Sunrise Immigration

Inasmuch as I wish I didn't have to get up so early for work and wish I didn't have such a long commute, I have to pause and give God kudos for the breath-taking sunrises I've been treated to this past week. I am in awe at how God can fill the canvas of the pre-dawn sky with such amazing light and color and how each display is both spectacular and unlike any that has taken place before it. You are truly God and I am thankful! With daylight savings time waiting in the wings this weekend, it'll be a while before I can again enjoy this miracle.

Occupying much of the news this past week is the debate over how to address illegal immigration. I think those who would like to see it become a felony are guilty of exaggerating statistics when they suggest that those crossing our borders are nothing but murderers, robbers, rapists and child molesters. Working in a prison in a state that is the destination of many of them, I can assure you there are plenty of red, white and blue-blooded citizens who are filling that bill. However our elected officials dance around the issue so as to be either politically correct or re-electable, I suggest we consider that we are all immigrants in a world that belongs to God. What the heck, I could also probably argue that there are more spouses than any of us might imagine who feel like an illegal immigrant in their own home! Sometimes I do.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

A Letter of Sympathy

I sent the following letter of sympathy to my ex mother-in-law. I share it here because it tells a bit more of my personal story...

March 29, 2006


Dear Joan,

Please accept my deepest sympathy for you, Helen, Rex and Richard with Claude's passing. I pray that with the passing of time you may all find comfort and peace over your loss.

Time goes by too quickly. In just 6 weeks, Helen and I would have been celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. I never would have expected that circumstances would lead Helen to decide that I was not the man she wished to accompany her through life, to provide for her family and stand at her side to offer comfort and support at times such as these. Nevertheless, you and Claude were always accepting of me and understanding as well and for that I will forever be grateful. I hope in your heart you feel the same toward me.

When I think of Claude, two things come to mind. First were the great times Helen and I, Shane and a whistling baby named Kaitlyn had when we would get in the car and together hit the open road. I loved our many road trips and, even though gas prices make it harder, continue to enjoy traveling the countryside to this very day. It is what Claude chose to do for a living and, after his disability, we were able to continue to keep what he loved so much alive for him through our many, many car rides together. I have no doubt that these brought him much peace and happiness.

A second memory that I will always treasure is how you and Claude were both there for me after Shane was born. Even though I entered the picture just a month into Helen's pregnancy and, like any father would do, did all I could to bond with him throughout that pregnancy, being "just" a step parent rather than Shane's biological father was difficult for me. I found myself depressed and questioning my relationship to Shane. Through your love and caring I came to appreciate, as you both would frequently assure me, that "anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a daddy."

You are an extraordinary woman, Joan. I think of how lucky a man Claude was to have had you, someone who so unselfishly cared for his basics needs long after he was no longer capable of offering you anything in return. You just don't see that kind of love, faithfulness and commitment much anymore. Please don't second guess yourself about placing him in the nursing home when his health needs became more than you were able to provide. You did everything you could and consistently went beyond the extra mile. Claude fully appreciated everything you did for him to make his life as fulfilling as possible.

As a truck driver, Claude loved the open road. I like the freedom of spirit you find in someone choosing to do this for a living. While his disability may have hampered that spirit and left him dependent upon others for too long a while, his death has once again set his spirit free to hit the open road.

God bless you all

© Copyright 2006 gentlefootprint. All Rights Reserved.

Fantacism vs Free Will

So recently we have learned it's potentially a capital offense for an Islamic man to convert to Christianity in Afghanistan. It's okay for an obnoxious group of renegade Baptists to invade the privacy of grieving families by protesting their country's perceived stance on homosexuality at our slain servicemen's funerals. It is okay in our country to cast a ballot at the polls irregardless of a candidate's stand on all other issues of major public policy in order to promulgate the particular tenets of one's religious faith with respect to values that belong between a person and his or her God. In waging jihad it is okay to resort to savagery and target the innocent to issue wake up calls or coerce a people to embrace their views or accept their agendas.

Sorry, but I don't buy any of it. None of it is okay in my book and, I dare say, in God's book either. God's invitation to love and be loved has always come wrapped in free will. This doesn't leave room for religious fanatics of any faith to, presuming the world incapable of exercising that free will, appoint its own governance to establish the rules and its own army to enforce strict adherence to them.

Cheat Codes

Not long after my son gets home from a trip to Blockbuster he's asking good old Dad if he can go online to get "cheat codes" for the newest game he's rented. Now if you've never checked it out before, there are cheat codes out there for every game and every platform. Have you ever wondered like I do what this is subtly and subconsciously teaching people, especially our kids, who have turned to gaming with a compulsion that borders on addiction?

The value used to be on developing fundamentals and skills through good old-fashioned practice, practice, practice! Unless you were born to excel in your chosen endeavor, experience would lead to some degree of earned proficiency. Technology, however, is changing the landscape as literally we become more and more a "now" generation that doesn't have to
wait or work for anything.

Are we slowly reducing life to a game where we can seek "cheats" that allow us to circumvent or bail us out of the hardships and difficulties that come our way? Are we setting future generations up to fail because they haven't learned how to face the adversities that are inevitable in life without the use of a "cheat?" With this emerging "cheat your way to success" mentality do we run the risk of cheapening the role or value of religion and spirituality by seeing it as yet another way to "cheat" on life?

Identity After Divorce

My kids' grandfather passed away Saturday morning. This is the first time Shane (15) and Kaitlyn (13) have experienced the death of someone close to them. My weekend was spent comforting and attending to their feelings.

I have probably not found myself in a more awkward situation. The deceased was my ex's father. I never had any problems with my in-laws and, together with my ex, much time was spent together on weekends traveling. A disabled truck driver, my former mother-in-law cared for her husband for as long as I can remember over 15 years ago. I often considered how lucky a man he was to have a wife who would stand by him and provide for his basic needs when he could no longer give anything back in return.

When I took my kids over to see their mom and grandmother, I walked them to the house and stepped in the doorway to offer my condolences. How awkward it felt seeing people that had once been a part of my life but were no longer because my ex chose not to have me as the person she wished at her side when facing moments such as these. Divorce doesn't take away that part of me given away to my ex and her family over the years. But who was I Saturday, really? I don't know.

I'm sure my kids found comfort in the bitter brokenness of divorce being set aside if but for too brief a moment while I gave their mom and Grandmother a hug.

Grandmas and Favorites

Tomorrow is Gramma J's 93rd birthday! To celebrate the family gathered at Red Lobster for dinner tonight.

Gramma J is my wife's maternal grandmother. Effie, as the family calls her, took my wife in when she found herself 18, pregnant and separated from her first husband who remained behind in California. Chris grew close to her grandmother and Effie developed a special relationship over the years with her new great grandson Jason.

While few would be comfortable admitting to favorites, Jason is clearly Effie's. In fact he is most likely the reason we are celebrating a 93rd birthday in the first place. Bouncing back from congestive heart failure that nearly took her a couple of years ago, Gramma J fought to be around to see Jason get married. This past year she rode her anticipation of the birth of her first great great grandchild when Jason's wife gave birth to Destiny Michelle. It was no accident we ate at Red Lobster - It has always been Jason's favorite restaurant.

Now I've known other grandmothers who have had a favorite grandchild or great grandchild. Upon her passing my ex's paternal grandmother left her home to her favorite great grandchild Kevin. I always appreciated that both of my own grandmothers held me as special, although I don't recall either showing partiality. It is not my intent to blast favoritism here. Jason and Kevin both gave much more time, attention and love to their great grandmothers than anyone else in their families and both Grandmas merely expressed their deep appreciation.

Are you anyone's favorite? Is their anyone in your family who is your own favorite? Do you feel it is wrong to show favoritism?

Peace and blessings to you all. Have a great weekend!

© Copyright 2006 gentlefootprint. All Rights Reserved.

Leadership & Other Things...

After sitting through 8 hours of leadership training today, I've been mulling over a few thoughts.

(1) We broke up into small groups to brainstorm and discuss who we thought was the world's greatest leader. An interesting exercise. Bearing in mind corrections is a paramilitary environment, it came as no surprise when the likes of Collen Powell and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf surfaced. Others named included the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Alexander the Great, Gandhi, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Princess Diana and the Pope. But our state trainer wasn't prepared to hear us ultimately give the distinction of greatest leader to Jesus.

(2) I observed how tragic it was that contemporary or current leaders were absent among the names that surfaced. Is there no one out there that instills hope and inspires us to greatness?

(3) Our trainer kept equating supervision and management with leadership. I suggested that this was wrong. The mere fact that someone holds a position of supervision does not make him or her a leader. I believe that a leader is "begotten, not made." I believe that in the workforce and in any group there are persons who will be recognized by the group as natural leaders, as the ones with vision who inspire and move the group.

(4) My definition of a leader? Someone who is a team builder, who recognizes the gifts and talents of individuals and empowers them to share these gifts, who is proactive rather than reactive.

(5) During another group exercise we were asked to list examples of leadership styles that don't work. Among this list was the practice of promoting the wrong people. When a participant asked why this happened, the trainer went around the group and asked if our spouse was like us or our opposite. What struck me was that out of 60 participants, 55 declared there spouse to be their opposite! The trainer suggested that we shouldn't therefore expect any better from our employer. I observed that we don't choose who we want for our supervisor like we choose our spouse.

(6) I was bothered by the 55 out of 60 statistic. What could that mean? Then I figured it out (I think). We don't choose our opposite to be our spouse. We choose someone who feels like our soulmate, our complement. After the ceremony and honeymoon is over we settle into the nitty gritty of married life and we begin to recognize the flaws in our spouse that romance left us blind to. These "new" (are they, really?) discoveries lead us to question our choice or what we got ourselves into. When we say our spouse is our opposite, aren't we merely saying that my spouse isn't the person I thought I was marrying? This stage I believe is where so many marriages fall apart. First sight of the flaws and we want to bail out.

© Copyright 2006 gentlefootprint. All Rights Reserved.

American Idol Spirituality

Singer, songwriter, arranger Barry Manilow gave advice to American Idol's final 11 prior to last night's competition in which they chose and performed a song from the fifties. It struck me how that advice is also pretty decent spiritual direction for all of us:

(1) Know who you are, what you do best and don't compromise it. We get ourselves into all kinds of trouble when we envy or mimic someone we would rather be or whose talents or opportunities we prefer. The only thing I am capable of excelling in is being myself. The world would much prefer and benefit most from me being me wholeheartedly rather than pretending to be someone else.

(2) You're not just a singer, you're a story teller. Interestingly you can tell the difference between the performer who is singing a song very well, hitting all the right notes in perfect pitch and the performer whose singing is coming from the heart filled with feeling and passion. I would much rather listen to the latter. Likewise everything I do in life can either be meaningless words (even when well chosen) and lifeless actions (even when appearing noble or purposeful) or each can tell my story to the world.

3. Song selection is critical. You must choose the right song that showcases your talent. If you are an investor, you're going to direct your resources where you are most likely to see a healthy return. It is likewise important to recognize that I am not a cornucopia or bottomless well and my success and fulfillment in life dictate that I invest myself in efforts that will impact on drawing nearer to my destination.

Silence

In an appearance last Sunday on CBS "Face the Nation," Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed suggestions that the Bush White House was in need of a shake-up. "I don't think we can pay any attention to that kind of thing," Cheney said. "The president has got a job to do. ... He ignores the background noise that's out there in the polls that are taken on a daily basis."

I'll leave the discussion about politics, responsibility to the thoughts of the electorate and the question of accountability for the government's less than stellar performance to other bloggers who do it far better than I. What caught my attention instead in Cheney's remarks was the comment about ignoring "the background noise."

Everywhere I turn I am bombarded with noise. After accepting the 5:10 am alarm's disruption of the last remnants of a restful sleep, I surrender again to the call to turn over another 12 hours of life to the job that provides a roof over my head and food on the table. The morning commute is a wrestling match whereupon the latest audiobook mystery, whats going on in the world and precious silence vie for supremacy. Once at work, I really cherish the quiet stillness of that first hour in my office before the prisoners begin to assemble for their interview and classification.

I have a colleague who inevitably perches herself in my office each morning and revs her mouth to rob me of my silence. With a voice sounding like the cross between a manic Mickey Mouse and the fast talking guy on the old Fed Ex commercial, she eats up the entire hour in noisy chatter barely giving herself time to breathe or leaving me the opportunity to voice anything more than a couple of words here and there. I must carefully weigh the desire to offer my word or two knowing that to do so is likely to send her on another verbal expedition. If you recall the old Gilda Radner character Rosanne Rosanadana on Saturday Night Live then you know my colleague Deb and her daily assault on my quiet time.

Silence is so absolutely amazing. It is like the finest symphony. Attentively listen to the silence and you hear instrumentation, movements and voices that are not noise at all and together form the most beautiful composition possible - life itself! Oh if we would only consider for a moment everytime we would open our mouths if what we are about to say really adds to the beauty that is silence.

Goals and Wishes

Like an unfinished book that is still being written, there remain things I still want to accomplish both in and with my life. Of course as I grow older, I have to temper the idealism and passion of my youth with the realization that there aren't going to be as many open doors awaiting a soon-to-be 55 year old man as there are the current student immersed in his or her undergraduate studies. Although levels of opportunity differ, what unites all of us is the motivation to make our mark, to make a difference, to leave the world a better place for our having been here.

To reach beyond my current experience in an attempt to fulfill yet unrealized aspirations is to have goals. A goal is a vision for which I am capable of making choices that can bring its realization about.

Some people, however, hold aspirations or dream dreams but do not enjoy the capability of fulfilling them. These people may face limitations imposed by disability or illness that is either life threatening or life shortening. These are the stories that wrench the heart. For them, goals are wishes. They still want to make their mark or make a difference, but they depend on the love and passion of others to help them realize their dreams. These are the people that shows like Extreme Makeover Home Edition seek out to help. This is reality television at its finest.

While other television shows like Deal or No Deal remind us that we can be greedy, people whose goals can only be wishes requiring the help of others are uncomfortable asking for that assistance. So today I thought I would pose a question that focusses our attention beyond our own wants and desires:

"Who do you know of that you would nominate to benefit from the help of a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition? What are their particular circumstances and needs?" Who knows, maybe there is somebody out there who reads this lowly blog with the resources to fulfill someone's wishes.

Unbelievably Strange

About a month ago one of the top ten emailed stories according to Yahoo was that of a man who sodomized Thelma in January of 2005. Apparently he had become a nuisance to the owner of a township farm. Fearing the man to be a stalker, she had to chase him off of her property when a herd of sheep alarmed her to the presence of the intruder. To the man's surprise, this woman also happened to be an off-duty police officer.

When a responding police officer surprised him as he stepped out from behind some trees behind the property, the man explained that he had gone into the woods to take a dump. The officer confronted him about his story, asking if he would find excrement if he were to take a K-9 back into the woods with his flashlight. The man, by now obviously growing uneasy, explained instead that he had stopped to pet the woman's sheep.

As the officer conducted his investigation, he noted that one of the sheep appeared particularly distressed. Unable to detect the presence of bodily fluids on the ground, a swab was taken of the animal's anal cavity and forensic testing later confirmed the presence of human sperm cells.

This man was sentenced to prison and ordered to register as a sex offender. Today he showed up for classification. He broke down in a colleague's office as, during the course of her interview, she reminded him that the blood of Jesus had taken care of his sin. The man tried to explain that he had been prescribed prozac and had no recollection of anything that took place on that cold evening in January of last year. He related how he had become so depressed over his situation that he overdosed on his prescribed medication.

Since his arrival at the reception center for processing, he has had to endure the sophomoric taunts of everyone around him mimicking the baaaaah's of sheep and a host of ewe-referenced jokes. Visit this online discussion to the story on the web and you'll begin to appreciate the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding this offender's presence in prison. Having served the maximum prison term on four prior incarcerations, I hunch he's going to find himself behind bars haunted by this nightmare not for the 2 1/2 year minimum, but for the 20 year maximum of his sentence.

In my view, the behavior of people (including corrections professionals) in reaction to this man's presence is reminiscent of a couple of prepubescent boys thumbing through the pages of a dictionary to find and laugh at dirty words. Sigh. We humans are a strange sort indeed.

Love Versus "The" Love

Mike Szydlo (homer 3132) poses a couple of heartfelt questions in his blog yesterday. We seek a love the spirit of which is captured so beautifully and hopefully in verse, song and prose. I find it puzzling that something so remarkably clear and desirous to most could be so difficult, even impossible, to attain. It makes no sense to me why love relationships, something that is supposedly so wonderful and to which most aspire, would be so hard and such demanding work, often times to the brink of and beyond the spirit's breaking point.

Is it even possible to find a partner, a soulmate, who would truly love us for who and what we are and be loved by us for the same? What happens when we let our need for love or the fear of loneliness lead us to settle for anything less? There are a lot of people out there in relationships who still feel unloved or find themselves lonely most of the time. Why do we hold out hope to find something that so readily eludes us? Other than to promote a socially acceptable context by which humanity procreates to perpetuate itself, is there any other viable reason to institutionalize any relationship? Does marriage in practice exist to license or sanction exclusive sex rights with so many, including those who would assert personal moral virtue or righteousness, breaking that sacred trust by infidelity? You certainly don't have to marry someone to enjoy their friendship or company.

In the end I think the difficulty rests in our equating "love" with the one true love in life that our instinct leads us to seek. As a celibate Roman Catholic priest, my life was filled with love. There has been no other time in my life when I was happier, when I felt better about who I was or what I was doing. My life was surrounded by people in meaningful ways from the time I woke up until the time I retired for the night. Yet instead of treasure all that I had to be thankful for, I listened to the loneliness that would gnaw at me an hour or two each night before bed. I had a life of "love," but instead gave it up in a futile search to find "the" love. Only now looking back do I realize that I had what I was looking for all along.

And so to my friend Mike and anyone else who would struggle with the questions he poses in his blog, I say focus your life not on the quest for "the" love but instead build your life around "love" and you will find what you are looking for.

Fear No Factors

Each week Joe Rogan pushes contestants to reach beyond their physical limits and challenges them to either consume or commune with the most disgusting of things to determine for whom fear is a factor.

As our lives unfold, many factors contribute to who or what we eventually become or what becomes of us. Some are the consequences of the choices we make ranging from the most careful, informed and conscientious to the most flippant, haphazard or impulsive. But there are other factors over which we exercise little or no control, among them the temperament of our given social and cultural structures, the conditions of our surroundings and the makeup of our environment, limitations in resources, the unpredictability of nature and genetic predispositions. There's also an intangible factor that determines why a set of like circumstances will prove devastating to one and an insignificant inconvenience to another with the randomness shown by a midwestern twister.

The truth is life does not unfold on a level playing field. So what, then, are we facing: divine predetermination or design of which faith demands our acceptance or a divine call to abide by a social contract whereby we look out for one another and equitably provide for all based on need rather than want?

Naturally Unnatural

When I'm born, I enter the world naked, no possessions and utterly dependent on others to care for and feed me. As a priest and pastor, it has amazed me how often the same lot accompanies one's passing from this life. A broken, failing body unable to sustain its own life, often dependent on family or nursing care, no longer able to eat or even drink faces an end where no earthly possession will matter for it must all be left behind.

Doesn't it seem strange then that we bring such an urgency to every breath we take in between that it defy this natural pattern of poverty and dependence? In setting out on such a journey is our life not spent like fish continuously swimming against the stream? With lives characterized by such innate discord and disharmony with the natural order, is it any wonder we so frequently find ourselves broken or troubled?

Creation Distractions

In the beginning...

Thus begins the Old Testament. There were no eyewitnesses to creation, no author who committed the event to writing as a reporter would write his story for the evening news. What we have in the opening lines of Genesis is the spiritual reflection of a believing people whose lives were wrapped in an intimate relationship with a God who called this people his own. They sought to understand both their history and their experience in light of that relationship.

The remarkable thing about a spiritual reflection on the beginnings isn't that a created realm unfolded. It is that there was a beginning void of anything that would distract from the Creator himself. Today our hunger to find, know and understand God reflects on discovering how God's hands have intimately touched everything both in and about us. We see God stooping over the earth and with his hands continuously fashioning a world and moving us about on it as a young child might build roads in the dirt on which he propels his diecast cars on imagined journeys.

But God isn't the created world or the drama that plays out upon it each day. These in fact have become distractions that prevent us from drawing intimately into the presence of God, from resting and renewing ourselves in the very presence of the holy. The search for God must take us away from the things of life, the stuff of our existence, and direct us instead back to the beginning into the void and emptiness where God is God.

Copyright 2006 Don Neale, Jr.
All rights reserved.