Music soothes the savage beast.

Lot of writing procedural stuff today and Bank of America comes across with a lousy loan modification deal (we'll do the back and forth of course because no business I know of would unilaterally accept the losses I'm looking at it without pulling their partners in to share liability; screw them, they want to take title to property basically making their note worthless they're welcome to it. I've been through this with Aurora already.).

While all of this is going on I'm plugged into my IPOD. Two Goo Goo Dolls songs remind me of some other challenges and beginnings back on Long Island circa 1983/1984 (even though the songs and the band didn't exist back then). The first "Here is Gone", hearkens back to letting go of some personal losses while doing a lot of riding across the 2 lane highways of the North Shore on my Kawasaki KZ750 (sometimes I would get on the Orient Point Ferry during the evening and cross the Sound to Connecticut). Not sure I can really adequately describe those moments; the feel of the leather seat as I'd tap into first gear after kick starting the engine; the dull vibration of the motor reverberating as the wheels unwind on the highway underneath me on an early fall day with the sun setting; the black soft separation from family (a lot of time out at night simply screaming down roads overnight), school friends, and old associations slowly growing and being replaced by the embraced solitude of a semi-rural environment; the realization I was moving on and not going back to my parent's home or the aborted adult life which had crumbled before me, ever. The beginning of a smile that could make the right woman blush. Some stuff sticks in your head (Even now, I still smile, and J, sometimes, still blushes). So, here's a decent YouTube video of "Here is Gone", which, at least for me, creates some neural triggers (you can minimize the advertising embedded in the frame). I usually turn the volume up on this and try to damage my hearing or at least a couple of synapses when listening. It still seems appropriate and I'd probably recommend the same for anybody in similar circumstances (Hell, if you're crossing that type of mental terrain with that little light, would you even want to live forever? Just go and turn the volume up and feel the wind in your hair.).



Click thru the embed (which YouTube has disabled) to the YouTube site for the WB official video and tune.

My favorite set of wheels at rest on the patio where I kept her.

The second tune is "Let Love In".  Like this year, 1983 brought a lot of issues to disposition and unfamiliar places to travel through.  You find yourself making up a lot of stuff as you go along.  At some point in time you hit your stride and realize you'll get to exit another tunnel, at least for that day.  Twenty eight years ago I had found my own pace on a tough piece of road, but started to recognize my solitary shadow when J popped up as a medical assistant collecting blood samples at the nuclear power plant I was working at.  It starts like this; you walk into some make believe examination room in the back of a tractor trailer and find yourself in front of some medical tech with candy blonde hair, large blue eyes, a kiss of freckles across her upper cheeks and dressed in a short white nurse's dress (from southern California yet).  After two years mainly by myself and a lot of time on the road I just stared alot and in the following days found myself trying to hit locations where my eyes could drink things in for just one more time.  Lots of stories here, and both of us had enough history that it felt like being released from some decrepit prison where even the guards had lost interest in performing their duties.  For now, just a snapshot of an intense late spring/early summer.  First, a first kiss at the center of the Brooklyn Bridge ("That's not NYC, I'll show you NYC", in laughing response to her tale of the NYC tourist tour) and today a copy of Roebling's engineering plan for the bridge hangs on our stairwell wall.  Second, a memory of my hands slowly encircling her waist following a dinner date during May 1983 and really fighting a desire to let my hands see for me (I mean really fighting that odd mix of "I want you" and "I stopped caring about things some time ago, so why don't we enjoy tonight"; I really liked this girl.).  She asked to go home at that point, but something unspoken passed between us that night.  It's hard to capture the thousand small gestures, sights and sensations that comprise the start of a relationship.  Suffice it to say a mix of forgotten intimacy, desire, talk, and some personal, quiet contentment marked her sojourn and mine as accidental fellow travelers at Shoreham late in the spring of 1983.  Six weeks later, with J returning to the left coast, I asked her to marry me and on May 12, 1984 we married on the anniversary of our first meeting in a tractor trailer where I gave up some blood and remembered what it felt like to be a young single man.  So here's my emotional memory of that six weeks.



As before, click thru the embed (which YouTube has disabled) to the YouTube site for the WB official video and tune (not as good as the first video, but the lyrics and tune catch the moment right).

And in the fullness of time, a very happy, but tired Mom and Dad posed with their daughter Rachel.  And we started down a new road.  It was a nice time.  I really didn't appreciate it enough at the time.

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering."

Another lagging draft, mainly composed Good Friday night, reflecting on my observation of the Passion and the renewed attention to the priest abuse scandals both here and in Europe.

The NY Times has been having a field day with accusations Pope Benedict failed to act strongly enough against child abusing priests decades ago while heading up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as Archbishop of Germany. I’m loath to give the accusers too much credence because too often church critics despise the church and its adherents (I suspect because of both doctrine and its standing in the Christian world). From my perspective, secular critics often cherry pick circumstantial information to suit a preconstructed narrative and would not mourn the fall of the man, or his church (I guess it’s sort of like that old saying of never going to an ex-spouse to get the true measure of an individual; too many people who believe themselves wronged preserve an amazing capability to nurse grievances for years and often use that grievance as justification for ad hominem attacks and slurs when the opportunity arises).

And of the monster priests? Do I believe they were coddled by bishops who confounded their understanding of the mission of the church with the neglect of adequate discipline for corrupt individuals who preyed on children? In some spectacular cases, yes. In others, the desire to be an agent of “grace” to the repentant (or those offenders simply gaming the system) was probably quite a temptation. Sadly, the victims were often simply expected to forgive these transgressions of their childhood and move on.

And now the current holder of the keys of Peter, made explicit in his definition of church dogma ex cathedra magesterium, who to Catholics by definition is infallible with regards to definition of church dogma (at least since Vatican I), finds himself called to account by a hostile media who treats him as if he was the CEO of a business who gave shelter to criminal enterprises of the worst kind. Needless to say, even though we differentiate between dogmatic infallibility and human flaws, there is a tendency within the church to view these accusations as an attack on the foundation of the church itself. As for me, as an intellectual descendant of Martin Luther, I wish the dogmatic authority codified by Vatican I in the person of the pope had continued to be reserved for the College of Cardinals, but I’m not blind to the increasing hostility of certain atheists within the community to all aspects of Christianity and particularly it’s public expression by believers. Faith, for some people, only deserves ridicule.

Within my Christian home, I recognize that Catholic arguments the Reformation would lead to an endless splintering of the Christian community without some allegiance to tradition and church authority are not without merit. One need only look at the long list of splinter Christian “churches” who embrace all sorts of odd doctrinal conclusions (all “biblically based”, of course) with their handful of members (Fred Phelps, in particular, comes to mind as a particularly repulsive representative), to realize it may not be a good idea to tell people anything they discern from their reading of the Bible is necessarily valid. From my perspective, we join organizations and institutions which ultimately may be as corrupt as the darkness which lies within our own souls. They are all things of man, and reflect the flaws of men. So we sit within imperfect institutions, worship our God, and listen to the jeers of the hostile crowd without.

Which brings me back to Good Friday. Pastor Tim this past week during the Tenebrae Service of Good Friday quoted a writer I wasn’t familiar with who claimed almost everybody “gets” the wreckage of Good Friday. We know the wreckage of couples who lacking the passion to renew their relationship, much less fight, and simply quit and walk away. We know the wreckage of the 12 year old girl kicked senseless by a 15 year old classmate for upsetting him with a set of text messages. We hear the voices of doomed passengers talking to loved ones they’ll never grow old with, saying goodbye to the children who they’ll never see graduate school. We hear the unexpected horrifying diagnosis, see the unexpected arrival of a drunk driver careening out of control, have watched the light fade in a loved one’s eyes and felt the warmth and strength of a human hand go cold and flaccid. And I sit in stone cold silence and horror during those moments, where simply continuing to breathe is an effort.

And yet 2000 years ago, this man, this iterant preacher, this innocent, meeting his end subjected to the most foul devices of torture and death the denizens of the most fearful empire of that time could come up, spoke only of forgiveness for his captors. He spoke of love, and said even though we didn’t deserve it, our creator loved us and would create a bridge for rapprochement through his sacrifice. It was said his followers saw him numerous times after his death, the same and yet, somehow, changed. Many of his early followers, rather than renounce their faith in him, went to their own deaths. Believe in him as son of the living God, or not; the world and its’ many faiths have produced few stories like his.

My faith has changed during my life, but my wonder at that story still renews me. The institutions and politics are really just an aside. During my moments of doubt and challenge, the difficult thing to live with as a Christian is not my belief in his resurrection, but the long wait following his ascension.

And some came running.

I went to the Fort Lauderdale Corporate Challenge 5K Run this past Thursday (I'm trying to make an effort to generate "real time" blog entries, but time is always limited, and, so, here I am playing catch-up with my own online enterprise. Sigh.). Anyway, it was a nice night (typical for southern Florida this time of year) and a chance to traverse and linger in some places I don't usually get to. The number of participants was smaller than in the past two years, but I'm guessing that probably reflects the economic downturn of the past year. The race itself has the competitive, "seeded", runners staged in the front of the field, and the "hoi polloi" (which includes your humble correspondent) in the rear. For myself, the days of running a six minute mile across a 5K course are somewhere behind and north of here.

I spent the two days after the race dealing (or, better yet, suffering through) with the side effects of an acute bout of Achilles tendonitis (which infuriates J, who sees a refusal to deal with a problem which should be fixed; I, of course, see only reminders of an inevitable decline which concludes with nothing left to decline). More curious yet, I suspected that might be the most concrete outcome of the evening and still found it hard to relinquish my performance, if not my participation. So I hung out amid the corporate tents, talked with some coworkers about things other than work, broke some bread (over veggie lasagna), and covered 3.1 miles in about 33 minutes.

Still, for that evening, I was in a semitropical, semiurban outpost with fountains framing the high rise condominiums of the Fort Lauderdale skyline.  My old sneakers were laced up and my running shorts were on.  There are some moments it's just good to be there, in that moment.  This was one of those times.

Some companies run as teams with their team members sporting shirts with corporate colors or logos.  They line up with everybody else under the city parking garage and wait for the starter's gun to go off.

And when it does, the seeded runners burst forward to hopefully establish some personal best record for themselves.  The remainder of the pack slowly surges forward, first walking, and finally passing beneath the balloon festooned starting gate.

Eventually, the pack breaks up enough for us to all find our personal pace, and our associated "personal best".  I've come to prefer starting behind and coming forward, rather than starting with an unobjective bravado and falling back in exhaustion.  I find my place in this river of middle class, middle aged denizens of the corporate woods and look for the ocean with them.

Eventually we finish, congratulate each other, inquire after finish times, bust chops, and watch the sun set overhead behind the towers fencing the park we're gathered in.  I hope the ankle supports I'm wearing might spare me any real discomfort in the next days, but time and circumstances have moved on, as has that day.