They once were lost

Sherry and I attended a wedding recently, and afterwards we could not locate the car keys anywhere. Sherry drove, and thought she may have left them on the table when she signed the guestbook. We searched everywhere, on the table, under the table, under our seats, in the car (although the doors were locked we could see that they had not been left in the ignition). We checked with the facility manager and wedding coordinator, no one had turned in any keys. She dumped her purse out and poked and prodded to the extent that would have done a proctologist proud. Nothing, nada, zip.

Fortunately, my buddy Reid and his wife were willing to give us a ride home so we could fetch the spare key and return in my truck to get Sherry's car. We headed out and instead of turning north toward our home, Reid passed the turn and continued south. He has been to our house several times so I knew he wasn't lost, hmm what could this mean? Our keys lost, Reid is lost - my sanity is...oh wait that went years ago. Sherry and I looked at each other and I said "Reid, I don't think this is the right way". He replied that it was a shortcut.

Now, I know shortcuts. A shortcut may take a little compassionate (that's a play on words, get it - turning 'compass' into an adjective) detour where you are going for example east, you may go a bit south east, or a bit north east, but you still are generally going east. Well, we were going dead south - and our home was dead north. Turns out that Reid assumed we were going to the reception, and we assumed he was taking us directly home so we could retrieve the spare keys.

I was reminded of an incident that happened while Sherry and I were dating. We had gone grocery shopping one night, went to her house and fixed a nice dinner, and then I left for home. The next day she paged me in a panic - she could not find her keys anywhere. She had torn her home upside down, looked in all the usual and unusual places, nothing. We had taken her car, and she wondered if somehow I had driven off with her keys. Ha! As if I would be so stupid. Of course not I replied. She got a ride to work and later in the day as I worked the scenario over in my mind I realized that indeed I DID HAVE HER KEYS! I had put them in my coat pocket.

Well, all of this got me to thinking about the story about the lost coin in Luke 15. Here something comes up missing, and great effort is expended until the lost object is found. The story of course is an illustration of God's love for all of us - and the effort and expense he initiates on our behalf. I love that picture, because when I was lost - God came looking for me. Well, of course we eventually found the car keys and had a happy ending.

The Rest of the Story

By the way, back to the dating experience and my pirating of Sherry's keys - rather than doing the smart thing and calling her with the good news, I thought I would be really clever and surprise her by driving her car to her. I got a ride from a pal to her house, picked up her car and drove to her office - only to find that she had left early and got a ride home. Now we switch to Sherry's view - her keys were missing, she had to leave her house unlocked, she comes home early, and now her car has been stolen! Enter boyfriend Dave, driving HER car into HER driveway where SHE is madder than a Democrat alleging a stolen election! All I can say is that due to forgiveness (and a dozen of the most beautiful roses you've ever seen) we're still laughing about that day!

One Sweet Ride

John's Impala - 3rd place finish in People's Choice at the 2004 Tualatin Crawfish festival and Car Show

Real Men love Poetry

I remember somewhere around the fifth grade being captured by the power of words. I came across a poem so vivid, so concise that the words lept off the page and created a virtual image that consumed my sight, to the extent that the line between reality and the poetic image became blurred. To this day I enjoy words - little containers that we pour immense, powerful, and sometimes even contradictory meanings into. I had great discussion with my English Lit professor in college, a man of great passion who was an ex-Jesuit priest who left his vows to marry and explore love. He actually wept in our last meeting, out of envy for me as I began to discover the world of literature and was seeing so much for the first time. I never moved much beyond English Literature, even though the world is full of great writers and poets (and I've read some of them) but fascination with the giants like Coleridge and Wordsworth have satiated my literary addicition for many years.

Here is the poem that impacted me in the fifth grade (author unknown):

Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet;
eating her yogurt plain.
While vampire gangs, with flaming fangs;
were eyeing her jugular vein.

While I have produced little (ok, zero) writing that is likely ever to be remembered, I'd like to think that my contribution to poetry with this little ditty might inspire someone, somewhere (I think I wrote this when I was about 25):

I like socks.
I think they're neat, I like to wear them on my feet.
Roll 'em up or roll e'm down,
Wear them in the city, wear them in town.
I like socks.

Sin is kinda like that

So my buddy Reid and I had just finished facilitating a session at our church. Being hungry for a little snack, we raided the kitchen (ok, more like a kichen-ette) browsing for a left over a snack or two. Reid opened the freezer door, and in slo-mo I saw his face begin to change as a glint made it's way into his eyes and huge grin unfolded - I watched with anticipation as he put his hand into the freezer and pulled..out..an..(wait for it now!)..enormous See's Candy bag! As I drooled in anticipation; he opened the bag and pulled out frozen peas. Yup, you read correctly - frozen PEAS - the little round green vegetables. What kind of a sicko (well, it's someone in my church so I guess I shouldn't be so judgmental) would do that kind of transgression? How cruel is that? What were you thinking?

Well, it got me to thinking that sin is kinda like that. MMM, looks so good on the outside. The temptation phase - the desire to indulge, the anticipation of pleasure - but it's just stinkin' frozen peas on the inside.

If there is any lesson to learn from this, it's something like this - it's all on the outside. No matter what the temptation is, it's a hollow shell - a pinata with no prize; socks and underwear for Christmas. Reminds of me of 1 Timothy 5:6 (which I'm taking slightly out of context but I think it applies to men as well) "But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives". Ouch!

Bottom line - in the passage often erroneously called the Lord's Prayer, which is actually our model for prayer; we see these words - "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil". And frozen peas too.

Aluminum Man Triathlon, September 11 2004

I love the Aluminum Man. My birthday is September 6 (there's a bad joke in there somewhere regarding my birth, my mom and Labor Day but we'll leave it for another day), and usually the race is held just after my birthday so once in a while I'm in a new age group. I should mention that I'm 47 as I write this, so my goal is to outlive my opponents and someday I'll win!

Well, this year started like any other. The race is held in The Dalles which is a WeIrD name for a city, but it's great fun to say it ten times fast with a bunch of friends. It was fairly windy even early in the morning as I set up my transition area and prepped for the swim, and the wind continued to increase in intensity. The Columbia river was whipped into near whitecap conditions, but as we shivered and waited for the starting gun I didn't really give it much thought. Suddenly, a few darts flashed across the sky in my peripheral vision and the pre race chatter was rent by a wall of noise as two F-15's split the sunrise like a dessert spoon into the sugary crust of a creme' brulee. Apparently there was a Patriot Day airshow somewhere in the area and the jets were enroute to entertain.

Exactly 2 minutes later the starting gun sounded, and we were off. The waves were the worst I've ever swum in (makes me wonder what an open water swim in the ocean would be like, never have done that) and although I found a good pace and rythm as I settled into my stroke I was bouncing around in my wetsuit like a plump seal tempting a sea lion. It's not uncommon for me to ingest some water as I'm breathing, but suddenly a squirt of rancid Columbia river water with all it's slime, toxins and heavy metals shot right down my throat into my stomach. Usually I can cough and spit as my head is underwater for the exhaling, but this time the volume was such that I started gagging and retching. For the first time ever in a race I actually had to stop and tread water as I struggled to recover. A safety boat started to make it's way to me, and there was an overwhelming temptation to abandon the race (if I accepted help I would have been DQ'd and that's disqualified not Dairy Queen!) but I waved the boat off and began to swim again. The river was so rough that a police boat was positioned at the last buoy. Nice and reassuring but the boat's exhaust fumes trailed right across the surface of the water into our faces! So now I'm gagging up rancid river water and choking on carbon monoxide as I'm tossed about like so much flotsam. Well, I ended up swimming breaststroke which hurt my time but allowed for survival. The rest of the race was uneventful but I'll never forget that swim!