Chill

I've got a political blog. But this is a spiritual issue related to it, so I feel it belongs here.

I've been frustrated rather than passionate about politics for the past decade. I don't like either side, really, and have been angry that people are growing more and more resistant to reasonable compromise. With the advent of the internet, there seem to have been more political opinions written since 1995 than in all of human history combined. I can see a dozen per day just among my friends on Facebook! Yet there is actually less sharing of information, less dialogue, less cooperation than I've ever seen in my life. Everyone's shouting and no one is listening - except to people who already agree with them.

Several times over the course of the past months I've had to remind myself that no one becomes leader of a nation without it passing through God's hands. I've tried to step into online arguments (some of which I started) and say, "It's not the end of the world if it turns out differently than you'd like. God outranks them all." Political parties, systems of government, and economic ideologies are - ultimately - just "chariots and horses."

Let's remember that the whole Earth will be ruled by a loving and benevolent absolute monarchy one day and is under its care right now.

Let's just put a peeing Calvin on it and be done with it

Many people are ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the new license plate adopted by our state. In pastel colors it depicts an idyllic Alabama beach scene. This is intended to generate tourism to our narrow but lovely stretch of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico, something of which many folks - even in our own state -are unaware.

Others are marveling that we have finally secured the rights to the title of Lynryd Skynyrd's paean to our beautiful state and that the words Sweet Home Alabama will finally be emblazoned on our automobiles.

Here is the new tag in all it's splendor:

Nice enough, I suppose.

But I am not too amped about all this. Because I know how it will actually look on the highway.

Here's my guess at what the final exhibition will be:

Thank you, frailty

I really needed this song today. Even though it's ten years old I only really listened to it this week - right before I needed it. Thank you, Providence!

Thank U
Lyrics by Alanis Morissette

How about getting off of these antibiotics
How about stopping eating when I'm filled up
How about them transparent dangling carrots
How about that ever elusive kudo

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

How about me not blaming you for everything
How about me enjoying the moment for once
How about how good it feels to finally forgive you
How about grieving it all one at a time

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

The moment I let go of it was
The moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it was
The moment I touched down

How about no longer being masochistic
How about remembering your divinity
How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How about not equating death with stopping

Thank you India
Thank you providence
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you nothingness
Thank you clarity
Thank you thank you silence



Alanis is more than slightly off her rocker sometimes (although I don't have room to talk) and this song was born out a trip to India, not Saddleback Church. But she's always brutally honest and I love her anyway.

Grace for the Captain

Note: Some of this is sheer speculation but it sounds better this way!

Choker? You could argue that. She's an elite athlete. She's been in these situations before. She knows from pressure. I'm not of that school but many athletes (including, probably, the lady herself) and armchair quarterbacks are. I'm just too touchy-feely for that.

Goat? No dice. She wasn't the only reason Team USA finished second. She was a major factor but the Chinese were also.

Robot. Robot? Yes, I've actually seen this term in print, used to describe a world champion gymnast with a heart the size of her home state, Massachusetts.

The boors - actually the astonishingly perfect morons - who say Alicia Sacramone showed no emotion when her dreams of Olympic gold were quashed as she fell from the balance beam last night are blind and obviously have no clue how to read other human beings. I hope they aren't married or dating anyone. They will have many years of pain caused by their obliviousness. Sacramone was on the verge of tears immediately after her beam routine but she refused to cry for the phalanx of cameras that were stuck in her face. Why? I can't read her mind but here's my take:

Because she was the adult.

She was the leader.

She was the captain.

Any reasonable person could see Alicia was utterly shattered and her eyes were filled with shock, grief, and an absolute all-consuming rage at herself. She even fell on her hands and knees at one point and fought to compose herself. But she refused to give the prying eyes of the world the satisfaction of watching her cry. And she would not break down in front of her teammates because she was trying to keep the agony from spreading and to reinforce her example to them. An example she set when they had made many mistakes during Sunday's qualifying, when she encouraged and coached her younger teammates to bounce back, to focus, to overcome. She wasn't going to be a hypocrite.

Did she bounce back? No. Did she maintain her focus? No. Did she overcome? As far as last night goes, one could argue she didn't. But, my goodness, she struggled mightily to do so.

Personally, I think many of us would have curled up in the corner and gone quietly insane if we'd spent twelve years to reach that one night and had it all collapse in a fraction of a second.

Thanks to the newly intrusive microphones in the team's huddles, I have marveled at Alicia all week for showing superior leadership and level-headedness. Through the setbacks of Sunday's qualifying round she was unfailing in her ability to rally her teammates and keep them on task and in a positive frame of mind. Sadly, she actually seems much more mature, emotionally, than their coach, Marta Karolyi. Alicia may have realized that, too. And that may have been her undoing. Last night I felt like she had probably taken too much responsibility on herself. She may have seen their success or failure resting solely on her shoulders. For a 20-year-old with billions watching, that's an incredible amount of pressure.

When she finally cracked under that pressure, she could not encourage the one teammate who needed it the most.

She dispensed so much grace that she had none left for herself.

Stone-faced and feeling absolutely outside of her body, her brown eyes filled with both fire and ice as they stared out at nothing, she let her teammates' encouraging words bounce off her ears and fall to the ground like rice off a groom's back. She would hear none of it. It was a distraction.

But one girl got through to her. It was only for an instant but it was real and it was a harbinger of hope.

Shawn Johnson. A Miss Perfect who realizes that she is far from it. She stood toe-to-toe with her captain. She looked Alicia in the eye and said something. I don't know what. But it made a fleeting smile pass across Alicia's face. Just one moment of grace in a night that will haunt her dreams for months, maybe years.

It didn't take the pain away. It didn't rally Alicia to a triumphant recovery in the floor exercise. But it was a start in her recovery from that one mistake. She will recover. She will graduate soon from an Ivy League school. She will be a great leader in whatever field she enters, rest assured.

And this was a start.

Just six this time? I can handle six.

I've been tagged by Dave C. to participate in this meme:

6 Random Things About Me

1. I am a supertaster, a person who experiences taste - especially bitterness - with far greater intensity than average. I also have a strong revulsion to almost any pungent food (I like only a hint of garlic) and any food that tastes, for lack of a better word, spoiled (rye bread, brie, etc.) Grapefruit, raw onions, Brussels sprouts, and spinach are absolutely inedible. One piece of diced onion can ruin an entire hamburger for me. It's all I can taste from that point on. Coffee is merely for warmth in the winter and must be heavy on cream and sweetener. Cilantro smells and tastes like a strong deodorant soap to me, which is usually a good indicator of a supertaster. My favorite Mexican restaurant recently began using cilantro in their salsa and I'm heartbroken. My sense of smell is equally sensitive. I get extreme headaches if I spend more than 30 seconds in the detergent aisle.

2. I was well into my thirties before I learned the real words to "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" by England Dan and John Ford Coley. It's "movin' in" not "the linen." Even knowing that, I can't understand why they say it like "moo vinnen." That's what they get for cramming a 2-1 syllable combination into a 1-2 beat.

3. I believe ketchup doesn't belong on your hot dog if you're more than 12 years of age. Mustard, relish, chili, or cheese. Everything else is anathema. See #1 for my opinion on onions.

4. I am a Toyota man. They last 20 years, are very forgiving, and get great mileage.

5. I am a Smarties junkie. I cannot have a bag of Smarties near me. I will eat every last one of them in succession. Non-stop. It's scary. The sugar buzz makes my heart race.

6. True story: Once, as a teenager, I was washing my hair in the shower and got shampoo in my eyes. As I began to rinse away the burning soap, I tried to open my eyes to let the water in. When I opened them, I couldn't see anything! I kept rinsing and rinsing frantically but every time I opened them again there was still only utter blackness. I yelled, slung the shower door open and flailed at the wall trying to find a towel. Suddenly I heard the hallway door open and my mother's voice saying, "You didn't go blind! The power went out!" I guess she knew every adolescent boy's deepest fear...

I also have a list of 100 more such facts over at "Not That You Asked", my lists page.

Joy unspeakable. Or unspoken.

I have had moments where I've had warm feelings about God. I'm sometimes grateful for some of the people and situations he's brought into my life. I appreciate what happened at the cross and I have been moved by it on occasion. But I've never been someone who just cannot contain himself about his unabashed ecstasy at how great God is. I suppose that's because I don't really have any overwhelming joy about Him.

I can't identify with people who - out of the clear blue sky - shake their heads and laugh and say things like, "God is just so awesome! He's just incredible! I'm just so astonished and amazed at how fantastic He is and how wonderful He has been to me! Yea, God!" Of course, I often take such people with a grain of salt. Too many times it has been revealed that they were trying to convince not only others but themselves that they were on the right track. But just as often I'm pretty sure they genuinely are overcome with joy.

Is there something wrong with me? Am I an ungrateful backslidden worm? I sure feel like it.

I know that the comparison game is a trap and that I don't get all wild and demonstrative about much anyway. It has to be really, really, REALLY outside my normal experience to get me fired up. Having an Apache helicopter descend on our riverfront retreat party uninvited (and hover for several minutes while we cheered) instigated possibly the last time I went spontaneously crazy about anything and that was several years ago. Even my recently acquired annual pilgrimage to an Alabama football game (thanks Mike!) has lost a little of its fire. Of course, actually winning could help that...

You want honesty? You really want honesty? Gloves off?

Why am I required to be grateful no matter what happens to me or the ones I love? If I ever stop long enough to really think about the horrors, I sure don't feel joy and gratitude. i just want to curl up in a ball and cry and beg Him to make it stop. In fact I've tried that, too. Didn't work.

Why am I supposed to tell God He's wonderful every time something terrible happens? Because He orders me to? That's not a good enough reason for me. At all. In fact, it's a pretty ludicrous reason on the face of it. "I make the rules. I define wonderful. It's whatever I do! Isn't that cool?!" Is that really what He means by His statements to the prophets or Job?

Maybe I will eventually learn something from it some day. Well, someday never seems to come. I never learn. So the hits just keep on coming. And what am I supposed to learn exactly? That He's right no matter what and I'm wrong no matter what? Hello! Square one.

How about I take the summer off and start that class again in the fall?

I get angry and hurt and confused sometimes. I cannot get better on my own. I at least know that one! But He never seems to fix me. It's a tough question and it causes its fair share of stress. I see glimmers of answers in the love of others and the positive things pain can drive us to. But it's a long, hard road.

All input is welcome. And don't worry, I don't need medication. Yet!

20 Years

April 1988.

George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis are in the middle of a primary race for the nominations of their respective parties. The Last Emperor wins nine Oscars, including Best Picture. Aloha Flight 243 makes a miraculous landing after its fuselage peels off in mid-flight with the loss of one life. The Soviet Union announces it will begin withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

And a nervous, skinny 22-year-old with a cold and a tiny, beautiful 23-year-old stand before God, their families, and friends in Huntsville, Alabama and promise their lives to each other.

He reads the following aloud:

So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!

Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.

Don't drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge draughts of him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.

Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.

Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to his church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as he exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.

Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ's love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They're really doing themselves a favor—since they're already "one" in marriage.

No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That's how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become "one flesh." This is a huge mystery, and I don't pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.

Ephesians 5:16-33, The Message

As he reads, he emphasizes the latter portions about love and respect. And they are important. Central, even. But he will learn as the years go by that the verses he (for some reason) couldn't let go of, the ones that didn't quite seem connected to the wedding theme but he couldn't bring himself to exclude, were just as instructive:


Watch your step.
Use your head.
Make the most of every chance you get.
Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly.
Make sure you understand what the Master wants.

He wastes many hours and years ignoring those verses. Thankfully, they remind themselves to him before it is too late.