Lately I’ve been joking that I’m sort of suffering from schizophrenia, but I’ve learned the difference now. I DID. No, not Did, but DID…Dissociative Identity Disorder. That’s about as close as I can come to describe what I’ve had to do.
Many people have to do the same thing. Many emergency or first responders, doctors, soldiers, and even those who work with animals daily do something like this.

It’s where you shut down some of the emotional side and live in the calm, rational side that is focused on dealing with the given moment regardless of the circumstances or more accurately, because of them. It seems cold-hearted and unattached, but it is really their professional way of doing what they need to do right then. Could you imagine the nightmare of a doctor trying to save a life if they were so emotional about the condition that they were unable to perform? I’ll take the cold detachment.

For the past several months I’ve been building the wall to separate my mind and soul. Late at night, early in the morning (and sometimes without warning) I step back to the side where the emotions wait. That’s the side full of sorrow, grief, tears and heartache. It is also a side where if I search, I find memories, laughter, and most of all Love.

I’m spending more time away from that side. I’m learning to embrace more of the side I don’t like but where I have to dwell. The side that examines the situation and in spite of what I see, deals with it with what little logic and reason I can muster. This is the side where as I look around, I see the world keeps turning, the bills continue to come in, and meals still have to be prepared. It’s the side where I know I must maintain vigilance to the ‘wall’ to be sure the emotions are in check before I try to make a majority of decisions.

Most of us have a division like this, but usually it is a mere lattice work barrier because we don’t need the strong defensive detachment. Occasionally we meet someone that has allowed this barrier to fail, and we wonder how they function in a real world…and sometimes they truly don’t function well. That’s how folks wind up with 20 cats, or spend all their money on some televangelist show.

What I’m trying to describe is nearly impossible to put in words. I guess this is one of those “if you’re not there you wouldn’t understand” times. It is possible but so very hard to do. When you sit and try to not only deal with day to day issues but try to wrap your mind around trying to make plans for the future. A future that involves you alone. Knowing that without some sort of idea or plan, you risk floundering around foolishly, doing things you don’t want to do and will probably regret further down the road.

It is then that you see the wall for what it is. Bits and pieces of your broken heart plastered together with shattered fragments of love. And you know that there is a sense of urgency in handling that minutia of details because all too soon the wall will give way. Today, it holds but on the other side the level rises and you know when the wall fails, the flood will be overwhelming.

Today I make the decisions, today we have the cut to the bone discussions and today, I make plans based on our thoughts of the worst case scenarios. DID at its strongest.

And today I’ll do my best to prepare myself for tonight, because tonight I know I’ll go back over the wall.

It's been awhile. Not that I haven't had plenty to write, just haven't taken the time to put it all down on the old computer.
Recently, I was asked about how I viewed my life and all the changes I've gone through the past year. That triggered a memory of a simple phrase which led me to the following. Hope it makes sense to you.

One of the phrases that has embedded itself into our modern lexicon is “jumping the shark”. It comes from an episode of “Happy Days” when the Fonz literally water-skied over a shark. According to reviewers, this episode marked the decline of the series.

Recently, I asked myself if my life had “jumped the shark”. We constantly refer to humans as reaching the peak of their life, midlife, over the hill, downside of life, and so on. In a story I wrote some years back, the main character described the moment in his life when he was “no longer reaching for the stars because he had started digging his grave”.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, he talks about the quickness of some changes, things that happen in the blink of an eye that is the tipping point toward a different direction.

Within a sixty day period, my wife was diagnosed with cancer, I was diagnosed with a double torn meniscus which in turn cost me my job, and I became officially retired. A few months later, it was determined that I was not just injured, but permanently disabled.
For much of my life, I had been involved with a dozen or more volunteer and charitable organizations and served as an officer in many of them. Because of the “tipping point” I quietly resigned from most.

Nine months later, I find myself spending the vast majority of my time at home, something I was totally unaccustomed to doing, and in doing so, I also began the process of assuming many of the responsibilities of running a household. With some of my time now being freed from other duties, I am able to resume writing, a passion I’ve had for many years.

I am able to spend some precious time with Nancy, my kids, my new daughter-in-law, my future daughter-in-law, and my brand new granddaughter. I’m working on some home projects that I’ve put off for years. Having always been one to wake early, I can now spend time reading and following world events and still have time for a leisurely breakfast or brunch. And just today I was asked to assist our neighborhood association board in a “consultant” type role.

So to answer my own question, has my life “jumped the shark?” Maybe. But jumping the shark isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so says the Fonz. Happy Days went on to remain one of the top rated shows for the next six years. So maybe, just maybe, it isn’t about jumping the shark as much as how and where you land. And some of us are able to land in smooth water and hang on safely to ski another day.
***

Speaking of sharks, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite shark songs: Jimmy Buffett and Fins:

She came down from Cincinnati
It took her three days on the train
Lookin' for some peace and quiet
Hoped to see the sun again

But now she lives down by the ocean
She's takin' care to look for sharks
They hang out in the local bars
And they feed right after dark

Chorus:
Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey
Can't you feel 'em swimmin' around
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only bait in town
Oh oh
Oh oh
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only girl in town

She's saving up all of her money
Wants to head it south in May
Maybe roll in the sand with a rock 'n' roll man
Somewhere down Montserrat way

But the money's good in the season
Helps to lighten up her load
Boys keep her high as the months go by
She's getting postcards from the road

Chorus:
Can't you feel 'em closin' in, honey
Can't you feel 'em schoolin' around
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only girl in town

Sailed off to Antigua
It took her three days on a boat
Lookin' for some peace and quiet
Maybe keep her dreams afloat

But now she feels like a remora
'Cause the school's still close at hand
Just behind the reef are the big white teeth
Of the sharks that can swim on the land

Chorus:
Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey
Can't you feel 'em schoolin' around
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only bait in town

I’d like to thank the many who helped make me more aware of what I don’t need to do in 2009.

I don’t need to accept what some overpaid mouth says on TV or the radio. Click them off and think for yourself. These are wordsmiths, with a staff of writers who jobs are depending on you listening and dittoing what they say. No need for facts, they just get in the way of the anger they are trying to build. Angry people tend to group together to keep the level of anger building and keep the facts from seeping through.

I don’t need your religion. Sorry, but I’m no longer calling myself Christian, thanks to you. Today’s version of Christians are yesterdays Pharisees and Sadducees. The degree of hate being pushed in Christ’s name appalls me, so I’ll just be a simple follower of God. Yes, I believe in John 3:16, but that is just the beginning. The overall theme was love, not hate, love the person, not the sin. Yet all I seem to hear is hate in His name.

By the way, I don’t need your approval because in the long run it really is just about me and Him, it is not about you or what you think.

I don’t need to try and browbeat someone to my beliefs. I haven’t seen a rush to the alter by spewing hate.

I need to live them. I’ll spread the Word, but I’m learning that someone in need doesn’t need your strange version of the Gospel, they need to see the gospel in action. I’m going for the “this is what God wants me to do, and He wants me to help you to rise up from your “sickness” and go and then go pay it forward”. That is spreading the gospel of love, instead of spewing the hate for anyone who doesn’t fit your little narrow-minded version of misquoted scriptures.

I’m sick of most of the churches. They are busy mining the pockets of their members and have forgotten the mission field. I watch as a place known as Fort God beats their chests and points to the good they do, while adding another structure. Where is the structure that fulfills the scripture: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Where is the structure that houses the homeless, feeds the poor and helps the indigent? Why is there such a disparity in the number of expensively dressed Sunday morning worshipers and the volunteers who help the poor? And why isn’t the stadium sized sanctuary just that, sanctuary?

Every day, I pass the homeless, the hungry, the out-of-work. I try to help, with donations, with taking on some of them and offering some work, some food, some housing. And I will continue. When I look at the huge stone edifices that are supposed to be holy places, I try to reconcile my feelings as I learn that more money is spent in other countries than is spent right down the street at the soup kitchen.

My favorite bumper sticker is “God, please protect me from your followers.”

Every day I get at least a dozen religious chain letters telling me how to get a blessing by forwarding them on. I don’t need that blessing, I need the blessing of seeing a child get a warm coat, I need the blessing of serving some guy down on his luck a hot meal, I need the blessing of giving a homeless man a blanket on a cold night.

2009 is the Year of the Blessing. Forgive me if I ignore your emails…I don’t have time to tell you just how wrong some of those things are, and you wouldn’t listen anyway. As the famous quote goes: You can’t handle the truth.

It’s time to quit sending emails about praying for people…when in reality you have the ability right now to fulfil those prayers. I watch people spend more on bottled water than it costs to feed the hungry. I see more waste in local restaruants than it would take to clothe a homeless person. I’ve seen people travel to China rather than adopt a black child, then turn around and hate the child because they grew up in drugs.

You want the truth of America, the reality of Jackson? It’ll cost you about $25 or so.

Go to the grocery store and buy several bags of chicken soup mix (Bear Creek or Mrs.Grass brands, makes about a gallon if you water it a little, maybe add some canned corn/peas/noodles/rice). Buy one bag of frozen skinless boneless chicken tenderloins.

Cook.

Get some stryrofoam bowls and plastic spoons.

Go downtown and set up in a parking lot: put out a sign: Free Soup.

Then see if you can handle the truth.

And like things I’ve been doing, you can take it to the bank: this truth will set you free. Learn first hand the reality of what the truth of the Gospel is really about. Love.

I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac*
From “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley

*for those who may not know…Deadheads were devout followers of the band The Grateful Dead and were often seen as the epitome of antiestablishment.
The Cadillac was used as the symbol used to represent achieving the highest rung of the establishment.

There is an old joke attributed to George Bernard Shaw about a young lady at a dinner; the gentleman seated next to her asks if she would sleep with someone for a million dollars. Without hesitation she replies she would. He then asks if she’d sleep with him for a twenty.
Astonished, she says “what kind of girl do you think I am?”
He replies, “We’ve established that, we’re just haggling about the price.”
***

Ask just about anyone if they were truly surprised about Gov. Blagojevich and deep down they will usually admit that no, they really weren’t. What they felt was a confirmation that politicians are a lot like the young lady above, it depends on the price.

Byram Karasu, a professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says that “for a seasoned prostitute, there is no shame or guilt associated with their being merchants of the flesh. If caught, they spend a night in jail.”

Because of headlines, we are now conditioned to accept that many of our elected officials spend a lot of time haggling price, and whether it be sex, money, power or fame, what is for sale is not just their office but their souls.

Renana Brooks, a psychologist and director of The National Institute for the Study of the American Unconscious says that Blagojevich may not have seen himself as auctioning off Obama’s senate seat so much as acting as a tough negotiator. “He would probably tell you that he wasn’t selling it.”

Psychiatrists say many people tend to believe that “if what I’m doing I think is right, it must be right” even when we would agree it was wrong if others were doing the same thing…that our reasons for doing it are pure.

I’m learning to take a few minutes each evening and reflect on the day. Were my actions and words righteous or did I sell myself for twenty bucks? It’s easy to justify your deeds to yourself; can you justify them to God? Was I like the above mentioned Deadhead sticker, proclaiming I was something but showing the world a different face?

As I make my list of things I hope to change, I realize that I’m not too far gone…I still have a sense of guilt and shame…and unlike the prostitute, I’m don’t plan on going “back to jail” not because I hope I won’t get caught but because I plan on changing my ways.
Like the Governor, did I justify my actions based on what I want to be right or what was really right?

In my personal beliefs, my soul is not for sale…it’s already been bought and paid for, my job now is to daily ensure that I’m paying it back by working toward doing the right things not because I think they are right, but because a standard has been set for me to judge my actions. I may not measure up but it won’t stop me from keeping my eyes on that goal.
Ask yourself each evening, Who are you? Like the deadhead sticker, do you try to present yourself as someone other than who you really are? Who is setting the standard that you measure yourself against?


I know there's a place you walked

Where love falls from the trees

My heart is like a broken cup

I only feel right on my knees

I spit out like a sewer hole

Yet still receive your kiss

How can I measure up to anyone now

After such a love as this?

Who Are You? I Really Want To Know….

Roger Daltry/Pete Townsend/The Who


“I’m not who I want to be, I’m not who I’m going to be…But thank God I’m not who I used to be”.

Peace.

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Over 40 years ago, I met George Atkins. Although I do not recall the exact date, the memory of that exact moment comes to the surface often, and that meeting, and subsequent encounters made a huge impact on my life.

George was the first black kid in my class at school, and he was assigned the seat next to mine. George gave me the experience of see racism and prejudice up close and personal.

This was not my first moment to be this associated with a black child. As a “poor white” family, I’d spent many days in the cotton field and as a result I’d had many times of playing in those same fields with several kids, both black and white. Never did my mom or dad say anything negative about the friendships I forged while we were toiling under the hot sun with a hoe or a cotton sack.

In a recent interview with the actor Will Smith, they discuss various rumors about his “involvement” with Scientology. His response was “Fear of other religions means you're questioning your own understanding, and that's just not where I am.” He discusses his Baptist upbringing and his unshakable faith. That gives him the strength to examine other religions without fear of losing his own.

That struck a chord with me. As one of our local radio hosts says about wearing pink, only a very secure man can do that without worry.

I have friends of different religions, different life styles, different skin color and extremely different social and financial ends of the spectrum. While each has a slight influence in my life, none can change my core beliefs.

As Will said, that’s just not where I am.

Today, I’m thankful for George for teaching me that I can overcome racial issues that I have nothing to fear. I’m thankful I’ve been blessed with being able to have such a diverse group of friends in part because I learned to be secure in who I am.

I don’t fear a people, a religion, or lifestyles. Oh, I’m slightly afraid of crazies with weapons but so far I don’t see that confined to any certain group.

Today, I need to get out the axe and work on that beam in my own eye before I say anything about the speck in yours. My hands are full worrying about getting my life “right” without poking my nose in you r business worrying if your living life according to my beliefs.

These past months have taught me that the less hate or prejudice you have in your heart, the more room there is for love, and that I need to spend more time learning to live in His image and less trying to mold you into mine.

Peace

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I work with bums. Literally. Homeless, hungry, nothing-to-their-names, down & out bums. They’ve been one of those scary people you see hanging out in parking lots of convenience stores begging for change.

One actually went around the neighborhood knocking on doors begging for can goods because he was hungry. The other was sitting in a hotel room, trying to find work, his fiancé undergoing chemo for a brain tumor. Another was an unemployed roofer, actually willing to work for food.

Over the years, I’ve worked with several of those type men. For a multitude of reasons, they are unemployed yet willing to work, they are willing to beg because they are hungry (and sadly, they need cigarettes…you’d think that’d be one thing they would give up but the more desperate some get, the more they turn to something).

Last week, I listened as a “pillar of the community” and professed leader in his church go into a tirade about street people. I was stunned. His beliefs were so far from the truth it was a shock that he was uttering those words. I might have expected it from some less educated, from people with no real ties to the community, but this was someone who ought to know better.

…”lazy, don’t want to work, expecting me and you to support them and their habits.”

Could be. I’ve seen some of those folks in the soup kitchen line, and could probably find a dozen con artists, shiftless and lazy bums who not only won’t work but will expend more energy figuring angles than earning a penny

But what about those others?

David was down and out. No work, no food, nothing. He couldn’t pay his rent, utilities, and was down to looking for cigarette butts along the curb. He had zero skills. As a former gang member, about all he knew was a life of violence and drugs, theft and doing what he wanted and taking when he could.

Today, he is a semi-skilled painter, laborer, willing to work even when he doesn’t know the job. I’ve seen him tackle just about anything to earn a living. He’s cleaned up demolished houses, built flower beds, painted whole houses (interior and exterior) and has tried his hand at roofing, sheetrock, and is learning basic carpentry.

In his words: he was given a chance to become something better.

When this so-called pillar of the community finished his little petty tirade, I asked him point blank: is this what you think God wants you to do? Trash talk them so you can ignore them?

His response told me everything I needed to know. “People have to want to help themselves before you can help them.”

Sadly, I walked away. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

One of my goals has been to do something for someone every day. Some days I can’t do much more than offer a word of encouragement, sometimes a dollar, and occasionally I can really splurge and offer something substantial. But every day, I try.

Don’t become indifferent. Don’t look for excuses. Look for opportunities. There are people out there that really do need and want a hand up, but you have to get out there to find them.

The mission field isn’t in front of the pulpit; it is on the sidewalk just down the street. It’s huddled in the cold house across the way. It’s standing in line at the soup kitchen. It’s where the truly needed are searching for hope.

And it’s up to us to find them, not ignore them.

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