Living in a different world

I am not free to share what goes on in my new ministry. Suffice it to say that each day is very interesting and full of unexpected conversations and routines to be learned.

The role of a Chaplain is unique in this setting in that so many people value the role you play, and respect you even if they have no interest in spiritual things.

Like my former life, I am working on Christmas again when Christmas hits of Sunday.

Speaking of that, I still remember the solemn Sunday Christmas when we heard about the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 that took so many lives in a manner of hours. I was so affected by the video captures of so many vacations that turned into nightmares in a moment. In a way it set me off on a deeper search into the meaning of suffering in human life.

A new direction

Christmas 2010, how quickly kids grow up. Ben is 11 and Shannon is 17 today.

Talking to a man in his 80's who said he retired at 58 and never looked back, still commuting back and forth from AZ to Wisconsin and his inherited Green Bay Packers Season tickets. I did not know their was a 40,000 person waiting list for the season tickets.

Talked to a man in his mid 80s, who talked about how hard owning his own small business was and how he managed to lose so much money during the last decade of his working life,....and he is still working in the same business and loves it.

Talked to a man in his mid 70s, who never retired from ministry, and now comes to work early to be home for his ailing wife suffering from dementia.

Been wrestling with this for a long time, but I am just not ready to retire and sit around playing golf and relaxing. It just does not fulfill me.  I feel like I have so much to offer from my life of study and experience.

More to follow.

Protesting an election?

Civility is the root of civilization. Lets be civil about this transition folks. FB has reveled in the comments and memes designed to make the other person look stupid and us look brilliant. Both sides play a destructive game with no winners.

I did not waste my vote, I voted, and those who voted for President Elect Donald Trump will win the electoral college unless something evil lurks underneath the process.

The protests are so odd, so strange and completely undemocractic and unrepublican that the source must be something deeper.  And the alienation that the left is feeling is probably not unlike the alienation I have felt in many election cycles. My reaction and those who share like convictions has not and would not reach this level and this length.

The healing of these feelings is possible, although the new people in power are already beginning to do and act in a way that causes power to corrupt in the first place.

I have a feeling that Christians were always supposed to stand between the two poles of expressing life, we are neither conservative nor liberal, we are citizens of another government of the heart under a new rule of life, being love and the spirit of reconciliation.

Not seeing too much of that spirit anywhere this week. Hoping for the best.

Refusing Doom and Gloom realistically

A blow hole on Kauai....blowing!

Somethings going to blow this week. Both sides predict weal and woe if their candidate is not placed in office.

Both sides predict joy, peace, prosperity, and harmony if their candidate is placed in office.

Those who doubt both, often place their faith in the absolute sovereignty of God. Which, while a comforting thought, may not be something we really understand in a world where God's best action towards evil was submission, and God's best advice towards wrongdoers is justice and mercy, with mercy winning in the end.

I just finished two books on God and suffering, for me a subject I find necessary to ponder. Both attempt to explain evil, and bad things that happen to good people.

When this thing blows, bad things are going to happen to good people, but how bad, how long, and how big depend on circumstance perhaps beyond the control of both parties and both candidates.

At my age, I desire wise government, and unselfish governors, I desire safe streets, and good opportunities for all to live and work and enjoy life.  I have no candidate in this race.

Can a Christian be apolitical?

One of the 30plus lego creations at the Phoenix Zoo till the end of the year. Very cute work.

I am a registered lifelong Republican. I have no candidate running in this presidential election. I have heard all the rhetoric about voting for the platform, and considering the alternative.

I have also listened to the reasoned concerns of many conservatives on the unsuitability of the Republican candidate in terms of life long relational and stability issues in relationship to having the qualifications of holding this high office.  I still fear that many hopeful people will "get Trumped" with some disturbing surprises should he win the election.

Somewhat disturbing among the weekly verbal barrages from Trump, was the use of the word "nasty woman", "nasty woman" twice in the last debate, uttered under his breath but clearly heard by all.

When a Christian acquaintance of mine repeated the word in an attack on Megyn Kelly a few days ago, I realized how quickly Christians can slip down the slippery slope. Megyn Kelly, the darling of Fox News for years, is suddenly a "nasty Woman", for stating her real concerns over the character of Donald Trump?

Maybe because I no longer get Fox News because of attempts to whittle down my budget. Maybe because I have become the subject of Christian narrow mindedness of late. Maybe because I believe all humans have more in common than they pretend. Maybe because my studies reveal that all political power is corrupting, and that government has over reached its boundaries on both the right and the left. I do not know.  But I feel very sorry for those trying to lift their nominee to a level of political savior. I would love to be the subject of all the "I told you so" if He indeed rescues our nation from demise.

I could have stayed silent till this mess is over, but I am trying to learn to speak my mind regardless of consequences, and perhaps believe our problems have spiritual answers apart from this us vs. them game we play.

O Ye Few, and Faithful

A day at the Zoo picture.

I have loved my little blog, closing in one 100,000 reads since I began in 2008. Just a few family and friends check in. I mostly share my life and a picture, and occasionally a rant on religion and politics.

For a while now I have been careful not to turn my facebook into a political or faith blog, and mostly the same here, although you know my views are changing from the general tone of my posts.

Retirement is changing me too, mainly because I am deciding how to spend each day when there are no messages to prepare, articles to write, people to visit in the hospital, and all the things pastors do each week.

I have started journaling in Evernote, and there I unplug and work through my thoughts and emotions where only me and God can reflect on my heart cries.

I have not lost my desire to grow in understanding, not by adding more knowledge but by putting the knowledge in the context of life and not being pushed and shoved by fear or uncertainty.

The world is changing, always does, and I do not want to be a rigid senior citizen, or a my way or the highway thinker. Life has been interesting, and I do not want to lose the moment by moment enjoyment of all that I can still enjoy. Maybe one day those private ideas will make there way to the surface, and maybe I will still have some people to discuss it with, and maybe the outcome of the election will elude both sides threats and fears, and life will go on with some degree of civilized interaction, some degree of unity, and some degree of good will.

Scorpions! Ugh!

Celebrating 3 and 1 year anniversaries of October trips to Hawaii Big Island and Kauai. Hoping for another trip to the Big Island sometime in 2017.

We move 7 tenths of a mile from a home where we never saw a scorpion to having a bit of a problem in our new to us home.  Last week we finally had a treatment and were feeling better about our sightings.  The brief story I am about to relate is true, and is a c, all for constant vigilance to me.

Last evening I was cooking dinner, and needed a spice. I picked up our tablespoon measuring spoon and shook out the spice, but the spoon down and began to crush it a little. After tending to my dish on the stove I glanced at the spoon and noticed what looked like a rubber band hanging around the handle, and instantly I remembered a warning by our pest control man to never pick up something that looks like a rubber band.

Yes, a two inch scorpion was wrapped around the spoon, had been there while I held it and shook the cup full of spice. My finger was less than a inch from the scorpion the whole time.  For some reason he did not strike, and at the moment unwound himself to run for cover, and met a quick and violent death by measuring cup.  Feeling grateful not to be dealing with my first scorpion bite.

I shared a platform with Patsy Ramsey Once

I watched the 20 year reinvestigation of the Jon Benet Ramsey Death with great interest the last two nights. We may never know but the recreation and reexamination of the original case and the subsequent foul ups made for a fascinating TV event.

I found myself agreeing with the plausibility of their conclusion of an accidental death by the son's hand, and a deliberate cover up by the family.

Before Patsy Ramsey died of Cancer, she attended and spoke at the funeral of one of her suitemates at the cancer treatment center who had died and had her mother plan the service and invite me to officiate.

I did not know until I showed up that Patsy Ramsey was there. Something about her fame and notoriety made her seem larger than life, and her tribute to her friend was powerful, poised, and genuine. I remember thinking that this woman could not have killed her daughter.  Her Christian faith was very evident in her presentation and of course you could tell that she had endured much scrutiny and much anxiety about her own life since the loss of her daughter and through the battle with cancer.

Laura and I enjoyed a powerful movie last weekend, The Light between Oceans, about a man of principle and integrity who gave in to the passion and love he had for his wife, and committed a crime. Know what I know now, this successful attempt to protect their son and disrupt the search for the truth was wrong, and just like in the movie, they all paid a price for their errors, if indeed this is the correct conclusion.  It was for me an interesting opportunity to share a closer look at a headline that became a real person to me that weekend.

Labor Day Retirement Thoughts

Been retired for five months, Labor Day weekend. We both have enjoyed our new home as a never ending project of care, improvement, and relaxation.

We had time away, I had my first extended golf outing, which wore me out, and we enjoyed a great quick round trip through the scenic southwest to Denver and back.

We have sort of honored the time honored practice of staying out of the church business  after you leave, which has created a vacuum of
friendships for us so far.

We both miss the world of labor, God said it was a good thing right?  I am now praying for a friend who retired once, and started a retirement business he ran daily for 12 years, and just a few months into a real and final retirement, has taken seriously ill. He would not regret never really retiring, he was not really equipped for it.

Laura is going to try the world of teacher substitution, and I am knocking on part time doors as well.
Back to labor day....is there any way our country can recreate a real middle class with well paying jobs?  Can those not gifted with tech or leadership skills not find manufacturing or labor intensive work?  How can we make improving our economy more than an empty campaign rhetoric? Labor made us great.

Left Behind?

Tim LaHaye has passed, and many of those who served as the vanguard of a resurgent premillennialism are aging toward the grave. His views and popularity have been fascinating to me and also one of the biggest roadblocks to healthy Christianity.

Dispensationalism is a way of seeing the message of scripture with a heavy dose of literalism and a huge belief that God wants us to figure out the season of His second coming.

I grew up with this, yet my own theological family always saw it as novel and somewhat dangerous. Throughout my ministry I would find people so steeped in the latest end time ideas that they assumed all around them were seeing things as clearly as they.

The history of date setting in my lifetime is a history of complete obvious failure. Hal Lindsey always couched his predictions with the vague phrase "this decade, month, season could very well be the last we see".

Is is polite to say bullsh*t? For LaHaye and his crew made themselves very wealthy on the steady diet of "This is It Believers, pack up, pray up and look up.

Fifteen years ago after 9/11 I spent months and months arriving as a view that has many variations but is generally about the fact that the prophetic scriptures in the Gospels are by in large past in fulfillment, that most of them pointed to a very close and temporal judgment coming upon that last Jewish Generation culminating in the loss of national status and the destruction of the ceremonial abilities of Israel.

Yes there are some possibilities that temporal history has perhaps a culmination, but the intricate end times antichrist scenario of The Left Behind Series bordered on the ridiculous and irresponsible. Yes, the rapture tribe loved them, and bought them, and discussed them. But my earnest hope is that Christianity will leave all this silliness behind. Please don't raise up another generation of date setters, please Lord, come before we have to endure another group of theological demigods who are oh so certain about things they do not really understand. Rant Ended, blood pressure slowly returning to normal. Rest in Peace Tim LaHaye.

The Oddest Situations Surround Me

Thanks for thinking about us, our compressor seems to be working, while a new one has been ordered by the company that installed the Trane system so we are still under warranty for parts. All AC repairs are expensive!!

My gut tells me that Donald Trump is not going to be the kind of savior that conservatives wish for, my observations confirm he is setting back civility by centuries.

So many of the groups that gave me my identity feel like places where I no longer feel at home.

I no longer really buy into the idea that God is allowing this to teach us a lesson, I just think all the wisdom in the world will not help you if you refuse to see beyond your fears and follow the person playing on them with the skill of a true con artist. This guy is slick.

I am listening to all sides, but the warning signs are there.

Violence and Revenge and Murder

Remembering a long morning walk a few summers ago on Pensacola Beach.

No easy answers to what we are facing, no easy finger pointing, hopefully a long shift of realization that our foundations need to be focused on peace, justice, non violence, addressing societal and religious divides. We have a poor track record of taking that path and remembering what fruit revenge, hate and violence produce.

Facebook friends can be real friends

Most of us use social media to keep up with people we know. Occasionally you let strangers in who have proven that you share things in common and they begin to trust you not to abuse your glimpse into their lives.

Marc and Dixie changed careers, went to Seminary, started ministry while raising three kids. I have loved their authenticity, often zany sense of humor, and over the years have checked in with them, although Canada is so far away, I felt a kinship.

So Facebook develops acquaintance, and empathy, and therefore they felt OK meeting us for an afternoon drive and a good Mexican Meal. We loved showing them the amazing drive up to Canyon Lake and Tortilla Flat Museum, Store and Tourist trap.

They are several decades younger, but I see our journey mirrored in theirs and I am thankful to be an encourager and long distance friend. I hope we meet again.

Water into Wine

Playing with my Ricoh underwater camera from the shady corner of my backyard pool.

In 2005 I decided to widen my family. I used my study leave, conference leave to experience Christians who were not of my tribe. The first conference led me on a journey away from tribal Christianity. Oddly, about the same time, a successful Word Faith Charismatic Pastor named Brian Zhand began the same journey, starting at the same jumping off place, but with enough history and youth not only to transition his congregation, at some cost, but to provide others a way into a deeper experience of the faith. Not a secret one, not a cheap one, but a real one.

He shares just put part of his story into a book and is giving it away on Kindle this week. Having read his book on non violence I was interested in his journey and I think you will enjoy it as well.

My own journey lacks the completeness of his exploration for what went wrong, some people are meant to write and share, some to teach without writing. But my desire to search where my spirit was not in agreement with those around me has been one of great joy. I still suffer from too much of the desire to be right and to argue, but in retirement its fading fast.

Month one of my retirement has been spent unpacking, de-stressing, putting together the building blocks of our financial freedom, and beginning to think about how to structure my time, how to find friends who share my interests, how to find friends that continue to search outside the walls of their familiarity. Please understand, this is not ego driven, the Christ centered gospel hidden behind our present experience is deep and wide.
I am wading deeper, not for monetary gain but for the true wine.

All my life I have struggled with wine skins that did not hold what I was knowing and experiencing. Wineskins are always a problem for the new wine and is older than what most of us have tasted.

Relax...check....Refocus....check....Reevaluate.....check....Take Action.....Uh...Not Yet

The Pier at Hanalei Bay, one of my favorite spots on earth.

As I begin week three of home life 101 I am still checking out the emotions and loss of daily people contact. I have really felt the absence of stress and the beginnings of a more relaxed lifestyle. Very soon Laura will begin the journey with me. She is reading What Color is my Parachute, Retirement. That sereies of books and updated were a constant for me over the decades when I faced career changes.

The Refocusing part is just beginning to take shape. I want to use my learning and experience and skills but not in the same way as before. We will see. The Reevaluation has been taking place for a decade. I no longer fit in most of the categories that defined most of my life. Thanks to Bob Edwards who has me going through Richard Rohrs Falling Upward a second time, and more slowly and thoughtfully this time.

Action steps, not yet, just keep pondering....because these are THE LAZY, HAZY, CRAZY DAYS OF SUMMER. LOVE MY NEW BEDROOM, LOVE MY STUDY, LOVE MY BACKYARD, LOVE MY PROPERTY, STILL VALUE MY FRIENDS, LOOK FORWARD TO MAKING NEW ONES. Oh, I still love Jesus as the true face of God, the reconciler, the peacemaker, the compassionate friend.

In and Out of many neighborhoods

Serving Plates for sale, cheap.

Garage Sales are interesting and revealing. Everyone has things they no longer need or want, or they are downsizing or moving. The search to reusable bargains is at the heart of the Ebay business, although many do sell new items as well.

I am amazed at the architectural variety in our East Valley, just about every type of home from the 60s cookie cutter 1500 sq ft row houses to expansive homes of all shapes and sizes. 20 years ago I threw Newspapers for the Arizona Repubic in the Lakes area of Gilbert. I remember how beautiful the streets and homes were in my area as I cruised through at 3 am searching for house numbers at first, then almost doing it in my sleep as I got experience. I was in some of those neighborhoods today and noticed how dated they had become in such a short time. We are not Europe in terms of long term beauty in our neighborhoods.

We also made a stop at a local good will and I am struck by the people living on the margins of survival we have all around us. I am so greatful for what we have been able to enjoy in our community, and so amazed that new homes are being built everywhere when the jobs that will support them and draw those families seem so few. Interesting times.

Reflections on one week of retirement

Designer Tattoo art pint glasses...the kind of thing people sell to get rid of and collectors look to buy.

Not long enough to make any concrete decisions. I loved the days I had a list of honey do's. I wish we could make progress with unpacking boxes, its daunting. My two days working and learning the Ebay reselling business...tough...lot's of work to find bargains, and lots of misdirections when finding directions to garage and yard sales. I have to share that this morning two churches announced rummage sales beginning at 6am, so we dutifully set the alarm to be the early bird, and the first one was totally unprepared to sell anything, and the second was so poorly staged that we were disgusted, churches need to do things right if at all possible.

The issue of life purpose hangs around the edge of my thinking, can't lose focus on continuing to build a kingdom vision for the God of all grace.

Laura is going through her own set of struggles as she brings her teaching career to an end in a month. She has a love/dislike relationship with her career as do most teachers these days. I look forward to us hanging out together all day. We are pretty good at it.

I keep running into people who hate swimming pools and I keep enjoying all the little duties and the refreshing rewards that surround ownership. I do battle daily with crud on the surface and stains on the water lines. I picked up a great set of snorkel gear this morning for next to nothing and enjoyed looking at the pool with snorkel and goggles.

I long for the time when this house begins to feel like home, when pictures are on the walls and we find homes for our treasures. This last move was such a blessing to us that the hassle will all be worth it. God grant me time and health to enjoy this new phase in life.

Lasts and Firsts

The bow tie look of the youngest child...me. Oneonta NY, 1959.

Last night I completed my last Bible Study as Pastor of Sun Lakes Community Church, 10 days until the office is empty and I embark on the post full time pastor part of my life. I am not retiring, I am teaching outside the institution. I fulfilled a commitment I made decades ago to be a pastor all my life. Now the pastor part will be voluntary, and the teacher part will be in the freedom to depart from the traditional concepts of my church family, if need and conscience lead me that way.

People always have said that most denominations agree on 95% of the doctrines of the Bible. Maybe, but there are times when the prevailing traditions have become disharmonious with the message that the church needs to be awakened. If my time left allows me to be a small part of clearing the air, then I will be thankful.

Finish Well

Met a generous couple this weekend that are going to make some future dreams come true.

As the months count down to the change in my life called retirement I keep remembering to find something meaningful and worthwhile to do, and for me that means sharing what I have learned over the decades of study and reflection. Shifting from pastor/teacher to teacher in many forms and manners.

To that end we are buying a home more suited to the task of working out of the home, along with several other needs that were not met at our present abode, and a few desires as well, like a place to park the desert vehicle, ie, the golf cart.

I am so grateful for all we enjoyed, overcame, endured, and survived and am praying for some fulfilling years ahead.

Time slows down, how can that be bad?

Time is the most precious thing we possess in life. It moves on relentlessly. Yet, in my transition from working to retirement, I find time slowing down to a crawl, and perhaps made worse by this interminable, and completely frustrating election process that ruins the evening news, pulls our nation further into divide and leaves one more frustrated about the future than ever.

I am really trying to get a better attitude about the gift of each day, and living fully each day, but we are so caught in the mode of preparing for and fighting for the future that I am exhausted and feel stuck in a time warp. Silly but true.