Greif is a GOOD thing!

This is a segment from about the middle of my newest book, "Day 0001: The Singularity and the Six-Day War". It has to do with the idea of grieving, and it came up this week in conversation with one of my favorite people in the world; it's for her that I'm reprinting it.

 

            “My mom. She’s gone.”

            There were equal parts sympathy and struggle in the room. No one here had ever met Mrs. Sutton; she’d never left Long Island, New York, so it was hard to say something meaningful to the boss. Dr. Wirtley patted him paternally on the shoulder; two women and one young man hugged him in turn, and various platitudes were shared with him. None of this seemed to affect his mood.

            <Doctor Sutton? May I also say, I am sorry for the loss of your mother. As I consider you my father, I think of Elizabeth Sutton as my grandmother.> Eisenhower looked up at the ME, taking in the whole of the machine the way we might look into the face of a person talking with us. <You included much information about her in my databanks, as you did about your entire family. Would I be right in concluding this was because you were hoping to consider ME a part of your family as well, and thus I should know about our family in turn?>

            Through tears, Sutton managed, “Yes, ME. I hoped you might think that.”

            <I am flattered, Doctor. Thank you. I hope that you will be proud of me.>

            “I already am, ME.” Sniff. “I already am.”

            <Thank you. I can tell you that what Grandmother believed about God seems to have borne out. He does exist, and His Biblical record is proving to be valid. Given her obvious belief in both of those statements, plus her demonstrated obedience to the teachings of Christ in particular, and her apparent disappearance at approximately the same time as the Rapture, there is greater than a 99.5% probability that she is in Heaven right now, Doctor Sutton. We do not need to grieve for her. She is – word choice? Happy? Happy.>

            Smiling through his tears, Eisenhower Sutton can barely choke out a “thank you” to his creation, and the three huggers come back to his comfort. (If someone had noticed the frowning Dr. Wirtley at that moment, they would have seen him asking Tommy Johnson, “Did that computer just tell us it had proved God exists?”)

            <It is my understanding, on an academic level only, that we grieve not for the person who is deceased, or missing, or moved on. We grieve for ourselves, for the loss that we feel when that person departs from our life. The grief is not significantly different whether they die or move or forego their love for us. The pain comes from the – word choice? Hole? Absence?>

            “Hole is fine, ME.”

            <Thank you, Doctor Yamato. The pain comes from the hole their absence leaves in our lives. As an analogy, I can theorize having access to a certain data pathway shut down, the one connected to where all of my interactions with you are stored, Doctor Sutton. I would still function at near-optimal levels, but given my memory of you would still have residuals in other databases, I would feel the absence of those interactions as a missing element in my existence. That, I believe, is what grief must feel like.>

            “It’s probably a little different in humans, ME, but that’s close enough. Given how many feelings you have had already, I’m afraid someday you’ll feel true grief as well. Believe me, I don’t wish it on anybody.”

            <But, Doctor! Grief is a good thing!>

            “How do you figure that, ME?”

            <It implies that you have loved.>

Let GOD shine THROUGH you!

A revelation from my reading of Genesis today, as part of my annual "Bible-In-A-Year" reading and analysis...

In Genesis 26:28-29, Isaac's rivals in the valley come to him (to his surprise, having had several disagreements recently), with olive branch in hand:

"We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, Let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord."

They were fudging a little, but the essence was on fleek. Isaac agrees, they all celebrate, and the next DAY, his new friends got God's blessing themselves, striking water in the desert on their next well. 

Similarly, in Genesis 21:22-24, Abimelech made a similar oath with Isaac's father Abraham:

"God is WITH you in all that you do. Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my descendents or my posterity, but as I have dealt kindly with you, so you will deal with me and with the land where you have sojourned." And Abraham said, "I will swear."

And again, while there might have been some slight fudging, this relationship immediately benefited him.

God's Lesson is Clear:

LIVE SO THAT GOD SHINES THROUGH EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO, AND PEOPLE WILL BE DRAWN TO YOU, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, DRAWN TO THE GOD WITHIN YOU!!  




It reminds me of the story of the six-year old girl questioning her parents about what she'd learned in Sunday School.

"God is really, really BIG, isn't He?"
Ah, yes, dear, He is.
"And we each have God inside us, don't we?"
Um....that's true, we do.
She thought for a moment.
"Then, He's have to show through, wouldn't He?"

Yes, dear. At least, if you're doing this Christianity thing right, He does.

Face up to our predictions...

So, as the ultimate "face up to our predictions" website in modern sports, here's how we did in our predictions for all 41 of the bowl games we just lived through over the last seventeen days...and after that Rose Bowl and that Orange Bowl, I hope the Alabama/Clemson game goes seven overtimes, so we can extend this college season as long as possible!

We laid out our FOLLOWING FOOTBALL pics within the framework of ESPN's "Bowl Mania" competition. Again, in the best interest of honesty, we'll tell you we placed in the top ten percent of the straight-up pick'em, and in the top two percent of the "confidence" set up where you rank your preferences, as we did. So, here are the games in the categories we felt "confident" in...

We'll start with the routs - these are the games (in descending order) that we think should be easy wins by the first team listed: Final tally, 5-2 here.

Mississippi St over Miami-OH Dec 26th [got it, barely!] ........ Tulsa over Central Michigan Dec 19th [55-10, Tulsa] ........ Old Dominion over Eastern Michigan Dec 23rd (Poor MAC!) [And yes, the MAC lost every game, but they looked ok in this one, and even WMU against Wisc!]........ South Florida over South Carolina Dec 29th [46-39 USF]......Temple over Wake Forest Dec 27th [whoops].........Middle Tennessee St over Hawaii Dec 24th [completely wrong!].......Utah over Indiana Dec 28th. [barely!] 

Here are games that we're pretty sure we know who's going to win - it might be close, but we're confident enough to bet on the first team (in descending order) if that were legal: Final tally, 4-3, missing BOTH Idaho state games!

BYU over Wyoming Dec 21st [as expected, 24-21].........Boise State over Baylor Dec 27th [where did THAT Baylor come from?].....Air Force over South Alabama Dec 30th [nailed it]........Washington State over Minnesota Dec 27th. [surprise Minnesota team, but I was happy for them]...... New Mexico over UT-San Antonio Dec 17th [winner chicken dinner] ......... Colorado State over Idaho Dec 22nd (hope not, though!) [Yay! We were WRONG! Go Vandals!]......... Army over North Texas Dec 27th. [Easy call -UNT shouldn't have been there.]

Next, these are the bowl games where we feel comfortable in our choice, but it wouldn't surprise us too much to see the underdog not only win but win big. But our fictional money's on the first team, in descending order of certainty: Final tally, 5-1.

Michigan over Florida St Dec 30th [missed it by THAT much!]....... Alabama over Washington Dec 31st (but we're giving Chris Petersen a month to prepare! UW has a puncher's chance!) [just not the athletes to punch]..........Wisconsin over Western Michigan Jan 2 (same deal) [more like what I expected]............. Grambling St over North Carolina Central Dec 17 [take a look at Grambling's season! Surprised it was only 10-9!]..........Southern Miss over UL-Lafayette Dec 17th [got it]...........Oklahoma over Auburn Jan 2 [all Sooners once the Tiger QBs went down]

Don't know what to say about this group...more of the same as above; we'd just be even less surprised if the favorite was beaten, I guess! Still in descending order towards the closest game: Final tally 5-2 here, too.

Central Florida over Arkansas St Dec 17th [the only game of six I missed on the 17th!] ..........Troy over Ohio Dec 23rd [Too much talent]............Georgia Tech over Kentucky Dec 30th [see above].............Virginia Tech over Arkansas Dec 29th [the most bipolar bowl game I've ever seen! 24-0 Ark, then 35-0 VT].........Pitt over Northwestern Dec 28th [nope, but great game by NW]...........Tennessee over Nebraska Dec 30 [too much talent on a lot of these games] ..........Stanford over North Carolina Dec 30th.[and yet sometimes, that's why they plat the game! 25-23 Cardinal]

Now we're reaching the "don't really know, but I kind of like this team" range. Our slight favorite is listed first, and still in order of descending certainty:Final tally, somehow still managed 5-2!

Iowa over Florida Jan 2 [see, now I was just guessing]....... LSU over Louisville Dec 30th [lucky guess]........Louisiana Tech over (heavily injured) Navy Dec 23rd [pleased Navy made a 48-45 game of it] ........... Colorado over Oklahoma State Dec 29th [completely wrong]......... Western Kentucky over Memphis Dec 19th [51-31 WKU]..........USC over Penn State Jan 2nd [what an amazing game! 52-49 USC]..........North Carolina State over Vanderbilt Dec 26th [41-17 NC St].

Finally, here are the seven "flip a coin" games. Mind you, we do like the favorite slightly, but only slightly. The last game is a literal tossup for us - the computer says half a point, max.Went 3-4, but if I'd flipped a coin that's about average...

San Diego St over Houston Dec 17th [lucky guess].........Georgia over TCU Dec 20th [31-23, another lucky guess]........Ohio State over Clemson Dec 31st [flipflopped several times, landed dead wrong!]........Maryland over Boston College Dec 26th [36-30 BC].........Texas A&M over Kansas State Dec 28th [as close as expected; 33-28 KSU]..........West Virginia over Miami-FL Dec 28th [wrong-o, moose breath!]..........and maybe Appalachian St over Toledo Dec 17th. Or Toledo over App St. Or a tie. Or..... [Ended up on Appy St winning, and that's about how the game went, too. Great game! 31-28, ASU].  

So, overall, we went 27-14, in games that are theoretically designed to be as competitive as they can construct. We'll take it! Like we said a few weeks ago, we do really well with college FB, Australian and Canadian rules...it's just the parity of the NFL that has our system flummoxed!

...and I'm a Rose Parade junkie...

Why does the Rose Parade hold such fascination for us that in the long-standing era of exclusivity in broadcast rights (Super Bowl ONE was the last sporting event covered by dueling networks, fifty years ago this month!)? John Nabor, a Pasadena resident and native, was asked that very question at the end of the ABC coverage this morning, and had most of the right answer: While the rest of the country is snowbound, we're celebrating a New Year with flowers and beautiful weather. It's a celebration of 128 years of tradition....

All of that is true. But there's more.

Yes, there's all that tradition - for example, if you watched today you were reminded that the reason for not holding the Tournament of Roses on a Sunday was that the parade would scare all the horses parked outside the churches on a Sunday morning. No more horses outside churches. A, we don't use horses to go places anymore - only horsepower - and B, we don't go to church any more, at least as a society.

But it's not just looking back - on New Year's Day (or its equivalent), we make our resolutions looking forward. We pray for a better year than the one just past. We want a sign of HOPE for the future, and what better sign of hope than a beautiful parade, entirely positive in nature (you never noticed that? It's very intentional...), on a fantastic sunny day in beautiful Pasadena, California. There's a reason every network that can afford to sends their crews to be a part of it - it's as important a part of that transition from old to new as the ball dropping on New Year's Eve in NYC...in the cold...often in the snow...always in the dark...get the contrast?

There's more to it than all of that for me personally, too.

I went to school in Pasadena for a year and a half, a student at the California Institute of Technology (as we never called it - it's always been CalTech). I was a band director for twenty-nine years, and taught marching bands that traveled the western US for most of those years. (Never marched in the Rose Parade, as student or director. And it's six miles long and starts at 8 a.m. - I don't regret missing it.)

So, I particularly appreciate watching parades in general, and the Rose Parade in particular. [I also admit that the purist in me HATES the Macy's Thanksgiving trend of making the entire parade stop so they can do a Broadway number for the cameras. Imagine the rest of the parade: stop, start, stop, start... When we took the Jerome HS band ("the Ambush of Tigers", thank you very much) to march in the Portland Tournament of Roses parade in 2012 (the little sister of the Pasadena version), we'd have to literally stop the parade every twenty minutes or so for a two-minute television commercial break! (There was also a fifteen minute delay for one of those Occupy Wall Street protests, but that's another story...)]

Over the years I took high school bands to several different "events" - maybe the most "glamorous" was the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which I got to take my band to back in 1999. Turn the corner, and the lights covering the televised portion of the parade (it's a nighttime parade) looked like Close Encounters UFOs were landing. The first quarter, half mile of the parade was marched on a red carpet, for Pete's sake! The crowd estimate was something like 1.5 million, and I absolutely believe it. I need to dedicate a blog entry to that entire trip. I'll save the rest and write that up sometime.

Some of the other trips we took were just as memorable, even if they weren't nationally televised. Yeah, the Fiesta Bowl parade was cool, but probably the most fun any of my bands and I had was on a trip where not a single performance had more than a thousand viewers. In 2002, we took a trip to Seattle (performed at the Seattle Center, marched through the complex), went north to Edmonds and competed in an indoor marching show, crossed the border six months after 9/11 (and THAT story alone is worth a blog entry!), performed in Vancouver, and ferried across the strait to Vancouver Island alongside three whales, toured Butchart Gardens, performed at Victoria's Parliament building.... none of it earth-shattering, but every person who went on that trip had the experience of a lifetime. 

And then there are the "every year" events, the ones you do as part of your community. The county fairs, the homecoming parades, the annual city celebrations... That's where you connect with your patrons as an employee of their school district. I used to always try to include my seventh and eighth grade band kids with the high school band and color guard whenever we marched for Homecoming when I taught in both Payette and Jerome. We'd end up with two hundred kids sometimes, hardly looking like what the Rose Parade precision did today, but the reactions! Parents seeing their kids perform with "the big kids", the classmates seeing them perform, and most importantly, the elementary kids getting to watch a huge band march by, and hopefully piquing their interest down the road....

Last story for today, but gosh, there are so many to tell! Since I retired from band directing, when I started getting sick, it pains me to report that the band program here (where I still teach the alternative school) has shrunk dramatically. Good young director who hasn't figured out how to connect with a larger number of kids yet. So, my daughter CC told me last month about a conversation she had with some fifth grade classmates after the high school band visited their school...

"The band isn't all that great, are they...", said the friends.
"Do you remember how the band used to be?" she asked.
"Yeah..."
"My dad was the director of THAT band..."

Pride is a sin. And I'm still working on purging it from my Christian personage. But obviously, Im not there yet...

If you've never read Adam 4d, you really need to!

I'm going to link the actual cartoon at the bottom of this post, but the context is almost not as important as what it is he's SAYING. (I'm going to make you click the link to find out what the context IS, because - dude, you really need to check out adam4d.com if you've never been there before!)



"DUDE, you're a Christian!! Do you realize what that means?"

"God chose you! Think about it! GOD! YOU! Before He created the world, He chose you to be adopted into His eternal family, to live forever! With Him! Think of how mind-blowing that is!"

"And consider what God did to accomplish that. The perfect eternal harmony of the Trinity, disrupted! God the Son, crushed for your sin! He took your punishment! God did! And He gave you His Own righteousness! Think about that. You possess the righteousness of God! DUDE!"

"You were transferred from death to life! From darkness to light! God the Holy Spirit took up residence inside YOU! GOD Himself! Now you're one of His! You're safe when you used to be condemned! You're free when you used to be in slavery! You're His! FOREVER! And the Creator of the Universe accomplished all of this for you when you couldn't do it yourself! Seriously!"




I have to tell you... I'm literally in tears just thinking about it when he puts our salvation likes that! Don't ever take God's Gift for granted! He doesn't.

(OK, OK, here's the link.) But, DUDE, you really should be reading Adam Ford's stuff without me prodding you.

It's the Start of a New Year - and the Start of Bible-In-A-Year!

Every year since I was saved on that Amtrak train between Fernley and Reno, I've read the Bible from cover to cover, taking notes and learning more about who Christ is, who I am as a Christian, and what it really means to be a Christian.

January First is always IN THE BEGINNING day! The rest of the book falls on different days - I usually end in August or September, because I simply read and absorb to my heart's content, rather than follow a specific schedule. But for some strange reason,Genesis 1 always falls on the first of January. Wonder why.

With that ado, here's some thoughts from my notebook on the opening three chapters of Genesis, the tale of Adam and Eve, the Creation of the World, the Garden of Eden and the Serpent...

It's good to remember that the humans who wrote Genesis were not the ones who were there. In fact, it wasn't even Moses, for the most part, although he apparently did the compilation when he started writing the Exodus down. Genesis is the combination of TEN different accounts of the time before Israel's family came to Egypt during the famine. They tell a history in a way that is true, but in places has the same difficulties as any telling of history by the people who came later. Because it's GOD, the important parts are TRUE. Beyond that, the choice of details sometimes got left to the humans.


 I will admit here and now that I am NOT a literalist when it comes to the "six days" of creation, but I am a firm believer in the story of creation. Here's why... Read the account: "Let there be light" - that's NOT the formation of the earth (it even SAYS so; that doesn't happen until v.10) - that's not the sun (that's in v. 16). THAT is so obviously the Big Bang that it's phenomenal anyone still argues it. "And God said..." - now that we've come to understand that both matter and energy is vibrations, how obvious does it become that God spoke the Universe into creation? What IS speech? Vibration. And we can go on and on. But most importantly, if you were God, and you're explaining to pre-scientific man how You created the Universe, how would You describe it? Think about that carefully, and then go back and read Genesis 1:1-19 again. Current cosmologists may disagree with some of the ordering, but the only thing that modern science hasn't matched the Genesis account in yet is the pre-flood lack of rainfall because of the upper and lower barriers of water in the firmament. The scientist in me cannot fathom that. The Christian in me is patient - everything else has proven itself true. [Oh! And the other reason I'm not a "six day" guy is that even God's account doesn't allow for the creation of a solar day until verse 16, the "fourth day". So, what WAS a "day" until then? That's all a caveat to pre-scientific man: It's an easier tale to tell when You're trying to teach Man the concept of a Sabbath if you give them a reason for resting on the seventh day - after all, it's not like He NEEDED to rest on the seventh day or any OTHER day.]


Remember the "ten accounts" part? Genesis 2:4 begins a second account. It's a second account of the creation of Man. Of course it backtracks!


Don't spend your time complaining that Eve listened to Satan and ate the fruit - she never even heard the directive! God gave Adam that order in 2:17, and didn't create his mate until verse 22! No, the sin that got us evicted was later. Read Gen 3:11b-13...

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

God gave them a chance to accept responsibility for their actions, and they each passed the buck. He immediately blames her, and she immediately blames the serpent. What if they had both said, "Yes, Lord, and we're sorry." Would we still be in the Garden? Possible.
 

Sometimes, getting my children involved in Scripture takes some creativity. My Star Wars addict teenage boy studied Genesis 1 enough to come up with this a year ago, just before Episode VII came out....fair warning, if you see sacrilege wherever you look, don't read further...

"In The Beginning, God created a galaxy far far away. The galaxy was without form, and void, and the Dark Side was over the face of the deep. And God Said, Let the Light Side Be, and there was the Light Side of the Force. And God saw that the Light was good. And God separated the Light side from the Dark. God called the Light Side Good, and the darkness He called Evil..."

Not to be outdone, my then nine-year old wanted to change it to Let There Be Cake! Again, you've been warned...this is from the Bible of the "Batter-Day Saints"...

"And He called the solid part Cake, and the creamy part Frosting, and it was good...And God said, Let there be a Knife to divide the Light from the Dark. And the Light He called Angel Food, and the Dark He called Devil's Food. And it was good..." OR this alternative... "...and He separated the dry cake from the liquid. And the dry cake He called Brownie, and the liquid He called Milk..."

The moral of the story: do (almost) whatever you have to do to get your kids into the Bible.


Notice that we're all supposed to be vegetarians, or at least we WERE before the Fall: This is Genesis 1:29-30....

29And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.    

It wasn't until death was introduced through the Tree of Knowledge that we learned to eat (and like) dead meat as food. (By the way, if you read the end of Revelation, it looks like the Tree of Knowledge will be present after the Second Coming, in our Final Home.)


Both God and the Devil tell the humans the truth about the Tree of Knowledge, you realize... In 2:17, God says, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And while God gave them a stay of execution, their immortal lives came to an end and they began their slow deterioration towards death at that moment. But listen to what the serpent says to the woman in 3:5 - “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And he was right: they did NOT surely die - at least not that day. And their eyes WERE opened, and they WERE like God in the sense of knowing good and evil - where they had only known good before. Tragically, the serpent told them the truth. And the temptation which the devil introduced that day is still the leading cause of evil...the temptation for something that we really wanted anyway...


There is a "gap" implied between Genesis chapters 2 and 3. At the end of Genesis 2, "the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed." When we start the next chapter, we only know that the serpent is casually chatting with the woman. In 3:8, God comes walking "in the cool of the day", fully expecting to walk with His two master creations (and knowing already what's happened, but that's another story), as if it's a regular occurrence. Here's my question: how long elapses between chapters 2 and 3? Do our ancestors spend two days in the Garden with God? Two months? Two decades? Why not two millennia? They were almost certainly immortal until they were cast out...I'd sure like to think that Adam and Eve spent a long time enjoying God's presence in the birthplace of humanity. (Actually, that's not true either - Adam was created in 2:7, and then the Garden was created for him in the next verse. But, again, that's another story.)


LAST THOUGHT: Here's something to sleep on... If you believe that God can create the universe...that God created mankind...EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK that it happened exactly the way Genesis describes it, remember that if GOD CAN DO THAT, DON'T YOU THINK HE CAN DO WHATEVER MIRACLE YOU NEED TO HAVE HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE?   

Never lose faith in an omnipotent God. EVER. Even if YOU can't imagine how your situation can be salvaged, HE CAN. And WILL.