One Week Later

I will never feel better.

I will never restore the broken pieces of my heart.

I cannot stop the tears that spring from my eyes unbidden or the lump that unexpectedly catches my throat.

I cannot stop replaying the images of frightened children fleeing unspeakable horror, frantic parents seeking little faces, miniature coffins sheltering tiny bodies.

I cannot stop imagining the car rides home with the empty child seats, the unopened Christmas gifts under the trees, the names printed on stockings still pinned to fireplaces, the vacant chairs at dinner tables.

I cannot stop picturing the last child, forced to hear the pops, the sobs, the screams, the moans before succumbing to the madman.

I cannot.

I will not.

I refuse…

…because I do not want to forget…

…because I do not want there ever to be another day like December 14, 2012.

Car of Wonder

When I was a young man, my friends Lance and Jeff could identify the make, model and year of a speeding car backlit by the sun from a quarter mile away.  At night.  I, on the other hand, couldn't even tell you the make unless I was close enough to read the nameplate.  Even then, I had to squint.  For awhile there, they tried to teach me to recognize the differences between a '65 Mustang and a '64 Mustang.  I knew this was important, that this knowledge would somehow make me a real man, so I really gave it my best effort.  The problem wasn't that I was incapable of learning the subtle nuances of headlight width and keyhole diameter or whatever.  The problem was I didn't care.

I didn’t care to the point that, when my wife Jenny was pregnant with our first daughter, we drove a sixteen-year-old Toyota Corona station wagon.  The dealer probably listed the color as something poetic, like “goldenrod”, when a more accurate description would have been “phlegm.”  The car would stall at stop signs and overheat in hot weather and would take twenty seconds to reach its top speed of 55 miles per hour.  The interior smelled like someone had burned an old sneaker in the back seat. 

And this was our good car.  Our other car, a sedan, was an eighteen-year-old Toyota Corona.

My dad was the original owner of both cars.  He had given the station wagon to us in exchange for a car which also happened to be a sixteen-year-old Toyota Corona.  The eighteen-year-old sedan had been a college graduation gift.  My dad had seen a chart in his favorite magazine (Consumer Reports) where he learned that Toyota Coronas had the best repair record.  Seeing the column of red dots when other cars were getting white dots, or half-black dots, or (God forbid) black dots, must have warmed his engineer heart, because he ended up buying four Toyota Coronas. 

And they were indeed reliable.  For all the years we had the cars, all we had to replace or repair was the oil, the tires, the wiper blades, the spark plugs, the brake pads, the brake rotors, the fuel filter, the air filter, the hoses, the ceiling head liner, the clutch upper slave cylinder, the clutch lower slave cylinder, the clutch, the alternator, a sun visor, the water pump, the ignition coil, the starter, the distributor, the carburetor, the radiator cap, the radiator, the exhaust manifold gasket, the head gasket, the head, the driver’s seat and the odometer cable.  If I had replaced the seatbelts, I would have been required by law to buy a nameplate that read “Monument Car Parts” because there would have been nothing left on the car that had been manufactured by Toyota.

The cars had amusing quirks that made every trip, no matter how short, an adventure.  For example, after a prolonged session of night driving, we could pop the hood and see the exhaust manifold glowing a molten-metal red in the darkness. I shudder to think about what a car that earned black dots in Consumer Reports would have been like.

That year, I was involved in a summer mission week in Sacramento sponsored by several churches in my area.  I was placed on a team with Karen and Steve, a young couple from England.  I say “young” because they were my age. The first time I really got to spend time with them was the hour-and-a-half drive from my home town of Antioch to the state capital.  In order to impress my foreign guests, I took the good car.

About a half hour into our trip, I noticed that the temperature gauge was rising close to crisis level, so I turned on the heater.  I explained to Karen and Steve that every car’s heater operates like a smaller version of a car’s radiator, and that turning on the heater actually causes the engine to run cooler.

I should explain at this point that the temperature outside the car was 105 degrees.  In England, a cold rain falls twice a year--once for five months and the other time for six.  If the temperature reaches 80 degrees, the newspaper headlines scream “COR, WHAT A SCORCHER!”

Still, Karen and Steve seemed not to mind.  As we winded down delta roads and the sweat dripped off our faces, we chattered away happily.  They were absolutely thrilled to be in America and were eager to point out the subtle differences between our two great countries.  “In England, this car wouldn’t be allowed on the road,” was an observation Steve made more than once.

Despite this, Jenny and I became best of friends with Karen and Steve.  They returned from England several times to stay with us, giving us many more opportunities to have adventures in our little station wagon.  Once, on another 100+ degree day, it overheated and left us stranded on the side of I-680.  This happened only fifteen years ago, so you can understand if it is still too painful to recall in detail here.  Let it suffice to say that the story ends with Steve, Karen, a fragrant guy named Dave, and me, crammed into the cab of Dave’s tow-truck.  I was pressed up against Dave with his stick shift between my knees.  Every time he changed gears I sat up a little straighter.  By the time we reached our destination, Steve was shaking, Karen was in tears, and my voice was an octave higher.

That was the trip that inspired Karen and Steve to compose a song about our vehicle, to the tune of We Three Kings:  The chorus starts:

Car of wonder!

Car of fright!

Car with engine burning bright!

We no longer own either car, and believe it or not, Karen and Steve are still our friends.  They have visited us here and we have gone to England to see them more times than I can count.  They used to kid us a lot about our old cars, until the day when, during a drive through the English countryside, we were stranded by the roadside because the windshield wipers stopped working-- something that would never happen in California.

You've Got to Be Taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught.

                                                --Lt. Joe Cable, South Pacific

I learned to be a racist when I was eight years old.

When I was a kid, the Oakland A’s were everything.  I could not remember a time when they weren’t winning the World Series.  I could rattle off the names of every player in every position…Sal Bando, Campy Campaneris, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Billy North, Dick Green, Gene Tenace.   I don’t think I understood the concept of replay back then, so in my mind Reggie Jackson was always hitting home runs, and Joe Rudi was always robbing them from other players with spectacular leaping catches at the wall.  Always. 

My best friend Vincie and I would play baseball together with a beat-up wooden bat and a tennis ball.  We would be the A’s, competing against an invisible Other Team.  The Other Team didn’t have a name, because in our minds, no other team really mattered.  The A’s would always crush the Other Team with massive moon-shots to left field and brilliant defense.  I can say with all modesty that Vincie and I played dozens, perhaps hundreds of games, and finished our careers undefeated.

The way we saw it, the only other thing happening in the baseball world at that time had to do with some guy named Hank Aaron.  Even though Hank Aaron was not an Athletic (it wasn’t until I was much older that I figured out that the “A” in A’s actually stood for something) Vincie and I were aware of him, because at the start of the season of ’74, Hank Aaron was one home run shy of the all-time record.  The excitement in the country had reached flood stage, overflowed its banks, and inundated every corner of the country before finally trickling through the gutters of Chickie Street where I grew up. 

I remember talking about Hank Aaron with Vincie.  I expected him to mirror the enthusiasm I had observed in my older brothers and their friends, but he didn’t.

“My dad doesn’t want it to happen,” he said.  “He doesn’t want a (black man) to break a white man’s record.”

I don’t know how, but I knew the word he used for “black man” was a very bad word.  Yet here was my best friend throwing it out casually, like a warm-up toss before a baseball game.  It never occurred to me that the record Hank Aaron was about to break had been set by another man.  Babe Ruth was a pudgy guy with a face that looked like a depressed Gerber baby, but the most important fact about him in Vincie’s mind, other than that he could hit home runs, was that he was white.  A lesson had been planted in my young heart, a lesson that said a black man was not worthy of a white man’s record.  That many of our Oakland A’s heroes--heroes we not only admired but often pretended to be--were black, was an irony that was lost on both of us. 

Of course, Hank Aaron paid no attention to Vincie’s dad.  He first tied the record, then, on April 8, 1974, broke it.  I remember watching it happen at my brothers’ friend’s house.  As the ball sailed over the wall and one fan tried to snare the priceless sphere with a fishing net, the room erupted in cheers.  I alone remained silent, conflicted. 

Fortunately for me, and unlike Vincie and Lieutenant Cable, I grew up in a home where seeds like that failed to thrive.  The word Vincie had used was a word I would never hear in my house.  I never heard my father say a disparaging comment about someone simply because of the color of their skin, and I never heard him tell a racist joke. 

But it wasn’t just the things my father didn’t do.  My sister, eight months older than me, was adopted.  My mother and father say they saw her picture--an infant with sad, almond-shaped eyes, her chubby face framed by a black pixie cut--and immediately fell in love.  They knew in an instant that this little girl from a Hong Kong orphanage was their daughter.  When I was a young teen, they told me that extended family protested, asking “isn’t there a white baby you can adopt?” My mom and dad ignored them.

Another lesson came when I was in high school and sang bass in the choir’s barber shop quartet.  I was surprised to learn that my reserved, mechanical engineer dad sang baritone in one when he was a young man.  He said he had even considered joining a national society of barbershop singers, but rejected the idea after he learned they would not allow black people into their organization.  He didn’t say it boastfully.  He didn’t point out that he made this little stand several years before the Civil Rights movement started to gain national attention.  He just said it, because it was true.  These are lessons that were also planted deep in my heart; finding purchase, taking root, and crowding out the one placed there by my best friend in 1974.

While I am grateful to have had parents who would teach me these lessons, I am also uncomfortable with how easily my eight-year-old heart was molded by a friend’s offhand remark.  While racism appalls me now, I must also recognize that I once started on that path, even if I never got too far past the trailhead.  I realize that even now, seeds of arrogance and ignorance and fear are constantly being sown, and I have a responsibility to be vigilant, to weed out evil and lies, and nurture charity and truth.

Bigotry has “got to be carefully taught” as Joe Cable self-loathingly sings.  The good news is that tolerance, respect and compassion can also be taught.  We, as adults, need to pass those lessons down to the next generation.  We need more people like my dad.

I, for one, choose to be one of them.

The Gospel According to Snoopy

Today, I would like to talk to you about religion.

*CLICK*

Did you hear that?  That was the sound of all my readers (both of them), navigating to other pages. 

Nobody likes to talk about religion. 

No, that’s not true.  Really, most people don't mind talking about religion.  It’s just that nobody wants to hear someone else talk about it.

You know the feeling.  There you are, poking at your in-flight meal with a plastic hybrid utensil, trapped in your window seat by a stranger on a plane.  Or maybe you’re talking over lunch with a co-worker.  Suddenly, the subject turns to God.  Your conversation partner becomes animated and enthusiastic, speaking with authority and conviction.  They might be Mormon or Methodist, Assembly of God or Atheist, Jewish or Jehovah’s Witness, Scientologist or…some other belief that starts with “S” that I can’t be bothered to think of right now.  It doesn’t matter.  They are certain that you agree with them, or if you don’t, that you will agree with them by the time the conversation is over.

And you are too polite to interrupt.  Your eyes start to glaze over.  You find yourself nodding and saying “Hmmmm!” and “Really!” while your mind is racing for an exit strategy (I wonder if I can break out the passenger window with this spork?) or ways to change the subject (“My goodness!  I believe I’m choking to death on my falafel! That reminds me of a time when…”)

On the internet, it’s simpler.  If someone posts a remark about religion that you disagree with, you can anonymously "dislike" their comment and then say he or she has the intelligence of %#&* and that everyone who agrees with them, including the poster’s mother, is a *#&@$@.   Then you can chastise them for their intolerance.  At least that's how it works on "Yahoo!"

The problem is that, when it comes to matters of faith, we all believe that we are right.  The corollary is that this makes everyone else wrong, although most of us are too civil to actually come out and say that.  Even when we, in the spirit of tolerance, listen to an opposing viewpoint and say things like “I respect all beliefs” or even “all ways really lead to the same place,” there is another voice deep in our psyche that is whispering “what a chowderhead!” and quietly snickering.

However, in this time in history, we need to be able to talk about faith.  The world is much smaller than it was even ten years ago, and we are being constantly confronted with differing viewpoints.  Avoiding the conversation abandons it to the extremists--the self-righteous Koran-defilers and the puerile amateur movie-makers and the Kalishnikov-toting embassy assailants.  The absence of your voice and mine leads to misunderstanding and demonization and hate, and ultimately, as we have seen too often this last week, to violence and death.  Glazed eyes or insulting jabs are no longer an option.

In one Charles Schulz strip, Snoopy sits atop his doghouse, clicking away on his typewriter.  “I hear you’re writing a book about theology,” says Charlie Brown. “I hope you have a good title.”  “I have the perfect title,” thinks Snoopy smugly in response, then types, “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

I think Snoopy is on to something.  We are all so sure that we are right about our beliefs.  After all, that’s why we believe them.  Nobody ever thinks, “This is what I believe.  I know it’s as false as my grandmother’s teeth, but I believe it anyway.”  We believe what we believe because we think it is right, whether it was because of something we read, something a respected teacher said, something we were taught when we were small, or something we experienced that profoundly shaped us. 

But let’s be honest, can any of us really know everything about something as big and mysterious as the notion of God?  And rather than just saying everyone is right in their own way, isn’t it more likely and more honest to say that every single one of us is, at least partly, wrong?

And that includes me.  That’s where I need to start if I’m going to have a productive and respectful conversation with someone about a subject as sensitive as faith.  I’ve discovered that I need to tuck my pride into my back pocket and approach the exchange with the attitude that maybe this other person has something to teach me.  That doesn't mean I will necessarily agree with them or that I will surrender my beliefs for theirs.   It just means that we can both learn from each other if we embrace some humility and attempt to see with each others' eyes, if even for a few moments.

Sad to say, it’s not always been the case with me.  I have been that proselytizer on the airplane or in the restaurant (and if that was you that I was annoying, I now ask your forgiveness).  Conversations turned confrontational and combative, mainly because I felt a need to defend my faith and be right at all costs.

But over the last few years, I’ve had some fascinating and respectful discussions with friends and strangers of several different faiths.  Often, as I’ve offered respect to others, they have returned that respect to me.  I have come to realize that "sharing faith"  is not a one-sided affair, but a dialogue, an exchange of deeply personal convictions accomplished with "gentleness and respect", as the Apostle Peter puts it.  It bears pointing out that Pete also resists the notion that we should aggressively confront others with our ideas about faith.  He seems to be saying, "have your answer ready, but don't give it until somebody asks."*

I remember a discussion with a Muslim professor that shook the foundation of my preconceived notions about Islam.  I have had talks with dear Jewish friends, talks that have opened up breath-taking vistas of my own Christian beliefs.  I have had long conversations with atheist friends that helped me to wrestle with some of my own pig-headedness and hypocrisies.  Then there were the dialogues with a self-described "New-Age pagan" that left me yearning for the same hunger and thirst for truth that she had.  And forgive me if I brag a little bit, but not once, in any of these conversations did the word “chowderhead” even cross my mind.

Once, at a music festival, two lovely Mormon students I worked with, nervous about an imminent performance, breathlessly said to one another “We should pray!”  When I asked if I could join them, they were delighted.  In a quiet hallway, we bowed our heads.  I said nothing, savoring the simplicity and sincerity of their prayers.  It felt no different from hearing students from my own church’s youth group pray.  I knew there were irreconcilable discrepancies between my faith and that of these two young ladies...

...but at that moment, I was more struck with what we held in common.



*You can look it up in 1 Peter 3:15.  

A Thousand Words

AUTHOR'S NOTE: They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Because of rain, I did not have a camera when the following took place, so this will have to do.  At the traditional exchange rate, you're actually getting a little bit of a bargain.  Just take my word for it.

***

July 11, 2012

For two days the clouds had just teased us; playful giants garbed in gauzy lace, crouching on our horizon, dodging or outrunning us as we sped across the salt flats of Utah.  In Salt Lake City they taunted us with a puff of cool breath in our faces as they peered over mountainous hiding places, like they were contemplating a dazzling display of sound and fury.  However, as we put the Great Salt Lake into our rearview mirror and headed into Idaho, they abandoned us, as if a vacationing family of four was beneath their interest.

But as we pulled into Yellowstone, the clouds gathered themselves and pounced, stabbing the ground with fluorescent blades and roaring their pleasure with a deep and throaty chuckle.  A stiff, cold wind hissed in the pines and spattering raindrops chased us into our room in the Old Faithful Inn.

Before we even started to settle in and admire the rustic redwood paneling of our room, we dashed to the window and threw it open to watch the trees kowtow to the wind and listen to the growl of thunder.  From our second story room we could see steam rising from across Upper Geyser Basin as each fountain waited for its turn to impress the park guests, but these geothermal wonders were unable to hold our attention against the gathering storm. 

The Old Faithful Geyser is different from any of its brothers.  Its eruptions can be predicted to within fifteen minutes, as opposed to several hours, days, or in some cases, years.  The park rangers told us that Old Faithful used to be even more predictable, but a couple of earthquakes over the last century caused it to mellow a bit, no longer sticking to so strict a timetable.  As the storm intensified outside, a thought germinated inside my mind…what would it be like to watch Old Faithful erupt in the middle of a thunderstorm?  I find ideas like this difficult to ignore and it wasn’t long before the idea blossomed into action.  I pulled on my coat and announced I was going outside. 

“What?!”  My younger daughter Meredith was incredulous.  Anneka, my sixteen-year-old, regarded me warily, as if my sudden bout of insanity might be a disease that could spread if I got too close.  But my wife Jenny seemed to understand, and almost expected it.  “Have fun!” she laughed. 

The raindrops crackled against my hood and stung my legs as I walked the 100 yards or so to the viewing decks.  Normally, the faux-wooden structures are groaning under the weight of hundreds of park guest waiting to view the latest eruption, but in the middle of the storm only a handful of us were foolish enough to be there now.  

The cauldron hissed and steamed and occasionally gurgled up a splash of boiling water.  The eruption could happen in a matter of minutes, or delay as long as a half an hour.  I could sense the rain starting to abate and I feared that what I came to see, this symphony of storm and steam, would fail to materialize.  Sure enough, the wind began to die and the rain slackened even more.  It seemed the thunderheads had tantalized us with the promise of a spectacular display, only to now impishly withdraw the offer.

But it turns out they had other things in mind.  Like a giantess daintily raising her skirt to step over a puddle, the clouds lifted off the horizon, and the setting sun peeked shyly through.  The small knot of people gasped and cooed as a rainbow appeared, as if growing out of the cauldron itself and arcing its way across the sky into the forest where pines waited with outstretched arms to catch it.  Gaining confidence, the setting sun smiled, drenching the forests, the spectators, and the steam in orange as the rainbow's hues deepened.  Unable to contain its own brightness, another rainbow spawned and began hovering over the first protectively.

Meanwhile, the cauldron frothed and bubbled, roaring, hissing, subsiding, as if it had decided to pick up the game of hide-and-seek that the storm had abandoned.  The few of us huddled on the deck cheered, urged, and groaned.  We laughed and joked together, a tiny family brought together by this potential masterpiece-in-process.

Old Faithful sputtered.  "She's teasing us now," said an elderly gentleman in khaki shorts and a Yellowstone sweatshirt.  "I bet the rainbows fade before she blows,"

"It'd be amazing if they didn't though," a young father with a child on his shoulders responded.  We all murmured in agreement.  We held our breath, but the geyser only belched lazily.

I glanced at the sky.  The gap between the sun and clouds had grown, and the storm was skipping gleefully to another part of the park.  It looked like the old man would be right.

But the cauldron gurgled again, spat, and then, suddenly, roared.  It spewed a stream of boiling water high into the sky, right on time.  The geyser threw steam into the arc of the double rainbow, an orange, glowing cloud.

Liking what it saw, the sun threw back its head and laughed, and the rainbow brightened, hardened, and crystallized into a perfect semi-circle of ruby, amber, garnet,  emerald, sapphire, and amethyst.  Even as the geyser reached its zenith, the wind diminished to a breath and the raindrops ceased, the sky flashed one last time and the storm chuckled its approval, crackling lightning down behind the glittering arch.

“Can you believe it?” we all gushed.  “The double rainbow!...wasn’t it amazing?...The sunset!...The geyser!...then the lightning!...”

 It’s times like this I find it easy to believe in God.  He was palpable here, a master artist using every color in his palette and every tool in his workshop, rolling up his sleeves for the sheer joy of creating something beautiful yet ephemeral for the delight of his sons and daughters.

Sometimes you just have to be willing to brave the storm and take a closer look.

***

AUTHOR'S NOTE (AGAIN):  No, I didn't make this up.  If these 1000 words aren't good enough and you really want to see a picture, go to this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/83252649@N04/7626482128/sizes/l/in/set-72157630704493958/

I'm the guy in the black coat to the right of the gentleman in the grey shirt.

Thank you to Matthew Gordon and flickr.com

What Harry Macafee Taught Me About Aging

One of the hazards of working in a theatre company for young people is occasionally, as the only man on the staff, I’m called upon to fill a role onstage.  This spring I played the role of Mr. Macafee in Bye Bye Birdie.

 

Mr. Macafee, like me, is the father of a high school girl.  He also has a younger son, played in our cast by a young man who is the same age as my other daughter.  Mr. Macafee is a little set in his ways, a bit awkward, and somewhat out of touch with pop culture.   In other words, it’s a role I was born to play.

I was talking to a friend about my role and he mentioned he had also played Mr. Macafee when he was in high school.  Jason is much younger than I, so I don’t think he identified with the character in the same way I do.  He described how he put gray in his hair, wore old man glasses, and padded his belly.  To him, Harry Macafee was an old geezer. 

Now to be honest, I often joke about being old, but I’ve never really meant it, despite the fact that I have started to notice things I’ve never noticed before.  Why, for example, did I ever think sitting cross-legged on the floor was comfortable?  In elementary school I could sit that way for hours, but now, after two, maybe three minutes, my knees and back are groaning in protest.  When I go to concerts now, I no longer move and sing along with the music, but instead think seriously about permanent hearing loss.  Last Christmas my mother-in-law bought me a nose-hair trimmer, and I was actually pleased, knowing I would use it at least twice a month.  I’m sure these are signs of aging, but even at forty-six, I still don’t really feel old.

But listening to Jason talk about Harry Macafee like he was some fossil got me to wondering...How old is this character supposed to be?  

The script doesn't say, but it does provide a couple clues.  The musical is set is 1957.  And Mr. Macafee, responding to an unintentional jab at his age from daughter Kim responds “I’m not an old man.  I was eighteen in World War 2.”

Let’s assume he was eighteen at the start of the war.  After all, if he was eighteen on D-Day, he could boast that he was fifteen on the Day of Infamy.  And let’s say he’s counting from even earlier.  Even if he turned nineteen the day after Hitler marched into Poland on September 1st, 1939, he could legitimately claim he was eighteen in World War 2, even if just for a day. 

So that means, the very oldest Harry Macafee--this fossil, this old codger--could be is…let’s see…1957 minus 1939, add 18, and we get…

Thirty-six.

Thirty-six!

THIRTY-SIX!?

I was okay thinking that I was on the edge of being old.  What’s tough is realizing that I am ten years past Codger-hood.  I've been swallowed up by Fossil-hood and am now well into my Geezer-hood.  

Can Old Fart-hood be far behind?

"I'm a Mac." "And I'm a TRS-80."

About five years ago, my dad bought a new computer.   For a long time, my brothers, sister and I had been trying to convince him to get a new one, but his response would always be, “I’ve got a computer!  I’ve got lots of computers!”

Technically speaking, this was true.  He had four of them. 

OK, those of you who remember when IBM came out with the Pentium, raise your hand.  Good!  Now, who remembers what preceded that?

Not as many of you, but yes, the 486.  And before that?...Anyone?

Oh, dear, most of the people who would have remembered the 386 are already dead.

In 2007, my dad was the last person in North America who still owned and operated a 286.  If you look up “286 computer” on eBay, you can see what my dad’s looked like.  You can pick one up now for less than $200.  They are usually described with words like “Historical,” “Vintage,” and “VERY RARE.”

And that was his newest computer.

He also had (and still has) a TRS-80, which is a Radio-Shack model from the 1970’s with a white on black screen.  It loads programs from a cassette tape.  I bet most modern high school students have never touched a cassette tape, let alone a TRS-80.

The other two used floppy disks.  Remember floppy disks?  Maybe.  Remember 8-inch floppy disks?  Probably not.

So when my dad’s “new” computer, the 286, finally died, he approached replacing it the same way he would approach buying a washing machine or a refrigerator.  He consulted his Consumer Reports magazines, and Consumer Reports told him that the best machine he could buy was a Mac.

Now, I know that Macs are fine computers.  I am certain of this because my friends who own Macs are always telling me in smug and patronizing tones how much better their laptops are than my li’l ol’ Toshiba PC with Windows 7.  My computer sometimes gets slow and occasionally crashes.  Their Macs also sometimes get slow and occasionally crash, but they also have slick white cases.  I’m not sure, but I think it’s the white case that made their Macs cost $1000 more than my PC.

Anyway, my dad’s Mac arrived.  As advertised, in a matter of minutes we had it out of the box and humming away.  We were amazed at all the things it could do.  We took pictures of ourselves.  We took distorted pictures of ourselves.  We took more distorted pictures of ourselves.  It was a busy day. 

We left my dad’s house with a sense of optimism and hope for the future.  We could be more connected!  We could email!  We could even Skype!  And maybe, just maybe...he might get a Facebook account!

A couple of days later, after no email of Facebook contact, I gave my dad a call on his landline, which is what we used to refer to back in the old days as “the telephone.”  I found out my dad had given his new computer a nickname.

“I can’t get That Damn Thing to burn a DVD!” he groused.

I went right over.  How hard could it be?  Didn’t Bill Gates steal the idea for Windows from Steve Jobs?  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Either way, I knew about PCs, so a Mac shouldn’t be that different.

I was wrong.

Now, I don’t want any nasty comments from Mac-lovers.  I’m not talking about your Mac.  All I am saying is that my dad’s Mac is an idiot. For example, it seems to save documents and cheerfully tuck them somewhere in a secret place in its memory, leaving us to play a hilarious and invigorating game of “Find the File.”  That’s just one of its many easy and intuitive features!

When I got to my dad’s house, there was a pile of worthless DVD’s next to it. My dad was fuming.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked.

“I want to know why That Damn Thing won’t make a slide show from the pictures of our cruise that I can show on my DVD player.”

“OK, that should be easy.  I’ve done this on my computer before.  Here, let’s put a blank DVD in.”  The golden disk slid smoothly into the side.  SO much cooler than my PC.

Suddenly, at the bottom of the screen, an icon started bouncing up and down.  It reminded me of when I was in third grade.  There was this annoying kid who always thought he knew the answers and would wave his hand frantically until the teacher called on him, but whenever she did, he would sit there and go “Ummmmm…”

I clicked on the icon and was immediately rewarded with a colorful, spinning wheel.  After the wheel had spun for two minutes my palms started to sweat and I began to feel an inexplicable rage percolating inside me.  If you listened carefully, you could almost hear the Mac going “Ummmmm…”  Finally the program popped up.  The wheel spun for another minute, and then, blessedly, turned into an arrow.  I breathed a sigh.  I was back in familiar territory.  “OK, let’s right click this…”

Nothing happened.

“OK, so Mac doesn’t right click.  Let’s see.  Where are the pictures you want to burn, Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“See, this is easy.  You just click here, where it says ‘burn CD’.”

“Try it,” he said.

The wheel spun for five minutes this time.  “Ummmmmmmm….”

As I said, that was five years ago.  To my knowledge, Dad has NEVER been able to make a DVD of his cruise pictures, or any pictures for that matter.  He used to call me for advice, but eventually the only thing I could recommend was to buy a PC so that his sons could actually help him when he got stuck. 

He still has his Mac though.  It sits at its desk, its gleaming white screen thin and erect and proud.  My dad eventually learned to send emails and to write letters, but he still regards it warily.  He no longer calls it “That Damn Thing.”  Instead he calls it “This Damn Thing,” which means he’s warming to it. 

But I know that deep down inside, he wants his 286 back.

"As We Forgive..."

"I'm a man of faith, but it gets tried in times like this.”  --Marcus Weaver, shooting victim injured in Aurora, CO

How does a “man of faith” respond to evil and unspeakable tragedy? 

From here, safe in my comfortable Northern California home, it is easy to turn it into an intellectual exercise.  I think about where a loving God was as this horror unfolded.  I think about the reasons why God might allow something like this to happen.  I think about how all of us, even the most ardent atheist and the most cynical agnostic, is still a “person of faith.”  

I can ponder these things because my body, unlike Marcus Weaver’s, was not violated by heat and metal.  I did not hear the screams of children and friends.  Perhaps you saw him, as you watched from the relative comfort and safety from your laptop or iPad, on the jerky cell phone images from the scene.  Mr. Weaver was the dazed, hulking figure in the bloodied white shirt being led like a lost child from the theater by a police officer. 

Mr. Weaver’s mind doesn’t wrestle with my questions but leaps to a much more practical one: What do I do in response to the horror that I’ve just experienced?

Perhaps, a man whose faith is (presumably) in Jesus always knows the answer:  "I'm not saying I'm forgiving him today,” says Mr. Weaver.  “I'm not saying I'm not mad, but at some point I'm going to have to let it go."

A man of faith, as defined by Marcus Weaver, knows he must forgive, even when, as the anger and pain are still fresh, it is the most difficult thing in the world to do.  A man of faith knows that forgiveness is the most powerful weapon anyone can wield against evil.

So I’ll stop asking “how,” “where,” and “why.”  Instead I will think about “what”…what will my response be when evil inevitably encroaches into my life?  Instead I will pray that I can respond to personal tragedy in the same way that Marcus Weaver has.  Instead I will pray not only for healing for the physical wounds Mr. Weaver and the others endured, I will also pray for the grace they and their loved ones will all need to forgive the unforgivable.  

blognamegoeshere

My best friend Steve has been encouraging me to start a blog.  I’ve been meaning to for a long time, but I have always made excuses.  Things like “I can never think of anything to write” (not true) or “I don’t have the time” (also not true) or “Nobody will read it” (extremely likely).   But finally I decided to take Steve’s challenge and actually do it.

That was two months ago, and that was when I was suddenly faced with another insurmountable hurdle (AKA “excuse”): “Coming up with a name for the blog.”

Steve’s blog is called “A Stranger in a Strange Land.”  Check it out if you like excellent writing that gently, thoughtfully, and with good humor explores mostly spiritual things (http://stevetheyouthworker.blogspot.co.uk).  It suits him because as a church worker who has rarely spent more than three years of his adult life in one place, it’s a great description of him coupled with a subtle biblical reference to boot.  My blog name needed to be as cool as his. 

My first choices (things along the lines of “Pure Drivel” or “Delusional Rants”) were self-deprecating, which I liked, and taken by others, which I didn’t.  I realized then that choosing the right name was going to be hard, and that I could potentially be saddled with a name for a long time.  I wanted a name that said something about me, and implied that I was wittier and cleverer than I really am. 

I finally settled on two.  The second runner up was “God Makes Snakes” (a Far Side reference) and the winner is what you saw at the top of this page.  I like the absurdity of it and that most people won’t know what the heck it means without consulting Google, and even then it won’t make sense.  The Gary Larson-esque  aspect of it satisfies the “witty and clever” part of my requirement, but not the part about saying something about me. 

And maybe that’s why I chose it.  While I like the idea of a revelatory name, I am more drawn to one that I can hide behind.  I think the hardest thing about writing is not the effort involved in crafting words on a page or screen, it’s the vulnerability that this act creates.  So in other words, my biggest hurdle preventing me from starting a blog isn’t really that “nobody will read it.”

I’m more terrified that somebody actually might.