My cousin Rob died young, but learned lessons for the ages

The first time I met my younger cousin, Rob Castor, he rushed up to the table where my aunt had made breakfast for my dad and me . . . and, with a big toddler grin, unleashed a spit-laden raspberry all over my toast.

He ran off giggling, his plastic pants a blur.

Over the ensuing 50-plus years, my contacts with Rob were better. Along with his three younger brothers, they were the closest thing I had to male siblings.

The fun-loving kid grew into a sometimes wild, partying teen and young man. He always had a smile, laughed at everything, seemed to love everyone.

No judgment from Rob, who was all too aware of his own foibles.

Like many on the maternal, Scots-Irish side of my family, he had a weakness for, and lifetime struggle with addictive behavior. It was a gene I, too, have had to fight.

Alcohol. Tobacco. Drugs. Food. Whatever would fill the gnawing hunger inside.

Rob paid a heavy price, his health suffering as he grew older.

His 56th year, this year, would be his last. Just a couple weeks after we had a wonderful, upbeat talk on the phone, he suddenly passed away. 

We had talked about growing up in our strange clan, the good times, some of the bad. He was considering weight loss surgery, something I had gone through a few years back. He was optimistic, motivated.

I encouraged him. He shared his rekindled Christian faith with me.

He never had the surgery. They say a complete renal shutdown did him in.

The last thing I remember, now, is his laughter, and concern for my parents. "I love them so much!" he said. "I'm praying for them."

Rob died young. But he did not leave us before learning, and practicing, a lesson — perhaps The Lesson — many of us never embrace:

Loving and accepting each other, flaws and all, is what it's all about.

I'm proud of that about my cousin. And in that love of life and others, without judging them, he will always be my mentor.

God bless, cuz.

I'll see you again, soon enough.

I'll just listen for that deep belly laugh, step into the Light and give you a bear hug.

Will meeting E.T. be the end of faith? Depends. How BIG is your God?

I firmly believe in God. I am a Christian, albeit a rational one.

I have faith in Christ, not magic. I am convinced that the Truth has nothing to fear from the truth, in other words.

So, I've never subscribed to the fear some of my coreligionists have that the discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life would be the undoing of faith, somehow.

It depends on your "faith," I would argue. How BIG is your God? And does the idea that a finite human mind cannot comprehend the thoughts, means of creation, capacity for Love and Justice of the Infinite One also threaten your belief system?

If so, time to open your eyes and marvel at the cosmos. Time to open your heart, gaze into the eyes of a child, and experience wonder.

That we may not be the center of the Universe, or the only special, beloved creation in it, does not diminish the love for a special creation — whether us, or us and others created in the mystical image of God.

It's nice to know I'm not alone in that conviction.

Read this article, and soar.

http://www.space.com/16285-alien-life-discovery-religion-impact.html

Going home: Even with Alzheimer's, the heart knows the way

When I was a boy, our preacher's family moved often.

Before I was 11 years old, I had attended a dozen schools in California and then Washington state as Dad and Mom took various pastoral positions, or sought employment between those "callings."

Mom would work as a waitress, sometimes holding down two jobs at once. Dad would take odd jobs ranging from warehouses and grocery store stocking to janitorial work and department store window display.

Always, though, the first thing done when my folks arrived at a new house or apartment was to set up the beds for my sister and me. That, along with Mom and Dad, and the smell of poached eggs and toast to send me off to school in the morning, made it "home."

When I heard the saying, "You can't go home again," I didn't, at first, understand the idea. When I later read Thomas Wolfe's novel, I grasped, though still did not share, the concept.

Home was where my family was, where I was tucked into bed at night with a prayer and a kiss on the forehead, sometimes after a story from Dad.

"Home is where the heart is," Mom would often refrain, fond of such truisms.

She taught that lesson to me decades ago, when as a young boy I both anticipated, and dreaded, going to a new school, fighting new bullies to earn my place as the "preacher's kid," and hopefully making a friend or two before the U-Haul truck reappeared in the driveway.

Time, as it will, has slipped by like an unrelenting river. I'm no longer young, but a grandfather. Yet, my Mom still taught me the Lesson during my trip this past week to visit her and my father in eastern Washington.

Dad is in an assisted living facility now, frail, just recovering from a mild stroke, but at 92 still alert, his memories intact.

Mom is in a 24/7 Alzheimer's facility. At 86, she is physically healthy for her age, but the disease has robbed her, and me, of so much. So very much.

She no longer recognizes me, nor can she speak more than a couple words, and usually nonsensically. 

As I tried to rouse her from a near-catatonic state, caressing her face as she sat in a wheelchair, I watched her breathe. When she finally opened her eyes, there was, for so long . . . nothing.

She stared blankly into space. No response.

Finally, my wife, Barbara, and I rose to leave. But before we did, as has always been the practice upon parting in the Preacher's family, we prayed.

I prayed for her peace.

What else was there to petition the heavens for? 

Wasn't the unspoken prayer that, with so much of her gone, the rest of that flicker of a once sharp, articulate and life-loving woman could also depart?

A final time, I bent down, kissed her softly on the forehead, as she had so often done to me.

 "I love you, Mom," I said, then began to move away, fighting the hot tears welling in my eyes.

There was a murmur, almost a whisper. "Me . . . too."

I looked back at her, but too late. Her gaze was locked on some invisible realm I did not share.

But, for an instant, I was home.

Love, work and deeds: Do you 'play for mortal stakes'?

The late Robert B. Parker, who created the literary Boston detective Spenser, entitled one of the series' novels, "Mortal Stakes."

Not the first time, curiosity over a title or phrase or quotation in a Parker book spurred me to investigate further.

This weekend, while reading a collection of Robert Frost poems, there it was:

"Only where need and love are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sake."

I read it several times. It had the feeling of . . . scripture.

The stanza above comes at the conclusion of Frost's recounting his joy of chopping wood -- until two unemployed lumberjacks come down the trail.

Silently, they watch him work . . . and silently, he understands that what he does for joy, they need to do for making a living -- mortal stakes. In the end, their need overcomes his joy; he pays them to finish the work.

This poem ("Two Tramps in Mud Time")  has so touched me that I've posted the above stanza at my work station.

Somehow, it makes me feel much better about starting another week of labor.

A painful lesson in Grace, 'truth,' and anger

Some lessons in life, seemingly, need to be repeated time and time, and time, again.

Case in point: Before you go off on someone about something you are just sure is true . . . confirm it, regardless the apparent veracity of your source. Then, think twice, three times, before going off on someone, period.

You can apologize after, that is true.

But you can never take back what was said, emailed, whatever. It still scars, regardless of a mountain of subsequent remorse and pleas for forgiveness.

I have, more times than I will allow myself to think about long enough to count, been on the receiving end of this phenomenon.

And I have been the perpetrator, too. Even lately.

Makes me slap myself, and appreciate Grace all the more.

We all deserve a coach ticket to hell, many times over, based on what we have done, thought, or even deliberately ignored or dismissed in our relationships with other human beings.

It's a good thing, a very good thing, that our Judge offers us forgiveness, not because of what we do, but through Grace, i.e. unmerited favor. Because of who He is: Love.

Doesn't mean, though, that we cannot improve. Day by day, decision by decision, we can choose.

I am going to try to choose better, and to do that with renewed commitment.

How about you?

Faith: A choice, a yearning to be more than an evolutionary dead-end

Take an evangelical, fundamentalist preacher's kid and mix him with a liberal arts education. 

Season him with more than a few decades of living, and you either come up with an agnostic, a metaphysical schizophrenic, or a believer, stripped down the basics of his faith.

I confess to, at times, flying like a confused, sometimes angry or at least disheartened moth, too close to the flames of the first two fates. The journey to faith — my own faith, not necessarily that of my parents — has been occasionally exhilarating, often painful, and all too human.

It has been, philosophically, an eclectic odyssey. That likely was inevitable, considering my History and Journalism double major and a minor in Psychology, followed by a career in journalism (a petri dish for cynicism, as professions go).

Ultimately, it is human nature that convinces me my faith — albeit skinned of what I concluded were doctrinal and theological assertions created not by an infinite God, but by finite human minds — makes more sense than pure secular humanism.

I could (but don't worry, I won't) write reams on why I find this so. Let a couple observations suffice:

— The fact that our species has not ceased warring with itself since it began, committing genocide on ever-larger scales, makes me bitterly laugh at the idea we are the pinnacle of sentient evolution on Earth. 

 

We may boast how much more sophisticated and civilized our high-tech, educated society is now compared to our stick-wielding, tree- and cave-dwelling ancient ancestors, but we continue to produce the same rotten fruit.

It's still about territory and resources, and who has the right — or might — to claim them. And since such brutal calculus always makes our "better angels" wince, we still use politics, religion, culture and racism as excuses and justification for dehumanizing and dismissing the Other.

— Yet, we desire to be more. I would argue that we were created for more, but are broken. Despite all the pain and madness humankind inflicts on itself and its planet, goodness persistently bubbles up within individuals, and reform movements. 

Changes for the better, history teaches us, are as finite as our bodies . . . yet we continue to reach down to the fallen with one hand, even as we bludgeon our enemies with the other.

So, faith. Because without it, without the saving grace of our Maker, we will remain stuck, either as an evolutionary dead end, or a creation to be ultimately redeemed, reborn and perfected.

I prefer to believe the latter.

Lessons from a mountain hike: The earth, friends and faith abide

It has been a long time since I have been able to go hiking with another guy of my generation.

Last time, in fact, was when I was just 20 years old. That three-week excursion was with my best friend, Clark, and we backpacked all over northern Idaho's Kaniksu National Forest, sleeping on the ground next to a campfire with our rifles nearby, in case the occasional bear, coyote or cougar should happen by.

We shot (well, I shot) and skinned, cooked and ate a squirrel, and had quite a collection of marmot skins we hunted in a logging slash high above Priest Lake. (Clark's dog mauled the skins, which had been scraped, salted and stretched to dry . . . but since that springer spaniel also chased off a big brown bear we surprised on the trail, all was forgiven).

We bathed in lakes and icy mountain streams. We slept under the stars, and a couple nights under pup tents as thunderstorms rocked the mountains with sheet lightning and torrents of rain, only to rise at dawn, shoulder our packs and head higher.

Now, I'm 60. Old knees and a repaired aortic heart valve have slowed me down, but that just means it takes longer to get up the scrub oak-dotted slopes of the Wasatch Front to the firs along the ridges. The elevation is higher and the air thinner in Utah's mountains, the rivers, streams and lakes not as numerous as the lush pine mountains of my youth; my boots now crunch on dry undergrowth rather than spring from a moist carpet of moss and evergreen needles of the Pacific Northwest.

What has not changed, though, is the pure, simple joy of a hike with a friend. The smell of fresh air and wild flowers, the thumping of your heart, pulsing of the blood in your legs, the tightening of muscles, even the aching of your feet and rivulets of gritty sweat soaking into your shirt, are serendipitous companions to discovery.

Here, a new view of the Great Salt Lake Valley and Western Desert; there snow-capped peaks above Emigration Canyon and the highlands to the east. Or, following a game trail that leaks into an arbor of trees and a shady alcove, you catch your breath, sip warm water from a canteen and share a few words, a laugh and the moment with a friend.

Tuesday's excursion, a rare day off during the week for me, was with such a friend, Rich. Obstensively, the purpose was to sight in his new pistol, and for me to inaugurate my own compact 9mm "conceal carry" and sight it in as well. We hiked into a likely area, a couple miles away from the road, found a safe place with a good bank of dirt, and did that.

The hike was the thing, though. Blue wildflowers were bursting from the greenery erupting from recent rains, and a stream along the trail was full with spring runoff. Birds flitted through the branches, seemingly frantic in their nesting, food gathering and the exercise of territorial imperative.

After walking back to his truck and safely storing the weaponry, we trekked up the side of another slope, perhaps half an hour or so, to check the condition of Rich's archery tree stand.

It was a good spot. Elk and moose tracks, some less than a couple weeks old judging by the most recent rainfall and the slippage evident from the hoof prints, were everywhere. I listened to Rich's observations, picking up on his knowledge -- and respect for -- wildlife, the terrain, and the unspoken joy of sharing the outdoors.

One more, important thing my friend and I share is an understated, yet resilient faith in God. We talked a bit about that, too. Simple faith, perhaps, but it has grown profound and deep with decades of pain, joy, grief, triumph and most of all, trust in and acceptance of our Creator.

And in those moments we climbed the trails and smiled and drank in the vistas where northern Utah's high deserts blend into forests, I better understood the musings of an ancient king who wrote of things temporal and eternal.

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever." (Ecclesiastes 1:4 KJV)

Across continents, white, red and black, we are family

Irony seldom disappoints me. Often, it delights me.

I'm just back from a recent trip to see my daughter Brenda, her husband Idal, granddaughter Lela, 6, and our grandson Gabriel, who is closing in on his first year on this planet.

Our grandson's full name seems a perfect segue for this post: Gabriel Idal Mims Tchoundjo.

-- "Gabriel," in Hebrew, translates to "God is my strength," or alternatively "man of God." As an archangel, he appears whenever something big, indeed history-making, is about to occur: Daniel's prophecies of the future, including the End Times; announcing John the Baptist's unexpected coming, and then Mary's coming role as mother of the Messiah; he also is to trumpet in the End of Days, according to St. John's Revelation.

-- "Idal" reflects the given name of our grandson's father. It is a name that appears, in various forms, throughout both African and European cultures, often meaning "noble."

-- "Mims." That was a blessing from my son-in-law and daughter, a way for our family name to live on in the next generational bloodline. The family name goes back to the the Middle Ages, perhaps starting with a folks operating a ferry over the then-significant Mims River in the vicinity of modern-day Wales (Mymms), though DNA and genealogical records show more instances of the name in Ireland, as well as Middlesex, England (Mimms). In America, the name embraced lineages of the Cherokee, too.

-- "Tchoundjo." The family name of my son-in-law, whose origins go back to west-central Africa and the Republic of Cameroon. The history of his people is hundreds if not thousands of years older than the United States, and today they are united by their shared French and Bamileke languages.

West-central Africa generally was the origin point for the slave trade, though most of America's African slaves came from the Ghana-Senegal regions. Still, in the 1700s, some coastal peoples in Cameroon were abducted, by other tribes or white-led raiders, and sold to slavers headed to the Deep South. In other words, it is possible that some of my southern forebearers may have worked their plantations and farms with African labor bought on the auction blocks of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia.

Most Mimses fought for the South, but there are about 30 who donned blue uniforms -- a few of them whites from the Northern states, but more than two dozen of them African slaves who had escaped, or in rare instances been freed by their "masters." Recruited by the U.S. Colored Troops Divisions, they shed their blood for freedom under the only surname they had ever known, Mims.

The circle has closed with a union of love and bloodlines that stretches across continents, time and space, in the smiling, laughing form of a child named Gabriel.

One day during our trip, our rainbow family visited Harpers Ferry, where in 1859 abolitionist John Brown and his band tried to seize the armory with the goal of arming a slave rebellion. He failed, his followers either slain or imprisoned, and he was hung. But his act arguably accelerated the ultimate break between North and South, eventually leading to the end of slavery in America -- and the beginning of the long, tortuous path toward racial equality.

Somehow, it seemed very right to share that visit with my son-in-law, especially. A young man I have become so proud of in the short time I have known him. He is a brilliant medical professional, a newly sworn-in 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves, a man of integrity and faith, patience and compassion. All those things, and more -- a loving husband and gentle, yet firm father.

We are Family.

The times we live in: Where even the cops say arm yourself for that walk to work

Our police chief in Salt Lake City of late has been boasting about how crime is down in the city's downtown core, i.e., the environs of the homeless shelters and free clinics.

Or, perhaps it is simply that people who used to report crimes -- folks you a couple years ago moved into new condos erected as the formerly depressed area of rail yards was "gentrified," got tired of the futility of calling in drug deals, bum fights, drunks urinating and defecating on the sidewalks, etc.

I work in the middle of the worst of this area. Every morning before dark, I ride the train downtown and get off one block from the shelters and the scene of weekly stabbings and strong-arm robberies committed by that criminal element that thrives within any large homeless community.

Like wraiths, there are always a couple of shadowy forms peering out from the parking lots, alleys and not-yet-open business entry ways.

During the daylight hours, the danger is likely less, but you cannot walk half a block without being accosted by beggars with stories of woe, and the hungry, wan look of meth or crack addicts in bloodshot eyes.

Twice, by different police officers I've dealt with as a breaking news reporter, I've been strongly advised to get a concealed/carry permit and carry a locked and loaded firearm.

Having once been confronted in the predawn dark by a couple street men, one circling behind me while the other attempted to cut me off from the front, I took the advice.

On the cited occasion, I was somewhat younger and lucky enough to find a piece of scrap rebar in a vacant lot that convinced the two to walk away.

Now, a last resort would be a legally obtained and licensed handgun. I pray I never have to pull it out, let alone fire it in a desperate, last ditch defense of myself, my family or an innocent stranger.

But this is the world we live in, and as my police acquaintances told me, going unprotected into such areas as where I work, and at the time of day I work, is to go naked into a den of hyenas.

So, today was another morning in the Zoo, the Asylum, or some circle of Hades, whatever you call these occasionally very mean streets. The shadowy forms flitted into and out of the dim street lamp lights, and away.

On the train platform where I daily get off to walk the couple blocks to the office, someone had abandoned a shelter blanket in one place, and a pair of underwear a few feet away. On other days, I've walked by huddled forms, their ragged faces brielfy lit by the glow of their crack pipes.

And, in front of the Tribune's main entrance was an abandoned syringe, the needle gone. I carefully picked up the syringe tube and tossed it in the garbage.

After all, little kids walk that sidewalk later in the day on the way to a nearby children's museum and school children by the busloads visit the planetarium across the street. 

Still, it seems an almost futile effort, like trying to dig through a mountain of sludge with a teaspoon.

The economy, and lack of jobs -- at least ones that can support a family or pay a mortgage; drug addiction; mental illness ignored by underfunding of needed treatment programs; and the human predators who thrive within a desperate, often hopeless community . . . all are contributors to the sickness.

All those things, and at the heart of it all, of our existence as human beings, the hopelessness of spirits broken by life, and however to define it, yes, sin.

And so, here's the bitter irony. On one hand, I am a Christian who gives tithes and offerings toward various outreach programs to the homeless and others suffering on the fringe of society.
And on the other hand, I live in a world where just going to my job means facing the possibility of a life-threatening encounter -- and, in the most extreme of circumstances, one where it becomes -- as it has for others, too often -- a decision to take a life to keep your own.

Obama's foreign policy . . . of denial and misdirection

So, our President's foreign policy (is there one?) gets slapped around like a trollup in Kiev, and in addition to anemic "sanctions" and brave words, his response to Russia's expansion into Ukraine is to dismiss them as a weak "regional" power? 

A regional power still with enough nukes to turn America into a glass desert, and one devoting more and more of its resources to modernizing and building its military; a regional power that is actively thwarting peace efforts in the Middle East.

No wonder, then, that as I watched this president, for whom I once voted, give Putin the raspberry in his news conference Wednesday, I thought of the crazy Emperor Caligula.

He took an army to the English Channel to invade Britain, only to declare victory and telling the troops to collect sea shells as their spoils of war.

I would have a lot more respect if The President just said, "Hey, our military is exhausted by war, and public won't support any new adventures, and frankly, we just don't much care about Ukraine."