Heaven Can Wait

The Porpoise Driven Life, those guys and gals and kids seemed to enjoy just swimming, and eating and loving the pod.

Saw some folks yesterday at a funeral who parted ways with me less than fondly a decade ago. Typical issues you might see in a church. So and so said such and such and I am offended and leaving. It was good to shake hands and express kindness to them and to hope that time and age heal old relational wounds.

But one sweet couple I could tell were struggling to look me in the eye. They were teachers and leaders in the church and I was hijacked by an angry woman who attacked me on the phone, caused me to say something defensive, and then promptly told this couple what I had said about them. Are you following all this?

I spoke of the genuine fondness and love shared between the man we were remembering, in the midst of people who felt I had hurt them. Hence, the title of my post. If heaven contains these remebrances of wounds past, something is really going to have to change in our hearts and minds for us to party on through eternity.

There would be very little chance in this life to go and pick up those broken pieces and start again. I guess thats why there are so many church choices around, find the preacher and people you like. Frankly, it makes me wonder why I keep trying to make the gospel actually function in our largely dysfunctional world. Heaven has a fix, and I can wait for it.

The Gettysburg Address

This is Chai, a Chinese American Hawaiian, and the chief coffee roaster at the Greenwell Farms Coffee plantation in Kona Coast, Hawaii, I loved her the moment she opened her mouth and spoke in a Chinese accent about her love for her job, her adopted country, and her passion for the coffee bean and all the conversations and moments of peace a good cup of joe has brought into our human experience. God made coffe, and he made Chai, a chinese women, created equal in God's sight.

Wow, in Elementary School I memorized the preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address and I can still say them from memory...as long as you don't stand me in front of a class to do it.

This 50 year anniversary of the Kennedy Assisination is looping all kinds of things together in my brief journey through this life.

My father moved us from New York to Alabama in 1961 in the middle of my fifth grade year, just as the South was celebrating the Civil War Centennial. In some ways the south never admitted defeat in that bloody war, continuing to devalue the black man as less than human even when I arrived to a structured segregation that would remain through my high school years.

That war really tested the fabric of the constitution in more ways than we can imagine, and those human beings in America who lived through those years really paid a price for that war in lost sons, and devastated land and commerce.

Lincoln paid with his life, and the parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy have been drawn for all to see.

'dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal'

Jesus died to tear down a wall of hostility, a wall of enmity so He could create one new man, thus creating peace, and he spoke peace to those who were near and peace to those far off.

Last night we met two young students from China who must have been amused at the way we old folks think and talk. They are here to study and return to China to have teaching careers, they look different and speak our language through another tongue. They are the children or grandchildren of those who suffered under Mao Tse Tungs communism which has yet to really be rooted out of the psyche of the Chinese people, and somehow, our beleagured constitution, and Abraham Lincoln, and John Kennedy, and Jesus who went into the grave and is thus far the only one to come out of it...Jesus is still calling us to view humanity through His eyes, and to see the essential oneness of every human being...created equal...what an amazing proposition.

Hooked on Kindle

A friend gave me a book that was normal paper size and bound with a plastic spiral. As excited as I am to read this exposition I am just plain distracted by the page turning and the size of the book when reading it. It seems that the convenience of tapping and moving with the color Kindle has made reading a whole new experience over the last several years.

I am hooked, so I bought the Kindle version of the book.

Continue to be excited by the shift in my thinking about the Gospel of Peace and the finished work of Christ which will be the continuing subject of November teaching.

Thinking about the Philipinos

Our family rented this huge two story in upstate New York for a couple of years, lots of good memories there.

Postscript on breaking 90....almost...an errant shot on the 18th kept me from the elusive goal. Next week.

As the returning golfers shared summer events, one gentlemen spoke of selling his family home and moving into a condominium, and when I asked how they disposed of the furniture in downsizing, he said they still have 3200 sq. ft. in the condo.

I belong to that generation and class where our streets were filled with homes with large families living in 13 to 15 hundred sq. ft. Our home when our kids were teens had 3100 sq. ft, and I loved the space.

My point is that we are a prosperous and blessed nation, and the shrinking middle class faces perhaps a future without this abundance if things don't change....and....nations like the Philipines live their lives with so much less, that the wind and water had very little trouble destroying the fabric of hundreds of thousands of families. May the help continue to flow as those poor people seek to rebuild.

10 strokes

Last years Chapel Treasure sale, about to start in 1 minute, thanks to all the volunteers.

That's how my golf game has changed from my 40s to my 60s. Golf is about walking outside, being with friends, competing against your mind and your body, and about improving your score.

Those ten strokes are lost by inconsistent swings, strange mental errors, back nine fatigue.

Every time I achedule a round I am believing that I can subdue a few of those mistakes that are keeping me out of the 80s. Maybe today.

The Annual Sun Lakes Chapel Sale

These trees have the capacity to reroot themselves and expand to create canopy that is very large.

Volunteers preparing for our Chapel Treasure Sale tomorrow and Friday even though the Ladies Association of Sun Lakes held their huge sale, but the interest of bargain hunters is never peaked.

Breakfast with John, we have been doing this for many years, though he has moved to Iowa so our times together are not so often.

John and I are one the same journey of expanding our view of the grace of God. Good times.

On sitting for an hour at the DMV

Ironman Triatheletes are not normal people, and are not pitiful, they are supermen and women, at least physically.

It's one of those places where the people are on the outside and the government are behind the desks helping you get drivers licenses or change ownership of vehicles etc.

It is one of those places where the wealthiest and the simplest, the youngest and the oldest must wait for their number to be called, no paying to get to the front of the line, all God's chillen gotta wait.

As I watch the crowd around me I still remember an impression we have gotten for all of our 25 years in AZ. Folks here do not dress up for anything.

Teenagers dress to impress their peers, not their parents, but that has not changed anywhere.

Overall I observed a pretty pitiful group of humans, no Thors, no Supermans, no James Bonds. And I wondered why God would love us as we are. And I know how easily it is for me to see so many differences between every human being in the room, and wonder how God could see the best and the worst in their hearts and still desire fellowship with people who are in general pretty normal and pretty pitiful.

I go to the DMV as rarely as possible, too many thoughts going through my head as I wait for my number to come up.