Miracles: They start by recognizing the miracle that is Life -- and the Lifegiver's love for us

My daughter, Brenda, is in the hospital for at least a couple days. Started having contractions one week into her third trimester. Naturally, docs in Baltimore want to prevent a premature birth, especially this early. 

She is holding it together, but a father can hear the worry in his little girl's voice.

 My son-in-law is the same steady, encouraging and loving man in a crisis as I have come to know in less trying times. And, our shared faith binds us together.

For Barbara and I, this is a deja vu moment. Thirty-eight years ago, my son was born at about 6 1/2 months. Three weeks in infant intensive care and the docs then refusing to say more than "we will do what we can." He made it and has thrived.

Docs then told us the "miracle" word was not to be dismissed, and God knows we prayed for one.
So many years later, the science of prenatal care has advanced far . . . but the outcome, as always, remains outside our hands.

In other words, friends, we find ourselves once more praying. We welcome your prayers as well, whatever form they may take.

I am reminded of the 139th Psalm, David's to the wonder of God and life, and the assurance that whatever we face, He is with us and cares for us:

"Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb. 

 I thank you, High God--you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration--what a creation! 

 "You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. 


" Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day." (Psalm 139:13-16, Message)

Be charitable, but beware of bogus charities that enrich no one but themselves

One of my pet peeves is mindlessly giving to "charity" without having the smarts to first check them out.

When you think of it, blindly donating every time you get a letter soliciting donations, or a telemarketing call, is no brighter than giving your hard-earned bucks to one of those neer-do-wells holding a cardboard sign outside parking lots, street corners, etc.

You know, the same "homeless" folks you will see pouring out of a van as part of an organized professional begging operation, or later driving an SUV to a house in the suburbs. That's why, if you want to truly help the homeless, you should volunteer in a rescue mission kitchen or donate directly to non-profit shelters.

But I digress.

Let's talk about established "charities" that are nothing more than cash-generating machines. They take $1 from you, and maybe spend 3-4 cents on their purported causes.

They play off the desire of Americans who have big hearts, but little time -- or desire -- to check out where they send their donations and what ends up getting done with them.

CNN, the Center for Investigative Reporting  and the Tampa Times combined their resources to explore such bogus charities. Here's their list of the "Worst 50."

It's NOT my 60th birthday . . . I'm just 39, for the 21st time

Sixty years old. 

Sounds old. So, I'll express it this way: I'm marking my 39th birthday . . . for the 21st time.

Honestly, a few years ago I did not expect to make it this far. Except for, IMHO, miraculous intervention and skilled docs (they do work together, you know), I would not have done. Since age 55, really, I've felt I was on borrowed time, and I became convinced of it a little more than a year ago when an aortic valve replacement helped me avoid what the cardiologist said was imminent death.

It's been a strange journey. My profession has made me an observer. My faith has made me an uncomfortable participant, as belief has wrestled with that human feeling (certainty?) of cosmic incompetence.

You do your best. You depend on faith to bridge the gap between comfort and conviction, insecurity and aspiration, fear and courage, mediocrity and the dream.

You don't want to leave anything important undone.

I think of Hemingway's character, "Harry," in the short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," who awaits death from a gangrenous leg wound on a cot in an African hunting camp. He laments having waited to write things, thinking he had to wait for accumulated experience before he could do those things justice. Now, those things would go unwritten.

Now, that he had weighed his life, seen what was truly real, judged himself, punished himself. He faces the end, dissatisfied with his spiritual sloth, and yet, as he drifts toward the end, acceptance and peace and perhaps self-forgiveness come.

That was Hemingway's hope, for Harry and himself. The horror, the truth is that the realization of dreams unsought due to personal cowardice, insecurity and procrastination are too often the last thoughts before the end.

There's a hyena that skulks around the camp at night, coming closer each night. Like Harry's leg, is smells. In the story, the foul odor and death personified become one.

One passage I like a lot from the final moments of Harry's life is part of a prolonged conversation with his wife. I find it particularly poignant:

"Do you feel anything strange?" he asked her.

"No. Just a little sleepy."

"I do," he said.

He had just felt death come by again.

"You know the only thing I've never lost is curiosity," he said to her.

I wake up, every day, curious. Curious about what life will bring to me and my loved ones that day. Curious about how news events I will witness, report on and read about and see that day will affect the Story of Humanity.

That's the baseline, the purely human part of me, I suspect. Add to that a sense of awe, adoration of God and his creations, the rare wonder of life in all its varieties, and regardless of the really minor irritations that we perceive as mountains, it's worth getting up and walking into the dawn.

Of bicycle tumbles, screaming dogs and obnoxious Mondays-that-basically-suck

Sheesh. Beautiful Monday morning so decided I'd bike to work for first time since my heart surgery a year ago.

Suffice it to say, I will be compiling a personal "Do Not Do While Biking to Work" list.

(1) In avoiding #$@% sprinklers that soak the road, parkway and shoulder of the street, do not ride on the wet, long grass of the parkway. (This results in sudden slippage and copious amounts of blood from elbow and knee; and broken tail light).

And in keeping with Mondays Basically Suck
  truisms, here is something obnoxious:
 "Cody, the Screaming Dog."

It has to be fake, right? But it IS obnoxious.

... Nooooooo!  It's not fake.

ARGGGGGhhhhhh!