Green Banana's

I can tell when it's getting to be time for me to write another blog, for days now I've been hearing internal dialogue's going on in my mind... phrases turned, concepts tried, meaning sought. I chose this title because of a phrase my father used to say in reference to his health "I don't even buy green banana's anymore." There's something comical to me about a person seemingly having so little sensitivity about their own eminent mortality. It's as if whats of the greatest importance is to engage the other person by means of "truth telling" or "gallows humor." It also reminded me of our current economic malaise, the whole de-flation thing. Banana's are normally about .69 a pound (green bananas) But if you wait for a short while, they bundle them up on a tray and sell 'em for a quarter a pound! They say they're "over-ripe" but I've never thought so, they're actually just right and the price is right too! Why should I care if somewhere in Central America a banana farmer has to lay off a few workers or cut the wages of some others because I wouldn't pay .69 a LB for banana's?



Over Ripe Bananas .25 .LB


(these are the banana workers)

What am I trying to do, guilt you into paying full price for some bananas?

No, I'm just using the banana story to illustrate something I'm sure most of you already know. That for every person who holds the clean end of the stick...(well you know what that leaves)

Also, to try to give a real life example of what each of our choices or actions say about what we really think is going on.

How about the consumer confidence level? Given the uncertain nature of our economy, right now may not be the best time to spend money on new big ticket items or take on long term debt. Many Americans are only spending on necessities and are putting off the"wants" in favor of the "needs." Still others are of the opinion that our current economic cycle is precisely that. That there's little cause for serious concern. To quote a late great elder statesman, one Frank Zappa, who in a song by the same name playfully mocked American people by saying, "It can't happen here!" (please,check it out) What can't happen? That our highly prized way of life could rather suddenly go by the wayside...

It certainly has "happened" to me!

I find it to be the height of coincidence that my situation has so closely paralleled the bigger picture of our country, not only in the last few years but in the years since my birth in 1960. So if you're looking for someone to blame I suppose that'd be me... I witnessed the American family becoming less relevant than the self, providing the proper mindset to embrace the rising drug culture as my "religion" in the 1970's. I was flush with the fashion in the conspicuous eighties, doing my utmost to consume enough "whatever" to keep the wind from whistling through the hole in my soul. It's a lot harder than you think to be tragically hip..

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you no one told you when to run you've missed the starting gun...(Breathe-Pink Floyd)

A great ironic hallmark happened to me in the 1990's, supposedly I was "over the hill" chronologically. But due to my years of drug use I was emotionally still a child in a lot of critical ways. Before this decade was through I had had it all and lost it all, I faced the new millennium sober for the first time in my adult life. I was a 40yr old "Green Banana"

A brave new century, and a new life! which seemed to me to be about putting out fires and exorcising the demons of the past by living "politically correctly" in the present. A plausible theory if you don't start any new fires which can harbor new demons. We all must eventually confront our own frailties and understand our own new limitations. I became old early in February of 06' when I slipped and fell on some wet steps. It was more than my rotator cuff that shattered that groundhog's day morning, it was my invincibility. Sort of like my own personal "twin towers" moment.

They say it's a recession when it happens to someone else, but it's a depression when it happens to you.

My last full time job prior to being a school bus driver ended on 07/07/07...
I was blacklisted in the trucking industry when a former employer lied about me to the driver "advocacy" council, (legally libeled)
By December of last year I was behind on my mortgage and looking to put my home on the market...(I'm still in my home by the grace of God!)
By April my car had been repossessed, (which made me eligible for food stamps) and my pastor provided me with one that was donated to him.
I went "belly up" on my credit cards, owing about 7-8 thousand dollars, I've gotten a lot of phone calls but nothing more than that.
I "survived" for months on money I made selling vegetables I grew, fresh eggs, and stuff I owned that I sold as well as some small odd jobs I took on.
I turned myself in to the authorities in August because I was unable to appear in court on contempt charges related to my child support and spent 10 days in jail, I was deemed too wealthy to receive "free counsel." (I was released on 08/08/08)

Naturally, I had to chuckle when they announced in late November of this year that our country was in a recession.

There's something comical to me about a person seemingly having so little sensitivity about their own eminent mortality.

My father passed on last the summer before last, now it's me that doesn't buy green bananas.

What Child Is This?

Having the opportunity to work around a school and "school children" has really put me in touch with a lot of my own "school days" memories, that's sometimes a good thing but other times it's not. Because of the circumstances of my own education I have a real soft spot for special needs kids or kids who just seem to fall through the cracks of the system. Any educator worth his or her salt knows that children's behavioral issues (beyond simple boundary testing) are manifestations of the circumstances in their lives that they have no other way to express other than to "act out" in the fervent hope that someone will be able to understand and "fix" the fear/anxiety producing "situation" that they're unable to verbally express. When a four year old bites and hits and causes chaos in a classroom do we simply discipline them with swats on the butt or time outs expecting that to make the scary stuff in their heads go away?





I think that in many cases that's exactly what we do...and it doesn't work



Years later, When this same child who has now been labeled a "discipline problem" develops conditions with names like "oppositional defiant disorder" or "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" we scratch our heads and send them off to the psychiatrist for "evaluations," some get the help they need and others don't . Its these kids that don't whom oftentimes, in an attempt to get a need met, become involved with substance abuse, gang's, teen sex, or even just good old fashioned stuff like being disruptive and talking back to teachers. Sadly, conventional wisdom says that the "problem" is best handled by suspensions, expulsions, or other "bullying" techniques, (apparently, there are not enough good school counselors, I know there are many so don't write) And while I'll admit that those techniques are effective on some students, remember...we're talking about kids who have "special needs" here. Kids who have 55 gallon drums of industrial strength pain that are constantly leaking into their psyche, to whom the idea of being suspended as punishment seems laughable or absurd, or even a relief from the daily bludgeoning they receive from peers, principals, and worst of all themselves...It is indeed a very dark place.




Lets fast forward to the rest of their lives...

Looking into the face of this young girl we quickly remind ourselves that circumstances don't have the last word on her life and that sometimes they prepare us for life in special ways.

We can choose to let our circumstances get in the way of what we want to do with our lives, or we can choose not to. This is true, but few of us could summon up the necessary tenacity to see this through...

This is a much more common result of having been failed by every person who was charged with helping to produce a successfully functioning adult... A chronically underachieving person whose life challenges also include the inability to maintain long term relationships with people or hold steady jobs. They're alcoholics, drug addicts,or maybe in prison...why? because when you're young and cute and so vulnerable it's easier to garner compassion and perhaps understanding from people, but as you grow older peoples perception is basically that you ARE your behavior which is patently false. We may be much older but our techniques of self expression are at times much the same as a small child's...it also makes sense that the solution would also be the same. In the life of a child or a young adult the positive influence of even one person in they're lives can make a profound impact. When we practice "understanding" people we validate their feelings instead of beating them up for having them. Learning new more functional ways to get our needs met in this life is what it's all about...it's irrelevant how old they are or...who's child is this?

Are facts "The Truth"?

Facts can be accurate, that doesn't always make them right...
facts are dispassionate, the truth is compassionate
Facts are said to be "cold and hard"like a prison cell, the truth, will set you free...
just the facts, to tell the truth...
The biggest difference between facts and the truth is in how they're used, I recently heard of a young couple planning to get married...the fact is that at least 50% of marriages result in divorce, especially when the people are under 25yrs old. It takes years to really know what it is that you want out of life or who you really are, people sometimes grow and change a lot in their early twenties. based on these "facts" I would have a hard time being supportive of the idea.
Whats the truth? The truth is that what's impossible with man IS possible with God, when a husband and wife put God first in their marriage He will bless it. a generation ago it wasn't unusual at all for people to get married at 16 or 17 yr's old...those are the ones celebrating their 50th and 60th anniversaries now! Who disregarded the "fact" that at times they were perhaps very unhappy with their spouse in favor of the truth which is that "nobody's perfect" and that we've all done some pretty dumb things...who had the ability to remember what it was that they loved about this person to begin with and hold on to that...and with few exceptions that their lives would definitely be better off WITH this person in them than without them.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "speaking the truth in love?' The term 'truth in love' is actually redundant. You can't have the truth without love. It says in the Bible that God is truth and that God is love. Facts, are most often used to accuse someone, or to discourage someone, are you starting to smell something? who IS the accuser of the brethern? Thats right! our enemy himself, satan...Whats interesting to me about all of this is that when we use the "facts" to tear someone down we ourselves are also left vulnerable to the same attack! This is an area that I know I've screwed up in...why? Because I live in a world of "facts," as critical, and as judgmental and as deadly as a heart attack to a persons Christian walk...So now, it's only the truth that can set me free, the truth in love

Blessed

What does it mean to be blessed? We say that we're a blessed nation, constantly thanking God for our many blessings and praying for other people who we think are suffering or somehow in need of a "blessing." Sometimes I wonder if we're as blessed as we think. We see refugee's in war ravaged places who are starving and have only the sparse clothes on their backs but what we don't see or understand is that these people have a blessing WE don't. We just celebrated Thanksgiving...how thankful were you? Was it just another day? just another opportunity to over eat? or was it manna from heaven? Remember the story of the Israelite's in the desert? They were fed "manna" that was new everyday. There were a couple of reasons for that, one of which was so that nobody could horde it... also, because it's our nature as people to turn our back on God when we have what we need and God knew that. In order for them to continually experience the love and blessing it was necessary for them to be kept humble so that they wouldn't forget or confuse the source of the blessing. God was blessing them by keeping them close to Him! God was blessing them by teaching them humility, God was blessing them by teaching them trust and dependence...

We're so incredibly blessed in this country to have so many church's and the freedom to worship God in the way we see fit. We dress up in our Sunday best and listen to preachers talk about how we're not the church we should be. We kinda feel bad for a minute or two but it's easy enough to brush that aside and contemplate what to eat for lunch or think to ourselves "How perfect! we must deserve each other because you're not the minister you should be either" Meanwhile, somewhere in Guatemala people are being delivered from demons and all kinds of disease, healed from sicknesses,truly brought into the presence of the Lord! These people may not have a three bedroom house or a buffet of food to pick and choose over but what they do have is a real relationship with Christ! They've been in his presence, they'll never be the same...whats the difference between us and them? They're believing on Christ for everything, they've got no other "safety net" to catch them, it's absolutely a matter of life and death! That's a right here and right now blessing not a "Lord, please continue to bless me and my family so that we don't have to find out you're really all that we need!" kind of blessing!
I think that there needs to be a drastically different approach to the evangelistic movement here in the U.S. We need to be treated like the spiritually poor people we are! We need to be given a crash course in honesty about ourselves and where we are. If we could somehow strip away all of the "window dressings" and our "prosperity" to reveal the truth perhaps then we might actually be "blessed." If we could lay down our pride long enough to bend a knee before God and cry a few repentant tears we might experience forgiveness. Perhaps if we went through another "great depression" we might rediscover what it means to be thankful, to be dependent, and then, having "gotton over" ourselves...experience the love and blessing our Heavenly Father longs to give us!

Send in the clowns...

That seems to be the mood lately, I'm a little tired of all of these "reality" shows though. Does it bother anyone else besides me that we as a nation are so preoccupied with them? I think what we really need is an "Extreme Government Makeover", Or maybe we should watch "wipe-out" while the market tanks! Maybe we can ALL be contestants on our own "home version" of "survivor"...Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned, so why can't we "dance with the stars"?

It just amazes me how the priorities of a whole society can be so incredibly shallow...

That we, like the Romans, would prefer to sit back and watch these "spectacles," I suppose it's mostly because watching someone else be ridiculed or be challenged in some ridiculous way, somehow makes Us feel less ridiculous.

Hold on friends, before you take that extra Valium... I've got some "good news" too!

Do you remember the other day I was talking about my cars alternator and how it wasn't working right? A couple of days ago I changed the oil and when I pulled the car off of the ramps and parked it I noticed that the battery light on my dash wasn't on! I was skeptical, so I started it up a few times...still off! That turned out to be really important when I went in to do some pre-training for a job I'm trying to land and had to leave before it was light! It was previously unable to keep itself running when the lights were on. I talked with a mechanical friend of mine and he said that sometimes the brushes inside the alternator don't make good contact or something like that...I'm just saying THANK YOU JESUS! thats cool huh?



Here's another "coincidence" way back in 1994 a
guy smashed my windshield. (long story) I get a postcard in the mail from the prosecutor of Greene county telling me to call them and when I do she informs me that this individual has been picked up for another warrant and that this was still on his record as being unpaid. She asked me how much the windshield cost me, we agreed on 150.00$ and either today or tomorrow I'm expecting a check in the mail! GOD IS GOOD! strange is'nt it?
UPDATE! here's the check...received it tonight!

And then, there's this job opportunity I'm pursuing right now. I was interested in being a bus driver with the Couch Mo school district, only to find out that the maintenance man is quitting in October and they're going to need someone there too! Thats a better Job than just being a driver and I'll also make additional money driving for them! Hallelujah!!

So God really is looking out for me! I was talking to a lady yesterday and we both agreed that as bad as things in our economy/nation/world seem right now, we're probably only seeing the tip of the iceberg! It's SO much worse than any of us can even fathom...But are we anxious? are we depressed? NO! why? because we know from Gods word that these things must come to pass, and that like birth pains, these are the signs that our Lord will be coming soon. This worldly system of things is a wash out, we can't do anything to change it! All we can do is be busy here with our heavenly Fathers business of telling as many people about the real "great news" that there is a God! He does love us! He sent His Son to save us from being eternally separated from Him and from our own choice to be cast into torment! Thats whats important right now...don't you agree?

Send in the clowns, don't bother they're here!

I say send us the savior, it's ever so near!

Come go with me to that land over yonder, He s prepared for the pure and the true.
It s a place where sickness and death cannot enter, I m going brother how about you?
Maybe today or maybe tomorrow, He ll return in robes of pure white.
I m packing up now getting my things together, Who knows? It might be tonight...

The Day After

Yesterday was NOT a good day for a lot of folks, I saw the former CEO of AIG say that he'd lost about three billion dollars...A lot of people are having to accept the idea that perhaps they'll be working past the time they had planned on retiring. We're all concerned with the current state of the economy, it can get to you if you let it! Yesterday was my birthday, because my mother sent me a check for forty bucks I had the money to put gas in my car, go to West Plains and buy some groceries at Aldi with my food stamps,come home and eat lunch, and then later go to church. I've been having an alternator problem with my car lately. Last night after church it was dark and I had to turn on the lights. A few miles outta town it died on me and I was able to limp it into a turn off beside the road. We (my wife, daughter and I) got out of the car and my wife reached into the backseat to grab the ice cream we had bought in town to go with the cake she had made. I questioned her about that, not wishing for her to carry this melting sack for who knows how long it might take for us to somehow eventually get home, she persisted. We took off walking, it was a beautiful nearly full moon lit night but it was still quite dark. Within five minutes a pickup truck drove by us, stopped...came back and asked if we needed a ride (two women) We all loaded into the truck, girls up front and me in the back. These "Good Samaritans" took us all the way to my house which is located two and a half miles off the paved road down some of the worst roads in Oregon county...I've never been so thankful to anybody! Driving through the blackberry thickets,the lady driving mentioned how much she liked blackberries so when they dropped us off my wife gave her a couple of quarts out of our freezer we had picked last summer. After a few minutes of letting my nerves settle we had my birthday party...the ice cream was still frozen! Then my daughter gave me my present she had made, here are some pictures of the book she made for me...








this is the cover...








We love you when you're sad, (notice she has colored me blue) that's me sitting in my chair.







This is me when I'm mad!







you guessed it! me when I'm happy...about getting a job!





We love you because you're YOU!...yup, I trained this one!

It's quite a wonderful thing in these times of upheaval and stress and so much hardship to be able to appreciate how truly blessed I am. I'm so thankful to God that He loves me, a broken sinner! and that He not only has my present circumstances under control but my future figured out too! I'm so thankful that he gave me my family my friends and for the love they show me. and lastly, but NOT leastly, for the kindness of strangers!

Character still matters...(to me)

I've never had to deal with or forgive a spouse who was unfaithful to me like Hillary Clinton has. So I don't really know too much about that. I remember when it happened, I was all over Bill Clinton and so were most conservative people I talked to. As bad as a situation like that is, it was his lying afterward that nearly cost him his job and buried him in a lot of peoples eyes. What I can talk about with some personal experience is what it's like to have to forgive one of your parents for being absent from your life, or for being preoccupied with either work or other activities. My parents divorced when I was nine, as a child this event left me vulnerable to anything I could find to fill the void...I chose drugs. For the next twenty plus years that's what I did. I feel as though I could also forgive Sarah Palin for what I see as a similar situation within her family, but unlike Bill Clinton she's being held to a much different standard by the Christian right and either just doesn't feel as though it's any of our business , hasn't had Ken Starr to hold her accountable, or who knows? Maybe it's just never been "the right time" for her to be able to discuss it without being ripped to shreds...I can understand that I suppose. For my own personal reasons I see what she has done to be quite a bit worse that what Billy did, and her holding onto the mantle of conservatism a curious thing given that most real conservative women don't run for office,they support men that do, they raise their children and give them wise council. Here's another curious thing, that it takes about four years for us as American people to forget the previous lies that we were told by politicians and that we're all ready to not just hear some more but to believe them...again! It's pretty confusing to figure out who's telling us the bigger lies so I don't bother, I just look at who they are as people, the judgments they have shown in their public life but also in their personal life... I believe in forgiveness, mostly for the sake of the one doing the forgiving, but also to the degree that I sense peoples sorrow or regret. I'd like to support Sarah Palin, but I need her to at least acknowledge this thing so that I can defend her and wholeheartedly support her. We're the party of character,accountability and responsibility and it does still matter....to me.