One Year Later...

The day got here almost without me realizing it.

Earlier this year I’d planned on remembering this day with a woodworking project I’ve been designing. A bird feeder shaped like a guitar to honor my dear friend Rick Elias.

     Rick always loved watching the birds in his back yard, and during the ten-month battle with a brain tumor that he ultimately lost -or won, depending on your view of eternity—the birdfeeders in his yard brought him great peace and comfort, and a distraction from the things he was wrestling with.

     I drew up a plan. I have some lumber ready to use and was going to pick up the rest of what I needed and finish this. I swear…I was going to build this thing. My goal was to build the first one and ship it to Linda so she could put it out in the yard with all the others. But I got busy, and then this coronavirus hit and has decimated my mortgage business, at least temporarily.

    So I’m trying to keep my chin up and hold on to hope and socially distance myself and hope for carpentry to come in while I wait for the mortgage business to improve, and I try to juggle all those balls while the world deals with a killer virus and I grieve the memory of my friend.

     One year ago, tonight, I was pulling into my driveway after a day’s work. I was still at LU then and I had stopped at the grocery store on the way home. My phone rang and it was a mutual friend of mine and Rick’s. He told me that Rick had just passed. He said he was at the hospital with Linda and asked me also not to say anything to anyone because Rick’s mom was on an airplane flying in from California to say goodbye and they didn’t want her to find out he had passed by reading it on social media somewhere.

     I have a rule about that sort of thing anyway…if it’s not my immediate family, I don’t feel it’s my job to post a notice on any social media. Besides…I was too devastated to want to face the Facebook bombardment at the moment.

     I hung up with Paul and sat in my truck in my driveway. I had only closed on this home two weeks before. I’d called Rick that week and told him I’d bought a home again and he was thrilled. He and Linda were there for me through six years of homelessness in Nashville the last time the mortgage industry collapsed, and they were happy for me to have come full circle. Linda asked for my address to send me a housewarming note, and we hung up with the usual, “I love you brother.”

     I spoke with Rick one more time before April 2. Sitting in the parking lot of Kroger on a Saturday, talking about what he thought the future held, and that they were going to enroll him in a clinical trial of an experimental drug to try to get ahead of the tumor. The barrage of treatments they’d tried just weren’t working and they wanted to at least give him more time.

     I spoke to him of a song he wrote. A song called “Stripped. It tells the story of a man -Rick in first person—coming to a place in life where he understands that even though he is broken and hard and battered and cynical, and even though he knows this about himself, and even though being stripped of all these outward deformities is painful and hard…he also knows it is the only way to stand fully in the presence of God. “Humbled but not betrayed” is how he put it. Rick had told me that he felt like he was living out the lyrics of an album he’d written based on the book of Job. He thought he was Job-esque in his abandonment by God. He’d told me that a few days earlier, and on that particular Saturday I had called him to tell him he was wrong. He wasn’t living out “Job,” I said “Rick…you’re living out “Stripped.” God has you all to Himself in these final days. You can’t play anymore, you can’t write anymore, you can’t even remember the lyrics to your songs sometimes. But you have God. You have the Thing you were writing about all those years.” As was Rick’s nature, he begrudgingly accepts truth. It’s my nature too and one of the many reasons we loved each other. We were so similar. Passionate, opinionated, a little angry, a lot cynical, and yet, under it all…deeply loving those we loved, even when we disagreed. Rick said, “Yeah I know…” and I knew how he meant it. He knew. He knew God was there with him and would be until his final earthly breath. But this was not how he wanted it to go and he was worried -he was so very worried—about Linda and the kids and his friends and all he was leaving behind. He wanted us all to be okay. He wanted Linda to be taken care of. He wanted his granddaughters not to be sad. And he wanted everyone he loved to know for sure that he loved them.

     I sat there in my truck that night; the evening of April 2, 2019 and wept. My friend was gone.  He wasn’t hurting anymore. He was instantly in the presence of Jesus, about Whom he’d written so many beautiful songs. But we were still here.

     One year later and we are all still here. I have almost dialed his phone a dozen times this past year, wanting to tell him some funny story or just see what he’s doing. Then it hits me that he’s gone. I listen to his music all the time and remember the times I saw him live and the times we’d talk about the genius of Springsteen, or the b.s. of Springsteen. He’d rail at U2 for not being original anymore. He’d talk about what a great guitar player James Honeyman Scott was and how he’d tried to capture that “jangly” sound on his own record. He always had funny, endearing stories about working on “That Thing You Do!” and what a wonderful cast they all were, and how he enjoyed teaching them how to “act like young rockers.”

     He’d talk about some famous star he’d run into in L.A. when he drove a limo while trying to bang out a record. He talked about the time his friend took him to meet Stevie Wonder in his studio in L.A. and how Stevie likes to close-talk and make you a little uncomfortable.

He’d do his flawless Bill Murray impersonation.

     And then he’d inevitably tell me he loved me and I would tell him the same and we’d hang up and I’d smile and think how blessed I was that I had been permitted a friendship with Rick Elias.

     Rick was soft and harsh. Sacred and profane. Fiercely loving to his friends, and yet unafraid to fire off a volley if we disagreed. The thing with Rick was this…he wore a mask, like we all do. But if you got the chance to see him without it, you couldn’t help but love him and nothing he did with the mask on, would ever change how you felt about him without it. So, you accepted the mask when he wore it, because all you really saw was the man behind it.

     One year later and all I have now is the music and the memories. It’ll have to be enough until I see him again in Heaven.

I love you, my big brother. We’re all down here just trying to get by.

See you soon.

My Christmas Without Jesus

     “Once each year the Christmas season strikes both the sacred spheres of life with sledgehammer force: Suddenly Jesus Christ is everywhere.

     For approximately one month His presence is inescapable. You may accept Him or reject Him, affirm Him or deny Him, but you cannot ignore Him. Of course, he is proclaimed in speech, song and symbol in all Christian churches. But He rides every red-nosed reindeer, lurks behind every new doll. Resonates in the most desacralized “season’s greetings.” Remotely or proximately, He is toasted in every cup of Christmas cheer. Each sprig of holly is a hint of His holiness, each cluster of mistletoe a sign of His love.”

Brennan Manning

“Lion and Lamb: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus”

I remember reading this paragraph many years ago when I first discovered Brennan Manning. I remember a light going off in my heart as these words confirmed what I had always felt: that regardless of how “commercial” Christmas had become, it was still about Jesus and everyone knew this. That’s why I never got riled up about Santa Claus the way my Fundamentalist Baptist friends did. I believed in the old fellow until I was 12, and still do in some ways. (Those Christmas-romantics among us know what I mean here)

This year, however, something is very different for me. I’ve been re-reading Manning over the past few months and I find myself untouched at heart by words that once moved me to tears. The truths of love and grace he was so gifted at expressing, are meaningless to me.

I have gone numb.

I never thought I’d say that. I never thought I’d have a bad Christmas. But here I am, Christmas 2019, having the most non-celebratory, non-Christmassy Christmas in my fifty-six years. This has been one of the hardest years of my life and it shows no sign of letting up.

Christmas has always been a haven for me. The house I grew up in was rife with discord, pettiness, arguing, resentment, and deceit. It’s not that there was a shortage of love…it’s that there was a love vacuum. Showing love in that house would get you hurt. But somehow, Christmas provided a two-week respite from this drudgery. For whatever reason, my mother and her husband seemed to catch the Christmas spirit and for about two weeks there was joy and a veneer of happiness. This was probably owed in large part to the friends and family who came to visit, and the diversion they provided. I lived in a house where outsiders were treasured and valued far more than the “family” who lived there year-round.

Being a Christmas lover, this was okay by me. I didn’t care about the “how and why” of it, I just knew that for about two weeks, the fighting would stop, the bitterness and resentment that pervaded our days would be tucked away, and we actually looked -for that brief period—like a family that loved each other.

I loved this season. I circled the dates on the calendar when each of the essential Christmas specials would air. Charlie Brown Christmas. Rudolph. The Grinch. And my favorite…Scrooge. I watched Bing Crosby’s annual Christmas specials, not because I was necessarily a Crosby fan at my young age, but because it was Christmas. And at Christmas, you participated in every possible tradition you could, because…it was Christmas.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Christmas, for me, was the center point of my year. Not because of the presents -though, as a child, that is certainly among the highest motivation—but because of the pervasive shroud of peace that Christmas brought. Maybe, I was seeing that quote from Manning in real-time in my otherwise very unhappy home. Maybe it was the baby in the manger, underneath it all, that caused a two-week truce, and gave me enough oxygen to survive the other fifty weeks of the year.

When I got older, I swore I would create the kind of home I wanted back then. A place where love would abound and my children would feel like, no matter what the world was throwing at them, once they set foot inside their home, the attack ended. A place where mom and dad where their champions. Where love was a year-round thing. Where Christmas joy wasn’t a facade to impress the visitors…it was an outward expression of a year-round emotion.

That never did happen. I was divorced before my daughter could have her second Christmas. I worked hard each year to create the kind of Christmas I’d always wanted, even within the bounds of a broken family. I did it well, for all those early years. When my daughter was three and was aware enough about Christmas to really start getting into it, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought the items to fashion a set of sleigh bells. I kept these hidden from her, and on Christmas Eve -on the years she spent with me—I would climb up on my roof, as she was just drifting off to sleep, and stomp around, and shake the sleigh bells, and “Ho Ho Ho” and call out to invisible reindeer. She never even remotely suspected that it was me. I would sneak back into the house silently and go into her bedroom and find her squeezing her eyes shut as tightly as she could, just to make sure Santa didn’t think she was still awake.

We kept an Advent calendar each year. We baked Christmas cookies together. We lit up our yard with enough lights and decorations to land a plane in a fog bank. Christmas was, for her, a refuge, as it had been for me. It broke my heart to see her not have Christmas with both her parents together. I would give her anything, and yet I couldn’t even give her this.

She is twenty-one now, almost twenty-two. She still loves Christmas as much as I do…or did.  As the years went by, we engaged in the traditions I knew growing up. She’s even made two trips to the legendary Wanamaker’s light display in my hometown of Philadelphia, and she’s eaten “Seven Fishes” with my cousins on Christmas Eve.

Somehow, amidst all the disappointment and sadness of our family dynamic, and the difficulties we’ve endured through the years, we “kept Christmas…and kept it well.” To quote Dickens.

But this year is different.

This year, no matter how I’ve tried, I can’t get into Christmas. I’ve played my favorite Christmas playlist. I’ve watched “Charlie Brown Christmas” over and over…I’ve even cried when Linus gives his remarkable “Meaning of Christmas” speech. But something is missing this year. Something has died.

Yesterday it occurred to me; You simply can’t have Christmas, without God. Not really anyway. If He is really behind every celebration and decoration -as Manning wrote—than to attempt an authentic Christmas celebration without Him is antithetical. It’s a fool’s errand. I should know better.

Yet here I am.

This has been a very hard year for me. Very hard. I finally positioned myself to buy a home, twelve years after losing my last home in the crash of “07. Two weeks after closing, my position at LU was eliminated, and I was out of work. Two weeks.

I found another job right away, but it’s a straight-commission job and building a pipeline is difficult and it has all but ruined me.

During this past year, I watched one of my dearest friends lose his battle with cancer. I saw my cousin’s son lose his battle as well. And somehow this year, I came face to face with my own orphanage, and with the long-term effects of growing up that way and how it has shaped me into a man I no longer recognize. 

So has my life.

I became a Christian at the tender age of nine. I am fifty-six. For the first time in forty-seven years, I am doubting God. Not questioning Him…I’ve done that before. I questioned Him about my divorce. I questioned Him about my abbreviated fatherhood, my job loss, the abandonment by my father and mother. I questioned Him -oh how often I questioned Him—when I was homeless. I questioned Him over the past year as my friend Rick battled a brain tumor, and God wouldn’t even let him keep his wonderful gift of creating music, as the battle drew to a close. I questioned Him as my cousin lost her son before he even turned thirty. But I never doubted Him.

Until lately.

I don't doubt He exists. I am certain of that. I doubt that what I thought He was like is true. 

Lately, I’ve wondered if He even cares. Not in a “I care about you” sort of way, but in a “That doesn’t really concern me” way.

Lately I have realized that I see Him exactly as I see -and relate to—my own father. “You’re here because of me. I owe you nothing. Make what you can out of it. See you when you get here.” I have stopped praying, except to pray for others. I have stopped reading the Bible daily, something I have been in the habit of doing for these forty-seven years. I don’t go to church anymore and don’t even want to. Church is full of people who will give me clichés because the questions I ask are too uncomfortable and I am viewed as some sort of reprobate for asking them.

I doubt Him now. I don’t doubt that He can “do anything.” I just doubt that He will.

More and more I am convinced that I’m down here on my own. That the promise to “never leave you or forsake you” is more a mechanical outcropping of the salvation experience -once you’re in the family you never leave—than it is a spiritual, almost-physical presence by my side. My family (my daughter and I) are struggling. Things are hard. My dreams are forgotten now and all I think about is bailing enough water to keep the boat from going down with one arm, while I row the boat to shore  with the other. One-armed rowing only moves you in circles. One-armed bailing isn’t efficient enough to make headway against the inrushing seas.

I can’t remember a time in these forty-seven years where I wasn’t concerned, almost obsessed with whether my life was pleasing to God. Even when I was “far from Him” and not living exactly as I ought…I was aware of Him and always made my way back in short time. I kept short accounts with God and never liked the feeling of distance or silence between us.

But now…it’s mechanical now. I can never retreat into a life of sin and debauchery…my faith roots run too deep. But the longing in my heart, the desire for something mystical, the feeling of a “personal” relationship has faded. God has retreated to His throne room and I am out here in the world, battling on my own. I guess what’s so scary to me about this is that I don’t even feel bad about it. I’m not even mad at Him for this. I was. I was angry that He would abandon me when life has taken such a toll. But I even got over that.

It’s sad to me that my relationship with God now has simply become one of accepted distance. I can’t imagine Him stepping in and helping me. I can’t pray to Him with even the slightest shred of confidence that He is going to intervene. I feel like He’s just watching, uninvolved, unaffected, unimpassioned. Just watching. Untouched by my struggles, offering only the encouragement “to just keep trying to figure it out.” Telling me -in a somewhat subtle manner-- that I’m on my own.

Just like my father.

That this would all happen at Christmas is heartbreaking. I love this time of year and for the very first time in fifty-six years I am entirely untouched by Christmas. The tree in my living room is just a thing. The Nativity scenes I see on display everywhere I look, are just figurines, barely visible through this fog, and no longer holding the sacred magic they once held.

The arrival of Jesus once moved me so deeply that I wrote an entire Advent book about it. A book I can’t even read this year. The movies I loved, the songs I sang, the lights and ornaments and traditions…have all faded. I have lost connection to the child this holiday celebrates and in doing so…the entire holiday has gone as flat as a failed souffle.

My Christmas without Jesus is drudgery. It’s painful. It’s sad and sorrowful and…pointless.

But I can’t change that right now. I have only recently, maybe in the last three days or so, begun to even have brief conversations with God. I guess that’s praying, but it isn’t very sacred. In fact, it’s been rather profane at times. I’m not mad at Him. I don’t hate God. I’ve simply accepted that, while He was infinitely concerned with my eternal salvation, my physical life and the trials I face and these hard things I’ve had to endure, simply aren’t something He involves Himself with. I don’t know if I should be worried about the fact that I feel this way, or that it doesn’t even bother me anymore.

Maybe it’s because I know what I’m missing, but I feel badly for people trying to have something of a Christmas spirit without a recognition of Christ. From my battered, jaundiced perspective, distant as I feel, I still recognize that without that essential element, this holiday is the most disappointing of all.

I’m a believer who no longer believes as much as I did. I’m a follower who no longer feels like he’s being led. My deep relationship with God has cooled. I’m a Christian at Christmas, who has lost his connection with Christ.

This has drained all the meaning from these days and left me drained as well.

    

Mass Shootings and who is REALLY to Blame

I'm going to try not to let this become an angry rant, but it's going to be hard. Because I AM angry. Yesterday we had two more mass shootings. And immediately the gun grabbers went to work, ramping up their attack on American Citizens who want the Constitution upheld. (You can call them "gun nuts" NRA...whatever, but the FACT is we just want the Constitution upheld) They keep screaming "How Long??!!" Well I want to know the same thing. How long??! How long will you ignore the FACT that since 1991, 97% of all these mass shootings and 100% of school shootings occurred in "Gun Free Zones?" This is fact. Since 1991, school shootings increased 92%. What happened in 1991? The Gun Free Zone act was expanded to include schools. Odd that shootings would increase so dramatically AFTER a law was passed making guns on school campuses illegal. Or is it? Your "Gun Free Zone" sign is really a "Nobody here can protect themselves" sign. You literally told the killers where to go for maximum result. How long before you admit that evil people will NEVER obey laws and they will ALWAYS find a way to carry out their evil plan? They'll build bombs out of household items. They'll drive a truck across a crowded sidewalk (These things have already happened) they'll hijack airplanes with box cutters. Evil is NEVER going to end until Jesus returns and puts an end to it forever. HOW LONG will YOU put your fellow citizens at risk by forbidding them from defending themselves? It's not the fault of the gun rights advocates. It's YOUR fault, if you support these frivolous gun bans and gun free zones. You want to sue gun manufacturers for the evil someone does using a gun? How about you sue shopping malls and local governments who create soft targets perfect for mass shootings, by outlawing guns in malls, and public buildings, and schools? You want to see some better gun laws? Start holding people accountable for NOT allowing people to protect themselves. If you want to eliminate guns, this is YOUR fault. There has always, and will always be, evil in this world. The first murder was committed with a rock or a log when Cain struck down his brother Abel...over nothing but petty jealousy. The Manson killings were predominantly done by stabbing. (Only one of the nine actually died by gunshot) The Boston Strangler never used a gun. Ted Bundy never shot any victims. You don't have to carry but STOP TRYING TO PREVENT ME FROM DOING SO! I want to go to a mall or a school or a public building and know I have at least a fighting chance. And do you know what the residual effect of this would be? The virtual elimination of mass shootings! How? Because one of two things would happen: 1: A shooter would decide not to attempt a shooting because now, there are guns allowed where they used to be banned. He doesn't know who has one or where, but he knows they aren't banned anymore so he decides against it OR 2: He tries it anyway and instead of killing 10 or 20 or more, he "only" (I say that tongue in cheek, even 1 is unacceptable) kills one or two before someone with a gun engages him and ends the slaughter. And don't give me this garbage about "I don't want my kids to grow up with armed people walking around..." Couple of points on that: First, Google the word "Concealed" that's the first word in "Concealed Carry Permit" I support open carry, however, I also understand that seeing a guy walking around with a sidearm and he's not in uniform, is unsettling. I don't need to puff my chest out in that manner. I likely won't ever open carry. But that should be my choice. Second, there was a time, not long ago, in this country, where guns were not an object of fear. They were objects of respect and caution, but not fear. Maybe you should take your kids to a range and show them what a gun is capable of WHEN SOMEONE IS USING IT and stop this "guns are inherently evil" nonsense. Stop fighting the solution just because you personally refuse to educate yourself on the truth, or are unwilling to accept the truth, and want to force your will on everyone else. People are dying for lack of shooting back. PERIOD! Stop fueling the problem!

"The Eagle has Landed:" Remembering a Little Boy and a Mission to the Moon

I was almost 6. It was hot. It always is in July, back in the Delaware Valley. I was just a little boy then. In a lot of ways, no different from little boys today the summer of their 6th birthday. But in many ways...very different. We were at war. We've been in wars since then, but this war was different.
Vietnam wasn't popular (not that any war is actually "popular" but at least other wars had a clearer provocation and popular opinion was mostly favorable) and instead of the news talking about victories, they talked only of our men being killed every day.
My mother and stepfather knew guys who were over there fighting. I remember them talking about going to the funerals of several of them. My father had served two tours over there and had been injured twice. But at five, I didn't know him and had only met him when I was a toddler and never remembered the visits.
My stepfather and I weren't close. That's me being kind. We didn't do the things little boys like doing with their dads, so I spent a lot of time imagining. I imagined I was a baseball player. I imagined I was a robot. I imagined I was an "army man" (by this time I'd gotten my first GIJoe.)
...and I imagined I was an astronaut.
To be a little boy in the 60's was to be surrounded by, and inundated with the Space Race and the dreams of landing on the moon. I could tell you my favorite baseball players, and I could tell you about the "Mercury 7" and the Apollo teams. I knew what a Saturn V was before I knew what Saturn itself was. I begged my mom for "Tang" because it had been developed for the astronauts.
I'd watched all the previous launches. Dry runs...practice for the real thing. Each mission taking measured, progressive steps closer and closer to the ultimate goal...the Moon.
I'd look up at the moon when I was a boy and wonder what it was like up there. On summer nights, when the moon was full, I'd swear I saw that cartoon image of Jackie Gleason, the famous closing credits shot from "The Honeymooners."
I had a GIJoe space man set, with a real capsule that Joe sat in, and the control panel glowed in the dark. I flew a million imaginary lunar missions with Joe and his space capsule.I launched water rockets that we'd bought at the department store, where you filled the body with water, pumped the handle to build air pressure against the water, then pulled the trigger and watched it lift off. Rockets and space were everywhere, and they were everything.
Apollo 11 had a different feel when it launched. I'd watched all the previous launches and they were special, but when this one left the pad that July morning, it was different. This was "the one." four days later we were sitting in front of our little Sears TV set, rabbit ears covered in tin foil, watching shadows and images that we could barely discern, become the lunar module...inching it's way down to the moon's dusty surface. Then, after a few moments of silence, came Neil Armstrong's first famous utterance: "Houston...Tranquility base here, The Eagle has landed."
Tranquility base was the name of their landing spot and base of operations. "Eagle" was the name they'd given the Lunar Module. Three long hours of waiting ensued. My mom let me stay up to see this historic moment. At 11:23pm, the grainy, shadowy images (the picture we were seeing was actually a broadcast quality relay of what the camera on the Lunar Module was filming. So we were watching a second generation...like someone doing a live feed on their cell phone from a movie theater so you can watch the movie...only the technology was so primitive back then that the images looked grainy and ghostlike.)
I watched in awe as Neil Armstrong navigated the steps in his bulky space suit and then spoke those amazing words. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
I couldn't say a word. I don't remember breathing. Those words...that picture was a defining moment in my life. The history of the world broke in two on July 20, 1969...everything would be different after this day. Truly anything was possible.
For a few hours, we forgot about the war, we forgot about the unrest at home, we forgot about the civil rights battles still being fought.
We were all fiercely proud to be Americans. We were amazed at the effort it took. The cost of human life (Three astronauts had perished in a flash fire in the cabin of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee) the brilliance of the scientists and engineers, all combined to get us to this moment.
To be an almost-six-year-old little boy that sweltering July night in 1969 was to live in the most fertile soil of imagination there ever was. This was my generation's "Star Wars" and "Star Trek." In hindsight -and I've never thought about this until writing this just now-- maybe that's why I just never got very deeply into either of those franchises. I enjoyed them both. I have no problem with people really being superfans or whatever. But for me...My Han Solo was Buzz Aldrin. My Luke Skywalker was Neil Armstrong. Men like John Glenn and Gordon Cooper were in their prime when I was a little boy...no movie character could ever hold a candle to these real-life sci-fi heroes.
Thinking about this right now...thinking how fifty years has come and gone since that steamy July night. It makes me glad. Glad that I will have these memories to cherish and that I was alive when this was happening in real time, not just learning of it from a Google search.
And it makes me sad. Sad because it's been far too long since we've had a national dream. A national goal. A national cause that forced us to break the boundaries of what we know, and learn something altogether unknown.
To take a theory on a chalkboard and turn it into two men bouncing across the surface of a celestial body other than the one we live on, and send the images of that back to us down here, where we could all sit in our living rooms and stare in wide eyed wonder. And...in spite of the war being fought, and the unrest in our nation, and the injustice our fellow citizens were fighting against, we could dream our own dreams. We could pick our own moon mission and dream about going after it.
For a while, we were united. We were one nation under God, and we'd just sent two of our own to that light in the night. I wish we could go back. I know people think it's a waste of money and effort. I am certain you only think that because you weren't around when we did this 50 years ago.
I could rattle off the list of things we use every day that came about as a result of this era; from cell phones to velcro and everything in between. But beyond that. Beyond any tangible benefits, stand the intangibles. The national benefit of just watching our best and brightest do something unheard of, something we thought was insane just ten years before...and make it look easy.
Every time I looked up at the moon before that night, I wondered about it. It was romantic and foreign.
Every night after that hot July night...I think about how we sent men up there. Men. Americans. Giant, heroic, legendary, daring, brave men.

Americans.

That mission was everything America is. Bold. Gutsy. Refusing to accept less than excellence. Imaginative.
Exceptional.
I wish we'd go back.
And I wish I could capture just an ounce of the spirit that filled that little boy's heart on that sweltering July night, when he believed -for a while at least-- that anything was possible.

C-Day: What was it like the night before?

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of "Operation Overlord" commonly known as "D-Day."

Bedford Va. is home to the National D-Day Memorial and tomorrow a huge gala is planned including a flyover of every plane used in that incredible operation. This week I've been seeing some of them in the skies overhead, I guess practicing for the big events tomorrow.

All this week on the news they have been discussing it. Today, I got pretty emotional thinking about it. Thinking about what June 5th 1944 must have felt like for those guys. Most of them were around 19 years old. They were still kids. I remember when I was 19 and all I wanted to do was cruise Newark De in my Chevelle and hang with my buddies and go to work each day. I never went to sleep, knowing that the following morning there was a nine in ten chance I would die.

How could they sleep that night, knowing that in the morning, they faced insurmountable odds? What kind of letters home did they write? What kind of prayers were prayed? What did it feel like to hear the roar of the machine gun fire and the clank of the rounds hitting the drop gate of the Higgins boat and pretty much assume you were going to die? What was it like stepping over your dead comrades as you dove into the water and made for shore, wondering when the bullet with your name on it was coming? What sort of madness did they see? The sound of gunfire, the explosion of ordnance and shrieks of the wounded. These were just boys. Just out of high school and in many cases having quit school and lied about their age to join. 

I just can't get the thoughts out of my head. The incredible bravery in the face of unspeakable horror. The desire to defeat evil. A desire so strong that you'd charge into the butchery of Omaha, or Utah, or Gold, or Juno, or Sword. 

The only person I ever saw die was my grandmother at 93. It was amazing and beautiful as she literally reached out to Jesus as He came to take her. (It's an amazing story I will share one day) I can't fathom seeing my friend, or my brother die suddenly and violently beside me. And having to stuff that horror down inside me and press on. 

Years ago, in Nashville, I met a man who was 82nd Airborne on that day. He was climbing up the rope ladders they shot up the cliffs at Normandy. Climbing to reach the gunnery nests at the top. He told me that about every 30 seconds, another of his comrades would fall from above him and he'd have to spin himself around and get on the inside of those rope ladders and press himself against the cliff to avoid being hit by the body. Sometimes they were dead already and sometimes they were screaming as they fell. He had to swallow all that and get right back to climbing.

They did all this because there was an undeniable evil at work in the world, and the time had come to put it down. At this point, nobody knew about the prison camps and the ovens and the "Final Solution." That horror was still to be discovered. This mission was about stopping Hitler.

These men ran face-first into hell and punched death in the mouth because it was right, and doing what was right demanded their very lives. 9 out of 10 of the first wave never made it off the beach.

Nine out of Ten.

For me, and for my generation, this is some of what the flag represents. It's why you stand and respect it. America is not perfect. It was probably even less perfect on June 6, 1944. But they didn't fight for a perfect country. They fought for THIS one. They fought for what was right and they did it under that flag. 

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary. 25 years from now, when we memorialize this day again, there won't be one single survivor in attendance to tell us stories of the horror, the battle, or then sense of right that made them rush out the door of those landing craft. They will all have joined their fallen comrades and become ghosts on the beachfront, and names on marble headstones in places like Arlington and Point du Hoc, and Normandy. I have wiped tears from my eyes at various points this week and I've choked back this lump in my throat more times than I can count. 

In another few years none of them will be left to thank. None of them will be around to tell the stories and remember the guy in the boat next to him. 

That's why we stand for the flag and the anthem...because we owe those guys and all the other guys like them from every war we've ever fought. Because if they'd die for the sake of that flag, the least I can do is stand for it.

And if they'd run out of a boat into a hail of gunfire for the sake of what is right...I have no excuses for not defending what is right in the safety and comfort of this country.

If you have a relative who fought in WWII (or any war,) please...tell them I send my eternal gratitude and love. 

God Bless the 4400 who died that day

and God Bless America.

Rick Elias...

It has been 21 days.

     Three weeks exactly to the day. Three weeks, and this is the first time I’ve considered writing about it. I’ve talked about it a bit. I’ve lamented it. But it’s remained buried beneath a hardened carapace of denial, grief, and sorrow. This empty, vacuous hole. This invisible, heavy weight.

My friend Rick is gone.

     Three weeks ago, today -April 2, 2019— my friend Rick Elias opened his eyes to see Jesus at last. The journey was hard, and wearisome, and difficult. He fought bravely. He fought the monster of glioblastoma that hid itself in his brain…and he fought the monsters who keep it company; fear, doubt, sadness, regret, sorrow…

     I have wondered why this has not broken me more than it has. I wondered if it’s because, from the moment he called me last August, to tell me of the diagnosis and the terrible prognosis, I knew this was going to be the outcome. So far, the score is Glioblastoma 1- humanity 0 for all of history. Nobody survives this one. I knew this last August. I wept at my desk after I got off the phone with him. I went home that afternoon and listened to his music and wept some more. I wept a lot in the early days and months. I have wondered if I grieved it so much before it happened that I was a little numb to it after he left us. Maybe. I don’t know.

     But this morning, sitting at my desk getting ready to pray and then go to my work day, it hit me again, and I finally wanted to write about it. Rick once told me, and told others quite often, that writing -for him—was like prayer. Something internal took place when Rick began writing a song and it was sacred. I understand it now that I write. This is the gift God implanted in my soul when He knit me in the womb and when I do this thing I am treading on sacred ground. Preachers must feel this when they stand in the pulpit. Doctors must feel this when they are in surgery.

Rick felt it when he gave us incredible songs. Incredible, honest, transparent, catchy, memorable, enjoyable songs.

     I’ve always listened to great music and wondered, sometimes, at what I was hearing. I always listened to them and thought how this was what was living in someone’s soul for days or months or years and this is what came out. I’ve listened to Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album and marveled how all sound lived in the heart and mind of a 25-year-old young man from New Jersey. I've had tears in my eyes at the beauty of some of Little Steven Van Zandt's music (especially with Southside Johnny) and been amazed that all those sounds came out of one man's heart. 

     I’ve listened to John Hiatt and been amazed that a seemingly simple guy could hold such beauty in his heart and manage to get it out on paper. I’ve sat slack-jawed at Stevie Ray Vaughan and realized all that amazing music had been swimming around in the heart of a sometimes-tormented little kid from the poor side of Dallas who couldn’t even read music. Yet he managed to make some of the best music this world has ever heard.

     The same things would happen when I would listen to Rick’s music. And maybe it’s because I knew him well and called him friend, or maybe it’s that his style was exactly what I loved in music and it grabbed me so tightly from the very first note I ever heard. Or maybe it’s both of those things coupled with the fact that this was a large, remarkable person who left such a giant void in this world that most of his friends remain speechless still, three weeks after his leaving us.

     Things lived in Rick’s heart that spoke so clearly and so loudly that I wondered how he contained them. Rick wrestled with religion, but he loved Jesus deeply. One can’t write a song like “Man of No Reputation” and not love Jesus deeply and be well-acquainted with who He was. Rick could rail at a theological point he disagreed with, with the force of a hurricane and the venom of a cobra. And then sing about the Jesus he trusted in with a passion and honesty that goes missing these days, among the current crop of CCM “stars.”

     Rick was far from perfect. But Rick never lied about his imperfections. His friend and band-mate Mark Robertson said it so perfectly; “Rick was just like you and me…only way more.” And he was.

     When he was happy, your sides would hurt with laughter. When he was cynical and sarcastic, you would laugh until you had tears in your eyes, so long as sarcasm and cynicism were your cup of tea. When he was angry…God help anyone on the wrong side of that topic. But when you were his friend, you were his family and he never stayed mad for long. Not if he really loved you. And thankfully…Rick Elias loved me. Our last eight months of conversations were peppered with “Thank you’s” and “I love you brother’s”

     We spent time trying to laugh at as much of this final act as we could, all the while knowing that both of us had read the last scene and knew how this was going to end. Once in a while, Rick would break down a little. He was worried about his wife Linda. His kids. His granddaughters. His friends. He was worried about what they were thinking and feeling and whether they would be okay after he was gone. He didn’t have any concrete answers about those things and that troubled him.

     Maybe his biggest frustration, outside of his family and their comfort with this, was his entire inability to play anymore. Rick was a musician. He was a musician. This was his life. This was his heart and his soul and his best ability to communicate all that his giant, mysterious heart contained. The location of the tumor made communication a chore. Words were forming in his head as rapidly as they always had but there was a disconnect between the mind and the mouth. He would stumble to say what he was wanting to say, or he’d forget what he wanted to say or which word he wanted to use, and the frustration would eat at him.

     Early on in this diagnosis he had fallen and broken his middle finger on his left hand. It was so bad that they were talking of amputating it, but they managed to keep it. But it was frozen in a three-quarters-extended position, unable to bend, like Rick was giving the finger to the world for the rest of his days. If you knew Rick Elias…this was perfect.

     Aside from being grotesque and comical at once, it was heartbreaking. Because the frozen middle finger prevented Rick from playing guitar anymore and this broke his heart. The last lengthy conversation we’d had, back in March, was about this. He said he felt like Job. Like God had stripped him of the very thing he had identified himself with for his entire life. He couldn’t play. He couldn’t write. He couldn’t even remember the words to all those songs he’d written.

All those songs.

All those wonderful, amazing, incredible songs.

     A few days after that conversation, I called him and told him briefly; “Man I don’t think you’re living “Job” (Rick had written an album based on his readings of the Book of Job and had, at one point, told me he felt like now God was making him live out the lyrics) I said “You’re living out “Stripped.” Stripped was the last song on his first album. A song about a man who stands before God, broken and humbled by his seeming continuous failings and faults, and yet who finds out that being stripped of all the pretense of correct Christian living and standing “naked, humbled, but not betrayed” was actually where the freedom was found. It’s where the love of God was most clearly pronounced. I told him that I felt like God had permitted the loss of his music for the final months of his life, because He’d wanted these months to Himself. Just Him and Rick. Getting things right, getting things out in the open…

…coming home.

     In the end, I think that is what was happening. Rick was coming home. He limped his way back to the front door, his armor dented and a bit rusty, his battle gear broken and held together with bailing wire and duct tape, but with some amazing stories from the field, and the contented look of a warrior who had enough of battle and was laying down his weapons to sit by the fire for a few last days.

     Rick Elias is gone. And the hole he left in my heart is so big, so deep, so uncharted, that I might never -this side of Heaven—understand how big it really is. I know it’s big enough that it hurts this much. I know it’s big enough that it will never be covered over, not with all the hallowed ground of his music or the memories, or the pictures in my heart. I’m only now beginning to feel the depth of this loss and I fear that there will be days when I descend a little too deep and the weight will crush me, and the tears will flow like a river.

     I miss you, dearest friend. I miss the laughter and the anger. The sacred and the profane. The way we could be so mad at each other about something so inconsequential, and then laugh about how stupid it was that something so innocuous came between us, and all would be right again. I miss the incredibly intelligent commentary on life, that you brought. Even if I disagreed sometimes, it was still incredibly thought-out, incredibly spoken, and incredibly funny.  I miss the songs. I miss the stories. I miss the big softy that lived inside that cave-man that you showed the world. I miss your love for Linda and for your kids and for those granddaughters, and for your friends.

     I’m building some birdhouses in my basement, because I know you loved them. I needed something besides music to remember you by and to honor you with. I decided it’ll be bird houses. And a fire pit. And love for my friends. And love for Jesus.

…and your music.

I love you brother…

We’ll see you soon

 **Rick's battle left some large medical expenses. PLEASE consider helping the family by donating here:

Rick's Medical Fund

Beth Moore and her "Sorry" drummer

Dear Beth,

     I’ve kicked this around for over a week now. I thought maybe I just didn’t care about you, or your BS ramblings and misandry enough to respond to your kneeling-drummer trick. But I thought about it and decided I needed to vent. Men are under attack these days and sadly, you’re leading the charge.

     I’ll spare you a lot of bible verses about men and women and the way God ordained the relationship between the two. I mean it’s not like you care very much what the Bible says about that stuff. You’ve picked and chosen what to obey and what to ignore and made quite a cottage industry out of it. You’ve made a boatload of money for yourself and for Lifeway, which is -as we all know—what really counts. You must be “anointed” otherwise your materials wouldn’t sell like they do. In the evangelical world, we know that pastors with big churches and authors with big sales numbers achieve these things only because God blesses them. It’s a sign of His hand upon them, right?

     Let’s skip all that and talk about that emasculated drummer of yours, and this rampant man-hate thing you have going on. That and the “But Ricky…I’m a victim tooooo! Waaahhhhh!” that you’ve served up as a narrative for the last three years or so.

     When I heard that your drummer – an alleged male of the species—dropped to his knees and “apologized on behalf of all men…” I vacillated between wanting to vomit and wanting to find that little candy-xxx and punch him in the throat. All men don’t owe women an apology, princess, and it’s best you realize that and stop milking this school of thought to sell more books.

     Let me tell you about one such man.

This guy was deeply in love with his wife. They were married three years. Almost to the day. She divorced him, not because he abused her, not because he had affairs or didn’t go to church or didn’t show her enough attention. He adored her. He set aside every dream he ever had, (except, of course, the dreams of a wife and family and a home and a fiftieth wedding anniversary) and he devoted himself to making her dreams come true. And if it meant that none of his did, then he was okay with that, so long as her’s did.

But she got better offers from wealthy doctors and eventually she left with the highest bidder.

      This guy was devastated. They had an eighteen-month-old daughter who he absolutely adored. He was a devoted father. His daily life that once revolved around his little princess was reduced to once a week and every other weekend.

     Without his family he was lost. He roamed his house like a ghost. He would wake up many nights in the fetal position on the living room floor, with his fingertips bleeding, because he’d fallen asleep there, after sobbing for hours and clutching the carpet fibers so tightly that they cut into his fingertips. He sat alone in church every Sunday, feeling as if everyone was staring at him and yet not even seeing him. There were support groups for the women going through divorces, but not for the men. He was relegated to the shadows. He wore his sorrow like a trench coat.

     He endured almost yearly court battles because his wife, who remarried after a few years and was making plenty of money, would take him to court for increased child support if he showed even the slightest hint of success. The judge who heard each case, was herself, a five-time divorcee. Five times. Yet nobody dared question her objectivity. They didn’t dare. She ran her courtroom like a dictator and jailed any man who dared speak up.

     There were no books in Lifeway to help him find his way across this lonely sea. None. Not one. Nobody in Christian publishing cared about his plight, because men don’t buy books the way women do, and even though there is a screaming need…a dollar is a dollar.

     His ex-wife’s new husband was a drug-addled monster. He attacked their daughter in vicious, cruel ways. He killed one of her pets. He destroyed her property. He tried everything he could think of to come between my friend and his daughter. Yet my friend endured, because he loved his daughter and because that’s what good dads do. His ex-wife sided with her new husband, even to the point of siding against her own daughter. My friend lost his job in 2008 when the market collapsed. He tried to find work but could not. He could not move to a city where employment was better because his daughter was at risk. So, he stayed, even though that meant living in his car.

     By 45 years of age he was homeless. He shivered in the winter and sweltered in the summer. Six years of this could not dim his love for his daughter, or his fierce determination to remain in her life. He protected her from the deepening horrors at her mom’s house as best he could. Finally, when his little girl could not take it anymore, and her mom finally saw things for what they were, she let him take their child and move to another state.

     He’s been a single dad for almost five years now. He has lost many a night’s sleep over the pain his little girl has been suffering. He thought he was going to lose her about two years ago. He has shelved all his own dreams and accepted a job that pays not nearly enough, but it provides her college tuition and so he endures every day and works a side job in virtually every spare hour, just to make sure she has enough.

     He does this willingly, because that’s what good men, good dads, do. It was nine years before his ex-wife would even admit to her sins that led to their marriage dissolving. He held no grudge. He speaks no ill of her to their daughter, even though there is ill to speak if he wanted to. He chooses to show her respect.

     In the twenty years since they divorced, he has never had a woman over to his house. Never dated seriously. He chose to remain single because he knew his daughter needed to know that at least one of her parents was going to put her first. He did it because he was afraid a woman would not understand his devotion to his child. Most of them did not.

     He has never left his daughter home while he spent the night with a woman. Even though she is almost 21 and could certainly stay home alone. He has never allowed another woman to intrude on his ex-wife’s sacred motherhood. (Even though for so many years she did not return this courtesy.)

     This man has always treated women with respect. He did this for his daughter. He did this because he is a man.

     By now, Beth, you’ve likely guessed that this man is me. I endured homelessness. I sobbed many nights on my living room floor because my heart was shattered. I sat alone in church every Sunday, because nobody knows how to reach a man in the midst of a divorce…and they don’t care.

     If anyone wanted to play the victim card, I certainly could. If anyone wanted to develop a severe case of woman-hate, I could have. Maybe even should have. But I did not. I behaved like a grown-up and refused to affix blame to all woman.

In view of this, where your beta-male drummer and his embarrassing “apology for all men” is concerned…count me out. I don’t owe you any apology. I don’t owe you sXXX!

You’ve grown amazingly wealthy playing this victim card of yours and writing book after book teaching other women how victimized they really are too. You’ve developed your own army of brittle, bitter Bettys who refuse to drop their claim of victimization and relinquish their man-hate. To do so would require them to grow the hell up and God knows we can’t have that. God knows we can’t put that stuff behind us, because we might actually be forced to be responsible for our actions…you know, like big people. Then who would you sell books to?

     Your drummer owes me an apology. He doesn’t speak for me and to lump me in with abusive men…to lump any other men in with abusers, is an outrage.

Until you address the sins of woman with the same outrage and venom that you do the alleged sins of men, you have no validity. None.

     Your drummer was wrong. And whatever “fell on you” at that meeting was not the Holy Spirit. The truth is that women wound men at least as much as men wound women. To say otherwise is to lie. To perpetuate your man-hate issues and teach them to another generation is a sin.

Where’s my apology?