Thanksgiving 2018

So apparently I haven’t written a Thanksgiving post since 2015. Maybe I should write more. This would, of course, require me to watch less. I don’t know how many hours of Amazon Prime TV I’ve racked up over this week of break, but if I did know, I would probably be embarrassed...

but still very thankful that that is even an option. I am a member of the very last generation to remember before the internet was an assumption. I recall using card catalogues in libraries, when letters with stamps were still a perfectly normal (and timely) way to contact someone, and when your personal music collection took up a couple of drawers and was only organized by the album. Oh, and cell phones were a brand-new thing.

And now we have—pause and take a brief look around whatever screen you’re reading this on—all this. I can hit a few buttons, click a few more buttons, and whoosh: these thoughts are out there for everyone from my grandmother to the nearest NSA agent to see. The closest my father could get to this at my age was a letter to the editor. Or maybe a chat room, but somehow I doubt he was that technically savvy back in 1990. Now he has a smartphone, along with everyone else—the man who grew up handwriting reports, only from what was available in the school library. My grandkids will hopefully be unable to even think in those terms. “Oh, you want to know the mating season of the Fijian Crested Iguana? No problem.”[1]

If Thanksgiving had an essence,
it would be turkey, mashed potatoes,
and this...

And it’s not just the tech. I have a couple of best friends who love me (even on my surly days), a plethora of family who love me even more (even on my annoying days), and a church with people who make sure I don’t get left at home alone on Thanksgiving—which means more than I would probably ever admit. And there was buttermilk pie. Do you know how hard it is to find buttermilk pie in northern Idaho? (And they gave me leftovers!) We played a mammoth round of Russian Palooka, had a few risqué Bananagrams, sang all sorts of lovely music. As for the rest of life, I have enough money, a job that pays the bills, good health, and more books than I will get read in the next two years, if I’m honest.

Does it get better? Sure. But please God, never let me shovel ingratitude over the blessings of the moment. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. On to Christmas!

---

[1] March to April. https://www.australiazoo.com.au/our-animals/reptiles/lizards/fijian-crested-iguana. Now you know.

To Destroy is Easy, to Build is Hard

For a pebble is nothing, a fleck, a speck,

easily held in the hand and tossed

from palm to palm. But this trifle

can bring down a forest--

The hilltop, long still, then

jolted: hop, skip,

rattle, a shower, a crowd, a torrent, the crash

of avalanche. Such smashing asunder, subtlety thrown

out in thunderous rush as the pebble roars

with his million brothers. How to destroy

ten centuries’ growing? One frenzied ounce

 of stone changing potential.

Chaos starts small

But pebbles cannot build a temple:

cornerstones are made of sterner stuff.

Massively shaped with blade and roughed,

smoothed, and never tossed, instead:

Abiding.

(Oct. 20, A.D. 2016)

Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Have you ever suddenly glanced up from your screen and realized you had been scrolling for far too many minutes?

Of course you have. That is what Facebook, Instagram, and the rest of the social mediums and sorcerers are designed for, after all: to pull you in, keep you there, and give you a magical dopamine high while you do it. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

(ooh, you didn’t see that coming, did you?)

Those of you who know me well know I love entertainment media more than most. I read thousand-plus page books. I’m the kind of guy that caused Netflix to come up with the binge-watching format. I sing along with musicals (and southern gospel cds). And I did once watch the entire Lord of the Rings extended editions back-to-back-to-back—although it took a little more manly fortitude than I was planning on. Short version: I like entertainment, artificial dopamine highs, and the advent of the Age of the Screen. All for it! Pop the corks! Cue the golf applause!

But where it gets dangerous—particularly for me and those of my ilk—is when all that magic happens by accident or for the wrong reason. Such as when you’re planning on writing a homework assignment and you watch three hours of Star Trek instead. When you call your brother and instead of asking about his soul, you ask about his movie preferences. When you are scrolling down your feed and bump into an exchange that was typed with both fists, in all caps, with little understanding, patience, or grammar. Social media is magic. I can revel in the vacations of my friends, keep up with the growing families of my cousins, find out about cool events in my area that otherwise would have flown under the radar, and all from the comfort of my desk. But it has a dark side, too: insulation from real people, fomenting of envy, and a large amount of time consumed in doing absolutely nothing either productive or truly relaxing. When was the last time you looked up from scrolling and felt well-rested, refreshed, and satisfied down to your toes?

Since you’ve gone to my Facebook page (which is, I presume, why you’re here) you may have noticed that mine’s a few degrees off of standard. It’s a little light on pictures of my daily life, rarely says anything political (or even informative), and my friend group is rather...limited. This post is about telling you why that is, (yes, I do it on purpose) in the hope of inspiring you to take a look at your own feeds and pages and make a few conscious decisions about where, what, and when. Let me pull back the curtain and show you how a few nuts and bolts go into the page that is my public Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

First off, I only friend people I know well enough to have an actual, casual chat with in real life. Facebook is far more like an extended living room conversation that way, instead of an envy platform. This means, by the way, that if you tried to friend me and I didn’t take you up on it, you should talk to me more. Hint hint. This has the added advantage of keeping uncharitable offenses down to the minimum. I’m sarcastic by nature—some might say I’m jammed down on the “chronically sardonic” end of the scale! I have found over the years that social media is about the worst possible media for conveying such sentiments. (Though emojis have helped.) People have a hard enough time telling if I’m being serious when they can see my eyebrows and hear my tone of voice. Hopefully knowing me in person cuts down on the possible misunderstandings. Second, I actively try to keep what I post either inspiring or funny. I actually do want people to walk away from their social media time refreshed and satisfied, particularly in a world that is scary, strident, and incessant. If one of my “It Happened at WinCo” or “Bachelor Chronicles” makes your day a little better, I’m meeting that goal. Third, I will post pretty much no political/religious controversy. You’re always preaching to the choir or ticking somebody off, at a distance where you can do nothing about either. There may be a helpful way to do that, but I know that I can’t; at least not in that medium at my point of life. If you like doing those things, go for it, but that’s not my cup of tea. Fourth, remember that barring an EM pulse or a systemic electrical shortage, those posts are more or less permanent. Do you really want your employer, future spouse, or God Forbid, your kids pulling a few of these things up at a later date? The mind, as Jeeves said, boggles.

I’m sure there’s more to say, but that should do for the present. Go forth, and scroll no more!

Fine, I’m kidding. But at least think about why you do what you do when the screen is lit.

Words and Water Worries

The trouble with impromptu activities is the lack of planning. Water, for instance. Water would have been nice.

I’ve got four slightly-uphill miles left until I reach home; or more accurately, the refrigerator. Twelve other miles behind me have narrowed my focus wonderfully. When Jesus promised that those who drank living water would never thirst again, the inhabitants of arid Palestine must have felt like this. That sounds amazing. Tell us, is this living water chilled? Does it come with ice cubes in the door, like in Texas? That would be great.

Today was not supposed to be an exercise in cameldom.

It was actually supposed to be a quick bike ride over to Wal-mart for footwear. My tennis shoes were on their last leg and starting to look like they’d escaped from the wardrobe department of a zombie apocalypse. I started getting a blister last night at work because the left shoe had a gap in the padding that went clear to the rubber. So I dutifully plodded off to go find a pair of shoes to last me another eighteen months. After finding a pair (black, so I don’t have to change socks after school; and cushy, so I still have blood flow at work) I strapped them on, tossed the old ones in a nearby can, and stood exultingly in the breeze.

And that’s when it hit me. Wal-mart was already on the edge of town, and I’d been musing about the need to get a little exercise today. Why not bike the seven miles to Pullman? Sounds fun. It’s not all that hot. I’ll be fine. So off I went: an impromptu excursion.

And, at first, it went swimmingly. There was a hint of a breeze, the noon sun gently baking me from a few million miles away... you know, if I’d known I was going to be out in this a few hours instead of a few minutes, I’d have worn sunscreen. This is going to take my ruddy Germanic tones a few shades up the chart. I glance at my arm. “Ohhh, he’ll feel that tomorrow!” “I think he is feeling it now!” “Ouch!” The Balto quotes roll out easily, accents and all, despite the lack of audience; I am alone as usual these days. Oh, well. I’m sure the angels enjoyed it.

Pullman is still in one piece and swimming with growing bustle as new freshmen and their parents make their first trip to Washington State. Part of my track crosses the campus, and on a further impromptu whim to my impromptu whim, I swing left. The WSU library is up here somewhere, and I have nothing else planned this afternoon. Now, let’s see. Logic dictates that a library, being an important building at a college, will be on the older part of campus, and the oldest parts of campuses are generally in the middle (and in this case, at the top of a rather steep hill). One map and rather less oxygen later, I found it. The surroundings—both inside and out—were a sharp reminder of what a big business education has become. I attended Texas A&M for a year and a half, and I know what the look, smell, and feel of plenty of state money is like. WSU has it. After three years of a one-room library and meeting in professor’s living rooms, it feels strangely decadent to look out a thirtyfoot library window at football players stretching on crisp Astroturf, a well-paid coach advising every third or fourth one. You can almost smell the dollars. The ungrateful students swarm by, superbly unaware of the prestige, power, and often wickedness they are financing. “Ignorance is this.” The library is spacious, modern, all lack of angles and unscented light. They only have one book by C.S. Lewis—such shame. They try to make up for it by four full stacks of Native Americana. I remain unimpressed. My hunt for the military history section takes me across the rotunda to the older section—the original library. 
Suddenly I’m in a very different world. That inimitable old library smell, the bare wooden desks and chairs, the relentlessly right-angle stacks narrowly crowded from dark floor to ceiling, few windows and less fresh air—here is the heart of scholardom on Earth. I am content. Here are words enough for any lifetime, words upon words upon words; some good, some bad, all bound and waiting patiently for wanderers like me. A few hours are spent reading half a book on dreadnought battleships, but outside the sun has moved unseen and other obligations approach. I return to modernity and its curves, pastels, and overabundant light. While the helpful young lady at the circulation desk grants me a library card, I glance at the wall, where a plastic pink triangle sign simperingly proclaims this area a “homophobic free zone, where we are happy to care for your needs however we can.” If that’s the case, they really ought to deny me that library card in the name of consistency. I muse idly while waiting over the irony of taking the pink triangle—the concentration camp badge in Nazi Germany for convicted homosexuals, like the star was for Jews—and making it into a sympathy sign. An object of reproach turned into honor. Christians, actually, have done the same with the cross. We are just so far removed from that hideous method of torture that it no longer registers. Our Lord also died a cursed death far outside the “respectable” pale, and belief in that cause also changed the world. A good reminder from a foul source.

Then it’s off though the maze of campus for home. I suffer repeatedly the uniquely civilized problem of knowing exactly where I am and where I wish to go, but having no legal route to get there. Turns, U-turns, and a mile long detour finally get me down the hill and back to the Chipman Trail. As the late afternoon sun adds nearly ninety degrees to the air, my thoughts turn to water. Camels are truly blessed creatures in spite of the hump. But at last my refrigerator is in sight and the impromptu excursion is over: I am the richer by a library card, two shoes, and a light case of sunburn. Not a bad afternoon’s work.

A Plane Old Day

Wwwwwwwrrrrrrrrroooooooowwwwwww!

Can anything equal the sound of an Allison V-12 engine roaring by?

Well, maybe the sound of a Rolls-Royce Merlin or a Pratt and Whitney.  But all three at once? Unsurpassable.

(On second thought, a deep-toned steam train whistle is probably better. But I digress.)

Little bitty Lewiston, Idaho isn’t known for much these days. Ask residents of the town where I live, and their first thoughts of the city to the south will mention two things: the Lewiston Grade (beautiful winding climb in the summer, nightmare of Route 95 in the winter) and the stink of the Clearwater Paper plant that pervades downtown.

But it does have an airport. And this weekend, the tiny Nez Perce County aerodrome has a bunch of propellers all over it. The annual "Radials 'n' Rivers" event brings a score or more of prop planes to town, and I went down Saturday to see some vintage craft. There were the usual trainers, a bunch of biplanes, an old chrome-colored passenger plane. But the cream of the crop? The World War II machines: most of the major land-based American craft of that conflict were represented, and all of them airworthy!

I started the event by pulling Red into the grassy overflow parking and sauntering past the long line for the shuttles. The runways were literally on the other side of the fence. What could they possibly need shuttles for? Besides, I needed the exercise. I got it, too; it turns out the planes were all parked on the apron on the far side of the runways,  so that a two-mile loop around the end was needed—and the beautiful, partly-cloudy, 80-plus degree day meant that would be a bit of a sweaty trip. Thankfully, a church acquaintance driving by offered a ride in the back of his truck. I love small towns!

On arrival at the apron, my first choice was to join a stretching, sinuous line to climb inside the great workhorse of WWII—the B-17 Flying Fortress. Carrying a crew of ten, thirteen .50-caliber machine guns and up to 8,000 pounds of bombs, this was the plane that flew deep into Nazi territory during daylight hours to destroy factories and other strategic targets. If you’ve ever watched any amount of documentary footage from WWII, I am certain you’ve seen at least one B-17. The inside was cramped, particularly the foot-wide walkway through the bomb bay—the portly gentleman ahead of me nearly became a permanent addition to the plane. But he squirmed through and I got this lovely shot out one of the waist guns.

Next was the B-24—the Liberator. A slightly smaller bomber than her more famous cousin, the B-17, she had a greater range and was adapted to far more uses, from antisubmarine warfare to cargo transport over the Himalayas. Her bomb bay catwalk was even narrower—a mere nine inches wide. Actor Jimmy Stewart flew 20-plus missions as a B-24 pilot in Europe.

A Mitchell B-25 was also out on the apron, but they had it fired up and running rides for the spectators, at the rate of $450 dollars for a half-hour trip. Would have been tempting if I was independently wealthy.

But the highlight of the day was at 1430, when the all the fighters present were put in the air for a grand fly-by. Two P-40 Warhawks (one of our early fighters), two P-51 Mustangs (late war long-range fighters), and the only surviving airworthy P-47 Thunderbolt, the Dottie Mae.

The Dottie Mae has a fascinating story. On May 8^th, 1945—V-E Day—she was being flown in the Alps to drop leaflets on an Allied prisoner of war camp, letting them know that ground troops were on the way to liberate it. The pilot misjudged his altitude above a clear mountain lake and crashed into it, making the Dottie Mae the last aircraft lost in the European theater. (The pilot jumped out after it hit and was saved by two Austrian girls--in a canoe.) For seventy years, it lay at the bottom of the lake in over two hundred feet of water. In 2005, an expedition financed by an American WWII vet found it and raised it, and after a ten-year restoration (most of the missing parts had to be made by hand) it now flies once again—its original pilot was even on hand to witness the inaugural flight. This air festival was only the third time it had been flown publicly. Its Pratt and Whitney engine (the same one used in the Navy’s Hellcats and Corsairs) had a noticeably lower, smoother tone than the other fighters flying today. Nicknamed “Jugs” due to their milk-bottle shape, the P-47 carried eight machine guns and could load a few bombs as well, making it a favorite ground-interdiction fighter. They took out trains, trucks, or other treetop-level targets.
The planes flew by individually at first, then in groups, and finally did a few passes with all five in formation. And the sound of those engines roaring by in unison is something I hope I won’t forget.

Then it was time for the long walk back around, the drive home (during which I picked up an exquisite Papa John’s pizza for only eight bucks—thanks, junk mail coupons!), and a relaxed evening of watching old documentary footage of those planes in their service period.

Plainly, a good old Saturday, indeed.

Stuck in a Rut

You ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut?

You struggle out of bed, bump along to your standard breakfast, rattle on to your tolerable job, just keep going through the motions, same old tasks, same old people, same old words, lies, sins. Nothing ever seems to change. God hasn’t accomplished anything for you (or with you) that you’ve noticed in months. You’re old and grouchy and tired (no matter how young the calendar says you are) and others keep passing you up on the highway of life every day.

Sound familiar? I have those days. Some days I have them more than others. The days when nothing is really out of the ordinary... but nothing really seems to be a blessing, either. The ones where God seems to have wound you up, spun you... and walked away. The days you’re caught on an alto drone note and just marking time. Meh. Bleagh. So what?

We had a Bible study this morning. In the midst of eggs and sausage and earnest discussion, Proverbs XIII 15 caught my ear.

“Good sense wins favor, but the way of the treacherous is an enduring rut.”

Wait. The treacherous get stuck in ruts?

I know this the alternative translation, the one in the footnotes, but to my mind, it is far more picturesque. At one summer camp in my youth in Texas, there was a piece of the old Chisholm Trail where you could still see 150-year-old-ruts, etched by covered wagons, inches deep, in solid rock. Those teamsters rolling north were set in their ways, it seems—just like the treacherous.

But these treacherous ones require a direct object to their verb. To whom are they treacherous?

A) A loyal servant?

B) A friend?

C) A king?

The correct answer is, for the Christian, “All of the above” for Christ fills all those offices. If Proverbs is right (and it is) only the fools, the wicked, the ungrateful are left to plod down life on the same road, shoulders bowed and bulling through by the main force of their will. Glance at the preceding part of chapter thirteen. They are unable to turn away from the “snares of death” because they have no good sense. And sense comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And this reverence for the commandment mentioned earlier extends to all God’s words, not just his written ones.

Has he spoken you a rainy, grey, textureless day? Thank him for the blessing of crops that grow and water that goes down cool. Has he spoken you a slow, meandering life? Thank him that he knows your frame and did not burn you out in a flaming lesson on overconfidence. Did he give you a community where you seem the least among the brethren, able to contribute nothing of value? Thank him for the opportunity to grow and learn if not to give. And if you’re growing and learning, you won’t feel left out and static.

Wake up and feel stuck in a rut? Thank God and wait. Sometimes he’s just waiting for you to let go of the steering wheel.

Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... there was a farm kid. That farm kid found a couple robots and an old peacekeeper, got in way more trouble than he bargained for, and ducked into a bar. In that bar he found a cowboy and a walking carpet, and they agreed to give him a ride off his dustball in their own special, piece of junk transport—

And the rest is history.

Nine movies, three animated series, a few one-offs and a billion and a half toys later, Star Wars is a global phenomenon that shows no signs of slowing down; in fact, it has a good chance of being one of the things scholars study a millennium hence to attempt to understand late-period Western culture, the same way we study the Greek myths, Canterbury Tales or Beowulf. The latest entry in that corpus? Solo, the spin-off that tells us exactly how that cowboy and walking carpet met.

I went into this movie freshly scarred from The Last Jedi and not expecting much (having, you might say, a bad feeling about this.) Rian Johnson’s take on the saga did what I thought was impossible and turned in some moviemaking that was as bad, or worse, than Episode III. Spectacle at the expense of coherence, politically-correct characters jammed into the plot, and a deliberate abandonment of all the story and saga that came before left me feeling betrayed that it made as much money as it did. Poe Dameron and one cool dogfight with the Millennium Falcon were not enough to salvage all that dross.

So I was three-quarters expecting more of the same. That’s not what I got. If The Last Jedi was a movie written by a PC Disney bureaucrat, Solo is a loving nod to all those sixteen-year old boys who wanted to strap on a DL-44 blaster, jump into the left-side pilot’s seat of a YT1300 Corellian freighter, and yell “Chewie, punch it!” (My nerd is showing. I know.) We get to see Han’s steampunk-meets-Detroit-slums homeworld, Han saving Chewbacca’s life and earning the famous “life debt,” and the Kessel Run. And most of it is pure fun.

"What a piece of junk..."

This movie runs strongest when it’s bringing to life what fans already know happened. We’ve always known Han won the Millennium Falcon from Lando in a game of Sabacc, but now we get to watch him do it (although that may not happen quite the way you’d expect.) We’ve known that it made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, but we didn’t know how good that was (twenty-plus is normal!) or why he had to do it (so his ship wouldn’t explode.) We’ve known Han saved Chewie’s life, but him doing it on the side of a snowy mountain monorail during a crazy heist is perfect. And we get to see why the Falcon looks quite so junky when we meet it again five or so years later. There’s just a lot of good, old fashioned shoot-em-up thrills.

Not that it doesn’t have a few weak spots. This is no Rogue One, (the very late change in directors probably being to blame) and it shows the most when Solo is trying to connect all the preordained dots. Han’s love interest is supposed to be a femme fatale “survivor,” for instance, but comes off far too heavy on the femme and way too light on the fatale. We enter the movie knowing she’s going to betray him and leave him the cynical smuggler we find on Tatooine, but when she does it mostly fails to land—whether from lack of on-screen emphasis or poor acting, I don’t know. Part of the fault lies with Alden Ehrenreich, who tries his best but just can’t quite capture Harrison Ford’s ability to be scared out of his wits and way out of his depth, and still be gruffly charming. He mostly just comes off as lovable, and this movie never quite completes his journey to the grouchy side. Part of that may have been mandated to save room for a possible sequel, but if so, it was a bad move. Paul Bettany tries his best as a scarred crime lord but is never quite up to the looming threat of Jabba the Hutt. There’s also some brief weirdness with Lando Calrissian and his droid that I shall simply choose to ignore when this movie is mentioned. Like midichlorians. Also, I never heard a Wilhelm scream. And that is just sad. But moving on...

My favorite single moment was a cameo that probably utterly bemused and puzzled those who have only watched the movies, but filled in a huge lingering question for lovers of the Clone Wars animated series. Well done, Disney.

The final ranking? I’d own it and watch it again. A good 7/10 or so, above the prequels (and waaaaaay above The Last Jedi) but below Rogue One, Clone Wars/Rebels, and the OT.

Hope that’s helpful, Star Wars fans. Here’s to better times ahead for the franchise. Chewie—punch it.

Antepenultimate

I’m guessing most of you, if you’re old enough, remember a day that you realized that your life was different than you planned.

And I don’t just mean at the end of the week, when you realize you haven’t made it to the grocery store again. I mean the big stuff. You’ve dreamed your whole life up to now of doing something: seeing the pyramids, being an astronaut, buying that certain car, marrying that girl, making that amount of salary. And then one day, you realize that you probably—or certainly—never will. That’s just not the way your life can go now. You missed the turn. Whether through active choices or passive ones, you wound up at this little spot on the map of your life that reads YOU ARE HERE.

I had one of those days recently. I took a look at one of my dreams and noticed that if I’d really wanted that, I should have made a different choice or two (or ten) half a decade ago. It’s a little late now.

This may be what they call a mid-life crisis. If it is, I hit it early (just like my birth.) Or I’m only going to live into my fifties. (Either is quite possible, if you think about it.)

And these missed turns on the road of your life don’t generally come along on sunny days as you travel a bucolic byway beneath a few wooly clouds and flash a grin at the flabbergasted bunnies by the culvert. You’d notice then. They come in the sleet storms, thieving fingers of wind striving to steal your hat from your head and breath from your lungs, two raindrops tickling coldly down the back of your neck. You haven’t seen the sun for days, it seems, and even God is silent when you stop to ask for directions.

To change the metaphor, it’s like living in a novel.  There comes a point in every good story when things get hard and dangerous, wild and wooly. The hero goes down for the count (and it’s usually his own fault). And if you’re not one of those heretics who skip to the end of the book first, you almost don’t want to keep reading; because there is no way under heaven it’s going to turn out like you hope it will. The sea pours into the dike. The plane’s engines start to cough. Edmund heads off with the White Witch. Frodo lies still under the cliffs of Cirith Ungol. Bigwig is in the wire. David stares at Uriah with fear and frustration and murder in his heart. Adam grasps a fruit in desperation.

God hangs on a cross.

One of my favorite words as a ten-year-old was antepenultimate. (æn.ti.pəˈnʌl.ti.mət) It’s Latin based, an adjective, and basically means “the thing before the thing before the last thing.” For example, Thursday is the antepenultimate day of the week. The twenty-ninth is the antepenultimate day of July. And after the antepenultimate, comes the penultimate. In a good novel, you have at least one antepenultimate build-up, a penultimate crisis, and the final, crashing resolution. In a really good one, you have several.

In one sense, all of human life is the Antepenultimate. From the first squalling breath to the last shuddering gasp, every son of Adam and daughter of Eve lives in the crisis. We ride the shock waves, travel the journeys, and generally wind up nowhere near where we wanted to go ten years ago. If we had known our current destinations a decade ago, we’d be terrified, disappointed, or both; no matter how good (or terrible) it would seem. We’d probably be so worried about how to achieve (or miss) this spot on the map that we’d freeze. It’s not really good to know that you’re in the crisis part of the novel as a character...it tends to chill the blood.

And wherever you wind up, eventually comes the greatest crisis. Death, the Penultimate Event. If you cross that bridge, your GPS has no way to recalculate your route. One way only.

But then you reach your Ultimate (in both senses) destination. And once you’ve made it there, the route you’ve taken—missed side roads, exits, gas stations, and all—will make perfect sense. It will, literally, be the only road you could have taken to get Home. You climb out of the car, stretch, and grin in sheer, tension-melting relief.

Made it.

Remember that the next time you missed a turn.

New Years, Old Years, and Jet Skis

My pastor challenged me yesterday. He mentioned that the divide between the old year and the new was a good time to take stock of what you’ve achieved (or failed to achieve) during your last trip around the sun—and what you expect to get out of the next one.

Man, I hate it when he does that.

See, by preference, I’m a drifter. I prefer my achievements to float up in front of me like logs on the flume ride at Six Flags—dead center and obvious, get on if you want, no pressure, it’s nice and slow. If I don’t manage to catch that particular one, there’s always another one arriving with a small splash about thirty seconds later. There's only one channel to ride. No failures. No missed opportunities. No regrets.

But I got challenged to a retrospective. And if you look back at last year—really look—my life looked less like a log ride and more like piloting a jet ski through some tricky sandbars during a glowingly thick fog... on the ocean.

Heeeere we go! Full steam ahead, sixty minutes an hour, seven days a week, and oh, yeah, the brakes don’t work so great anymore. Yes, I have a partial map, but with the wind, and the spray, and the fact that I can only see about six feet in front of me... I think I missed a few turns. Scraped some paint off the bottom. One of the gauges is cracked. I might have wound up in entirely wrong part of the ocean—it’s hard to tell. There’s too many drops clinging to my crooked glasses to see much of anything.

All water looks alike at half an inch.

Okay, the metaphor ran away from me... just like last year. In retrospect: I really didn’t mean to wind up in this chair at this moment, I had other plans. I was going to have a different roommate, be dating a really nice girl, have way more money in the bank, and probably no longer be working a full-time graveyard shift during school. Oh, and I was going to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay holier. The complaining and the envy and the slothfulness—gone. I was going to be God’s perfect child by now.

(I’m picturing the Father smirking behind his hand, like you do when your two-year old announces that she is going to cook breakfast “all by herself!” Sure, kid. Knock yourself out. Just don’t put your spoon in the microwave with the Fruit Loops.)

Did I have a banner year? Not really. I’m still single. I’m still mildly in debt and clawing my way above the poverty line. I never made the dean’s list in school (of course, I never really planned to). I sinned against a bunch of people, complained to a bunch more, and was only as holy as I had to be most of the time. Depressing, isn’t it? (Maybe I actually crashed the jet ski...)

But perspective is everything. It wasn’t a bad year, either. I’m still in one piece, relatively healthy, and making enough money to eat with, which is more than a lot of folks can say. I got to watch my old roommate trade me out for a fantastic wife. I’m learning great and wonderful things with a bunch of joyful and reliable Christian people, day in and day out. I have a pastor who gives me challenges (that hopefully lead to far more than blog posts!). I have reliable friends. I have a great, enormous family. And I have a whole year ahead to give it another shot. So what if I’m dripping wet? I’m in the water, where I’m supposed to be.

Where will I be a year from now? God only knows. Possibly still in this chilly chair, single, with a different pesky roommate and more gnarly, tangled sins than anybody but Christ could count. But maybe not. After all, if you’d told me four years ago that I’d be sitting here, I’d have laughed you out of the room.

So here’s to Anno Domini MMXVIII. In prospect (can I do that?): This year I hope to pay senior year down, begin to pay off my loans, be the best friend I can be to my pals, write a lot more, read a lot more, come up with a senior thesis, and not get any more cavities. And, shoot, maybe find a date. And while we’re at it, I hope those close to me can look back and say, “Wow, James, you’ve really grown more godly this year.” Feel free to hold me to that.

Toss me the keys to the jet ski. It’s time to climb back on.