Dis-ciple?

Jesus! I don't write or say too much about the man. For some time now I have held my Jesus cards close to my chest. This is not because I am ashamed or embarrassed to admit my love for and belief in him, but because what I feel and know about him is personal.

Think what you will of me, and base those feelings on anything you choose; something I have written, said, or done, a brief moment that we may have shared years ago, or even something someone else said about me. Look at a photo of my fat head and decide that I am worthy of ridicule, read my book and choose to hate me, it doesn't bother me (anymore).

Just don't dis my Jesus, or somebody else’s Buddha, or Allah, or Yahweh, or even the belief that none of them exist.

For a world wishing to be draped in a garland of tolerance (a terrible word if you think about it), we sure do hate a lot. The Religious and the Atheist, the Liberal and the Conservative, the Coke and the Pepsi; we find it easy to express disdain for each other.

(If you have to be right all the time, then you are probably wrong most of the time.)

Not too long ago I was at a special family gathering at an LDS (Mormon) church in Salt Lake City. We filed in and sat down, filling the room with happy chatter and light laughter. While we waited for stragglers to arrive, a man with authority walked in and introduced himself. After some shaking of hands, he made an announcement.

"Well, the election is over, but if I were made king, I would outlaw tattoos, Halloween, and motorcycles."

My reaction was immediate, even automatic. Without a word or a thought, I stood and made for the door as if deeply offended and unwilling to listen to another word that the opinionated stranger had to say. As I reached the threshold, my father-in-law said in a half-jest, "I think we have all three of those categories here tonight."

The family laughed at both my reaction and my father-in-law's statement, while the man with authority stood before us looking confused. I turned around and sat back down with a smile, believing that I had made clear my point.

But upon reflection, I doubt that the man with authority grasped the message behind my humorous disagreement with his narrow-minded and unsolicited declaration, or my father-in-law’s subtle warning to respect the family that he loves in spite of their many imperfections.

If he is out there reading this, here it is. I hope he figures it out this time.

Since you are a Mormon, I know that you believe in Jesus. You believe that he came to save sinners from themselves. Some of these sinners wear suits, colorful ties, and scuff-marked loafers, while others sport black leather jackets, blue jeans, and scuff-marked riding boots. A good amount of sinners drive mini-vans, work ten hour days, watch golf on television, and check their 401k online every four minutes. Others ride motorcycles, work ten hour days, watch Clint Eastwood movies, and check their 401k online every four days. All of their hearts pump blood, all of them sleep when they are tired, and all of them eat when they are hungry. They love their wives (I hope), care about their kids (they’d better), and all of them want to be happy.

And since you believe in Christ, you believe that they all sin.

You are aware that you are one of them, right? A sinner?

I’d like to think that your announcement on that happy night can be excused by your suffering through some traumatic childhood event. Perhaps one dark Halloween night as you trick-or-treated, your mother was run down and killed by a tattooed biker. Maybe Daddy didn't love you as much as he loved tattoos, trick-or-treating, and his motorcycle. Maybe you loved all three as a teenager, but your parents were zealots and beat that love out of you.

Because as a believer in the same Jesus, I would hate to think that you feel that way in order to be like him.

I’m not sorry to say this, but that ain't my Jesus.

A man that I admire above most (and one that I am sure you wish you could be more like) once spoke of a bumper sticker that had taught him a powerful lesson. It asked of its readers, “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”

Full disclosure moment: I fall into all three of your would-be-illegal categories. (stories about each to follow in time)

I am no great study of theology, and I don’t think any of them are real ardent sinners, but I am willing to bet that Jesus, Buddha, Allah, and Yahweh wouldn't hesitate to slap that same bumper sticker on whatever they drive.

And I bet at least one of them drives a motorcycle.

Blueberry Eyes

“I’ve done some bad things to get here,” I admit through cracked and bleeding sunburnt lips.

The man I have chased across the desert lies captive and silent at my feet, his hands tied behind him with rope, his naked ankles cinched together with rawhide strips. 

I take a sip of water from my canteen and refuse to wince as the hot metal burns the sores that have plagued my mouth for days. I distract myself with memories of her and the pain subsides, but in deference to hatred rather than love. My boot swings back, then finds its way forward in an instant, connecting with the man’s stomach. He folds in on himself and coughs blood onto the ground.

“Several months back I was a decent man. I spent weekdays behind a clerk’s desk, Saturdays with my family, and Sundays in the presence of the Almighty. A good and kindly married fellow, I was happy to be a father, content to be simple, and determined to be God-fearing. I had never so much as yelled at another man, let alone shooting one in the gut and watching him die, like I did to your brother. I shunned confrontation, hid from violence, and tempered my emotions. Modeling myself after meekness, I hoped to one day inherit the earth.” My throat dry with confession, these last words sound gritty and desperate.

I take another sip of water from my dwindling supply.

My prisoner, the father of who I have become, looks up, his eyes squinting in pain and sunlight. I move to cast some shade across his face, then ignore his pain while searching his eyes for terror. There is none. Not yet.

“But then you came and murdered the meekness, strangled the temperance, and filled my path with confrontation and vengeance,” I explain, before spitting blood and bits of burnt lip onto his cheek.

He shudders as the gob of blood, spit, and skin trails down across the bridge of his broken nose. I chuckle with dark pleasure and walk over to my horse. She is a beautiful grey that until last week carried someone else, someone now dead and unburied. I pull a small leather pouch from my saddlebag.

Returning to his side, I squat low beside him. The knife stuck in my belt fills his view, and his breath escapes in sudden bursts of panic as he struggles to turn his face away from my reach. Small clouds of dust rise with each desperate gasp. The red drool of the broken and beaten drips from his lips. I watch, a tickle of satisfaction running up my spine. Terror is rising within him, I can feel it like a warm breeze on my face.

“Ever been a father?” I ask quietly.

He stops struggling and drops his head into the dirt. Comprehension has paralyzed him.

"I'll take that for a yes." I shift my weight, and my heels dig deeper into the dust. I fumble with the leather pouch, and the soft cloth figure falls out into my hand.

She is a simple affair, hand-made from love and left over cotton scraps, her face painted on with patience and blueberry juice. Her red and white checked-gingham dress remains clean and bright, but its time inside the protective leather pouch has pressed it into wrinkles. Looking down at my daughter's doll, my eyes fill with tears.

"I don’t expect I'll ever inherit the earth; I've resigned myself to eternal hellfire with the dark sins I have committed since the day you rode into my life," I hear myself saying.

The man on the ground begins to sob. His body trembles in the dust. "Please Mister, don't kill me," he cries.

The sound of his despair is beautiful to me. Her doll rests still and soft, cradled in my left hand. I slide my right hand down to my gun.

His sobs grow louder and more wretched. I look at him; he has turned his head to face me. His eyes fill with sweet terror as they dart from mine, to my gun hand, and finally, to her doll.

Thunder rolls. I look up at the clear indigo sky. No clouds. And then I feel it, the gun in my hand, my finger on the trigger, the barrel clear of the holster.

Her doll stares up at me with those blueberry eyes.

-The End.

----This short was inspired by the terribly painful sores now coating my sunburnt lips, my boyhood love of "The Sacketts" paperback book series (written by Louie L'Amour and gifted to me by my mother), and the fact that my daughter is away this week and I miss her.

Lend Me Your Laboratory-Grown Ears!

A human ear has been grown on the back of a mouse. This is gross, but also cool; the future is now. Rather than get into a lengthy and heated discussion on how this proves (to some) that God and Science can’t get along, let’s look into the marketing potential of this exciting news story. Don your Kafka sunglasses and ride this one out with me.

Marketing potential for laboratory-grown human parts:

-Smoking Never Felt So Refreshing As It Will When You Win A New Lung From Big Tobacco! Buy A Carton Now To See If You've Struck It Lucky!

-Cirrhosis, Schmirrhosis! Drink Up, You Just Might Win A New Liver! (Details at the bottom of this bottle.)

-Eat Your Way To A New Heart, Only At (insert any fast-food chain name here)! Collect Matching Game Pieces To Win A Brand New Laboratory-Grown Heart!

-Carpal Tunnel From Too Much Late Night Computing? Buy A Computer From Us Today, And We’ll Guarantee You A New Wrist When Yours Blows Out Completely! (No embarrassing questions asked.)

-Brain Dead From Watching Too Much Terrible Network Programming? Want Re-Runs To Be New-Runs Again? Watch Even More Television To Be Entered Into Our Drawing To Win A New Brain!

There are many more and I would have continued, but I have a lot of smoking and drinking to catch up on...

Playing Favorites

When I was about sixteen I borrowed a shirt from a friend. It was a soft-blue, button-down, cotton casual oxford. I never returned it, and wore it unbuttoned over my “Save the Wolf” tee shirt well into my early twenties, when it actually fell apart at the seams.

Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy was my favorite book throughout my teenage years. The well-written and fast-paced story of a conventional third world war fueled my ever-fearful-of-a-world-war teenage imagination. I dog-eared my way through its pages over and over again, reading it on the school bus, in the tub, on campouts, and in the flashlight privacy of my blankets at night. I am not sure where that book wandered off to in the end.

At the age of 17, I started writing with a green ball point pen made by Bic. “Love” letters, song lyrics, short stories, and the occasional journal entry; they were all written in green, using that ball point pen that wouldn't dry up. I loved that pen until the day it finally died, somewhere in Paraguay. I was twenty years old.

I had a brief affair with a 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser when we lived in Seattle. She was painted green, wore chunky new tires, and looked great topless. The very thought of her roll bars makes me grin. Beautiful and petite, she was also tough; she loved to climb mountains and wasn't afraid of mud. We spent our weekends together in the Cascades, and my wife wasn't in the least bit jealous. I sold her when we moved back to New Hampshire with a new baby boy in tow.

A good friend and hero of mine gave me his watch. It was a simple black and white analog timepiece, and the wrist band was just a red and black braided bracelet that he had made out of string. I wore that watch long after the last time I saw him, waving goodbye from a rusting rattletrap of a bus in the middle of nowhere, Paraguay. I lost the watch a couple of years later, and was upset about it for some time.

I took several beatings for Roger Staubach and the Dallas Cowboys in the 70's. We lived near Pittsburgh, and in spite of two Super Bowl losses during our time in Steelers country, I wore my Dallas gear to school on the days after both. I lost some blood, a little skin, and had there been any friends or pride for me to lose, I probably would have lost them as well.

When I was sixteen, I bought a beautiful muzzle-loader from a trader at a mountain man rendezvous. Much like the gun Daniel Day-Lewis carried in "The Last of the Mohicans," there were six extra inches on her barrel, and her wood was naturally patterned to attract the eye. She shot straight, stood tall, and I loved her as much as I had ever loved anything. Every time I slid her out of her long, black, cloth cover, men would stop and stare as if I were peeling a lacy thigh-high off the leg of a sexy starlet. Upon hearing her roar, some would even dare to ask how much money I would take for her. "There isn't enough money in circulation," I would reply with a grin. Years later I lost her in the move from Seattle to New Hampshire, and I don't think I even have a decent photo of her. I still sit and think about that gun from time to time, and my wife can usually tell when I do, because my mood shifts to the left of happy.

I often think about these and other favorite items that I have loved and lost over the years, and wish that I still had them. But I wonder if they would be priceless in my hands, just as they are in my memories.

Probably not.

Well, maybe the gun. Sitting next to me on the seat of that Land Cruiser.

West 4 Independence

"I think I could do this," I whispered.

"I was just thinking the same thing..." Ella replied, her own voice barely audible.

I reached out and took her hand in mine. My eyes wandered across open fields, up mountains, and  towards the big blue sky.

This simple exchange occurred two years ago this week, while driving through Eastern Utah on our way to spend a few days with Ella's family at Bear Lake. We had already spent a few days in Oakley, relaxing at the family cabin. You wouldn't think that surrounding ourselves with two dozen or so nieces and nephews would be a relaxing enterprise, and in the past it hadn't been for me. But that year I had embraced it, and found the experience to be a restful one. We had spent the evening of Independence Day at the Oakley Rodeo, where we watched the bucking, riding, roping, and when it was over, the colorful flashing of fireworks overhead.

I searched my memory for a more patriotic 4th of July but could not find one.

Bear Lake was sunny, hot, and metamorphic. I had brought the first half of a manuscript that I was working on, and it was passed around to brothers and sisters-in law. A discussion ensued one afternoon, as we sat in the sun and watched the kid-cousins playing in the water. Common ground was uncovered, and for the first time in an eighteen-year marriage I felt kinship with Ella's family.

I flew home two days later, leaving Ella and the kids to stay in Utah for a couple more weeks. During that time the cell towers between us crackled and sparked with excitement as Ella and I discussed our plans to move west. It was unreal; we were the last people on the list of those destined to move to Utah. We had long ago fallen in step with those bent on stereotyping, ranting, and speculating when it came to “Utards.”

By the time Ella and the kids were home, my excitement had melted in the hot humid air of New Hampshire. We would not be moving; we ran a successful business, lived in a nice home, enjoyed the company of good friends, and loved our sweet little town in spite of its growing pains and ever-increasing tax burden. Wasn’t the thought to move west just a knee-jerk reaction to a restful vacation? Would living in Utah be as wonderful as visiting had been? I imagined my doubts until they grew into the joy-killing weeds of reality. I informed the Salt Lake City based company that was eager to meet me that we were no longer seeking an immediate move to Utah. Ella and the kids were deflated.

Summer ended, school started, and happiness struggled. We pushed our way through the autumn months in slow motion, still hoping for a reasonable end to the perfect storm of emotions that had raged since Jared’s suicide two years earlier. I wrote sporadically, never imagining that I would actually finish my account of the troubled relationship I had shared with my little brother, and the shame that I felt at having abandoned him whenever he had truly needed me. I longed for a sweeping, cleansing change, but fear and the unknown stood in the way. Driving the winding, canopied roads of New England became a metaphor for life; I couldn’t see where I was going.

An unexpected email, a couple of phone calls, and a flight to Salt Lake City later that winter seemed (at first) to confirm my doubts. I had come to meet with that same interested company on their dime, but upon entering their office I knew in an instant that it wasn’t to be. I threw the interview and left the building. Looking up at the grey layer of winter smog, I felt depressed, lost, and let down.

And then I accepted a ride up to Summit County. There the sky was blue, the sun was bright, and the mountain air was clean. Snow covered the ground, but I was warm. It felt like home. I called Ella and told her that yes, we could do it, but it would have to be at 6500 ft.

Soon our house in New Hampshire was on the market, and so was my business. Both sold with little trouble, each to good friends looking for their own sweeping, cleansing change. Ella flew west, and after a couple of days searching around the valley, she found the house and neighborhood that had been waiting for us.

We moved in just before the 4^th of July, one long and winding year after that moment of clarity we had shared in the car. One of the first things we did after unloading the truck was to buy tickets for the Oakley Rodeo. As it began, several girls rode into the arena on horseback carrying the Stars and Stripes. The crowd went wild as the flags fluttered and a song about “Home” began to play over the loudspeakers.

One year later.

Ella has made our home comfortable and happy, and she has worked hard while I have scribbled. When she goes missing I know to look for her on the back deck, where she is sure to be sitting on the couch swing, staring up at the mountains with a smile on her lips. The kids have settled in; they’ve made new friends, tried new things, and admit to loving it here.

My book is finished. People love it, and I refuse to check sales figures. I like to drive through Summit County; out here I can see where I am going.

I am doing this; we are doing this.