it is. Jesus did this so we would understand that He understands. I have been overwhelmed lately…and I mean overwhelmed, swept away in a tsunami it seems…of hurt and grief for all that I lost four years ago. Maybe God permitted me to be tough and hard about it until now, just so I’d survive it. Maybe He let me “go into shock” and have huge sections of my heart go numb, so I could get all the way through it. This summer…when a job finally emerged after 3 years and then when it became a reality that I will graduate college in May, and now that I will be able to get my own place again…the scab came off and the wound reopened. I have lost four precious years of overnight stays with Morgan…years I can’t get back. I have shivered in the dark more nights than I can remember. I have lied about where I was living to avoid my embarrassment, in those days before I even had a room to sleep in. My heart has aged more than my 48 years. I have seen a lot and I am tired. Thankfully I will have somewhere to rest very soon. But Jesus…the very Son of God…never did in all his days on earth. He died a homeless man and was raised a homeless Savior. He ascended to His rightful home in Heaven, but here…he had none. He was a man of no reputation, and He chose this life for me…and you. If you fear Him, or you are threatened by some misconception of His posture or his personality…remember He was a homeless vagabond who found no rest at all while he lived in this world. So he understands that so many of us are just like that…even if we do have a place to live. He understands the pain we feel and the sorrows that go along with living on earth. And when those hurts of humanity ganged up on Him and he would have liked to have gone inside and shut the door and propped his feet up and relaxed for an afternoon, He never once had that option. He slept out in the open, or in the Temple courtyard or in the olive grove. He knew how people could disappoint each other and hurt each other and at the end of a long day, when you and I would be going home to leave it all behind until tomorrow…He had no place to do that. He had nowhere to lay His head. And He did this on purpose. The next time you are wary of His presence, remember he endured this humbling, crushing, lonely life of ours to a degree many of us never will…and he did it just so we would understand, that He understands. Come as you are…to the man of no reputation.

Braces, First Kisses, Pretty Daughters...and why it is God loves us so much

2011-09-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

This morning I took Morgan to get her braces checked. She had hoped she was getting them off today, but that was not to be. About 3 more months and then she'll be finished. She was really sad that they weren't coming off today...until they showed her the pictures from when we first began this whole process 4 years ago. Dr. Joel Cooper is a genius!
It seems like with my life the way it has been, the only real time I get with her anymore is when I take her to the orthodontist or to school. I have missed time with her over these past 3 years living from place to place. Now that I am settling in again here in Nashville, things will be normal soon...but three years is a lot of time lost.
Last week, taking her to school, we talked about how she is doing right now. I asked her about school and her friends and her little brother...you know, small talk. Then I asked her about boys in her class. Was she interested in any of them...did she have a boyfriend? She let out a resigned "No" and then she said "The boys my age are stupid anyway". "Good" I thought..."That will change soon enough but one less day of boy-craziness is fine with me. " I said "Honey don't worry about it...you are so much more mature than them right now...you're 13...there's plenty of time for that stuff" Then she looked at me and said just a little plaintively "But I haven't even had my first kiss yet." I was ready to alternately shout for joy and break down in tears. I was happy to hear that, but sad because of the pressure she must be under and the importance in this culture of the first kiss. I instantly realized this was a critical daddy-moment and I uttered a silent prayer for a wise response. "It will come in time Honey...you don't kiss someone just to kiss them" was my attempt at wisdom. She said "But all my friends have already had their first kiss" I wanted to cry. Not because the thoughts of my little girl kissing a boy was sad...even though it is...but because my daughter is living the very struggles I read about each day on the Internet or in the newspaper. How this world pressures kids into becoming adults way too soon.
Something in the way she said "But I haven't even had my first kiss..." just broke my heart. My little girl is at that stage where a lot of things are painful and awkward. She is a beautiful girl who doesn't see herself that way. She doesn't see herself as ugly...daddy has made that impossible...but she wrestles with the doubts that young women this age do. She often tends to be so determined not to go along with the norms for beauty and femininity that she goes 180 degrees the other way. She dresses very different from the "girly girls" in her school. She is artsy and a tremendous singer and artist. She is beautiful but she is afraid to accept it in case she is wrong about her beauty. It's a hard time for her and a hard time for a kid to be coming of age. I hate the messages this world sends. Messages from vapid synthetic stars like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift and pick-a-Kardashian. I wish there were some approachable, visible, young women who truly lived from a biblical world view but were still "cool". Mostly I wish my daughter wasn't caught in this teenage time period when she is so unsure of herself. I wish I could just sweep her up into my arms and hug her tightly until she was about 20, and ready to face this nonsensical world. I wish I could absorb the blows this world hands out to 13 year old young women. I wish I could make her be 4 years old again.
I love my daughter...anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with me knows this. But I love her a little more and I linger in our hugs and I kiss her forehead more when she is hurting. When she needs me the most is when I respond in love the most. Isn't that like God?
A friend of mine recently watched as God granted a wonderful dream come true. At a time when she yearned for hope and healing and life..God backed up the dump truck and did what God can do...He poured out His love in an unmistakable way. There was simply NO way my friend could look at what God did...at the timing, the perfection, the path it took to happen...and not say "This was God". My friend wrestled with God's love and her (and all of our) worthiness of that love. How can God love us as He says He does when we do the things we do? God decided to answer with an exclamation point..." I don't love you because you deserve my love...I love you because you never COULD deserve my love" God loves us a dad loves his children. He especially loves us when we are broken and far from Him. When we awaken in the pig pen and look at our ragged clothing and smell the pig poop on our skin and decide we have fallen so far that even our daddy won't want us now. We are convinced He could never forgive, never heal, never restore...only to discover that this is when He loves us the most. When we need His love so desperately but are so convinced He could never love us again...we find out he never stopped!
When my daughter is confused and sad and full of doubts and fears...that's when I want to be the best dad I can be. It's not a time for ignoring her or being harsh. That's how God is too. When we are afraid...he answers our fear with His awesome love...because "perfect love throws out all fear".
I don't know where we got this misshapen idea that God only loves us when we don't need Him to. Or that we have to clean ourselves up before he will love us. Or that His love is mercurial and capricious...on one minute, off the next. The truth is that God loves us like a real daddy...without regard to the dirt on our shoes or the sweat on our forehead or the snot running from our nose. He only longs to hold us in His arms, and let us grow quiet until he can hear our heartbeat next to His...
When we come crawling to Him because we are in pain, because our job is gone, or our home is gone, or our spouse just left us. When we are worried because life hasn't graced us with our first kiss yet and we are starting to wonder whether we are as good as all the others who seem to be making out in the hallways while we pass them on our way to choir...God pounces on us. He runs to us...the great hound of heaven...and smothers us with love. He loves us as we are, because we are as we are. My failures don't define me...they are the reason God loves me as much as he does.
I'll close with a wonderful story from "The Ragamuffin Gospel" that Brennan Manning quoted. It is a story written in first person by a neurosurgeon who had just operated on a beautiful young woman, removing a tumor from her face...
"I am standing with the young husband who is impatient as I gently unwrap the heavy gauze bandages from the face and head of his beautiful young wife. He is almost jittery. It has been two weeks since he has seen the whole of her face and he is almost like a groom on his honeymoon. He holds her hand to reassure her. Just two weeks ago she had come to me to remove a tumor on the left side of her face, that threatened her eyesight. The operation was a success and the tumor was benign. I unwrap the final strands of bandage and hold a mirror to her face for the young woman to see. She reaches her hand gently to her face and sees the tiny, almost imperceptible scar. The I watch as her eyes fall sullen and grow moist. Fear spreads across her face as she sees her lips as they sag on one side of her mouth. Her smile is twisted into a clownish pose with one side perfect as before and the other drooping and fallen. She clears her throat and looks at me..."Will it always be like this?" she asks "Yes..." I begin..."You see I had to clip the nerve when I was removing the tumor and it was a delica..." My voice trailed off because what happened next was beyond words. Her young husband leaned over and took his wife's pretty face in his hands, he smiled and said "I like it...I think it's kind of cute" then he bent in close and shaped his mouth to fit her twisted clown-lips...and he kissed her deeply. In that kiss he restored her beauty and told her "see...your kiss still works, and I still like kissing you"
That is what God does for us. He takes off the bandages we have wrapped ourselves in to hide our faults, looks at us, decides He likes us, and then He kisses us squarely on the lips. He does this with a song, or a perfect day on the beach or an unmistakable moment with our children...or in the form of a lost love that returns after half a lifetime and brings with it more happiness than either person dreamed still existed. That is how God responds when we feel like the unlovable, unkissable, awkward kid in the schoolroom. That is how much He loves us. Not because we are perfect and beautiful...but because we are so broken and we need the love of a dad.

Birthday Thoughts, Rich Mullins, Calling Stars by Name...

2011-09-07T20:55:00.000-05:00

*Today is my birthday. In four and a half years of blogging I have never written about my birthday until now. I debated writing this because it's personal and it could easily be interpreted as whining or sour grapes, although neither is actually true. I decided to go ahead and write this entry because I know from conversations, from speaking engagements I've had, (especially when I've spoken to kids) and from countless e-mails I've received, that this is something that touches the hearts of a lot of people. A lot of people. So when you read this, keep in mind that I have learned this lesson, but that many folks desperately need it.* --Craig

Hey Everyone...
Today is my birthday. I received over 100 birthday greetings today on various social media and I want to say thanks to everyone who let me know that they care. It was more appreciated than you know.
I haven't always enjoyed my birthday. In fact for a lot of years I have purposefully ignored it. But this year it's different. I think I need to tell the story behind the difference.
The story doesn't begin with my birth...although ultimately it does I suppose. It begins, in fact, with the birth of someone else. Two people to be exact. You'll need some background...
In January of 1992 I started attending Praise Assembly in Newark Delaware. I had attended only one other church for most of my life until that point. I instantly fell in love with Pastor Paul Walters, whom I consider my "spiritual Daddy" and with the people and attitude that his leadership fostered there.
I was also pleasantly surprised to run into not a small umber of old friends from years before. Amongst those friends was Pam Owensby and her husband Fulton.
I had met Pam and her sister in the 1980 when we had all attended Summit Lake Camp with our various youth groups. Pam was a genuinely sweet and absolutely breathtaking beautiful girl who had become a sweet and breathtaking beautiful woman by the we reconnected years later.
I had been attending this church for maybe only three weeks when the beginnings of life-change for both Pam and Fully...and ultimately for me as well...commenced.
One particular Sunday morning, We had an altar service, as pastor Walters frequently did, and Pam was kneeling and was surrounded by several women of the church, praying fervently. I stood in the back and for whatever reason, I was drawn to watch Pam and the other women in prayer. Pam was visibly emotional. I watched for a few moments and suddenly, just as sure as I can hear my own voice, I heard the distinctive voice of God internally. "Tell Pam to get ready to have a baby!" was the very clear command. To be honest, it scared me...terribly. I was raised in an ultra-conservative Baptist church who kept the Holy Spirit on a very short leash and things like this were never "of God". God's one and only means of revelation was the Bible. If it wasn't written between the leather covers of a King James Bible, God had nothing to do with it.
That line of reason was still firmly entrenched in my mind when I heard that voice. So I did nothing. I said nothing to Pam and Fully and kept this to myself, doubting the authenticity of this word from God.
Three weeks later, we were sitting in the auditorium for the annual Valentines Dinner the church always held. The folks my age all managed to congregate at one large table. I was sitting there during dinner, cracking jokes and enjoying my new friends and the friends I'd rediscovered. After dinner as we sat and chatted, I was holding Nathan, the then-one-year-old son of Heather and Dwight Walters, the pastors' son and daughter in law. Nathan was laughing and I was in my wheelhouse. I was a natural with kids long before I became a dad. At some point, Heather said "You need to have children Craig" to which I laughingly responded "I know...I decided that if I don't get married by age 30 I am going to adopt...so I have a year!" Thinking I was serious, Pam looked at me and said "Fully and I have been thinking of adopting too. have you checked into it?" I instantly remembered the voice I'd heard and the message I was supposed to have given Pam three weeks prior. Wanting to be sure, I asked "How come you're adopting, Pam?" She smiled a bit painfully and told me "We've been trying for almost 7 years now and we can't get pregnant. The doctors can't figure it out...everything comes back okay, but it's just not happening. We really want a family."
Now, I am a notoriously emotional man, but usually I don't cry in front of a table full of friends as I try to explain that I heard from God. But I could not fight the tears as I told Pam; "Pam I am so sorry...three weeks ago I absolutely heard from God and I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know you guys were trying to have children and it never occurred to me to ask." I swallowed hard and spilled out the message I was supposed to tell her before... "Three weeks ago God told me 'Go tell Pam to get ready to have a baby'. To be honest Pam, it scared me so much I thought I was hearing things and kept it to myself. But now I understand. So...Pam, God says get ready to have a baby!
One Friday night about two months later, we were sitting in the dugout at our church softball team's game. Pam was not in the stands and that was unusual because she never missed. Fully pitched or played third base and was a centerpiece of our very good team. She showed up around the 3rd inning, walked to the fence and whispered something in Fully's ear. He broke out in a huge smile and then told the rest of us...Pam was pregnant. We whooped and hollered and shouted and smiled. They were our friends and they wanted this so very badly. I was coaching first base at the time, waiting for my turn at bat. I watched the whole thing from 30 feet away and had to hide my tears. God had permitted me a tiny role as a messenger of hope to these two dear friends of mine and I was watching the last scene of the play He had begun a few months earlier.
The entire church had already heard the news by Sunday morning and we were all celebrating. Pam and Fully are so well loved by those folks, and we all knew what this meant to them. There had been so many people praying for this miracle and finally it was here. We were all collectively celebrating with them.
The months that ensued were very eventful and not without worry and fear. Pam had a difficult pregnancy and so prayers for conception quickly became earnest prayers for safety, blessing, and the completion of the promise. The worry was punctuated by even more great news...twins! Pam was going to have a boy and a girl. God had truly blessed them back for their faithfulness.
All that summer and into fall and winter we prayed, worried, hoped, and thanked God for each continuing good report. And then on January 18th 1993, we all let out our collective breath when Kelsey and Ryan arrived...a little early but arrived they did.
Our happiness was immediately tempered with concern as the twins had to remain in the hospital long after their arrival. We prayed for their health just as we had prayed for their safe arrival and for their conception before that. Good news kept coming and finally the word passed...the twins were going home!
This is where it really becomes personal...
Some time that spring...I want to say it was in May...the day came for Kelsey and Ryan's baby dedication. It was a truly beautiful, sunny warm Sunday morning. Both grandparents and families were there. The twins were simply beautiful as was Pam. Fully was proud and beaming. It was a wonderful sight.
Dear, sweet pastor Paul Walters called them to the stage and the families stood there with those two beautiful babies and it was a scene of victory and celebration. We had all prayed these two children into this world, it seemed. This was the most special baby dedication I ever saw. It felt like the children had about 400 additional family members that day.
Pastor Walters said some wonderful words about parenthood and blessings from God. His voice broke frequently as he recounted all that these children encompassed. Then he invited the church...anyone who wanted...to join them at the altar and pray a dedication over Kelsey and Ryan. About half the church responded, probably 200 folks praying, extending their hands towards the family and pronouncing a blessing of their own. People wept, they sang, they celebrated. Kelsey and Ryan were here at last and safe in our arms.
I sat in the back watching and taking it all in. I wept too, but my tears turned from celebration to sadness. I walked to the very back of the church and stood next to the audio booth where my friend D.J. was manning the controls. I watched people finding happiness because of the arrival of two babies. I saw a mom and dad who had been married for 7 years and all they really wanted was right there in their arms. I saw grandparents beaming with pride and a church weeping for joy.
Right there I asked God the questions that had been screaming in my heart for years. "God.." I began, "Was anyone happy when I arrived?" "Was my birth a good thing to anybody at all?" On September 7, 1963 I arrived to a single mother who had only turned 20 that spring. My dad had recently arrived in Vietnam as a member of the 101st. He was fighting for his own life as I was beginning mine and my mother was doubtless wondering what would become of hers. Kelsey and Ryan went from the hospital to a beautiful home that had been awaiting their arrival for years. I went home to my grandparents house. To a grandmother who had been damaged by life but who held to her faith, despite her quirks and idiosyncrasies, and a grandfather who was more chained to his vices than any man I will ever know. His demons caused him immense pain and he had crawled inside a bottle many years before. he was a sad and tragic man.
I wondered to God who might have been anticipating my birth. I didn't have a dad who was eager to teach me a curve ball or buy me my first Eagles helmet. I didn't come home to a freshly painted nursery, and a roomful of stuffed animals. I arrived to whispers and hushed accusation. I wasn't a long awaited bundle of joy, I was an interruption. Instead of having great plans for his newborn son, my father was trying to stay alive and get back to college and finish the plans he had dreamed of since he was a boy.
That morning as the twins were dedicated and celebrated, I felt as if I were a study in contrast. Whatever they were...I was not. Whatever longing and desire they represented, I represented shame and secrecy and the scarlet letter of a mistake that you pay for forever. That's what was raging in my heart as I watched my dear friends dedicate themselves to doing whatever it took to raise these two sweet gifts of God to adulthood...and they took this vow before God that morning.
I asked God again..."Who was excited about my arrival God? Who celebrated? Who anticipated?" By now I was weeping and I had to sit down in the back row because I was far too visible for me to be comfortable. "God...is there a plan for me? Is there a reason for this life of mine?" I asked plaintively.
As God often does...his answer was surprising in it's simplicity. It came in the form of a song. Instantly, as the tears were still burning hot in my eyes, I heard a line from a Rich Mullins song. The song is "Sometimes by Step" and the line says: "Sometimes I think of Abraham...how one star he saw had been lit for me." Without hesitation, I heard the words of Psalm 147:4 echoing in my soul; "I number the stars, and call them each by name" I had always wondered what that verse meant. Numbering them I understood...but naming them? Why would God name stars? In one split second He connected those two elements...that song and that verse. They merged at Genesis 15:5: "Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." There it was. From zoom to pan in one moment God showed me the specific promise to give Abraham a child for each star in the sky...and those children...each one of them...was a personal fulfillment of the promise He made with Abraham. Each one was part of a detailed plan...a plan so detailed that God already knew my name as He placed my star in the sky while He was creating the world. A plan that promises to bless me and that I am the central figure of. A promise whose fulfillment is embodied in me.
I was weeping again but for joy. I was part of a great plan and I was important to it's continued fulfillment. Then I heard God in an unmistakable voice..."Son...I couldn't wait for you to arrive. I couldn't wait for you to be born, and I celebrated your birth. "I danced over you while you were unaware" and I still do. I know exactly which star is yours and I know it's name. It's not "Craig"...it's that secret name that only I know. The name I have written on a white stone that I will give you one day when I see you face to face." I couldn't wait for you to get here. I am your Daddy, and I have loved you from the moment I placed your star in the sky."
In the 18 years since this truth first burst into my soul I have learned to accept it slowly. It hasn't been easy letting go of the desire to know a dad who doesn't hold that same desire for me. As I held to that dream and goal of establishing a relationship with my earthly father, I continued to stiff-arm my heavenly Father. This summer I finally let go. I have a great dad...he is the God of heaven and he has never spent a moment where He didn't love me...and you...fantastically.
I know this is intensely personal...I also know there are a lot of folks who needed to hear this.
Please listen to me...you have a star in the sky...it is there to mark the promise God made. A promise that you are the fulfillment of. You matter...you are at the center of the very God of the universe. Abraham went out to the mountain that night and "one star he saw had been lit for me..." and for you! He has a wonderful plan. You are at it's very heart! Never again feel unwanted or unplanned..because you were never that! God paced the halls of heaven until he heard your first cry. He danced and sang over you while you took your first breaths. He began the detailed moves that put His plan in place. he did this for you. You are a promise! He sent his son to die for the love of you! You are not alone.
Your birthday was happy indeed!

The Last Innocent Age...The inevitable and the unbelievable.

2011-09-01T08:27:00.002-05:00

I debated whether to write about this. Some things are beyond words and this might very well be. But it's part of the heart and soul behind writing the "Last Innocent Age", I guess. Looking back not only to the great times of childhood but to the people...especially to the people...who made them so great.
Tuesday I found out we lost one of those very special people.
I found out on Tuesday that one of our original "Monroe Avenue gang" had died. Sheila was in the younger group of us kids on the block. She was a couple of years younger than me. Her brother Kevin was amongst my very best friends from the day I moved to Monroe Avenue. Her older brother Billy and Frankie were an integral part of my life back then too, as was her sister. Her mom is one of the funniest, goofiest, nicest people in the world. Heck I even knew her grandmother. That's how close we were on that street.
Sheila was the nearly non-stop companion of Monica and Dawn when we were growing up. They were about the same age, and had most of the same interests. I remember in particular, when the three girls had discovered Peter Zezel when he came up as a rookie with the Flyers. (As did every other girl in the Delaware Valley...nobody made them swoon like Pete) When they discovered that Peter and I had become friends, through a hockey clinic, they called me unashamedly asking me to introduce them. They came to the rink at U of D and after the night's session we got together with Peter and I introduced them. Pete was his usual gregarious self and gave the girls 20 minutes or so of his undivided attention. It was great fun watching them interact with this guy they all adored.
Sheila was an irreplaceable part of my childhood. She is interwoven like a thread in a piece of fabric. I couldn't come up with a memory from Monroe Avenue that didn't somehow involve her directly or indirectly...just like everyone else on that street.
I guess I could go off on a path of "Well it's time to start thinking about this...at a certain age your friends start to die..." That's true, but that does Sheila's memory no justice. I prefer to think of how you just never know...as you live your life every day and you become what you hope to become and you start a family and you build a life. You never know, fully, what people mean to you until they leave and you feel the vacuum. You never look at your friends and imagine them gone. Nobody does that unless they are forced to. Maybe we should. Maybe life would be sweeter if we occasionally imagined an obituary for a dear friend before we actually read it. I suppose it would, but we seldom do that and it's a bit morbid.
No, we just tend to live our lives and keep our words inside. Not because we don't want to say them, but because we always think we'll have an opportunity. "I really need to catch up with ..." sadly becomes "I wish I had called...". I remember watching Earl Campbell's acceptance speech when he won the Heismann and being moved by it. I was maybe 12 or 13 but I thought his tribute to his mother was stunning. He quoted an old Wilburn brothers song "Give them the Roses While They Live"
"Wonderful things of folks are said
When they have passed away
Roses adorn the narrow bed
Over the sleeping clay
Give me the roses while I live
Trying to cheer me on
Useless are flowers that you give
After the soul is gone"
I probably could have stopped for a chat on one of my trips home. I could have gotten an address and sent a Christmas card. But I didn't. Sheila and I were on great terms when I moved away so I have no regrets that way. But we never think something like this will happen and so we don't take the few extra minutes to tell someone how much they mattered...and still matter...to us. We just live each day and then each day adds up into years and we fall out of touch. It's how we are and it's a shame. Then when something tragic like this happens we are left trying to put the shattered pieces of our hearts back together again, and cutting ourselves with the jagged shards. Because losing a friend hurts.
So...Monk, Tommy, Donna, Johnny, Kevin, Rich, (and you too Debbie;) ) Billy, Frankie, Misty Amber and Jimmy...I love you guys. You were all the very best thing about growing up on Monroe Avenue and you were what made my childhood happy. You probably made it livable. I hope that we never forget each other, and we never forget the way we have touched each others souls.
We miss you already Sheila! (But now you're hanging out with Elvis...so you have that going for you!)

Class of 2012...Thoughts on Graduating (at last) from LU. Snowflex, Online education...and why I am still a "Jerry's Kid"

2011-08-23T18:01:00.000-05:00

In August of 1982 I arrived on the campus of what was then Liberty Baptist College. I was 19 years old and as lost as a man could be. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going. But I knew I wanted to go to this fledgling school in central Virginia. I lasted three weeks before the lack of funds and the general blur of trying to figure out my life sent me packing. I withdrew and left, but not before I met one of the three or four best friends I would ever make...Jim Freeman.
Two Years later I returned and completed a full year. I loved that place. I met my other best friend that year, Greg St. Clair. I played on the very first hockey team we ever had that year and Jim and I had some amazing adventures...Mr. Olympia in November and Springsteen in January. I left in May, hoping to return for the following year but my home situation precluded that. That Christmas was when I found out about my dad and it sent me spinning like a tilt-a-whirl. From 1985 to 1994 I was a carpenter, a counter clerk in an HVAC supply shop, a very good hockey coach, and a lost soul. Through the ups and downs, maybe the one thing that ate at me the most was never finishing school. It broke my heart to be honest and I let it define me...the guy who didn't finish college. The one dream I couldn't make come true.
In 1994 I was blessed with the chance to return and I did. I went back to what had become Liberty University and played another year of hockey and loved every second. I transferred to another school the next year in order to get into their PA program. That was the year I lost my sister and came home to be near family. It was also the year I met my future wife. I had completed all but 18 hours of a pre med degree and had been accepted at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine. I got married that winter and by the following September we found out we were pregnant. I quit school after the spring semester and moved my unhappy wife to Nashville. I became a dad, a mortgage banker and then a divorcee all in about 2 1/2 years. I fought my way to prominence in my new career and bought my first house. Then my second house. I was basically in cruise control. Doing a job I didn't really care much for in a town that had one solitary good memory for me...the birth of my daughter...and hurting inside like nothing I could understand or believe. Under all the other unhappiness...divorce, homesickness for my native Philadelphia, lack of purpose and fulfillment...there was the gnawing issue of school. At every turn, every time I saw Doc Falwell on TV or went to LU for Homecoming or talked to my old school friends...I was regretting never finishing my degree from LU. I didn't want to graduate from any place else on earth.
In 2007 I lost my home as the mortgage industry collapsed. In 2008 I couldn't renew the lease on the rental house I lived in and I was homeless. The company I worked for reduced in size from 900 offices to 125 and I was one of the very unfortunate ones. By May 2008 I was homeless and spending my nights in my Volvo, hidden in the weeds behind a church in Nashville. I was more lost than I'd ever been. I had no family to turn to and no real friends in town. I don't remember ever being so alone and it was the most devastating time in my life. I lost my home, my career, the dreams my daughter and I dreamed together...even our family pets. I became a vagabond for the next three years. I lost everything I loved or held dear and I sank into a terrible place of desperation. I had no hope left.
In August of 2009 I talked to a friend who had gone back to school and who told me how much money she had been getting to do it. I looked into it and sure enough...I was eligible for grants and loans and so I decided this was the time for me to finish my degree and maybe improve my situation. I remember sitting in my car talking to an adviser at Liberty online and them enrolling me in 15 hours that first semester. When I hung up I broke into tears. I'd forgotten how much this meant to me and I was a Liberty student again. I had something to hope for and work towards for the first time in 18 months.
I was still homeless and completed that initial 15 hour semester while sleeping in that Volvo and studying in Panera Bread company or the public library and reading by dashboard light. I got 4 B's and a C. Since then I have lived in a friends basement, in a 10x12 office sleeping on an air mattress and sometimes...in my car again. There is little work in Nashville and I have alternately built chicken coops, detailed cars, done construction, roofed a house and aerated lawns. It has been as difficult as anything I ever tried to achieve. I changed to a Religion major so I had to surrender about a years worth of work that just didn't count towards my major in any real fashion. So I slugged it out for the last two years and last Wednesday night, at Fedex Kinkos I was sitting there finishing up my summer semester work and I decided to do a Degree Completion Audit.
The results...I have 100 credits, I need 20 more to graduate and I am taking 24 between now and May. I did it. I am going to walk across that stage in May and finish what I started 28 years before. I had to dash out the door because I didn't want the people in Fedex to see me crying. It was all I could do not to break into sobs. Even now...a week later...I got tears just seeing those words on my screen; "I will graduate in May". Besides the length of time it took, the lone regret I have will surely be that my beloved Doc Falwell won't be handing me my diploma. Doc is why I chose Liberty. I loved that man. His faith is why there is a Liberty Mountain. He used to come watch us play hockey and cheered loudest at our fights. He was a funny, cantankerous, godly, heroic man and I wanted to look him in the eye when I got that paper and tell him "thanks"...and probably "I love you Doc".
I'll be getting the diploma from his sons so that's not too bad a deal either. I'm so happy I stuck it out and I'm so happy I went back to where I started instead of just finishing at some local college. There is only one LU and I will really be an alumnus now.
In the week that has passed, I have become a palpably different man. This has been the first good news I have received since my life began to tumble 4 years ago. I needed this success and it came at exactly the right time...as most things God engineers will do. I am truly happy for the first time maybe since arriving in Nashville. Hope deferred truly does make the heart sick, and my heart has been on life support for years now.
But that changed with just the click of a mouse. Just something as simple as some real. good old fashioned hope. Some real tangible success I could look at and point to and say "See...you can do it!"
I feel ten feet tall right now...and I think Doc, while he was proud of every one of his "kids" who crossed that platform, would be particularly proud of what it took for me to get this diploma. Doc used to tell us about 1000 times a semester "You measure a man not by what it takes to knock him down...but by what it takes to keep him down." Thanks Doc...I understand now.

Finding my way Home...A Prodigals Tale

2011-08-03T09:38:00.002-05:00

There are those who maintain that God adds punishment on top of our sins. That he thinks up ways to make our lives worse than our foolish behavior already renders them. These are the people who have never seen their own reflection after they fell. They don't even believe they have ever slipped and fallen themselves. They have never heard the voices in the night, that scream out every failure and every mistake. They don't know the burden of being unforgiving towards ourselves. They don't replay pictures in their minds of that one poor choice, or that one drink, or that one harsh word. They have never come home to an empty house where children's voices once filled the air. They have never stood at the grave of a friend or a parent and wished it had turned out different. They have never awoken in the pig pen, smelling like a pig and having pig crap on their clothing and broken down in sobs because they are sure that because of that one decision, all they will ever know is this pig pen, and these pigs. They have never lied to themselves that it wasn't really that bad because deep down they had lost all hope that they could ever leave this pig pen...and go home. They are the whitewashed sepulchers that hold the bones of bondage and fear and doubt. Bondage to the shame that our sin forces on us. Fear that we have lost all contact with anything good...and dread that this is true. Shame at the thoughts of what we have become. The reflection we catch in the mirror or in the shiny bauble that lured us away in the first place. They are the people who have decided that this pig pen wasn't bad enough. That this shame and hurt and fear and self loathing I carry because of my sin...or because I was sinned against...isn't enough and I need to suffer more. That God watches with His arms crossed as I writhe in pain and as I stoop lower each day under a burden of shame and He somehow decides that isn't good enough...that I need to suffer more. That memories and visions and echoes and loss aren't already breaking my heart more than I can bear it being broken and He wants to grind the tiny fragments that remain.
I learned this about God from those pious brothers who told me this about him. Who steered clear of the pig pen because they might get some on them. Who shouted from a safe distance, telling me how bad I was and how this was what I had coming and how God was going to add even more to this. More to the pigpen. More shame on my unbearable shame. More pain...if He can find a sliver of my heart that doesn't already ache. I learned God was wringing His hands in disgust and dreaming up ways to make my life hurt more. Finding something further to take away. Some kernel on the cob that the pigs might have missed.
They lied. The fact is that the moment I chose what I chose or the moment someone else chose what they chose and it affected me...the moment a wedge started to drive it's way between my Father and I...that was the punishment. The loneliness...the shame...the horror...the fear and doubt and flashbacks and what-ifs. That is the punishment. Those are the built-in jail terms we serve for letting our humanity win over the love of God. Then our jealous older brother decides he hates this grace that our father keeps referring to. He hates Him for standing out at the edge of the property every morning and evening waiting for us to come home. After all...HE never left. He never screwed up and chose poorly or just plain sinned on purpose. He did it right and he is better than I am and he is mad that our father still loves me so much that he misses me so terribly. He knows our father has sent people to find me and to relay the message that all he wants is for me to come home...that there is no punishment at all...that the life I am mired in IS the punishment. But the older brother heads them off at the pass. He finds me first and shouts loudly from the safety of his perfect, pristine judgementalism. "Daddy doesn't want you anymore...look at you!" "Daddy doesn't love you anymore" "Daddy is so angry with you that if you come home he'll really take you to the woodshed! Look at you! Who could love what you've become?!"
After a while I start believing it...we start believing it. Because after all...it's my brother telling me this. I look up to him. He did it better than me...he did it right. And so I stay in this pig pen and in this filth and I lower my gaze a little more each day and I slump even more under this enormous weight and I turn my eyes away when I catch my reflection. I scream in anger to drown out the voices that keep screaming in my ears at night. I cry when nobody is looking and claw at them when they are. "I help you up a ladder to watch you dangle from a rope..."
...and I wish I could go home

The Last Innocent Age...R.I.P Clarence Clemons

2011-06-19T09:57:00.001-05:00

It took me all night last night and all of this morning to even begin to come to terms with last nights news. I considered changing the title to this post because this is, in many ways, a departure from the fun, warm, stories of growing up I have been sharing. But it occurred to me that in the most profound way of all...yesterday punctuated what it means to be a part of the Last Innocent Age in a way that crystallizes the aspect of innocence lost and innocence never again to return.
Last night, at 7PM, The "King of the Universe" the Great Clarence Clemons died. Clarence was the sax player for Bruce Springsteen's beloved E-Street band since it's inception. The temptation here is to write about the musician and the music. But others are already doing that and doing it remarkably well. My thoughts went in another direction this morning after digesting this news all night. Clarence's passing is, for me, another marker on the highway of life that means time is passing and another age has ended.
The first time I ever heard Clarence's incredible sax was walking to school in 1975 with my friend Tommy Riccio, listening to his transistor radio. "Born to Run" came on and from the opening drum roll, I was captivated. There are about a thousand brilliant moments within "The Greatest Rock and Roll Song Ever" (IMO) and many of them came from that incredible sound that Clarence forced from his sax like a hurricane.
By the time that song reached it's amazing crescendo, I was hooked. I was a Bruce fan and I was never going back.
The music speaks for itself. It's the moments I want to talk about. The magical, wonderful, incredible, indelible moments that this amazing music was providing the soundtrack for. I've been asked by my friends, "If you ever met Bruce, what would you tell him?". I joke about saying; "Please stop the stupid politics and write like you used to..." But I know that I would look him in the eye, and blink back tears as I said, simply..."Thank you for all the times you said the things I was holding in my soul, but could not find the words to say." Beyond that, I think I would thank him for all the friends I have made because of the music and all the wonderful memories that I associate with every album he has made.
Clarence was the one integral part of all of that. The lone irreplaceable piece. My pastor used to say "If you think you can't be replaced, go down to the river and put your hand in the water. Pull it back out. If you leave a hole...you can't be replaced."
Clarence Clemons leaves a hole.
He leaves an obvious hole on stage because of his size, his charm, his immense talent and self awareness. Clarence always knew exactly how to play to the crowd and to Bruce. He was larger than life and he could render his voice so amazingly soft that you wondered at how it came from such a giant.
Clarence was part of the greatest moments I have ever had involving music. Moments that go beyond the notes on the sheet and the sound coming from the speakers. Moments that link friends and time and space and eternity.
I was a freshman at Liberty University in 1982, in the days when possessing a rock record at LU was grounds for weekend detentions. I was one of four people jammed into in a dorm room built for two people. We each shared a closet and a desk with another person and we each brought a footlocker with us for extra storage. You kept your valuables in this and for some of us...your contraband. One of my room mates that year was Jim Freeman. Jim is a couple of years older than me and I came to see him as a big brother and one of the best friends I have ever had. Our friendship began with an interesting exchange that still makes me smile.
I was having a discussion about the "evils" of rock and roll with another of our roomies and I happened to quote from Dave Marsh's brilliant book "Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story" Jim was laying in his bunk, studying, but apparently he was at least listening casually to his two freshman room mates debate. Upon hearing my quotation of Marsh's book, Jim sat up, looked at me analytically, and in his inimitable, deep, thoughtful tone said "You're a Springsteen fan?" I perked right up...Jim was imposing to me and I was hoping for that whole first week of school that we would become friends. He was quiet and thoughtful and trying to get to know him can be a bit daunting. When he spoke those words to me...the "S" word...I was elated. Jim got up from his bunk...locked our door...pulled out his key...unlocked his footlocker and produced a copy of the book I had been quoting to our room mate. Then we began what became at least a three hour discussion about Bruce, music in general, life, great rock and roll, God, love, parents, churches, politics and about a thousand other vital matters.
Jim and I would go on to become dear friends as we are to this day. And I was with him when he saw Bruce for the first time. We caravaned to Greensboro to see Bruce at the Coliseum. We missed Bruce walking unnoticed through the crowd in the lobby during soundcheck and we stayed up to the wee hours after the show talking about what we had just witnessed.
Just a few weeks ago the thought occurred to me that they won't be touring forever, and I had been thinking how Jim and I really need to see them together one more time. My daughter just turned 13 and has become a huge fan of the band as well and I wanted her to come with us and experience the greatest show on earth for herself. She is an aspiring musician with a truly remarkable voice and I want her to feel the inspiration and spirit of a Springsteen show. I wanted her to feel the bond that built a friendship like I share with Jim.
Back in the day...Jim and I were sure to be on the phone as soon as we heard even a scant rumor of a new album. In the days before the Internet took off, real Bruce fanatics stayed in touch with each other and shared bits and pieces from mags like "Backstreets" and traded bootleg records. This band...this family of great music makers...was everything to us.
Now there is a palpable hole where the magic used to be. Clarence is gone. Maybe too, the magic is gone as well. Bruce's sound has changed over the years and to be really honest I haven't loved it. His new albums don't inspire me like everything up to and including Tunnel of Love did. But the live shows are still the best concerts you will ever see, Bruce knew instinctively what his fans came to hear and more importantly...what they came hoping to feel. In 2000, Jim and I saw Bruce together twice in a 6 week period. Once in Nashville and once, through a connection I had at Sony, stage right, about four rows back, in Atlanta. I was one year removed from a heartbreaking divorce. I was hurting. I was living in a town where I knew precious few people and I was trying to succeed at a whole new career I had never planned on. I was in many ways, a lost man and yet for four hours on both of those nights, I was sitting with the closest thing I will ever have to a big brother, watching the greatest Rock performer who ever lived, singing songs that each had special, vital, life changing meaning to us both. I needed them then and I think I never stopped needing them.
I can be in the midst of turmoil or heartache and when I hear the opening lines to "Thunder Road" I am instantly thrust back to 1981, cruising Newark DE in my '69 Chevelle with that wonderful record blasting from the tape deck. The same holds true for Born to Run, or Backstreets, or Hungry Hearts, or Jungleland, or Rosalita etc.
The E street band held me captive. I miss the way that feels. I miss going to a record store and buying Bruce's new record, or Southside Johnny's, or that amazing first Little Steven record...on real vinyl. I really, really wish my daughter could have seen this band together, whole, intact and as magical and powerful as I have over the years.
That can never be now, because Clarence is gone. The Big Man has fallen silent and the echo of his soulful sax is still reverberating in my heart. I never met him but he was my friend. He elicits such powerful memories. He is the "Ho Ho Ho" at the start of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" that officially starts the Christmas season for me. He is the beautiful flowing solo that begins "Spare Parts" when played live. His ripping sound on BTR means only one thing...the crescendo is coming. His cry on Jungleland can reduce a man to tears at it's beauty. He is Bruce's foil, his friend, and his anchor.
Now he is gone.
The E Street band gave me the chance...whenever I saw them...to return to that blessed Last Innocent Age, if only for a few hours every few years. But the return was wonderful, complete, and restorative. I miss The Big man already. My soul misses him.
If there was ever a group of people I need to live forever it would be this band of brothers who make the greatest music in the world. That cannot be, and this morning...day one of a world without Clarence Clemons dawned to find millions of broken hearts, all along the path that runs from today, back to the Last Innocent Age.
R.I.P. Clarence Clemons 1942-2011

The Last Innocent Age...How many people can you cram in a Beetle...

2011-06-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid my mom drove a VW Beetle. Not the new version...it was a 1968 model. It was the real Beetle with a rear mounted, air-cooled engine and the trunk in the front. They bought it new in 1968 and drove it until probably 1975. It was a standard run-of-the-mill VW...no air conditioning, so you opened the wing windows and pointed them out so they acted like air scoops. It had the trunk up front and a storage area behind the back seat that we called the "well". Once or twice a year my mom would be backing out of my grandmothers steep driveway and bottom-out and drive one of the tailpipes into the muffler. That was a trademark issue with Beetles. The thing was great in the snow because the engine was right over the rear wheels. It was white and I think it had a black interior if I remember correctly.
What was really amazing about the Beetle was how much we could cram into the thing. We had discovered Elk Neck State Park on the Chesapeake Bay when I was about 8 years old. You could get in for $2 a carload and swim all day. So we would load the car up and head down Route 40 into Maryland. As best as I remember, here is a list of who and what would make the trek to the Bay...
My mom drove...obviously. I rode in the front seat because I suffer from intolerable carsickness (still do to this day) Tommy Riccio usually sat on the front seat with me, sometimes we'd jam someone in the tunnel where our feet went on the passenger side. Now these were bucket seats mind you...not a bench. Wedged in the middle leaving enough room for the shifter, was usually Donna Riccio or Sheryl Messick. In the back seat would be Kevin Messick, Monica Riccio, Sheila Messick, My little sister Beth who was a baby at the time (no car seat) and my brother Tommy would be hidden in "The Well" like a contortionist, along with a playpen for Beth, a cooler for food, and assorted bags for changes of clothes.
We'd load up towels, suntan lotion, and cheap plastic diving masks and snorkels and be off to the beach for the day. If anything had every happened to that car on the way down or back, they never would have untangles the bodies. We would have had to been buried together in a piano crate. Mrs. Riccio used to crack up laughing at us when we'd get home at night because she said it was like watching a clown car at the circus...people just kept getting out of the thing for about 12 minutes. That's not an exaggeration...we usually jammed eight people into a car meant for four. It was hot and uncomfortable and rough riding but we were going to the bay for the day and it was great fun. The water was murky, the crabs would nip at your feet sometimes. But we had a blast.
My friends and I have been reminiscing behind the scenes since I started writing this series. We have unanimously decided that we all wish life was like it was back then. I wish my daughter could know the happiness of riding to the bay with every kid on the block and not one of them was a stranger. I'm all about child safety, but it does come at the expense of funny stories like the number of people we'd get into that little car. Mrs. Messick used to joke that as we drove past her house on the way to Maryland, she saw flesh pressed against every window in the car. We have all remarked how well we really, truly, knew each other on that street. How we really did love each other like a big family. How we really still do...
We all wish our own kids could grow up in a world where it was okay to have that sort of lifelong friendship with people. People don't really love each other like that anymore. We fought...of course we did. There were disputes on the block and parents who would sometimes stop speaking to each other for a while. But almost invariably, enough time went by, and spring would return, and we'd be outside and they'd see each other and just start talking again like nothing happened...like it suddenly dawned on them how trivial the argument was compared to how much we all shared and how deeply we loved each other.
I miss that the most...

Some thoughts on the love of God.

2011-06-08T20:37:00.003-05:00

Taking a break today from The Last Innocent Age. I was thinking about this topic today, and on my way to my office this morning I guess I wrote this entry in my mind. Once again I have been thinking about, and considering the love of God. How much He loves us. How we can't outrun that love, out wrong that love, fall outside the bounds of His grace, or ever push Him so far away that He won't come rushing back, even more determined than ever to love us relentlessly.
We live in a world that is increasingly lacking in open demonstrations of love. Especially when you are a little older, have been through the minefield-laden holocaust of a divorce, failed your hyper-religious upbringing a few hundred times and slowly...over a period of time that somehow rushed by while you were fighting to catch your next breath...became something or someone you never thought you'd see looking back from the mirror.
I get accused of being a bit too honest on this blog from time to time and I know it's often true. But I do that because I realize that inside of us we all carry something...or several things...that we would love to unload and bare for the world to see, if only someone else would do it first. If we could see someone with problems like ours, coming clean and being honest and finding redemption and hope and happiness...maybe we could open up about our dark secrets and the things that haunt us and the things we can't seem to forgive ourselves for. The pictures that are emblazoned on our memories that we can't make go away. The voices that keep screaming in our ears.
There has to be an icebreaker, it seems, and sometimes thats me.
The last few days I have been wrestling with my own relationship with Jesus Christ and with how I think I've failed Him, and disappointed Him, and betrayed Him, and let him down. I get so mad at myself for being so darned human. I feel like the worst Christian in the world, and maybe I am, but compared to who? For every Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, there has been a Craig Daliessio. A scoundrel with dirt under his nails and a sack of shame and doubts and regrets slung over his shoulder. For every Terry Chapman, Paul Walters or Steve Allen or Jerry Falwell or Steve Berger or Dave Lewis, (men whom have been my pastors and my biggest spiritual influences at one point or another in my life) there are ten Jim Bakkers' or Brennan Mannings. Men who loved God deeply, but who couldn't find the release from the voices that screamed at them in the wolf hours when their honest mistakes turned to serious consequence, and their well intentioned dreams shattered like glass.
To talk about others would be here-say so I speak only of my own experiences. I know I love God. I know I don't like living that love for God the way a lot of other people do. That's part rebellion and part common sense. I'm not like others. Now granted, there are elements of living my faith that are universal. But most of my walk of faith will be uniquely mine and strictly between God and me.
Again for the last few weeks I find myself wrestling with the question of whether God really loves me, really forgives my mistakes, really wants the best for me, really sees nothing of the failures, sins, faults, shortcomings and broken pieces that make up my character. Does He really only see a child He adores? Does He really forgo the judgement for the stupid, rotten, selfish things I've done in my life because He already punished Jesus for them? Is the consequence of my actions really all the punishment there is for a believer? Is God really broken hearted over the distance I have allowed to come between us?
I have learned the answers to all these questions is a simple yes.
I learned it again...as I so often do...through my parenthood.
I was showing a friend of mine a video of my daughter singing at her talent show and the whole truth was illustrated there for me. Here is the link: Morgan Singing at her Talent Show When you open it up and play it, you will hear...immediately after she is introduced...a very loud "YEAH!!" in the background. That would be me. I was thinking about this today. Is my daughter perfect? Nope. Does she have issues? Yes...in fact right now my little girl is wrestling with some things I never thought she would be wrestling with. Things far too complex and confusing for a 13 year old girl. Has she done things that disappointed me? Yes, of course. But I realized something as I was writing this today...she has done things that have disappointed me...but she is not a disappointment to me. She can never be. She is my daughter. She is the love of my life. She is my reason for getting back up when the world knocks me down and she is the fire in my breast that burns in the darkest night and makes me press on. When you watch the video and you hear me yell...that is what God does for us. I thought about this today. God is wildly, passionately in love with you and He is your biggest fan! He is not like an earthly Father. He cannot turn His back on us. He turned His back on Jesus instead. He does not punish our sin...(assuming we are believers) our sin is punishment enough. The awful loneliness and isolation of separation from the only Father who loves us perfectly is more punishment than most of us can bear. Do I get upset with my daughter? Do I feel let down or saddened sometimes? Yes. But I never ever stop loving her! In fact, because I know her, and I know her heart and I know how demanding she is of herself...I am usually broken and sorrowful because I know there is no punishment I could ever dream up that would be more harsh than the one she is dishing out to herself immediately.
I have a friend whose eldest child is going through a period of extreme rebellion. He has become someone and something my friend never saw coming and my friend has spent a lot of nights in tears and sleeplessness over his wandering son. The young man won't talk to his mom but for some reason he has begun opening up to his dad. His dad is infinitely tougher and more strict than the boys' mom, and for a while the boy hid behind his mothers' leniency. But over time, the young man realized that he actually wanted some structure and he started gravitating towards his dad. We were talking about it once and my friend told me he thinks it's because, despite his being tougher...his son never once doubted that his dad loved him.
I wish we could get to that point with God. I wish I could stop stiff-arming Him and rejecting Him so that He doesn't get to reject me like I think He will. I wish I could stop fighting with Him over things He doesn't want to fight over.
I am going home Friday after 3 weeks away. I am going to see my daughter for the first time since the middle of May. I won't ask her what trouble she has been in. I won't check to see if she has clean clothes on or whether she has brushed her teeth. I won't check the condition of her bedroom or of her heart. I will simply smile as big as I am capable of, grab her in my arms, kiss her head about a thousand times, tell her I love her over and over again, and love my daughter as much as I am able to express.
That's what God wants to do with us. We all run from Him. That's our nature and if you doubt me, look no further than Adam. As soon as he sinned he covered and hid. God had never been mad with Adam before. Adam didn't even know God could get mad. But as soon as he failed, and he heard God walking through the neighborhood for a visit...he ran and hid.
If you are running and hiding...stop. Your Father doesn't care what you've done. Let me emphasize that. He does not care what you've done. David was an adulterous, murdering, liar whom God called "The Apple of My Eye" and described as a "man after my own heart". Peter was a foulmouthed, impulsive, reckless, fisherman who quit under pressure more than once. But God loved them both. God loves you recklessly, wildly, unselfishly, unconditionally, passionately, and without limit.
God doesn't care what you've done...He misses you terribly. He is that voice yelling loudly when you attempt your dreams. "YEAH!" He wants you to come home to Him and just be yourself. He doesn't want you to follow anyone else's prescription for repentance. Just come home. If you could listen closely for just a minute...that's what He would be saying..."Just come home. We can't heal this if you're over there and I'm over here...just come home to me" Just let your Daddy love you. He misses you more than you realize.
He has never stopped loving you...

The Last Innocent Age...25 Hours in a Day...The Games we Played, the Things we Did

2011-06-05T12:11:00.000-05:00

Every neighborhood...probably every region of the world for that matter...has their own games that the kids played growing up. I'm not talking about playing baseball or football...we certainly did that. I'm talking about the funny things we did to entertain ourselves when we weren't playing sports. The games we made up on cottony-thick summer nights when we needed to run to avoid the mosquitoes that were so big they had landing lights. The tales we told, the hobbies we engaged in. The innocent practical jokes we played on the neighborhood.
Monroe Avenue was built in 1960, and as such it was an "old school" neighborhood with telephone poles. Since about the late 70's, they bury all utilities, but back then they used telephone poles. It might seem like a nuisance and an eyesore...and it probably is. But a good portion of the fun we had on that street revolved around either the poles that stood on the curb at every third house, (and only on one side of the street) or the wires that were strung across and between them like a giant web. We played wire ball almost daily. This is were you throw the ball up in the air and you try to hit the wire. (We used a "pimple ball" or a tennis ball). If you hit it and your opponent dropped it, it was a single. Hit it on the way up and it counts regular, if you hit it on the way down and your opponent dropped it, it was a HR. We tied old Converse "Chuck Taylors" together and threw them over the wires. Johnny Wilkins, Richard Ferraro and I lost a sinker or two wrapped around those wires while we were practicing our casting techniques on winter evenings when it was too cold to go fishing.
The poles themselves were the most user friendly things on the street. The were a pole for a basketball backboard. They were the backstop for stickball games after we took the cinderblock wall down. And they were "homebase" for about a dozen different versions of tag or capture the flag that we made up as we went along. They were the end zones for legendary touch football battles in the street.
Probably the one game we played the most using the poles was "Up and Down Tag". The poles defined the base. The object was simple. Whoever was "it" was in the middle between the pole at the Riccio's house and the one at Mr. Lowman's house. A distance of about 50 yards. All of us would spread out behind the imaginary line that ran from the pole across the street. Behind the line was safe. Once you crossed the line, you couldn't go back, you had to run down to the other pole and cross that line to be safe. The guy in the middle would try to tag you. if you got tagged, you stayed in the middle with the original "it" until everyone was caught. then the first guy who had gotten tagged became "it" for the next game. We would play this game for hours. Sometimes we played a version of it with a wiffle ball where the "it" could throw a wiffle ball at you and that was how you were tagged.
We played a version of capture the flag that they called "Relievio". We were all divided up into two teams. The two poles represented our home base and the "jail" where we kept the prisoners we captured. We designated one jailkeeper each, and the rest of us ran and hid behind the houses. (This was in a day when virtually nobody on our street had fenced-in yards. A few families did because we had dogs, but mostly we all ran through each others yards at will and nobody cared) The object was to capture opposing teams players and take them to your base where they were now in jail. When you caught someone, you had to say "caughty-caught 1-2-3...no jailbreaks!". That was the official lingo and that meant the person had to stay in your jail until his team mates came to set him free.
This was going on simultaneously on both ends and it was a lot of fun that lasted deep into the night. It was nothing for us to be out in front of the houses playing beneath those street lamps until 11pm and our parents never gave it a moments thought. They knew we were out there, they knew all the kids on the street, it was as safe as anyplace else. We played "Buck Buck" which has it's origin in Philadelphia. We played wall-ball. We played a game that had no rules and no real intention except to scare us all. The game was created by Frankie Messick who was older than most of us. A little history is in order to introduce this one. Behind the houses across the street from mine was an area of public space. It stood between the backyards on that side of the street and the public park. It was a no-man's land. The county owned it and they cut the grass once a month, but it was really ours to run wild in. There was a big creekbed that ran through it where we had enormous fun. The creek was dry most of the time except when we had big rains. At one end of this area was a grove of trees we called "Heinyaland". They were calling it that when I moved there so I have no idea where the name originated. I do know it was really nice by day and creepy as can be by night. On those thick summer nights, sometimes we'd go back to Heinyaland and play a game called "Heinyaman". Frankie Messick would go back there first and hide in the darkness...usually inside the boughs of the willow tree. Then we would all go marching in to face his inevitable attack. He would come running out of the darkness howling and menacing and we'd be scared witless. We knew he was there...we knew he was coming...and he still scared us.
We played wiffle ball and we held our own roller derby. We all had those noisy steel-wheeled roller skates and we made an oval in chalk out in the street and we re-enacted the roller derby we watched on TV.
Tommy Riccio, Johnny Wilkins and I would take a trip down to the "Chelsea Swamps" where our beloved Nonesuch Creek was, and bring back dozens of cat tails. Or "punks" as we called them. We'd let them dry for a week or so and then we'd light them at night, convinced the smoke kept the mosquitoes away. We pretended to be smoking cat-tail cigars and we would blow the smoke at each other. each summer we got fireworks and we'd use the punks to light the fuses. They have a unique aroma when they burn and I can still smell them if I think about it.
We built models. Models of dragsters, and battleships and airplanes. We collected butterflys. In fact that was a big hobby for most of us on the street for a lot of years. We knew all the species and which ones were the hardest to find. Johnny and Richard and I always sought the elusive Zebra swallowtail and the Mourning Cloak.
We had chemistry sets and microscopes. We had erector sets. We built elaborate tree houses and ground forts. One fort even had a working fireplace. We built a 9 hole golf course in the public ground behind the houses one summer. We built goal posts for our football games. When the summer rains would come, we'd take my 2 man inflatable raft and float down the creek in the rapids that suddenly developed.
We had lemonade stands in the summer and snowball fights in the winter. We would hide between parked cars and hop the bumpers of those who drove down our street in the snow. You'd run out, grab the bumper and let the car pull you along.
We were fascinated by UFO's back then. It was the rage in the mid 70's. Me, Tommy, Johnny and Kevin would lay out in the big park on a blanket at night and watch the stars to see if anything strange happened. it never did, but we never lost the wonder of looking up into space.
We ran and laughed and imagined and dreamed. And the last thing we wanted was for the nights to end and to have to say goodnight and go inside. They don't make video games that capture what we had back then.
...we packed 25 hours into a day. We'd sleep, and dream, and wake up to do it all again the next day.

The Last Innocent Age...The Fond Farewell...

2011-06-02T07:17:00.001-05:00

There is no particular sequence to this series. I am writing stories as I remember them and so one day I might be recalling something from when I was seven and then next from when I was 20.
I say that because this morning I was moved by a particular memory of an event that I hadn't thought about until it suddenly burst on my heart this morning. It was the last night we lived on Monroe Avenue...I guess it was the actual end of the Innocent Age.
I don't recall the exact date but I would guess it was around the end of June. We moved to the new house on July 7, 1986. The week before the move, my mother and stepfather decided to host a party on the big deck we had in our backyard. It was an open invitation, come as you are, bring something if you want, stay until you feel like leaving. Pretty much the way all get-togethers on Monroe Avenue were since the day I moved there.
By now we had lived there 16 years. The neat thing was that in all that time, nobody on the block had left. All my neighbors...all my childhood friends were still there. Some of the older kids were married and gone but their mom's and dads and younger siblings remained. The whole gang showed up, including a few surprises. The Riccio's, of course, were there. (Of all the families on my street, it's the Riccio's and the Ferraro's and the Messick's I miss the most. They were the ones who I had a relationship with everybody in the house, not just the kids.)
The Ferraro's were there, Mr. Messick had passed away by this time but Mrs. Messick was there. The Campbell's showed up.
Mr. and Mrs. Savage came out. That was a treat, because they didn't do as much on the block as other families did but by this point they had suffered a few hard blows in life and I think they had drawn much closer to all the rest of the families than previously.
Mr. Wilkins stopped by. He was a big, gruff man and had been a widower a long time. But his youngest son Johnny was amongst my best friends and Mr. Wilkins had softened a lot in recent years. It turns out he was a really nice man under that gruff exterior. Our neighbors from behind us, whom we shared a fence with, The DeMattea's came out. Mr. Smith, whose grass I cut in the summers came out briefly. Dwight and Nancy from next door showed up.
They were all there and we enjoyed each others company until late into the night. We ate and swam and laughed at stories about what we did when we were kids. Our parents took turns embarrassing us...all adults by now...with "Remember when you and Tommy / Richard / Johnny / Monica...did _______? " stories. We cringed and we turned red...and the truth was we loved it. The night was sweet and it was more fun than we'd all had together in a long time.
Many times during the evening the parents would remark "We should have done this sooner...". But life is hectic and families take time. Sadly we seldom gathered all in one spot except to say goodbye, either temporarily like that night, or permanently, when we lost one of the family on the block.
We laughed and listened as The Riccio's told us stories about what the street was like when they first arrived. They were the first couple to buy a house on Monroe Avenue. They watched us all arrive over the years and they are still there..."The Mayor" and the "First Lady"...it's comforting to me to drive down that street when I go home and know the Riccio's are still in charge.
They told us stories about all of us kids...the day I met the other kids on the block. The day my sister was born. The hysterical practical joke that Kevin and Johnny were playing that backfired when the cops were called. The trips to the drive-in and the beach and the haunted houses at Halloween.
My whole childhood...or at least the greatest part of it...was gathered there that night on our deck.
Toward the end, my mom got a radio and brought it out on the deck. They tuned to an oldies station and everyone started singing. It was wonderful. Then, in one of those moments that seem simple and yet you realize how deeply they touch you only years later, everything I loved about Monroe avenue was summed up in a five minute stretch.
The most surprising guest of the night was Ray Weingartner (Sr). Mr. Weingartner was older than the other dads on the block. I don't know how much older, but substantially. Maybe 10-15 years. By this point he was probably approaching 80 years old. He was a tall, long legged man whom the other dads christened "The Goose". He had been a widower for a number of years when his beloved Maybelle passed some time before. His only child, Ray Jr. was married with a young family and he didn't come around a lot.
Mr. Weingartner wasn't a recluse, but he kept to himself. He spent his evenings in Mr. Ferraro's garage and Mrs. Riccio checked on him every day. The Riccio's were on one side and the Ferraro's were on the other so he was never really alone. But I think sometimes he was lonely and I know he missed his wife. I know this because of what happened when the music started playing. Mr. and Mrs. Savage decided to dance together. They danced a wonderful waltz. I had forgotten how good they were until I recalled watching them dancing at Tommy Riccio's wedding some years before and thinking how they could have been on the Lawrence Welk show. They were terrific together.
At some point a few other couples danced together and Mr. Weingartner was singing along and getting teary eyed. My mom got up and asked "The Goose" to dance. And he did. It was special...even to a 22 year old young man like me who was only beginning to understand what all this meant and how much this neighborhood had shaped me and how much I loved it.
Mr. Weingartner danced with my mother and I think in his heart his was dancing once more with Maybelle and he was crying openly when it was done.
...And everybody thought it was magnificent.
He passed away a few years ago, and I like knowing that his later years held some happy times with his extended family on that street.
I don't know if places like this exist anymore. I don't know if neighbors still gather without pretense or agenda or unnecessary gossip. I don't know if the residents of entire streets remain in one place for a generation or two and really, truly, deeply love each other. But I know mine did. I know I had a place growing up that was special and wonderful and amazing and it left it's mark on my soul. I don't know one kid I grew up with who hated that street and doesn't have fond memories. There are precious few places like that in the world anymore. In the end...the street didn't change...society did.
What the world needs now...more than politicians and programs and promises...is for people to care about each other to the point that they feel like family. I wish my daughter could have grown up on Monroe Avenue.
Heck...I wish the whole world could have...

The Last Innocent Age...We Entertained Ourselves

2011-06-01T07:26:00.000-05:00

Part of watching my daughter grow up has been sorting through all her old toys that I have in storage. I am a bit of a pack-rat when it comes to her. I guess it's because having been divorced since she was about 2 years old, my time with her has always been so broken. Once a week and every other weekend and two months in the summer. It always feels like I am running against the clock with her and I guess I held on to anything that reminded me of her childhood, even as I watched it speed by me like the shadow of a sports car.
I was looking at the boxes and boxes of toys she used to adore, and reminiscing about the toys I had as a kid. I was surprised to recall how much of the great fun my friends and I had, was a result of making it ourselves.
We all had bikes. Back then, the bike to own was a "Spider Bike" It had long "Ape-Hanger" handlebars and a "Banana seat" and a "Sissy bar". The taller the sissy bar, the cooler your bike was. Gary Savage, who was much older than the rest of us on the street, had a Schwinn version of this bike. But Gary's was modeled after a dragster. It was a five speed...almost unheard of back then...the shifter looked like a stick shift in a race car. It had a fat "slick" on the back and wheelie bars. It came right from Schwinn this way. It was the coolest bike any of us had ever seen.
We would take Testers model paint and customize our bikes, and we all went up the street to Pete's Citgo station and got an STP sticker that wound up on our chrome fender. The only plastic these bikes had on them were the seat cover and the handlebar grips. They were tough as nails. We built ramps in the street and jumped them. We rode down hills that defied gravity. We rode miles to Nonesuch creek and they laid in the sun all day while we fished. I delivered thousands of newspapers from my bike. We rode "no hands" and inevitably crashed once or twice when the "killer wobbles" got the best of us. And of course...we all put baseball cards in the spokes with clothespins. It made the bike look like a roulette wheel but sound like a Harley. You clamped the cards to the braces on the fender and they clicked the spokes as they went by. You could get 2 cards on each side, front and back. Eight cards per bike. We sounded like the Hell's Angels riding up and down our street all day and into the night.
One particular summer, Tommy Riccio, my neighbor across the street, found an old bike in the trash. He was always amazingly creative, and he cut the front forks off the bike, slid them onto the ends of his front forks and made the first real "chopper" we had ever seen. Tommy's front wheel was a good two feet further out than the rest of us. It was Easy Rider!
The only video games we ever saw were in arcades. Arcades! Remember those? We played pinball. That's it...Pinball.
We read comic books religiously. My favorites, beside the superheroes, were the "Creeper" comics. Tales from the crypt, the dark side, etc. I loved comic books. I loved the ads inside. I always wanted to order a bunch of the "Army Surplus" weather balloons they were selling in the back, tie them to a big garbage can and float away. I never ordered the balloons but I did buy the "1001 plastic army men" in the footlocker. The footlocker was much smaller than it appeared in the ad. It was about the size of a shoebox, and while I never actually counted...there weren't 1001 army men in there. But they were enormous fun no matter what. We staged epic battles in the sandy banks of the creek behind the houses. We made handkerchief parachutes for them and threw them out of our upstairs windows and they became part of the "101st Screamin' Eagles". And of course...we sent most of them to a horrible, deformed, fiery death under the power of the enemy death ray, which looked remarkably like my grandmothers magnifying glass complete with sound effects of us voicing the pain of the dying soldiers claiming "It BURNS!" and calling for their moms.
When the plastic army men twisting and melting grew old...we found an ant colony and cooked many an ant. Picnic goers may never know how deep a debt of gratitude they owed us.
We were creative. One summer evening, Tommy Riccio came outside holding about 10 feet of thread. My mom asked him; "What are you doing Tommy??" he replied..."I'm taking my beetle for a walk." He had found an enormous June Beetle and tied thread to it's leg. The thing was flying around, tethered to this thread. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. We caught lightning bugs and put them in glass mayonnaise jars, with holes puncture in the top. That became our nightlight. We used to go behind the houses and "Fight the Bats". There were common house bats back in the fields and being knowledgeable about wildlife, we knew they responded to high pitched sounds. So we'd go back there at dusk and click rocks together, convinced we were driving them to dive at us. Tommy Riccio had a Crossman 760 BB gun and he'd try shooting the bats. We never hit anything and never realized until we were adults that the bats were diving at small insects and the rock-clicking thing was of no importance.
We read a lot. I read the entire Hardy Boys series. I read Sherlock Holmes. One summer I decided I wanted to be a detective and I took two old baseball hats and made my own "Deerstalker" cap. (A Deerstalker is that hat that Holmes wore, with a bill pointing forward and one pointing back) I put the magnifying glass to a use much different than melting down invading plastic forces or making the picnic world a bit safer. I don't think I solved a mystery or avenged Holmes' honor against Moriarity, but I had a lot of fun.
We listened to baseball games on transistor radios. AM stations only back then. WAMS played Top 40, WFIL was Top 40 until it became "Oldies". WCAU was all news. I was walking to school in the fourth grade, and Tommy Riccio had a transistor radio with him. "Born to Run" came on for the first time. When Bruce hit that crescendo at the end, the hairs on my arms stood up and I got chills. From that day forward I was a fan.
We slept in Kevin Messicks backyard in a pup tent. Slept was using the term loosely...we stayed awake all night, telling jokes we'd heard our dad's tell and would never tell with an adult around. We told scary stories and argued about who the best baseball players were.
We decided, one particular summer, to hold our own Olympics. We made weights out of some rebar and cinder blocks. We used a hubcap for a discus, and a softball for a shot-put. We wrestled and ran and swam and fished and played. We had BB gun wars and never shot our eyes out. One summer they were building a freight Depot across the park in a field were we used to cut trails and ride our bikes. We would stand there for hours watching enormous machines transform the earth into a flat square. We stole matches and lit fires from the dry grass in the fields and we never burned anything down. We played stickball, wallball, Buck-Buck, up-and-down-tag, and Relievio. We rang doorbells and ran away to hide and watch the neighbors answer the door, convinced they had no idea who it was. Of course they did...but they played along and acted angry but probably laughed at us when they closed the door. ...and maybe they were just wistful for a moment when they remembered doing it themselves many years before. We soaped windows on Mischief Night and trick or treated with pillow cases. We did everything together because we really, deeply, loved each other. I think, of all the things I see different in my daughters' world...that is the thing that hurts the most. Neighborhoods aren't like Monroe Avenue was back then. Lifelong friends are so much harder to develop and maintain. It's such a different world. We didn't have half the toys and devices they have now, but we had creative minds and we had love for each other and we had fun. We made our own fun, and it was ours and we loved it.
...sometimes I wish it were still that easy

The Last Innocent Age...Heroes big and small

2011-05-30T08:05:00.001-05:00

Growing up in the late 60's and early 70's, as I did, you had real, identifiable heroes. I don't know if the generations that came after us have them or at least have as many. We had them everywhere. I remember a time when the networks all had their own "Science Editor" and, with the Space Race in full stride, every time Gene Krantz at NASA burped it was the lead story. ABC's Science Editor was named Jules Bergman. He was the guy who sat at that desk with the launch pad in the background and explained to us the dangers of the flight. He talked us through the entire mission and explained what an "orbit" was with a model space capsule on a stick. He described the danger of re-entry and let us all know it was okay to let out our collective breath when he saw those three red and white parachutes in the sky that signaled the safe return of our three astronauts.
The astronauts themselves were like gods to a boy my age back then. Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, Buzz Aldrin, and of course...Neil Armstrong. I was 5 years old when he landed on the moon and took those first steps and said those famous words; "One Small Step for man...". All my friends could talk about nothing else for months. We would re-enact the landing and the moonwalk in our yards. We would walk around in slow motion and bounce from one foot to the other to simulate weightlessness. I was 5 years old and knew what terms like "Capcom" and "Flight Control" and "Mission Control" meant. I knew what a LEM was and I knew what "Tranquility Base" was. The words, "The Eagle has Landed" had special meaning for me.
We idolized race car drivers. This was the heyday of Formula one / Indy Car (back then it was called "USAC") and Nascar was a regional sport in the south. I knew names like Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Gary Bentenhausen, Andy Granitelli, Parnelli Jones, and Jackie Stewart. I had a slot car track and the car everyone wanted was the black Texaco F-1 car of Andretti. There were guys who drove cars on Bonneville and set speed records. Guys like Craig Breedlove and Gary Gabelich who drove incredible rocket powered cars that approached the speed of sound. Mattel used to sell these cars with one big wheel in the center. They were called "SST"'s (Supersonic Transport) They came with this toothed strip with a T-handle on the end. You inserted the toothed end into the center of the car and it meshed with the gear that drove the wheel. Then you pulled that T Handle as hard as you could, it got the wheel spinning and you set the car on the floor and it took off like a bat. We all wanted the "Laker" because it was blue and looked exactly like Gabelich's "Blue Flame" car.
Of course...nothing provided heroes like sports did. Baseball was really the only game on the American consciousness back then. Football hadn't yet caught on and basketball and hockey were small venue sports. Baseball is what we all played and it's what we all watched. I had heroes like Mantle, and Mays and Dimaggio. Killebrew and Lolich and Koufax. The Oakland A's of the early seventies were an amazing team laden with talent. Reggie and Rollie and Catfish. I remember that October night when Carlton Fisk waved his 12th inning homerun over the Green monster and would become my favorite player of all time. When I was a senior in high school and our baseball team ordered brand new uniforms, I insisted on getting number 27, just like Pudge. There was that sad and terrible day in fourth grade when the news came over our transistor radios during Christmas break, that the great Roberto Clemente had died. I remember sitting in a fog in Wilmington Manor Elementary School, talking to my friend Mark Weidick, on the first day back from Christmas, and trying to come to grips with how this could be true. Not Clemente...not him! And to be doing humanitarian work...taking supplies to those poor people in Nicaragua after that earthquake. I didn't know where Nicaragua was, exactly, but it seemed like the dark side of the moon.
We were the last generation to have known "Wide World of Sports" and the wonderful Jim McKay. Because of that show, and it's knack for making the most bizarre and obscure sports interesting, my friends and I knew the names of guys who raced ice boats on Lake Michigan, or jumped barrels on ice skates. I knew all about Vasily Alexiev, the enormous Russian weightlifter. I knew who Al Oerter was. (The great 4 time Olympic discus hurler) Of course, we had the great Vince "Invincible" Papale who made our beloved Eagles as a walk on, and who had us all believing that one day we could do the same thing.
Those were the heroes everyone knew about. But my neighborhood had heroes of its own. The place was populated with them. Nick Caputo was two years older than me and an amazingly accurate pitcher. Where other kids our age used the catchers mitt as a target, Nick used the pocket of the glove. Sherm Johnson was bigger than anyone else our age and once hit a ball out of Stahl field (where our little league teams played) off the handle of the bat...it went about 250 feet. In fourth grade, my friend Jimmy Schnatterer was moving to Mechanicsville, PA. On the night of his very last little league game before the move, Jimmy got up in his final at-bat and told his mom he was going to hit a home run for her. he smashed one off the light pole in dead center field, circled the bases and ran right out of the ball park and into his parents car. My next door neighbor, Mr. Hainsworth, was younger than all the dads on the block. He was really like a big brother and he'd come out in the street with us and throw a football or a baseball. One time, he told me if I'd wash his car for him, he'd take me to the driving range to hit a bucket of golf balls. That was the first time I ever had been to a driving range and it more fun than anything. One neighborhood hero who stood out above a lot of others was Poppa John Iorizzo. Years later he would become a second father to me and his family is my family. But when I was 10 or 11, Pop was the guy who taught hunter safety. He was an amazingly smart man and knew more about hunting and firearms than anyone I ever met. One day I was talking to some friends in school who were describing watching this "guy at the skeet range" who was busting ten for ten, shooting two clays at once by waiting until the exact moment they crossed and hitting them with one shot. and even going 10-for-10 from his hip. (Shooting without bringing the gun up to his shoulder). I would find out years later, that was Poppa John. He was larger than life and full of wisdom and shenanigans.
Neighborhoods don't have heroes like this anymore. Then again, they might, but we'll never know because we don't bother getting to know each other anymore. On my own street we had Mr. Stuber who had been a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber in WWII. Pat Ferraro was a naval veteran and Mr. Wilkins was an ex-Marine. They were heroic men who fixed our flat tires on our bikes with a real patch kit where you scuffed the rubber in the innertube then applied that glue and lit it with a match before adhering the square patch. They showed us how to change oil and how to gap a spark plug, and how to put a new roof on the house. They had scars and tattoos and war stories. They were grouchy and cranky sometimes, but they were smart and funny and they seemed like giants.
I think the world needs heroes like that again. Real men with opinions about things like war and politics and social issues. I could picture each man on my block growing up and probably tell you what party they voted for and where they stood on the issues of the day...and what they'd say about the issues of our time. We had families of legends like the Tiberi's who were all boxers, including my friend Dave who would become Middleweight Champion of the World. By the time they reached high school they were all giant killers whom you wouldn't want to even sit next in the cafeteria. The truth was they were as nice a bunch of kids as anyone we grew up with but they were the only boxers we knew and imagination got the best of some of the kids.
There were boys like Cliff Steed who set a state record in the 40 in 8th grade. Joe Pinunto who hit a ball in little league that may still be in orbit. Mr. Davis, the principal of George Reed Jr. High who was scary just walking down the hall.
It wasn't a politically correct time back then. I think that's what made these people heroic. You were expected to have an intelligent opinion and to defend it. Others disagreed with you but it remained civil. Now they have neutered all the voices of reason because somebody's feelings might get hurt.
That's sad...we need heroes. Our kids need people who make them dream of greatness, because they see greatness living in their lives. I hope I get the chance to be heroic to a kid the way these folks were for me.

The Last Innocent Age. Characters and Heritage...

2011-05-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

I grew up in the Northeast. Right in the heart of the melting pot. I was born in Philadelphia and grew up about 15 miles south, in Wilmington Delaware. My street was populated by the wonderfully colorful characters that area is known to produce. If you were to ride up and down the block I grew up on, you'd find a last name for virtually every ethnicity that came through Ellis Island. Great Old-World sounding names like Ferraro, and Weintgartner and Riccio. Rubelmann and Savage and Jamison. Pennypacker and Lowman and DelVecchio. They came from various areas. The Ferraro's came to the area from the coal country of Pennsylvania, as did the Jamison's and The Wilkins'. The Pennypacker's were from Canada. Mrs. Riccio's father lived with them. His name was Frank Dobrowolski, but we all called him "Pops" or as his grandson Tommy called him..."The Old Crabber". My own grandparents on both sides were immigrants. I never met my father's parents but my mother's dad was born on the boat on the way here from the Ukraine. All my neighbors held onto their old world traditions with both hands. Mrs. Ric made kishka and Pizzelles for the holidays. Florence Rubelmann (who was Italian, married to a german) made homemade wine out of frozen Welch's Grape Juice. Mrs. Messick, (whose maiden name was Cataldi and who was pure Sicilian) made the best Italian food on the block. They all ascribed to the immigrants code of hard work. Mr. Riccio held two full time jobs. Mr. Ferraro was a wonderful craftsman who took advantage of every opportunity at the chemical plant where he worked, increased his education and became a plant supervisor. Kevin Messick and I worked at that plant briefly when we were both in our early twenties.
Mr. Wilkins was an ex Marine who worked for the power company. Mr. Messick was a union carpenter. They were our baseball coaches and volunteer firefighters. We didn't need a "Community Watch" program because we all knew each others families and if any one of us was doing something stupid and getting in trouble they'd just pick up the phone and call our moms. We didn't need a Community Watch program because we knew everyone, and anyone walking down our street who didn't live there, had 32 sets of eyes boring holes in them making sure they didn't stop where they didn't belong.
We were at each others houses all the time for the Holidays or birthdays or graduations. It was really like a family. They told us stories of the struggles they went through growing up and the struggles their parents went through just getting here.
If your family had a tragedy or an illness or a new baby, there would be a parade of food and well wishes for a week or more. Nobody visited empty handed. It was expected that you'd show up at every summer cookout. You were never formally invited...the invitation was extended when you moved in and lasted until you are gone from this earth.
Eventually my mother and step father decided to move to another neighborhood. They quickly found out how special that old block was. Nobody in the new place spoke to each other. Nobody cooked for a sick family or knew each others kids' names. They just came home, held cookouts for invited guests behind their stockade fences and lived as strangers.
I don't know if neighborhoods like mine exist anymore, but I wish they did. I'd move to one if I could. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I had friends I made for life. I had about 10 different families I could almost claim as my own. It was an innocent age and I wish my own daughter could grow up in such a place. But I think it is a time long gone...and that is sad.

Sidebar: Celebrating the Life of Dr. Falwell, four years later

2011-05-15T09:56:00.002-05:00

Four years ago today, I was sitting in my office and the news came on the wire that Dr. Jerry Falwell had passed. I sat there looking at the headline in stunned silence. They were words I couldn't even fathom...Dr. Falwell...gone. Four years later and his passing leaves a growing hole in the lives of the generation that loved him and answered his call to Liberty Mountain to become "Young Champions for Christ". He was a hero to us. We went to that school because of him. He was a man with a different vision than his contemporaries and that difference was what drew us to the mountain. When I graduated high school I had several options for college. I knew I wanted to attend a Christian College. My options were Bob Jones, Hyles Anderson, Pensacola, Tennessee Temple, and Liberty. Those were my options, but Liberty was my one and only choice. The other schools were marginalized by their bizarre legalism (except TTU which was fairly moderate for the day) and at least in the case of BJ and H/A they were run by some severely twisted individuals with such a self aggrandizing nature that they actually named a school after themselves.
But Liberty was different. Liberty was where you went if you had a huge dream and vision of doing something great for God and nobody there was going to chide you for it. Nobody was going to tell you to shut up and wait your turn and mop the floors and be happy. Nobody was going to deny you a chance to be the thing that burned in your soul every hour. The school had that attitude because Doc had that attitude. Doc had 18 year old freshman preaching on national TV. Doc would tell us that one day we'd be bigger than Notre Dame and we'd beat them on the football field right there in South Bend. Doc invited Ted Kennedy to speak on campus because being the man's friend opened a door of ministry to a guy that all the other Evangelicals reviled. Doc had the Arch bishop of the Richmond Diocese come to campus to speak because, while they might have disagreed about the Pope and about Mary, they agreed on the unborn and Doc knew which hill was worth dying on.
More than anything, Doc loved us. He loved us. He was funny and cantankerous and joyous and when he was on campus you could just sense it. He would sneak up behind you in his Suburban, cut off the engine drift silently up to you and blast the train horn he'd had installed. Then he'd laugh himself silly behind the wheel while you picked up your books or your girlfriend jumped into your arms.
Doc once stopped me in the hallway to ask me about a fight I'd gotten into the night before in a game against NC State. "What's it like to fight on the ice?" he boomed. (Doc's natural speaking voice was as thunderous as the one he preached with.) "Oh...pretty much like fighting anywhere Doc, except you have to watch your balance a bit" I replied. He laughed at that and then he pointed to (yet another) a scathing article in the Liberty Champion about what a bad testimony it was to fight in a hockey game if we were a Christian college. "Don't let 'em get to you" he laughed and walked away. It never did.
My favorite memory of Doc...and his son Jonathan...was during my freshman year. I had run out of money by Christmas break and I was not planning on returning for spring semester. Jonathan and I had a few classes together and we had become friendly. (I was a participant in the infamous "Andy Barrick Affair" where a simple game of touch football at Jonathan's house got too physical and the star recruits pitching shoulder was broken) Jonathan asked me what classes I was taking next semester and I told him I wasn't coming back. He seemed incredulous. The following Friday, Doc preached in chapel and the entire sermon was about how "Nobody should ever leave Liberty because of finances. If they don't let you check in, you come see me!". After the service, Jonathan comes up to me and says "You heard what dad said, right?" I replied a muttered "yeah I heard" Jonathan grabbed my arm and said "No! You heard him right? You'll be back next semester...no excuses." I suddenly realized Dr. Falwell had preached that sermon for me. Jonathan had told his dad and Doc was letting me...and a lot of others in my situation...know that it was never going to be acceptable to not attend Liberty simply because of money.
That was Doc.
In October of 2009, I took my daughter to homecoming. She was 11 at the time. We had been at an art showing at the new exhibit hall in the Fine Arts building and we were walking across campus to the dining hall to eat. I stopped at the intersection across from the Reber-Thomas hall. I was taking in the vastness of the place. The things that weren't there when I arrived as a freshman in 1984. I told my daughter what it was like back then. the big hill alongside dorm 22 where we'd take trays from the dining room and slide down the hill when it snowed. How the DeMoss building wasn't even there when I got there. How the bald spot got it's name. (the annual spring fires) How there were about 2500 students there back then. We played hockey in Roanoke, and football at Lynchburg Memorial stadium.
I looked at the ice rink on campus, the Snowflex, all of this... I told Morgan; "All is because of one man's dreams. One man who heard from God and went after those visions when everyone told him he was crazy to do so. Without Doc and his vision, none of this would be here. But with him...all this has come to be. When God gives you a dream..you go after it with all your might because this is what can come from that"
I was teary eyed when I spoke those words to her. I am teary eyed recalling the moment now.
I miss Dr. Falwell terribly. But his presence is all around. Carry on Doc. I know you are in that great cloud of witnesses, cheering on those "Jerry's Kids" who loved you so much.

The Last Innocent Age. Saturdays...continued

2011-05-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

Saturday mornings were like a holiday when I was a kid. There was something wonderful about Saturday morning. It felt different. Breakfast tasted different. It even smelled different. It was our day. No school, no homework, at least until we got older, no worries. It was the day we got to do what we'd talked about doing all week. Saturday was the day for adventure. Saturday was the day for doing that thing that your friend double-dog-dared you to do at lunch on Tuesday. Saturday was for baseball in the warm months and football in the cool months and hockey on those rare occasions when we had ice on the creek. It was for bike rides and cutting Mr. Smith's grass and earning the enormous sum of $5. It was trips to Wassam's 5 and 10 to buy waterguns and then hours-long watergun wars in and around our back yards. It was bike trips to Battery Park to try our luck fishing in the Delaware River. It was the day you waited for all week and you filled it with adventure and fun until the seams burst.
Friday nights were a close second to Saturdays for sheer childhood fun. On Fridays in the summer, Mrs. Messick would cram about 12 of us into her enormous Chevy Impala station wagon, (This is a REAL Impala...not the thing they passed off as an Impala a few years ago.) and we'd go to the drive-in movies. A mid 60's Impala wagon is about 37 feet long. You get in and walk to your seat. It has optional lifeboats. To say we "crammed" 12 kids into it isn't exactly true. We each had enough space for a small vegetable garden in case times got tough. The drive-in charged a dollar per person. My mom would give me $2 and I'd be set. You got in for a buck and for the other dollar you actually got a hot dog, popcorn, ice cream, and a drink. We watched classic Disney movies on the giant screen. Movies like "The Biscuit Eater" (which made me want a bird dog) The "Herbie the Lovebug" trilogy and classic scary movies like the original "Willard" and the endless parade of movies with the "Night of the..." tag. It was a trend in the 70's to make a horror movie and title it "Night of the...". I guess it began with "Night of the Living Dead". By the time I was a kid going to the drive-in, we actually endured something called "Night of the Lepus" about genetically altered gigantic rabbits. Rabbits! They had been the victims of some experiment gone amok and they were now the size of Volkswagons. Somewhere along the way, they decided that celery and clover weren't appetizing anymore and they developed a taste for flesh. They ate their way through town, chomping at the front doors and devouring the unwitting inhabitants. This was in a time before CG animation and they used real bunnies and small model houses for the panoramic shots. It was pathetic, but we were there in the drive-in with our friends and to be honest...the movie was second to the fun we were having just being there. We'd pile out of the enormous land-yacht and parade to the snack shop. Mrs. Messick hung the speaker in the window and told us to buy a couple of those curly mosquito repellant things. They looked like the coiled up burner on an electric range and you would light one end and it smoked and kept the mosquitoes away. We would spray "Off" on ourselves and plop down in a lawn chair to goof around and watch the movie. Somewhere during the second movie, (they always did double features) we'd all sneak off in the darkness to wreak havoc and annoy the other movie-goers. Then we'd hurry back to the car before Mrs. Messick knew we were gone.
In the winter, when the drive in was closed, I would sometimes find myself at the Messick's again. The youngest son, Kevin was my age and we were best friends. Kevin's mom was one of the funniest people I ever met. Kevin and I would make a run to The Doghouse on our bikes and get pizza for the gang and we'd watch a movie. Fridays were like that. Movies and decompressing from the week.
Saturday was the day you waited for. Saturday was like Christmas morning, 52 times a year. I have always been an early riser and I was generally up first in my house. Something about being awake before even the adults were...getting breakfast for myself. (Sugar Pops were my cereal of choice) Listening to the house come to life. Thinking about the day's adventure. It wouldn't be long before the day began. And it always began with a tradition...Tommy Riccio would come to my front door and he always did the same thing...he had his own "secret" knock. Five taps and one "ding-dong" it went like this..."Knock-knock-knockknock-knock...Ding Dong" (think of the tune for "Shave and a Haircut...two bits). That was Tommy. I think if I still lived on that street, he'd still come over and knock on my door that way.
...there's a big part of me that longs for exactly that.

The Last Innocent Age...Saturdays...

2011-05-14T06:02:00.000-05:00

Saturdays when I was a kid, were special days. Even though there was no school, there was still a routine. I was up and out of bed by 6AM. Bugs Bunny / Road Runner came on at 7. Once Bugs was over, you went outside...period. The only reason you'd be indoors when the next cartoons came on was if you were sick, or it was raining to hard to go outside. If you watched TV on Saturday long enough to see that funky train animation and hear Don Cornelius' deep voice announcing "Soul Train", it was pretty much a wasted day, because Soul Train came on at 11AM.
By 8 AM we'd be out the door and usually we'd congregate on our front wall to plot out the days adventure. If it was summer, we'd pick sides and then go behind the houses to Manor Park and play pickup baseball for the day. We'd have wooden bats that Frankie Messick got from William Penn high school's baseball team. They were cracked and we'd drive brads into the handles to hold them together. They were far too big for us but we never admitted to that. We were Schmidt and Mantle and Musial and Killebrew and Ruth and Aaron and Mays. Those guys used big bats and so we might as well get started. We'd play games that lasted 30 innings and we'd be dusty and dirty and sweaty when the day ended. But we'd be happy that we got to play our favorite game all day with our best friends. We'd come home and run through the sprinklers before dinner to wash off the days dust.
Saturdays in the summer often meant fishing. For me and Johnny Wilkins and Tommy Riccio and Richard Ferraro it usually meant pedaling our bikes through Chelsea Estates, the neighborhood next to ours, down the firebreak and out to our favorite secret fishing hole...Nonesuch Creek. Now, while that sounds like a name the local kids gave the place, it actually appears on local maps that way. Nonesuch is a small tributary that feeds the Christiana River. The Christiana, in turn, empties into the Delaware which runs out to the bay. Nonesuch was our little slice of fishing heaven when we were very young. Before we became avid bass anglers and outgrew the euphoria of just catching anything. The water was dark and smelled like diesel fuel most of the time. But you were guaranteed to catch something every time you went.
The trip was always planned out in advance. It was never a case of all of us deciding on Saturday morning that there wasn't anything else to do so we might as well go fishing. We would plan all week and decide on a departure time. The night before, we'd wait until it was very dark and then Johnny and I would go out in the fields behind the houses with flashlights and catch nightcrawlers. There is an art to this. You shine the light on the ground but the nightcrawlers are found in the perimeter where the light barely falls. Light makes them suck back into the ground so you have to find them in the fringe of the beam from your flashlight. We all had the same flashlights then. I was a paperboy and Radio Shack had been running a promotional ad where they gave you a free 5 cell flashlight. The idea was to sell batteries I guess. I took coupons out of my newspapers and gave them to my buddies. We were all carrying these grey plastic flashlights for a couple of years. So Johnny and I would fill our coffee cans full of huge slimy nightcrawlers, top them off with dirt and the next morning we'd set out for Nonesuch Creek. I had a knapsack from Cub Scouts and I'd pack a lunch and my tackle box. Then we'd jump on our spider bikes and head out...fishing rods in hand.
Nonesuch Creek was a thick and dense jungle of weeds and scrub trees. It took some work to get there, but it was our spot and we were like adventurers. We were Jerry McKinnis and this was our "Fishin' Hole". We'd tie our hooks on the line, about 12 inches up from the sinker, and cast out into the dirty water. It never took long before one of us had a carp or a catfish on the line. We never caught anything you'd eat from this place. There were no tasty species in these waters, and even if there were, the pollution would have ruined them anyway. We would crack jokes and look for the perfect spot to fish from and dread how fast the day was flying by. We were maybe 9 years old and we were miles from home in a secluded wooded area by ourselves. And it never occurred to our parents...or to us...that there would be a hint of danger. There wasn't. It was a different world then. We never had so much as a whisper of a problem in all those glorious trips to Nonesuch Creek. We put worms on hooks, took nasty catfish off them, then wiped our hands on our jeans and ate our lunch and never thought once about bacteria. We picked ticks off each other and peed in the bushes like real men. We carried pocket knives we got from the Cub Scouts and we entertained ourselves by burning ants with a magnifying glass while we waited for the fish to bite. The sun was hot and the field smelled like grass and honeysuckle and water. We'd catch horrible cases of poison ivy and we'd look like whitefaced Vaudeville players with calamine lotion from head to toe. We wore our old Converse Chuck Taylors on these trips so the new ones didn't get ruined. If we got a flat tire, we all knew how to fix the tube ourselves and get back on the road. On one memorable trip, we had been talking about eating our catch for the week before. We decided this week was the week. My mother had just gotten a new set of "Revere ware" which was the copper-bottomed rage in the day. So I snuck up into the loft area over our garage and took one of her old enamel frying pans that was destined for a garage sale. I stuck it in my knapsack and we went fishing. Tommy Riccio and Me and another kid from the street named Jack Bodzo, Tommy caught an enormous carp and we decided to try cooking it. We built a small fire and broke out the pan I'd brought. Tommy gutted the nasty fish and we cooked it. When it was done, we tried a bite. It was about as horrible as you could imagine. It tasted like dirt, and oil and sewage. Tommy and I spit it out. Jack, for some strange reason, sort of liked it and ate a bit of it. We had no oil for the pan and the inside was scorched and the outside was covered in soot, so the pan stayed behind.
We never tried eating anything from Nonesuch again, but we can always say we had the experience.
As exciting as that sounds...that was a typical Saturday for me and my friends. Every day was filled with adventure and imagination and fun. We stayed busy. We played the games that kids now only play on computer. The days flew by.
As have the years...

Happy Birthday Morgan

2011-05-06T20:59:00.000-05:00

An interlude in the "Innocent Age" series while I mark the passing of time once again...
Tomorrow my daughter, Morgan Wray Daliessio, will be 13. I can't believe the time has come and gone so quickly.
She came into this world two weeks early, on a Thursday night at St.Thomas hospital. She was tiny, and dark haired and perfect. For 8 1/2 months I anticipated becoming a dad. From that scary moment in Pat's restaurant back home in Delaware when Holly took the pregnancy test in the bathroom, until May 7, 1998 I couldn't wait until she got here. I talked to her every night through a paper towel tube, pressed against her mom's belly. One particular night, I leaned over and said "Hi Morgan...it's your daddy...I love you!" and in an instant, she kicked. She recognized my voice and knew I loved her before she took her first breath. She has never doubted that one very important truth...that her daddy loves her. When a child knows that to be true...when a child can trust that to be true...she will go far. When the world is against her and there are nothing but storm clouds and she has tripped and fallen on rocks she cannot even see...she will know, "My daddy loves me...he will be here for me, he believes in me...I can make it"
I can't think of a moment in the last 13 years that she hasn't brought me joy, given me hope, restored my faith, stoked the fire of faith, made me smile, and weep, with pride simultaneously, and fall to my knees more than a few times in thanks for the privilege of being her dad. She has shown me how a loving heart can make a difference. She has shown me that there is a love in this world that never fails, never abandons, and loves without limits.
She is talented beyond what I would ever have dreamed. She is caring and loving and tenderhearted in ways I have never witnessed. She wants to be a missionary or a school teacher. She wants to sing.
In the last 4 years I have lost so much. And in every loss, she lost as well because everything I have and am was founded in her and in my love for her and all those losses were her losses too. She has withstood them like a saint. She has never complained and seldom shown the sadness her heart surely contained...except when discussing her beloved pets. That becomes too much for her sometimes and the tears slip from her eyes.
My daughter is becoming a real godly woman. She has more love for Jesus than I have ever seen in a kid her age. It's sincere and real and genuine. She loves her family fiercely. She loves being a Daliessio. We talk of traveling to Montecassino one day to see my grandfather's hometown. She loves her Aunts and Uncles and cousins. She loves Seven Fishes at Christmas Eve with Toni and Nick and Uncle Franny.
She loves to sing. She sings all the time and everywhere she goes. Her voice gives me pause and makes me smile. She knows it is a gift and maintains such humility about it...I am proud of her.
She is 13 now. In five years she will leave and go to college and the return trips will be fewer and fewer. My little arrow has gotten another year closer to that sad and glorious day when God shows me, in no uncertain terms, where her intended target is. I will bend my bow with trembling hands...aim my sight through hot tears, and with a kiss and a smile I will let her fly...to become who and what she was put here to be. And her story will just be beginning.
...but tonight, she is my little girl, if only for a short time more. For all I have lost in the last four years, I have retained the only thing that really matters, and the one thing that gives me strength to try to get back all that has slipped away. I would breathe my final breath into her lungs to see her live. I would set my own dreams alight to see hers come true. For all else I may be...I am her dad and that is a blessing that I could not properly thank God for if I had eternity to say it and a thousand songs to sing it.
Happy Birthday Morgan Wray...You are the kiss of God on my tired lips and when you smile...I feel His smile as well. Your daddy loves you more than all his many words can ever tell.
Never forget that...

The Last Innocent Age...When Neighborhoods had Characters

2011-05-01T11:00:00.002-05:00

The first neighborhood I really became a part of was Wilmington Manor. We moved to the house on Monroe Avenue when I was 7. We moved in February of 1971 and the morning we moved, my "uncle" John died in a car accident. He wasn't a relative but our families were too close to ever call him "Mr. Rulon". He was Uncle John and his wife was Aunt Brenda. His son Chucky was one of my best friends at our old house. I know I didn't fully grasp what it meant that he had died. Uncle John was a character. His father even more so. His dad owned a bar in West Chester and carried a cane with a sword inside it. He also had one with a shotgun built in.
There is always a rite of passage when you are the new kid on the block. Monroe Avenue was no different. The street was a dead end, and so the lack of traffic flow allowed the kids to play outside in the street a lot more than other kids would. The neighbors were all friendly to each other, for the most part. Everyone knew each other and they were all "family". Most of the families were original owners when the neighborhood was built in 1960. If you were the new kid, it meant that one of the old kids must have left. This was tough for the others and it made it hard to gain acceptance at first. In my case, the Efta family had moved away. They had three kids and the two boys were popular with the others on the block. So I was the new kid who lived in the Efta's house. Our house had a 4 foot tall block wall across the front yard and up the sides. The yards were all sloped and apparently Mr. Efta had desired a flat yard instead of a slope. So he built a giant retainer wall around the three sides of the perimeter of the yard, back-filled it and planted grass and two trees. The wall was a gathering point for all of us kids on Monroe Avenue. The day we moved in. our neighbor directly across the street. Mrs. Riccio, came over and introduced herself. Knowing how things were done on the block, I'm sure she brought us something to eat. That's what you did back then. You took food to your new neighbor, or your sick neighbor or your neighbor who just suffered a loss. Because you weren't strangers living on the same street, you were friends. You cared about each other...a great deal. I loved Mrs. Riccio. I still make it a point to go see her and her husband when I get home each year. She and her husband were the first family to buy a house on Monroe Avenue. They knew the builder personally. They knew everybody on the street and everybody knew them. Mr. Riccio is affectionately known as "The Mayor" because he has tenure over all the other neighbors. Their son Tommy was one of my best friends growing up. Their daughters Donna and Monica are too, and we all made the block a special place. But first they had to accept me...
"Mrs. Ric" (as I lovingly still call her) still loves telling this story: about a week after we moved on the street, her son Tommy came in the house and said "Mom, I think the boy who moved across the street is named "Newt". Mrs. Ric said "Well I met them last week and I'm pretty sure his name is Craig". Tommy replied "but I heard his dad calling him Newt". It's funny now and it took us a while to figure it out. My uncle Jack had sometimes called me "Craig-a-nooch" and my stepfather had done so on occasion as well. Tommy had heard him call me that and thought he was calling me Newt. We still laugh at that today.
Sometime in the week or so after we moved in and got unpacked, it was time for my official appearance before the lodge. I would be accepted or voted off the island and this meeting would be the biggest factor. For a week or so, the other kids didn't congregate on the wall like they usually did. I guess they were waiting to see if my parents would be cool with it. Eventually though, they showed up. I think it was also a way of checking me out. They probably knew I'd come out to meet them after a while. The kids on Monroe Avenue were divided into three pretty distinct age groups. The "big kids" were the oldest. They were Franky Messick, Donna Riccio, and Mike Wilkins and Bobby Pennypacker. Mike and Bobby didn't really do much with the rest of us on the street. Ray Winegartner was older still and really never associated with us much. He was an only child who had really cool cars. Robby Miller lived across the street from me, next to the Riccio's. He was a stud athlete and we hardly saw him. The Miller's moved away about a year after I moved there.
Those were the "big Kids" The next group were my age. I was seven when I moved there. My group included Tommy Riccio, who was a couple of years older than me, Jack Bodzo, Ann Pennypacker and Frances Pennypacker and Billy Messick and Patrick Ferraro who were also older. Then there were the guys my age. Johnny Wilkins, Richard Ferraro, and Kevin Messick.
This particular day, all the kids on the block were playing touch football in the street. I came out and stood on the wall and they all said hello. We talked for a minute and somehow the topic of our fathers was introduced. I told Franky Messick that my stepfather was "7 feet tall". Now he wasn't of course, but when you are 7years old, a man 6 feet tall seems like a giant and 7 feet tall was about as tall as I could imagine. Franky laughed out loud and told me I was crazy. "Nobody is 7 feet tall...that's how tall Lew Alcindor is!" I had no idea who Lew Alcindor was at 7 years old. But I felt a little embarrassed and I think after that, they tossed me the football and we started playing. Over time, these kids would become my extended family and their parents would contribute to all of us coming of age on the street. Each of their dads were unique men who had very distinct personalities. The same for each of their moms. We went to each other graduations and birthday parties and weddings. We knew all the secret places in each others houses and cut through each others back yards. We slept out in tents and went sledding in the field behind our street. We hopped cars and had snowball fights and rode our bikes to secret fishing holes. We told funny jokes and ate Italian Ice and made up games that we played outdoors until very late on thick, humid summer nights.
...and the whole adventure began with that first big introduction on the wall.

What Defines the Last Innocent Age?

2011-04-26T20:29:00.000-05:00

Okay gang...here we go. I think this will be great fun. The series is "The Last Innocent Age". What defines that? What is this age and how do you know if you're a part of it?
One definition is age. I guess the easiest determining factor is if you were born at the tail end of the baby boom or maybe a few years after. I'm going to say if you are 43 or older, you are part of this Innocent Age.
That's easy. But now the intangible definition...
If you remember Saturday morning Cartoons. If you remember when you actually celebrated Christmas in school and not Winter Holiday. If you put baseball cards in your spokes to make it sound like a Harley. If that bike was a "Spider bike". If you owned a Duncan YoYo (A Butterfly model especially) If you owned "Clackers" or "Roller Derby" brand roller skates for the street with steel wheels. If you know what a Jack and Jill Ice Cream truck is. If you caught lightning bugs and kept them in mayonnaise jars as nightlights. If you ever kept a jar of tadpoles and watched them become frogs. If you ever fished with a cork bobber. If you remember TV shows like "The Brady Bunch", "The Courtship of Eddies Father" or "The Partridge Family" when they where new. If you knew that Once Bugs Bunny was over on Saturday morning you went outside to play for the entire day unless you were sick. If you went to drive in movies and remember those speakers that hung in the drivers side window or those curly mosquito repellent things they sold that you lit with a match and it smoked and kept the mosquitoes away. If you played Little League baseball and you wore your stirrups high. If you blocked your baseball cap with baseball cards and oiled your glove and tied a baseball in it to break it in. If you remember AM radio and TV Antennas and Dr. J's Afro. If you remember who played third base before Mike Schmidt in Philly and if you remember the bumper sticker that said "Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent"
If you stayed out until 10 pm on cottony summer nights playing tag, or Buck-Buck in the street with your friends. If you played wiffle ball or stick ball or kick the can of capture the flag. If watching TV was like punishment on a Saturday afternoon when you'd rather be playing with your friends. When you had no idea what a video game was. If you watched "the Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday nights before getting ready for school to begin again on Monday.
If you remember Scary movies at matinees and Shows like Captain Noah and his Magical Ark. If you remember your parents talking in hushed tones about the war in Vietnam. If you remember a time when there were NO leather sneakers except for Pumas. If names like Ille Nastase, Bjorn Borg, Chris Evert, Rick Wise, Carl Yazstremski or Bobby Orr mean something to you. If Jim McKay was your guide to obscure but wildly interesting sports from around the world. If you remember slot cars and Rock 'em Sock 'em robots and playing 500 Rummy with your grandma...you are probably part of the Last Innocent Age.
Mostly...if you grew up in a time when you knew...really really knew your friends on your block and you knew their parents and they were a part of your life like a family member. If you knew your friends grandfather because he lived with your friend...or you knew what kind of beer your friends dad drank or you knew which mom on the block made the best dinners. if you remember a time and place when neighbors watched out for each other, cooked for each other if there was a sickness or a death and loved each other like family...you are part of the Last Innocent Age. It's gonna be a lot of fun...and I am afraid it's going to be a touch of sadness because it truly was a time that has come and gone.
This will be a chronicle of memories made with Tommy and Donna and Monk and Kevin and Billy and Franky and Cheryl and Sheila. It's Johnny and Mark and Richard and Pat and my brother Tom. It's men like Pat Ferraro and Bill Messick and Ben Wilkins and old man Weingartner (The Goose) and "The Mayor" Leon Riccio. It's pets we loved like Cinder the beagle, Teddy the St. Bernard, Cookie the cat, Max the Springer Spaniel. It's our first car, our first fish, the first time we hopped cars and our first kiss. It's street hockey at Our Lady of Fatima parking lot. It's Wilmington manor Elementary school, George Read Middle school and William Penn high. it's fishing at None Such Creek, sledding in Manor Park and swimming at Elk Neck.
We could stay out at night without fear of weirdos and danger. It's a time when paper boys delivered the news. Its a Cup parade down Broad Street and it's Tug McGraw leaping off the mound. It's our story...it was a good one and we're going to have fun telling it.
Ready? here we go...

The Last Innocent Age...

2011-04-23T17:54:00.000-05:00

Hey gang...
Yeah I'm still alive! It's been a long time since I've written and to be honest, I was worried I had lost my desire. A lot has been happening...big life changes...tough decisions. I haven't had the extra time to sit down and write and I haven't really felt like it. But yesterday i got a piece of news that made me get back in gear and probably start laying out my next book. Like "A Ragamuffin Christmas", I think I'm going to start it off as a blog series and see how it flies.
Yesterday I got the sad news that one of my childhood friends' father had passed away. Mr. Wilkins was a big man. He worked for the power company after serving in the Marine Corp. His youngest son John was one of my dearest friends growing up on Monroe Avenue. He remains a friend to this day.
Johnny's dad joins Mr. Messick and Mr. Ferraro as dad's from the block who have gone on to heaven. I am sad to be marking the time in this way.
Monroe Avenue was a dead-end street we were kids. (It's be redesigned now and traffic flows through). It was a wonderful place to grow up back then. We were all friends, we had traditions and habits and secrets that only the kids on the block knew.
We did things that the next generation (our kids) will never know about or experience. I am starting to realize that we were the last truly innocent generation. After us, life began to get complicated much earlier and kids don't do the things we did. So that is what the next series will be..."The Last Innocent Age". It's stories of growing up in a time when life was easier, kids were safer, and the world was still a happy place. Stories of telephone pole tag, sandlot baseball, Saturday fishing trips to "Nonesuch" creek, holding our own Olympics, and learning about life. Stories that will mostly make you laugh, sometimes make you cry, and always make you remember when you did things much the same way. I'm hoping it'll be special, and wonderful...especially for my friends from Monroe Avenue...who may be the only people in the world who know how to play "Hinyaman"
Craig

Hello again...hello

2011-02-10T08:06:00.000-06:00

Hey gang,
No...I haven't left the building. It's been a very busy time over the last three months. I haven't had the opportunity to write here much at all but I am taking steps to change that. I have a lot going on and there will be announcements upcoming. A few highlights to whet your appetite...
A BIG announcement about "A Ragamuffin Christmas" and the very exciting plans that are coming together for this project. Not going to divulge here...but a hint would be that other folks whose names are synonymous with the term "ragamuffin" will be involved! :)
A new book is in the works. I don't have a time frame for this one and I may to a test run as an ebook just to gauge reaction / interest. It's another fiction and another very emotionally charged work.
This year, if I have time...I plan on revisiting the first book I wrote, "Sometimes Daddies Cry", which was my very personal view of life as a divorced dad. It's been 4 years since I wrote the first draft of that book and I want to update and revise because life changes.
I may revise "Nowhere to Lay My Head" which was my second book. Because "Harry Kalas Saved My Life" was born out of that book, an because HKSML tells so much of my story, I am thinking of revising "Nowhere" to more of a study of the homelessness and humanity of Jesus Christ. That was a key lesson I learned during those long months and I think it's a very moving and passionate view of Jesus, and one that isn't explored nearly enough.
On top of this I really want to resume this blog on a regular basis. I may not be able to post daily anymore but I would like to see one item a week at least.
I'm excited to be back at it and we'll see you soon. Please be watching the Facebook page for "A Ragamuffin Christmas" for announcements in the very near future!
High Hopes!
Craig

2010 and looking forward to 2011

2011-01-01T06:57:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year everyone!. We pass that around like "Hello" or "have a nice day", don't we?
I remember where I was this time last year. Day one of a New Year and I was sad because of a betrayal by someone I thought much more highly of than I ever should have. We'll come back to that but it was that heartbreak that opened the door to the best friendship I have developed in recent years...perhaps in my life. It's funny how that works...how pain and disappointment and unspeakable sadness can yield the fertile ground that brings about the greatest blessings in our lives. I'm hoping for that this year.
This year saw my daughter enduring some of the toughest upheaval in her mere 12 years. Choices that were made by some of the adults in her life effected her in ways that she won't forget easily. But she also saw that her daddy would always be ready to jump in and make it right if he possibly could. My daughter is one of the most amazing people I have ever known and it is a privilege to be her dad.
This year saw the publication of my third book and first that really was promoted and publicized. I did 45 interviews in support of "Harry Kalas Saved My Life". Amongst my favorites were, of course, the first interview I did, with my dear friend Angelo Cataldi at WIP. I was on TV with Ukee Washington on the first anniversary of Harry's passing. But the biggest thrill for me was sitting down at Stan Hochman's dining room table for over 2 hours while this giant of a sports reporter and legend in Philadelphia journalism interviewed me about HKSML and told me what a great book he thought it was. I still get a lump in my throat thinking how blessed I am that a man whose articles I used to read at the breakfast table when I was just a kid, wrote a full page story about me in my hometown paper.
In August I met some of Harry's family, and got the chance to say thank you for sharing him with us all.
None of this would have happened except for the immense pain of losing everything I had...and was...and having to find a new purpose and voice and identity. That's so often how it works in life. All those times I shook my fist at heaven and asked God in the vilest language and terms I could muster why He wasn't stepping in to help me and where was he as my life collapsed...turns out He was busy getting His new and better plan ready. A plan I wouldn't have ever dared accepted if I had been given the option of walking away from my old life or keeping it. If He had stepped in and preserved what I was...I never would have let him make me what I am, and what I am becoming. This was the only way...at least for me.
If last Christmas had not been so desperately sad and lonely and disappointing I might never have been so desperately seeking a reconnection with the soul of Christmas and I don't think the blog that became "A Ragamuffin Christmas" would have ever been written. I had to be in the frame of mind that desperation brought me in order to write something as moving and emotional. At the time I would have rather had a nice Christmas with my daughter back in the house I no longer own and with the career I hated but which provided for me nicely. One year later and I am still missing my five acres and my workshop and my dogs and my cat and Morgan's pony. I can't lie...but I see a reason and I see all that being replaced with something bigger and better and it is beginning to go from just a dream to something that is taking shape. That only happens if you stay in there and don't view the moment as all there is. It's not. This present problem and pain is not the last long act of your life. It's just a scene in a movie. The next scene will be better especially in contrast to this one. I know...I've been there.
Perhaps what every writer wants more than anything...even money...is to know that what he wrote touched someone. This year I learned that many times over. The emails I received, the notes, the handshakes, the friendships that developed because of something I wrote about a baseball announcer and a beat-up Volvo and the hope that we can cling to when the world is spinning out of control, were amazing. I am honored that my story and the way I told it, lent hope to so many people. What makes me happiest is how many people appreciated the frankness I told my story with. I didn't skip over the pain. Because we can't skip over our pain in the real world either.
I have friends who I wish had that luxury. Friends of mine who are in situations that make them hurt. Hurt in ways that those who love them are helpless to remedy and all we can do is love them, and be there for them when they cry, or vent, or need to be reminded that they aren't all alone in this world. I have friends who lost much and the gaping hole they were left with was filled by the resounding love of people they only barely knew prior to their troubles. As Rich Mullins said..."Much joy can blossom from many tears".
I have friends who took a tragedy that no family ought to ever endure...yet many do, including my own, and make something wonderful come from it. Something that will touch millions of lives before it's all said and done. (You know who you are and I love you!)
I watched as one friend picked herself up off the floor of despair and hopelessness and willed herself back, not to her old self but to the person she always was inside but never allowed to come out. One year later and she is stronger than she ever knew she could be and her long fight has been worth it.
I met more of my family that I didn't know before. I saw the depth of love which my "adopted" family really loves me.
I sat in Warner Park with my daughter as we sang songs together and I was proud and happy. Then she played Jeff Buckley's arrangement of Leonard Cohen's "Alleluia" and I wept with what I can only describe as tears of honor to even be her dad. My little girl is an amazing talent and has an amazing heart to go with it and being her dad is the finest work I have ever done. She will go far and I will give my last heartbeat to see it happen.
There have been friendships borne of adversity and of adversary. Those I disagreed with vehemently but still love and respect.
And there were some new friendships that I found this year that will change me forever because in only 12 short months these folks have already left their indelible print on my soul. These are the few I will name in print here...
Tony Luke Jr. Bro...you are big in every way a person can be. And I am not talking physical stature. Your huge smile is just the result of your huge heart and enormous soul. And your desire to leave everyone around you with that same smile is what we all should aim for. Your friendship is one of those great treasures I take with me from 2010 and look forward to in 2011 in greater measure. Your next project will leave your smile on the world...and I am excited for you! I love you my brother!
Brandon Kamin....The Kid...Every once in a while you meet someone and you think, "This person has whatever "it" is" and you are one of those people. You have the innate ability to make anyone interesting. That is an art and a knack. Looking forward to greatness from you.
Nick Bonsanto...another Paisan / Yankee / insufferable Philly fan trapped in the south. Which makes us soulmates! Thanks for your undying support and friendship.
R.J. Reyes...maybe the one guy who touched me the most deeply. When a young man comes up to you in a wheelchair and speaks to your for an hour about how much he misses his Philadelphia home and you realize that he was the very reason you were where you were that day...you have to love the guy! RJ you are a special man...hang in there bro, I believe God has big plans for you!
Skip Denenberg...technically we didn't meet this year but we spent more time together this year than ever. You are amongst my dearest friends Skip and your support and enthusiasm is infectious and sometimes...it gives me hope. You're like a brother and I love you.
And finally...I found a friendship this year that changed my life. It has been difficult and rocky and blissful and wonderful. It broke me down and it built me up and every smile was worth every tear and I hope it continues for as long as I am alive. To my best friend...every day of this world I will thank God for you and what you bring to everyone who knows you. You are amazing and your life is only now ready to blossom like the most beautiful rose. You have my heart...
To everyone else...God bless you in 2011 and God willing we'll all be back here next year with bigger smiles, more happiness and more hope than ever before. If you're reading this it's because I love you...
Happy New Year

The Measure of a Man

2010-10-28T10:16:00.000-05:00

I found out on Tuesday that a friend of mine has passed away. Keith Harrell was a motivational speaker that I met at a corporate convention in February 2007. I was working for the mortgage company at the time and he was a keynote speaker.
Normally I have zero tolerance for motivational speakers. Over the top nonsense about "believing and achieving" and guys who repel down from the ceiling to the overblown strains of "Ya'll ready for this?" just make me tune out.
But Keith was very different. From the moment he stepped on stage there was a depth to his message that other speakers were sadly lacking. He didn't talk about being a better salesman...he spoke of being a better human being. He wasn't there to motivate me to break records in production, he was there to motivate me to break records in the number of lives I could touch by just doing what I do better and with more purpose.
"Superfantastic" was Keith's trademark phrase and he was a guy who lived it. I remember sitting in the crowd that morning and seeing my future staring me in the face. I wanted to do what I watched Keith do. Convince people to be great at touching lives...then the sales would naturally follow. It took me 2 more years to finally give in to the calling I felt that day.
Keith was supportive when I emailed him and told him of my decision. Instead of ignoring me or giving me a brief nod, he sent me several emails full of thanks for God's using his words to move me into a new phase of life. He spoke openly of his faith in Jesus Christ and how thankful he was that we shared that bond. I felt that Keith was my friend and my brother in Christ.
As I grow older I am learning that the truest things you can know about someone are the things said after they pass away. At Keith's memorial website, there is an overflow of wonderful words about what great friend this man was. He was a star in the speaking world but never so big that he didn't care deeply about people who listened to his words. He cared. He saw every contact as a chance to touch someones life. The world was truly a better place during his time here.
Now I have the challenge of trying to live so that the same can be said of me one day.

New website...New BOOK!!

2010-10-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

My new book is finished and will be available for shipping in 3 weeks. Taking orders NOW!
"A Ragamuffin Christmas" It's a very very different view of Christmas.
www.ragamuffinchristmas.blogspot.com

Ergun Caner and the high road

2010-09-26T18:20:00.000-05:00

Lynchburg News and Advance ran a story yesterday containing a brief interview with my buddy Ergun.
He was gracious, kind, he didn't speak ill in the least about the school which he (and I ) love so much or anyone at LU. He took a nameless swipe at the mindless blogging cellar dwellers and pastors-wife stalkers who have been attacking him online but he was more concerned with doing what he does...proclaiming the gospel.
I am pretty sure I would have been far more incendiary. Dr. Ergun Caner is a great man...and this article just highlights that fact. James White and his mindless morons would have seized the opportunity to ratchet the invective to a higher level. But not Caner. There is a calm reassurance in knowing that you have a legitimate degree, a real knowledge, and that people actually want to hear what you have to say...as opposed to the Whiteheads and their hapless leader in his basement command center.
I'm glad Ergun chose to rise above this. I think he will come out of this with more respect, more wisdom, and with a greater anointing than he ever had before.
And the cellar dwellers will still be where they were years ago...holding conferences in phone booths and regaling us with bicycle stories and foul tips.
The Unwashed Mass...
Craig

The Amazing World of James White

2010-07-31T07:33:00.000-05:00

Look...I'm kind of sick of posting about this stuff to be honest. I hadn't posted about Ergun in a week or more. There isn't a point anymore. The attackers have self-marginalized and that's doing it's own job of silencing their already poorly respected voices. People are running from Whitey and his crew en masse now and it's a guilty pleasure to behold. It doesn't nearly "draw the blood" I'd want in return for what they've done...and continue to do...to my friend, but it's quite satisfying in it's own way.
For whatever reason, I cruised on over to The Tighty Whitey website and saw one of his most recent threads about the matter. The one where he attacks Tim Guthrie. He attacks Tim's defense of Ergun as friendship-driven and in ignorance of "the facts". Besides the fact that it takes him (as usual) 8 paragraphs to say what he could say with 2, (If you asked him where the bathroom was in a one-room schoolhouse, he'd write a ten page dissertation, with footnotes. But as they say...you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else) He makes some wonderful statements in the last paragraph. I didn't cut it and paste it, nor will I give you the link. You're capable and you'll find it. Just get ready for that last paragraph because this poor persecuted soul has apparently been so horribly and unjustly misrepresented. The best part is he lists his attackers as "Peter Lumpkins, Tim Guthrie, Daliessio, etc." Really?! James...I never thought I'd say this but..."Thanks!"
Peter, Tim...I apologize. Why he attached me to you two guys is amazing but you are far more important men in the theological realm than I will ever be or even care to be. James...baby...listen. My only association with the SBC is that after 27 years I will graduate from an SBC college next year. I did grow up in a Baptist church but it wasn't SBC. I am not a theologian professionally. I don't want to be one. I have no desire for it and after watching all of this unfold I made a firm decision against ministry of any sort. Because there are too many jackasses like you out there harming the people who want to do the work Christ sent us to do.
Let me explain my connection to Ergun Caner for you James...I like the man. Period. I know you find that hard to comprehend...probably even impossible, because I doubt there is anyone out there who would say the same about you. People might enjoy your teaching, or they might live vicariously through your eternal fault finding in everyone who ever disagreed with you anyplace or anytime. But I doubt anyone would just observe you doing what you do and say "Wow...that is one really nice man. I want to get to know him".
I met Ergun about a year ago through mutual friends. I am almost 47 years old so I wasn't some celebrity addled sophomore on LU's campus. I'm not in the SBC so it wasn't political. To be honest...for reasons that have nothing to do with anything theological, we became friends. I just like the man. It's that simple. It's probably off your radar totally, but it's just that simple.
Now, I have heard him preach and I have seen the results of God using him on campus during a few trips to Liberty. I am well aware of what God has done through this amazing man. But to be honest, where my friendship is concerned, I could care less. My pastor is a man of very similar gifts. But I love my pastor because he is my friend, not because he is the single best teacher of the Bible I have ever sat under. God once used a donkey, so those things are all trappings to me. I respect them, but they don't inspire friendship.
I suppose I should be flattered that you put me in the same line as Peter and Tim. I am just embarrassed. For them of course. They deserve better than to be compared along with me. They are men who have given their lives to theological discourse and I am just a guy who was homeless two years ago and who wrote a really great book about it. While pointing out that everyone who defends Caner does so because of some ulterior motive, or some secret handshake or membership on some committee, you would do well to add the fact that some folks do so just because we love this man as a friend. I have nothing to gain by defending him and being on his side. I do it because it is right. I am nobody James. Really I am. The difference between me and you is that I can live with that fact about me. You are still fighting it about you.

Keith...Bible Wheel...don't bother, you know you won't get through.

A family reunion with Fred Phelps, and the Caner-haters.

2010-07-24T10:26:00.000-05:00

So I'm already in a bad mood for reasons that have nothing to do with the ongoing, never-let-this-die-or-James-White-will-return-to-being-a-nobody scandal for the ages. But they are everywhere, those Caner-haters and they infest conversations like head lice. They pop up in topics that have nothing whatsoever to do with Ergun Caner, because if they can just insert his name someplace they can draw attention to themselves (so they can, of course claim that he wants to draw attention to himself. It's "look at ME telling you how you shouldn't be looking at ME!") . I am tired of seeing my friend attacked now approaching two months after the conclusion to this matter. I am tired of a megalomaniacal cult leader from Phoenix giving marching orders to his stooges (and stoogette) and sitting back and trying to heap devastation on a devastated man. I stopped being angry though because I have been watching the tide turning against these impostors and it warms my heart. James White is now one more blog from being Fred Phelps. (He is the jackass that pickets the funerals of fallen soldiers and claims he speaks for God) The similarities are amazing. Both men are already marginal characters to begin with. no one in the mainstream takes either man seriously. Both men have followers who have even more anger and hatred in their evil hearts than their cult leaders. Neither man may be questioned by his devotees or they run the risk of being attacked and labeled unregenerate. Both sound more and more insane with every rambling diatribe. Both find insane ways to attach some evil to a separate issue and both enjoy nothing more than a microphone stuck in their face and someone asking them to talk about themselves.
Oh and neither of them really know God. If they did, they wouldn't behave this way and they wouldn't be saying the things they say. Not every time mind you...nobody is perfect. But the vast majority of the content of both of these men's words are as Godless and evil as can be imagined.
They are really one and the same, Fred Phelps and James White. Self aggrandizing impostors who scream about a God they have never really encountered.
Now they are both part of the same steaming pile...

My response to James White and his cronies

2010-07-09T14:31:00.000-05:00

Regular readers here will know that I have been defending my friend Ergun Caner against the most purely evil attacks I have ever seen. He is my friend and I have seen things transpiring that literally make me sick and then they make me mad. I have at times, responded in my typical hotheaded fashion. Where my friends are concerned, I would die for those few that I call friends, and if you come after them you have come after me, and I will rain on you in buckets. I have been accused at best of being less than “Christ like” in my responses to James White and his sycophants, and at worst, Whitey and his cronies have decided that I am unsaved. That I have never had an experience with Jesus Christ and my life has never been changed. So for the record, and because my friend Peter Lumpkins has also had to do this…here is my own story. It’s lengthy; believe it or not this is the short version…

How I got to November 9, 1989 is fairly inconsequential. The highlights are:

I grew up in a VERY hyper fundamentalist Baptist church. This was the trend in the late 70’s and most of the 80’s. The hallowed names of Jack Hyles and Darrell Dunn and Bob Jones were regularly bandied about in the church I attended. It was unbelievably strict and regulated. I “prayed to accept Jesus” at age 8 and grew up in that church and in the Christian High School they started sometime in the early 70’s which I attended until graduation in 1981.

I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” (remarkable that this has lasted so long in Christendom considering no “sinners” actually prayed it in the Bible. Everyone who followed Jesus simply said “yes” to His command “Follow me”) and never questioned my relationship with God because, having such a strict set of rules I was just like everyone else, and since surely they were all saved, then surely I was saved too. It was essentially Catholicism amongst folks who detested Catholics. We held to all the sacred rites of the Baptist church. We burned rock records…sadly we burned the really great ones more than once. We stopped watching TV of any kind. We never wore our hair parted in the middle. Our girls and women never wore pants for fear of God taking their legs with cancer. (THAT…sadly…is a true story from the mouth of “Evangelist” Darrell Dunn! James White…I despise you but if you need a new target…go after THAT guy! ) We never owned anything but a KJV bible and our lips never even touched alcohol.

Because I never questioned my relationship with Christ, I never realized I didn’t really have one.

I graduated high school in 1981, went to college for a year in 1984, and could not get back the next year.

In the years after my first year of college I was a roofer, a carpenter, a counter man in an HVAC distributor, and I coached hockey. (I coached for 7 years, sent 7 boys to college programs and have one kid with his name on the Stanley Cup…but he was good already when I got him and I can’t take credit)

I had my own construction business and in 1987 my partner took the checkbook while I was on vacation and cleaned out the account and went on a 3 week drug binge.

I was left to face the mess he created, checks bounced all over town and I was arrested 11 times in 2 months because of his actions.

Having never been in trouble before, I was sure this was to be my demise. (In truth, they were treating it as a level above parking tickets but the judge knew I was a “good kid” and wanted to scare me so I’d never be in trouble again) I spent four days in jail until I made bail and got out to face the court system and trials and sentencing.

I got home on the night of Nov. 9 1989 and collapsed into a chair. I sat there thinking about my life and about my future. I was a good kid who at 26 had never been in trouble before and was sure this was something so bad that I was going to jail for years.

I sat in the same chair for hours, not moving. People knocked on the door and the phone rang but I didn’t move. The sky grew dark and night fell and I sat there without getting up to turn on a light.

About 7PM I decided that I would not allow myself to go to jail. I got up, turned on the kitchen light and went to my bedroom and got my shotgun.

I sat back in the chair, loaded a deer slug in the chamber and put the business end in my mouth. I can still taste the steel and feel the front peep sight as it dug into the roof of my mouth. If you’ve ever burnt your mouth on hot pizza…it’s the same spot.

God would not allow what was about to take place. I reached for the trigger and, because I had a 30” barrel and not the usual 28”, it was just long enough that I couldn’t reach the trigger without making myself gag. That one second of gag reflex was enough to have me ask one question: “Who will care if I do this?” I ran down a list and when I got to my baby brother and my Grandmother I knew I couldn’t do this. My brother was 7 and he’d never understand his big brother…his hero doing this. My grandmother was 88 and she had raised me. If I did this tonight, she would be dead tomorrow. It was as simple as that.

I put the gun down, walked into my bedroom and dropped to my knees next to my bed. For the next 3 hours I wept like a man who has been broken beyond limits. I cried until I had no tears left. I was dehydrated and sore. I asked God to change the life I had. I realized I knew all about Him and didn’t know Him at all. I prayed a long sorrowful prayer that didn’t mention ‘come into my heart” or be merciful to me a sinner” I already knew I was a sinner…I wanted HIM. I asked Him to be the God He was and not the God I was shown.

I’ve never looked back. (For the record I paid all the checks off and everything was resolved, so it was simply God using a situation)

I returned to Liberty U in 1995 and played another season of hockey. I got married, I became a dad, I endured a divorce that shattered my soul and broke my heart.

I became a mortgage banker when I wanted to be a pediatric orthopedist.

I lost my home in 2007 and lived in my car for half of 2008.

I have discovered and rediscovered His love and grace in a thousand ways since that night with the shotgun. I am cracked and broken and a work in process. All my things are becoming new…but they aren’t finished yet.

I have discovered His grace usually in nature or in great music or in the written word. I find Him at the beach in the early morning when the waves are breaking on the shore and the sun announces its intentions with a glow on the water. When me and my “adopted” brother Bryon were sitting on jet skis watching the sun coming up and it hit me that His enormousness must render this world in His eyes, the same way a snow globe appears to us…He observes it all at once.

I saw Him in February of 1994 when I was rounding the bend on a long ski run in Killington, Vermont and I saw 75 foot cedars with their snow covered boughs reaching to heaven. And I sang the words Rich Mullins’ wondrous “The Color Green” when he declares “And the wrens have returned and they’re nesting…in the hollow of that oak, where his heart once had been. And he lifts up his arms in a blessing for being born again” I’d never noticed before how trees reach their arms in praise. That was a moment of grace.

I saw His grace at work as He set in motion the 3 month string of events that would eventually have my little sister praying to accept Christ in the office of an evangelical Catholic priest, a mere 3 days before she would be run off the road by a still unknown person and be ushered into heaven.

I saw His grace keep a family together in the face of that tragedy. A family that had opened up their hearts to me and given a home to my orphaned soul for the first time in my life.

I saw His beautiful kiss on my lips as He blessed my then-wife and I with a little girl we named Morgan Wray. Morgan because we liked the name and Wray because it was my grandmother’s middle name and she was the first Godly person I ever knew.

I saw His grace when I was curled in the fetal position on my living room floor at 2 AM on more nights than I can remember because my wife wasn’t my wife anymore and my daughter wasn’t there and I couldn’t sleep and I was cursing God at the top of my lungs and I was ripping carpet fibers out until my fingertips bled. I heard His grace when he would tell me in a voice I will never mistake, as vile obscenities were spewing at Him in anger “I know…I love you anyway…I am here” His grace would not let me give up on Him even when I screamed my desire to do so.

I saw His grace as my heart began to slowly heal. And then I lost my whole life and had to start over again three years ago and found out at age 44 who and what I was really put here to be.

I’ve seen His grace every time I’ve told my story and some homeless man found the ability to believe that God might just love him too.

I’ve seen his grace when I read emails from divorced men who have read my first book or my blog and they realize that someday they will smile again.

I’ve seen his grace carry my pastor and his family through the worst tragedy that can befall a family and I saw that man and his wife allow God to turn that thing into a means of blessing and strength for probably millions of hurting families someday.

I’ve seen his grace on the pages of Brennan Manning’s writings as I read and wept my way through “The Ragamuffin Gospel” and The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus” and I dared to believe that God really does love me, deeply, recklessly and without anything I bring to the table.

I’ve seen His grace in the friendships He has blessed me with and in those friends who have risen to the defense of a dear brother who has been laid waste by these evil people.

So James White, Debbie Kaufman, Turrentinfan et al. I may not be the best at my walk with God. I may be stumbling my way like a man groping at the back wall of a dark cave. I may be, as Brennan Manning says, “An angel with an incredible capacity for beer”

But I am not, as you have declared, unregenerate.

What I am though is sorry. I am sorry that you live in such a constricted and restricting place that you cannot breathe Him in and feel His love as it settles on you like the warm summer sun. I am sorry you don’t find Him in the sunset or in the voice of a baby or in the smell of an ice rink as you skate up ice. (That’s my “one thing” as Mullins said)

Yes I pop off at the mouth when my friends are attacked viciously and I feel like defending them. Yes I will spit bile and chew a hole in a block wall if need be. Yes sometimes I probably go too far and I occasionally hear God telling me to “shut up”.

But for you to doubt my encounter with him is beyond offensive. It’s sin of the highest order.

I may not always do Him justice but I have certainly had many moments where I have met my Savior. I have an eternal memory to remind me…because when I close my eyes I can still taste that steel and I can almost feel my finger twitch.

Things I Blame Ergun Caner For...

2010-07-07T19:26:00.002-05:00

I got hit in the head with a lugnut from a Zamboni this afternoon and for some strange reason it made me really see things differently.
I see the wisdom of the Whiteheads and I have decided they are right. Ergun Caner is, in fact, at fault for everything in the world, and should apologize as such. Ergun...we were friends once but nevermore, quoth the raven. I am wounded you owe me an apology. I blame you for:
My waistline: it's your fault, Krispy Kreme donuts are so tasty and delicious. You've practically preached sermons about that, you defiler of the blood glucose levels.
My moobs: See above. Also, your heretical ideas of "buffet on wheels" was my undoing and you even caused me to stumble...I came up with the sleeve / napkins.
The Nature Boy Ric Flairs sad descent into doing ads for the Tennessee Lottery:. You did this. I've heard you mispronouncing the term "Woooooo". You sir have never styled and profiled! Not the way the "Thixteen taaam Worldth Champ" has. You have neither kiss-stealed nor have you wheeled or dealed. Repent sir.
The Phillies poor start: A food connoisseur who has never even eaten a Tony Lukes! You possess fraudulent, unaccredited fat cells sir. Repent.
My new found acceptance of Led Zeppelin: Prior to your series I could only ever tolerate "Fool in the Rain" and "Hot Dog" and of course "Kashmir" (but more as an ode to Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
Now I find myself actually knowing a line from "Misty Mountain Hop" and I've even forgiven Allison Krauss for that duet album with Robert Plant
The keyboard on my laptop: It is a greasy mess and smells like 11 herbs and spices. This I lay at your feet. repent sir.
My Obsession with chest hair shaving: I saw the baptism pictures from Israel...I was in shock. I watched as water from the Jordan literally ran off that pelt like you were the Yeti. You sir, are a Sasquatch!

There is more, sir...there is so much more. But I have to go now. My mom needs the basement.

I am
Craig Daliessio A.B.C. DeF. MOUSE!

They Might Be Giants!

2010-07-07T05:46:00.001-05:00

Okay...the guy is a despicable human being but occasionally I stop by his blog now so that I might see how a truly psychopathic mind operates. (In my opinion of course) Jimmy usually rants like a mental ward occupant carrying on long arguments in his head, with people like Ulysses or Daffy Duck. Endless paragraph after endless paragraph, spewing vile invective at Professor Moriarity, and finding yet another windmill on the horizon that just might be a giant. Then it funnels down to the kennel where the lapdogs live and before you know it, the fair Dulcinea has regurgitated it in her homespun, midwest fashion, and Mr. Anonymous, SouptureenFan has slapped it up on his wall and Danny Spratlin, the boy wonder, has twittered it all over the world while taking a break from declaring everyone he ever met in church unsaved.
Today's rant of insanity was a gem. It's megalomania carried to it's ultimate end. But first a little set up. How would a megalomaniac get taller? He would decide that the current stock of rulers and tape measures were all off in their calculations, he would develop his own ruler and then declare himself 10 feet tall. If he wanted to lose weight...just change the scales so they stop at whatever it is he wants to weigh. See how easy?
Today, Jimmy decided that the issue of his "doctorate" not coming from an accredited school was really a matter of a failure in the whole accreditation process. Oh and it's also about how going to a "Real" college with "real" accreditation, (and I am assuming a real brick and mortar address) is really all about pride and desire to impress people.
I concur. How arrogant of me to demand that the guy about to reconstruct my shoulder (again!) actually went to an accredited medical school. I mean it was a nice tropical clime and they had a real skeleton in the lab. That's good enough right?
I have hated every second of the Ergun Caner attacks...except for the last few weeks when the wheels have fallen off the collective wagons of the attackers and they have been exposed for the frauds and fakes and (in my opinion) mentally irregulars that they are. What troubles me most is that there is a real stirring now, after seeing these attackers, that my alma mater looks a bit foolish for ever having entertained this mess in the first place.
I have to go...I am working on a mirror that declares me handsome.

Dr. Geisler Speaks again...

2010-07-07T04:43:00.000-05:00

http://www.normangeisler.net/infurtherdefenseofcaner.html

Perfect. I have nothing to add. After this...all the detractors have is there self-exposed hatred

Thoughts from Teddy Roosevelt

2010-07-03T14:42:00.001-05:00

I am sitting in Panera choking back tears.
I came across this website with great quotes from famous speeches while looking for something totally unrelated to this topic. It must have been God. I needed to read this today.
I have failed more than I have succeeded in life and I have blundered along the way. But I have yet to quit trying and as I grow older I realize more and more that there is the real victory. There is the greatness. In not quitting. In bouncing back over and again. In refusing to relinquish my "High Hopes".
There are those who populate the sidelines or dabble in their lives instead of jumping in with a splash and going for the thing that makes them feel alive and that brings them joy and makes their family smile. They are the ones who will attack all those "doers" and "try-ers" in the world for every mistake they make and every time they fall. All these people have that tells the world they are alive, are their constant attacks on the ones who are neck-deep in the game of life. The simple fact is that the more you are trying to live...the more mistakes you will make. It doesn't work any other way.
Apparently Teddy Roosevelt knew this full well. Here is a beautiful excerpt from his speech "Citizenship in a Republic"

"Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Well said Mr. President...well said indeed.

I desperately needed this today and I know of a few friends who do as well.
You know who you are...and you know how I love you.

Dr. Geisler speaks on Dr. Caner again...

2010-07-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

This is marvelous and it leaves the ungodly haters of the brethren without response. ...although they will surely try

http://www.normangeisler.net/indefenseofcaner.html

Another round of spew will follow from the mouths of the Whiteheads, I've already surrendered to that.

Keith...don't post a comment because it won;t make it to the board.

Contradiction of terms

2010-07-02T09:03:00.000-05:00

Thot for the day:
"Reformed Theologians speak of Grace, consider themselves experts on the topic of Grace, and often have Grace in their church names, or book titles.

...Yet I have never found even ONE who practices Grace."

---Craig

Norman Geisler Speaks About Dr. Ergun Caner

2010-06-30T08:33:00.002-05:00

Dr. Norman Geisler is considered the grandfather of modern Christian apologetics. Those who practice apologetics do so in his shadow. Those who merely claim to practice apologetics, (and who spend more time attacking real apologists,) merely wish they could be one-tenth as respected. To the shame of those who attacked Ergun Caner...and perhaps to the shame of those who voted not to renew his contract as LBTS dean...here is Dr. Geisler's statement.

"An extensive independent investigation has exonerated Dr. Ergun Caner of all the false charges made against him by extreme Muslims and others, and he has been retained as a Professor at Liberty University. In spite of a few misstatements (which we all make and he has corrected), nothing has diminished his testimony and orthodoxy as one of the great Christian voices of our time.

I have examined all the ethical allegations leveled against him and find them groundless. Anyone familiar with the facts of Dr. Caner’s testimony and ministry knows that he is a man of honesty, integrity, and is a devout follower of Christ. I enthusiastically support him and his ministry."

Dr. Norman L. Geisler
Professor of Apologetics
Veritas Evangelical Seminary
Murrieta, CA

*Note From Craig*

For those wholly unfamiliar with the term or discipline of Apologetics, it means defending your faith. Telling people, factually, why you believe what you believe.
In terms we all understand...Dr. Norman Geisler saying that he "enthusiastically supports you and your ministry"...that's like Henry Ford telling the world you really know how to build a great car.

Friends that stick closer than brothers

2010-06-29T11:01:00.000-05:00

In the days since Liberty announced their actions in the Ergun Caner matter, I have run the gamut of emotions. I've been angry, hurt, betrayed, worried, disenchanted.
This morning I was so terribly sad. I am in deep sorrow for a great man who has been dragged through the mud and viciously attacked by people who claim membership in the body of Christ. I have my very serious doubts about whether these people have ever truly had an encounter with Jesus Christ. Jesus was nothing whatsoever like these people. Nothing. These people are monsters. They got their wishes and Ergun was not renewed as LBTS president. They decided instantly, that L.U. had not handled this correctly and they want more blood from Dr.Caner. They have decided that Liberty didn't do it the right way. I worry that they have tested the waters with their particularly evil and sinful style of attack, and found them agreeable to continued attacks. I worry that I may one day soon, find a website hosted by some of these impostors of Faith, with video of the late Dr. Falwell in "contradictions". I worry that Jonathan Falwell will find himself the next to be attacked or Jerry Falwell Jr. my chancellor. I worry that their real target was, all along, inserting themselves and their will into the operation and theology of Liberty University. The ONE unifying theme amongst these attackers is their errant, Reformed Theology. Every one of them, right down the line, is a reformed practitioner. The committee and the administration of L.U. would be wise to pay heed to this because that should speak volumes about the REAL reason they wanted to remove Caner and why they work so hard...and continue...to damage this man and my school.
Now...some thoughts on friendship...
If anything good has come from this, it would be the depth of love I have seen amongst those who support Dr. Caner and his family. Being familiar with some of those closest to him, I am impressed. This is biblical, Christlike, genuine love in action. When you love someone you are in anguish when they are in pain. When you love someone you hurt for their hurting. When you love someone, you rush to their side and you bind up their wounds and you weep in their pain with them. Sometimes you sit in silence because words are empty and thin. We find ourselves their with our friend Ergun and his family. We don't know what to say so we say nothing, except that we love them and we are remembering them continuously in our prayers.
When you love someone, you try to cheer them and make them smile. When you love someone you feel the piercing of the enemies darts as deeply as they do...maybe even more deeply. When you love someone you remind them that you will never leave their side, that you remember the great things they have done and the great way they have affected your life and how important they are to your every day.
When you love someone, you remind them of their own greatness and how much they have achieved and how this current situation is just a bump in the road. When you love someone...you never stop believing in them.
Ergun Caner is loved. I can assure you of that because I have seen the outpouring of his true friends during this time when fraudulent Christians have used him as a ramrod to infiltrate my beloved school and destroy the work that The Falwell family began, and continue.
I do not envy the pain and sorrow and hurt that these vicious attacks have rendered on my friend. But if there is anything to envy at all in this, it is the number of people who deeply love and respect and care for this wonderful man and his precious family. I envy that much.
Strands have been added to his cord, he has been kept warm as more good people have huddled around him in the chill of the night.
Ergun my dear brother...I love you. I am honored, and happy, and privileged that you consider me a friend. I have enjoyed every laugh, every funny line, every sermon I streamed, every kid I met on campus and those who emailed during the last months (that I never told you about) who have thanked me that an "old alum" like me (as one of them so graciously put it) would stand up for "their" Dr. Caner.
If you weren't a Turk you'd be a great Italian. I consider you not only "paisan" but familia. And as my people say "ala familia" "We're all family". We say that around the table, surrounded by those we love and consider family, whether defined by blood or by deed. Capps, Dr. Penn, Leo, Redden, My brothers in arms...ala familia to you as well. Your efforts at simply showing love and friendship have made me so proud. Thanks for bringing me into your fold. There are others I know I forgot, but you are in this collective heartbeat we all feel right now. We have been in a battle, seen a shameful and fraudulent enemy who is more ruthless and despicable than anything we imagined. Hopefully, while the immediate battle was lost, and our dear friend took an arrow, we maybe accomplished the greater good of bringing the TRUE desires of these people to light. My prayer is that our beloved University has seen through the Trojan Horse that these charlatans used to invade us and have taken precautions. If our love for Ergun is superseded by anything, it is our love for our college, for TRBC and for Jerry Jr. and Jonathan and for Doc's legacy and his dreams. For that we will continue to fight against this surreptitious attack that is so cleverly framed in a battle that is far from their true goal. I trust that the admin at L.U. will remain vigilante against these impostors and frauds. I am proud to declare my friendship to my brother Ergun and to those who have shown such amazing Christlikeness toward him and to his family during this horrendous ordeal.
Much will be revealed by the response of those attackers, to this blog...

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio..."

2010-06-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
A nation turns it's lonely eyes to you
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away"

With that line, Simon and Garfunkel lamented the disappearance of heroes in the culture of the mid 60's. Joltin Joe DiMaggio was retired and there was no one to look up to anymore.
I'm not sure if that is what I feel tonight or whether it's more of the sadness of watching someone you love in great pain from an unjust wound.
Maybe it's both.
I've posted 4 times about Ergun Caner since this mess began. I think this will be my final post. I am worn out and sad and angry and betrayed.
I am a Liberty University Alumnus and a current student as well. If you never went to Liberty, never knew anyone who has, and maybe aren't familiar with the school, you need a background.
I will skip the historical matters because everyone knows that stuff. You mention L.U. and people who don't know what you are speaking of will make the connection when you say "Jerry Falwell's school". The bulb goes on and they make the connection. That's how we were known..."Jerry's Kids".
It's a special place and when you go there for the first time you can feel the pulse of the place. It never leaves your veins and when you return at homecoming or just stopping through on the long road to somewhere else, that pulse sparks back to life. It must be what a salmon feels that drives it back from the ocean to the stream it was born in to bare a new generation.
Being on the mountain is mystical. Thousands and Thousands of young and impressionable believers had their first real, tangible interaction with Jesus Christ there. You go there a kid...you leave a grown up with a walk with Christ that won't leave you even though some of us try to make it sometimes. The mountain shapes you and in return you shape it. It seems like time stands still there, spiritually anyway. The place has expanded and grown and seemed to take over the whole town of Lynchburg but the spirit on campus is still fresh, and eager and desperate for God. There are pimply faced pastoral majors who will, over four years time, enter thinking they have something special, find out they do not, and in that discovery be blessed with something very special indeed. Friendships form that last forever. Two of the best friends I will ever have, were made in those dorms on that mountain.
I skated for the hockey team for 2 years. I wore my sweater with fierce pride and remember those days with great warmth and love. I feel like the mountain is home.
Now I think I feel what my daughter felt when her mom divorced me and her home was shattered. I guess with anything, no matter how you love it, it will change.
Apparently the Mountain isn't mine anymore.
Let me explain...
L.U. is only 40 years old. That's a mere blink in the life of a college. This school hasn't really even hit it's stride yet. When I was a student there it was nothing to see people on campus who were among the very first class ever to attend. We were told almost weekly about Dr. Falwell's ongoing struggles just to keep the doors open and we frequently wondered if we'd even have a school left to graduate from. Jokes were made about "brown hair" scholarships, because Doc gave scholarships to everyone back then. He was so passionate about this place that he thought every Christian kid in the world should be a Liberty Student. I always thought he was right. I talked up L.U. like Ron Popeil selling a Pocket Fisherman. I know I steered a dozen or so kids to L.U. with my over the top love declarations of that magical place.
People of my vintage remember the early budding days of that place. I remember when the quad was all we had for classes. When the DeMoss Building was a dirt patch were we ran for recreation. In fact I went to school with Mark and David DeMoss. I didn't really know Mark, but David was a friend, and his loss is still felt by those who knew him.
We felt like we were Liberty. Like what turned that dirt that peculiar red was really the blood of those young brave souls who became the crash test dummies that begat what L.U. is today.
We trusted that Doc was always going to be there and that he was always going to find the right people to lead us into the future.
Now none of that seems true anymore.
I am hurt over the decision to demote Ergun Caner for several reasons. Because he is my friend. Because he was cleared of everything except some times and dates that don't rise to the dismissal of a Seminary President. Because I fear that whoever steps into the position will go out of their way to be so unlike Ergun Caner that the wonderful spirit of the mountain is quashed. Because I think they were wrong and hatchetted my friend. But mostly...because with this action, I believe Liberty just took a giant step away from being the "World's most exciting Christian University" and towards being just another Christian University.
I believe this was nothing more than my beloved school not having the nads to tell individuals like James White that he is a crazy, self absorbed, arrogant, self aggrandizing jerk and he can rant for ANOTHER four years if he wants, Ergun Caner is staying and "you will NEVER dictate L.U. policy."
Instead my school decided that expediency was worth more than guts. That remaining the beacon of come-as-you-are, outside the box ministry was no longer the main thing. We just leaped towards becoming Baylor or TCU, or Temple University. (Most people, even in my hometown, wouldn't know that Temple began life as a Baptist college) We just checked our uniqueness at the door. A good man was thrown under the bus so that an evil man and his evil friends would finally just shut up and go find something else to attack. Which they will because they are parasites. The leader of the gang of idiots is already crowing so loudly that he is publicly declaring how he unseated a Seminary President and is also unsatisfied with how L.U. handled this and demanding that L.U. somehow force some sort of public confessional from Dr. Caner. It is here that I would have told James White in no uncertain terms, just which of my cheeks he could kiss.
I fear my beloved alma mater just became very plain and very much like other universities. That makes me sad because I have a sense of ownership of that mountain because of when I attended. I was there when Doc invited Ollie North to give the commencement speech even though he was up on federal charges at the time. That didn't bother Doc. He laughed at the critics, and told them he would make no other comments...so deal with it. The Caner matter is nothing in comparison to that. Yet my school chose to "just make it go away".
Maybe it's because I am older now. Maybe it's because at 46 God has recently ignited a fire in my bones that I never had before and I long for a few more great adventures before I settle in to the quiet of the rest of my life. The kind of adventure that this mountain use to give birth to about once an hour.
Now we have lost our soul and our heart and some or our history.
I feel like I come from a broken home now. It makes me sad.

Revelation...

2010-06-26T10:19:00.000-05:00

From the first moment I read a word on "dr" James Whites blogs I knew I was seeing a real-life Mrs. Turpin. I am a huge fan of Flannery O'Connor and this is my favorite of her works. Six weeks later and I was right. "dr" White is indeed Mrs. Turpin. So is the increasingly pathetic Debbie Kaufman, so earnestly desiring to gain male approval that she carries water by the tankful for "dr" White and I have to wonder if she secretly doesn't desire to bear his love child. (you can spare me the "ad hominem" references Thy Fleece...I ain't in the mood for anything except dropping the gloves this morning)
The good "doctor" has been exposed though so all is not lost. This emperor has no clothes. The Muslims he befriended in order to achieve his nefarious desires serve him no purpose now...so they will be in his sights.
Debbie will continue to embrace the vision of singlehandedly changing SBC policy into that spiritual slavery that is Reformed Theology...the most Catholic theology outside of the Vatican. She will fail to even be noticed except by the same 9 people and she will go into advanced age still thinking she will be the first female SBC president.
James White is nobody. He was nobody when this began 4 years ago and in about 37 more seconds his 15 minutes of fame will end and he'll be just the same old fringe nutjob he always was. James White is a reformed theologian. He believes in Sovereignty. But I am wondering about it now. Capt. Phil Harris is dead from a stroke and yet James White is alive. God may be sovereign...but He isn't exercising it right now.
Here is a wonderful review of Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" If you get the chance, read the entire story. Everyone one should read O'Connor. I take great comfort in knowing that "dr" White had to go to Wiki to find out who she was when I first referenced this story. You sir, are a bugiardo.

This comes from the following link:http://theblackcordelias.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/2379/

Revelation is perhaps Flannery O’Connor’s most popular short story republished regularly in college writing course primers. Not surprisingly, it is one of her most accessible stories for new readers coming as it does to a more or less easily recognizable resolution. It is common for Catholics to speculate that some of her stories are efforts at associating particular church doctrines with everyday life. If this is true, if it is even possible or desirable to reduce a work of fiction to a single point, I would consider Revelation to be an enfleshing of the doctrine of Purgatory. This is, of course, a religious reading of her stories not shared by many literary critics. Still, if her stories are anything like gospel parables, their deeper meanings should be apparent to the Christian disciple while remaining hidden from the non-believer.

Mrs. Turpin is a classic O’Connor character, a southern white Christian woman seemingly pleasant and well mannered on the outside but bearing in her soul the unspoken thoughts of her class and race and time—thoughts which to her seem like innocent and objective observations are jarring and offensive to everyone else including the reader. She is a women who is utterly unself-reflective and believes passionately her own P.R. Mrs. Turpin holds-in her darkest thoughts in order not to betray her small venial spirit without realizing that what she thinks acceptable is virtually as dark. Revelation’s opening scene sets up the crucial lines:

“Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them—not above, just away from were the white trash…but the complexity would begin to bear in on her, for some of the people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below she and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost their money and had to rent …Usually by the time she had fallen asleep all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around in her head, and she would dream they were all crammed together in a boxcar being ridden off to be put in a gas oven.”

Among the occupants of the doctor’s office waiting room in the opening scene is a young woman with a bad disposition named Mary Grace, perhaps code for being Catholic. If her possible religion did not make her alien enough, she was ugly, constantly scowling, an intellectual given to all manner of book learnin’ and worse, she was studying at Wellesley in Massachusetts—a true foreigner in every sense, wherever she may have been born.

Mary Grace’s foreignness and her estrangement from her mother and the rest of her environment set her up to be an unwitting and ironic prophet for truths which undermine the orthodoxies which form the matrix of Mrs. Turpin’s world.

Mary Grace’s mother held her smoldering daughter in an unrelenting contempt put out for public display. Mrs. Turpin matched the mother’s contempt with a similar attitude thinly disguised in pleasantries expressing in vague code her moral self righteousness.

“Mary Grace’s mother’s mouth grew thin and tight. “ I think the worst thing in the world,” she said, “is an ungrateful person. To have everything and not appreciate it….”

In a fit of self satisfaction for not being anybody else in the room, or black, Mrs Turpin blurts the twisted testimony of her own Pharisee’s prayer:

“If it’s one thing I am … it’s grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!’ It could have been different!” For one thing somebody else could have got Claud. At the thought of this she was flooded with gratitude and a terrible pang of joy ran through her. “Oh thank you, Jesus. Jesus, thank you!” she cried aloud

The book struck her directly over the left eye…

Mary Grace had thrown the book and instantly pounced on Mrs. Turpin beginning to choke her. Collecting herself for a moment without understanding why, Mrs. Turpin dares to ask Mary Grace, “What you got to say to me?” Perhaps expecting some kind of apology or explanation, instead she received these words, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

The doctor and others struggled to give Mary Grace and injection and send her off to the hospital as a lunatic. But the wounding message of the unlikely prophet was delivered and Mrs. Turpin bore a nasty physical welt on her face, a kind of sacramental of the convicting message which accompanied having the book literally thrown at her, itself a visual pun.

Just as her gratitude to Jesus for not making her any one of “them” had repeatedly echoed and rattled in her soul, the words of Mary Grace stayed with her as if it were a mysterious ancient oracle.

Finally, in the last scene, Mrs. Turpin is washing down her hogs in the fading sunlight and erupts in a new prayer, no longer that of the Pharisee, but that of Job:

How am I a hog? She demanded. “Exactly how am I like them?… There was plenty of trash there. It didn’t have to be me. If you like trash better, go get yourself some. You could have made me trash. Or a nigger. If trash is what you wanted why didn’t you make me trash? … Or you could have made me a nigger. It’s too late for me to be a nigger,” she said with sarcasm, “But I could act like one”…”Go on”, she yelled, “call me a hog. Call me a hog again from hell. Put that bottom rail on the top and there’ll still be a top! … Who do you think you are?”

A tantrum without a glimmer of insight into her own need for contrition, without an inkling that she was in any way in the wrong. How can conversion happen with such a soul? Perhaps just another nudge …

A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right … They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that that even their virtues were being burned away…what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward in the starry field and shouting hallelujah.

The Lord’s revelations to Mrs. Turpin are manifold in this one momentary epiphany. One wonders if she will be able to absorb it all. The moiling and roiling jumble of classes she has tried so hard to separate will be in the end together, not in some gas oven, but in the fires of purgatory on the bridge between earth and heaven where virtues and vices will be equally burned away. Shame and pride will be no more. Clean and unclean, sane and lunatic, white and black, rich and poor, gentile and Jew, slave and free, woman and man will enter in a single throng, the last being first, the first being the last. Even Mrs. Turpin, if she is careful will have her place.

Suffering and violence have a clear and vivid place throughout Flannery’s fiction. It is perhaps here in this story that a connection can be made between the sufferings of this life and the sufferings of purgatory, each illuminating the other. Both her wounded face and the fires of purgatory bring her into an encounter with the Lord, one imperfectly, the other perfectly. It is the purification of pride that happens to her in the first wound that prepares her for the second. And it is in the sufferings of purgatory that her earlier sufferings can begin to make sense to her for the first time.

The Mountain in my Heart

2010-06-25T20:51:00.000-05:00

Well it's done.
This afternoon...after hours so nobody could call and raise a fuss...Liberty University demoted Ergun Caner from Seminary President to prof.
Look folks let's get something straight. Ergun is my friend. I am not in the Seminary, I was thinking about the idea but had not committed. I don't attend LU on campus, I am completing my degree online. So I don't go to Campus Church. I'm not enamored with Caner like a freshman Pastoral major. I am older than him, for crying out loud.
So this isn't about hero worship or star making or even SBC politics...I'm not an SBC adherent and I don;t go to an SBC church.
I love the man. Period. I am impressed at his keen ability to defend this faith of ours better than almost anyone on this earth.
I love my alma mater. I LOVE it. I love being a former Liberty Hockey player. I love going back as often as possible. The place simply oozes Doc Falwell's spirit.
Tonight I think that spirit weeps...
Ergun Caner did not have to be removed...period. The board was wrong. They made a foolish decision. They cowered to some insanely jealous fringe dwelling pseudo-Christians who worked for FOUR years to cause a problem for this man. FOUR years!
The committee took the cowards way out...PERIOD! (I'll stand by that remark even to the point of discipline by the school...I am still a student there)
The decision reeks of politics and pettiness and not of wisdom and boldness and integrity.
When Doc was alive he was a bit of a rogue. And I loved that about him.
He would have been all over these accusers like a dog with a bone. Apparently many on the committee either never met Doc or forgot his spirit or never really "got him" to begin with.
Congratulations committee...you just let a fraud like James White back you into a corner and make you jump through a flaming hoop. Now you are his bi$%#. He will simply hold up a smaller hoop next time...higher, with more flames. You might as well name a girls dorm after him.
I never thought I'd see the day when the school I represented on the ice and in my daily conversations would back down like a bunch of sissies.
I am disgusted tonight. I thought I was from the same stock as the great man who began that school and I hoped there were similar men making the decisions.
I was wrong about the latter and that makes being right about the former a lonely proposition.
This decision today sends the signal that if Liberty University were to be just starting out today in 2010, Doc would be very alone.
I am saddened and disappointed.

Man of No Reputation...what REALLY hurts about the attacks on Ergun Caner

2010-06-10T21:21:00.003-05:00

(Click Post Title for link)

I tried posting thoughtful and emotional opinion yesterday and the Ergun haters came after me. They are intellectual, you see, and they place no value on well crafted words that paint a picture of a soul. They only know facts.
In their Christian lives they can describe Calvary to you from a soulless scientific standpoint...how hot it was, what was the approximate elevation of Golgotha, how old Jesus was to the day, what kind of wood the cross was made out of, etc.
But ask them to describe the moment when all those facts became mystical and the Son of God burst upon them like a flood in the desert and they turn cold and lifeless. They place no stock in that, you see, these knowledge worshipers.
None of that means much if anything. They run through a checklist of the salvation experience which is no different emotionally than the pre flight checksheet for a 747. Flaps? Check. Engines? Check. Thorough biblical exegesis of predeterminism and acceptance thereof? Check.
Nothing would speak of Blaise Pascals "Night of fire" or Leonard Ravenhill's description of "Soul Hot Preaching", or Brennan Manning's declarations of the enormous love of God in "The Ragamuffin Gospel".
Nothing that would move you to tears and have you longing for the God who could be held as He appeared in the baby Jesus.
No room for the Son of God Himself to take his rest in your soul and make your life a purely blissful living hell of turmoil as He changes, shapes, redirects, alters, purifies and transcends. That is a seeming conflict in terms but it's not. I've never referred to it like that before but that's what it is...at least to me.
A purely blissful living hell of turmoil. I guess it makes no sense, except to those who have pulled the safety bar down, decided not to look at the size of that first hill, gotten to the top and descended the first crazy drop with hands in the air screaming, "This is crazy, Lord...but I would have it no other way."
Their only passion seems to come in the form of collecting trinkets of knowledge and fact to sacrifice on the altar of the god of intellect that they mistakenly worship as the God of heaven. In fact He does make his residence there...sometimes...but usually he speaks through foulmouthed fishermen and miraculously converted ex-Pharisees with innocent blood on their hands and, sometimes...donkeys.
He is passionate too, you see and His passion is reckless towards ALL creation...not just the select few that these poor passionless brothers like to claim. We aren't hand selected. We are all requested at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It's just that some decide not to come. Hell is the monument to that choice.
This has been on my mind since this Caner business started...or at least since I was immersed in it. It's not about Ergun Caner...not really. Not for these folks. Sadly it's about pathetic pride and envy and jealousy and the desire to have something they cannot have on their own merit. And I don't mean a biography I mean an anointing. Those carnivores may possess a lofty amount of knowledge but they don't have the anointing that Caner has had fall on him. They've not been used to bring about a sweep of the Holy Spirit on a college campus. They've not preached "soul hot preaching" to again quote Mr. Ravenhill and seen hundreds of young, thirsty, desperate-for-God believers laying face down under the weight of God's hand, never to be the same.
They are not to be dismissed these folk. What they do is of great value when done in the proper spirit. Defense of the faith is crucial but using that as the measuring stick against which all is checked is idolatry. Dr. Caner is amongst the best of the apologists but he is also an anointed brother who has the gift from God to connect his head knowledge of facts and figures with the heart that screams "Jesus" in his chest with every beat. It's THAT which they resist.
And it's sad.
My dear friend Rick wrote a song some 17 years ago and I remember hearing him play it in a small church in New Castle Pa, not long after writing it. It was and still is (in my opinion) the single greatest song about Jesus Christ and who He REALLY was that has ever been written. It's my personal soundtrack of sorts and, stray as I often do, I strive to live my life as the picture of Jesus painted in these lyrics.
This is the Jesus that I long to serve, that I said "yes" too after He forced my hand and crumbled my world. This is the Christ who moves among the broken and the beaten and the wounded sons and daughters. This is the Christ who could not possibly die for some, but by right of His very personality allowed that butchery on the cross for all.
They hate that I believe that, those squinting lords of minutiae. And they hate Caner for it too. That's why they want death where only perhaps a tear would suffice. (If any accusations are indeed true, which I remain unconvinced)
I never began my defense of my friend with the blinders-on belief that perhaps there wasn't something to these ridiculous attacks. In 27 years of ANYTHING mistakes can be made. But my stance was always "Why"? Why do you find it necessary to enlarge this dispute until the unsaved world is now the judge? Why do you align yourself with a non believer, (in perfect violation of Paul) in order that your nefarious will be done? Why will you not rest until a good man who loves his Lord lay bleeding in the street? Why?
I say it is because, with all the knowledge that they possess, and all the facts they can quote and the books they read and the debates they've engaged...they have missed Philippians 2:5-8 "Let this mind be in you which also existed in Jesus Christ...who became a "Man of no Reputation". The NIV renders it "became nothing" If Jesus let go of his rightful claims as the Son of God and became nothing then why are you making demands?

Here is a link to the greatest song about Jesus the world has ever known.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90XeL2Cp0RQ you can also click the title to this entry and go there.

Ergun, My Friend... I am so sorry you are being treated in this fashion. You are a man after God's own heart and very much like the first guy to wear that moniker. They will come after me for this I know, but let them eat cake. I'd rather "die" by your side, dear friend, than go captive into the life they claim. My soul SCREAMS for another head-on collision with my Lord. If you drive, I'll ride shotgun. I thank God every time I remember you dear brother, and that does not change.

Come get me haters...you validate me.

Crazy little men with God complexes... more on the Ergun Caner hatred

2010-06-10T17:49:00.002-05:00

I am a moderate fan of Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian Christian folk singer. He has a few songs I enjoy. His album "Nothing But a Burning Light" is a gem. The first time I ever heard him was in 1984 when they ruched him to the American mainstream radio stations in order to cash in on Springsteen mania. (Same first name...)
They tried to make a hit out of "If I had a rocket launcher" a politically motivated song of decent but not spectacular lyric.
The final line to the song says "If I had a rocket launcher, I swear I'd make somebody pay".
I know how he feels...
I determined yesterday to remove myself from the daily battles that have cropped up around my friend Ergun Caner. But today I saw something on one of the fringe hit-blogs that made wish for Cockburn's rocket launcher. Let me just post it here verbatim...
It was posted by someone named "Thy Peace" (an odd name for a flesh picking cretin with ruthless devastation on the brain) Italics added...

Thy Peace permalink
June 10, 2010 1:20 pm

Here is a concise statement of confession, that might be issued by Liberty University:

Grace and Truth to You [Wade Burleson] > The Reason I Can No Longer Recommend Liberty University to Students or Seminarians.

Dr. Falwell, Dr. Towns, the board of Liberty and the President of Liberty Seminary could begin this process of restoring gospel integrity at Liberty by issuing a short statement like the following:

“Liberty Seminary and Dr. Ergun Caner both express deep regret for the various discrepancies in the biographical, educational and professional background of our President. Dr. Caner acknowledges that in years past he has embellished and even fabricated events to make his background in Islam more colorful, falsely believing it would make his gospel presentations more powerful. The seminary is assisting their President in clearing up the record by acknowledging these ethical and moral lapses in judgment, correcting the record with an accurate biographical and professional resume, and assuring the evangelical Christian community that this type of behavior when speaking publicly will not be tolerated by any employee of the Liberty University or Seminary. We have officially reprimanded our President, and he has received in brokenness and repentance our discipline, and we are moving forward in rebuilding trust within the evangelical community by restoring our institutional integrity. We are thankful for the grace of forgiveness which is found in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

It’s that simple. May it be so. When that happens, my faith in Liberty will be restored.

Now I don't know who this clown is, but if I were Jerry Falwell Jr. This is where I'd find a nice succinct way to flip them the proverbial bird. They actually wrote a confession for him! Amazing!
Just who do these people think they are?
LBTS students? No
Parents of said LBTS students? Nope
Board members, financial supporters, trustees, people who walk past the campus in the morning? No.
They are envious, jealous, pseudo-theologians who are so absolutely certain that they know scripture better than all of L.U., and everyone else for that matter that if you disagree with them they condemn you to hell...literally...and demand your repentance. In other words they are screwy as loons.
But they are not a nice innocent sort of insane...nooooo. They are sociopathically insane, not only not seeing their error but demanding any one who doesn't conform to their ways to repent for the disagreement.
L.U. and Caner were right in falling into silence. Let these idiots chatter long enough and they will self destruct...and they have. James White has been found out for the envious, power-lust that he is. His lapdogs have been exposed and the serious accusations have been defused.
Now all that is left for me to deal with is my anger and these visions of me using golf clubs for something other than golf.
Fore!

Liberty University and the "Spirit of the Mountain"

2010-06-08T00:09:00.002-05:00

Some of you know...most of you do not. There is a controversy in full sway at my Alma Mater, Liberty University.
The controversy involves a friend of mine. We have not been friends a long time but our friendship formed rapidly and I like to think it is because we are something of kindred spirits.
My friend is Dr.Ergun Caner. President of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.
I am not writing today about the nuts and bolts of the controversy...I might do that another time. I am writing about the effects of the controversy.
First of all though, let me disclose the nature of our friendship.
Caner and I really "got to know" each other through the unusual medium of Facebook. I have friends who took some courses with him at LBTS and I have heard him speak. So I "friended" him on FB and we would occasionally chat. We share a similar sense of humor and a similar sense of living the Christian faith outside the box. We love the golden era of professional wrestling. We love our families and fatherhood. I make a trek back to L.U. about 3 or 4 times each year because of my involvement with the hockey team. (I played two seasons at L.U. and will occasionally return to Lynchburg and teach a bible study to the current team.) On those trips back I have seen a remarkable metamorphosis in the moving of the Holy Spirit on Liberty Mountain.
Campus Church meets on Wednesdays and Ergun preaches most services. There is a Spirit at work in Campus church and across that mountain that was never present when I was a resident student. It is not unusual at all to see hundreds of college students, young men and women from all nations and pursuing all manner of studies, prostrate on the floor crying out to God or caught away in worship. I assure you I never saw that in my days on the mountain. I wish I had. In recent months, Caner has spoken with me about my books and my life and last week on my most recent trip through Lynchburg we met for coffee with two other friends. I am proud that Ergun Caner is my friend...period.
I made the decision to attend Liberty University because of one man...Dr. Jerry Falwell. Period. I grew up in an ultra legalistic church that squashed the Spirit of God at every turn, demanding an unbending adherence to a set of rules and regulations that would make the U.S. Military proud. What I wanted was freedom.
I wanted to know God as He knew me and not as anyone else knew my. I wanted to "taste and see that the Lord is good" and use my OWN tastebuds and my OWN bucket to draw the water. That sort of thinking and desire landed me in hot water on many occasions when I questioned the status quo. To quote my dear friend Rick Elias..."Don't ask me to sing like a caged pet canary...when I'm burning for freedom, not just sanctuary" That's where I was when I arrived on campus for the first time in 1984, four years after my high school graduation and already regretting not having attended right after high school.
It was an election year and Doc was on his game. He supported Ronald Reagan without question and so did we. He was famous for saying sometimes outrageous things and then laughing at himself when the press circled and "brothers in the faith" took shot after shot at him. (My own pastor at the time would not sign my college application without first telling me he disapproved of my choice in schools...which made me that much happier with my choice) Doc was going at it with Larry Flint pretty good back then. And yet he considered Flint a friend. He sparred with Ted Kennedy and yet had Kennedy come speak to us. He was a decidedly anti-catholic theologian and yet the Archbishop of the Richmond diocese came to speak on abortion because Jerry said we had that much in common and the lives of millions of babies depended on our working together. At every turn Doc took risks and said dumb things and did things nobody thought he should do and we loved him for it. Little by little he was reshaping my Christian World View and I needed it. I would cringe now and then when he spoke out of turn but I admired his zeal and his passion...even if his passion forced the occasional "Mia Dispiagio". (My Apologies) And it did...more than once.
That was what I loved about him. At 21 years of age I needed to see a slightly wild, mildly unruly, risk taking, stepping-in-it-occasionally leader of my school and I needed to make him my hero...and I did. Doc taught me to speak my heart and if apologies must be said...speak that too...but be true to yourself. Doc taught me that passionate zeal for God is often found in the most fallible and reckless of men. It's all throughout scripture. Virtually every great man God used was a bit wild and untamed. Moses struck the stone because he was so sick and tired of the rebellion of the Jews. Elijah grew so tired of a group of smart mouthed kids teasing him about his baldness that he called a bear from the woods and killed them all. David wrote about smashing his enemies babies against the rocks and breaking the teeth out of his enemies mouths. Peter jumped from a boat, walked on the water, and then nearly drowned out of faith. He chopped of the ear of Malchus in an impulsive attempt at defending his Lord. Peter cursed and swore and claimed he didn't know Jesus the night of his trial. Peter was so excited at the Transformation that the voice of God had to tell him to shut up! God uses wild, passionate, slightly untamed people and Liberty University was founded by one of the best of that breed.
I love my Alma Mater dearly. I am enrolled there now, finishing up a degree I began years and years ago and changed three times. L.U. is my home.
My Alma Mater faces a serious challenge right now. If you aren't familiar with the controversy surrounding Ergun Caner I will not recount it here. I will say don't believe what you read on the various attack blogs circling the blogosphere. I have not witnessed such a gang mentality since Doc was in his prime, battling on multiple fronts with Democrats, pornographers, ACLU-ers and other Christians who hated him for his renown. I have not seen ONE person attacking Caner who does so with a measure of sanity. This is the ugly fringe of Christianity and it is shameful. But I don't want to give them any space on this blog...it's not what I do here.
What concerns me is the choice that L.U. faces. My guess is that the investigation will be complete and they will find nothing of worth to challenge Ergun Caner with. Then they will be faced with the ugly proposition of facing the storm this has created. It won't come down to what Caner said or didn't say as much as "How much will this affect the name and reputation of Liberty University?" The fact is, it is Ergun Caner, like Jerry Falwell before him, that draws so many evangelical collegians to the mountain. Ergun embraces the kind of faith we want....those of us who come to the mountain. We are wild, a bit untamed, a bit outspoken, passionate as a newlywed, but burning inside for freedom...not just sanctuary! We come to the mountain to seek God because we have heard from those who came before us that this place is special. This place births dreams. This place encourages wild men in camel skin with locust and wild honey on their breath. It develops dreamers who do things others won't think of doing, in ways nobody has done them before. Along that road they will say things they shouldn't, do something stupid, eat crow and get back to the work at hand. That was what Dr. Falwell was to me. That is what I see in Ergun Caner. My friend. I have never known a seminary president before. I suppose that is a big deal. At 47 years old I am automatically suspicious of men who demand that their titles be mentioned. Caner has never told me to refer to him as "Doctor". He has never big-timed me because he is LBTS President and I am a guy who has spent a good portion of my life avoiding answering the call God placed on me. He has laughed at my smart alek comments, encouraged me to pursue my calling MY way. And been my friend. He reminds me of Doc.
Let me relate my favorite Jerry Falwell story...
In 1984 I was a 21 year old freshman at Liberty University (then Liberty Baptist College). I was in some classes with Jerry's youngest son Jonathan. We had become casual friends, goofing off in a few classes and playing football at his house with a bunch of guys from school. In December my money had run out and I was not going to be able to come back in the spring. I don't recall how Jonathan found out but somehow he did. I only know this because the last chapel service of the semester Doc gets up to preach and spends the entire hour telling us all how money had better never be the reason we don't attend Liberty. "Nobody leaves here because of money!" he thundered. "If they tell you that you can't come back in January, you come see me!" Immediately after chapel ended, as I was walking to class, Jonathan came up to me and said "Craig! You heard what dad said right?" I was a little startled and he said it again "You heard what dad said?" I said "Well yeah..." "Good" Jonathan said..."Then I'll see you next semester, right?" He was grinning as he walked off and I stood there in disbelief. (typing this now I still have tears in my eyes thinking about it) Jonathan had told his dad about me and Jerry had sent the message to me...and everyone on that campus...that he cared and that I needed to be there in January. I never forgot the feeling of knowing I was coming back after Christmas. ...and I'll never forget Doc.
He got himself in more trouble with that attitude. He had to answer to a frustrated board year after year after year as he battled to keep the school open and refused to reign in his generous heart. He took heat for saying things that made people cringe and he had to apologize sometimes. But it was THAT which I loved about him. I wanted to BE like that. After the years of legalistic shackles I wore I thirsted for a man who could be a bit unruly and say something profoundly stupid sometimes and have to apologize. Because despite all Doc's flubs I only ever saw God using him. I only ever saw growth from year to year.
This past fall I was at homecoming with my daughter, who was 11 at the time. We were walking to the dining hall and we stopped and looked at the mountain. The DeMoss center, the Vine Center, the apartments across 460, the Ice Arena...I told her how much of this was just a dream when I was there before. I told her "all this is the result of one man listening to God and following His Voice" sometimes that process was pockmarked with mistakes. But Doc was a pioneer and a visionary and those types seldom ever are faultless.
In that vein, I hope my Alma mater does the right thing and finds that the mountain needs Ergun Caner. I hope they sense that some of Doc's mantle has fallen on this man. I hope they do not begin a sad tradition of deciding what is best for the school by considering what is most expedient in the eyes of attackers, and will just "make it go away". The Doc I knew would have laughed at the buzzards circling the carcass, mispronounced their name on purpose, loudly pronounced his admiration for Ergun Caner and then refused to speak of it ever again. It would have driven the spiritual assassins nuts and made Doc smile.
...and somewhere some wild eyed high school senior with a dream that doesn't fit inside some evangelical box but which burns in his heart at night, would be smiling too. He'd think..."Now that, is where I will go to college. That is a man I will try to be like." And he will one day find himself prostrate on the floor of campus church on a Wednesday night as my friend Ergun Caner "brings it".
I pray this comes true.

Happy Birthday Morgan

2010-05-06T21:12:00.003-05:00

May 7 1998 at exactly 10PM Morgan Wray Daliessio took her first breath and began her journey in this world. Every day since that one has been filled with joy with every thought of her, with each bright smile, with each amazing comment.
I have had the privilege of being her daddy for 12 years now. I can't come to grips with where it has gone and with how fast it is flying by.
Years ago my friend Rick wrote a song for his son and it so perfectly encapsulates how I feel for my daughter. I need to post some of the words here. I am working from memory so I can't vouch for exactness but here goes...
"Oh the happiest day I have ever known, was the day you took your first breath.
And to watch you grow in the warmth of the sun, is the only other wish I could ever have.
But if cold night winds should begin to howl and if trouble should come your way
Remember these words I'm telling you now
And all your days I pray you'll call His name
Rain will fall as it surely must, on the heads of the wicked...and the just
God forbid that rain turn your dreams to rust.
And all your days I pray you'll call His name
On that bittersweet day many years from now when you take your first steps on your own
Remember these words I'm telling you now
As much as I've loved you, there is One who loved you more
So if cold night winds should begin to howl and if trouble should come your way
May the warmth of the sun comfort and guide you May those cold night winds stay forever behind you
If you lose your way, know that God will find you
And all your days I pray you'll call His name"
Even before I finished typing those lyrics I was in tears
I guess it's as much because I know Rick and how much he loves his children as it is how perfectly this song says what I feel for my little girl...who isn't so little anymore.
She was perfect. Tiny and quiet and content and perfect. I was so scared and in awe of her. From the moment we found out we were having a baby I knew I loved her. That has never changed.
She has a heart full of amazing dreams and hopes and I am sworn to seeing them come true. I am shaping this arrow of mine and finding targets to aim at. Targets that are a little farther away each time. Each time she flies she travels a little farther from my bow. It's all in preparation for that one bittersweet day...many years from now...when I will know in my soul the target she was meant for and I will put her to flight...through tears and with a pained heart. God will whisper those dreaded words in my ear..."There it is...that's her target...now let her fly!"
I hope I will be ready for that day. I hope I will have her ready for it as well.
Until then, I am racing home to a devastated Nashville TN with a beautiful black Ibanez guitar in my trunk, (THANK YOU Skip D!) because my daughter dreams of making music. 12 years comes and goes so fast and the next 6 will be but a blink and a breath. She is my everything, my sun and sky and moon and stars. and each day with her is the kiss on the lips God gave me to let me know He loved me by giving me such a wonderful daughter, and loved her by giving her a dad who loves her as much as I do.
Happy Birthday Morgan Wray
Each day with you is a birthday present all it's own.
Your Daddy Loves you!

Man of No Reputation

2010-04-28T09:40:00.004-05:00

Greetings friends...
More busy-ness and more traveling. More interviews and more school work. Somewhere in the midst of all I want to be, there is a gaping hole of what I am supposed to be. My wants and desires and dreams and longings are sometimes in a head on collision with my purpose. Most of the time there is no conflict in that confluence but sometimes there is.
This morning I found myself in a protracted period of self examination because of one song. Not just any song...to me it is the song.
My friend Rick Elias wrote this tune about 18 years ago, and I first heard it 17 years ago in New Castle PA, in a little Methodist church where he was playing. I drove 6 hours from Wilmington DE to hear him. I love Rick's music and I love Rick. In Nashville I have friends and then I have friends who are family and Rick and Linda Elias are that to me. Rick would cringe at accolades but it is his friendship that has seen me through many difficult days...often from a distance. Rick is honest to a fault...if that is possible. But it is his honesty that makes me so comfortable because he is honest about his faults and his faith. He does everything with passion, including write songs about Jesus Christ. In this case, (in my opinion) the best song about Jesus ever written.
This song has never once failed to move me emotionally. Today it did so in a deeper way because right now I find myself rather annoyed at my own relationship with Jesus. I guess I have been cranky because of the immense stress of trying to sell the world on my book, and trying to be a full time college student and trying to find some means of putting food on the table and trying to find a way to live someplace besides a friends basement. I let it get me down a little and I got a little edgy. I had already been thinking about this when Rick posted this clip on his wall on Facebook today. (Click here to listen and watch: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/video/video.php?v=407655924364&ref=mf)
If you listened to that and weren't moved somehow...check your pulse. You don't even have to believe in Jesus in a religious way for that song to ring as true as a bell-buoy on a foggy lake. If you only see Him as a historical figure and nothing more, not a Savior, not God in the flesh, not the One in whom I have placed care of my soul...you have to see this song as a beautiful and flawless explanation of who He was...even if only as a man.
I have endeavored to live my faith. Sometimes I do it beautifully and sometimes I do it terribly. To quote my friend again, in another song, "I am Peter...who would drown out of faith, while he walked upon the water..."
I am surrounded by the pull of my dreams, my desires, and my needs. I am engulfed in a world of prepackaged religion and bumper sticker theologians who want me to jump through hoops and read from scripts. Inside I long to emulate this Man of No Reputation so closely that people say to themselves "If Jesus was here right now He'd be like this guy..." I do a crappy job at that. I let myself get caught up in facts and figures about Him. I get diverted into discussions about when He might be returning. I get mired in the swamp of what "looks" like a follower of Jesus, what "behaves" like a follower of Jesus, and what version of the Bible best represents Jesus.
I know this much...I have endured a small taste of what this homeless, rejected, unwanted, unassuming, vagabond Savior chose to endure while He walked amongst us. He was no one special to look at. He probably smelled like bait from the nights He spent sleeping in Peter's fishing boat. His clothes were probably tattered and not always clean. He wasn't a big man, and I don't think he looked like Jim Caviezel. He was often lonely, and probably homesick and missed His Father. He was poor. He didn't have a home and a favorite chair and a pet dog. He spent His entire life being misunderstood. His best friends didn't get Him and they abandoned Him when He needed them most. If you took just a snapshot of His life it would seem tragic. He lived that way so that He could understand us.
So that when He said "Come to me all of you who are tired and weary and lugging around boxcars full of guilt and shame and broken dreams and I will give you peace and rest" (Craig version) we would know He meant it...because He lived the life most of us will live at some point. Broken and sad. Disappointing and lonely. His call to us is clear because it is true. It's true because he left there, came here and lived as we live.
I have not done the best job relating that Man to the world.
I could tell you a hundred signs that give "clues" to when He'll be back. I could quote a hundred verses that talk about His lineage or His position or His miracles. But I have not been asked to do that. The only thing He asked of me was that I live as He lived. In attitude. I don't have to be homeless but I have to have the attitude of a man who doesn't consider this world my home. I don't have to remain poor but I have to see riches that aren't money. I don't have to remain lonely but I have to look for the lonely amongst us and remind them that He was lonely too.
I could do better at this task.
Phil 2:5-7 is a special passage to me. Paul demands we have the same attitude as Jesus, and then he defines that attitude. "Jesus" Paul says "Became a Man of No Reputation" The NIV says He "became nothing". I live in a world that tells me to spend my waking hours being "something and someone". I have to play the game in some respects because of my vocation...I get it. But my heart needs to remain in tune with His.
I can do better.

Making the best use of our time...

2010-04-19T05:14:00.004-05:00

This weekend, I guess I stirred the pot a little with a thread I posted on Facebook about "ETO's" (my new term...it means "End Times Obsessors") and this morning I awoke at 5AM with the thoughts still heavy on my mind. It became very clear to me why this school of thought bothers me so very very much and so I thought I would explain my position...and my passion.
Jesus is coming back. I get it. He told us that on that morning when He ascended into the heavens. Paul was looking for His "soon return" as early as 50AD. The disciples thought it might be a matter of a few days between that ascension and His return. From that day until now we have seen "signs and wonders" that point to His imminent arrival. It has literally become a cottage industry within the church. Last night I was at dinner with some friends of long standing...which is how one says "old friends" once one realizes he is, in fact, getting older...and we laughed about "evangelists" who used to come to our church when we were kids, some 35 years ago, telling us how they knew for certain that Jesus would be back that fall. 35 years later and either they were wrong or I missed something.
I saw people obsess about it back then, even to the point of cashing in their retirement and giving it all to missions because they were sure they'd be strolling the golden strand come September. (This one clown always taught it was going to occur during Yom Kippur, therefore he always predicted a September arrival. I always hoped Jesus would wait until after the World Series...in case the Phils got back in it)
There are three reasons I get torqued about this sort of obsession. Well two and a half...let me review them for you...
One: The church is made up of wounded, weak, damaged people. I get it. I know because I myself am wounded weak and damaged. But that condition usually becomes a breeding ground for the same behavior we always displayed but with strange religious twists. You always see the guy who screams the loudest about which version of the Bible the preacher uses or what kind of suit he wore, secretly carrying on with his neighbors wife or doing the perp walk one day because he embezzled funds. You always see some "godly" old mother hen nitpicking at the length of some young girls skirt because she and her husband haven't shared an intimate moment in a couple of decades and she doesn't want anyone else cornering the market on happiness. "A skirt that is one inch above the knee causes a man to look and lust young lady and by God if they aren't looking and lusting at my cankles then looking at your legs should be a sin!" Somehow over the last century or so we figured out how to create our own buzzwords and secret handshakes, and bumper sticker theology, and we started creating a caste system within the church. Brother so and so is an "expert" on end times prophecy. Sister such and such is "gifted" with wisdom for young women. (actually she is a prude but there is a strange comfort in prudishness to those who secretly don't trust themselves and who don't believe God can really change their natures) we try to outdo each other with obscure knowledge about things that don't truly matter. And believe me...when Christ is returning only truly matters for one reason...but we'll get to that.
We have silently developed a hero status for people in the church who can baffle us with nonsense and irrelevant facts. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, an angel appeared shortly thereafter and scalded the observers..."Why do you stand there looking into space?!" he charged. They were so caught up in His leaving...and with His return, that they stopped moving. I mean, He had just left! They stood there staring like he was just going up to put away some groceries and change his clothes and he'd be right back.
People are doing that today. Every time they obsess about the "soon return of Christ" or plunk down $35 for some DVD from some late-night TV preacher who is a self proclaimed expert on the topic. $35 that could have fed the poor, supported a missionary...or provided a fun night for the kids. It really troubles me because of reason number two...
TWO: What happens when He finally does get here? You obsessors do realize that once we hear that shout and we are translated into heaven, our time here is done, right? You do realize that in that same glorious instant when you get what you've been waiting for, the world gets her death sentence? Your chance to reach a lost friend is done. Your opportunities for evangelizing and reaching the lost all cease. Your family members and those you love basically are frozen in their current spiritual state...whatever that state might be...forever. No more chances to pray for your lost loved one or your wayward child. No more opportunities to feed a homeless man or comfort an abused girl or rescue a wounded child. No more being Jesus to a Christless society. "It is what it is" is a term we Italians are fond of and it applies here nicely...or tragically as the case may be. Is ETS the best dent you're going to make in the kingdom of Satan? When you vanish suddenly at the sound of an angels trumpet and your friends who are "left behind" (copyright Tim LaHaye) sit around wondering where you went, what are they going to say? "He was a real jerk but he sure knew a lot about Eschatology" Or "She was a prudish boor who inflicted her personality on us all every chance she got, but she seemed to have this "date of Christs return" thing down pat. What are you doing with the time you have? Are you feeding the hungry, loving people into the Kingdom and living out a faith that is so real, so passionate and so vital to your life that people just have to have some? Or are you worshiping a homeless Savior inside your church and then stepping over a homeless man on the way out of church? Are you a beacon of integrity and righteousness, or are you as slimy as those who need the Savior whose return you are obsessing over?
I have work to do and people I love whom I haven't been able to reach yet. I don't want Him to return yet! I guess that's selfish and probably heretical somehow. But I have work to do and a passion for doing it and I don't feel like I've hit my quota yet.
So I don't really care about the earthquakes and the floods and the volcanoes and whether Obama, spelled numerically in Swahili adds up to 666. I must be about my father's business. That business is being a GREAT dad, a good friend, a godly man, a powerful witness, and a fierce warrior in prayer. It's being salt and light. It's having a "backbone like a saw-log" as my dear old pastor Paul Walters used to say. That is job enough for me. Jesus can come when God says so...I have plenty to keep me busy. Jesus is coming, and no matter when that happens...it will be too soon for those on the losing side of the equation.
The half-reason...I sort of like it here. I'm going to say it because so many of you are thinking it anyway. I know heaven is better, I get it. But this ain't so bad sometimes. I have a wonderful daughter who I love with every breath. I want to see some of her dreams come true. I want to see my book be a success, because it's a really good book. I want to see another sunrise over the Chesapeake Bay. Heaven is better...I get it. But here ain't too bad.
In the meantime I want to do what Jesus did tell me to do...and not worry about what He told me not to worry about.

The True Cry of the Heart

2010-04-18T06:34:00.003-05:00

Yesterday on Facebook, there was a somewhat serious, somewhat heated debate about world events and how they relate to "end times prophecy". Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods...etc. Sitting back and observing it (plus interjecting my never-well-hidden opinion) I was disheartened. I think we've all been Jack-Van-Impe-ed into a coma. Jesus is coming back. He's been coming back since the moment He ascended into the clouds and yet we get preachers, TV "hosts" and Christian laity by the hundreds of thousands who "stand there gazing" looking for signs of Him keeping His word. C'mon! He wasn't kidding when He said He was coming back. One person claimed the Bible revealed "clues" so the faithful would remain so. Really? The faithful should be faithful because God keeps His word. I don't really care how many earthquakes have hit the Gongladore region of Smellistan this year. I don't care how many floods have hit central Maldavia or whether a meteor is hurtling toward earth at breakneck speed. Jesus didn't give a Great Commandment that said to track earthquakes in various places and keep a whiteboard in your living room that keeps score of all the times a "nation rises against a nation". He said to GO, Preach, and Baptize and make disciples. PERIOD! he said "Occupy until I return" That means stay busy and focused on the task...not on the earthquakes.
I find it amazing and sad at how many people could quote the number of earthquakes or other natural disasters this year and yet couldn't name a dozen martyrs or fathers of our faith. They couldn't tell you 6 basic doctrines of the Christian faith and yet they knew about the average rainfall in Botswana before CBS news did. They don't spend 10 minutes on anything eternal like family, friends, proclaiming the gospel...but they can quote the website of their favorite interplanetary collision theory like they named their dog after it.
Stop Studying the return of Jesus and start studying Jesus!
Until He does come, there is a world to evangelize and more than one society to change...especially THIS one! marginalizing our faith by turning into earthquake chasing Eastern Sky watchers makes us a laughing stock, and neutralizes us. The truth is it's all a need to be an "expert" at something. Sadly it's something that doesn't matter because Jesus Himself doesn't know when He is coming back. I want to be an expert at being a great dad, writing a book that changes someones life, touching a soul and seeing them transformed into who God intended them to be, being a better friend, and loving Jesus more. That's the true cry of my heart. That's what I want from the remaining days He has given me. If I can do that, His coming won't take me by surprise...earthquakes or not.

Loving Someone

2010-03-01T04:50:00.004-06:00

This semester I am taking a class on the Gospel of John. Last night in the lecture, Dr. Towns made an interesting point, ie: in the Old testament we were commanded to love our neighbors as our self. Jesus commands us to love our neighbors as Jesus loves us. Jesus loves us without judgment. Jesus loves us and sees what we could become if we let Him take over. Jesus loves us where we are and helps us get to where we want to be. Jesus loves us in spite of our terrible treatment of Him at Calvary and even in our lives after salvation. I didn't see much "tough love" with Jesus...except for the Pharisees.
I also don't see much Jesus-like loving going on. We want to attack when someone is doing something we don't think they should be doing. We seldom pray from an attitude of empathy...what would it be like to be that person. We seldom love without restriction.
Recently I have been in a long season of prayer for a few special people. It goes against my flesh and even the advice of some friends to be praying for some of these folks. But as I have, I've seen the wounds they carry deep inside and I am aware that perhaps nobody else has bothered to go past the rough exterior and pray for the hurting person inside. Asking God to see these people through His eyes has made a difference. When I see the wounds, I forget the wounding they've done to me. I hurt, but no longer for myself it's for them. And then I love.

Being a Baggage Handler

2010-02-17T04:20:00.004-06:00

"Baggage and Drama Free" ... "Please no Baggage" ..."I am looking for someone without baggage"...
I was surveying profiles on a popular dating site the other day and these are the very common phrases I found.
I am 46 years old and divorced. The world I inhabit seems to split into two groups...those with "baggage" and those in denial about having baggage. Let's define baggage before we go further. Baggage, as we use it here, is all the experiences and issues and problems that we acquire along our walk in life. It's the sum of every heartache and the scars those heartaches leave us. It's the hole left in our hearts by the death of a friend or a spouse, or the breaking of a marriage vow. It's the sorrow over a wayward child or the struggles to keep the lights lit and the wolves on the other side of the door. It's what you get for your journey and there is no denying it.
In his classic work, "You Can't Go Home Again" Thomas Wolfe wrote: "Man was born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must, dear Fox, deny it all along the way."
Wolfe was right but he was wrong. Man was born to suffer, that is very true. But living in denial of that suffering, and especially living with the obscene notion that those sufferings don't leave you with something you tote around all your life is very very wrong.
As I've lived a little longer, I've begun to see the value of baggage. Not in a codependent, enabling way. But rather in the way that my baggage makes me vulnerable and removes the illusion that I have it all together or that I am a "well adjusted man of means". I'm not. I have baggage. You have it. I have come to realize that somewhere out there, there is not, waiting for me in some ethereal light, a perfect woman with no baggage and no issues and no imperfections. Nor am I some one's baggage-free dream man. The reality is that somewhere out there exists someone whose baggage...if I dare call it that...is what God has been training me to handle for these past 10 years. By accepting my own limitations and frailties, I can become free to accept others' frailties as well. When I look at my own lifetime of failures and shortcomings, I can offer patient hope and loving grace to someone else. Familiarity with my own baggage makes me able to handle someone elses. I become a "baggage handler". Somewhere right now, Dr. Phil is bursting an artery. But this is true. Jesus Christ didn't go around blasting people for lugging their heavy burdens around...He offered them a one sided trade. "Give me yours, and I'll give you mine. Yours is heavy and hard to carry and mine is light." That was His offer, Perhaps so few people take Him up on the deal because they see so few of His children mimicking this offer of love. We have moved from legalistic attacks on "sin" to subtle insinuations that if you have baggage you have no faith. That's a load of garbage. We are irretrievably broken...the sooner we grasp this, the sooner we can fall into the loving arms of God and find that easy yoke and light burden. The longer I try to hide my baggage, the farther from freedom I find myself.
Recently I found myself in a position where I have been praying for an entire family. Baggage abounds because of a tragedy. Instead of judgment, I have prayed as if this were my own family and that has made the difference. The more we pray for someone...and listen to God...the deeper our prayers become. We begin to pray for them as we would want someone to pray for us if we were in that same position. That is bearing each others burdens...or handling each others baggage.
I have a lifetime of experiences...maybe half of which were happy and blessed. Those experiences have softened me and made me ready to carefully handle baggage and thoughtfully help lift it and carry it to Jesus.
If I wait for someone with "no baggage" I will either never find that person, or I will find a liar. I want neither scenario. I prefer someone to pour myself out for, spend myself on, and serve with the heart of Jesus. Watching God work with that sort of love will be amazing...and worth the high price I paid. My baggage taught me to be a baggage handler. It's a job I am looking forward to, not just in a dating relationship someday, but in everyday living amongst bruised people whom Jesus Christ died for.

Praying and Listening

2010-02-10T04:43:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted in almost a month. It's shocking how fast that much time has gone by. I have been incredibly busy. More on that another time...
I've been learning a valuable lesson about prayer and about communicating with God in general. I was raised in a traditionalist background, (I am being kind here) and I was taught that "when I pray I speak to God and when I read the Bible God speaks to me" and those two are never altered. I was lead to believe that people who claim to "hear from God" are nuts, charlatans, snake handlers or worse...Pentecostals. But when I grew up spiritually and began making my own decisions about what I believed, and particularly what I believed about God, I have come to find out how wrong that teaching on prayer really was.
When I pray I willingly seek to put myself and most importantly my will and my spirit, in line with God's will and His Spirit. That's why we frequently bow when we pray. I am here to ask, of course, but I am here. I am in the Presence of the King of Heaven, but more importantly...I am in the presence of my Heavenly Father. I am a dad. My daughter does not come to me, ask me advice or make a request, and then leave my presence and wait on a decision like she just appealed to a board of directors. "We'll get back to you" is never on my lips when she talks with me. Why have we always applied this thinking to God. Is this why James said "You have nothing because you don't know how to ask properly"? (James 4:3)
For nearly two months I have had several specific prayer requests on my heart. I have prayed harder for these folks and for these issues than maybe anything else I have prayed for in my life. In that time I have been listening. Listening as God showed me little glimpses of the heart of the people I have prayed for. It has broken my heart all over again for some of my hurting friends and it has had me taking my prayers in directions I never foresaw when I began. I came to talk, I listened as well...and God spoke to me so that I could pray even more effectively.
There is a risk here. When God does this, you begin to become very attached to the people you are praying for. You begin to move from praying for their need to feeling their need. You begin to take on their burden and fulfill the law of Christ.
...and your heart will break.
You can pray for a sick little girl. If you listen, you begin to understand the fear in her heart and the pain in her parents soul. Then you begin to pray as if she were your daughter...and then your prayers take on an urgency you have never had before.
You can pray for a homeless man or woman, but when you listen you begin to hear God tell you what lies in the deepest corners of their hearts. The broken dreams and the shattered visions for a life they no longer think they'll ever have. Then you begin to pray as if they were you.
How incredibly impacting our prayers would be if we took the time to listen to God while we were asking Him for things or for people. Our intentions are good, but our prayers could become earthshaking if we would break out of the box and listen.

The Value of a Life

2010-01-18T08:15:00.003-06:00

I took a few weeks off after the Advent series. I've been finishing the new book, (it is GREAT) and working on material for a men's conference. So today I am back in the saddle.
Last night I went to see a movie called "The Lovely Bones"
It disturbed me and broke my heart. It is basically about a 14 year old girl who is kidnapped, molested and murdered by a neighbor with a history of this type of crime. It takes place in the seventies, in the days before amber alerts and disappearing kids on milk cartons.
The movie moves in directions you aren't expecting and it purposefully throws curve after curve at you.
Being a dad...it was hard to watch. Disturbing in fact.
After 12 hours, I came away with another viewpoint from this film and I want to share it here...it's the value of a life.
The girl in the movie is 14. The tale is told with her as narrator...from the afterlife of course. It's her experiences as she watches her family try to move on after her death and as she see her murderer once again planning yet another crime, this time against her sister.
It also shows scenes that broke my heart. The week of her death, the boy she had a crush on finally noticed her and asked her out. She was supposed to meet him at the mall the day she died. She was hoping for a first kiss that would never come. He was in love for the first time in his life.
The movie goes on to portray all that might have been had she not met such a brutal death.
This morning I awoke very pained by the images. I've experienced the death of a child in my own family and I know how it changes all those plans we have for each other and for ourselves. I have a friend here in Nashville who is a widow. It happened at a very young age and I see how it effects her and her children. There is so much value to a life. So many dreams and hopes are wrapped up in that space between when you are born and when you leave this earth. So many other lives are touched in ways we never really imagine.
I see my friend here trying to be a mom and a dad and still be a single woman. It's a pull from a thousand different directions. I was thinking of her last night in the theatre. I was thinking about my sister of course, and of others I've lost recently. How their dreams and hopes are like a daisy-chain that connects with the dreams and hopes of others. My sister would have been a pediatrician by now. My friend Pete might have married and had a child in the future and at least would have continued his hockey clinics and coaching and passed on his love of the game to others. Harry Kalas would still be calling Phils games and maybe he'd even read my new book. My friend's son would be in his second semester of college right now.
All those possibilities link themselves to other possibilities in the lives of people who would have been in contact...and on and on it goes.
A life has enormous value. My friend's children miss their father. As she does, I'm sure. Philadelphians are still trying to get used to Phillies games without Harry's voice. There are no more Peter Zezel hockey schools. My sister and I haven't had a catch with a softball in 14 years. And on it goes..
Every life has value. Every life is full of dreams and hopes and wishes and desires. Those of us who have lost someone dear, carry the burden of trying to see one or two of those dreams to fruition in memorial to the love we lost.
Every life has value. Homeless people on the streets, the mentally ill, the handicapped. Those poor folks in Haiti. Babies who are destroyed before ever seeing the light of day. They all have dreams. They all have hopes. They all have value.
I want to try, as Jesus did,to see that value and draw it out into the sunlight.
I want to, as my boyhood hero Brian Piccolo did his entire life, find the one thing people around me care most about and then encourage them towards it. I want to leave people warmed and glad they met me. When I leave this earth...hopefully many many years from now...I want my greatest value to be that I placed great value on everyone I met.

Advent Day 22...The Mother of all Shipwrecks

2009-12-24T07:29:00.004-06:00

The advent calendar is almost full now. I think about the little open paper doors and all the incredible scenes of encounter we have looked at this month. It has been a true blessing to write these and so many have come from inspiration. I saved the last three for today...I know that is not a typical fashion but that's the way my time schedule allowed it.
Opening the door for day 22 I see a young girl kneeling in the dirty straw of the cave, holding the Baby...it is Mary.
Theologians will tell us that she was probably no more than 16 when she had Jesus...maybe younger. In Hebrew culture there are no "teenage" years. You go from child to adult basically, so Mary was considered a woman. But make no mistake, a 16 year old girl is still different from a 26 year old girl. This girl had the incredible burden of bearing the Messiah...even though she probably didn't comprehend nearly all of what was going on at the time. Angels appearing to her...virgin pregnancy...her cousin finally having a baby at an advanced age and that baby leaping in her mothers womb when he hears Mary's voice...Joseph deciding not to stash her someplace and go on without her...those angels again earlier tonight and those shepherds telling her an incredible story about even more angels and a star. People worshiping this Child with all their hearts.
This was a lot for a 16 year old girl to process. Besides all this she was still a mom. She still had the mother instinct and the whole nesting thing and this cave was a disgrace. She descends from David, after all, and there were a few shepherds in her family. She knows what kind of dirty animals they are. She probably saw this place and it made her sick but she was in labor by the time they got here and she had no choice.
This wasn't her dream nursery for her firstborn...but then this was not your ordinary child.
Mary is kneeling next to the manger holding her boy...
"My son...my son...there is so much I still don't understand about all of this. Your Father is God...that's what the angel told me and I have to believe it...especially now, holding you as I am, because I have a baby in my arms and still have not been with a man. When the vision first came to me I was afraid. I thought I was going mad. How can I have a baby when I am unmarried? People talked. They said mean and hurtful things under their breath, about you and about me and Joseph. Joseph is a good man and he has a good heart. He deserved better than the cloud that followed us because of this situation, but he too heard from God about you and he decided to obey. He is not your father...but he will be a good dad. I hope we will be the parents that your Father desires us to be. This is strange...I feel like you are my son in many ways but in other ways I feel like I am the child here. There is much I don't understand."
Mary rocks her son for hours...storing up the things she has seen and heard and thinking about them over and over in her heart. "Pondering" is the word the bible uses.
Shipwrecks tend to ponder when they finally find their way to this place. It is never what they expected, and He is never what they thought He'd be. He is tiny, and unassuming, and it is safe to approach Him. That's never what we have in mind for the Savior of our souls. But that is what makes Him so beckoning to us all. That was God's master plan...it starts here. We ponder how God could love us this much. We ponder how He could send His son to us wearing our skin and dressed in our clothes and poor like most of us are. We ponder the fact that Jesus Christ was illegitimate, by earthly standards, and people talked. He was poor, probably just to spite the word-faith charlatans who claim He was wealthy and we should be too. He was scandalous and He didn't just enter through a side door...He burst on the scene. The scandal of a poor, homeless, illegitimate Savior ripped time in half and history divides itself cleanly along that line..."Before Christ and After Christ". He is the centerpiece of time and the fault line of humanity. And He lays here tonight dressed in rags, in a dirty manger, in a cold dreary cave, with a teen-aged mom and barely a soul noticing. He causes shipwrecks...this scandalous little boy. His unseemly entrance and his meager birthplace are great rocks against which even the mighty find themselves dashed. He is not at all what we expected...but He is all we hoped he'd be.
The shipwrecked find this comforting...and we ponder it all year long.

Advent Day 20...Top Ten Signs Christmas is Upon us

2009-12-21T06:36:00.002-06:00

Taking a break from advent writing...I am short of ideas and the three images I have left are reserved for the final 3 days. I'd rather write something light and fun that force another advent story when this series has been some wonderful.
I was thinking about those special moments that mean "It's Christmas" when we experience them. Here are mine, the only two that are in real "order" are 1 and 2...

Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing "Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy
Bruce Springsteen singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"
"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" the claymation TV special
Seven Fishes with my family
The first time Pierre Robert plays "Christmas on the Block" and tells the remarkable story behind it
Nat King Cole "The Christmas Song"
Darlene Love "Alone on Christmas"
Christmas lights at Opryland
2: Watching "Christmas Carol (1951 / Alistair Sim) with Morgan
1: When Linus takes center stage in "Charlie Brown Christmas" and says "Sure Charlie brown...I can tell you what Christmas is all about...Lights please..." and then he goes into the entire nativity story word for word from the gospels.

Merry Christmas

Ice Shavings and Shinny

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

Sunday Morning in America...Thoughts on society, post-Dr. Falwell

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

DadMatters 02/12 by Craig Daliessio | Blog Talk Radio

When your vision is right...you're seldom wrong. Lessons I learned from Dr. Falwell

Saying Goodbye to Joe Paterno...

Urgent letter to Bruce Springsteen concerning this "new song"

Get back in the car, go back to the boardwalk, start drinking Bud again, and write like you are still a little desperate. Either that or run for office. But if this is all you have left in the tank, I'd rather you retire and leave me with my memories of a GREAT rocker!

Some Thoughts on Brennan Manning's "All is Grace"

And Down the Stretch they Come...(My Last post about graduation until Graduation)

A little note about Tim Tebow...

Hope...

The rare breed...A tribute to Mr. Harry Flohr

Just Leave Me Alone...

Bittersweet...

My thoughts on the "99%" and "Occupy Wall Street"

Coming Home...thoughts on homecoming week

The Homeless Savior...Some thoughts on the life Christ chose

Braces, First Kisses, Pretty Daughters...and why it is God loves us so much

Birthday Thoughts, Rich Mullins, Calling Stars by Name...

The Last Innocent Age...The inevitable and the unbelievable.

Class of 2012...Thoughts on Graduating (at last) from LU. Snowflex, Online education...and why I am still a "Jerry's Kid"

Finding my way Home...A Prodigals Tale

The Last Innocent Age...R.I.P Clarence Clemons

The Last Innocent Age...How many people can you cram in a Beetle...

Some thoughts on the love of God.

The Last Innocent Age...25 Hours in a Day...The Games we Played, the Things we Did

The Last Innocent Age...The Fond Farewell...

The Last Innocent Age...We Entertained Ourselves

The Last Innocent Age...Heroes big and small

The Last Innocent Age. Characters and Heritage...

Sidebar: Celebrating the Life of Dr. Falwell, four years later

The Last Innocent Age. Saturdays...continued

The Last Innocent Age...Saturdays...

Happy Birthday Morgan

The Last Innocent Age...When Neighborhoods had Characters

What Defines the Last Innocent Age?

The Last Innocent Age...

Hello again...hello

2010 and looking forward to 2011

The Measure of a Man

New website...New BOOK!!

Ergun Caner and the high road

The Amazing World of James White

A family reunion with Fred Phelps, and the Caner-haters.

My response to James White and his cronies

Things I Blame Ergun Caner For...

They Might Be Giants!

Dr. Geisler Speaks again...

Thoughts from Teddy Roosevelt

Dr. Geisler speaks on Dr. Caner again...

Contradiction of terms

Norman Geisler Speaks About Dr. Ergun Caner

Friends that stick closer than brothers

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio..."

Revelation...

The Mountain in my Heart

Suggested Reading...

Man of No Reputation...what REALLY hurts about the attacks on Ergun Caner

Crazy little men with God complexes... more on the Ergun Caner hatred

Liberty University and the "Spirit of the Mountain"

Happy Birthday Morgan

Man of No Reputation

Making the best use of our time...

The True Cry of the Heart

Loving Someone

Being a Baggage Handler

Praying and Listening

The Value of a Life

Advent Day 22...The Mother of all Shipwrecks

Advent Day 20...Top Ten Signs Christmas is Upon us