End of a Church Era

Well, it hit me tonight as I was dismantling the music corner of the sanctuary: this period is over.

"Our little church" is clearing out, selling most of our stuff, and returning to a simpler, cheaper time. It is a 15 year long story, and how it goes depends on who's doing the telling.

As a church leader, I was the first to say "we gotta leave this place" I knew (and know) it is the right thing to do now. With every end there is a new beginning, this is no exception. We believe a new, better, stronger church will be the end result of our present actions, but we will take time to honor the people that gave so much over the the years, the campus is full of things that are stories of themselves. I know most of those stories and in taking them down so quickly, am reminded how fragile we are.

Secrets of a Super Scooper

At the tender age of 15 I worked at the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in Oak Park Il. I got good at the skill of "soda jerk" (some would say better at the second part). I scooped a perfect 2.5 oz. serving every time, made excellent ice cream sodas (most living people would not know what that is), pretty much the whole menu, even cakes!

The one thing that came to me tonight in my meditation was hand-packed pints and quarts. You see our ice cream was sold by weight, not volume. The ice cream went into the quart container and weighed let's say 26 oz.

When I first started I would pack the container, customer watching in delight as I got to the top, I would weigh and see how close I was. Well, if I was over I had to take some out.

Customer: :-(

I would point to the sign "Ice cream is sold by weight not by volume".

customer: :-((

One time the boss, Mr Fitzpatrick took me aside and said just watch me and you'll never have another unhappy customer.

It was pretty simple; you throw a few slivers in the bottom, and as it gets to the top you have to force the last of the ice cream in.

customer: :-)))

Everybody happy!

New Discovery!!!

Scientists have uncovered a new break in reality: "Humans should have, MUST HAVE a screen with a movable image before them at all times" declares Dr. Henry Higabothem, noted researcher.

Luckily, we live in a time that allows our eye sockets to be bathed in moving 2d images nearly all of the time.

While waiting in line to get into the drive in movie theater (Toy Story 3), we were behind a mini van where the kids were watching Toy Story 2 while waiting to get in to see the new flick. OOOKAAAY.

And the super market has got our back; I think mine has about 112 flat screens to let me know important things about the food I'm buying. Tell the truth, that's a guess. I block them out.

The carry-around DVD player, the one we used to watch on our way home from the video rental shop, has been replaced with glasses that give us the Panavision view 24/7- We never have to take them off! Awesome.

The guy that used to be at every social event watching as he taped on his videocam, has been replaced with dozens of people thrusting their phone at you (or whoever). Concentration and excitement focused on the tiny screen.

How about the big high-dollar music festival? The peeps in the first few rows (instead of enjoying seeing the performer close up) are craning their necks back to see them on the big screen instead!

What's your favorite? I gotta go, big stuff up on Youtube.

Who's Got it Bad?

I was listening to one of the few radio talk shows I can still stand, it's a little program that comes on an hour a day. It's mostly about personal finance. The host stays off politics, people are polite, and even though the host gets repetitive, I generally learn a little something by listening.

Well, this week a man called up to explain that he had worked hard, saved half a million dollars in his retirement account, owned his house free and clear, owned his lake house free and clear, owned his two rent houses free and clear, and it just made him so unhappy that the value of these things had fallen!

The host asked him questions (thinking there was some logic maybe), but this man saw the down side of all his triumphs; "the rent houses had to be painted", etc. The host suggested that the man was better off than 98% of us dealing with the great recession, and that he not let the fact that things were not totally perfect steal his joy.

This phone call stayed with me all week. The man may have been clinically depressed, maybe he just had a downer personality, or maybe he worshiped at the alter of consumerism: "you are defined by what you own, how much money you have, etc."

If so, he bet on the wrong horse.

A bit later that day, I was driving down the street in an area just outside of downtown. I saw a street person pushing a shopping cart. In it looked like this person's possessions; a few odds and ends most of us would gladly drop off at Salvation Army just to get rid of. The woman was carefully adjusting her cargo to ride smoothly as she pushed it to wherever she was headed.

A report from the mountain top

To do this task justice, I should have a full daily briefing. Each day at SWUUSI is much like a week of normal life, and here we are at the beginning of day 3 already. Oh, our not-quite-a-week is also over in the blink of an eye. Ask Einstein about this.

I did mention we are being shown a road map to a new Unitarian Universalist Church. This is something long overdue in my opinion. UU Churches do not get a great deal of direction from the top down, so with each on their own, evolve or DE-volve into something not a church at all. When I feel it is necessary, I will define my terms; being aware some terms are buzzwords for some people.

I will make some assumptions from time to time. Like you know what a church is and why they exist. (What was that cracking sound I just heard?) and plow ahead to make some quick points.

I like a phrase Rev. Aaron White used several times during his sunset talks so far. “We exist to provide TRANSFOMATION of individuals through the power of Love and Justice. Meaning, if you take what we are preaching and teaching seriously, it WILL change your life. This is from a young man who statistically has no business being anywhere near a UU church. 28 year old males do not seek out a church life ordinarily. Yet, he is on his way to being a national leader in this movement. Why? Because this church changed his life.

After giving it some serious thought, I realized it also transformed my own.

What I Did on my Summer Vacation

It's been so long since I've written here I could not figure out how to get in. They changed the door I used to use. Oh well, somehow I here, I'm back. And ready to share an insight or two about those strange yet polite people to the north: The Canadians.

OK, they aren't THAT polite, unlike the Brits (who say 'sorry' in every sentence), Canadians say 'eh' in every sentence (as we all know). That is the one thing both the English speakers and French speakers can agree on; to pepper their gab with 'eh'. But enough, eh, let's get to the good stuff.

The real question in traveling is how the actual experience compares with our expectations. I've always maintained a policy of low expectations in my life, and so, I'm rarely disappointed. This strategy worked well again on My Summer Vacation (MSV). Although it would have been fine otherwise too.

Let's start with my expectations.

We'll, we were booked to tour the Canadian Rocky Mountains in the province (that means state) of Alberta. This is located right above Montana (= mountain in Spanish). So, having been to Colorado many dozens of times, I expected to see cool stuff, but not necessarily stuff new to me.

On that, I was wrong.

If John Denver had visited this area instead of Colorado, he would have re-named himself John Banf, or John Jasper (but would have sold far fewer records).

We also used a tour company from last year (see Costa Whata?). Oh. I didn't name it last year. OK, free plug: Caravan Tours out of Chicago (my home town). They showed us a real good time in Central America last year, so we figured it might be the same if we went up North. It was.

So that's it for expectations: See stuff I've seen a million times before, but, with a group of 44 strangers. In the relative comfort of a cushy tour coach (sounds much better than "bus" don't you think?) with someone (the tour director) that knows more about the place than any one person should ever hope / want to know.

The reality was:

No use going into how fantastic the mountains were, or waterfalls, or glaciers, or wild animals, or food (yes, food! in Canada!). I won't bore you with endless tales about wearing a heavy sweater every morning to go to breakfast. Or being places where at least a dozen different languages were being spoke. (The tourists talked funny too.) I found out the average Canadian is rainbow colored and speaks in several tongues. After this, I will trust Caravan to show me a good time, and deliver a good bang for the buck, where ever we are going.

Also, They (the government) discovered "Woman" about 50 years before Texas did. There is a group of statues larger-than-life in Calgary explaining how these 6-7 women had to explain to the men folk ( in 1912 or so) that "person" in their constitution meant women and men. Naturally, men folk always believed "persons" meant Men, and occasionally women (like if a woman killed a man). The women fought the men in court passed the Canadian Supremes, to the Queen - I think you can guess how she saw it.

Well, it looks like I ran over. I have humorous tales of how the French tour guide, the 20 Brookliners, and us Texans struggled to understand each other the whole week, but it'll have to wait eh?

New Flavor of Terrorist?

I must say, the news this morning of 40 commuters being blown to bits by two women terrorists was disheartening to say the least. It raises may questions in my mind; all fueled by my own view of the world of course.

Women, givers of life, recruited to kill as many men women and children as possible.

When women in this country were fighting for the right to vote, their opponents declared "If women have the right to vote, there would be no more war" (They saw this as a bad thing).

I suppose someday all this insanity will be explained and it will make some kind of sense.

Til then...

You May Already Be a Winner! (but probably not)

Last blog I touched on winners and losers and how "this is what makes America Great" according to some of our more conservative brethren. We all know people who support political ideologies that run contrary to their own best interest. I've always come up short trying to understand that... Well, gather around because I get it now, and now I'm gonna give it to you:

Why are people who will never make $100k/year willing to board buses and protest when earners of $250K + are threatened with a tax increase? They will tell you: "Someday I expect to be in that bracket, and I don't want to pay those high taxes" .

Why are unemployed people with no health insurance willing to shout at town hall meetings that they "don't want government taking over health care"?

It's the winners/losers modality, and it's always running in the background.

Suggestion: listen to John Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses while you read the rest of this.

To say "Hey, I'm struggling here, and me and my family could use some help" is to paint yourself a loser in the eyes of many. Maintaining the illusion that someday you'll be rich (and have the problems of the rich) is worth the cost.

Why are some people so resentful that the government assists people who are down and out? Because they're LOSERS! If they were worthwhile, they wouldn't need help. They would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become WINNERS!

I don't have answers for this, it's just an observation that came together for me this week. I WILL say there must be a better way to run a society...

America Is...

During a period of sleeplessness, when many things that have been floating around in my head come up, links sometimes click into place and I get an aha! moment.

I have been staying away from the political fray lately, earlier last year, I got enough of it to understand how little my voice means to Washington or even Austin politicians. But these movements still fascinate me, like the Tea Party folks. I heard one spokesperson that was articulate enough that I could follow her train of thought, and that led to a couple of conclusions.

All the pushback and fear around concepts like Socialism, Welfare, Universal Health Care, Taxes, suddenly made a bit of sense to me... When I understood her view of the world:

America is a place where there are winners and losers; the winners deserve to win, the losers deserve to lose. This, in a nut shell is their definition of our country.

It caused me to remember Bishop Carlton Pearson, a preacher who built a huge following and religious institution around the traditional theology of "God loves me, but you're going to hell".
Bishop Pearson had an awakening one day when God informed him nothing of the sort was going on, all his children were on his 'saved' list, and that was that.

Thrilled and excited, the preacher brought this news to his congregation who (like the tea party folks) were less than happy to hear about universal salvation. As in ages past, I suppose many people have a mental list of who's going to hell, and they don't want that list disturbed. Something like 95% of his congregation denounced him and moved on (to someplace where "we're saved, and THEY are not").

I don't know how they square that with an image of the Almighty being identical to the program at a German death camp in the 1930's.

Who Is Anointed?

It occurred to me that some people come into this world destined to leave a big footprint.

Really now, think about it. If you read biographies, or follow the lives of particular world movers and shakers... you have to agree that many of them seem to know there were no limits to what they might do with their life. These realizations seem to come early in life. Many broke the mold from which other people came before them to do things nobody in that field had done before.

I'm being vague, so let me try one example (but there are hundreds or thousands).

Bono for one. Here is a guy that knew he was a star long before he was one, and spent his time preparing for it when stardom came. Say what you will about his ego, etc. (BTW rock stars without egos are called singer-songwriters), Bono also broke the mold for what rock stars do. The man is an influence on the world political stage in the humanitarian sense.

Compare that with Elvis (my real daddy in case your just tuning in) who was instructed to say "gosh mam, I'm just a simple entertainer, I don't know nothing about all that" whenever asked about anything of any substance by the press. I'm not saying E didn't make it big, just that he was Rock Star 1.o I suspect Bono is in the 3.x somewhere.

Think of someone you admire that really took off in a big international way. If you learn their history, you often find they hit the ground running, shot themselves from a cannon at an early age, to become the adult human they are. And this begs the question: Are Some People Born to Change the World?

This just in; 7 year old boy the next Picasso

Clueless

I have become more and more aware of an epidemic of this psychological condition lately, I've been looking at more documentaries on the state of various parts of the world. Oh, I know the clueless charge is one we hurl at people as an insult. I'm not talking about that, I mean conditions when entire countries are completely out of step with what is actually going on in front of them. One clue of cluelessness is the feeling of shock when the realization hits. Like last Tuesdays election (hellos Dems? wakeup call).

One example is when the trumpets were sounded several years ago and we (the US) invaded Iraq. It was crazy then, and still crazy after all these years (lives, billions $, resources).

I watched a film about China invading Tibet and taking it over. After years of mistreating the Tibetans, they invited a delegation back to tour the country and try to patch things up with the Dali Lama. Of course the stories they heard on their tour were horrifying, and the Chinese canceled the project after about 10 days. The amazing thing was the Chinese thought they had improved the country so much that the exiled leadership would hear good things! THAT is CLUELESS.

On a personal level, probably the most scary form of clueless is believing you are somebody you actually bear no resemblance to. Important, but less so is getting off in a direction where we lose site of the middle ground. This could be in consumption, status seeking, or whatever. Know Thyself!!

This is why isolation is very bad for the individual. Without community surrounding you, you WILL create a world of you own, and it may consume you.

You may notice, many of these regions of the world that are so disfunctional do isolate themselves.

So, I'm wondering what issues do you see in our society where a large percent of us is clueless?

De-Bugging

Here's some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first? The good news? OK:

We haven't had roaches or ants in our house in at least 15 years.

Now the bad news.

Our house may be a toxic waste pit.

A long long time ago (around 15 years), our house began to get German Cockroaches (the little brown roaches) (LBR). How did I know they were German Cockroaches? They were wearing the armbands and sounded like Clink from Hogan's Heroes.

In alarm, I contacted a guy I knew from a business breakfast club I was a member of. "He" was Joe. When he stood to introduce himself each week, Joe simply said "I kill bugs". In my predicament, I felt sure Joe was the man for me.

Joe laid out a plan to get rid of the LBR, and it was a tough plan, Joe was the Saddam Hussein of the bug world. "I'm using the most powerful chemical allowed by law" Joe would say. He showed up regularly to lay down the wrath of Joe on the LBR. Sure enough, before long, they were gone.

I thought we could use some touch up after a year or so, I called his number to arrange it. I was told Joe was no longer among the living as he died of cancer. Sad, but determined to not let the bugs back in, we used the referral Joe's wife gave us. I'm guessing those folks either closed or also got cancer, as they stopped calling us after a while too.

Fast-forward 12 years.

No bug man has been in my house, I have not treated it with over the counter sprays, and yet, the only time we see a roach, it is a large one, and it is in it's death throes calling out Jooooeee!!!

Well, I've seen a LBR, and I'm ready to get on the war path. We called an outfit well reviewed on-line, and the nice representative explained they no longer use deadly chemicals, instead chrysanthemums and mostly outdoors! 'Can't hurt mammals or even dogs!

They also explained that you sign a one year contract and they come around every other month.

Since we now have 2 houses, that adds $800. to the budget of maintaining them! All this because a Little Brown Roach popped his head out of a book!

Early Connections

Reading a story where a man is looking back on his childhood to connect where meeting someone like himself kick started his life and life's work. In this case the man was a scientist, so as a kid, I suppose you would say he was a geek (in today's lingo).

In my case, it would have been finding friends as interested in music as I was (as a kid). That happened early. I played guitar backing a girl in my class in singing "Downtown"at a school talent show in 1964 (I was 11). A few guys were trying to get something going, and asked me to join with them. The playing I did with them didn't last but a few months, but because of it, I realized I needed band mates and got some guys I was already friends with to take lessons, etc. We jammed in my basement nearly every weekend.

When that folded, I got with another group of guys from my old neighborhood and got in a band with them. It all becomes a series of one thing leading to another after that. When I got to Houston in 1972, I knew how to network. I promoted a weekly jam/get together called Montrose Musicians Workshop. It lasted 6-8 weeks and that got me and many others acquainted and playing together. I took off with some of them to Austin and formed a band that lasted 6 months. Again, another stair step. I came back from Austin and found an index card on the bulletin board at the local music store. "Working band seeks keyboard player". Answering that card kept me busy the next 4 years...

Salude!

I think that's the spelling to toast one's health. Having spent more time in a bed recouping, than the whole last 20 years together, does give one new gratitude for the general health most of us enjoy. After all, how can you miss something if it never goes away?

Believing I had the flue, I was just riding it out (didn't see the Dr.). After a week and a half, no better, and trouble breathing to boot, it was time to see the Dr. 2 hours later, I left the office with prescriptions for pneumonia. Gotta have an x-ray to figure that one out!

I have some good people, a family practice we have been going to more than 25 years. Although in that time we have only seen them a total of maybe 5-6 times. They were always good to us, and gave us breaks on visits (we had always been cash patients, no insurance). Now we have insurance, and it actually seems that it is going to help with some of the office visits, etc. Although the prescription help does nothing until we have spent several thousand dollars. Overall, this is known as a "high-deductible" policy.

Last night was the first night not visited by fever in a week. 'On the mend...