Ever Have One of THOSE Days?

They pop up when you least expect them. They either send you into an emotional high orbit or send you crashing nose first into the pavement. There are even those occasions, maybe when we're on auto pilot, when they are barely even noticeable and they affect us not one whit.
I'm referring to those first thing in the morning, right out of the chute, pieces of unexpected information, or critical updates... or sensory inputs. The effect they have on us is tied closely to what your current state of mind is. If you are riding high, feeling good about yourself, your friends and life in general, you can handle darn near any news without suffering adverse effects. When you are in this state, this zone if you will, a sledgehammer to the cerebellum will slow you down, but only a bit. Life can't wrestle you to the ground, let alone pin you, as long as there's breath in your body. Immovable object... I'd like you to meet irresistible force. There are people out there who are in this state, and seem to be able to remain in this state perpetually. It's probably not a significant portion of the population, but it does register on the Lecter scale (Hannibal).
I throw Lecter's name into the mix just to draw your attention to how we as humans, seem to consume ourselves with things we have no control over. Things in our daily lives sometimes fall into that category - out of our control - but are not the norm. We control a lot of our daily lives, we make conscious decisions to choose a course of action. These actions all come with their own set of likely outcomes, which our brains process and then tell us in advance which course to choose. Plastic or paper, stay or go, regular or unleaded, polite or annoying, left or right, red or black, formal or casual, early or late, walk or ride, cry or laugh, matte or glossy, regular or super-size, soup or salad, text or voice, today or tomorrow, love or hate, fresh or frozen, coffee or tea, street or freeway, happy or sad, selfish or helpful, crabby or friendly... I think you get the picture. Literally hundreds of decisions that we make every day are processed, for the most part, automatically.

The choices I listed above (and hundreds more) are always right in front of us, and if we're not happy about the direction we're headed, we have the steering wheel in our hand. Take yourself out of "automatic" for a day and alter your course just a bit, choose a bit differently, and be amazed at the results within a day or two. De-rutify in street slang.

I've heard it said that our lives are what they are because of: the people we meet, the books we read and the places we go. A bit of an oversimplification, but I think pretty accurate. Chew on that for a few minutes... a quick review of some of those connections is worth a minute or two of your time. We know it, we just don't think about it.

This brings us to the Question of the day; How do you handle those first thing in the morning... day starters? How's your life experience factor treating or guiding you? Is it guiding you, or are you in control of it? You can't change the past, but you can change how you deal with it. You can box it up and put it on a shelf and ignore it, or you can trot it out, pin it up on the corkboard and re-live it endlessly. If you choose to continually put it up on the corkboard, at least bring in an interior mental decorator to help you decide what to keep and what to just throw away. We all have more control than we realize and in my experience, cruise control is best left in the car.

So what's it gonna' be? Bath or shower, coffee or juice, white or wheat, news or music, blog or read, friend or enemy, leather or canvas, silk or satin, run or walk, frown or smile, cat or dog, think or act, change or...

Adrian? Ambrose... are you there?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I cannot resist the urge anymore... there's just too much here to ignore.

Three years before my dad died I dropped in for a visit to his home in Minneapolis. He didn't hear me knock so I let myself in through the kitchen door. The TV was on and very loud as dad's hearing had deteriorated a bit over the years, probably the after effects of raising 5 kids.

Background - Dad & Mom were married for a little over 40 years before cancer claimed Mom in 1988. Dad grieved inconsolably for about 2 years and then miraculously snapped out of it. He started keeping company with "a new gal." WE, the kids, were flabbergasted but unbelievably happy for Dad as he didn't hide his depressive stretches very well and we were starting to worry. His life had done a total 180 and he was back to his old self, laughing and making loving, pointedly funny comments about all his kid folk. In June of 1991 he announced that he was getting married... you could have heard a pin drop when the news came out. In a family gathering we just all kind of stared at each other and tried to drink it all in and then, almost unanimously, came to the conclusion that this was a good thing, no check that, a GREAT thing for Dad. Who deserved happiness more than him? And, you could tell he was happy. My concern, my only concern was the age differences between Dad and his new bride to be - they were 25 years apart. His betrothed was my sister's age. This took a little thought on my part to get some kind of perspective on how this all fit together and was this person just kind of a gold-digger looking to capture my father's pension and take him for a ride? My fears were groundless as this woman turned out to be the epitome of nicety and wholesomeness, well mostly. In addition, she was the church secretary, an accomplished musician (plays 3 instruments) and directed all 3 choirs at a very large Catholic Church. As we later found out, after they had been married for a couple of year, we discovered that she also had a wickedly funny sense of humor and could freely ask hard questions of the church she loved to death. As my Dad would say (he wouldn't say this about her because it would be inappropriate) "She is a real pistol!" They lived happily ever after until my Dad died in 2003. { Beginning of another post (Dad died of a broken heart) }
I feel like my "step-Mom"needs more depth and you need to know a bit more about her, but she deserves her own space, so I'll put that on the back burner for now. ~


I walked into the living room amid snickers from my Dad. They weren't directed at me but rather at the TV. I startled him as he still hadn't heard all the commotion i made coming in. He said "hi" and then said "you've gotta' watch this." It was Monk, in my book a so-so detective dramedy set in San Francisco (if you don't know the premise of the show go and Google it and come back later). I had no context for what scene I was watching but I obediently sat down and didn't say a word until commercial. At commercial Dad began to extol to me the wonders of this show and relate all these funny anecdotes, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time.
Nearly every time after that when I would come for a visit, there was always something Monk related, either the show itself or a funny Monk story that would be part of our conversation. Maybe not a lot but it a held a permanent spot in his life. Dad was always a cop show kind of guy and gravitated towards the real action type shows (Mannix, Yancy Derringer, Rockford Files (fav), Magnum PI, Hawaii 5-0, the Untouchables... you get the picture). I could tell he fancied himself as one of those detectives in the shoot 'em up solve the crime, capture the bad guys kind of way. Monk on the other hand, wasn't the same cup of detective tea. Monk is cerebral, quirky, efficient, endlessly OC and devoted to his deceased wife Trudy who was murdered(?) by a member of the criminal element (a recurrent and underlying theme to most of the episodes). I really don't know if the Trudy thing was the "hook" for my Dad but he loved that show with a passion. I can't picture him as Monk, though.
After Dad died, within a few months actually, I was sitting home alone one night channel surfing and came across Monk on cable. I buzzed by it and then, for some reason, something told me to go back and give it a look. Remember it like it was yesterday - I could hear my Dad chuckling and snickering in front of the TV as real as if I were back in his living room. Thinking about it now the hair stands up on the back of my neck and a trace of goosebumps is roaming nearby. I obediently went back to Monk and finished watching the current episode, totally unfulfilled as there was only a few minutes left in the show, which made me slightly irritated for wasting valuable surfing time for just a snippet. As is often the norm with cable, there were back to back episodes, much to my surprise, so I decided to get the full picture. Randy Newman's Monk (It's A Jungle Out There) theme song started to play, which is always a good thing (Short People, I Love L.A. are primo), so I sat back with a diet-pepsi and took it in. I thought to myself: "Damn, that wasn't bad at all and that Monk guy has something about him that makes you laugh and squirm at the same time." And he was so eerily right all the time (I give the credit to Trudy) it made you want to give the show a second bite. I'm not ashamed to say that I developed a love for the show that may have even exceeded my Dad's. It has a inexplicable magnetism to a very select group of people, and I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones that "gets" Monk.
The best part of it, and maybe one of the most frustrating too, is that I share time with my Dad every time I happen to pull up in front of the TV with a Monk episode. He's there and I know which parts would make him smile and smirk and it makes me smile just to think about it. Sadly for Monk fans, they stopped making new episodes but the old ones have not as yet worn out their welcome with me. I love spending time with Monk, and Sharona and Natalie, and Ambrose, and dip shit Randy and Leland... and Trudy, when she would visit Adrian (in dream state), usually in his bedroom. Their relationship was breathtaking - they shared, they laughed, they loved.

I don't watch much TV... baseball, college hoops some, Law & Order (maybe over the top) and Monk.
Monk provides me with one of two rock solid connections to my Dad. The other requires a whole different story, so if interested... come visit again.

Life is, indeed, a funny old dog and there are no coincidences. I believe that.

The long and winding road

For the thousands of you (read one or two) avid readers of this blorg (yes) and any of my in-line Twit friends you'll notice one thing about me. My "style" is not original it is borrowed, rather stolen, from dozens of writers that live in my front hemisphere. Strange because there's barely enough room in there for me, but there they are nonetheless. It's hard to get back into the practice of writing more than 17.5 words per message, so your indulgence with this and any of the other wayward missives that may hatch is requested and/or appreciated.

There was a time when I thought I had the great American novel inside of me. It was a time when I lived with the likes of Zig Ziglar and Tom Peters, Jim Rohn and Wayne Dyer, Norman Vincent Peale and Roger Dawson. August company to say the least, but they were living on the shelf in my office and I was their promoter (pimp). It was fun to pretend that the business I created put me in direct contact with these luminaries of the motivational business scene, when in reality I was helping them become comfortably wealthy while I struggled to pay the bills. For the time when "the office" was actually up and running (2 years?) I did have the opportunity to work with some large and medium sized businesses, either by doing sales trainings or by filling in a motivational chasm that needed bridging. I saw people and their businesses and their lives running on cruise-control, even when, in some instances, the road had ended and they never bothered to look up from the wheel to notice. Many had the good sense to slam on the brakes or make an exaggerated turn in order to avoid being crash-test dummies. Some didn't. My job was to help them and, hopefully, their staff put their eyes back on the road. If they didn't I would agonize over ways to customize a more cogent message for them. It took a while before I realized that some businesses and people had their radar turned off, or had failed to hook it up in the first place. Loud crashes would sometimes follow.

Those aforementioned messengers and their messages, for good or bad, grabbed hold of me for more than the briefest of moments and took me places where I thought I wanted to go. Granted, I do revisit those places every now and then to this day, but it's for a cup of mental coffee and a "hi, how are 'ya" kind of stopover. I could never live there again, not because there weren't valid and inspirational messages, but because much of it just wasn't real, even to the people that were collecting the jing. An indictment of all the people therein? No, just another comment from an observer of the human condition (I just dropped in, to see what...). Whoops, I guess that would have to include me then too, with that old guilt by association thing. Your honor, at this time I would like to submit an Alford plea.

Let me just put away that broad brush for a split second and state, for the record, that I HAVE learned that there is no perfect message or perfect messenger. There are some damn good ones, but almost (N)obody is perfect. In my experience, perfect messages are corrupted. Perfect (M)essengers are corrupted or compromised. This is the human touch. It's unavoidable. Humanity touches it and there just has to be a fatal flaw; the birthmark that exists on a nearly unblemished skin. Oh so smooth to the touch, but there's more to messengers/messages than single sense feedback. We all want depth and substance and continuity, and dozens of other personal spices folded into the batter in order to make it a nourishing and appealing cake. Reality is biting into that cake and finding out that after the first swallow you really need to either wash it down quickly, or spit it out. There are, however, some cakes that look "okay" and, once tasted, become sensory delights; you just can't stop devouring them. It's a special bakery that can produce such delicacies. Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you make it a second time (love that one). So too with cakes.

Twitter Torment; Love/hate at its best

There's a unique dynamic that's created when you become part of the fraternity known as Twitter (the Twitstream). The word that comes to mind is "maelstrom" in trying to describe the almost unfathomable numbers of people, places and things that come at you as a Twit-novice.

If you have some web savvy it isn't quite so daunting, but there's still a steep learning curve, which changes frequently, I should add. Terms like follow, followers, re-tweeting, blocking, unfollowing, tweeting, tiny url, lists and more become second nature within a few weeks of even semi-regular visits to Twitter. But then the real fun begins... interaction.

As you begin to follow people and you acquire followers, you start to develop your own niche (your stream or timeline in Twit terms) in terms that you set. You do this by the nature of the people you follow, most of whom have some kind of interest or shared values. I might add that there seems to be a high degree of trust among regular Tweeters, but some of that is illusory as with any human interaction.

As in any relationship the longer you converse (limited by 140 characters) the greater your comfort level grows with people in your "stream."

This brings us to a very delicate issue... which I really need to think about before posting a message that does the issue justice. Stay tuned...

Quit Circling the Wagons, PLEASE!

I received this note in response to someone who was pushing folks to "defend to the death" (so to speak) the behavior of the Catholic Church in lieu of the most recent flap... enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is so unbelievably awful, I can't even begin to figure out how to respond -- but hey, I'll just start and see what comes out.

I would REALLY LIKE a Church that the world hates -- but I have a suspicion that MY hated-by-the-world Church might be different from yours:

I would like a Church that takes the American flag out of its sanctuary and stops pledging its allegiance to the political leaders of the day (and stops singing "America the Beautiful" on the Fourth of July).

I would like a Church that actually doesn't believe that we are the Promised People living in the Promised Land, and God is on our side no matter what we do.

I would like a Church that reminds us regularly that riches are not the goal of our lives and challenges us constantly to "sell what we own and give it to the poor" .. And I would like a Church that actually lives as if it believes that message.

I would like to have had a Church strong enough to stand in the pulpit and preach peace when everyone was yelling "Time to go to war in Iraq" -- I didn't hear very many of those voices; how many did you hear? a Church that reiterates that the end doesn't justify the means (wow! we could have used THAT message before we invaded Iraq) ...

And I don't hear Church voices now on the morality/immorality of sending drones into foreign countries that kill innocent bystanders, or using mercenary soldiers to carry out military missions because they can do so without answering to anyone except themselves, or carving out military programs that have carte blanche permission to assassinate people.

I would like to hear more Church voices talking about Guantanamo and the use of torture, and how this good "(supposedly) Christian" nation should at least not be using interrogation techniques on fellow human beings that rival those used on Jesus. And how maybe our policy of "rendition" is just unbelievably evil.

I would have liked to have had a Church standing up strongly for the health care bill that passed recently; where were those voices (except for the nuns -- who took flak from the bishops for speaking out)?

I would like now to hear more Church voices speaking out for the poor, the disenfranchised (that would include gay people), the immigrants (legal and not), the homeless, the hungry and all those people who are in our prisons for very little reason at all.

And I would like to hear more Church voices speaking out on behalf of those who are not Christian -- yes, even Muslims! -- acknowledging that they too have a place at God's table.

I would like to hear more Church voices reminding us that we as Christians are into community-building more than individualism, that there needs to be more "we" and less "me" in our goal orientation.

Yeah, I would like a Church that the world hates. But in fact, I think we have exactly the opposite problem; we use the Church to defend our country, our way of life, our wants .. to define God the way WE want God to be, to exclude those WE don't like, to excuse ourselves for turning our backs on those WE don't want to share with. And the Church, generally, lets us do it.

So the Church is just way too OK with the world, and it will stay that way unless and until we realize that if we want to follow Jesus, we need to challenge the powers-that-be, we need to put ourselves out there on a limb and know that it's going to be sawed off under us.

In those places where the Church IS hated -- say, parts of South America where priests, religious and lay people are standing side-by-side with the poor -- it's usually because the Church isn't aligned with the political/social/economic rulers of the country. And in those places, there is a REAL threat, and believers can and do lose their lives.

But the Pope? Give me a break.

As far as the abuse is concerned -- Well, I'm a senior citizen; I lived through the years when all of us inside the Catholic community ignored Father So-and-So when he came to the altar on Sunday morning absolutely drunk ... He was just ill, poor Father, and we didn't talk about his problem back then.

I lived through the years when we knew that at least some of the good Fathers' housekeepers were more than that, but we didn't talk about it, because that isn't what you did back then.

And I lived through the years when we didn't talk about sexual abuse either, because that wasn't what you did back then. And Church leaders thought that if priests were sent off to rehabilitation, they could erase their desire to have sex with the altar boys (maybe it was fortunate we didn't have altar girls in those days). Still, it seems like after two or three or four rounds of rehabilitation, bishops would have sort of gotten the drift that it wasn't working really well, or that Father wasn't listening to the Holy Spirit (or whoever it was we thought would transform him) -- and maybe they would have given Father a desk job where he couldn't even come in contact with kids.

But now we know better, don't we? And now these "kids" -- who aren't kids any more and who are, many of them, still suffering from the trauma of their experiences -- are saying they want more honesty, and the most we can come up with is that our poor Holy Father is being attacked???

Why can't Benedict come out in public and say what I just said? "We knew (well, some of us knew, and he was one of them) it was going on, and in the context of the society at the time, we did what we believed would be helpful. The truth is, it didn't work, and lots of kids (and their families) suffered. We cannot undo that, and we cannot erase what happened. What we CAN do now is recognize the reality of this problem and change how we deal with it -- and that is what we are trying to do."

If he would just be honest about what happened and his part in what happened -- why he did what he did, and I think there IS a reason -- people would be able to forgive. Instead, he and all the other hierarchical leaders circle the wagons, deny any culpability, put the onus of evil on the victims and act as if they are somehow reliving the passion of Jesus. NOT!!

It's very hard for the victims to confront what they have gone through, and being able to forgive is a big part of that -- But how can they feel the power of their forgiveness when the person on the other side is denying they ever did anything wrong?

Sitting inside a bubble and talking about this as if it is an attack on the Pope is not helpful at all -- not to him, not to ourselves, not to the Church in general.