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!

Memorial Day: Only the names of our wars and the victims' faces have changed

Memorial Day.

 This time, every year, I am once more 17, a pallbearer at the military funeral of my childhood friend, Lee Olemacher.

 Lee, a year ahead of me at Cheney High School, was drafted. The Vietnam War was supposed to be "winding down." The "Vietnamization" of the war, the White House called it. Our boys soon to come home while their boys shouldered the responsibility of defense.

 Sound familiar? Maybe we should call it "Afghanistanization," which may work better than the "Iraqization" of our wars, which has left a violent, sectarian, divided mess.

 But nonetheless, that autumn day in 1972 we laid Lee to rest in a flag-draped coffin, Taps were played, the honor guard fired the empty, somber salute. A folded flag was given to a mother grieving for her only child.

 Lee was a rare innocent, who took simple pleasure in a smile, a rough pat on the back, teaching kids to play baseball as a Little League coach. 

 Forty year ago, now. Had he lived what could he have accomplished? How many lives touched, enriched? I am almost 60, a graying, aging man with memories, good and bad, sweet and bitter. Lee is forever young, we'll never know what he may have become.

 Since Lee, tens of thousands more American men and women have died in service to their country. A new generation of maimed and wounded -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- come back to our shores.
Forty years, and still we war, still we hate, still we thing violence would serve the good, or we are forced into violence to meet violence . . . and the cycle goes on. 

What version of God or gods, ideology, political system or economic advantage is worth the blood we have shed, or been forced to exact in return from those who shed blood?

When will be beat our swords into plowshares and learn war no more?

Happy Memorial Day? Rather, I wish for us a Contemplative Memorial Day, and the commitment to work for peace, love and the dignity of our brothers and sisters one life, one family, one community, one city, one state, one nation, one planet at a time.

God bless, and empower us all to dream of, and help make better times.

And so it goes: Of pigeon-holing, limitations and unmet expectations

As an editor and writer, the thing I hate the most is being pigeon-holed in the eyes of others about what I can, and cannot do.

I've found this frustrating phenomenon inside the journalism biz in the past (as have many colleagues), and more recently outside the office in freelance work.
Certainly, folks DO have limitations and should accept them (like Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" Callahan advised, "A man's got to know his limitations.")

But I want to protest, nonetheless. In my decades I've worked a dozen beats, written books of fiction and non-fiction, technical papers, poetry, in-depth investigative articles, briefs, cops-and-robbers yarns, medical and high tech stories, magazine pieces, won more than my share of awards
.
I know. Yada, yada, yada . . . still, I don't see the same limitations.

But that's my judgment, based on what I've done and know; others make their judgments based on what they perceive. And ultimately, you can't really counter those gut assessments.

Life is like that, regardless your profession. You do what you can do, and move on -- always keeping in mind what is truly important: the ability to make a living for your family, love of wife, kids and friends, taking pride in your work and walking humbly before your God, or at least consistent with your principles.

And, so it goes.

Still, it sucks, as least for a moment or two.

Onward.

"Blind faith?" That's superstition. True faith has no fear of reason.

Learned today that for some folks, "faith" means blind faith, a resolute, eyes-closed, suspension of reason and refuge in circular arguments (i.e., why, if you aren't healed, you lack faith . . . and if you seek to confirm your healing through the docs, that's a lack of faith and, voila, no healing for you!)

Sort of an Evangelistic Soup Nazi approach, I guess. (A Seinfeld reference, folks).

Sad. For me, "blind faith" is more akin to superstition than belief and practice I believe Christ called his followers to emulate.

 

So, to those souls to afraid to test their faith with reality, I offer this from St. Augustine:

"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."

And since I'm on a rant, this from Lee Strobel, a self-described former atheist turned believer: 

"Is that what faith is all about—fooling yourself into becoming a better person? Convincing yourself there’s a God so that you’ll become motivated to ratchet up your morality a notch or two? Embracing a fairy tale so you’ll sleep better at night? No thank you, I thought to myself. If that’s faith, I wasn’t interested."

For Strobel, it was the evidence and reason behind open-minded faith that led to his conversion.

And finally this, from C.S. Lewis:

"You can have faith with or without religious affiliation - faith is a state of being. Faith is putting hope and power into that which we can not see now...but know we will see in the future.
"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods."

Beauty and imitation: Real world unrivaled when God's 'special effects' are displayed

One of the reasons I enjoyed the movie "Avatar" so much was the stunning special effects, the beauty of the exotic, extraterrestrial jungles, floating mountains, plants, animals, etc., created for the backgrounds.
The same appreciation was evident in the "Lord of the Rings" movies in the mammoth sculptures on the rivers, mountain fortresses and especially the abodes of the Elves with their surreal light and detail.
All fiction, those things.
But, to me, they pale next to the reality of breathtaking beauty in our "real" world. I was reminded of that when I stumbled upon this website, featuring the photo above -- and more than 20 others.
Stunning scenes, all the more so because they are places we can visit, touch, see, experience and . . . wonder.
So, take a look, and then, I dare you, go back to your daily tasks without a lingering sense of the inexpressible beauty of our planet, and gratitude to its Maker.

The heart of the matter: Year out from surgery, a new valve -- and a grateful Heart

I had a milestone today. My year out from aortic valve replacement surgery, I met with the surgeon who sliced, cracked, scooped out the old, about-to-fail valve and sewed in a new cyborgian metal, plastic and bovine model this time last year.

If all is well, one more battery of tests in August and then, hopefully, just an annual thing.

I've had so many EKGs and echocardiograms and blood draws (and the occasional cable up the femoral artery) this year I could put the sensors on myself; I can recognize the various chambers of my ticker when looking at the monitors.

I deal with this rather well, when I approach it with a journalist's curiosity, and intellectual awe at what medical science can do today. Kind of like being immersed in a Discovery Channel documentary.

It's when I get a glimpse of this ordeal through the eyes of loved ones that the appreciation also becomes emotional, even spiritual.

Perhaps, a lot spiritual, as in gratitude broadcast out to the cosmos and the Spirit of Love I know as God.

A through-the-eyes of others moment caught me by surprise on Sunday. Barbara and I took a walk on a glorious spring afternoon, finding a park bench to just sit and hold hands. The sunshine warmed our faces, the breeze caressed us and brought the scent of cherry blossoms. Time stopped.

She leaned over, put her head on my chest and hugged me, holding on for several minutes.

"What?" I said, with my usual sensitivity to the import of the moment (not).

She looked up at me, a tear spilling from her eye. "Just listening to your h-h-heart," she said.

"Does it sound weird? Is it clicking?" I joked. (That's how I handle those moments in life when things get too . . . serious. And often, when I handle it this way, it comes across as inappropriate. But  I am what I am; flawed in character, as well as in the cardiac realm.)

Live with it; I do. Thank God.

"No. It sounds ... like your heart," she finally answered, and began to sob softly.

So, I just shut up. And held her.

I was humbled in a way the word "humble" falls far short of expressing.

When you feel Love like that, sometimes you just shut your mouth, and hold on tighter.

Grandfetus revealed (and how). It's a he, and his name shall be Gabriel

Since my daughter, Brenda, and her husband Idal told us she was expecting, I've been calling my future grandfetus "Critter."
This was tolerated, barely, by the future parents.
Now, halfway through the pregnancy, a sonogram snapshot confirms that "Critter" is a male.
Captured for all to see are the appropriate . . . accoutrements to the male gender. Let's just say, without bragging, that the evidence is impossible to miss.
Even if the viewer suffered poor eyesight. Just sayin.
Moving along . . . 
So, the child's name shall be . . .  Gabriel Mims-Tchinang Tchoundjo.
I suspect, as the years come along, I will be calling him "Gabe."
After all, it took me nearly a year to get the pronunciation of my son-in-law's name (he's originally from Cameroon) correct.
It is nice they included our family name in there, though.
And, who knows . . . I might even have a special nickname for little Gabe down the road.
Hmm.
Maybe . . . Critter!

P.S. Not sharing the aforementioned sonogram, at the parents' request.

P.S.S. I'd have to include a viewer's warning, after all.