Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories

Slumbering without benefit of an alarm clock for the first day of work in 2014 was not as restful as I would have wished.  Due to conflicting schedules today,  I drove my pickup truck to the train station instead of carpooling and was uncomfortable.  Huffing and puffing the few hundred yards from the transit parking lot I caught the Coaster commuter train with minutes to spare;  missing it would have given me an excuse to skip work until Monday.  I’m just glad to be away from the left-over cookies, chocolates, zucchini bread, crackers and dip.

The weekend will be here in a couple days.  And none too soon.  I have a list of projects to start the year off.  The truck now seems to have developed some fuel problem that thankfully held off until I was pulling into my driveway,  A couple strings of outdoor lights need to be stored in the garage.  A bedroom needs painting;  odds n ends cluttering the house have an appointment with the Amvets truck now that 2014 is here.

Happy New Year!   Four hundred ninety-six days ago, or 1 year, 4 months and 9 days ago, I apparently had something to vent and did so.  In the meantime I have been silent, like a slumbering caldera, or perhaps have had little to say. A Christmas present from my wife this year, a journal, bears a witty foreword that resembles my thoughts and verbal commentary — usually while we are driving together over these last two years.  Perhaps a little more blogging is in order and will provide me some perspective.  Numbers like five years from now I can draw military retirement,  two years from now our financial house should be in order, one year from now a student will have graduated and be urged to leave the nest, six months from now I will be able to order from the Denny’s senior menu,  and a day from now, I may be taking public transit back to the job to start another 52 weeks of work.

In the past year I learned a little more about ancient cultures and the figurative relationship of numerology in the Bible.   And though I have no real fascination with numbers,  I cannot avoid some interesting (some might say hazardous) coincidences.   While three is associated with Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Trinity,  seven is regarded as a holy number ( seven crowns, seven lampstands, etc) in the Book of Revelations.  Six on the other hand is a number associated with evil. Six pieces of silver, the  ‘666’ mark of the Beast and so on.

In 2013, I learned to live without a car (totalled by a drunk at the end of 2012),  dealt with another hospitalization for gastric issues,  severely broke my wrist, had my house catch fire (candles – though the artist who used them has not- have been banished from my home), had another car driven by my other son disabled by a collision (two previous tire blowouts on the interstate that year were foreshadowing his pending lack of ‘auto’-mobility,  and other minor irritations,  And if you believe that incidents occur in threes, I bear witness,  If one sums the digits of 2013, the result is SIX, but happily, the sum of the present year is SEVEN.
Let me offer prayers to the Most High that the new year will bring significant positive outcomes for my family.

Raise your hand if you have become irritated with sound bites, glossy ads, baby-kissing, union-halls forums and now the increasingly annoying dirt-slinging between political camps.  If you are gay but fiscal conservative, you are attacked by gays; if you exercise free speech to attack one-time ubiquitous American values, you get center-stage. If you use free-speech to criticize others championed by the same suck-up media, you are a bigot.   Profits earned by business – other than those who fund the political machine of the party in the White House are despicable. But what about the suck-up media which profits enormously from it’s muck-raking??  Not much different than the campaigning of two hundred years ago.

The Alamo

Anyone who has studied U.S. history might recognize one of the symbolic structures in our nation’s lexicon. “Remember the Alamo!”.  In 1836, a small group of Texicans opposed an overwhelming force of foreign soldiers in the struggle to have an independent state.  While these brave men were killed, they were remembered in a rallying cry that later gained Texas as an independent territory from Mexico, and then   statehood in the growing United States.

Today it is unpopular to be a Christian Disciple, in the true sense of the word.  The world at large hates the values and ideals of following a Christian God, partly due to the folly of men and women who have professed a faith in Jesus, but have in practice, have exhibited little of His teaching. In the absence of a true and committed faith and adherence to His Word, cynicism, ignorance, selfishness and  brutish behavior fill the vacuum left behind.

It is foolishness to those who are perishing, the Bible says.  The brave men who took a stand for an ideal and died at the Alamo outnumbered by an enemy, might appear foolish to some. But how many then or today would choose to leave omnipotence to be clothed in human form, suffer and die horribly for the entire race of men across the world -even enemies – including those yet unborn?  That God sacrificed His only Son so that we might have the right to become sons and daughters, and to inherit eternal life.

I choose to change the course of my life.  It is meaningless to squabble over politics, over leaders who have acted one way or another, to hoard up riches or to squander the opportunity to know God.   The beginning of knowledge is to be empty of oneself.   At a gathering of 18000 faithful, “recovering sinners”, men and women, families of all ages, who chose to worship a Christian God as He intended, I am eternally grateful for the change and focus.  As a White Male, whose attitudes were once laughably labelled “Born Forty:, I have chosen to redirect my remaining life in service and worship and Truth.

YOU are never alone when you have multiple personality disorder.  I work primarily by myself in a closed engineering lab and over time I have given in to talking to myself.  Now my friends who have known and worked with me over the years may not be surprised as I have been this way for a long time.   

2011.  Okay world, lets try to get the year off to a better start:  If you own an Iphone and used it as an alarm clock today – it is a good thing that it is NOT a workday for most folks – the news reported another operating system bug which causes a failure of the alarm on January 1 and January 2.   

Guesstures is one of the board games that can bring out the competition, foster claim to bragging rights, and leave everyone in a better mood, without having to reach for the medicinal-use only bourbon, Ibuprofin, or a band-aid. 

After a long day at work, seven of us gathered in a friend’s living room tonight to continue building friendships on the foundation of our common spiritual beliefs.   

So there we were – teachers, an administrator, a construction foreman, semi-retired, metro transit supervisor, and an engineer – who have no reservations about playing this game, or Apple-to-Apples, Balderdash or whatnot.
It certainly allowed all of us to melt away the cares of the day.  Oh, yeah – our team lost by a few points — Next time buddy!

Never in my wildest imaginings did I think I would become so enamored with civil disobedience!  Henry David Thoreau refused to support the war effort of his day, the Mexican War. At the time I first read about him in high school, I had little experience to appreciate Thoreau.  But  Thoreau’s treatise is after the life experience of fifty years, very appropriate today.  He noted, “The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.”  

I’m not a young man anymore.  

Not that I am ready to roll over and die just yet, though.   I have made an effort to go to the gym every weekday, to keep the gray at bay.  I try to be engaged with the social media, though it seems there is one school of thought that finds it quiaint or even mildly annoying that ‘old people’ use it for anything other than report comings and goings to restaurants and starbucks coffee.   And at an age now, very comfortable with married life,  I have joined the ranks of the over-forty somethings, who sport graying beards and staccato hair, Costco -fashion shorts and company polo shirts.  Fashion -sense is for the young, unmarried folks.  But then in my workplace, the ones who write all the code or hunch over benches testing devices shuffle about in flip-flops – while the managers who are attired in the unusual button down shirt and slacks, must have customers onsite that day.  

As for conversations, my peers discuss aches, colds, college-bound kids, and who will bring the bagels on Friday.   In contrast, younger men and women are planning a weekly competitive match-up, a vacation destination, or some activity, and the young marrieds have to hustle home for either toddler duty, a parent-teacher meeting, or a  youth sporting event. 

When my colleagues stop by my office or we have a chat in the hallway to and from the break room,  I can find myself in a conversation with another former navy Chief, one of the facilities workers, a former manager, or my co-worker D_ with whom we’ve been label the twin sons of different mothers for our penchant to be loud, amusing, and equally diligent on our search for the left-over snacks or catered lunch remains in the lunch-room.

Today one of the female engineers on my former project stopped by to see how my kids and spouse were doing – she commented before on the yellow sticky note that still covers a picture of my son- and his now-ex fiancee.  How the fund-raising was going for the walkathon Sheri was participating in.  And to chat about clutter in our respective offices.  

I can chatter about anything technical, social, or political.  Conversation is an art of listening to others though.    So glad I didn’t go off on one of my routine political rants that my generation is so fond of doing.  The 70s altered the consciousness of the country, the 80s  was all about money and success, the 90s for social mores, and since 2000, the loss of national identity. 

But one thing that 50 years provides, is some measure of perspective.   It really is going to be chaotic for the next several decades, but then every generation has faced a paradigm shift in what is important.   I know that in another fifty years,  the over-forty crowd will still be talking about kids, colds, and finances, the youth will still be planning whats in and whats out, and the politicians will still be singing the same tunes …. perhaps though from life-size holographic, personalized projections.

Ha!