A Marvelous Prospect

I haven’t written a thought lately, and the time has come. (Note the time of this post – I’ve been up since 3:30 this morning.) For all my avid readers (both of you), I apologize for the lapse.

Strike 1: I’m a federal bureaucrat. I confess. Forgive me. (You realize that since early 2009, there are more people in the USA with government jobs local-state-federal than private-sector? You don’t? Check it out. But I digress.)  In early November I was faced with a problem. I needed money for a project – money that was actually there, sorta. Without the money – immediately – I was going to have a lapse in user support for one of the systems I run. I could not get my hands on the money. We had a new system for creating and managing purchase requests, from whence money arises. I hadn’t completed the training and so couldn’t use it. In September I had a colleague prepare a PR in the new system, but it got all fouled up – put on the wrong project and ultimately left sitting. Couldn’t use that PR. On September 30 our budget system was shut down for three weeks to cut over to a new budget system to complement the new PR system. NO action on any money in October – while the fuse on this project burned. So here I am mid-November with a real, hard, fast deadline approaching, a deadline that affected others’ livelihoods – no PR, no work. No work, no beans in the pot.

I felt utterly helpless. As I drove in to work I literally felt like a bug caught in a spider web. I have NEVER felt like that before. EVER. Really, ever. I thought about that. Never, ever felt like that before.

Our “funds-certifying official,” the wonderful clerk who manages all of our money and PRs, saved the day. I work with some really, really good people. Hard-working, dedicated, smart. I also work around a few people who “have good gov-mint jobs” and wouldn’t know what work looked like if it smacked them in the face. Harriett is the former. She takes delight in her work, and she’s good at it. After exhausting about six different approaches to shaking the money loose from the old PR, (at which point many would have thrown up their hands and said, “There’s nothing I can do.”) she worked with my managers and borrowed some available funds from another source. Above and beyond. In my helplessness, I was forced to rely on others. It wasn’t such a bad feeling.

Strike 2: Have you ever read Les Miserables? Not watched the movie, but read the book? Not a comic book, but THE book. OK, neither have I, at least not as written in French by Victor Hugo, but I am reading an English translation. I started it several years ago, but it’s heavy, and it wore me out lifting it. I laid it down when Fantine sold her front teeth to pay the Thenadiers their ransom for Cossette’s care. Ugh. Gives me the willies, just thinking about the despair that would drive one to do that. I might add that the first chapter, the first 50 pages, are devoted to a description of the Bishop who redeems Jean Valjean with the candlesticks. If you want to be encouraged and challenged, read that!

Les Miserables is a very interesting novel. To describe the character of Mr. Thenadier, the lout with whom Fantine leaves Cossette as she pursues work, Hugo writes one of the best histories of the Battle of Waterloo I’ve ever read. Now, I’m not a historian, so I confess probably the most I’ve ever read was a paragraph here and there in those Western Civ tomes in high school and college. However, the incredible sequence of events that caused Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo is just almost beyond belief. The minor things that determine history. In the same vein, Hugo, while describing the convent where Jean Valjean and Cossette wind up for a season, spends some time considering the nature of convents and their place in history.

Did you know that some monks allowed themselves to be buried alive? Neither did I. (Google monastery buried alive – for some evidence) Hugo cites the small cell at the remains of a Belgian monastery, a crypt “too short to lie down in, too low to stand in,” and placed near a river where there was always the threat of inundation.

Reflecting on this, I found myself again with an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Twice in a matter of a couple of weeks, I experienced a feeling, a milieu even, that I had never had before. Can you imagine being placed in a box like that – indefinitely? The thought makes my heart race, the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and my body simply becoming generally weak. Me! The “rugged individual” American man. Nope.

Strike 3: (Also see my other post on giving thanks.) We still live sorta out in the country and get our water from a well. From time to time it fails, something goes wrong. Said failure usually means I have to pull the pump up out of the 300′ deep well to repair or replace it. We’ve lived here 24 years; had to do it 6 or 8 times now (not always a pump replacement – they last a bit longer than that, thank goodness). What makes this one different is that I’m approaching 62 and not quite as strong as I was 24 years ago, or 5 for that matter. Dealing with the well pump is also really a two- or three-person job, and Kathleen’s vision problems and arthritis disqualify her as an “able assistant.” Calling “the well guy” means $300-$1000 in costs, depending on the problem. Money I’d just as soon not spend. But where do I get help? Neighbors? Perhaps. Kinda hate to ask them. Someone from the church? I confess – I’m not really sure whom I might call and inconvenience. I hate to depend on others. But I think I’m going to have to.

“And y’er out!” Why am I writing? What am I trying to say? Simply this – the very idea that we can get along alone is a lie. The “three strikes” is because I should have written this immediately after the PR$$ problem that so impacted me, but I put it off. Then Les Miserables. And now the water situation. I don’t think God cursed my well pump to get my attention, but I do believe he wanted me to write about my reflections. I’ll say it again – the very notion that we can get along just fine alone is a lie. God gives us our very breath. Everything we have is his provision. He also designed the family and the church as community. What are Jesus’ two simple commands? “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is action. Our culture is destroying all meaning of community (unless it’s community organizers fomenting discontent). Community: family, neighbors, church family, work friends. Instead of relying on one another in close inter-dependence, we strive either to be self-reliant or to demand that the government take care of it. Both those paths lead to dead ends.

I remember vividly getting out of my truck and heading into the building to pursue the PR money back in November. I was a bug caught in a spider web. You know what? I gave thanks to God that in my utter helplessness he is my provider, the lover of my soul, the Creator of the Universe who gives me life and peace and joy. I did then. I do now. I don’t do it enough.

Several weeks ago I noticed that I ran out of hot water during my nightly shower. Unusual, but didn’t think much of it. I was ready for bed. In the morning we seemed to have plenty, so I just chalked it up to “one of those things.”

This week I’ve run out every night, near the end of my shower. Well, last weekend we were in Gastonia, and Jamie and Carol’s water heater had blown a lower element – common enough problem, since the lower element does 70% of the work. I figured that was my problem too – the water heater has a little age on it, and the elements don’t last forever.

Kathy had a women’s retreat at church this morning, and I needed to take her, so I figured I might stop by Lowe’s on the way home to pick up an element and perhaps a thermostat, as often a blowing element takes the stat with it. So I wanted to glance at the heater to see what make/model it was in order to get the right element. When I opened the crawl space door, I was greeted with standing water, dripping insulation overhead, and a significant leak at the water heater plumbing, some 10-12 feet away. My heart sank. That was all I needed, especially being a lame duck – one arm in a sling recovering from rotator cuff repair surgery. (Mending nicely, actually.)

So off to church we go, having cut off the water heater and the well. And am I in the dumps! Oh, woe is me! My crawl space is dripping wet. Is all the underlayment going to rot out from under my bedroom? Are we going to be mold victims? Can I survive this? What young buck can I get to help me? Oh, woe is me! That was on the way to drop Kathy off.

On the way home, I reflected on my “Oh, Woe Is ME!” attitude a bit. Egypt is in the toilet, the people of the Middle East in general have discovered that their tyrant leaders (Muslim, mostly, but not entirely) have been denying them any hint of an abundant life for decades. Kadafi has promised to raise every family’s annual income by $400/year – a year! I make that much a day. (Well, not really. The government gets about 1/2 of it right off the top, but that’s another post.) Will the poor Haitians ever have a hint of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue” (the meaning of “happiness” at the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence), given their corrupt, dysfunctional government and culture of distrust out of which it has grown? What about the Pakistanis, beleaguered by earthquakes and in the grip of ruthless radical Islamists?

Hmmm. Maybe my woes aren’t so big.

Maybe I should be thanking God for his incredible provision, instead of taking it for granted. Maybe I should be on my knees in prayer for others, instead of being so self-focused. Maybe the next time I see someone hurting, I’ll stop what I’m doing and pay attention to them in their woe. Just maybe.

The rest of the story – turned out to be a leaky fitting, easily fixed, even by a one-armed man. Only took two trips to Lowe’s.

I’m going to start a new series of blog posts of a category “airport stories.” their key attribute will be that they are a gimpse into the lives of folks I meet while waiting to board airplanes, and sometimes the people I sit next to while flying.

This new category is inspired by two people I’ve encountered this fall in my travels to Chicago and Boston.

Returning from Chicago in late October, I gate-checked my bag (avoiding the stinkin $25 fee – bah), which meant I had to wait for it to get belched out of the bowels of RDU after my 10:30 pm arrival home.

I casually greeted the little lady who was waiting beside me, and she returned it in a voice with an accent. As is my custom, I asked where she was from – Italy. Because I’ve been blessed to travel there once, I asked where, exactly, and it turned out that she was born and raised in northwestern Italy – the area Kathy and I had traveled through.

I told her about almost eating at a Mexican restaurant in the Italian Alps, but electing not to because of the narrow twisty-turny mountain road that I wanted to be off of before dark. It smelled soooo good, but we ended up eating the best mushroom ravioli of our lives that evening in town.

Our pleasant conversation continued while we waited for our bags, and I learned that she had lived much of her adult life in Peru. She related a restaurant incident too: she had returned “home” from Peru to show her son around the area where she had grown up, and had gotten caught in weather that closed all the restaurants – except one, who was almost closed but agreed to feed them. The proprietor was from Peru! Small world.

Now comes the six degrees of separation thing (which I think is hooey, but hey!). Why it took me so long, I have no idea, but as the bags were finally dropping onto the conveyor, I mentioned that I was from Beaumont, Texas. Well, the lady that was picking her up that evening, one of her dear friends, had just moved to Beaumont, where her husband had accepted the position of CIO for Lamar University – my Alma Mater. Smaller world.

Shhh. I’m at a conference in Orlando. That’s code for DisneyWorld. Last night the event organizers took 3,000 of their favorite clients to Epcot. I rode “Test Track” – a pretty good roller-coaster disguised as a car test track. Being Epcot, the ride is sponsored, in this case by GM. As you wait in line (which you can apparently do for a really, really long time), you ease past a number of exhibits which explain simply the history and various aspects of car testing. Then you ride the roley-coaster, which simulates aspects of a car on a test track, including a crash – almost. Typical Disney.

In preparation for the evening at Epcot, which I had never been to, I did a little on-line searching to find out what the rides were and which were the neatest. One reviewer of Test Track noted that he had ridden it the day that GM declared bankruptcy, which leads to the tie-in to my topic. (I know you’re glad I’m finally getting to it.)

Why did GM go bankrupt, and what does that have to do with the  moral bankruptcy of the USA?

this morning as I was walking through the hotel lobby, a CNN report on HPV vaccine for BOYS was being discussed. HPV – human pappiloma virus – is a known cause of cervical cancer in women. It is an STD. 1/2 of sexually active women are infected.

So, what’s the point? Aren’t vaccines good things? Isn’t disease-prevention a good thing? Certainly. But in this case, there is a moral restraint that is being abandoned.

Rather than a vaccine, what we need is a moral and ethical climate that suggests to our children that sexual restraint before marriage and a monogamous relationship within marriage provides freedom and protection that is far better than any vaccine.

a couple of months have passed since I started this one…

I just learned that my neighbors are divorcing. I’m not surprised. They had to get married. Well, they didn’t have to, but she was pregnant with his child. So it was “the right thing to do.” I guess it was. But these are two adults who chose to ignore the moral restraints that God places on our sexuality, and that our society used to. I know, we all messed around, or wanted to, but we knew it was wrong. I don’t think that’s the case any more. Now we have another fatherless child that’s going to hit the streets in a few years. Nevermind her children from the marriage that their liaison busted up. sigh.

A couple of more lines of rant and I’m done with this one.

Earlier this morning I was poking around YouTube and watched a cute anti-smoking clip. Any time I say that smoking is OK, people should have the freedom to smoke, I get lambasted with how it causes cancer and all sorts of diseases, and how bad it smells. Of course I can’t argue with that. A question – has anyone actually pondered the costs to our society of the sexual perversions that are considered OK, and the laxness of morals across our society as a whole? Anybody? To borrow from Robert Heinlein, “there ain’t no such thing as free sex.”

Tiger Woods has been unfaithful to his wife. Who cares? Oh, you do? Why? I thought it was  a founding principle of this country that we’re entitled to “the pursuit of happiness.” If we pursue it and find it in the arms (or whatever) of a prostitute, aren’t we  entitled to do that, whenever and with whomever? That’s what the media says – all night long every night. And I think all day long too – in the Soaps, but I haven’t seen one of those in a long, long time.

What’s going on? Why are we collectively incensed that a successful athlete would make it with as many women as he could? It’s sort of the new cultural anthem. Wouldn’t you, if you were in his green jacket? Smoking is the new evil act – screw whomever, that’s all right.

OK. You know I wouldn’t ask a question without offering an answer. We are incensed because we know better. It’s written on our hearts. NO culture lasts long that ignores this basic natural law of fidelity in marriage. The family is the foundation of every society. We destroy it at our own peril. Even committing the act, Tiger knew better. “Sex addict.” Give me a break. The 7th Commandment (of 10) says “Don’t commit adultery.” Inherent in that is the concept of marriage and fidelity. Adultery is the act. Even the thought (addiction if you will) is prohibited in Commandment 10 – do not covet (or lust).

Don’t tell me that for all time men have been philandering. It might have been winked at, but it’s always been outside the acceptable norm. Everybody knew it was hurting somebody while at the same time pleasuring another.

It isn’t “sex addiction;” you know that as well as I do. It’s sin – a wrong choice. A focus on satisfying self instead of honoring God and loving our neighbor – beginning with our spouses.

While we’re here, we might as well address the issue of Buddhism and Christianity – which Britt Hume exposed and now Tiger has addressed. He said yesterday, “I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it. Part of following this path for me is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”

Well, they certainly have the pointless search for security part right, but to what end? Buddhism is about doing. Work hard and be good to “achieve nirvana and escape … the cycle of suffering and rebirth” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism) – escape to – nothingness. Yuk. Christianity is about being – accepting the gift of redemption bought by Jesus the Messiah through his death and resurrection – and doing – in gratitude, not to earn God’s love or to escape. We are forgiven and can hence forgive. We are loved and can love. We are not escaping, we are living an abundant life here and now. It’s Tiger’s only true hope.

Here is a good analogy showing the difference between Buddhism and Christianity, in the words of a former Buddhist: http://www.christianministriesintl.org/articles/03.html

Oh, do you know what “happiness” meant to the authors of our U.S. Declaration of Independence? Virtue – the pursuit of a virtuous life – “transcending self.” What a concept.