A Little Note About Today

Sometimes, it is a very hard thing to put your thoughts in words. I write a lot and still, I’m sure I don’t always say what I mean to say. In the age of social media, it seems that we are being watched closer and scrutinized or even criticized for our random thoughts. Sometimes, just making a quick observation about something can be taken the wrong way. I’ve sort of backed away from constant updates and posts.

I don’t always agree with my friends on facebook. People are often very outspoken on issues I often feel very differently about. I don’t get into debates in these cases. I have “unfriended” people who continually offend me with some kind of narrow-minded obsession.

I’ve had cancer in the past few years. I’ve gone through financial troubles in the past ten years. I’ve gone through some personal things and somehow made it so far. I’ve had to face deaths, some family members had some major health scares and I’ve had to make some big decisions in business. I’m sure I’ve done a few things right and a few things wrong. I managed to secure the old home place for my family. I fixed up the old house a little and it’s even good enough to live in.

We’ve all made mistakes. I’ve made my share. Each time, I was trying to do the right thing but sometimes, the results were not what I expected. I’m not foolish enough to imagine I am finally done with making mistakes.

I’ve really been soul searching for about two years. I’ve changed. I’m growing. I see God in a different way. I see some loved ones in different ways. I took some people off of wobbly pedestals and I’ve tried not to put anyone else upon one. I’m beginning to accept my own mortality. In terms of years, I have more behind than before me. But as for quality, I may have the best ahead.

I haven’t said a lot about Susan. I probably won’t say a lot about her for a while. I’d rather tell this story in retrospect, but I will say that I adore her. She is a very good woman. I’ve looked back over her life while sharing mine with her. Many nights, we’ve sat on Grandma’s glider and we’ve talked for hours. Her story is a lot different than mine. I’ve listened closely for hints of bitterness. She was in love twice before; she has even been happily married twice before. With both husbands, terminal cancer shortened their lives and shortened her time with them, but instead of dwelling on the pain of having to say goodbye to these good men, she talks about how blessed she was to have them in her life. “I could cry because I lost them or smile because I had them.” She says, and it’s not just words. She lives this and she really is grateful in areas where some people might not be. She has taught me a lot.

I fell in love with Susan on our second date. It was Valentine’s Day this year. For us, it wasn’t a romantic night .We went to Dave Poe’s Barbeque and I didn’t even take her any flowers. There were no fireworks that night. It was quiet in her house. We went out to the sun room and she said, “Sit there,” pointing to a recliner, “It was Danny’s chair. You’ll like it.”

She leaned back on a chase lounge across the room. “This is my place.” She said, “I like to just come out here to think.”

We talked a while. She told me all about her new grandson, her daughter, her son-in-law and how proud her first husband would be if he could see what kind of mother his daughter has become. We talked about my life too. I told her about my family and some of my struggles through the years.

In between our conversations, something happened in me. I somehow knew this person. I didn’t feel like I was on a second date. I felt like I was with someone I had known and loved all my life. I was completely at ease. In that moment, I realized I could never be without her. And that’s how it happened for me.

Eight months later, we are getting married; today in fact. In these eight months, I’ve only felt what I felt that night. I’m at ease. She was right; I do like Danny’s chair.

PS Dave Poe’s Barbeque is great.

My Brain and God

Trying to take it apart; to defuse it. I want to see what wires I can cut without making it go off.

I heard someone say, “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

This is true of the color blue and it’s just as true of me and you. I think the thing we refer to as God is the same thing we refer to as love and that’s just the same as life. All of this is synonymous. We cannot take love out of it. What is happening, as I write with this keyboard and this computer, is God speaking but completely through the thing I think of as me. All expression is inspired. I have got it all wrong when I think that there is a brain in my head that instructs my hands and eyes to put down in writing what it thinks. The truth is that there is a much bigger brain which tells my brain to tell my hands to do what they do. The continuity of it all is liberating. My hands cannot live without me, but I can live without my hands. I am sure I would not like to lose my hands because they seem to make my life easier. But imagine how devastated my hands would be if they lost me. They’d cease. They’d no longer have any kind of life in them. I could plant them in a garden and they’d eventually fade forever from the planet. Even the bones of my hands would eventually turn to dust. Suppose I could live a thousand years beyond my hands. And suppose, within those years, I never grew more hands. Would I be less alive?

This is how God sees me and my beloved brain. “Oh you precious boy; you think you are doing this independent of me. That’s cute.” He might say.

But the thing beyond and greater than myself will be here when I am cut off from this world as an individual.

An indeterminate hypothesis is often referred to as religion and religions want to have the last word. They are there to fill in the gaps left by logic and science. However, if it is what we use to fill in the gaps, there is a very good chance we are wrong. This can be seen clearly by looking back over the centuries and the religions imposed upon each generation.

I’d personally like to remove the fillers and let science fill in the gaps; let the religions fail and then reintroduce religions whenever science fixes a place for them.

In my experience, we’ve only used God as an answer when we had no other answer. We came up with a theory about how the planet got people on it and then came science with a much better answer. By trying to establish God as an engineer, we’ve taken away His credentials. He never put “Engineer” on His own résumé.

If we had left God alone with His poetry, He would have been recognized for it by now, but by insisting that He is a Universe Builder instead, no one is willing to hear His poetry now. They think He said that He made the universe the way Al Gore said he developed the internet.

If I tell you that I made Mt Everest, you would likely not hear me if I say, “You are beautiful and I do love you.”

You’d still be thinking about my claim. You’d want me to go away.

The same thing might happen if one of my friends tell you that they know me. “He is good. He made Mt Everest and he is just a loving person. I know he made Mt Everest because he said so.”

Then you happen to meet me and you’ve already got this idea about me. But maybe I never said that to my friend. Perhaps my friend thought it would impress you if he said all that about Mt Everest and then you’d want to meet me more. But it doesn’t work that way.

I did not create Mt Everest.

You are beautiful and I do love you.