Oblivion

When something dies, it's body begins to shut down, starting from the least important organs to the most. Our anatomy is really intelligent and reactive to our physical and emotional situation. Eventually, without a cure, the body will begin to let go of it's most important organs...until the heart succumbs and the rhythm of that soul has ceased. Everything that person has experienced has become an archive. Very few will remember him and even less as the years add to their numbers. 1% of the earth's total population will be remembered by the future. 99% will go off into oblivion without a soul eventually remembering their existence.

This is why artists paint and writers write. This is why people are fighting day to day. We are fighting oblivion. We want to be remembered when we leave what we call life.

99% will fail.

My kids will love me forever. My grandkids will talk about me to their wives and children. My great grandchildren will see me as a Bible story that shouldn't be trusted because it was told by someone who knew me. The rest will never know my name. This is part of the curse...the worst part of the curse. Sin has made people eternally forgettable.

...

But the beauty. The beauty of life is remarkable. We are born and learn things through trial and error. We learn what life is through pain and laughter and hatred and perceived love. We make mistakes and correct them. We live the best way we know how and pray that God will correct our mistakes. We regret things until we die. We look at the way our sons treat their wives and are so proud, as if they did all of the work of being a good man. All the while, we know and dread the day we will be laying, hands folded in those cedar boxes below the most beloved people...the only people that will mourn or remember our lives. If we could see their eyes, I believe we would know that it was all worth it.

Then we would see the way our great grandchildren treated their wives and children. We would smile because the world is evil, but your wisdom went on for generations. We would see the things that history would not tell you directly in a book. They will see the point of life. They would know all about the need to fight through all obstacles and provide for our families. They would know about what true love has to fight through to remain...true.












Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

The Dead End Kids - A short story

We climbed into the 1990 Ford Econoline conversion van. It was the dead of winter. The part of February that everything seems sterile. The snow isn't new, it's grey and packed deep into everything surrounding the paths shoveled out twice a week. The air itself smells of salt and stale cold water.

When December comes, 30 years later, you will sit outside and catch the snowflakes on your tongue and cry thinking of doing that same action 30 years earlier as a boy. You remember the way your scarf would bother you as it collected your breath and rubbed your spit across your face. You remember the snowballs and the tears mixed with snow dripping down your red face.

It's not December 30 years later. Today the snowflakes just fall onto deaf eyes. In the van are my brothers. Kids that would never make it out of this place, just like you. There were kids that went away to college and became all of these glamorous people with glamorous things. They had cabins "Up North" and came home from work everyday without cuts and scrapes across their hands and arms. We were the kids that buried their hands in the snow to take hold of two by fours to carry up a ladder to the roof of the new construction would-be homes.

We were the ones that would never make it out, not because we didn't have the skills, but because we didn't want to. We loved this place. We loved the familiarity of every street we drove down. We loved going from place to place and rebuilding and exaggerating all of our memories.. We would get into that van and drive for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette, making fun of each other.

This night, we would put on ski masks and go to the liquor store and just buy some coffee. We would get out of the van and rush into the store and tell people to move as we passed them and grab some beef jerky, potato chips, and machine mixed coffee from the thing by the coolers. We would approach the cashier with the masks on and look him no where but the eyes and set down our prospected goods. He would pause and stare us down. We would keep our hands on the counter and stare directly into his eyes, waiting for him to react. He did first as he reached down to the shelf under the counter and showed us the handle of a handgun. We didn't look away from his eyes, or pretended not to. I slid the money over to him. He dropped the gun back down and grabbed the money and put it in the register. He took out our change and dropped it on the counter in front of us. We didn't break gaze with him until we turned together and walked, leaving the change on the counter.

We get back into the van and laugh. We go home and build rockets out of cardboard toilet paper centers and fill their guts with rocket engines and tissue. We mold them into the very vessels we wanted to leave this earth in someday and go outside to fly them.

3 AM in the morning is when the first was launched in the middle of the suburban street. It soured into the winter night sky as if it had no intention of coming back down. We lost it when it burned out and found the end of our atmosphere. Engineering was my oldest brother's strongest gift. The second onto the roof of the neighbor's house. The third would be found in the park across the street.

We laid down on the snow packed grass and spoke about getting into those rockets and flying away one day. We watched planes scratch the sky above us, wondering where they were going and what kinds of people were on them. Maybe we would want to go somewhere someday. This night has been sitting in my memories for years and years. This was a picture of the only thing that made me happy as a teenager.

***


Many years later I would return to this house. One brother gone in his rocket, and the other somewhere between grief and loneliness. The house is boarded up and the the windows broken. I climb in to see the place I used to sleep next to my brothers. It's February again, the dead of winter. The street is now a dead end as the new freeway has been built at the end of it. There stands 4 houses on each side, 5 of them covered in boards.

I see my bed, still unmade and full of ashes and dust. I uncover a spot to sit down and look at the ceiling I spent so many hours looking at before life became fast. There is a feeling of emptiness there, yet I still see the memories of my life here. The wallpaper is cracked and peeling, but I still see them as they were when we were kids and everything was as it should be.

I look over to my pillow that still lays at the foot of my older brother's bed below and smile. I pick it up to smell the distant scent of my youth. I look down and see something that I cannot explain. I see a rocket. A pristine rocket lying under where my pillow was. I picked it up and examined it. It was the same rocket my oldest brother had climbed and left us behind in. I pulled out the burnt rocket from the inside of the toilet paper tubing and smelled it. I still had a faint smell of burnt sulfur to it that brought me instantly to another place. I began pulling out the tissue packing used to balance the rocket and give it weight. As I did, I found a piece of paper crumbled up. I knew I had found what I was looking for. I opened the paper up and read the words "The World Never Changes For The Dead End Kids."

The tears ran on and on until I got up and put the note back inside the rocket and put them both back under my pillow and left the house. As I walked away, I looked to the broken cement of the driveway and pictured that van and my brothers waiting for me to join them. I smiled and looked to my right to see the dead end sign that reflected the night.

I got back into my car and went home.









Sing.
Migrate.





 Thanks for reading...Z

I Like...

A list of things I like to do, but don't tell people I do.

I like to visit houses I used to live in, pretty regularly.

I like to smell everything.

I like to listen to other people's conversations when I am eating alone and respond as if I were in the conversation. A few times I have responded out loud.

I like to start writing projects knowing full well I won't finish them.

I like to give people nicknames, including myself who I have given many to.

I like to do things that people would find weird if they were watching me on television. For example, I once faked being a bird catcher and was hired to remove some of them from the drop ceiling of a video store. My brother and I used rubber kitchen gloves, a harmonica, a fly swatter, and two pillow cases. We removed the birds, but turned the video store upside down and filled the floor with bird crap in the process. The video store gave us $250 in free video rentals.

I like to change my appearance as often as possible, although lately due to work constraints that I did not previously have, I have shown restraint.

I like to think of the most horrific thing in the world that could happen to me and try to make myself cry. If I succeed, I will go look at myself in the mirror.

I like to look at people in their cars as I pass them. I will rarely abstain from this activity.

I like to be freezing cold.

I like to tell strangers really personal things about myself. ( As you well know by now)


Also, I really love pizza with pepperonis that curl up like little bowls of grease.

Exposing Yourself

Good evening. Good morning. Wherever this finds you, hello out there. I haven't posted in a while. To be honest, I had run out of things I believed in enough to speak about. Whether you're in China searching for a picture of an animal with a human's beard, or in Alaska actually searching for whales, you are now here. This is my little neglected home where I write things down. This is my history, at least the history the way I see it.

I was driving today, stuck in the gridlock and dazing into the sky at a plane scratch the sky (as my daughter says). I started thinking about the plane and who was on it and where they were going, I didn't know, so that led me to smile at my daughter saying that, whenever she looks into the blue sky. I was thinking about what makes things that a kid says so cute and precious to people. I could have just as easily said the same thing and no one would smile at all. They would just stand still, then look down at their phones. I think maybe it's their innocence that draws such attention. A kid says something so little, yet it stuns people into this memory of themselves being so frail, yet so empowered to say or do whatever they wanted. 

At the heart of happiness, there is transparency.

A child is happy because they are open. They have no deep secrets or insecurities. Insecurities are learned from ridicule. Children should never be ridiculed. Neither should adults. Kids are happy because they don't know about the world yet. They're safe in their homes watching cartoons and waiting for their next desire to be fulfilled. They are doing exactly what a child does. They get a little older and life begins to show them the world and all of it's beauty and wonder and despair. For many, the darkness hides the beautiful things and for others, the light exposes the root of the darkness. For me, the despair was all I could see. I saw only the bad in people without really acknowledging the good. The world was wilted flowers to me. I had an idea that things were once beautiful gone terribly wrong and now filled with the remnants of what used to shine in the sun. I realized after many bad things that I was just hiding. I turned the lights out. I was finding the darkest places and living there. So I made a decision. I made the decision to let go of everything I had been taught about God and whatever He supposedly wanted from me. I had reached a place where there was no more down. I just sought out something different. I found it. Things changed slowly with work and frustration, but they were changing. Something about me was changing from within. I asked God if "He were really real and had something to say to me, then say it so I can here you." So He did. All of those things that made me so angry and awful to other people had to go. They had to be exposed. I....had to be exposed. No more hiding. So I painfully devoted my life to living without secrets. I have failed many times, but I am continually reminded and motivated to let every stranger know exactly who they are dealing with.

Here's why.

Transparency attracts people. People want to be around someone they can trust. It's both refreshing and scary to them. It makes them angry when things are said that aren't what they wanted to hear, but keeps them coming to you because they know beyond all that you can be trusted. I think many Christians have real issues with honesty, including myself. I think that our words about God should be few. We are often quick to share the words of our faith and keep the obstacles and troubling truths silent. People are smart. They see through this as a scam. In honesty, it is a scam. We hide the difficulties of being a person with faith in Jesus silent to attract people to the more attractive aspects. We tell them they will finally be happy and free, but hide that their family may reject them and ridicule them for their senseless faith in the unseen man-made superstitions of the Bible. We tell them them that God will protect them, but hide the notion that people all over the world are taking leaps of faith and being slaughtered for it. We tell them that we accept and love everyone, then segregate and ostracize based on whatever perceived sin the person is living in. This is not transparency, this is a hoax that drives people away from God. This isn't what God wants. God doesn't want you to flaunt your freedom and condemn the others for their differences over social networks. God doesn't want you bashing and judging His Creation because you feel your rights are being infringed upon. God want's no hate or lies to spill from your lips. God wants the same unconditional love from you to others as He gave to you while suffering and dying on the cross.

God wants a different Christianity.

God wants a different religion.

God wants an open book standing right here for all to read, because people flock to truth. You may be ridiculed, but you will represent God...who was in fact...ridiculed.









Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

The Church in Peril

This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and trample the hurting under foot.

I think this is the day that many Christians have lost their minds. One would think that the Bible would be clear on this issue in the hearts of those that subscribe their lives to following it. This principle is at the very base of God's moral code. Love God with all of your hearts, souls, and minds, and treat others as you would be treated. Love God, love people. Yet here we are in 2013 and all we can do is argue. The Bible also says not to do that. You don't see Jesus doing it. He knew better. Our personal liberties are not worth driving those that are lost further into the dark. What those do that are not subscribing to our Bible is between them and God. We aren't granted the liberty to judge them. We are granted the responsibility to love them. Love drives people to God. Judgement drives them to the grave. We use harsh Bible language and use God's very words of love as a dagger to cut at the hearts of those who are already bleeding. This is insane. It is as if we are stumbling right back into the pharisee's robes. We pray loud in the squares and flaunt our freedom as if it were something we earned and not God. We exercise our own freedom and strip others of it as if they hadn't worked hard enough for it. It was Christ who worked for all of it. We build worship buildings and spend millions on drawing a crowd. We could never draw God with our money or bricks. We draw God with sincerity and love. We are still throwing stones at that prostitute instead of reaching out our hands to her.

The American church is in peril. We got here by ignoring the very actions of Jesus. Jesus did not call out the sinners and condemn them, quite the opposite, he called out the righteous as hypocrites for their judgement and legalism. Jesus ate and drank, yes alcohol, with the sinners and the religious called him a drunkard and a glutton. Jesus spent his time with the hated people, washing their feet, not condemning their actions. The American church will be destitute of the actual Spirit of God if we continue this progression into hate. We will be sitting in huge buildings full of people acting out emotionally and as publicly as we can, all while rotting on the inside while the country rots on the outside.

We must wake up. Our banner must be love, compassion, and grace for God to be seen in us by the world. Those are the very attributes of God Himself. When people see those things, they see God. I challenge my brothers and sisters to simply close your mouths. Lay your hands beside the keyboard. Take a few minutes to meditate on God and what His Word actually says and act accordingly. Make this your creed with me, we will all fail at times, but people will have grace on us because of our practice of having grace on them. "Let us speak no evil from our mouths."





Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading. Z

What The World Needs Now

Lot's of sad things in the world right now. Yesterday a 13 year old kid shot himself dead in the school bathroom before classes began.When something like that happens we always picture our own kids in their shoes...picture ourselves in the shoes of their parents. I don't even know how to describe what would be in my head. A few months ago a guy robbed a pregnant woman and shot her in the belly, killing her baby...just because. Every week in Detroit a guy breaks into an elderly person's home and rapes her, robs her, and kills her...just because. Point being, you watch the news enough and you will learn to loathe the world we have to live in. You will become cold in your heart and forget about those that just want peace.

I have served as youth minister for 13 years. I've seen and heard a lot that I can never tell you. Things that make me sick. At this point and time, I cannot serve at the capacity I used to. So since yesterday and the suicide of that kid, I have been wondering what to do. What can I do? I have never been one to sit back and watch the world burn. I wanna get burned trying to save others. It occurred to me this morning that I am not doing much at all to help those in peril. I have been living my life and adjusting to a different career and craft. I sat down this evening with my wife and watched a doc about a guy who used Craigslist ads to keep him in shelter and food for a month. He didn't want to just mooch off others, so he spent most days volunteering to those that needed love. During the film, it occurred to me that this is the answer. Disconnect from the digital and reconnect to humanity. We are cold and self centered because we are conditioned to relate via internet or text. The issue is, you cannot look into the eyes of a person on the internet. You get what they choose to give you. Face to face, most cannot hide who they really are or what is really happening in them.

So here is my rough draft resolution. Take more time in every human interaction you experience in your day. Speak with the person serving your coffee, your lunch. Take every opportunity to get to know strangers everywhere. I am betting you will find that people share the very same feelings on many levels. I am betting that you will make a difference in more than one person's life. Say hi to the neighborhood kids. Give a 100% tip to your waitress. Adopt a child from Compassion International and actually write her. Start a relationship with a person whose life you are sustaining.  Sit down next to a person who is sitting alone and open a conversation. Step out from where you are comfortable. Look people in the eyes and say things that matter. Learn to keep your mouth shut when it is foolishness coming out. Leave behind your negative attitude. Ask God to break your jaded heart. Give in to the thoughts of that kid that still lives in you. Would you as a 9 year old drop your last nickle in that filthy guy's hand...probably yes. If you are shoveling snow, shovel your neighbors as well. Buy the lunch of a random person sitting across the restaurant. Do all of these things in secret.

I think this is what the world needs now. Love. Love is still a verb, not a feeling. Love is something you practice. Do so intensely. I will too.











Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

Beginning to Break

Life is really fast. When you're young it goes by so slow, always waiting to be old enough. Thirty years later, you have no idea where your life went and how it got here without you noticing. Things then spiral and speed up and your time is more, for the most part spent doing something that you would soon not notice your doing so much. Phone calls and text messages and emails and tournaments and soccer games and dance recitals and appointments and paperwork and insurance and 401 K and 403 B. When your 80, you know now you will wonder how you got these wrinkles so quickly...you were just 7 years old playing in the sand and picking the bark off branches at the top of your backyard tree. Without knowing it, the world spins around and around, reproducing the same 24 hours it produced the day before. Days vary, but in all, they are the same and it is all going too fast.

Until that moment your world is shaken. When everything that has inhabited your turn of the earth is changed. Suddenly things slow down so you can really experience them. Sometimes this is a blessing when it is time to celebrate, others it is a cruel joke and everyone is laughing but you. Then...you having nothing but time.

When you've been rocked the lights above you as you drive move slower above your head and you notice when a streetlamp is out. You look at the details of your surroundings because all of the sudden you have time. You listen to the drip of melting ice trickle down your gutter. The turn off the radio to hear the sound of the cracks in the cement of the road pass beneath your tires. You wonder why that baby is crying in the shopping cart while it's mother shops quietly and oblivious it. You wonder what it will look like as an adult crying like that in front of the mirror trying to see what you look like crying. You watch the trees sway back and forth with the wind and the helicopter seeds sail down to the earth and realize that this very same moment in time produced the tree that produced them in the first place. All of these things are part of the shock and jarring of the changing of the pull of gravity of the earth in your life. This is what happens when rotation is reversed...you end up on your head.

For a while, we stay on our heads and look at all of the beautiful things in the world and learn how to block out bad thoughts. But after a while the earth begins to make sense a little. Never as colorful again, but sensible enough to allow the earth to speed round and round again unnoticed by your days.


The question then becomes appallingly clear...Are we now healed or are we again beginning to break?










Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

Excerpt From the Diary of the Great Grizzly Brown

If I stopped walking, my legs would fall off and I would bleed to death. If I stopped and stepped back, my eyes would be crushed and my tongue pulled out. I had been through that hell. I had seen all that the devil wanted me to see. I lived through it. Now I walk away from it with the back of my shirt still on fire. The smoke still smolders from my flannel button down.

I had stared into the eyes of everything that I feared and became who I never wanted to be. I became nothing at all. I just sat there. I stared at blank screens and lost track of time inside of myself. Any pride left inside was torched and left to mix with the ashes of what I had lost. There was no sun. There was no day. The night reigned both my dreams and lucid hours. I fought for my sanity, I begged for comfort. I got only emptiness for my cries.

Until the day I woke in the dirt, my face down on the concrete alley. Bottles surrounded my frail form. I lift my head in weakness and let it fall back to the ground that I so badly wanted to dwell in. I had heard a voice. I am sure it was in my head, but it was loud enough for me to understand. I heard a voice of One calling in the desert. I heard Him and I rose to my feet. I had been waiting for this voice for thirty years. Thirty long years of obedience. Thirty years of faith without one moment of proof. Now He speaks. Now...after my only family is perished and I have nothing left but my thoughts. He speaks, so I listen.

He says....."Move! Remove yourself and get up and keep moving."


So I did because I had nothing left to do. I could lay in this alley until I froze or starved to death, which may have been only hours away, or I could stand to my feet and start walking toward where the sun used to be.


What I found was a fire remained. It burned inside of me quietly. It was what kept me from fading into the asphalt. It was anger, but misplaced anger. It was anger at my childhood for what it produced. It was anger at God for where He lived compared to where I lived. Most of all, it was the anger that screams from the emptiness that comes from holding out your arms to hug a son that is gone and a wife that has joined him in paradise. It was directed and everything that had always kept me alive through all of this madness.

For the first time I was silent. I walked for days and weeks and months, not speaking a word to anyone. I sorted it out. I fought every demon that had infested my heart. I fought until I nearly bled out. But in the end, I walked forward, away from the madness and into more madness.

-The Great Grizzly Brown (Excerpts from his personal diary found during The Celebration- dated 3013)



















Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading...Z

Valentine For My Love

"And if ever to leave. I'll say before I go. That you're the best moment I've ever known." Ben Howard


Life travels so fast. When I was little, I would always want to be some older kid. The older kids got to stand up on the school bus or leave class early to stand on the corner. Adults would always tell me that I was too young for this or for that. It bothered me to be young. I didn't like being put off...still don't. Every year seemed to drag on and on as I would perceive it then. Now my perception of it is much different. I wanted to be the teenager smoking in the park playing the saxophone. Instead I was stuck in this over-sized Member's Only jacket in an under-sized body. I tried once to just go buy cigarettes with my lunch money. I went to the counter and asked for a pack of cigarettes...had no idea there were more than one brand. Lady laughed and told me to buy some gum. I looked up to the wrong people. Something about a rebellious teenager made me want to be one. I did end up being one.

Now I want a time machine. I want to travel back and watch it happen the entire night. It could take the place of dreaming. I could be sleeping soundly in the here and now, but back there in my mind. I don't want to be able to change anything, I just want to see it. I want to perceive it as I do now and not then. I want to speak to myself then, even if I can't hear it. I may have trusted very few if I could go back. I would have told that guy in the park to stop making me afraid of nuclear war and to get a job and stop playing that sax in the park, people are trying to sleep. I would have realized my potential far before it became so painful to achieve. I would have given all I had left in my hands to take a step out of the shadows and be who I wanted to be. I was always an underdog in my mind, but it took years to fight like one. I was held back and restrained by my own fears until late in my teens. I got to where I always wanted to be. I bought cigarettes and drank booze.


I was that cool, rebellious teenager. I hurt people on purpose, I think it made me feel powerful to make a person cry. I was the weakest of all teenagers. I was full of rage that had been held back. I was a lion that could not devour enough of everything that satisfied my need for life to fair. Life was never going to be fair...not for me...not for the millions who had things far worse than me....and that isn't fair. So I just let everything around me burn to the ground and I stood over it. I fought for every moment of every day. I gave in to nothing. I dared not to try anything. If it scared me, I ran at it. Nothing was enough. I became all that I had always been scared to become. I became fire.

It was empty. Inside, I wanted something better. I didn't want anger to fuel everything anymore, it took too much out of me. I was lonely. I was the loneliest man in the entire world. I fell in love with everything but what I needed.

Then I met her. She sat in front of me at a wedding. I had a girlfriend at the time, but she was another placeholder to something different. I went to the wedding with my brother instead. She was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my entire life. I played it cool. I didn't talk to her. My rule was that if you wanted the girl, act as if you didn't want anything to do with her. So I did that. We got to the reception and I knew we had something going on with the glances and the fast turning of our heads when the other looked. I took a picture of her looking at me...an action she could have copied from me a hundred times. I walked over to her table and a friend of mine introduced her to me. She was holding some random person's baby. I took the baby from her. Years later she would make the claim that I purposely fondled her during this baby exchange, but I will deny it to death. We spoke for a minute and I sat back at my loud table and ate dinner. A couple of hours later because of her courage, we were dancing together. We had an amazing time, even though I looked like Jar Jar Binks flailing around with my arms and legs like a skier falling down a hill. That night I asked for her phone number and she hesitated, which was awesome to me.

The next morning I broke every one of my dating rules. I called her and spoke to her little Scottish grandma, who told me she was at college and would be back later. She called me back at some time, I don't know how long.

I loved her right away. She didn't mind that I didn't take her out to eat for dates and dates. She didn't mind me taking her to strange places like this train car below a hill where homeless people lived. She didn't mind that I didn't kiss her for a month after we started dating. I wanted to know her on a different level. She became my wife on June 9th 2001. She delivered our first child on January 13th 2003 and our second on May 6th 2006. This was the life I never knew that I always wanted. I never saw this coming. I didn't think I ever deserved it. I found my potential on the one thing I never saw growing up. A husband and a father. This was God's second greatest gift given to me.



Happy Valentine's Day my love. You are the best moments I've ever known.



Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading...Z

Drunkin Dunkin, time to make the donuts

 His eyes open at the high pitched sound of a swing set and kids shouting. At first he didn't know where or even who he was. He had asked that very same question hundreds of times before. He would wake up and roll out of the bed and onto the floor, crawl to the dresser and lift himself to his feet. He would stagger his way to the bathroom feeling every pulse from his heart blasting blood into a brain that felt full already. He would look at his creased and quickly aging face and ask himself out loud, "Who are you?"

Now he wakes in his car in a parking lot next to a school beside a big hill that the trains run on. He wakes to the sounds of recess. He wakes to the very sound of his own child playing with his friends. No one even knows he is there. He would pull down the back seat that opens a hole that leads to the trunk and would lie 50/50 between the back seat and the trunk. In the winter, he would start the car for 30 minutes several times a night to make it warm inside, then shut it off to conserve gas. He had to work too hard to pay for gas...and hurt too many people.

He brings himself out of the back seat and sits down onto the front seat and lights a cigarette. His little boy is standing straight up on the top of a dome of monkey bars. He hasn't spoken to him in years, but sees him 5 times a week at 9:45 and 2:15 PM. Some days it's kickball and others it's the dome of steel. Either one, his kid was clearly king. It makes him remember when he was king...that very short period of time that he ruled the entire world.

Literally.

He sat in the oval office and controlled whether a nation would recover or decay. The earth was at his fingertips. He thought at the time that he wanted this power, but when his wife left him during his second term, reality set in deep inside. He started smoking weed in the presidential garden. He did so without regard to anyone that may be watching. He got drunk and made a state of the union speech using a made up language that no one understood. This was his last term and he just didn't care anymore. He had lost everything. His wife had left 2 years after his kids gave up on him and wrote tell all books about him. He was shamed, damned to serve his final year as commander of the world and go off into oblivion. That was when his maid got pregnant with his child. He knew it was his because he never let anyone leave him. He paid them more money to stay and ease the loneliness.

Now he sits and watches his child play in the park of a low income community. No one is calling him for speeches or stamps of approval. No one cares whether he lives or dies anymore. If he is mentioned anywhere, it is accompanied with a joke at his expense...and he deserves it. He is the "Trailer Park President" the "Black Eye of the American Electoral College." He was President Duncan, now he is "Drunkin Dunkin, time to make the donuts." The laughing stock of the entire world. This is why he awakens to the sound of swing sets and not the radio.

His bottle of the cheapest vodka available sits under his foot as he rolls it back and forth on the floor until the bell rings and he gets to watch his son walk back into school and out of his life until 2:15 when he will barely recognize him due to a new bottle of the cheapest vodka available.

He sits and watches the doors close and the field go silent. He begins to figure out a way to get the 2 dollars he needs for a new bottle, but is interrupted by the young guy walking toward the doors of the building his kid is about to learn mathematics in. This guy doesn't look official and surely is holding something under his jacket. President Drunkin Dunkin opens the car door and runs as fast as an intoxicated man could be expected to run and swings open the door of the school exposing himself to a very angry teenager with a very deadly gun. They lock eyes for a moment of understanding and the kid fires a round into the stomach of President Shamed Duncan, then turned toward his son's classroom. Duncan pushes forward toward the kid, making noise that would both distract and agitate the gunman. Another bullet into the shoulder. Another into the abdomen. Duncan kept coming. He kept walking until he put his hands on the shooter breaking his neck with the last amount of strength left, then crumbling to the ground in death.

No one called him "Drunkin Dunkin, time to make the donuts again." No one called him anything but a national hero.









Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

The Need For Prayer

It was never about the lions. The lions are always hungry. It was about a story between God and Daniel.

 Guns are really popular. Guns right now are either angels or demons to people. People everywhere are talking about gun laws and freedoms. There is an outcry on both sides of the coin. However, we see a similar situation, except way worse in the Bible.

Before Christians take arms to fight, as some are threatening, take note of Daniel's response in Daniel 6. He was stripped of his right to pray to his God. The real God. He was told he would be killed if he did so and he did anyway. He didn't hold up a picket sign or march on the Roman capitol. He didn't make a fuss, he simply did as he thought was right in the face of death. They sent him to the lions den and he was unharmed. Those that accused him were then sent and killed immediately...

God is powerful and will shut the mouths of lions if He chooses. We are nothing. We are powerless. We should stop believing otherwise as far as our state of living is concerned. God is in control. Things happen that we consider bad or unjust, yet we do the opposite of Daniel. We fight. We whine. We cry about freedoms.

We are not given freedoms apart from the freedom of God. Neither was Daniel. Did he cry about it and scream about freedom entitlements? No, He just kept praying. The answer is prayer.

Just pray.

Get alone in the house with God and pray. You cannot overthrow the government when  things get voted against you. You are powerless...and that is where God wants us. We need to rely on Him and pray. Submit.




Sing.
Migrate.









Thanks for reading...Z

Saying Goodbye For Good?

It has taken me such a long time to discover some things that I always knew with my mind, but never experienced with my life. There is a difference between the two. People know everything until they have experienced it and have found themselves lost.

Saying goodbye is one of the most difficult things for me to do. I have difficulties leaving things behind, even if they are causing me harm. I have never wanted to ever say goodbye for good to anyone or anything. This is a thought that is so sad when I think about it. To leave it behind and never come bad to it. My dream is to have a time machine. The kind of time machine that will only take you back for 30 minute periods. I don't want to stay there, I just want to revisit. I want to watch myself make all of those decisions I made and experience all of the things I remember as being golden. I want to relive them and then come back home to my beautiful wife and kids who are more than I have ever deserved.

I have everything. I have all I have ever wanted and more than I could have expected, and yet I still want to go back and live it again. I realize now that I am making a heaven for myself, one much different than the one God has prepared. One far less beautiful than what God has in mind. I want to relive the sorrow. I am not sure why, maybe the train wreck syndrome. I just don't want to let it go...it just doesn't feel right. Those times were me. That was me. Those were the things that made me what I am now and what I will be. I should be moving forward without looking back. Well I am moving forward, sometimes there is no choice in that, but I am constantly looking back. This brings me to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible. There was this place...these two connected cities where the people had lost all desire to please God or to follow even a moral code of some sort. They were a city of rapists. God sends angels to remove the one righteous family and the people line up at the door to rape God's angels. Lot, the righteous man, agrees to leave after much prayer and arguing with God and as his family leaves, God tells them not to look back...no matter what. Lot's wife disobeys and looks back and sees the horror of a city full of people turned to salt. She then turns to salt also. She had one job and that was to move forward to something beautiful. Instead she could not say goodbye, no matter how disgusting the things that were behind her. This is a lesson to us. We should heed it. I should heed it. I/you cannot live in the past. It may bring back nostalgic feelings that we want to cling to, but we must let those things just be feelings. The word nostalgia means basically, a "Pain for the past." In the human body, pain is a warning. It's a sign of something wrong. The point is to correct what causes the pain. For some, this is easy, for others the most difficult thing life could bring.

For the past several years I have been working on goodbye. I have been trying to say goodbye to my brother, who is gone from here and somewhere else beautiful, but still so much of what drives my thoughts. I've been trying to say goodbye to the bad habits my actions have produced in my life. I have been trying to say goodbye to a certain set of railroad tracks that once almost made my life a tragedy.

I am a positive person. This has not always been, but by the grace of God, I have become a positive thinker. I love to laugh. I make jokes wherever I am because life should never be taken too seriously. We are a mist that appears for a while, then vanishes. I try to stand out to every person I meet, so that they can see that God is good. But I just cannot keep from looking behind me. I cannot find it in me to finally say goodbye.

To be honest, I don't even know how or where to start.





Sing.
Migrate.








Thanks for reading...Z

Happy Birthday Will

I laid on the grass next to you watching the sparks erupt and fade into the dark as the rocket flew first up, then to the side.  We used to build those rockets all night long as the snow would fall outside our window. Yours was the most meticulously built. It's nose was as sharp as an arrowhead. It's fins were perfectly placed. It's packing was stuffed gently but carefully, sure to not bring unbalance to the rocket as a whole. The rocket was taped to the side with a counter weight on the other side to keep it from throwing off the weight and balance of the rocket, whose frame was a simple toilet paper cardboard base. Joe and I were both lacking in any mechanical abilities, but you....you were a guru. Your rockets flew into the night December sky and out of our vision...out of our reach. It was as if they had a real destination that was far away from this place.

We laid on the grass and watched Joe's rocket fly sideways and onto the neighbors roof...a site I had seen so many times before in both my rockets and his. We didn't take those nights for granted. It was cold outside. Crystal covered everything. We wore those hats. We smoked and smoked and smoked. We exhaled and made symbols of our youth into the sky, never once admitting that we would grow older and have to accept the responsibility that came with age. We just tuned out the world and built those rockets and enjoyed every moment of our time together.

Underneath was a dread of it all ending. In the back of our minds we knew it would have to end and there would be wives and kids and jobs. We knew we couldn't live in the night sky forever. There was something profoundly sad about the thought of that. I didn't want it to end. I had what I needed...finally.

I grew up, just as I suspected I would. I got married and had kids and became a wild success...maybe not the way success is usually defined, but success the way I have perceived it. I became intensely devoted to my wife and my children. I had been blessed with everything I thought I did not deserve. I had everything, until I lost you on Christmas of 2009. The last time I saw you was your birthday 2009, just 6 days before you built a rocket that could hold your 6 foot 6 frame. It's your birthday today and I don't know still why you aren't here celebrating. In fact, today none of us are celebrating. We are instead somber...trying to remember only the positive. We are trying not to let it all come flooding back in. The last three years have been the most difficult of our lives. We have wept uncontrollably and without consolation. We have shook our fists at God. We have held each other and held each other together. We have had to stop talking when talking about you to keep from breaking down. We have remembered every beautiful thing about you. We remember who you really were...the most beautiful person any of us had ever met.

Losing you brought us together. Losing you has defined the way we live our lives. Joe and I still talk about going night fishing or building rockets, but those things are gone now. If we did them, they would only be an unbearable reminder of how you were no longer here with us. All of those things are gone now and we are forced to finally grow up....without you.


I miss you big brother more than any of my words could describe. I wish I would have known and done more to save you. I wish all of the beautiful lights of Christmas could have kept you out of he dark. But I didn't and they didn't and now I stare at your grave with your ashes lying on my chest. I say, "Happy Birthday!" You would have been 35 years old. You would have loved to see your son as a safety at the elementary school. I get to see him directing traffic every morning. You would have loved to see your daughter sing a solo in the Christmas play. You would have loved to see the way your kids have grown so strong. They worship the ground you walked on. You are their hero. You are my hero. They miss you and so do we.

I stopped being mad at you years ago. I thank God for you. I thank God that I got that time with you, laying on top of my car, looking at the sky and dreaming together. We were made of gold and nothing could touch us. We were what every kid believes they are...invincible. Until we weren't.

Happy birthday Will.









Sing.
Migrate.









Thanks for reading...Z

Christmas in a Box

I watch my kids play and sit in bewilderment at the things they do when they think no one is watching. Every Christmas when the tree comes out, my son grabs his action figures and plays on the branches with them like it was the only thing he desired to do in his entire life. I used to do strange things like that too. I still do sometimes. I still lay in front of a small heater with the window open, freezing my wife into frustration. I do it because it helps me fall into sleep, which is something I have always had trouble doing.

When I was a kid, I would lay in front of the heat register when everyone was sleeping and just stare at the tree twinkling despite anyone but me being awake. I would wait for the clanking sounds that the furnace would give off minutes before it would push hot air into the house. I remember the smell of the heat as it hit my face. If I didn't fall asleep by the time it gradually produced cooler air and turned off, I would wait for those noises again and feel real peace when I heard them. Those moments were mine. I would get up and play in the tree just like my son would. We had these little elves that we would put on the tree and I wanted nothing more every year than to play with them. All year, they would wait in that box until late November when they would become my muse. I like to think they are still on some tree right now and not in a box waiting for eternity. My mother bought me similar ones off of Ebay a few years ago when we couldn't figure out where the elves had gone. At Christmas, in my mind everything was crystal and the heat vent was my closest friend.

I played a stuffed bear in my church Christmas pageant when I was a very small child. I had a handful of lines that were aimed at making people laugh just because I was cute. I remember watching all of the costumes and old people sewing together last minute mistakes by the children. I remember the crowd smiling as if there was no violence going on in the world. There were little old ladies in grey and red blazers with poinsettia lapel pins and old men with pinstriped tweed slacks. They all called each other brother and sister and greeted with a hug for the women and a handshake for the men. After the play, we would all go deliver groceries with the Goodfellows of River Rouge to people that needed food on their doorsteps.

Christmas is one of those things that science cannot explain. It is every much an emotion as it is a calender holiday. Those emotions are driven mostly by our memories of the way we experienced this holiday as kids. I think that is why it is so perfect. As kids, most of us can only see the light, where no violence happens to us. So these memories bring back this feeling that is stored in a box all year and brought out just as strong as it ever was in us. Everything becomes crystal and beautiful again. It makes us remember that we are all the same and yet have such different experiences. No wonder why Christmas is the holiday that people most donate their time, money, and services to give to someone else. The absolute spirit of Jesus.


I hope that Heaven is a child's choir singing peace into the world, and recreating every precious memory we have ever had of something beautiful.




Sing.
Migrate.

The Great Grizzly Brown

"I didn't know I wasn't dead until I walked right out of hell." -The Great Grizzly Brown


The television flickered and flashed across the screen as people waited for the static to clear and the picture to return. One moment they were watching a large man hold a very primitive but effective looking ax over the seizing body of The Great Grizzly Brown. This was one of the New York coliseum's most hyped duels. The Grizzly had taken down 9 straight opponents bringing him to the tenth. The tenth had never been achieved. When you take down ten, you earn your freedom. No one had ever earned their freedom. The large man standing over him was this monster the media named "Samson." He was on his fifth straight victory, which means, he had taken the lives of five men that also shared his captivity. There was a very dreadful way in which he won his battles. Never by accident, and never without screaming. This one had been in lights for months.

Grizzly Brown was not a crowd favorite as he never addressed the media or spoke after he took another man's life. He would make the fatal move and lean down to the man losing life's blood and whisper into his ear and deliver a finishing blow to the head. It drove people crazy to not know what he was saying. Was he taunting them? Was he telling them he was sorry for what he was about to do? Either way, he never told the crowd what they wanted to hear.

Samson didn't speak much either. He was a school teacher before his sentencing. "Hard to imagine him in front of a desk," the newsmen would say as they flashed replays of him stabbing a man in the jugular over and over, holding his head up by the hair, letting his blood drain all over his feet. When he was sentenced, he was originally sent to the boiler room. This was a death sentence for most as they would drop you into a pool of boiling water. They got him to the edge and kicked him in. He fell in and went under causing a wave of water to rush over the edge from his large frame. He began thrashing around and flinging boiling water over the edge to the faces of the executioners, scalding them. He screamed in a rage of pain and anger and pulled himself out of the water and onto the side of the pool where the executioners lay buried in their faces. He snapped the neck of the first and threw the second into the pool. He was almost impossible to subdue. He made such a fantastic show that the president chose to enter him into Death Valley, the tournament in which he was at the time the static came, about to win.

Grizzly Brown was a Scotsman who's infant baby was thrown into his own fire place and wife shot in front of him. Grizzly Brown was said to have killed the machine gun clad soldiers with their own rifles and bayonets. The story was legend, but a photo was leaked of one of the soldiers being removed from the home with a bayonet protruding from his ear. It took 2 weeks before the authorities located him, which incidentally happened when Grizzly Brown actually made it into the president's house with a cleaver and kicked open his bedroom door. He was shot in the back and dropped. A mere two days later he was sentenced to Death Valley and locked in a small stone cell with a dirty bandage covering his wound. 9 lives later. Gallons of blood later. 9 souls released from their prison cells. Whatever he whispered into their ears gave them a sense of calm, that was clear. They would go from screaming and twisting about, to lying still, until they saw darkness.

This was freedom standing over him with an ax. One more and he would be free. The ax comes down and static. The entire world sat on the edge of their seats for the cloud of chaos to end and sanity to return to their eyes.

10 minutes later, the cameras returned the viewers were shocked to see Grizzly Brown walking out of the arena to his holding cell as bagpipes roared his theme song..."Lay me down, in the cold cold ground...." People were cheering and shocked and some were just holding their mouths in bewilderment. The body of Samson lay in the middle of the arena face down with his skull chopped in half.

The president outlawed any speech of the battle and immediately begun promoting the next big fight. No one attending said a word and The Great Grizzly Brown's freedom he had earned was stripped of him due to a guard's report that he had murdered one of their own, found dead in the recreational area. For now, The Great Grizzly Brown would have to continue the fight.














Sing.
Migrate.





Thanks for reading...Z

Even The Bad Guys

Things matter until they don't anymore. There are these undefined moments that no one warns you about where you forget about every little thing that once festered in you. These moments where all you can do is wander your own mind for an answer that seldom comes. Times like these when your brother dies and you answer the phone to your other brother in a panic with a voice so other worldly. Times when you are at home and the phone rings and your child has been in a car accident. Times like when the soldiers ring your doorbell with a flag in hand. You forget everything you have ever cared about except the one person you would melt through a wall for. These moments, no matter how terrible and traumatizing they may be, are what make life beautiful. The very reality that we can love so much and work so hard for something we consider better than ourselves, makes all of life's toils seem trivial.




I ask myself this question...Who could stop me if you placed my brother in front of me? Who could keep him from my embrace? Most importantly, who could keep me from my God? It is important for the ones who believe that Jesus rides with you, to remember that one day when our eyes close and the little ticking in our chest subsides, we will be standing before the very God that allowed His flesh to be ripped from His body and thrown to the ground like and animal hide. To stand face to face with Him. To remember the way the cold steel felt beneath your neck. To taste the carpet again as you remember the hours on your face. There is nothing that could keep me from my God. Nothing.



So easy to forget what we are working for. So easy to forget that life isn't about punching a clock and hoping for a good day. Life is so much more. Life is sharing in the lives of others. Life is listening beyond what someone is saying and hearing what they are really saying. Life begins with Christ and thrives in the restoration of humanity. As ugly as we may be sometimes, we are bigger than we look. We are more than our appearance, even the bad guys.

Photo credit to: http://intao.deviantart.com






Sing.
Migrate.



Thanks for reading...Z

The Church In Peril

As a pastor for over 12 years, I have hesitation when writing this
blog and I will choose my words very carefully. Some of what I write
may sound inflammatory or cynical against the church or it's
inhabitants but this is not the intent. The intent is to speak about
what I think is clearly happening the the United States church.
I will begin with what I don't mean.

*I don't mean to disrespect any church or it's leaders.
*I don't mean to sound as if I know it all or have figured anything out fully.
*I don't mean to be too harsh or allow my pride to make me unteachable
to criticism.
*I don't mean to open my mouth and allow the words of the devil to
come out of it.

That being said ahead of time.... I love you. I love the church. I
love the United States. Most of all, I love God, which is why I write
this.

The United States may just be the most impoverished country in the
world. We eat freely, we sleep freely, we assemble freely, and we
become habitually entertained. We still are the richest nation in the
world and it sounds arrogant to place us below countries without
drinking water. However, we are certainly teetering on being the most
spiritually barren. You can look around and see the way the world is
changing, especially the US and no one would argue that it seems to be
losing blood and weakening. So much of what our culture and society is
standing on is based on money. Our entertainment isn't following the
cultural norms, it is driving them. Our politics aren't based upon the
voice of the people, but the voice of the wealthy. Our morals and
ethics are not based upon our upbringing and homes, they are quickly
becoming driven by our media culture and ideals that don't really have
a base in any tested theory or doctrine. We are a country that has
lost value of life. We kill for many reasons, but here are a few that
don't match with the Bible.

*Revenge killing- One may have committed crimes against another, so it
becomes ok to commit the same crime to them. If you deserve it,
killing is ok. However, the Bible says we all deserve it.

*Convenience killing- If a life doesn't make sense for our plans and
goals, regardless of our actions to achieve that life, we have the
right to end the life. We can use our untested and untrue moral that
is based on the media all we want as justification, but there is no
science behind you.

*Pre-emptive killing- Made popular by politics, this one says, "Let's
look at our nation as the standard for everyone to live by and
eliminate those that don't subscribe." We have made ourselves the
Bible for the rest of the world. We will nuke you and have, but if you
mess with uranium, we will bomb your residents. We are the all
powerful dictators of the land. We have divorced our constitution.

What does this have to do with the church? Everything. We meet in
buildings made of beautiful stones and stain glass that presents our
suffering Christ. We sing together and hold hands. We listen to a
lesson on what God wants from us. We put our money in the plate. These
are all good things. But where is the follow through? Where are we
Monday through Saturday? Where is the fire and passion to make real
change in the world around us? Where is the Jesus ending up in our day
to day? I disgust myself often. I realize so many times that my words
are many and actions few. I speak of change and find myself changing
nothing. A very valid and applicable message can go in my ear and
register in my consciousness and leave out the other side moments
after the final prayer. All of our talking and holding hands mean
nothing without follow through. We have let our country go where it
has gone. It is the duty of the church to preserve the world. God said
we are the salt of the earth. We both preserve and flavor, yet the
church has become synonymous in our culture with mean spirited,
bigotted, political, and hypocritical. Much of what is said about us
is fabricated from this media again, however, not all of it. The
church needs to be seen as a healer and mender, not in groups of
whining people, shouting about our rights being imposed on. The church
is flourishing more in places you do not have the right to be a
church. They are sending missionaries here! We are flawed and broken,
but there is hope. God is good and faithful. God reigns still in us.
But God hates the lukewarm Christian. We are about to be vomitted!
What happens when the stones of our buildings get dismantled and
scattered?

Doom and gloom. Nope. Hope. We pray and we listen for God. We shut our
mouths and get back to the basics of loving God and loving other
people. We love in a more practical way. Instead of raising awareness
for people in peril, go to them and help them in whatever way God lays
on your heart. For some, keep your money and use your hands. For
others, sell off all you have and give to the poor. Remember that true
religion is related to helping widows and those in prison, not holding
hands and singing through our tears. We need to worship, but we need
to stop crying and do something. Holding our hands outstretched to God
is only valid when paired with holding our hands outstretched to other
people. We don't fight an evil culture through our words, we fight
through our actions. If we all unify and shower this country with
love, those living in the dark will be able to finally see the hope we
profess. America is hiding it's light. The church in America needs to
be awakened, not by argument, but by example. This darkness in our
church must no longer be tolerated.

I write this out of a recognition of the darkness in me and my desire
to light up for all those around me. I am the worst offender, but
change comes with humility. Light will be found in Christ and our
obedience to following you He is.


Sing.
Migrate.


Thanks for reading...Z

Waiting..............

I keep getting into this figurative car and slamming the door on myself, trying to tell myself not to go. There is this battle that wages within every human. The battle to hold on to the things that have value while trashing the things that harm us. This is maturity. When we have learned to bag the bad and live the good, you are fully mature. This is supposed to be natural I think, but for me I find myself constantly finding myself in that car slamming the door on the things that are good.

Like fire. This is the thing people saw most in me when I realized that there is a God and He is active in my life. I was excited. I was ready for anything. I would let you stick me with a rusty knife if it meant you finally seeing the truth like I did. I wanted everyone to know that Jesus is real, and alive, and active right now. I wanted the entire world. I was intense. I would drink pots and pots of coffee and read and educate myself. I was training for a war. People would comment on my intensity because I was a bit misguided and rash.

Then something happened...time. Time passed and I helped make a family and tried really hard at my life and job and failed to be who I thought I could be. I have always had big dreams and thoughts, but lacked follow-through. I felt God had more in mind for me, but failed to deliver what I should have been able to deliver. So I became frustrated with the constant starting and stalling. God would shake me with something and the cobwebs would be cleared and I would set fire again....for a while, then fizzle. I would get discouraged so much and find myself ready to quit, then smash, an SUV would strike me from behind and I would emerge alive again....and full of flames. I was still on fire when my brother took his life.

After that.....I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It had a base in anger, but didn't feel like anger. It felt like how a field feels when the wind is blowing and no one is around to watch how far it's stems bend. I was just there receiving punches. I took them, but I am still unsure whether I was really fighting or just receiving the punches out of a feeling that I deserved them.

I did things to better myself and my surroundings. I did difficult things to take my mind off the time that was passing so quickly. I went back to school and changed careers even though I loved the one I was in. I felt the need to escape the bleeding that seemed to come from every place I set my foot down. I would pray to my God, but to be honest, my prayer life lacked any fire at all. It was me asking for help and God directing me back to my own heart. I knew the answer then and know it now...letting go of the things that are harming you and returning to the fire is the only way to find yourself complete. I had walked away from the little things that burned in my chest and forced me to act. I got in that car and slammed the door on myself and anything great I could have become.

Life isn't about your talent or potential, life is about your obedience to God even when the entire universe hates every inch of your existence. It's about the fight....and remembering constantly why you are fighting. If you forget that reason, you will end up stagnant. You will end up without any direction to travel and you will sit down and wait. Waiting is the worst enemy of any human being.






I know I said I would finish the Halloween story, and I will, but I still haven't figured out how it ends.

Sing.
Migrate.










Thanks for reading...Z

The Awakening - For Halloween- 2 part series

I opened my eyes. I open them again. I opened my eyes. I open my eyes to silence. The sun flashes through the trees like street lights passing overhead in the night sky while your driving away from someone. The wind is blowing leaves over my jacket and across my face. This is the most peace I have felt in many years. I can't hear anything, not even the wind, not even the squirrel that scurries up the tree beside me. It looks surprised to see me awake. He stops mid-trunk, looks at me and stares into my soul, searching for a threat, then tears up to the top. Life is happening in slow motion and I have no real desire to speed it up.

My life is too fast. I wake to the world forcing me to be somewhere. I sleep as a necessity to get me to where I have to be tomorrow. I am a soldier marching on through whatever is happening in this giant spinning sphere. There is a tightness in my chest, so bad sometimes that I have to remind myself to take a breath and then another. I feel smothered and sinking. I haven't spoken to my family in so long...never have the time. My mom calls three times a week and I don't even listen to her messages anymore. It's not that I don't love her, it's that I don't have time for her. I don't have time for anything. They came to my house last Thanksgiving in Seattle at my mom's insistence. My dad just sat at the end of the table and ate quietly while my mom waited on me, probing me with questions. "Do I have a girlfriend?" "What's my job like?" "Where do I do my grocery shopping?" I told her I had to sleep and we all went to bed. Through the wall, I heard my dad ask her if they could just grab their stuff and leave in the night. I woke the next morning and they were gone. My mom left a hundred dollars on the pillow. I haven't heard from my dad since. I haven't spoken to my mom since. I have always felt so ashamed for that night.

Right now I feel nothing but silence, so I choose to stay still for a while...just until I can feel my feet moving across the pavement. My body seems to be moving across the path, but I don't feel any part of me. I do find it strange that no one is on the streets, in fact the place looks like crap. The buildings are dilapidated and the sidewalks are split in pieces by weeds refusing to be ignored.

"There's nobody here! No one is left!" Shouting a voice from nowhere and all around me, seeming to shout from the inside of my body to the outside. "What? Where are you? What's your name?" I shout back. Silence. No answer. I am no longer relaxed. I start to run, but still cannot feel my feet. I look down and now cannot see my feet. I panic and turn into a store and slide through the door handle and stumble through the glass and into the room. I had meant for my feet to stop and they didn't. I had meant for my body to hit the glass, but it didn't, yet I am in this room. I see the phone and try to grab it and nothing happens. I scream in frustration and still nothing happens.

"Think about picking up the phone without your hands and just speak to who you want to speak to," says this voice again, this voice that sounds arrogant, that has a hint of laughter, like he is making fun of me. My dad used to do that when I would argue with him, like he knew the answer and the future and was going to just go along with me and laugh at me when I failed.

I reach for the phone again and nothing. So I close my eyes, which I assume I must have because it became dark when I did so. "Call my mom." Ring. "Yes!" "Hello?" "Dad?" "I'm no one's dad, he says laughing. Who might I ask is calling me?" "It's Mason, is my mom there, Shelly Morgan? Is this even the right number?" I say. Laughing comes from the other side of the phone. "Who is this?!" I say. "This is Shelly Morgan's answering machine." "What? Stop messing around, is she there?" "She's not here anymore. No one is here anymore, they are all gone into the ground. They all went screaming," he says. "Stop it! Who is this?!" "This is the only voice you'll ever hear again. You won't like me much now, but when the silence becomes deafening to your mind, you will pray to me for my voice."


More to come, to be continued.......







Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z

My Last Right

I work in an environment that deals with so much death. I meet many people when it is too late. I am new to this environment, but I have to admit that it has scared me a bit. I don't feel much of it when I go home. I take off my shoes and scrub all of the disease off of my skin and go to bed. Some cases bother me because they could have been avoided or they were too young, but for the most part, I am not affected. But I do think that after a while, it could be very easy to take death too lightly. I could be me lying there on that bed with another jaded person suctioning my airway...rolling me over every two hours.

Humanity needs a second look.

In the Bible, people would fall on their swords just to avoid disrespect for their family. I do not and could never imagine being subjected to the things that many families put their loved ones through. People just want the problem to go away so they can rest again. So as long as there is a heart rate on that monitor, even if it is being controlled by my hands, they will live. Make a puppet of them, just make them live.

I do sympathize. If it were my wife or kid lying on that bed, I would fight for their last breath. I cannot blame the family for trying and hoping, I would tear that hospital apart, but in the end, the person that suffers is the person that is being kept from peace. They just want you to let them fade.

This is gonna sound weird from a pastor. Don't take it the wrong way, I do believe in God. I do believe in miracles. I do believe that God is capable of anything and He is active in this world and in our personal lives. But when people come in and decide to let us cut holes in their mother's throats and stomachs to make them stay alive when there is not a chance of recovery, and yell out Jesus' name, I get frustrated. People still do not seem to understand that God blesses those who do evil with those that do good. He takes away those that do evil as well as those that do good. God takes us into what comes next for a reason. Just because you may believe in God and place your faith in Jesus, does not mean your family or you yourself will not suffer and die. Actually, the Bible says the contrary. So when you put your loved one through all of this torture and do it in God's name, I get a bit annoyed because my job isn't to coach your life decisions. My job is to be an advocate for the patient, even if that means I have to tell you that it may be time to consider whether your loved one would want to continue.


So I come home from suctioning really old people and turning them every two hours to avoid the inevitable bed sore, and I take a shower and decide to not allow that to ever happen to me unless there is a really good chance that I will walk out of that hospital on my own two feet and listen to music again. The moment I cannot hear the music or see my family's faces, I want to fade away.













Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z