The Rules Before Me: The Rules Behind Me

• The rules by which I would live were formed prior to my existence.
• When I was born, they were all invisible to me.
• I obeyed all invisible rules because I had a category for them: normal.
• When the rules became visible to me, I had choice.
• Rules do not become visible without resistence.
• The choice I had was not a fair choice.
• Social systems correct rule breakers.
• I am passing along invisible rules to my children.
• They believe these are normal.
• Sometimes, they name a rule as something other than normal.
• It feels like an accusation.
• It breaks a rule.
• I must be willing to rerule.

Cemetery

I finally got out to the cemetery. I needed it so badly. I had not been there in just over a year. It's been just over 4 years since my father died.

My father died in 2006 at age 59. 11 years before he died (1995), he was hit by a drunk driver at age 48. We should have lost him then. He was severely burned, had a significant head injury, and was badly injured. On the way to the cemetery I drove past the place where the accident happened. Nine years before that (1986), my father had a terrible fall off a scaffold that had no rails. It left him partially disabled. He was 39 years old when this injury happened.

I turned 40 this year. My knees crack sometimes and I ache every now and again. But when my dad was my age, his able bodied days were over. It is so much sadder for me now than it was when it happened. I cannot imagine my able-bodied days being over by now. I cannot imagine the rest of my life in physical and psychological pain every single day. Dad lived for 20 years in pain. And frankly, his whole life was that of pain. His first 16 years at home were unspeakable.

As I pondered his life, I asked, "Why so much pain?" I asked the question of God. I stood at his grave, sobbing and asking God, "Why life is so painful?" The question of pain and suffering gets to the very core of theology and faith. Why would a loving God allow so much pain and suffering?

My usual approach to answering this question involves freedom and love. I settle it for myself. I didn't go there today. Rather, when my questioning persisted I looked at my father's gravestone. Engraved on his gravestone is the following: "He laughed heartily to the end." This descriptor of my father has two meanings. 1. The day my father died, he had a brief moment of lucidity. He was attached to all sorts of tubes and could not talk, but he could hear and nod. My brother told a joke and my dad's body quaked. He was laughing. Soon after he fell back into his sleep. 2. If you had known my father, your favorite thing about him would have been his sense of humor and his laugh. It was contagious. When he laughed, you laughed.

In my sobbing theological question of God about pain, I read my father's gravestone - "He laughted heartily to the end." It challenged my question. The man whose life theme was pain was also the man whose best charactersitic was humor and laughter. How can this be?

Then that question replaced my prior question. Who I addressed my interrogation to also changed. I addressed not God, but Satan and asked, "How do you explain this?" Asking this question made me laugh while I was crying really hard. I guess Satan's got some explaining to do as well.

The time spent in the cemetery was good. I really love my dad.

A Little Faith is Worth Something

Meditations on Faith after reading Colossians chapter 1
-Chris Gonzalez

A little faith is worth something, spotted and tattered as it may be. It is worth something because it exists. There is no better case against the forces of Evil than the existence of faith…faith in any condition or size.

Evil has a no tolerance policy on faith and therefore any little scrap of it is an affront. A little quivering, gelatinous splotch of faith is all that is needed to throw Evil into a four-alarm emergency. Faith is so much a threat to Evil that it cannot justifiably and comfortably exist if even one person has one ounce of it. The threat that faith poses to Evil is so striking and so profound that it is like a giant lumbering through a land of tiny, tiny people. It could crush evil, even without trying. Faith, its mere presence, even in its weakest form, keeps Evil awake at night, mind racing, fearful of what to do about the problem. Frantic, manic and paranoid, Evil scurries about for solutions to this impossible problem of Faith.

What lie can be told to diminish faith?

What distraction can be concocted to have faith forgotten, even for a minute?

And yet, all Evil can do is defensively try to put out fires, all the while perplexed and frustrated as to how it is that these fires keep starting.

Evil’s endless movement to extinguish faith is merely a desperate attempt to justify its own existence. One instance of faith pronounces all of evil for all time irrelevant and meaningless. Evil loses when Faith exists. It is all or nothing. Faith may be beaten and bloodied by the wild and reckless flailing attacks of Evil, but Evil is constantly playing defense. Faith assaults Evil by existing. Faith does not have to actually do anything but exist in order to do damage to Evil. Faith with a sense of volition and agency sends Evil into a frenzied rush for the nuclear button. Faith in action takes Evil by the throat.

Oh ye of little faith, you wield a mighty power.

Communion

Breaking deep down;
Time interrupted;
Heartsoul – cracking…crushing
Body fails;
Cries and wails flinging from chapped lips;
Pinned down, exposed, and afraid…
But not alone

…In the company of billions;
Time quarantined;
We gather at one table
Our chapped lips wet with wine,
Our broken bodies strengthened by bread

Bodies as Body sustaining each other.

Novice Mentor

Strained ahead to see
A path worn, but empty
Walking unlead unnerves
No stopping, not turning – must walk.

Walk as though lead
Is how my mentor lead…
But how?

Those young eyes depend,
And I am not yet old.

The World Suffers in Ignorance of You

If people of the world only knew you,
How better they would be,
At living their lives
At finding their lives
Useful and healthy and free

They’d find uses and meanings,
For broken down things,
Life in old tables and chairs and screens;
Repurposing spindles and windows and doors;
(re)Creating whatever they touch;
Taking so little;
Making so much,

Let nothing be wasted

They’d find flavor and taste,
In surprising places;
Neither bags, nor boxes, nor even cartons;
Plucked from trees and vines or dug from the ground;
Close to the source;
Delicious indulgence;
No remorse;

Let health be tasted

They’d break some rules and customs and traditions;
Innocent Rebels;
Meaning for performance and movement and action;
Dancing through life on common senses;
To move is to mean;
Parroting? Waste!
Morally clean.

The world suffers in ignorance of you;

Sing.

Confessions of Emerging Adulthood #6

When my smalltalk words ran out, there was a silent pause in which we just stood there and looked at each other in the dim lights. It was my turn to talk, but I wasn't saying anything. It was then that Helen began to realize this was a different kind of conversation than we had ever had before. Her curiosity moved from light and playful to something more serious. She was reading my mind, and I knew it. I had to give her my thoughts before she just took them from me.

It was time for me to be courageous, even though the many opportunities for courage with Helen were long gone. This courage was about something different, though, like I was catching up on growing up. I was about to get the failure I needed, but had so skillfully avoided for so many years.

Since I didn't know how to be cool, courageous, smooth or even mildly attractive, not on purpose anyway, I mimicked what I believed to be those things. Images of other guys who were most certainly those things entered my mind, but not in an accessible way. These thoughts were stock caricatures of those guys. As I spoke, it must have sounded like I was doing impressions of Saturday morning cartoon.

"You know, Helen, I've been doing some thinking about us," I said with a confidence so obviously false it hurt. I played with a stringy piece of bark I had peeled off of a stick. It was something I could look at when it was too hard to look at Helen.

"Uh huh,"Helen replied as her folded arms tightened and posture shifted into defense. It was too late. She had already read my mind. The game was already over. Too bad I didn't know it.

"Yeah, you know, about us...about our future," faking a confident nod, "you know." I said having completely run out of vocabulary. I really didn't need to say anything more. I'd finally played my hand even though the game had been done for more than a year. Helen looked back at me as if to say, "Oh, you're still playing? You still think there's a chance? You poor, poor, thing. Bless your heart." But she gathered herself together quickly. She knew I was vulnerable, but she also knew there was no way this was going to work.

I'd just placed Helen in an impossible situation. I'd thrown my heart at her and she caught it, but didn't want to keep it. Reject me too hard and I am crushed and the friendship is in jeopardy. Fail to reject me and she falsely gives me hope and then her integrity is in jeopardy. Helen would never let her integrity go for so little, but she would not just let the friendship go for little either. She needed to thread a needle while balancing on a bowling ball and standing in a hurricane.

And somehow she pulled it off. We sat there talking as the fire died out and the mercury light flickered out. Helen was amazing. She let me down so gently, so kindly, so lovingly. With the skill of seasoned politician and the empathy of a gifted therapist, Helen gave me heart back to me uninjured. She was my friend. We talked some more, laughed a little, hugged, an went to our respective cabins.

I slept just fine that night, having accomplished what I needed to accomplish.

Confessions of Emerging Adulthood #5

It was Helen. Unassuming and beautiful, she approached me with a curious little smile on her face, arms folded and hands pulled into the sleeves of her sweatshirt to buffer against the chill. The dew had fallen, but I hadn't noticed yet. But there is something about the dew falling - sooner or later, you will feel its chill in your bones. She was genuinely curious why I had asked her to meet me at the campfire.

I sat on a log and Helen sat on the log next to me. The fire dying, I tried to create some small talk, but it felt forced. The clock was ticking and I was stalling. Helen was patient - tonight. But she had lost her patience with me a long time ago. It was two weeks before Helen would go 800 miles away to college and I would go back for my senior year in high school. I wouldn't see her again until Christmas.

We had known each other for six years. Every summer we spent weeks together at camp. We had been to lock-ins, hay rides, and new year's parties together. We talked to each other on the phone and wrote letters to each other. At times she would show up unannouned at my summer baseball games. I called her from work one night during my break, complaining of how miserable I was, hated my job and missed her so bad. When I left work that night, there was note from Helen, sitting on the front seat of my car. I was worth her time and effort. It was like this for six years.

So no one was to be faulted for wondering when we would get together. She liked me, they say. She liked me. The thought of it confronted me - conjured up my fear. Failure. Rejection. My deepest inner dork exposed for all. Was I likable? I mean, as more than a friend. Could I be in a relationship? The thing was, we were friends, good friends - and that was the problem. I didn't know how to be anything else. The safety of our friendship was so comfortable. The idea that it could be more was enough to keep it exciting enough for me without the requisite risk.

Six years of wondering how to be more than friends, but being afraid to do anything about it, was about to time out, right there at the camp fire ring. I had to make one desperate effort at doing the one thing I didn't have the courage to do. Six years of chances ended tonight.

Dissertation Insanity

I am giving every article, chapter, and book I read for my dissertation a code based on what kind of literature it is. I am struggling to organize myself, whcih is hard because I have hard time organizing my half of the closet at home. Here is my current coding system.

Type of Paper:
T = Theory (PYD theory and any other theory that is included in this paper)
E = Empirical Research Study
R = Review
X = Not specified

Topic of Paper:
C = Civic Engagement in general
R = Religion (Effects of religion and spirituality on Adolescent Civic Engagement)
P = Parent (Effects of parents and family on Adolescent Civic Engagement)
M = Media (Effects of Media on Adolescent Civic Engagement)
X = Not specified

Design:
C = Cross-sectional / Time (Snapshots – correlations, associations, and differences)
L = Longitudinal / Time (Effects of Time on adolescent Civic Engagement)
E = Experimental design
X = Not specified

Number:
1, 2, 3.....N

Example:
ERL1 would refer to the 1st article that was and EMPIRICAL study on RELIGION which had a LONGITUDINAL design.

ERL2 would be the second of the same kind of article.

I am holding to some kind of belief that this will help me when I return to the notes I am taking and have a clue as to what I am looking at. Anyone else have a system for organizing loads of articles?

Confessions of Emerging Adulthood #4

I stood near the campfire ring as the evening summer camp activities wound down and the other campers started their procrastination routines – putting off going to back to their cabins for just a few more minutes. I usually joined them milling about the shower house and strategically pretending to forget my toothbrush back at the cabin. I would go looking for one last round of good night hugs – it was going to be a whole nine hours before we all saw each other again. It was bedtime, but we were juiced. The sugar and caffeine that had not worn off from canteen combined with a surge of adolescent hormones made the idea of going to bed sound ridiculous, even though it was nearing eleven o’clock. We would chase around the shower house hoping not to get caught by the camp director, hoping to play a lot and at the same time somehow appear to be getting something necessary done. It was an unstructured, yet highly ritualized, part of youth camp – a part that I never missed.

But tonight was different. I didn’t do any of that. Tonight I waited for Helen.

The embers of the campfire were still orange, but a darker orange. The festivities of crazy campfire had long passed and echoes of the whole camp singing silly songs faded into the shadows of the pine and birch forest. Smoke wandered out from the charred wood and slowly rose into the darkness. The last bit of color had left the sky and the stars were staring down in anticipation. I tried sitting on one of the logs that circled the fire ring as I waited, but couldn’t find a comfortable way to sit. I paced back and forth, but never too far from the fire. Besides the intermittent mercury light by the old craft house, which was no off, it was my only source of light. Once again, my flashlight was somewhere else. The lake was only about 20 yards away, but it looked like complete blackness. The lake was beautiful, my favorite part of the campground, but night had sent the lake to bed. I looked around for Helen, hoping to see her, but also hoping she would stand me up. I knew that an important conversation was about to happen, but I still didn’t know my lines. The spotlight was about shine and I had not rehearsed.

This was a conversation that I should have had a long time ago. No, it was a conversation that should never have had to happen. It was a Hail Mary pass in hopes of a miracle - the kind of miracle that would release me from the all of the social and romantic responsibility I had found ways to avoid over the past six years. Desperation, as it turns out, is the necessary experience of prolonged avoidance of the inevitable. But how was I to know that? No one told me actions and inactions were boomerangs. I thought when you avoided something you got away with it. It was a clean break. Each day was a new day. I had an intense loyalty that that which was convenient in the moment, even if it had no semblance of truth. That was one of my major flaws - I kept believing things that were not true. Experience, however, was merciless in its reminders of the realities of world in which I lived.

I heard the crunch of footsteps on pine needles and sand. Someone was coming. A shadowy figure was emerging from over by the girl’s cabins. Backlit by the dull purplish mercury light, which had flickered on at some point outside of my awareness, I could tell the person was female. My stomach squeezed and I wanted time to stop. Like a log to the buzz saw, I was about to be shaped into something more useful – through pain.