Old Man, Talking

Many years ago, my family was needing to purchase some supplies for an upcoming camping trip. So, we went to one of those giant outdoor outfitters in hopes of getting good prices on what can sometimes be rather expensive gear. Along the back wall of the store stood a 20-foot climbing wall. Now, twenty-something years ago, climbing walls like that were still a bit of a novelty and my oldest two kids, who were roughly five- and eight-years-old at the time, were all excited about giving it a try.  Being adventurous parents who encouraged such activity, we signed the necessary paperwork and watched carefully are our children were strapped into the harnesses and given explicit instructions to only climb to the blue line that marked the half-way point. The expectation on everyone’s part was that the climb was difficult enough, and the children were small enough, that climbing ten feet would be sufficient.  The kids started their trek upward and after watching for a minute, long enough for us to be sure they were reasonably safe, we went on about our shopping, happy that they would be occupied for a while. We were a few feet away, considering the merits of folding cots versus hammocks when we heard the annoying sound of an air horn declaring that someone had made it to the very top of the climbing wall. Looking up, we saw the smiling face of our five-year-old, sitting on top of the wall, smiling and waving. To say that both we and the store’s employees were shocked that the child had scaled the wall so quickly would be an understatement. He climbed back down on his own as well, rather than being lowered in the harness. When asked why he hadn’t stopped at the blue line as instructed, he said, “It wasn’t that hard, really. Once I started, I just kept climbing.” Of course, there was a mix of congratulations and admonition. While he had done something impressive, he had broken rules to do it. And then, I looked over at his older brother who wasn’t smiling. He had done exactly as he’d been told. He climbed to the blue line and then let the guide lower him. No one was congratulating him. I knelt down, gave him a big hug, and assured him that what he had done was just as important as what his brother had achieved. We emphasized that just because he hadn’t climbed to the top didn’t mean he was any less special. He had done well and had done it without breaking the rules. One of the places where I fear we fail with our children and society, in general, is that sometimes we make such a big deal out of climbing mountains that we overlook the fact that there may be better alternatives to making that effort and potentially putting ourselves in danger. We all face challenges and struggles in life, but we don’t all have to treat them as mountains to be conquered. It’s okay to play it safe, to take a different path, or not climb the mountain at all. We need to re-examine what motivates us to climb mountains and take a serious look at the alternatives. Not only may it make our lives easier, but we may also live longer. Everybody’s Climbing Mountains The metaphor of climbing mountains as a symbol for overcoming the struggles and challenges permeates our society. For old farts my age and older, you’re likely to remember the final song in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, “The Sound of Music,” in which the Abbess challenges the Von Trapp family to “Climb ev’ry mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow until you find your dream.” The song is beautiful and many people have found it inspiring. A little more recently, it was only back in 2009 that a young Miley Cyrus sang, There's always gonna be another mountainI'm always gonna wanna make it moveAlways gonna be...

This has been quite a week and for many Americans, the effects of unprecedented snowfall in places where snow doesn’t normally fall are going to linger for some time to come. Where there hasn’t been snow, there have been thunderstorms and tornadoes. Extreme weather has taken a heavy toll on us at a time when we already didn’t have much tethering us to reality. We were hitting a collective pandemic wall before all the weather fell on top of us. Our stress systems are frayed and growing uncertainty around health and finances only makes that situation worse. Remember when we could just hop on a plane in mid-February and spend Mardi Gras or Spring Break somewhere on a warm beach, like Galveston? Oh, wait, Galveston has snow all the way to the water’s edge.  Okay, Southwest Airlines to the rescue. You can catch a flight out of your current hell for as low as $50 each way. Hold it, that rate requires 21-day advance purchase and the only destination where the $50 rate actually applies is St. Louis, which is currently under more snow than they’ll remove before May. So, maybe that won’t work after all. A lot of the options for mid-winter getaways simply aren’t available to us at the moment and when we’ve already canceled trips and vacations for the past year, our need for a break grows stronger with each passing week. How much longer can we tolerate this seclusion? Even going down to the local pub for socially-distanced drinks with friends grows increasingly difficult as bars and restaurants continue to close. What’s not helping is that in this new work-from-home (WFH) environment that everyone was sort-of cheering a year ago, we’re working more than ever. WFH has increased our daily work schedule by an average of 2.5 hours per day. So, even if you were one of the lucky ones who was only working 40 hours a week before this mess started, you’re probably working closer to 50 now, and for those in many salaried positions that were demanding long hours before, it’s grown from 60 to 70 hours.  Of course, there are still plenty of people who have no jobs at all or their work is severely curtailed. Many people in the service industry who enjoyed full schedules previously do well to get in 20 hours of work each week now and are struggling to pay bills. When storms hit like they did this week, their schedules get obliterated. People who were already scheduled don’t easily push their services down by a day or two, they’ll put it off a week or more, dramatically reducing what was already fragile income. As a nation, we are exhausted. We still haven’t recovered from the emotional abuse of last year’s presidential election and now we’re having to deal with a life-threatening cold snap for which many parts of the country are not equipped. We’re not sleeping well. We’re not eating well. For many, relationships have gone down the toilet. Then, extreme weather raises its ugly head and we all get a magnificent pile of snow and subfreezing temperatures. Isn’t life grand?

Reconsidering who is or isn't loveable as a part of personal, spiritual, and social growth. For those not already in the loop, our family has nine cats. You heard/read that correctly, nine. All of them are rescues and most days we wouldn’t trade any of them. They all have unique personality quirks that endear them to our family and they bring a lot of joy and comfort along with the dander and shed fur all over our clothes.  Most days, they all get along beautifully. They have their tribes and their play partners based largely on age and size. They all sleep somewhere close to 22 hours a day, and they make sure playtime is coordinated so that they’re not all running through the house at exactly the same time. Still, there are moments when a couple of them don’t get along and one of those moments happened last Sunday morning. It was still dark so I didn’t get a chance to see who it was. I heard a hiss, and the next thing I knew there was a large cat stampeding across my face in panic.  Immediately, I felt blood in two places, my left cheek and the corner of my right eye. My eye! Now I was the one panicking! I ran to the bathroom to see how bad the damage was. The reality was that the scratches were superficial, but if you’ve ever sustained any kind of eye injury you know it doesn’t take much for your eyelid and the skin around your eye to change color, making it look as though you’ve walked into the wrong side of a right hook. The injury may be insignificant, but the stigma that comes with an altered appearance isn’t, and since we’re all masked up for the moment, eyes are the only part of us anyone notices. If our eyes are messed up, people are going to question how bad the rest of our bodies might look! I can’t leave the house in a mask looking like this! Adding to the admittedly humorous-sounding event is an experience from a little over seven years ago when I had my first cataract surgery. As I was lying on the table wearing nothing but a surgical gown, waiting for the local anesthesia to kick in, one of the attending nurses noticed some bruising on my arms and legs. I knew the bruises came from my lifetime curse of being one of the most clumsy people on the planet, but she didn’t know that. With all concern and seriousness, she leans over and quietly asked, “Are you safe at home?”  Ever since then, any time one of us has a clumsy moment that results in bruising, we tell the other, “I’m not safe at home!” and last week’s cat mauling definitely falls into that “cat”-egory. [Go ahead and moan at the pun. I’m a Dad. I’m used to it.] In this case, the nurse was showing legitimate concern about my health, but there have been other times people have looked at me and let certain stigmas take control.  When I had really long hair was probably the most obvious. Dressed in black, especially in the winter, the whole look resulted in a stigma that kept a lot of people away. Being a photographer who shoots art nudes carries a stigma with it that we may not be trustworthy. And I’ve written before about the stigma my current relationship has caused.  Everyone I’ve ever met is subject to stigmas of different kinds and the response is universal: they suck. So, why do we tolerate them? *** Stigmas have been around almost from the beginning of humanity. Abrahamic traditions tell the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel and one of the punishments for Cain’s crime is that he is given an undescribed mark so that he will always be noticed no matter where he goes. Now,

Read or listen to this week's message. We appreciate you being here either way. Welcome to Super Bowl Sunday! To pretend that anything else exists today is nonsense. This game is the most viewed sporting event all year. Last year, more than 100 million people watched as the Kansas City Chiefs took the title and this year it is quite likely that there will be more people will be watching. Not only is there the question of whether the Chiefs can repeat or if Tom Brady can manage to win again, but we’re also in the middle of a pandemic. We’re stuck at home! What else are we going to do? We’re desperate for something different than bingeing D-level sitcoms on Netflix.  Part of what has always made the Super Bowl a draw for people who aren’t necessarily huge fans of the sport is the commercials. Companies this year are paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.5 million for a 30-second spot, and that’s not including production costs! If they want their commercial to stream as well, a stronger draw this year than it’s ever been, that costs an additional $300,000. Getting your ad in front of all those people, especially during the first half of the game when the most people are watching, is big business. This year, though, three of the most iconic and well-known brands who have been long-time mainstays of Super Bowl advertising aren’t participating. Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi have all said they won’t be airing any commercials during this year’s game for their primary brands. Now, don’t let that mislead you. Budweiser is only omitting ads for its namesake brand. There will still be plenty of ads for Bud Lite and other beers. Pepsi will still air ads for many of their Frito-Lay brands and Mountain Dew. Still, they’re not the only ones saying “no thank you” to the high-cost, high-visibility ads. Hyundai, Ford, Olay, Avocados from Mexico, and Little Ceaser’s pizza are among the other brands sitting on the sidelines this year. To some degree, the move isn’t surprising. All three major brands have strong ties to the entertainment industry and have taken a severe revenue hit as people haven’t been going to the games or the movies or any other entertainment venue where they might purchase beer or soda. The hit to their bottom line has been frightening. Spending a total of somewhere close to $10 million on a single ad doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense. Budweiser, however, gave a different reason for not spending all that money this year. The statement on their website says: For the first time in 37 years, Budweiser is foregoing its iconic in-game Super Bowl airtime and reallocating the media investment to help support COVID-19 vaccines awareness and education through various marketing efforts throughout 2021. To start, Budweiser will donate a portion of its advertising dollars to the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative: one of the largest public health communication campaigns in history. Let me give this some monetary context. Last year, Anheuser-Bush bought four one-minute commercials for the Budweiser brand, an investment of roughly $20 million, give or take. Imagine the level of good that can be done if Budweiser donates even a portion of that investment! Giving back has always been a shrewd corporate strategy, but today, it’s a bit in your face. With everything that has happened in and around the pandemic this past year, there’s been more talk than ever about giving and philanthropy and what it means to help someone else. You’re going to see that theme repeatedly throughout the Super Bowl ads. The reason is that there are more people in need right now than any living generation can remember. Record high unemployment, disproportionately affecting single-parent homes and p...

We're still working out the kinks in this whole podcast/audiophile thing. I'm a long way from being pleased with the final result, but we learned a lot this week and hopefully, next week will be better. Thank you for listening and reading. Our family has two dogs. The eldest is Belvedere, a hound mix who is about as chill as any hound dog can be. He is, more than anyone, our family Dude. He spends his days curled up in the most comfortable spot he can weasel for himself, sleeping away.  Then, there’s Hamilton. Hamilton is a 90-pound black lab/pit mix who is the most anxious creature I have ever met. Like all our pets, Hamilton is a rescue and was roughly ten months old when he came to us so we don’t have any information on what he was like as a pup, but we can only imagine there were some problems because this dog has severe abandonment issues. When we took him in, we did so thinking he would be Kat’s dog since we’d had Belvedere over a year at that point and he and I had bonded strongly.  That didn’t happen, though. Hamilton decided that he needed to be my dog as well and in the years following, I’ve often thought I should have named him Shadow because no matter where in the house I am, he’s there with me. He often naps with me and he’d sleep with me at night if I’d let him. If I change rooms, he needs to know where I am. If we’re separated, he cries. If I walk out the back door, he stands there waiting until I return. If I leave for a doctor’s appointment, he gets upset that I’m not where he can see me. Let there be a sudden noise outside and all 90 pounds of him is going to try and sit in my lap. I’ve never seen anything like it and the older he gets the worse his condition. Anxiety is a significant issue in the United States and around the world. In the US alone, the National Institute of Mental Health calculates that 19.1%, roughly 71.5 million people, have a severe enough level of anxiety to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those, women are almost twice as likely to experience anxiety as men, and younger adults ages 18-44 are significantly more likely to have some form of anxiety as are those who are older. Over 30 percent of the US population, more than 110 million people, experience some form of diagnosable anxiety in their lifetime. Anxiety is very real and can impact how we live our lives. Before we go much further, we need to define how we’re using the term anxiety. We all experience momentary anxiety such as when we’re about to go for a job interview or one’s spouse sends you a text that says, “We need to talk.” That type of anxiety is typical enough and usually goes away when the situation passes. For a person with a diagnosable anxiety disorder, though, that anxiety does not go away; it’s always there, lingering in the background, can get worse with time, and can dramatically interfere with what we are able to do. Anxiety is a part of PTSD, panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and any number of phobias in addition to generalized anxiety disorder messing up people’s lives on its own. Like a number of mental health issues, most anxiety disorders can be treated with therapy and medication to some degree, but finding the right prescription and the best therapist can take a lot of time which often generates increased anxiety in the process.  The American Psychiatric Association conducted a poll in both 2017 and 2018 showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans were “extremely or somewhat anxious about health and safet...

We'll continue to provide our weekly homilies in both audio and text form until we reach that point where I have to start paying extra to store the audio files. After that, we'll need our "congregation" to step up and help cover that cost. If you're enjoying the audio, please consider donating using the form at the end of today's missive. Thank you. In one sense or another, we are all procrastinators. Most often, that moment comes first thing in the morning when, even if we’re not inclined to slap the snooze button a dozen times, we still lie in bed for a second thinking, “Do I really have to get up right now?” We are endowed with a sense of hesitancy born of an abundance of caution. Our ancient ancestors had to question, “If I leave the cave now, am I going to be eaten?” For most of us, that particular concern has dissipated, but as a metaphor, it still stands. We put off what we don’t want to do because, somewhere in the back of our minds, we’re not convinced that the action is safe or worth the effort required to complete it. So, when we think of the terms “procrastination” and “change,” the two don’t seem to go together. Yet, that’s exactly what humans have been doing for centuries. We understand that change is inevitable. The changes someone else makes, often without our consent or consultation, ripple out to others in dramatic waves.  Over the past year, we’ve endured a most dramatic example of this effect and the real-world consequences of procrastination. The global pandemic required severe change in how we live our lives: social distancing, washing our hands, and especially controversial, wearing a mask in public. No one liked those restrictions, but most of the world mandated they be applied quickly and uniformly across the entire country. While they still had severe spikes in the number of infections and deaths, they were able to manage those increases and get past the worst relatively quickly.  Americans, on the other hand, resisted. We put off having any response at all. Our president told us, “It will be gone by Spring, don’t worry about it.” As a result, this past week we surpassed 400,000 deaths from COVID-19 and we have to ask ourselves, and our government, how many of those souls would still be alive if we had adapted to the necessary changes faster? Procrastination has consequences, and too much of the time those consequences create a larger problem. One of the things that made me happy this past Wednesday was that after the inauguration was over and after all the official celebrating, President Biden went to the Oval Office where a stack of 17 black folders was waiting. In each folder was an Executive Order waiting to be signed, orders that had the power to dramatically change the course of the country. As he took his seat behind the Resolute Desk, the new president, referencing the quick timing of the orders, said, “There’s no time to start like today.” As he signed each one, he addressed critical issues that have been backing up in some cases a lot longer than the past four years. Some of the changes implemented Wednesday evening were: * Requiring masks and social distancing, kicking off a 100-day mask challenge.* Rejoining the World Health Organization* Rejoining the Paris Agreement on Climate Change* Creating the position of COVID-19 response coordinator and restoring the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense * Extending eviction and foreclosure moratoriums until at least March 31* Extending the existing pause on student loan payments and interest for Americans with federal student loans until at least Sept. 30* “Embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and i...

Disney/Pixar's movie "Soul" raises the question of "What is my purpose in life?" We've asked that for centuries. The answer is simple.

The actions and events of this week require a response if we are fulfilling our obligations to making this year a better one.