Be a Blessing

I was about halfway through my second semester at the University of Richmond and ready to quit. Things were not going well. I was working 25 hours a week building wooden pallets in an unairconditioned and unheated warehouse in Ashland while taking a full load of classes at UR, and the grind was wearing me out. My grades weren't good. Commuting all the way from Hanover every morning and working until nearly six every night made for a very long day. As a "townie" I was enjoying none of the raucous social life associated with the college experience, and felt isolated from most of my fellow students by a wide gulf of privilege; many of them were from wealthy, old-money New England families whose BMW convertibles made my 1966 VW Beetle look even shabbier than it actually was.

So, I was feeling very sorry for myself one Saturday morning when I walked across the church parking lot towards my Dad's tiny office to broach the subject of dropping out of school. There he was, slathering a shiny line of black ink on the squeegee of the hand cranked mimeograph machine so he could print out the church bulletins. I always loved the smell of the thing and was temporarily side tracked into helping him with the process, until I eventually spilled all of my troubles to him and informed him of my decision to quit. He kept his attention on the machine and said nothing for the longest time.

Dad had a way of making you feel like an idiot without saying anything remotely unpleasant. In my case, he acknowledged how difficult I had it, but then in a very matter-of-fact, almost kind tone of voice began reminding me that when he went to the University of Richmond, he had four children to feed, and worked the graveyard shift at Reynold's Metals six days a week and still somehow managed to stay on the Deen's list. He never considered quitting because quitting simply wasn't an option. Then he said something I have never forgotten, which I will attempt to paraphrase.

"Son, it seems to me that all you're thinking about right now is yourself and all of your problems. I suppose that's natural for someone to do when things aren't going well, but just because it might be natural doesn't mean it's a good way to live. I want you to try something for me. Every morning when you wake up, I want you to thank the Lord for giving you another day, and then ask yourself this question...how can I be a blessing to someone today? Then, go about your day looking around, paying attention to the people around you, paying attention to the situations that you find yourself in that day, looking for a way that you can be a blessing to someone. See, no matter how bad you think you have it, there is always someone else worse off than you. We don't see them because we are always too wrapped up in ourselves we don't notice. But if you strive each and every day to pay attention to those around you, you'll discover a world of hurt out there. You might find that a kind word here, a cup of coffee there might make a world of difference not only to the people you help, but to you too. Everyday we are given our daily ration of God's clean air to breathe, and everyday we should be striving to justify our share."

Obviously, I didn't drop out of school. Once again I was saved from myself by the simple wisdom of my Dad's words. But this particular talk has stayed with me. I haven't always lived up to his advice, but on the days that I have, it has made all the difference. One of the reasons I am a Christian today is the example that my parents set for me. Dad was able to pour the truth of the Gospel into me without my even knowing it was happening. The speech he gave me that day was essentially a sermon about The Good Samaritan, without a pulpit. Dad had a way of living out his faith in practical ways without a trace of piety. He believed that if your "faith" didn't actually result in making you a better person...and a blessing to others, what good was it?

Thanks Dad. I miss you.

"You're Fired, Cupcake!"

Today, I'll be heading back to work. Yesterday, I followed my wife's advice that I stay home and rest the shoulder for one more day. Being here all day nearly killed me...death by boredom. It took me nearly an hour to take a shower and get dressed after which, I felt like I had run a marathon. Stupid surgery.

One of the lowlights from yesterday was the chance I got to read all about what passes for student activism on the modern American Campus. The President of the University of Missouri displayed perfect cowardice by resigning his position after a handful of students demanded that he do so. The reason for their indignation had something to do with his alleged racism, demonstrated by his insignificantly hysterical reaction to an outbreak of, er, a recent number of, uh...a few curse words being uttered at students of color by a drunk white guy...or something. The tipping point came when the thirty or so black players on Missouri's football team vowed to boycott this Saturday's football game against BYU, if the President didn't step down. That would be thirty African American kids who were given full rides at the University to play a game because of their exceptional athletic skill, upset about...white privilege. Meanwhile, on the east coast in the heart of the Ivy League came the heart warming story of the Yale undergraduates brought to the edge of the abyss by the mere possibility that one of their classmates might choose an offensive Halloween costume. When their glorified room mother suggested in an email, that this sort of thing might best be handled by Yale students themselves, through stuff like face to face conversations, her continued employment at the University became the subject of much angst and recriminations. One of the students, statistically among the smartest, most gifted in the country summed up the feelings of the protesters well..."I don't feel like debating, I want someone to feel my pain!"

As I read these stories I became truly envious. Seldom do I actually wish I were twenty again. Being an adult is so much easier than trying to get started in life. But, I swear, for a minute yesterday I so wished that I was twenty again, and that I would get the chance to compete against these delicate flowers in the job market. If this is the best America can do, we are in some serious trouble. If we are producing this level of weakness and fragility, this much self-centered childishness not to mention this much contempt for the First Amendment, then this country is doomed. But I suppose this is what academia gets for teaching kids what a rotten, horrible, racist country they live in. You teach students that America is irredeemably racist, mysogonistic, homophobic and ruled by white privilege long enough, then I suppose that this is exactly how you would expect those students to eventually behave. Trouble is, if they actually find jobs after leaving their $70,000 a year safe spaces, all of the helmets and knee pads in the world aren't going to protect them from the cold hard reality that awaits them in the real world of competition, where literally no one gives a crap about your pain, and those non-existent micro-aggressions, turn into real, honest to God aggressions that begin with the words, "You're fired, Cupcake!"

Maybe Paris 2015 Really IS Our Last Chance

Even though I've been following the story since before either of them were born, my kids know more about global warming/climate change than I do. Maybe they are just more science-y than I am. Or maybe they are just less skeptical. When I read any article in Salon or The Nation about it, my mind becomes a garbled mess of charts, statistics and dire predictions of planetary chaos that make me want to go slit my wrists. On the other hand, when I read articles from National Review or Reason, I hear about murky science, Manchurian maneuvers by internationalists and statist planners whose goal it is to empower themselves, with global warming providing the vehicle with which to finally rid the world of capitalism. 

My own position is that the earth is warming, a little, and mankind probably has something to do with it. Beyond that, I'm not convinced that the various cures that have been proposed to fix the problem will A. Fix it, or B. Produce a mountain of unintended consequences that will be worse than the disease, not the least of which will be the end of national sovereignty and representative democracy. But I will admit that when you are a person who doesn't trust Big Government, that conclusion might be a bit overwrought. 

So, anyway, I bring this up because in a couple of weeks the United Nations Climate Conference will begin in Paris and it will be all over the news. Already, I've read three different stories with breathtaking headlines describing the Paris confab as humanity's last chance to do anything about global climate change before a tipping point will have been reached beyond which mankind will be doomed. In this, Paris will be in good company, since I have been told the exact same thing about several other United Nations Climate Conferences. A simple google search will produce a treasure trove of doomsday predictions in the weeks leading up to each of the previous meetings listed below. 

Bonn 2001

Montreal 2005

Bali 2007

Poznan 2008

Copenhagen 2009

Cancun 2010

Durban 2011

Doha 2012

Warsaw 2013

Lima 2014

And now, Paris 2015. Anyone who watches the Weather Channel knows how difficult it is to reliably predict changes in weather. So, predicting something as complicated and multifaceted as planetary climate has got to be infinitely more challenging. Consequently, maybe the alarmist rhetoric should be given a pass. If you truly believe that the earth is about to be plunged into a irreversible death spiral because of man made global warming, then you're going to have a tendency towards overheated language. But for those of us who aren't as convinced, hearing every single climate meeting over the past 20 years pitched as humanity's last chance does raise a few eyebrows. After all, if all the experts who said that Bali 2001 was our last chance were right, then Paris 2015 would be a exercise in futility, right? Thank God they were wrong, I guess.

ACWI......attending church while injured

Four days after surgery and I am so thankful that it's Sunday. I have the greatest excuse ever for getting out of this house...church! I will take a shower, find a clean shirt, then strap on my stylish shoulder sling/harness and make my way to church with the unbridled enthusiasm of the newly converted. I will wear the sling not because it is required as part of my therapy, but because its presence will hopefully keep the David Johnsons of the world from greeting me with a hardy pat on the back, which would launch me into a bout of public weeping that I would never live down in a million years.

Attending church while injured, ACWI for short, has many benefits, not the least of which is the fact that it provides a handy topic of conversation for those sometimes strained fellowship times. For those of you who aren't Baptists, this is when the pastor extols the congregation to "find someone you don't know and strike up an awkward, forced conversation!" With my sling, I have a built in excuse not to have to shake hands and a conversation starter:

Random stranger: So, you break your arm or something?

Me: No! This is just the latest fall fashion excessary. All the kids are wearing them these days.

Another benefit of ACWI is that it gives you a pass on the musical chairs routine common in Protestant churches nowadays. One never knows anymore when you're supposed to stand and when you're supposed to sit in church. A song will begin and at first everyone will be sitting, but after a couple of awkward measures, a few people will randomly begin standing, especially the rhythmically challenged woman down front. Pretty soon, a full fledged group think experiment breaks out and before anybody knows why, everyone is standing. I'm thinking that if I'm wearing a shoulder harness, I will be given a pass.

Perhaps the single greatest benefit of ACWI is the blanket dispensation one receives from the ubiquitous clapping that has managed to infect Baptists congregations all over the fruited plain. Every song, regardless of meaning or purpose demands a round of applause. Every attempt at humor, successful or not, is met with thunderous applause. Even the most tender and nuanced song brought forward in the most subtle and thought provoking style gets crushed by wildly inappropriate clapping. Well...not today, baby! I won't clap, for anything! Heck, I couldn't even if I wanted to...which I won't! Now that I think about it, this sling business might be the best thing that's happened to me at church since I taught a Sunday School class full of tenth grade boys. Maybe this thing actually is a fashion excessary!

Surviving the Second Day

It's always the second day after surgery that gets you. The first day, you're all psyched up and determined to conquer the thing, and you're popping the full dose of pain medicine every four hours. The second day, all residual benefits of the nerve block are gone and you realize just how terrible you feel. Taking the bandages off is nice and taking a shower is glorious, but then it dawns on you that you've got six weeks of pain ahead of you, and it's time to start backing off of the pain meds. However, my second day was made so much better by three things...my wife, my siblings and my dog.

Pam is not a natural nurse. The sight of blood makes her lightheaded. A mere conversation about stitches makes her nauseous. But there she was yesterday morning, unpealing my bandage, taking short breaks to gather herself, all the while smiling and being about as upbeat and positive as possible under the circumstances. She took two days off from work to be with me as I have recovered, and spent that time making me delicious food and basically being the most adorable person you can imagine. But then it was time to go back to work and leave me alone for the day...with Lucy.

My dog has been baffled at my condition. She is totally freaked out by the black sling. She seems completely confused as to why I am moving so slowly, astonished that I am unwilling and unable to throw the frisbee with her. So, she has decided that her job, for the duration of this strange set of circumstances, is to stay permanently at my side at all times, staring at me for hours on end looking for any clues as to the reason for my condition. Occasionally, she will leave my presence to search for things to bring to me and drop in my lap. It's like she's thinking, "Here. Maybe this will help you snap out of it!" My second day featured the inability to sleep even though the medicine had made me groggy. So Lucy took it upon herself to demonstrate for me the sixteen different ways that she can fall asleep, just in case I had forgotten...

It's at times like these when I wonder how it is that people recover from illnesses without animals. 

Ever since the surgery on Wednesday, I have been checked on by my siblings at regular intervals. My nurse sister Linda has texted me, my big brother has called a number of times to talk baseball, a much needed diversion, and yesterday, my sister Paula came by and took me to Panera for lunch. My kids texted me all day to check up on me and in Kaitlin's case to give me a homework assignment..."well, since you'll just be lying around all day doing nothing, why don't you look up some examples of news texts that have multiple purposes? Oh, and I need them by noon!"

I survived the dreaded second day, in large part because of some wonderful people...and a devoted puppy!

A Retraction

I got punked by the Internet. Yesterday morning I was sent an article by me niece that contained an excerpt from a monologue by Pat Robertson of the 700 Club. In it he suggested that gay people should be required to wear specially colored clothing to warn heterosexuals of their identity. The article came courtesy of a website named Religionlo. Most of the quotes attributed to Robertson in the article were accurate, but the the most outrageous one that was the subject of my blog was not. Accordingly to the myth-busting/fact checking website, Snopes, it was fabricated.

Frankly, the fact that I believed it was because of Mr. Robertson's history of moronic statements. Nonetheless, I should have done a bit more research on something as vile as this before writing my blog. This mistake was all on me and I apologize to anyone who read it assuming it was true. The fact that it isn't true restores a little bit of my faith in humanity.

The Pink Triangle

Maybe the worst thing about having surgery is that you can't have your coffee in the morning. So, I'm sitting here on the sofa, starving to death, writing what will be my last blog for a while, since left handed typing under the influence of opiates would probably not be wise. What I need is a diversion, and my niece just provided me with one when she sent me a link to an article asking me to opine about it's content. Here's the headline...

" Pat Robertson thinks Gay People Should Wear Specially-Colored Clothes to Warn Straight People."

Wh...umm, wait, is this from the Onion? Unfortunately, no, it comes straight from one of his 700 Club monologues. My first reaction was, wait, you mean like the Nazis did to the Jews with the Star of David thing?. Maybe he's thinking they should wear pink hats, or a pink triangle patch on their otherwise fabulous shirts? I swear, some days it's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other...

Every time this wretched man opens his mouth the cause of Christ suffers a body blow. People will read this and ascribe it to all Christians. That's how things work now. The most vile and outrageous drives the news, not the millions of Christian men and women out there spreading the love and grace of Christ. But hey, they don't have a TV show and a private jet, so who cares?

Today, I have bigger fish to fry than a demented Howdy Doody lookalike. Pretty soon, I will be in an operating room surrounded by several highly skilled men and women, some of whom might be gay. But I would never know because they won't be wearing special rainbow gowns. And I couldn't possible care less, as long as they are, in fact, highly skilled and can fix my shoulder without killing me in the process. 

Mercy, what an idiot!




NOTE:  Please read my post from November 5 correcting the record on this quote that I just discovered was falsely attributed to Mr. Robertson.