Christmas in the deep South

# Chapter 143

Back in the Deep South at Christmas time, always strange unique and wonderful. Wonderful to see the parental and hang out with him, alleviate his loneliness and aloneness. To see him light up and enjoy our time together. To eat his home baked goodies and and share meals with him. Working on projects with him, seeing progress happen. Bragging on the work he did while I was away for the last three weeks. Our coronavirus project that we have been working for the last nine months, is taking shape quite nicely, and I am calling it the “kitchen sink” truck, since we have parts from at least four different vehicles in it so far! The wonderful.

The strange are the obsessions with guns and dogs and trump down here. I don’t get the allure of a single one of those, not a single one. The neighbors down here spend thousands of dollars weekly firing off their guns, but they then claim they can’t pay their bills, can’t save money, can’t feed their children, blah blah blah. And the other neighbors have so many dogs that bark so constantly the din is nerve-racking and discombulating and we live a mile way! That man’s dog pens are right next to his house! But not just him, there are dogs barking constantly from every direction.

Unique because we can have a beautiful almost warm day like yesterday, and a near snow day like tomorrow. The weather is an erratic aberration down here in the winter, you can either hate it or enjoy the warm ones! Ah its good to be home for Christmas.

Still the magic

# Chapter 142

Air travel in the Coronavirusworld was and is rather better and rather worse, than pre-Coronavirusworld. Better in the sense that everyone is generally more civil and polite and understand that everyone is tense and afraid and really would rather not be flying at all if possible. This is a nice pivot from the days when air travel was considered an adventure and their attitude was, “oh you are so lucky to be flying with us” kind of attitude. Passengers are much much more difficult to find these days and since the passengers pay the bills, and the bills have all come due . . . yeah that is definitely a factor here. Plus Coronavirus has forced more structure into the loading and unloading process on the flights, and more organization equals a smoother process for the most part.

Worse because you have to keep your face covered for the entire time from you walk into the airport, until you exit the destination airport. And while I totally don’t mind not talking to anyone, Mr Introvert here, I do enjoy people watching in airports, it was always one of the boon’s of air travel and all the headaches that come with it. The most exotic people in the world fly from place to place. Fun to watch. In the past. Not so much now.

Still it is the fastest way from point to point and that is magic that makes it worth the pain and difficulties that I subject myself to over and over, because at the end of the day I value my time more than almost anything else. Though I have to admit that a good long road trip has its own special appeal at times in life.

Less than fun, but thankful

# Chapter 141

Travel again. Air travel again. On the morning of the UK’s announcement of a new strain of Coronavirus appear and beginning to decimate London and the outskirts. Countries are banning travel from the UK already! Fortunately today’s scheduled travel does not include the UK, only a short 1 hour flight to Greenville. Three hours on the pre-flight end here in the North, and two hours on the post-flight end in the South. A total of four hours in a mask. It could be far worse, I could be one of those poor people who wear one all day!

Travel has never been much fun, and now it is even less fun. However nothing available today can beat the speed and efficiency of flight travel. I can spend 5-7 hours total to get there or I can drive for 12 hours. There aren’t any other options except not going at all, and that is no real option since we don’t want the parental to be alone on Christmas day. He is almost 80 years old and is alone far too often already. We were down there for Thanksgiving for the same reasons.

This is frankly a terrible time to travel even when there is no world wide pandemic. Having lived oveseas for most of the last 26 years, we traveled often at Christmas time and it was rarely pleasant and only occasionally tolerable. But all too soon the last parental will be gone and there will be no need to travel at Christmas, and that will be a different sort of not fun. So the lesson is - be very thankful for even the less than fun parts of life. They too are blessings.

The battle inside your head

# Chapter 140

I need to fail more. Along with those impossibles that I was talking about yesterday. Taking risks and making new efforts with big learning curves, yeah that sounds like lots of failure, and a few impossibles. This would be the recipe of success at any age, but it seems to be especially difficult to settle into this approach at my age, and my stage of life, at my gray beard and thinning hair stage of maturity. This is the shining star of success age, not the risk taking age. This is the peak of your skill and career age, not the failure age.

Well if you need the admiration of others more than you need success, I suppose this is true. You can still have wisdom and gravity and good thinking as you age, while learning an entirely new field of business or study or skills that will make you leaner and sharper and more likely to have a large success, than those who just flow into their peak in their late 50’s or early 60’s. This battle is going on primarily inside your own head, but the desire for admiration and respect are very very powerful forces in anyone’s life, and maybe older folks the most of all. I hope that is not true in my life, but I fear it may be.

Well here I am at nearly 59 years old, with a brand new 30 year mortgage and 359 payments to go, yet I surrounded by my wife and kids and grandkids and have so much, but so much is at risk unless I fail more, learn more, do the impossible and succeed more than I ever have.

Impossible possibilities

# Chapter 139

I am looking for the impossible. I need the impossible. As Authur C Clark said, you have to go beyond the possible to find the impossible. For me at my age, it means trying things that no sane nearly 60 year old grandpa would try. The first impossible that I need is fitness. I want to be more fit than ever before in my life, because the quality of every moment is so much richer and better when fit. The vast majority of men (and women) my age, find fitness to be the very last thing they are thinking about. They are thinking about retirement and pensions and 401k returns. Trust me I am thinking about those things too, but far more intensely then they are, because I realize that the third third of my life is beginning, and what I am going to do and how I am going to experience the next 30 years is very much up for grabs. Fitness is the most crucial piece of enjoying the next 30 years.

The second impossible that I need is a job. A task that produces income. This is impossible because of my age, and that I haven’t had one of these things called a job for the last 27 years. I had a ministry, but not a job. It covered the basics of housing and food for us, but not much else. I need a job now because I have a mortgage and real bills of the Western variety. Honestly I haven’t faced this one much in my adult life, but we are now, and how to finance the next 30 years is a real challenge. Who will hire a 58 year old former missionary pastor? Right. No one. This is no more and no less impossible than being fit at 60.

The impossible is just beyond the edge of possible.

Neighbors helping neighbors

# Chapter 138

Neighbors helping neighbors yesterday. That was super special. After the big snow storm dumped all that wet heavenly snow on us, there was a nightmare to clean it up enough to function, and there are many people in the neighborhood who could not have ever cleaned up theirs. So we all pitched in and helped. I helped people that I care about and know, and I helped people that I had never met before. it did not matter, what mattered is that we were all helping. No politics, no arguing, united against the snow, shovels in hand and all the snowblowers the neighborhood could muster, we tackled the common problem we faced.

Why can’t we do the same again other problems? Many of the people I helped yesterday were being helped because they have COVID-19. We clearly can’t ignore this problem that we are all facing, but yet we do. It is not clear to me why these two challenges are so different, when it seems to me that they are so similar. Perhaps it is the visibility of the snow? The impossibility of ignoring it? I don’t know. The virus isn’t very visible in your world unless someone you know or love has it, and has it bad. I want to help foster the generosity of yesterday’s snow battle, into the rest of our life here in America.

Gail

# Chapter 137

It is not officially Winter yet, but we just had our first snow storm of the year. It was so big they gave it the name Gail, which was appropriate since it had gale force winds blowing the snow into drifts mounded up high against the buildings and houses. The wind chills were and are in the low teens, I think windchill at the moment is 10 degrees F, and like I said, its not officially Winter yet!

Far too cold for enjoying much of anything outside, but the views are great. The snow reflects the light so much that it was far brighter from the ambient light last night than it would have normally been. The whole neighborhood seemed to glow.

I enjoy watching snow fall as much as anyone, but today is gonna be a shoveling and snowblower day as we try to clean up the stuff, it won’t be pretty and spotless for long, as we get out in it this morning. And the kids in the neighborhood will be wanting to play in it if it warms up some later today. We did not have snow very often when I was a kid and we never had the right gear for being in it or playing in it or on it, but we made do. At the end of playing in the cold there was always something good and hot to eat or drink or both, and you could warm up next to the heater. Honestly I can only remember 3-4 good snows as a kid and teenager.

Most of my best snow memories have been made in Pennsylvania or Macedonia, though we did have some occasional epic ski adventures in Switzerland, Germany and California and Colorado and Alaska.

Time to go get the shovel out.

Broken metal files left behind

# Chapter 136

Well my mouth is still sore from the root canal trauma imposed on it yesterday, but for the first time in months, no toothache. You gotta cut away all the rot in order to get rid of that toothache. There is a great metaphor for spiritual living in there somewhere, but I want to move on to other things today. This was my first time going to a modern MODERN dentist office in the states. It had some serious wow factor at play, the technology was astonishing.

First of all was the live X-ray, so that he could follow the root properly with the file to get it all out. I can’t overemphasize how important this is, as I have had many root canal’s done and most of them are hit and miss, and create future problems. This one, shoot he even stuck the file completely down the root and then took a standard X-ray to make certain that he was getting all the way down!

It was that X-ray which showed his file completely to the bottom of the root, that also revealed inadvertently, someone else’s shoddy work. That particular X-ray also showed the two roots in the next tooth that had been filed out supposedly . . . but about half way down, there was an aberration. I ask the dental assistant about it and she sheepishly told me that some dentist in my past, had broken off a file and left it in there!

Well this guy didn’t. He video shot the excavation and the computer automatically measured it and sent the information to the next room where it automatically milled a new ceramic crown and 15 minutes later it was done. Wowza.

Root canals

# Chapter 135

Today is root canal day. What can I say? The 10 or so teeth I had filled and capped throughout my pre-teen and teenage years are biting the dust and just crumbling into shards 45 years later. I think they have held up quite nicely all these years, but they have reached the end of their existence and now I have had to replace nearly all of them. What is astonishing is that this is still the same solution to deteriorating teeth as 45 years ago!! A root canal and a filling! Yes there have been some improvements in X-rays and such so that they don’t have to guess about the location of the root as they did in the past. I am sure they (the dentists) believe they the materials are superior to the old fashion ones, but we will see if they hold up 45 years.

And when there is no longer anything left of the tooth to hold a cap, then yes, they can put an implant in rather than leaving a gapping hole like my dad has, and I even have one of those. It replaced the bridge I wore for many years. But the pain of getting the implant put in, almost negated the positives completely. Wowza that hurt. And of course today is not going to be a jog in the park either, but hopefully this will resolve the months of toothaches and pain I have had as my mouth falls apart.

And lets not forget the price!! As we don’t have dental insurance, this procedure costs a tidy fortune. I paid less for each of the last three cars that I have purchased around the world. Something is seriously wrong in the culture when a root canal costs more than the car I drive for years and years. And so it begins . . .

Make some awesome memories this week

# Chapter 133

Christmas lights, sunsets and projects around the house. It’s Christmastime in Pennsylvania and its cold and soon to be snowy and so very different than Christmastime in Georgia or Florida or Macedonia or Russia or Canada or Thailand (some of the other places we have lived and had Christmas). This year we are in our own space, near our biological children, working on meals and gatherings with them and the grandkids, working on the millions of projects around the house (woohoo), hanging lights and decorations, buying a few gifts, babysitting the grands, and generally enjoying the chaos of living life together. Brenda even made me a sweet potato pie yesterday!

Christmas has long been a favorite holiday with our family, because it was when we could tuck in and stay focused on one another and lounge around in our PJ’s all day and the house was filled with the smells of Brenda’s magic in the kitchen, and the sounds of laughing kids happy to be home from boarding school. We the parents felt like the 3 weeks of Christmas break was just one big long present that we got to open everyday and every hour for three weeks. We planned for months, enjoyed it intensely and were devastated when it ended. There are some awesome memories from those Christmases.

Let’s make some more! In the Coronavirusworld where we have been isolated and quarantined and afraid and politically abused over and over, we need a joyful and deep Christmas that makes great memories while keep Jesus front and center of our celebrations. Can we do that? I don’t know, but we sure are gonna try.

Choose your ripples carefully

# Chapter 132

Our actions make ripples of influence on the lives of others - for good or ill. Even in the Coronavirusworld we live in today, even with all the quarantining and isolating everyone is doing to stop the spread of the virus, no one lives in a vacuum. What you do and don’t do affects other people for good or for bad. Our lives are an endless stream of ripples pealing off from our actions and deeds. This applies to our unintended actions and mistakes as well. It applies to our car accident that occurs when driving distracted by the phone, the kids and the dog, as well as when I help my handicapped neighbor get their groceries and take care of their lawn and house.

This happens when we are mean and petty and strike out at people and diminish them. This happens when we help a child with their homework. This happens when we tell poisonous things about a person or situation regardless of the truth of the matter, and it happens when we praise a person for a job well done or a valiant effort. This happens when we are destructive and tear down, and this happens when we are constructive and build up. This happens when we complain about everyone and everything, and this happens when we volunteer to coach a team or deliver meals on wheels.

Choose your ripples carefully.

You can only go as far as you can communicate

# Chapter 131

I know that I keep circling around back to clarity, and especially pre-clarity, but the more I work at getting settled and adjusted to life in America, the more these two keep coming up over and over. I have business decisions that need to be made, but hell I don’t even know what I don’t know about that yet. And when will I? When do you hit that magic number of experiences that let you make a clear informed decision?? I have no idea, and am pretty sure that every field of work and knowledge has a different number and requirement. Knowledge work can take decades, widget work takes . . . ? I guess I might find out if I hang around here long enough.

Art Petty said it so well and I am properly challenged to take it up another level or 10, “you can only go as far as you can communicate.” I need to find the right words, segue’s, time and moods to communicate effectively and carefully so that I don’t do damage to this relationship as I tell the truth about my concerns and fears and thankfulness. These are tricky matters. My feelings and emotions threaten constantly to overwhelm my restraint and wisdom and get my mouth in gear long before I carefully map out what I can and should be saying and how. I am sure you never have this problem and neither do I usually, but I definitely have it here in this particular humongous problem. This is pre-clarity at its most defined - what are you actually trying to communicate and why? Honestly?

These matters can be so tricky and difficult and of course you don’t want to do any harm along the way. How to preserve and enhance these relationships while extricating myself from relational minefields? How well can you communicate these nuances? There lies the rub.

Steady

# Chapter 130

Steady as she goes. Steady and dependable actions in a consistent direction will win the day. Steady small steps consistently taken along a course of intent, hope, desire, or destination, almost always result in success of some fashion. I can only remember one or two times in my six decades that this did not happen. Failure as it seems, is mostly a lack of intent, or consistent effort toward the goal. Said more plainly, most of my failures have come about because I was too lazy, distracted, lazy, busy, lazy or confused to take the actions necessary to get to where I thought I wanted to go. Mostly just too lazy . . .

It’s like this daily chapter of writing that I have been doing for the last 500 days. The pull and temptation to not write is still just as strong as it was 500 days ago. This very chapter is occurring very very slowly as I keep erasing, choosing a better word, a clearer manner, to communicate this idea. I really need to move this task to another segment of the day, when I am more awake, more flush with feelings and ideas, but the probability of it being completed each day, goes way way down, if it is not very nearly one of my first tasks each day. Gotta eat the frog first thing each morning. . .

So steady is your word for today, this week, even if Christmas is two weeks away and you are distracted beyond belief in the strangest year of our lives. Think of it as the best practice ever. If you can do steady in the Cornoavirus world, you can do steady all the time.

Stop the world!

# Chapter 129

Life often feels like a ride that you can’t stop or control or manage very well. Randy Stonehill sang a song back in the late 70’s, “Stop the World I wanna get off” and there is some of this sentiment in that song. The thing is, we make a decision and then we take action, and then consequences happen. Often far more reaching than we had planned or anticipated. And yes, not deciding and not taking action has its own consequences and probably most likely far worse than with us at the helm, but consequences and containment are things you cannot fully anticipate.

You cannot understand all the consequences of your choices and so living with them can be frustrating and lead you to more actions and decisions which compound your consequences and maybe your frustrations. Now you can better understand Stonehill’s Stop the World, this thing just keeps building and building and how do you stop it?

You have the power! You started it, and you can own it and change it and ride it out with a great attitude. Sure you might have to dig deeper than you ever have before, but this is mostly just perspective and ownership - the more ownership you have of these decisions, the easier it is to have a great attitude and to change things mid-stream, and then to live with THOSE consequences. The best way to get started is to remember rule number one of cowboy logic - when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

The difference between education and learning

# Chapter 128

“Education and learning are often very different. And online is not simply the same as sitting in a very big classroom but with a keyboard. It’s an entirely new form of pedagogy, one that’s about doing, not complying, about possibility, not coercion.” - Seth

One of the regularly disappointing things about having completed my doctorate, is that people demand I be an expert in every field and in every task all the time now. I know I know, it is ludicrous but I am telling you this happens all the time. My plumber expects me to know everything. My mechanic tells me I should know how to fix my car. Even my best friend expects me to be an expert in every field. No one can be an expert in every field and even if I could, I don’t aspire to be so. In fact the very nature of a doctorate in science is that you know more and more about an ever shrinking narrow piece of the universe. That you become an expert in one tiny field of knowledge.

People around me expect me to solve their Human Resource problems, their computer problems, their training problems, their financial problems, their business model problems, their marital problems, their loneliness problems, etc etc etc, ad naseum. All because I have a terminal degree in some obscure field on knowledge. Wake up people, I have an education, but I am still learning! There is one great gift from a doctorate if you are willing to learn it - that you know very very little. Yet you can learn anything that you put your heart and mind to.

A path

# Chapter 127

People are not lost, simply because they are not on your path to whatever or wherever. For example the path leading this born and bred Southern to live in Pennsylvania is so twisted and warped as to be unbelievable. You think not? What if I told you it led through Yugoslavia and Russia? True too. Our paths to the present are rarely similar. The world seems to be overly sensitive to whether or not we are on the same path. But few people have walked my path, if any, ever. And that is ok, because we are all different. It’s what makes life interesting! We all have a different perspective on the rain, but we are all experiencing the same storm of the present.

I love working with my two friends both of who I share some very deep experiences living and working abroad, and yet we are as about as different as possible. Luckily for me, they both have a solid working understanding of Southerners so I am safe! And lucky for them I have a solid working understanding of Northerners and Midwesterners. But our origins are less important than our shared experiences along the path to where we are today. Yet we know that we were shaped to a point by those origins. Bernie and Jeff are both younger than me, but yet they both inspire me and encourage me in so many ways. The point here again is that they are not lost, simply because they are finding happiness and fulfillment in ways different from me. My way is a way. Not The way. Same is true for you. Let’s relax and let people be who they are and enjoy the stories of how they got here.

The best values aren’t always where you think

# Chapter 126

How does the cheap grocery store have the most decadent brownie mix?? Save-a-lot has long been a favorite in my wife’s family, because of its cut-rate prices and no frills ambience. This is a store where you bag your own groceries by need, because no one is going to help you. This is a store that that has few options of each item on the shelves, not a lot of choices here. Just basic groceries, minimum options, no sale papers or discounts, the only upside here is the prices. And well now . . . the brownies.

The Save-a-lot store brand items, much like other store brand items, at your pharmacy and other grocery stores, is usually stated to be the same item, but a generic offering and a much better price. But here is the thing, up until recently, the store brand versions were just. . . . less. They just didn’t taste as good. That is no longer the case. I use a number of walmart store brand items (Great Value Brand) every day now. I prefer them over the typical commercial brands. I only buy my peanut butter and trail mix in the Great Value brand now. And I only buy my brownie mix in the Save-a-lot brand. To buy the three times as expensive Duncan Hines decadent double chocolate brownie mix, is an exercise in wasting money and getting disappointment. The Save-a-lot brand is better and tastier and far cheaper.

I don’t know how a small discount store company like Save-a-lot can produce something this great, but my taste buds sure are happy they do.

New days

# Chapter 125

It’s a new day. Yesterday was tough, the whole week seemed difficult. But its a new day, with new possibilities and potential. But it is a strain to focus on those and embrace them because you are tired and worn out. And so many different people and organizations want your attention, its exhausting and wearying. (Hint here, turn off all electronics and they can’t find you, and if that thought panics you, then you aren’t desperate enough).

I was working on a project yesterday that took all my focus and all of my coworkers focus, and it was stressful for my 30 year old co-worker to ignore the endless pings and dings of our phones, even the ones on my phone! But our hands were full and our attention demanded, and the electronic cues of the modern world are so ubiquitous and constant that it is hard to create space between the world of focused attention, and the world of distraction. Electronics aren’t the bad guy here, just get control of them, so that they don’t control you. You may have another type of distraction that is keeping you from embracing your new day filled with possibilities and potential.

Or this new day could be an opportunity to continue working on a bigger project or event that you have committed yourself to. A chance to dig deeply into that work flow again. Whatever you want to accomplish you can do it on this new day.

Not giving up

# Chapter 124

Don’t give up. As Babe Ruth said, its hard to beat a person who never gives up. You can choose to be that kind of person. It is within you to choose this. This is the foundation of resilience, of grit, of determination. You can choose to never give up, and you will be nearly impossible to beat if you choose to be such a person. Too many people have just quit, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. Sure it takes incredible effort to not give up in the face of difficulties and setbacks and failures, but that is common to each and every person. You nor I are unique in that we face challenges and hardships. The ONES you face may be unique to you, but everyone, and I mean everybody, faces them.

You can make this decision and repeat it to yourself every day. Make a card and put it on your bathroom mirror so that you see each day. Repeat often. Stir. Then repeat again. Never give up. One of my best friends gave up. He hung himself. He would not accept help in the toughest times, and it led him down a miserable end. His children have been without their father these long eight years since he did that. Not that giving up leads most people to suicide, that is not the point of me telling you that. The point is that everyone faces sucky tough times and most just quietly give up inside. Don’t do that to yourself and those that love you and those that depend on you.

Rushed fractured and shallow

# Chapter 123

So many things compete for your attention in the West. And now we are in the Advent season, and there is more competition than ever, both in the church and in the stores and in our families and jobs still need to be done with excellence, and the phone is not working properly and the bike needs to be picked up and the repairman hired and the neighbors have COVID and need us to fetch somethings for them and feed them something since they all three are sick, and youngest daughter is pregnant and needs extra love and help and band practice is today and the parental needs attention and . . . you get the idea. In fact your life looks very much like this and worse, because you have been dealing with it far longer than I have, since I have been living the American lifestyle only these last two months and a bit.

I understand and sympathize. Trying to find a spot to think and do deep work of any type is nearly impossible. I even put it on the calendar and of course it got pushed right off again! The end result is that I find myself leading a rushed, fractured, shallow existence, one continuous stream of urgent stuff competing with other urgent stuff and never the important. We need a better plan than this. While I can enjoy the rushed fractured shallow for a while and all the dopamine it floods your system with, in the end it is not what I am aiming for, nor will this work for you, if you want to create something valuable and life-giving.