Falling skies...

                                                           What if they're right?

                           A lot of intelligent people are forecasting an end, an earthly, and maybe a cosmic shift, on the horizon. What gets my attention and makes these swirly little hairs on the back of my neck bristle is not so much the forecasts, but the amazing diversity of people and political idiealogies that are vocalizing their worries...

                 It is not only the Christian standing on a corner with a sign declaring that the end is near. It isn't just the tree huggers with photos of melting ice caps and dried up river beds...

                     It is also the Ivy League economists and ex military, the steadfast and rational, along with assorted cuckoos from every walk of life. The convergence I'm seeing is not a solitary and prejudiced world view, but a thousand different and individual heads being scratched, trying to figure out what exactly "isn't right"...

                                  Multiple other nations are going back to a precious metal standard to base their currencies... Russia and China are selling off American debt in a whirlwind that creates so much dust, no one really knows those who are buying it.

                    Many people smarter and more educated than I, see the hundreds of trillions of worthless dollars we are printing and are wondering if we are buying our own debt back, to create illusory value.

                                       A Ponzi scheme to top all Ponzi schemes...

                        Thinking I should start typing " The Pledge of allegiance ", just in case a NSA or Homelands algorithm is catching this...

                                Jade Helm happenings in Texas...

                                   Shemita and blood moons...

                          I tried to be dismissive of all the conspiracy theories and prophetical summations that seem so prevalent, as of late. 

                                    The problem is that I grew up playing poker for drinking money, often betting more than I had to lose, in the process...

                                    You learn very quickly in that type of environment, that there is no such thing as a sure thing... But you do get real good at seeing patterns...

                              Sometimes you feel the tension building in the bar and you just KNOW all hell is about to break loose. Not the good old boy, rustle tussle that happens a lot, but that " someone's going to get hurt very badly" vibe, that you just can't shake.

                                                      If your smart...

                                   Let's just say you don't stick around for the floor show...

                                       What scares me now is that I'm getting both those feelings at once. That "sure thing" poker one that often paid my tequila bill and that other twisted gut/ horror movie chill -down -the back of my neck, that often helped to keep me in more pieces than I should have been...

                                I'm praying that all these intuitions are part of an acid flashback and I will reminisce in a decade or so, and laugh at my paranoia.

                                          I'm doubting that, though...

                            So I asked myself, if this is a Biblical deal, as so many of the pieces are lining up to be... Then how do I prepare and out think, out play and out smart the Omnipotent one behind it all?

                                                                 Uh huh...

                      As in every single moment until now, it is an Amazingly Gracious and Loving God that is looking after me, you, us..

                             And for every single moment, from here to eternity, it will be Him and His eternal Grace...

                                                   My only hope is in Him. 

         No plans or preparations on my part can ever minutely affect the history, already written...

                                        I don't often ask people this, but tonight I am going to.

                                            Are you ready...if they're right?

                          I'm not talking about food or water; I'm talking about The Bread of Life...

                                        Maybe it's ok in a blog about a Christian family man, to ask those reading it if they've accepted Jesus as their personal Savior? 

                        The crazy stories are one thing. Moderately amusing, at best, but void of any real content. Maybe, just this once, I'll put that question, the only real question, out there...

                                Do you accept that He died for all our sins and that they all have been paid for, by His Blood?

                                                Repent has such a harsh tone...

                  But all it really is, is looking at all those things that we did, that we wished we didn't, and  putting them all in a giant trash bag and handing it to the only one strong enough to carry it away...

                Own that we collected it and don't want to collect any more of that crap again...

                      More freeing than restrictive, stepping into Love and out of fear and guilt...

                                      

                               I thought I should ask, just in case no one else has ever asked you...

                                Because Jesus is real and Loves you more than you can imagine...

                                        It is the one thing I am completely sure of...

Yes, but......

                                         I wrote this seven months ago, two months after it actually happened. I wanted to post it then, but was a little too ashamed at the time. Recent events in the news ( crazy Christian lady) made me go back and re-read the draft I hid among fifty or so other unpublished diatribes.

                                      This one is for all the imperfect, screw up Christians, like me...

               I was standing in our shop at work and a guy comes in, screaming at me. He wants something done NOW!...

                                      Not a boss, just a guy inflated with ego.

                               I screamed back at him a couple of words, a group of them, really...

                     None in themselves having any bad connotation, strictly speaking, from the dictionary...

                           But together, in the sequence and tone stated,they made the entire shop floor turn around and look at me, aghast in shock. I heard a voice from a tool box nearby. " And you claim to be a Christian!?!"..

                          My head sank. Disappointed in myself for the outburst, I felt a new sensation for an occasion like this.

                                                               Shame.

                                        This surprised me. Most of my Christian life I have went out of my way to insure that people knew I was not claiming to be any remnant of an example of how a Christian should look. I have explained time and time again that I am lower tiered than those of the exampled persuasion. I am a struggler and a bumbler of Faith...

                                                            It is just my way...

                                                            Not an example.

                                      The sad thing is, in the past few years I've really been trying much harder to be a better Christian than I have previously been. Maybe God put something strange inside the last couple dozen burgers I'd eaten this week, because somehow, that spiritual disclaimer I've always worn and hid behind, just wasn't cutting it anymore...

                               And what I said was bad enough to silence a room full of mechanics, each with many decades in a mill environment....

                      So I silently repented to God, and apologized profusely and owned that there was no excuse for my words or behavior to the men still standing and staring there...

                                              Since that moment, I have taken a lot of ribbing, much more than I really feel necessary. I squirm a bit, each time that story gets retold in our shop ( on a very regular basis ) as I apologize again for not only unchristian, but truly bad behavior. Each time, I have to fight every urge to justify and rationalize it away...

                                    God probably would have much preferred that I hadn't acted how I did, I'm pretty sure...

                                                                  But I did.

                                                              I screwed up...

                          

                                                  I guess I'm a lot more like that crazy Christian lady screaming on the news than makes me comfortable. Maybe the only difference between the two of us, is that I have been Graced enough to see it, Graced enough to want to do better?

                                   Maybe all of us are brothers and sisters in that same blessing?

                                        Maybe, But for the Grace of God, could go all of us...

                              

                                           

                                  

Hide and seek....

                                          Don't whistle in the dark, pretending your not afraid, if your playing " hide and go seek".

                                                                They find you...

                                        That's all the "philosophical" I got tonight....

                            

                                   I am more afraid than I care to admit, and I'm hiding.

                                            It doesn't matter why ( well, it probably does, but I'm hiding tonight and not going there ), but trying to keep busy enough to dodge feelings I cannot change by sheer will, is tiring me out. 

                                                  Distraction is my idol today.

                                        I want to pray, but do not want to feel...

                                                    Not the best combination...

                         So I pray that God sees past my feeble, philosophical attempts, and Blesses me anyway...

                                                

                                         I come from a long line of people who don't do "powerless" particularly well. The family motto has always been " I better do something, even if it's wrong"

                                                          I am powerless...

                                There are situations I cannot fix and people I cannot cure.

                             What answers I have ( that happen to be correct), are not what is wanted to be heard.

                                    There are some who even I , cannot out stubborn...

                                                                  Imagine that.

                                            So I'm doing all the wrong things, purchasing regrets and wasting precious time...

                                                    So I sit here hiding, whistling...

                                                      Best prayer I got to offer, today...

                                            

The Farm...

                                  My brother left to move back to Florida, without a word to my family.

                      Of course he said goodbye to our mother, but no one else.

                            Me, I'm slightly angry, offended and trying almost hard to resist being both resentful and judgmental...

                                 It's not so much me. We never have been especially close, and I am used to this passive- aggressive control deal. I spent a large portion of my life perfecting it, and probably could give him a few pointers in improving its effectiveness.

                        What upsets me most is that he didn't say goodbye to my kids...

                                         They get excited whenever he's up, looking forward to the times they get to see him. He might go outside, once or twice, and toss a football with them, but that's about all the time or attention they get over a summer he's here..

                    A half dozen times, over the course of their childhood...

                                    My brother in laws are exactly the same.

                           None of them will ever know who my McMonkeys really are; the things they love, the passions they have. They may know the obvious, like favorite sports teams, but the little idiocincricies of their hearts will continually elude them.

                                                They are missing so much...

                                                   Not the kids. The adults...

                                   

                                     But in other ways, my bubs have been exceedingly blessed.

                               

                   My family, on my mothers side, have been having a Labor Day picnic for over fifty years. All the relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins eight times removed, show up, hang out and catch up on lives that have drifted in different directions, the preceding eleven months. I get to see four and five generations of family coming together in a living tradition, all in the same place, all on the same day...

                                                       And so do my kids...

                                            When I was younger than my little trio, my mom and dad would load the three of us into our Matador station wagon and drive us up to the farm. I remember my great grandmother wearing a straw hat with dollar bills stuffed into it, donations to be used for steamed clams they cooked...

                                  My aunts and uncles were teenagers, and it felt so cool to have them pay attention to us. I don't think most adults know how good it makes kids feel to not only acknowledge them, but to take interest in them and what they enjoy.

                                     I was certainly blessed, to have grown up in this...

                                                             We all were.

                         For years, in my twenties and mid thirties, I was invited to join the family. Having not been there, for all those years, I felt very uncomfortable going back there.

                    Not because I didn't want to reconnect with my family, because I certainly did. I just hadn't been there in so long and I felt disconnected.

                               Guess that's what happens when you disconnect...

                        One year, my Wonderful Wife and our tiny toddlers showed up. I saw aunts and uncles that I hadn't seen in decades. Memories came back, amazingly happy ones...

                         I remember going to visit my grandfather and grandmothers house when I was tiny . It was one of my favorite places to go, as a child. There was a big field and out back was a stone pile that I could smash with a hammer. Some of the rocks looked like marble...

                         Of course, the coolest thing there was an outhouse.

                          Still functional. I used it quite a few times. Super cool...

                              It was so strange. My mother always acted ashamed of that house. I looked forward to seeing my grandfather ( my hero and namesake) and grandmother, aunts and uncles.

                    We used to walk down the street to a tiny store and buy candy...

                                     

                                     I now get to see my gracefully aging aunts and uncles, great aunts and everyone else that I just classify as " cousins"...

                       I am so grateful that my McMonkey clan is included,and invited into this....

                         I am so grateful for those carrying this tradition on and for the people who plan their vacations around its date and make the trek from many states away, to come...

                                 I am grateful that I can bring my children to connect to another generation, that may just bring them treasured memories of their own childhood, as they grow up...

                               So, I'm not really mad at my disappearing sibling...

                                         I guess. I'm just sad. Not so much for us. We miss him, but the kids are getting used to it.

                                       I'm sad that so much of the " real " stuff that life tries to Grace us with is not even seen by him.

                                                                Sad. 

                                                             That's all...

          

The transmorgifier's demise...

                                                                   ACT 2

                 As we were heading out to Church this Sunday morning, four minutes late and still loading the car, my youngest McMonkey begins screaming bloody murder. I finish filling the last water bottle of ours, and then trek the length of our back porch, to the source of said caterwauling.

                It seems the eldest partial primate had walked over a still wet and crumbling card board box that our dishwasher had arrived in, two months ago...

                                Oldest son screams to the near dying( by all rational observations) youngest one, who is probably going to be a theater major, that all he did was walk on a stupid piece of garbage-cardboard box.

                               As with most things in my family, the backstory might add understanding, but not necessarily sanity, to the second act of this play...

    

                                                                ACT 1 

                    Our dishwasher,many moons ago, began turning on at various times, by itself, day or night; sometimes it began an entire wash cycle, while at other times just adding an extra rinse, five or six hours after it had sanitized and stopped. Being an industrial electrician, I studied, ordered parts and installed them. The ghosts inhabiting the appliance seemed happy with the added attention, and increased their shenanigans, three- fold.

                        I figured that dishes and pots were getting extra clean; my Wonderful Wife, thought otherwise...

                             Thinking that swapping out the unit for a new one would be easier than another repair, I smiled and acquiesced.

                                 My family tends to have very long back stories...

                In the end, the swap was not easier, I used a few words that my kids would be grounded for, and my youngest son, Jacob, became proud owner of a brand new, industrial grade, form fitting, cardboard box.

                           Markers of all colors and types disappeared from our house. The ghosts that inhabited the dishwasher seemed to have transformed into sticky fingered poltergeists.

                                 Pens, paper, sticky tape, all were fair game...

                       Having given up my search for any implement to make a grocery list, I lounged on the couch. I figured I might need half a bag of potato chips and a nap, to sort this mystery out.

                           Just then, my littlest McMonkey banged and barged thru the house, near screaming ( ok- actually screaming ) DAD! DAD!- YOU GOTTA SEE THIS THING I TOOK THE DISHWASHER BOX AND MADE THE COOLEST FORT IT HAS RED AND GREEN AND I CAN FIT RIGHT IN IT AND IF MOM LETS ME BRING BEAR OUT WE CAN SLEEP IN IT ETC ETC ETC

                    The lack of punctuation was not a mistake. It is exactly how he talks, when excited.

                           He would carry it with him across the yards, both front and back.

             Jacob can be an uncanny cross between Calvin, from " Calvin and Hobbes " and The Little Prince, sometimes..

                  Angelic and deep, caring for his stuffed animals with a love like The Little Prince showed his rose...

                         Imagination so strong that a cardboard box becomes like in the comics, a "Transmorgifier", and a fluffy bear becomes just like a certain stuffed tiger....

                                               You just gotta know Jake...

                       He would bring his box onto the porch or in our garage, for safe keeping.

                                     A week ago, or so, I told him it took up to much space in the garage. His mom said the same thing about our porch.

                              I put it outside, in the space between the porch and the garage, figuring the placement was a good compromise...

                          Of course, the rains came. The once proud fort or spaceship  now became a dilapidated tenement- just not too Jake.

                                  His brother saw it wet and wrinkled, and stomped it...

                         

                                                                   Act 3

                                        

                                 The first thing I did that morning was to get them all on the inside of my house. I didn't want anybody thinking Jake was really dying and calling 911 or Social Services...

                                         So I tried to explain to the two perplexed older brothers a lesson that I didn't even know how to describe to myself...

                    I hemmed and hawed, trying to find the words to help them understand how something seemingly worthless, like an old, withered box could be precious to someone.

                                    Try explaining that to a twelve and a thirteen year old...

                                                   I stopped in mid sentence.

                                 " Upstairs in my sock drawer, I have notes and pictures that you all have drawn and written, years ago." I said.

                                                    The two older ones smirked, amused and doubting. I looked them in the eye as I began pulling my wallet from my back pocket. " Those letters and pictures are some of the most precious things I have in this house. If there was a fire, after making sure everyone was out, I would grab them all, as I left." As I was saying this my fingers perused my wallet, searching.

                            I pulled out a tiny, handmade million dollar bill that Nick had made for me about eight years ago. Their eyes opened wide in disbelief and puzzlement.

                 " I've had this in my wallet since Nick gave it to me. Every year, when I get a new wallet and go thru all the " stuff" that gets collected, I hold this in my hands and remember getting it. I put it next to any few real dollars I might have. You're mom watched once,as I switched things, from one to another, as puzzled as you guys are now.

 She asked why I didn't throw that away, because he had made thousands of them, some still stuck in her vacuum cleaner."

                                       I couldn't explain it well to her then, either.

                         All three of my boys looked touched and surprised. Nick was actually smiling.

                              " If someone found this piece of paper on our porch, they would throw it away, without a thought"... I said as I gently placed it back in the outside flap.

                                  For a millisecond, I think they got it. Soon, they were arguing and justifying, again...

                            I told them that this was a subtle lesson that probably wouldn't mean anything to them for a very long time. 

                                                        " Huh?" they replied.

                                                       You gotta love teens...

                      

Sand between the toes and a Jackson Pollack thought train...

                                     We spent a week at the ocean, slamming into rogue waves on the beach, riding their crests and intermittently being pile driven into the sandy bottom...

                                Is there a better description anywhere, of Heaven?

                     My lungs and sinuses cleared up, and once again, one week out of the year, I lived without an otherwise chronic cough.

                          I fought crazy currents whose sole intent was to drive me north, with an unending barrage of mass and force. There were extended moments where I actually won, for a while...

                             Each day, I left exhausted, scraped, sunburnt and bruised.

                                                           Glorious...

                     But all ecstasies harbor a bit of of nagging agravation and discomfort. Mine is always the trip from the berm to the boardwalk; when the sand grinds between the toes and rubs against my sandals straps...

                     Love the beach but hate the sand, sticking to my piggly digits...

                                        It's gotta be something, doesn't it?

                                That sand washes off with a quick blast of the hose, but there is a sand that works its way into you, from sources God surrounds you with; the things that haunt you and grind uncomfortably into your soul.

                           I escaped all thoughts of work and all the things home that normally weigh upon my mind and heart. I dodged the ghosts of worry and fears, for those loved, not with us...

          I managed to set aside, moment by moment, the guilt of abandoning sick relatives, whose lives would not be improved measurably, even if I were present.

                                        But those grains of sand rubbed against my soul, anyway...

                        When God leaves these grains, it is to irritate, as much as polish. He wants us to be haunted, as He instills convictions that we really don't want and would rather not have...

                                  So he leaves grains of sand instead of seeds...

                       Seeds are comfortable. They grow gently and bring gradual, beautiful and predictably measurable growth. Given the choice- always choose seeds...

                       Sand is consistent, but can exist, irritatingly for decades, if need be.

                               It never becomes comfortable, and grates not only the soul , where it touches, but also the brain, the thoughts and the mind.

                            

                          It seems like the last few seasons, God has been working on my heart...

                                 That was not my choice. Not my choice at all...

                             I prefer logic and and answers with theoretically sanitized outcomes; not faces and souls sitting on a vendors scale, throwing of simple calculation with emotional plea...

                                I had informed God a time or few hundred, that He would surely get much more return on investment by going with my strength. I'm thinking, I tell Him, that my brain, at one time, was clocked pretty high, on the I.Q. machine. Following that stream of logic, investing there, would have made much more sense. 

                        Demonstrating His infinite Wisdom, God totally ignored my well thought out plan; of course, in a complete opposite direction, He leads ( boots) me ( my buttocks) into areas foreign and terrifying.

                                The work is not complete, but today I cannot see individuals simply as variables in economic equations, or accept the term " collateral damage" easily, in my soul.

               Labels and preconceptions and margins of error, today cannot erase the actual people that always fell under them.

                              Uncomfortable. Difficult. Maddeningly complex and confusing...

                                         But the moments of peace in my soul are now more frequent, and not nearly as " theoretical"...

                                      Guess that damned sand had a purpose, after all...

                            

                                    There has been other sand that was poured in, long ago...

                           

                             All I can say is, that soon, God will be working on my mind...

                               Thought I would be more comfortable with this concept.

                                                                 I'm not...

                                       

                                                     

                    

Realities lost...

                                   I went and saw " Ant-Man" yesterday.

                                                      I love movies. 

                           Excited, I get, when I I remember them, finding myself reciting 

Iines long since forgotten, by those who have watched them with me, in the past...

                I cannot remember the word " screwdriver" or " doorknob " to save my life, but I can describe the tone of voice and gently rising volume of Rex Harrison's monologue to "Lucia" ( Gene Tieney) in " The Ghost and Mrs. Muir".

                                  When I was about ten years old, I'd found myself in the school psychologists office. Lots and lots of questions were asked by him, as he studied my class folders and large, folding, overstuffed organizer. They had every Marvel character possible on them, some were stickers, but the coolest being the organizer...

                              After about a thousand dog years of teachers complaints over my " disorganization", my mother decided it was time for drastic measures. Her last regaling was in minute detail, of my literally having to pull out a solid block of crunched papers, bent classbooks and assorted semester old snacks, from my desk and then needing to hand split the pile like dried elm, to search for a paper both the teacher and I knew, I never had even started...

                              Let's be kind, and say it was enough, for her.

                        Enough impetus to convince my wild eyed mother, who until that moment, would never fathom the possibility of powerlessness, that maybe, just maybe, everything everyone knew and had tried so far, wasn't going to work... 

                  Maybe, just maybe, spending $22.00 on an officially licensed Marvel three way binder, might be enough to spur some extremely latent organizational gene in me to finally sprout,  and get those anal-retentive educators off her back...

                            WW2 erupted at home, when my father saw the price tag. It was a doozy of a battle, but in the end, both my parents went to their respective corners exhausted and angry...

                                             I did get that cool binder, though...

                                The sad part was that within weeks, my even wilder eyed mother was hearing diatribes from the same teachers, about more, but thinner blocks of compressed and crunched papers, being pulled from between the now triangle shaped covers...

                    When the psychologist realized how much I knew about the comic book universe, he became concerned. I couldn't recite times tables, but could tell him the secret identity and super powers, origins and associated villains of every superhero created...

                     Clueless about any actual historic event, I could describe frame by frame, the smallest altercations between any hero and arch nemesis ...

                          He was genuinely concerned about my grasp of reality. I knew that it was all imaginary, but I also knew that I had a college educated, hundred and forty pound, psychobabble spouting, gender questionable hippie on my line.

                                         And catch and release was not in vogue, then...

                                                 Not by me, anyway...

                               I remember a lot of meetings, a lot of counseling.

                       I remember being bored and amused at the attention. They really thought I couldn't separate reality from fantasy. They couldn't comprehend that maybe a kid like me, in a house like mine, might want or even need something " out there" to divert his attention and distract his mind...

                              I came home one day to find all of my comics, all of my action figures, models and magazines incinerated in our wood furnace, in the cellar.

                                        I guess I was a better actor than I thought...

                                 It wasn't long until I found other escapes.

              

                      To my Wonderful Wifes chagrin, you will find most days, in either bathroom, comic books filling magazine racks, or piled on the sink...

                 Not usually left on the sink. I try to remember to bring them out of the downstairs bathroom, mostly because there is no handy magazine rack, in that one, and said Wonderful Wife doesn't appreciate the hero decor as much as the rest of us...

                                  I watch every superhero movie, the first week it comes out. 80% of the time, I go alone...

                                       It took MaryAnne quite a while to "get" how important this was to me. 

                     Probably ( most certainly) because I never took the time to explain it. Truthfully, I don't think I knew, myself how important it really was....

                  We don't fight often, but a couple fairly loud disagreements have been had over me stopping mid project, at home and heading out to see " Spider-Man" or " The Avengers", with no real explanation.

                                                     I didn't know how to explain it...

                       Most people watch these shows and smile at the affects, enjoying happy remembrances of childhoods memories, long since past..

                                I watch them and see characters and stories that allowed me to keep some semblance of comfort; some tad bit of sanity, in a world where I was kind of terrified and emotionally fractured.

                                             Maybe it did get me out of reality. 

                                            Maybe, just maybe, I needed it to...

                       I walk into a theatre today and my body, my soul, and what's left of the little McMonkey inside, all sit back and smile.

                   For 120 minutes or so, I am home. Not the home of my birth or upbringing. 

                   I am home in that place of wonder and miracle; where good guys win and every battle fought was worthwhile.

                        There was both victory and defeat, but the outcome mattered.

                                The conflicts solved problems and made the world a better place. People did not destroy each other for no reason....

                                            That is the home I'm talking about. 

                                  That house may have been burnt down, inside a wood furnace, in our cellar,long ago...

                                                      but the home...

                                               The home is still there...

                                                  In a theatre near you...