indie * faith

A Good Divorce

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Tue, 17 May 2016 21:08:00 +0000

First off let me say that it has been quite awhile since I wrote about anything of substance or with any theological bearing at all. However, if I may lean a bit on my laurels I will say that I did devote quite a bit of time to writing back when I was a pastor.

I wrote as a pastor for two reasons. One, I believed that I had a unique perspective on the scriptures that I was "called" to share with the world.   So it was sort of a requirement for me. Two, had to do with what I believed about Jesus. Jesus spoke up when it was important. So, that is what I am doing here.

Notice I did not say I am opening up my blog for debate on this matter.   I am well aware that there are plenty of folks out there with differing views on the subject of divorce. In fact in the Christian world, there are as many views on the subject as there are denominations (which last I checked was around 41K)

Preface
I will start by saying that if we are going to review what a Christian believes or should believe about a subject it is important to ask the bigger question of "What does Jesus think about the subject." It doesn't matter to me what this church believes or that church or this denomination or that, but what does the tongue of God have to say on the subject, the very embodiment of God in the flesh according to our faith.

I believe that in the context of the Christian story, that Jesus came to earth to be the spokesperson of God to a generation of people that were completely missing the point thus far.   God had tried using prophets and seers and Kings and weirdos from the wilderness to deliver his message, but to no real avail. I mean the scriptures are full of the stories in the OT, read them.

If after reading the story of Abraham, Noah, Elijah, or Moses you feel like you drank way too much wine and just want to go to bed, well then you might agree with me and God that, this approach simply was not working.

So here comes god as a baby, and then tadah he's a grown up with a lot of grown up words for the established religion of the day.   Notice that Jesus does not spend any time criticizing the world at large, the Romans who had held his people captive and ruled them mercilessly, the Samaritans whom the Jews despised or any other nations or peoples.   His major gripe was with the Jews and the religious leaders among them.

It is their laws, their edicts, their doctrines that he rails against in the Sermon on the Mount. Many people read these words as nice little phrases that are fun to remember and recite, but living by them seemed more a task of angels than men. I mean "Turn the other cheek" and "Walk a mile" and "Give up your coat", and "Don't sue?"

Really Jesus? I mean really?

But many don’t know that Jesus actually addresses divorce in a powerful and stunning way in the sermon. He literally goes on attack for and about divorce. He often gets quoted out of context from the sermon and people take his words and twist them to say that "Jesus says its only ok to get a divorce if your spouse cheats on you." But, if you examine the context of the sermon along with the words spoken around the subject you will begin to see that Jesus was really an advocate for a good divorce.

Turn your wife into a Prostitute?
I know. Believe it or not there is such a thing. Even Jesus would agree.   In order to get my meaning here you will have to understand first of all that marriage was a construct of human people at a time prior to Jesus arriving.   Back then it was used more like a contract regarding the ownership of the man over the wife.   She in a sense becomes his property through the contract. Now I know this sounds crude and you're probably thinking "who would sign up for that?" I mean what woman in her right mind wanted to become property to a man? Well, as the saying goes, "it's just what you did back then." There were benefits too.   As the mans property you were entitled to take on his name and management of everything he owned and you garnered a certain amount of respect based on who you were marrying. Still doesn't sound exactly like a win-win to me.

Unfortunately the opposite was true for any woman divorced by a man back then. As a divorced woman you lost everything and you were not allowed to own property. You lived in a sort of shame that was carried on by the people around you -- friends and family members. You were considered to be damaged goods and the only way you could raise any money was by completely illegitimate means.

So in order to survive a divorce, a woman would have to either marry another man in a degraded relationship, work for her family as a sort of maid, or sell her body for money. In a sense, when a man divorced a woman back then he gave her very little options but to become a prostitute and to commit adultery.

"Society simply would not then, as ours does today, support a divorced woman to any degree or allow her to support herself in a decent fashion." Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

Jesus the first women's rights activist?
Every body knew this and the religious folks of the day protected the men in their society and liked very much that the men made out while the women suffered here. The only rule they had in place is that when a man divorced his wife, he had to give her a piece of paper saying they were divorced -- a legal document -- a right of passage for most of the men back then who were tired of looking at their current wife, who wanted sleep with other women openly or who simply did not like the way their wife looked after having ten of their children.
Jesus, being the activist and lover of all people, and advocate for women did not like this. He saw that women were not being treated fairly. Let's just say this, God saw this. God in his glory looked down on man and despised they way men treated one another in the name of… him. So he came here as a man and said this:

"31 "It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." - Matthew 5:31-32 ESV

Jesus is not making this stuff up. He is merely stating a fact that this is what men have been doing to women the whole time and it was wrong to divorce a woman because you grew tired of the way she looked. He is saying that unless there is "Sexual immorality", that the divorce forces women into a sort of adultery.

Why Sexual Immorality?
Remember marriage is man's construct blessed by God. It is what men chose to do. Jesus is saying that if you choose to marry, then you have to play by the rules. You cant just dump your wife in the street when you grow tired of her and want something new.

So why sexual immorality and not some other reason? I mean assault and battery is a pretty good reason, and so is accidentally marrying a criminal or a glutton or a person that is morally bankrupt. I mean isn't all sin…. SIN?

Well if we read our bibles right it is! ;) Was God somehow obsessed with sexual sin?   Is sexual sin worse than the other stuff? Any victim of a sex crime would shout "Yes" right about now, but in religious terms all sin is sin according to God.

This is where it really pays to read the scriptures in context. The entire time that Jesus is speaking here he is drawing this picture of how God wants us to love one another and not harden our hearts towards each other.   If we read the sermon carefully we can easily draw from the previous words that sexual immorality is one of the few crimes in a marriage that will cause a person to harden their heart to another growing angry and contemptuous with each passing moment.

There is a sort of death that occurs to a human being when one hardens their heart to them especially within the bonds of marriage.   We have already read earlier in the sermon that to merely be angry at someone is the same as murder in god's eyes (Matt 5:22) .   Imagine what hardening one's heart can do to them. It is a never ending state of constantly murdering the other over and over again in one's mind.   This happens to people when they are cheated on. Jesus is saying that if you cannot love the person you are with and rather that you are contemptuous and angry at them constantly it is not good for either of you to remain married to one another. This is not the purpose of marriage, but a broken version of the original contract.

A Good Divorce
It is better to divorce than to stay married and constantly and mercilessly kill one another through contempt and anger and lost love.   Save yourself, and be merciful to the one you signed on to love regardless if you can find love for them ever again or not. Jesus is saying that if you are in a marriage where the other is cheating on you, and you have tried to forgive them time and again, but simply can't, it is better to divorce.

Jesus is saying that if you hate your spouse because he has ruled over you from day one with an iron fist and has threatened you and physically hurt you and hurt your children. It is better to divorce.

He is saying that if you have lived with a woman who has stolen money from you and your children to buy drugs and who refuses to get help and doesn’t seem to care about you or your children or anybody for that matter and you can find no compassion in your heart for her, it is better to divorce.

He is saying that if you married someone who is mean, and who puts you down and refuses to listen to you when you speak and who disrespects you in front of others and who emotionally abuses you on a regular basis - get out now. It's not good for you, it's not good for them and it is especially not good for the kids to stay.

God says that he hates divorce when done frivolously by men to dispose of unwanted property (women). He hates to see people treated this way. Hates it so much he sent his son to speak up about it. But don’t get lost there. God hates divorce, but he hates human cruelty more. He hates contempt and anger and murder with the mind, way more. SO much so that when given an opportunity to speak (Jesus), this is all he seems to want to talk about. None of the fire and brimstone stuff you see from the prophets, but this. God loves a good divorce.

Things That Bug Me (A Distraction)

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 15:30:00 +0000

This post is designed merely to distract you from my nipples and Sara's forehead (the previous post). I know that the mere mention of these things is not a distraction at all but quite the opposite. So, please read and enjoy the following:

Things that bug me

- People who judge others without ever having a conversation with them.
- Dogs that aren't on leashes that roam the streets and see runners as the enemy.
- Having to get in an airplane and fly 2400 miles and about 6 hours to see my best friend and get a hug.
- Having to work for someone else for the rest of my life.
- Ill fitting undergarments.
- Lots of snow
- Lots of rain
- Lots of Heat
- Lots of cold
- Being low on fuel in your car but not knowing exactly how low
- Poor leadership
- Bad decisions made by upper management
- Racist Politicians
- People who follow racist politicians because they think they are not racists.
- People who follow racist politicians because they are racists themselves.
- Discrimination in all forms
- Churches that fire gay pastors.
- Birds that target my car for some reason.
- Bitter and angry people who can't seem to move beyond their bitterness and anger for whatever reason
- Houseflies landing on my food while I am trying to eat it.
- Cats that pee on the furniture or otherwise attempt to destroy it.
- That hot sticky feeling you get when your legs and other body parts are all sticking together.
- A bad haircut
- When my fingers are numb and I want to play the guitar
- Feeling fat after eating too much
- Walking more than 5 minutes on a four mile run
- Running in a rainstorm
- Chaffing
- Ants on my nightstand
- Ants in my bed
- Ants devouring a soda can left overnight
- Did I mention ants?
- Waking up after getting little sleep
- Sleeping when I am not tired
- Cuddling a pillow every friggin' night
- Missing her so much it hurts
- Counting the days until the next trip
- waiting, waiting, waiting...

Nipples and Wrinkles, oh my!

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 00:15:00 +0000

Nipples

Okay, I said it. Nipples. There it is again. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate that word?

Nipples. So here we go. Class, I did not want to have to talk about this subject, but it has become necessary at this point to bring it up. No, "bring it up" is not a tongue-in-cheek reference to my nipples, so you can stop right there.

Nipples. Why am I talking about this? Why do I keep repeating the word nipples?

Well to be honest I am trying to psyche myself up into actually writing this bit about insecurities in general; Glaringly evil, wicked insecurities.

Maybe nipples are no big deal for you. Yours may be entirely normal and not obnoxious in the very least. Maybe they are just a little more relaxed in certain situations. Maybe they are relaxed most of the time until you need them to be there and then BAM... NIPPLES!

Me? You really don't want to know this, I know. Ever since I was a boy, I have been barrel-chested. I have a rather large chest that sometimes gets in my way.

I think because of this, my nipples always appear to be at the ready. You know prepared for the next great war, terrorist attack, ready to run into battle to fend of the alien invasion, or the zombie apocalypse, or well, whatever. It doesn't matter what temperature it is here, whether hot or cold; they are there.

Present. Available? On-the-ready. BOOM. I have been well aware of this ever since I was a boy and it has been the source of much embarrassment, insecurity and well, shame. For the longest time in my youth I would walk around with my shoulders hunched over to de-emphasize the pronouncement of my chest. Parents and friends always told to me to stand up straight and hold my shoulders back and use better posture for fear I would become a hunch-back. Until one day, when I got older I realized that I was not so different than others.

I convinced myself that maybe they weren't so bad. Maybe this is all in my head, this obsession with people making fun of me or noticing. Maybe the whole time it was just me be being silly. So from that point on I threw back my shoulders, and walked with my head held high and my chest out. This came as a huge relief to my back and neck which had been hurting due to the aforementioned hunch, and I again began to feel somewhat normal.

Normal that is until someone, usually trying to get a good laugh would say "is it cold in here?"

People
People don't seem to realize the power their words have sometimes. My friends would most likely never know that I had this strange insecurity about these obvious body parts of mine. So, they might not realize that drawing attention to that area of my body, be it negative or positive almost always makes me feel a little ill. It makes me feel noticed, strange, abnormal -- deformed even. The feelings I have towards my own body are startling at times - don't get me started.

To speak of them usually worries people or makes them realize they are not alone in their own self-judgement of their body. So for me, bringing up the fact that I have nipples is one thing you can do to really make me feel awkward and sometimes hurt me deeply, especially if you are someone I love and trust. It usually just makes me want to run and hide. Sometimes I do that in my head anyway when this happens.

Recently, I have been told the following:

"Is it cold in here?"
"Must have been cold over there."
"NIPPLES!" (as a one word comment on Facebook in regards to a picture of me)
"If you were gay you would have no problem getting men with nipples like that"
"Dude, you're nippin'"

In the past it has made me want to walk around wearing two shirts in the Summer. It has made me want to never take my shirt off. It actually did make me want to change my posture. But these days, I don't worry about it so much. Instead I just usually grin and bear it. Lately, not a lot can hurt me.

I have this person now who loves me in a way that makes me feel like I am alright. She is the only person that I allow to talk to me about my chest and she always makes me feel normal and happy and well not weird at all about it. In fact, her kind words and observations make me feel good about myself in general, and dare I say comfortable in my own skin? I have a new appreciation for my body because of it, and I am more resilient to the comments I hear.

That's not to say that the comments have no effect whatsoever.

Wrinkles

Funny thing is that as she feeds my self-esteem with her love for me, I do the same for her. She has these amazing lines on her forehead. She calls them wrinkles and relates them to being old. I don't see them that way. For her these wrinkles are as noticeable and as unwanted as my over-obvious nipples are for me. When someone notices them or uses them to make a joke or says anything about them, it sets off a score of insecurities in her, and it causes her to have a physiological reaction to those particular comments.

Sometimes she will spend an entire day stressing and feeling ugly and unattractive and weird because of just one comment made by someone she loves and trusts. I do the same thing when it comes to my chest.

And again for me, her wrinkles are beautiful. I love the way her forehead scrunches up when she smiles, for real. Because when she is completely relaxed, and at ease and in the zone, she smiles with her whole being. She is not worried about how she looks to me. She is just in the moment having fun, laughing and being herself. She lights up the world usually at those times.

Her face is this amazing projector of joy and giddiness and just awesome bright beauty. She is so beautiful when she lets go and just smiles like that -- her forehead wrinkled, her teeth showing, her eyes bright and wide and blue and her cheeks dimpled. This is usually at those times when she has not done her makeup and her hair is not styled in any way at all whatsoever.

This is real beauty, not some contrived, dressed up, over-glamorous attempt at beauty. Not some relaxed forehead, lips sealed, hair and makeup poised, put-on and forced attempt at prettiness, but a genuine explosion of life that is both outlandish and aggressive and soft and sweet and takes your heart by storm. She is all of that when she is not even trying. She is beautiful in so many ways and no one generally gets to see this but me, because she is afraid to show her forehead lines to others. So what do I do? I take lots of pictures. Lots. And I show them to others, usually on Facebook.

For other people (those with insecurities), it is their eye brows, their nose, their ears, hair, belly, butt, feet, breasts, neck, you name it. For some reason anything that we see as different than the norm, or even a little more noticeable than others about our face or body, we tend to obsess about. We fear others noticing those things about us. And we anticipate the comments that might come from those observations.

It's like we are all doing fine usually, but in the back of our head, is this ever-repeating mantra, "I hope they don't notice my nipples right now" or "is my forehead relaxed right now?" Or "Am I sucking in my gut enough?" Or "remember to keep your mouth closed when you smile, dummy" Or "I wonder if this jacket is covering my overly large misshapen hips." And so on and so forth. We are always stressed about people noticing, because people don't seem to realize when to just keep quiet about things.

What can we do to help those who are insecure?
I want to ask you to think about your own insecurities. Maybe you have something you don't really like people noticing about yourself. Maybe you think you have hidden it well and that no one really sees it the way you do.

Now imagine someone noticing and making a comment to your face about it. Imagine how that might feel. So the next time you are looking at someone's picture on Facebook or you see them in real life, don't say anything to them that might point out their obvious differences.

Chances are they have already heard that joke, that line, that particular critique of their body or face. Just keep it to yourself. Say something else. Say something nice about something you think they may want commentary on.

Use your mind and remember, we all have things about our body and our face that we care to keep to ourselves. Don't make it your business to expose those things for others.

If you have recently said hurtful things to someone even unwittingly, then find them and let them know about your insecurity and tell them you are sorry. If you are one of my friends and have said one of the things above about my chest, don't sweat it, I did not expect you to realize that these comments would forever be engraved in my mind due to my particular insecurities. Just, watch that stuff in the future would ya? :)

I still believe...

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 15:13:00 +0000

"So don't you think that the reason you are changing your beliefs about god is kind of selfish?"

My friend sat across from me in the cafe area of the church and said these words carefully as if to feel out whether or not the statement might set me off or hurt my feelings. I considered the question and answered with the best response I could muster.

"It's all selfish isn't it?" I meant to say that all pursuit of greater truth be it god or science or anything else is done with the self in mind. If its a pursuit of god, then it might be for salvation sake, or for the sake of connecting with god as an individual. There are definitely selfish reasons for it. That does not make the pursuit of god a bad thing though.

In much the same way one does not read the classics in order to better the world or the people in it, but to better one's self -- to grow, to learn, to heal, to enrich your mind, to save your soul, to rescue you from evil or ignorance. These are the reasons we pursue god, literature, science, spirituality and reason.

So the answer is yes, after a recent trip out of the country, I chose to believe in god based on a rather exclusive and subjective experience I had personally. This decision is based on selfish observations. But that in and of itself does not disqualify the experience and choice from being relevant, meaningful and true for me.

The experience was deeply personal and it involved an answer to specific prayers, a felt sense of love by another person, an acceptance and welcoming from people I would not have expected a welcoming from, a confirmation of earlier beliefs going back to childhood, providence and protection and favor and good-timing and all of the other buzz words used to describe an interaction with god.

I would go into great detail on all of this, but I would like to refrain from over-sharing. Let's suffice it to say that I came to see that god is real, and that god genuinely cares for people and their various plights for the sake of love and other. God showed me himself/herself/itself that night at Whataburger and I wanted nothing more to do with it.

But as they say, God aggressively pursues his people. I was made to see and believe once again. Does that mean I have all the answers? No, in fact I have more questions than ever. Does it mean that god is right for you, or that I am trying to sell god to you or belief in god? Of course not, that kind of behavior irritates me when I see others do it.

What I am saying is this. I believe in god. I choose to worship god in the context of the Christian experience because that is what I know best. Your beliefs are your beliefs and I respect that. I ask that you would do the same for me. Thanks for reading.

To be honest...

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:12:00 +0000

So again I was faced with new information and had to figure out the best way to deal with it. I decided to continue to explore community. I remember that I went to church the next week and really did not participate much. I was there, but my head was somewhere else if you know what I mean. I realized that to be honest with myself meant that indeed for whatever reason whether it meant my own mental departure from reality, the presence of a family ghost that would not leave me alone, or some other being that existed in the spiritual, I could not rely solely on my scientific explanation of things to inform me of all things that truly exist,

See, I set out on a personal journey about 11 years ago to pursue honesty, integrity, transparency and authenticity in my own life. I was a Christian youth pastor at the time and up until then you might have called me a fake if you knew me well. You would at least think that I had some sort of split personality if you knew me that well, but the truth is, barely anyone knew me that well.

I myself had a little trouble figuring out who I was back then. I blame the church's approach to holiness doctrine mostly. At least the church I had gone to prior to that. It was a Nazarene church that subscribed to holiness as a way of life. Sanctification, according to the church is a gift you receive shortly after becoming a believer that effectively seals you for work inside the kingdom of God.

So, once a person is sanctified, there is no turning back, they are now holy, set apart for all practical purposes. Except that after I declared my sanctification to the world around me at the tender age of 18, I didn't exactly feel any different. It was embarrassing. Other members of my flock who received sanctification had become perfect models of Christianity, but me? I was the same old John. The same guy that made mistake after mistake and chose selfish behaviors over Jesus-like actions all the time.

So what did I do to remedy this? I began acting holy. I figured I could fake it until I made it, ya know? I mean I already knew the language of church, and the culture and what was expected of me. So I talked the talk and talked some more, never really able to walk the walk of true holiness. That did not seem to matter to my Christian friends however. They accepted the "new" me and rewarded this behavior by giving me high-praise for my apparent piety.

It wasn't until I started going to a different church (The Vineyard in 2003) that people started calling me on my holy behavior. They asked me questions like "Why do you do that?" They challenged me on things like art and music and culture in general. One pastor pulled me aside and asked me point-blank why I only listen to Christian music. I gave him the standard answer I had learned from my past and he seemed baffled.

This conversation led to other conversations whereby I started to pick apart the armor I had been wearing - that I myself had donned on a daily basis. One article at a time came down and I began to realize that I used these concepts and actions that appeared holy merely to mask who I truly was inside -- that scared kid that had been mistreated by not only imaginary beasts and monsters in my childhood, but who had also been brutally mistreated in school by a number of bullies and at home by his own brother; that kid who had never been nurtured, loved, cared for; the one who had anger issues and bitterness towards men and women. I had covered that kid up for so many years (since I was about 16) and did such a good job of it I was surprised when he actually surfaced.

He was even more angry than I could have imagined having been ignored for so long by me. But I decided then and there I had to deal with him, nurture him and become more like him than the fake super-Christian I had created. This came as a bit of a shock to people who knew me before, but in 2004, I made an active decision to never be a fake again. I would be who I was, who I was meant to be and if that rubbed people the wrong way, well then so be it. I stepped down from ministry at the Vineyard and pursued authenticity and transparency full-time.

This also meant that I was questioning everything. My faith, the way I talked and walked and thought. Everything was up for grabs, everything had to be reconsidered and evaluated. Nothing could be overlooked. If I found I did anything one particular way because I wanted people to think I was something that I most certainly was not, I would strike it out of my life.

This period for me started back in 2004 and is still going on today. It took me 38 years to become that way, and it will take many more years to weed out the false-piety I had grown so accustomed to. Because of the fact that this fake-self so impacted my life and because of all of the work I have done to recover from it, I have an aversion to anything that appears fake or phony when it comes to faith -- and there is a LOT of that going around. A lot. I will usually expose it for what it is when I see it for that reason.

So considering all of that, I have re-approached the subject of God very slowly. And I refused to accept the blanket answers to things offered up by my fellow fakers and their predecessors. I wanted to know the truth and I wanted to know now. What I guess I didn't realize is that there is no proof, no concrete anything, no way of showing the results, recording the findings. God is subjective to everyone.

Ask anyone who claims to believe in god, and you will get differing accounts of god even within the same peer group of the same denomination of the same religion. I had to either accept god's existence based on my own subjective observations (knowing full well I could not prove god to anyone and that I could just as easily be mistaken), or reject god's existence based on objective physical evidence alone.

More on this later...

God found me at the Whataburger drive-through

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 01:10:00 +0000

So there I was, feeling really smug in my new-found acceptance of the denial of God's existence. I had been going to a secular humanist community for a bit and had really enjoyed my time with these people.

Evangelical Test: If the words "secular" and "humanist" just set off a red flag or loud alarm in your head, then you know you are deeply embedded in the evangelical/fundamentalist culture and way of thinking. I might as well have said a "Satanic, God-Hating" community -- right? However, those words in and of themselves don't really describe anything bad. The word "secular" merely means "non-religious", and the term "humanist" merely means "celebrating of humanity". If you really think about it, Jesus fit both of these descriptions in his time here on earth. So don't knock it until you try it.

There was an honest approach to living that these folks had adopted that blows away most forms of community I have ever been involved with including the church.

There were atheists, agnostics and believers mixed in with this lovely group of people and they all seemed to get along fine, choosing to focus on topics of discussion that were scientific and educational in nature. It was and still is a beautiful thing, and I am not done with those good people.

This particular evening however, I was coming home from an experimental group I belonged to. We were getting together to try and see if we had what it took to form a quasi-religious, irreligious community of our own. In my mind this community would be more open to issues of faith and might possibly be a blended group of believers and non-believers alike from all walks of faith and life.

The title of my message that I shared that evening was "Because the Greek philosopher told me so." This was an expose' of the Christian religion and how much of the ideas, patterns and theologies that we have adopted in our faith are not really found in the Bible, but are borrowed from Greek philosophy,

In the end, I found myself in a heated discussion with my friends that made me realize three things:

1. I did not want to give up on the Bible, just the old ways of viewing scripture that were not entirely scriptural or considerate of the context in which it was written.

2. I was not an atheist all the time.

3. This experimental group would be short-lived for me, because I may have been the only advocate for the Bible as a reference.

One of the members argued that we should not even be using the Bible because it mentions things in scripture like justified rape and promotes slavery and misogyny. I had very little to respond with except to say that we can't throw the baby out with the bath water. All in all I was pretty disappointed in the end. I felt that I had failed my friends and that I maybe even failed myself as a wanna-be atheist. I was in deep thought about these things when I pulled up to the Whataburger drive-through.

My standard order? A number 2 with cheese, grilled onions, mayo instead of mustard, no pickles with a large Diet Coke. As I rolled down my window on this balmy Summer's eve though, something strange happened. No, I did not see a fiery chariot descend from the heavens with 14 faces and tongues of fire, sporting a goatee and a moderately large pair of Ray-ban reading glasses (I know you were thinking that).

I felt it. You know what I mean by it? Refer to this post if unsure (or just keep reading). I felt that benevolent, parental presence surrounding my vehicle and enveloping all of the empty space between me and the world around me. It was huge and powerful and overwhelming and I started to cry.

I was flabbergasted. I was angry, and to be honest I felt a little crazy. Like, why doesn't anyone else ever complain about feeling this presence in their lives? Why do I have to be so damn aware of the thing? What the hell is it?

I yelled out loud (in my mind) at the thing "leave me alone".

That's when I heard the voice.

It sounded a little garbled at first, and I had some trouble making out the words in the message, but once I recognized the sound of it's voice, I readily understood the meaning behind those words. Here is my best interpretation of them.

"Welcome to Whataburger. Can I take your order?"

"Uh, yes, let me get a number 2..."

After talking to the nice lady over the small voice box I resumed my conversation with big and silent.

"I am trying to be an atheist. Would you leave me alone please?"

silence

"What in the hell are you anyway?"

nothing

I pulled up to the window and paid my 8 dollars or so and wondered why hamburgers costs so much and then the thing was gone as fast as it came. It was like it was taunting me. Staying barely in the margins, watching and waiting. Always there, never completely gone. It was as if the entity were waiting to be there for me, anxiously waiting to comfort me and watch over me like it did in years past. But, I wanted nothing more to do with it.

I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous to some of my more intellectual friends (trust me I am right there with you), psychotic to those who are more in tune with mental health issues and down-right offensive to folks of faith, but I can't explain these encounters any better than to just say what I saw and describe what I felt. I know that I risk appearing over or under spiritual. I know that this sounds like the ramblings of a mad man. But, it is what it is.

I explained this encounter to a friend of mine from my community and she helped me to understand things better. She said that being an atheist is not necessarily about denying that God exists. There could very well be a god, or gods in our world, but if those beings do nothing for humanity, nothing for us in general, why waste time trying to get to know them or trying to understand them?

I truly appreciated her take on things and there is a lot of truth to what she told me. In essence, if all God does is make me feel less afraid, but does not actually conquer evil, maybe I can do that on my own. If all my god manages to do is help me sleep, why can't I just take a pill rather than to pay homage to the great unknown?

What good is a real God, if God does no real good?

More on this later...

I believe in God (but it's not what you might think)

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 16:37:00 +0000

I woke up scared out of my mind. I remember that feeling like it was only yesterday. Lying in bed afraid to move. I adjusted only my eyes and looked around the room for any movement -- any indication that there was something there to get me -- steal me away in the night, eat me, devour me, kill me and take me away from my parents for good.

The trees moved slowly outside rhythmically with the wind and I could swear I saw a shadowy finger brushing up against the window. I could hear the tapping the finger made against the glass pane and it went right to my spine and seemed to irritate everything in my small system. Listening and watching I determined that the finger was a branch from a tree, tapping away as the wind moved the tree and everything outside back and then forward.

It was either that or some cruel beast playing tricks with me -- messing with my head, making my tiny heart race and my insides ache in fear. Establishing that the windows were devoid of beast or entity, I took the risk of slowly moving my head towards the closet door. I wasn't sure if I had left the door opened or closed, but either way the menacing entryway and cubby posed a threat.

Closed the door could easily conceal a monster that would burst out at any moment to cover me in its immense size and darkness. Open and the monster could be waiting within the recesses of the darkness within, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting until my guard was down,

I was 5 years old at the time, and this was a typical night in my childhood home. I had been waking up regularly for days to this unimaginable fear of harm - fear of something supernatural at best that would be there the next time I awoke in darkness, be there to hurt me. I was determined for a few days to just not fall asleep. I figured if I remained awake, nothing could sneak up on me while I slept and therefore nothing bad could happen to me,

This particular night I remember praying. I did not exactly know to who I was praying to, or to what, but I do remember praying. I asked (god if you will) whatever benevolent presence I felt at the time to please just make the nightmares stop. I implored the good of the universe to overshadow the evil that I felt was there to harm me.

I called out to the darkness and the emptiness of the great unknown and begged for a moments rest as a small child in my room that night. And to my small imagination and eager little heart I got an answer.

It was subtle at first. The response I got back from the great unknown was a physiological one. My body just started to calm down, my breathing slowed, my heart relaxed a bit and the tension in my belly eased. My mind was still racing, and my eyes continued to scan the room, but I felt the presence of something really good in there with me. Something strong, clean, and parental.

I closed my eyes and slept like a 5 year old for the first time in days. The next night I uttered the same words to the same benevolent presence and got the same results.

Now, one could argue that my parents taught me about prayer or that Sunday school had taught me as much. That paired with a child's immense imagination could have caused me to conjure up these feelings and the peace I felt, just as I had conjured up the feelings of fear and anxiety before. But to me, in that room for that period of time, "God" became real.

As I grew older I learned to attach labels and names and categories and structures to this god-being. When I was a teenager, someone told me a story about Jesus and I thought that maybe, this good thing that I knew from childhood fit into the context of who Jesus was.

I mean he loved children. he stood up for the marginalized and the minority, and he confronted evils of all sorts. So, it was just a natural thing for me to accept Christianity as my religion because well I had already experienced the goodness of God to comfort me and to chase away the bad.

Now as an adult, I have tried desperately to shake off those old ideas. I have learned that maybe my god does not necessarily always fit the molds of Christianity, nor does it fit into most contemporary religions or understandings of God. Maybe my god is no god at all, but the combined feelings of all on the planet who wish to do us well. Maybe this comforting presence is a ghost of a family member long since gone from the world who has chosen to watch over me. Maybe, it really is a god defined as good by most earthly well-intentioned religions.

I tried to be an atheist a few months back and I am sad to say that it didn't work out for me. See I have a huge amount of respect for atheists. I think it is because deep down, when I am honest about myself I have troubles reconciling this good god with a world in trouble. I take issue with the descriptions that religion has constructed for God -- the excuses they have made for god's seemingly uninvolved, unconcerned, or unavailable approach to human suffering. I take issue with believers who look and sound more like the evil presence I felt in my room than the loving, concerned and caring presence I felt back then and still feel today.

It's embarrassing to say I am Christian at times, knowing full well that others who use that label use it to bash people over the head with their own interpretations of the Bible or their own opinions and judgement about what is right or wrong. It's a little infuriating to be honest. I tried to run away from all of it, live in denial, steer clear of hatred in all of it's ugly forms.

More on this later...

Where am I?

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 02:06:00 +0000

It's a simple question if we are talking about mere geography, right? Where am I? Ask Siri and she would even give you an estimated address. "Where am I" is a good question to ask when getting off of a city bus, in a strange town you've never been in if you are trying to get to a connecting bus or train or car. And it is usually easily answered by whomever local pedestrian you might ask.

But ask yourself "where am I?" to questions of faith, doubt, life, relationships, love, and emotion and the answers will vary from day to day for most. Maybe even moment by moment. It's only because we are human. Human beings traditionally can be fickle, flippant, wishy-washy, doubtful, and undecided. Add an anxiety or personality disorder to the mix and you will get varying results.

It makes one wonder if it is even worthwhile answering this question if the answer is just going to keep changing. But, I still ask it. I ask myself this question on a regular basis, and sometimes I even know the answer. Sometimes, I am on a roll with answers, then I reach a plateau of sorts and land back into the mystery of unknowing.

When I am honest with myself (and that is pretty normal these days), I have to admit that I don't know as much as I should about life and love and faith and belief and science and things that are not so black and white.

But I do have personal knowledge of some things.

I know what it feels like to be loved.

I know what God feels like and that there is God.

I know that I have a long way to go to understand either of those two ideas.

I know that everyone else who has experienced these two ideas, is in the same boat as me. There really are no experts in love or god.

Disagree? Just look at all the books attributed to the subjects of love and God. Think of all the different religions and all the different love stories.

Try to number the ways of belief found in your own religion. Christianity for one is the most diverse of religions having over 43,000 denominations worldwide by some estimates. It is incredibly pluralistic and varied.

To some that would seem to be a limitation. They might even argue that Christianity is a farce because no one seems to agree on what it is. I see it as a great advantage - an opportunity to learn and understand the god of Christianity from the view of 43,000 other vantage points. Even within each denomination there are conservative groups and progressive groups, traditionalists and modernists, and even post-modernists.

This means that I can say right now with very little uncertainty that I am in fact a Christian. And really, no one can argue with me about it. It also means that there is room to grow and grasp and move and stretch and learn and study and teach and converse about the many varied approaches to god found in the one religion.

So where am I?

1. I believe in God
2. I am a Christian
3. I know love first hand.

More on this later.

Fix You (Cover of a Coldplay song) for Lily

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 01:01:00 +0000

Everything I need to know about God, I learned from Mom and Dad

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 16:59:00 +0000

This Sunday in church we were all tasked to remember a time when we received a surprising, extravagant gift. It was a simply task of recall that struck me like a swinging baseball bat right in the heart.

As I sat there trying to remember, the following story came rushing back into my mind as if stored there for a long time and waiting to pounce at this exact moment. And it did pounce. Everyone's eyes were mostly closed at this point and I was pretty grateful, because I probably looked a lot more devastated than I did overwhelmed with happiness, gratitude and emotion.

I turned 18 at the end of my senior year on May 5 -- Cinco de Mayo, 1984. Graduation was still to come, but most of the work was done. So there I was in my bedroom winding down after a long day at school. This year had been my best year ever and so I remember being happy a lot back then.

I was sporting a pretty hard-core mullet with streaks of blonde hair running through my all-too-dark mane. It worked well with the rock-star image I was trying to project. I wore glasses back then as well and had overcome a lot of self-esteem issues because of them. Lately though I was feeling more in control - more confident and more appreciated.

My Mom and Dad who had been working that day had just returned home and I could hear them moving around in the house beyond my room. Within the next few minutes I was being summoned by my mother to join them in the kitchen. I figured that we would firm up our plans for the evening's festivities. We always eat as a celebration for birthdays. Well, we eat and we hang out together. Two of the more significant activities that seemed to solidify our little family over the years.

I crawled out of my bed and stretched a bit before leaving my room and walking down the hall towards the kitchen. There they were. Mom and Dad were both standing in the middle space between hallway and kitchen and each had a goofy look on their face.

"Yes?"

"Happy birthday" Mom said with a sly smile.

"Oh, thanks" I looked at Dad as he was handing me something across the space between me and Mom. I reached out to grasp it's handle.

It was a hard case, plastic with a handle in the shape of... a... guitar. It had the word Ovation written in chromish colored font in one corner. I set it down on a chair and looked back at Dad.

He smiled back at me, "Open it."

I undid the first few buckles that kept the lid secure and pulled up on the case only to realize I missed a buckle in back. So I leaned over and unsnapped the last hasp and pulled up on the lid anxiously.

There it was. Sitting inside the case surrounded by felt was this beautiful, amazing guitar. It was colored with oranges, yellows and browns in a sunburst pattern and had a new set of strings on it. I just stood there staring. How, what...

I looked back at Mom dumbfounded.

"Well, take it out. Play it."

I reached into the case and grabbed the neck of the guitar and pulled it out. It had a solid feel to the narrow performance neck of the thing. I strummed a few chords and my eyes began to get moist.

"Like it?" Dad asked.

"How? I.."

"It's yours. Happy Birthday. I bought this from a customer. It's electric too."

I adjusted the knobs installed on the guitar. It was phenomenal. I had been playing guitar since I was about 5 years old and until that moment I had always played cheap guitars purchased from Mexico for about 50 dollars at most.

I was always interested in music, but in High School I actually found out that I was good at it. I had started going to church kind of late in life at about 16, and there they asked me to play the guitar all the time, but I didn't have a guitar. I had to borrow the youth pastor's guitar to play.

My parents had purchased a professional instrument for me on my birthday. I had no idea at the time what this gift meant and how it would impact me until much later in life.

The Anti-Message

Up until that point I thought that I had seen and heard glimpses of God, but that it mostly came from the church I was attending. I had literally spent hours studying the Bible and reading stories and sections of it. Once I discovered church, it was the thing that I did all the time. Every Sunday and Wednesday and every time in between I was there learning and praying and witnessing and discussing scriptures.

In fact I spent so much time at church, my Mom and Dad had to sit me down and ask me to take it easy. They said I was spending too much time there. What I did not realize is that they were asking me to spend more time with them. The sad part about it is that even if they asked me point blank back then to please spend more time with them, I would have continued to go to church every time the doors were open.

You might think that is good. If so, you are wrong. I missed out on a LOT because of church. This is just one of the things that it impacted. Anyway, amidst all the game playing and hanging out with church friends and laughing and praying for each other there was something else going on. A sort of "anti-message" that was being preached over and again in my head.

The anti-message had a lot to do with rules, and crucifixion and judgement and Hell and eternal punishment and discipline and conviction and sin and submission, even unforgivable sin and death and an angry god. The two main messages I heard said this "I am an all loving Father God that wants to take care of you forever." Then there was this "If you don't like me or want anything to do with me though, I will abandon you to torture and death forever -- no second chances, no mercy ever."

I literally soaked in the love of God in those early years. I took every opportunity I could to feel that love and live in it from the first message. But the other message, I avoided it like the plague. Deep down I always doubted that that was actually God. I mean, they preached that message way more than the other. You might even say we were brain washed to believe in death and punishment. But there was this nagging piece of reality in my mind and heart that said "not true" every time I heard the anti-message.

I usually ignored it. Years later I realized that the voices that said "not true" sounded exactly like my Mom and Dad.

The Gift

So how significant was this gift? Let me elaborate a bit on my upbringing. My Mom and Dad were really self-made people by this point in their lives. Everything they had -- the cars, the house, the ability to buy me a 500 dollar guitar on my birthday -- they had worked really hard for.

They did not have well-off parents, a trust to rely on, people in their life to send them to college or support them otherwise. They had each other, and a lot of hard work way before I ever came along.

So my Dad did what he could to provide for us while Mom stayed home with the kids (all four of us) until it didn't make sense for her to do that. Dad sometimes worked three different jobs during this time. What do you think they wanted for me?

When I was a bit younger I was all excited about being a barber one day, just like Dad, but NO. They would not have that. They wanted me to go to college, graduate and get a professional job somewhere and not have to worry and work as hard as they did. It was a simple request, especially considering what it is they had done to get me there.

They really wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or do some other career that promises financial security. What did I want to do? I wanted to be the next Amy Grant (excluding gender of course). I was going to be a musical performer and had signed up for college to go and do that.

I was pumped full of confidence by my high school peers and felt like I really had what it took to do music for a living. My parents, supported me. They supported my crazy ideas so well, they were willing to put up the money to buy me a real professional instrument. They even offered to pay for college and let me stay at their lake house while I went to school. They paid for everything -- school, gasoline, meals, lodging.

I remember that semester at college. I made a lot of realizations then. One, I am not a super-star. There are hundreds of people, if not thousands that sing and play better than me and even seem to have a natural ability for it. My first day at college pretty much inundated me with that sort of knowledge. In High School I was a super-star, but in college I was a nobody Freshman.

The other thing I realized was that my parents were losing weight. They both were working so much they did not hardly have time to eat at home and so the kitchen cupboards were empty. The refrigerator - empty. I began to realize that they were sacrificing everything for me, including their own well-being. They were putting it all on the line for their college bound son - their super-star.

I dropped out of school after the semester was over much to their utter disappointment. I then soon joined the Air Force and left home and got married. There was a lot of confusion about those last few months at home - a lot of pain and hurt and things unsaid. The hardest part for me was telling my parents that I was not going to school anymore. They worked so hard to get me there and I failed them. I felt like there was nothing I could do to gain their confidence back and their trust and so I left - a failure.

I was so wrong. I had never lost their confidence - never lost their trust. They loved me so much and I could not even see it. They would have done anything for me - anything. These two people know how to love.

I was ill-equipped to receive it. See I had applied what I knew about God, the anti-message to my parents. In my mind, I had done the unforgivable sin. I failed and I rejected my parent's ways ultimately turning my back on them. What did Mom and Dad do? Did they banish me to some form of hell - an eternity of punishment? Did they judge me as too far gone -- did they turn their back on me because they could not look upon me as a sinner?

Hell no. They began to slowly embrace me for my new decisions. They supported everything I chose to do whole heartedly. They told me over and again how proud they were of me. The accepted the new John, and then the next version of John and the next. To this day we cannot have one conversation about politics or religion, but I know that they love me, and they tell me all the time that they are so proud of me.

The gift of the guitar was their way of saying, "no matter what you decide to do, we are 100% behind you boy. We loved you when you were born and when you wanted to hang out with us all the time. We love you when you want absolutely nothing to do with us, and we love you now and always. You cannot escape our love for you, even when you reject us. Go and do your music son, and do it well. We are so proud of you."

Everything I need to know...

This is how God must feel about his creation. This is who God is. Not some angry, egotistical giant, waiting to pounce on you because you rejected him or her. Not some people-programmer in the sky that demands you follow his will and his will only regardless of your desires. Not some hopeless lover that cries at the loss of another human-being somehow as much a victim of sin and the consequences of it as his own creation. God is a Father. God is a Mother. God is so proud of you.

My Indie Faith

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:14:00 +0000

In case you have not been paying attention I have not written anything in some time. I think that is because at some point my "faith," though it is independent (indie), has been through hell lately. I mean that in a good way. :)

So when a person's "faith" goes through such a thing, they don't usually talk about it until most of the hectic parts are over. Talking about things like this in the midst of the hell is a little bit difficult because well, you don't really know what to say.

How could you speak definitively about something that is forever changing to you and for you? So I have backed off from talking about faith and my faith particularly until I know more about what I know about the subject.

Yes, and as luck would have it, I am through a significant transitional period in my faith and on the other side of that. FINALLY! GEEZ! Sorry for my exclamations, but man that was a confusing part of my life. Anyone else? Any of you going through that right now, have gone through it, considering going through it?

See in order to have a faith transition, you have to be open. Well, scratch that. I think a better way of thinking about it is you have to be sick of the bull shit. It usually starts by being drawn to authenticity in your life. You could call it a pursuit of truth -- not just some exploration of what truth is for the experts (pastors, philosophers, gurus, etc.), but what is the truth for you. What is true to you?

No, I am not talking about circumstantial truth or selective truth or anything like that. I am not talking about my truth or your truth, but the truth. What is true for everyone. Not just the narrow-minded faith-talking Jesusy people. What can we agree on when it comes to the subject -- all of us?

If what we collectively can agree upon is considered the truth, then to me, it has to be true.

But, what about God? Well, God does not look at all like the Christians, Muslims, Jews, or other religious groups define him/her/it to be when we look at God in those terms -- if God exists at all.

BUT (<-- and this is a big but), If God does exist, then religion for me becomes something completely different than it used to be. Religion now becomes man's attempt to explain the unknown. AND GOD DOES NOT FAULT US FOR NOT KNOWING -- no matter how often you are threatened, shamed, harassed, shunned, or ignored by the religious. All religions then have some truth in their writings, some information we could all gain from, some element of God.

All religions have a lot of crap - baggage if you will. All religions have the capacity to snuff out the life of a believer -- completely crush others, or allow a believer to blossom and grow -- love others immensely.

Some religions have done a fantastic job at explaining the unexplainable, some atheists are doing a better job of it. But what atheism and religion have in common is the fact that some very intelligent and enlightened people have taken an exorbitant amount of time thinking and talking and writing and reading about God or the absence of God.

So then my job as a "believer" is to explore all of that. Seek the truth. If I am on this journey to pursue the knowledge of God, then I can't go wrong can I?

In the Bible, Paul's last advice to the Thessalonians goes like this:

"19Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. 20Do not scoff at prophecies, 21Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good." (I Thessalonians 21, NLT)

In order to truly DO this. In order to take that advice, we have to actually LISTEN to other "prophecies".

I hope to be able to write more about how I came to this conclusion and how my whole life has been full of the life of God and light and darkness. I hope to also make it interesting.

The Gospel According to "John"

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:57:00 +0000

So Jesus, having just spent several hours hanging out with this large group of folks from all walks of life is sitting down now at the base of a hill and he is addressing this same group of folks letting them know that it does not matter if you are poor or rich, young or old, jew or not, you are included in the Kingdom of God. -- this wonderful existence with God referred to as Heaven by the Jews that begins now, not later.

Everyone had to be so excited. Even folks who were not allowed in the Jewish Synagogue, those folks were being told that they have a seat at this table. This was a happy jubilant time for these folks. until Jesus drops the bomb on them.

KA-BAM!

In Matthew 5:20 (NIV), right after this little love-in, Jesus says this "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

WHAT? I would have been angry, I think. So what is all this "every one is blessed, everyone is welcome" stuff he was gabbing about earlier? Why say that, only to drop this line afterwards? Is this the old bait and switch we have become accustomed to with these types of individuals?

Look a little closer with me though. This is what Jesus says. "Unless your righteousness…"

Wait a second. Jesus is saying the we have "righteousness" that those folks possess righteousness All of us, each of us! EVERYONE. We all posses this inner goodness that he is referring to.

Born into sin?

So who is it that says we were all born with original sin? I mean God himself says in Genesis after creating man and woman "And he/she are good." And now Jesus is referring to an inner goodness that EVERY LIVING SOUL POSSESSES. This is the sort of stuff that leads me to believe that original sin, and sin from birth are constructs created by the early church, designed to make us need the church. We got the sin, and the church has the solution don't they?

So by telling us all these years that we have this disease within us, this scourge that we were born with, we all feel pretty bad about ourselves. But, the church, they say "Come on over here folks, we have the cure, we can make you all better, well at least temporarily, you will always be consumed with sin, but we have the bandaid. " And we just go flooding to the first open door looking for the cure. Don't we?

So here is Jesus saying, NO. You all are possessed by goodness, each of you.

Apples to oranges

So lets continue. He says "Unless your inner goodness surpasses (passes up, is better, beats) that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Wait a second now, if each of us possess this inner goodness, then what control do we have of whether it is better or passing up that of the pharisees and teachers of the law?

Well the answer is we don't. The answer is also that just by being there and listening to Jesus we/they already have surpassed the folks who depend solely on the rules. All those people, who were just called Blessed, their righteousness already surpasses the Pharisees.

Why so?

Because they were not depending solely on the law, they were not waiting for the next nugget of truth to be passed down by the teachers. They were seeking out God on their own. Not only were they rejects of the religion of their day, but they had moved on from all of that out of pure necessity. Their inner goodness made them move on. Their righteousness rejected the status quo and made them look for something better. All of the folks who were so concerned with outer appearances and performance and appearing holy, those folks were lumped in with the pharisees. They, along with the pharisees and teachers of the law had trampled their own inner goodness to run towards the triple-guarantee of the written word, the expressed rules of tradition and the holy words of a lost kingdom.

Jesus, was not interested in them, he was interested in these rejects, this band of dirty, homeless, diseased and impoverished people. It's worth thinking about isn't it?

8 Things I Love About My Dad

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 02:15:00 +0000

My Dad, Thomas Martinez, turns 80 tomorrow. I know, crazy right? Anyone who knows my Dad, knows that he is full of energy, and is still working 3 full days a week. They also know that he doesn't look or act 80.

I always imagined an 80 year old man to be shrunken, hunched over, walking with a cane, hearing aids, glasses, mumbling to himself. And here we have this guy who stands 5’ 10”, good posture with no help from any kind of brace, still cuts his own grass, still works on and washes his own cars, doesn't even have a limp, has most of his hair, still sees well without the aid of glasses, still hears well again with no hearing devices.

Dad cutting my Son's hair June 2012

In honor of 80 years, I was going to write some kind of tribute and so I settled on 80 things I love about Dad. I realized that some folks would actually want to read this, so I shortened it to just 8. So, each of these things represent a decade of Dad’s amazing life up until now. However, you must keep in mind that I have only known the man for 46 years, so my experience with him is rather narrow.

So, without further ado…

8 Things I Love About My Dad

8. Dad talks tough, but he is all about self-control - Yeah I have Dad to thank for this. Sometimes growing up Dad would bark at us, even threaten us within an inch of our life, but he never killed us – not once. This led me to believe that 1. He was either a lot of talk, or 2. He would have killed us but there was a rational part of him that was able to reign it in so that he did not end up having to spend the rest of his life in prison. Self-control, I learned it from him. Thanks Dad, 1. For teaching me how not to kill my kids even when they deserved it and 2. For not killing me.

7. He never failed to provide for us no matter what – You know in the several years that I lived at home, the country went through all sorts of economical fluctuations both good and bad. There were the really amazing times, like the day Dad brought home an RV and told us that he bought it. Just like that. One day we were a family of 5 driving around in a Chevrolet Station Wagon, the next in a large fiberglass camper that slept 6. Dad drove us all over the place in that thing. We even took a two month vacation one Summer with the thing and drove all the way to Canada. Then there were the tough times. It was the big oil crunch in the late 70s. In case you didn't know, Dad is a hairstylist and has always cut hair so long as I have known him.

In the late 70s, no one came to get their haircut anymore. So, rather than make excuses, Dad took on some other jobs. We never knew there were money problems, because dad never complained about it, ever. Me and my brothers never heard him blame the economy for tough times, or use the recession to take a break from having to work or look for work. He just, worked and worked and worked and made no excuses, because he didn't have to.

We never saw an interruption in our every Saturday pizza, and our regular weekly meals. We always had a new wardrobe on the first day of school, except for Chris who refused to wear new clothes. J My Mom and Dad both cut hair to provide for us, and it worked. They still do. I learned that a Man does not make excuses; he makes money and brings it home for his family, period, no matter what.

6. He loves my Mom stubbornly – My Mom is amazing don’t get me wrong, but sometimes the things she fought us for seemed silly, even ridiculous. However, we never told Mom this, or Dad. See, we knew that bad mouthing Mom was pointless with Dad. Not only did we risk dying, but Dad would probably have first killed us, then in defending Mom’s honor he would have killed us again while telling us we were wrong and Mom was right and to shut up about it.

Niagara Falls June 2012

That’s right I said he would kill us twice. Because once you have gone as far as to kill your kid, you can’t get booked for killing him again, so why not? Anyway, not only did dad defend Mom even when she was wrong, he let us know in no uncertain terms, that Mom always came first, period. I think he knew that once we were long gone and grown up, she would still be there with him, and she never forgets anything. Or he just loves her that much.

Either way, I learned 1. What love looks like in a marriage, and 2. How the best approach to parenting is a team effort –a united front. Thanks Dad for teaching me that.

5. He is the life of the party - a true entertainer. Man can that man dance. Party after party, event after Mexican event, quinceaneras, weddings, funerals, there was Pop moving faster than the speed of light with his feet, moving Mom all over the room while everyone else was winded. When he wasn't dancing he was cutting up with the relatives.

When my grandmother was alive, I swear dad saw it upon himself to make her laugh every time she turned around. One liners, complicated jokes that took setting up, crazy off the wall comments. Dad was a goofball, and people loved it. They still do. Today, Dad works in a large building full of hairdressers, mostly women and gay men, and he has them all in stitches most of the time.

He is a comedian alright, but he can also sing, and he can sermonize and deliver a eulogy that would bring Hitler to tears. He is also a story teller. Everything that has ever happened to Dad will be in a story of sorts - a dramatic retelling of the event with details that had to be slightly embellished in order to make it interesting of course. Mom is the fact-checker in the relationship and is commonly on hand to let folks know that “it did not happen like that.” But when she is not around, the stories are amazing.

Dad has always been an artist when it comes to making people laugh, cry and listen. I have always tried to mimic his ability to do so, and maybe one day I will be as good as he is at it.

4. He doesn’t half-ass anything – My Dad is not just a hairstylist. He is also a barber. But not just a barber, but a licensed barber instructor. Wait and that’s still not all. He is also a cosmetologist. And… you guessed it, a licensed cosmetology instructor. If you don’t happen to be in the know, a barber, is different than a hairstylist and the two are different than a cosmetologist. It was not enough that Dad cuts hair for a living, he had to be the best. He spent a great deal of time in his early life traveling around and doing shows for folks, explaining to them how to cut hair and style hair and color hair in ways that he knew best.

Aside from all of that, Dad is a carpenter, and an electrician, a plumber, an auto mechanic and an all around handy man. He was never satisfied to pay someone to do something that he could do himself. I spent many a Sunday under the hood of a car or under the car itself with Dad while he fixed things and I handed him tools. Occasionally he would bump his head on something and then I would learn new words to add to my vocabulary. Dad is an explorer, a learner and a tireless student. A few years ago I gave him a computer, and to this day he not only uses it daily to read scary conservative political emails, but he actually gets on Facebook and posts on people’s walls.

Facebook, at 80. Wow. Dad you taught me that “if that guy can do it, I can probably do it too.” You taught me how to troubleshoot what’s wrong with my car and my friends cars. You taught me how to dig a hole, mow a lawn, paint a building, pour cement, lay bricks, trim a hedge, change a light bulb in an oven, fix a dryer, hammer a nail, put up sheet rock, frame out a building, put in insulation, lay carpet, build a roof, shingle the roof, fix a motor, clean a battery connection, change a fuel filter, change oil, fix brakes on a car, pull the head off of a motor and replace the head gasket (without catching the fuel line on fire), and the list could go on and on, Pop. I have learned so much from being around you and from just being unafraid to try something new and then eventually master it. That is you in me. Thanks!

3. He can still kick above your head – in the 80s I was pretty much convinced at the age of 15 that I was going to be Rocky Balboa. I had purchased a 60 lb body bag to suspend from a rafter in the garage and pummel on during my intense work out sessions. I also had a speed-bag to practice my punching on. Dad helped me hang that up by building a custom fixture for it out of wood.

One day, me and my friend were in the garage hitting the bag when Dad walked in. He had to be in his 60s back then, and he said, “I don’t need to do all that punching, because I can KICK…” on the word KICK he lifted his leg straight up off the ground and hit the bag right where the person’s face would have been, nearly knocking the bag off of it’s rope “…above your head” then he brought his leg down and walked off.

Me and my friend laughed a little bit at the randomness of it all, but we were both impressed that he could do that. My Dad can still kick “above your head.” Not sure when that will come in handy, but if anyone ever needs a good kick above the head, just ask Dad, I am sure he has been waiting all these years for someone to need him in that way.

My Dad has periods where he works out and some where he doesn't but he has always been strong and healthy and tireless. I hope to aspire to that one day.

2. He is strikingly handsome – Okay, now I understand that this is a subjective point of view here, but my Dad is pretty handsome. I mean he must be, because people say I look just like him, so it has to be true. See what I did there? Yes, I always thought that my dad with his ability to use his voice, and put on an act for anyone anywhere would have made an excellent Hollywood actor. I think he missed his calling honestly.

I have had girlfriends in the past tell me that my dad is handsome and that they would stay with me forever because I would probably look like him as I grew older. All those girlfriends have left me for other reasons entirely, but that is beside the point. The problem was with them really. No seriously, they were all bad bad girlfriends.

1. He had regrets. He made changes – okay, serious here. My Dad has made some pretty solid decisions in the past. He has been stubborn at times and made rash decisions. Haven’t we all? But, I got to see him have regrets. He let me know when a decision he made was a bad one. He let me see that side of him that fails, and then gets up and tries again -- tries something different this time.

He let me see the part of him that realizes that his point of view was wrong and then he let me see how he changed his point of view to accommodate for his new knowledge. It was subtle and one of those things that we never talked about. My Dad showed me that he could appear very stubborn, but deep down he learned from his mistakes and he did not go on making the same ones.

Because of his regrets, he changed. This has been a major, major thing for me. I am who I am because of this. My whole life has been about one stubborn decision after another, and how I have had to learn and learn and learn and change to accommodate for what I have learned.

Because I was younger I got to see Dad raise kids, make decisions about money, about drinking alcohol, about morality and culture. I saw him change from a guy who bad mouthed one group of folks, to a guy who praised those folks later.

Dad, thank you most of all for making mistakes and not being afraid to admit when you were wrong about something. Thanks for teaching me how to accommodate and change based on my knowledge of the world around me changing. I know you don’t agree with me when it comes to politics, but the reason I am who I am today is because of what you taught me.

I love you Pop. I hope your next 80 years are just as amazing as these have been. Happy Birthday!

Your son -- you know, the hard-head…

Me (in my diaper) and Dad (In his barber smock)

Jesus is For Losers

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 16:07:00 +0000

(Song written by Steve Taylor)

But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. "Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. "And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - "just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Matt 20:25-27)

The Opposite of Winning
Part of getting older for me has been dealing with loss in many big ways. There is the loss of my children as they grow old enough to not need my protection, my income and my wisdom; the loss of respect that folks seem to get just for being over 40. There is the loss of youth, virility, strength and time. Likewise, there is the impending loss of mobility, health, and eventually life iteself to be concerned about.

So no, I do not find myself at the age of 46 saying victoriously the word “WINNING” like the equally old Charlie Sheen most recently. Instead I can say with much certainty and conviction loudly that I am “LOSING!”

Every day I stand to lose more and more.

So what happened?
I mean really, this is not the glory story I was told as a teenager in my Jesus-freak youth group. Certainly it does not smack of the usual optimism. I mean, that would suppose that you believe the same stories I did. You are special. You are important. You will do great things. You have a special purpose. You can be a winner. You just have to work hard and be good and everything will work out for the best. This lack of optimism may be taken as negativity or worse still, morbidity, but I find myself just wanting to be very honest here.

No, you do not get everything you ever wanted in life. No love does not stay the same and never change. There is no happily ever after and the sun WILL NOT come out tomorrow most days. If you find something good, I mean really awesome, in your life time you will most likely lose it, and probably in a horrendous way.

However, when I look at the Christian church and most Christians these days you would think they missed the memo. They are all about winning and claiming the victory. They seem fixated on simply emoting happiness as if being a Christian has somehow fixed all of their problems. There was a while there when I played the same game. Regardless of what happened to me I would simply praise Jesus and of course neglect to tell any of those other smiling happy Christians who never experienced problems about my woes.

We are all Losers
But, the truth is they are all losing – we are. Right now, in fact you too are losing… something. It could be love, money, time, friends, family members; other loved ones, life itself, health, longevity. Seriously, the list goes on. A case could be made that each of us are losing far more than we are winning and will continue to lose even in the midst of winning.

Jesus on the other hand was a Master loser. He knew how to lose and how to lose big, with little dignity and little saving face. He demonstrates to us how we can go on with life even after losing so much.

Don’t believe me? Show me a scripture where Jesus tells us to “Play the Lotto, because you can’t win if you don’t play.” How about just one that says “Build a big nest egg for your self and constantly defeat your enemies.” How about one that says “Amass a great big happy family, or obtain a large lovely home, own the most cattle, win, win, win?”

You won’t find it – I looked. Instead if you truly reflect on the words of Jesus, you will find a common thread among just about everything he has to say. Here’s a hint – it’s not about winning.

Jesus says “the last shall be first.” Loosely translated this means that the biggest losers will actually be the winners. In the upside down world of Jesus and his Kingdom of God, there is value in being last.

Jesus goes on to say things like:

“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 1:18-19)

Really?
As “Followers” of Jesus aren’t we supposed to be like him? What would it take for us to value other people’s successes over our own? This is antithetical to just about everything my parents, church, and school taught me. Isn’t it all supposed to be about victory, success, winning, building a mansion in the sky, achieving more for myself?

I have this tattoo on my left arm that I have had now since October of 2004. It is a stern reminder of this message. Often-times I forget the tattoo is even there, but when I look at it for more than a few seconds, I quickly sober up and remember this mandate.

The tattoo says “Ars Moreindi” in a Gaelic script. The Latin words simply mean, “The Art of Dying (Death).” My Mom would think this was awfully morbid and has voiced her opinion of my tattoo on a few occasions, but I continue to try and cling to this message in selfish moments – moments when I want to hold on to my life too firmly – times when I reign supreme and no one else matters — times when I am pursuing the American Dream at the expense of other people and in spite of those that are not doing so well, times when I know I am right and the other person is dead wrong.

A year ago, just after Easter, I lost my home. He is Risen! I lost my Home! He is Risen Indeed! Someone could have died, but He will come again! Everything I own was in limbo for weeks at a fire restoration facility. He is Risen! I am not a fan of Easter. In my opinion it was a holiday created by Christians designed to gloss over Jesus’ entire life’s work including everything he ever said and demonstrated, by celebrating his resurrection from the dead. Whoop-dee-freakin-doo, I was not feeling very Easterful last year.

If you were unfortunate enough to catch the movie “The Passion of Christ” you know that Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead though, right? He was tortured to death first. It took hours. At least he didn’t have to watch the movie, or work closely with Mel Gibson. But seriously, read the white spaces in the Bible (between the words) and see exactly all that he lost prior to his end on earth.

He lost his status as a carpenter. He lost his family business. He lost dignity and respect. He lost his position in society as a teacher. He lost all of his friends. He lost the possibility of ever having a wife and kids of his own. He lost his Mother and Father and brothers and sisters and cousins. Don’t you think he wanted those things? Don’t you think he loved his family and friends as much as we do?

He gave up on all that stuff, all those people. He was good at giving up wasn’t he? He held on to everything – every blessing, every friendship, everything — very lightly. It’s like he knew that he could lose it all at any moment, and was already prepared to do so.

How then shall we live?
If we are to be followers of Jesus, why do we fight so hard to not just keep ALL that we have, but to get more and more in spite of others? Why do we work so hard and for so many hours away from each other? Why do we fight so hard for principles that have nothing to do with these words of Jesus? What are we trying to do anyway?

Does the fact that Jesus lost everything somehow mean he did not care about anything? I don’t think so. I think he cared an awful lot about all of it, all of us and all of them. It’s just that he knew that life was a blessing. All of the good stuff did not BELONG to him, nor did he have a right to possess it. So when he lost it all he was most definitely hurt by the loss, but he somehow knew it could happen.

Sometimes I feel that we as Christians missed the point completely of his death. We see it as a means to his resurrection, which we celebrate so victoriously on Easter, being remarkably silent on Good Friday. We see him as a winner, a victor over death, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace and all that other mumbo-jumbo which means very little to people who are still alive and having to live with loss on a regular basis. So rather than embrace loss as a way of life, we are forced to sort of pretend that everything is lovely all the time and losing a loved one is no big deal because we will “See them in Heaven.”

We don’t understand why things go so wrong at times and why even though we are living “victorious” lives we still lose so much. We think sometimes that maybe we are not living victoriously enough and that is why bad things happen. So we turn it up a notch, the entire time going in the wrong direction, moving further and further from the God of losing — moving more and more towards the God of winning — a fictitious, evil god that is never satisfied.

Or even worse, we blame God for the bad things — for the loss. See him as some kind of cruel cosmic game master in the sky plotting against us, we who have served him so well for so long. How could God take these things away? We deserve so much better. How does he expect us to claim the victory when he keeps taking, taking, taking?

What we fail to see is that we as followers of Jesus, are to lay these things down — give them up — hold on to them looser than we currently hold on to them. No one can take them away from us, no one, because we lay them down on our own accord (John 1:18-19 again). I know, hard words to hear, and harder words to live by. Thanks a lot, Jesus. Why couldn’t you have just told us to infiltrate a major American political party and dominate the federal government with the intentions of legislating morality based on our own interpretation of scripture? So much easier.

The Loser’s Club
The good news is that we are not alone. Not only is God with us (in my opinion), but we have each other to lose with. We can have our own Loser’s Club to be associated with.

In the novel “It” by Stephen King there was a special kind of camaraderie that the main characters shared in being part of this special club of kids called The Losers’ Club by their schoolmates. But in the end, this band of would be losers somehow proves over and again their ability to sacrifice everything they have for one another.

Love, sacrifice, commitment, compassion, these are the principles that come about when we are used to losing and are held hostage by no-thing. Jesus knew that.

In The River

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:53:00 +0000

In the river I'm gone
In the river I'm gone
In the river I'm gone
In the river I'm gone
(Sarah Masen's song, The River, from the album, A History of Light and Shadow, 2007)

I never thought much about that part of Christianity that is all about escaping the cruel evil world.

I remember being told sometime back when I was a youth that if I got "saved," then eventually I would get to leave earth and go live on a cloud in Heaven, or in a mansion in Heaven and I could never quite reconcile either of those with reality.

For one, does Jesus really get off on big houses? I mean is that what our reward basically amounts to is a large house with many rooms and servants and a decent sprinkler system? How about a few Rolls Royces while we are at it? Does God come over to your mansion for dinner parties and will I have to wear a fancy antebellum dress on this ocasion?

The cloud idea was also a little crazy. Wouldn't you fall right through? If not, how do planes fly right through clouds and how many Heaven-dwellers are knocked right off the tops of clouds when planes fly by? Also what about issues like exposure? Wouldn't we eventually die if we had to spend eternity outside like that, with no shelter?

Yeah, I know this is coming off a little silly. Really, I don't mean it to, but you know it is me talking. I tend to lean towards the silly. Anyway, the main point of their sermons is this: "Your life truly sucks right now, doesn't it? If you accept Jesus Chirst (he always has a last name in these sermons) as your lord and personal savior, not only will it get dramatically better, but eventually you get to leave behind this shithole." Okay, I may have gone a bit beyond with the term shithole, but you get the picture.

Christianity was a means to escape the world. If I can dwell on Heaven a little more, I don't have to dwell too much on what is going on right now, right here, and right in front of me. I needed that as a teenager. I really did. My life did suck.

No, I did not have abusive or alcoholic parents. I did not have a heavy drug habit or anything like that. Nopers, as a teenager, I was just plain unattractive and unpopular and desperate for friendship and acceptance. Sounds a bit like something a drama-queen might say. In fact I was so unpopular and unwanted by most kids my age, I thought that becoming a Christian, though being a form of social suicide, would be much better than the life I was living up to that point. In fact, I needed Jesus as much as I needed anything back then.

I eventually grew up and I eventually grew to realize that this world is God's creation and that I am also his creation. I learned that escaping was not at all what Jesus was talking about when he said things like Love your neighbor as yourself, and go the extra mile, and do not divorce your wife, and do not objectify each other, and that the kingdom of God is here, near, and now. Jesus was overly concerned about how we treat others right now, right here, and on earth. At no time did he say "forget all that shit, we are out of here in 5, 4, 3..." He just simply doesn't say that ever.

So I have settled into the idea that Heaven is really not at all what we think it is, and neither is Hell. We simply don't have the answers. None of us do, and neither does the Bible. But, sometimes I still want to just hide. Sometimes I still want to get away. Sometimes I could just withdraw from everything and everyone and just totally isolate myself. I don't get it. I don't understand it, but it's true.

So, when I heard this song by Sarah Masen, I just fell into it. I listened to the lyrics and I just fell into it. For me, "the river" is not just the equivelent of spiritual bliss, it is a means to escape all of the hard stuff. A way to run into god's arms and just cry, or sit and be quiet or just relax. Because sometimes I am like this big kid. With all of my knowledge and education and experience, sometimes I want my big daddy to just wrap his arms around me and hold me.

At those times, I am sick of my job, my church, my life and people and I just want to escape it all and be with someone who I think not only understands me, but maybe who understands me more than I understand myself. Maybe this is a form of Heaven. Well it seems that way to me. This is a place that I can go whenever I want, but there is also a certain amount of depravity in staying there, isn't there? Sarah, has put her music online for folks to listen to and I invite you to quietly listen to this song with me. Below are the lyrics.

Click Here to download the song:

I could never get close enough to your fire

And now that my flame's gone out, I won't try
Cause I'm in the water under and going down tired
And if there's life at the bottom, I guess I'll find out

Somehow I knew I wasn't meant to burn on
And how could such darkness make any sense, I don't know
But everything is pulling like Easter, somethings begun
But everything's moving toward something that's already done

In the river I'm gone (x4)

I can see your light on the surface, now it fades
But I am still alive, some second wave
And I can hear singing, some distant parade
And over and over, I hear the same refrain

In the river I'm gone (x4)

Come with your weary
Come with your thirst
Come with your fading
Come with your hurt
What is not is now
Come with your doubt
Come on

In the river it's gone
In the river I'm gone
In the river it's gone
In the river I'm gone

Come to the river
Come with your burdens
Come into the river
Come

In the river I'm gone (x4 and fade)

Angel in the Centerfold

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:34:00 +0000

I have always thought that it is good to have a kid around that is both attention deficit and hyperactive in case you ever were to lose anything. There is something about these children that seem to be able to not only know where said lost thing is, but can most likely take you to it.

It's their keen sense of observation. I think it is because most ADHD kids spend most of their early existence bored out of their minds. I wish I could tell you I know about this because I have studied a great deal about the disorder while in college, or because I have an ADHD child or two or three.

Although each of those things is true, I have to say that the reason I know this is because I was an ADHD kid. Blessed at an early age with the disorder, I spent most of my early life bored out of my mind, shaking parts of my body until I was numb, humming, chirping and basically driving my parents crazy.

When I was sleeping the whole house got to sleep. When awake, god bless the poor person trying to sleep. The only real way to keep something from a kid like this is to lock it in a steel box and keep the key on you at all times. Because let’s face it, we ADHD kids are damn curious all the time. Our little minds are racing and we pick up on subtleties that most people miss. Likewise, we have no boundaries and no hiding place is truly sacred.

For instance, where is the best place to hide a large stack of Playboy centerfolds? Some would think that the best hiding places are in plain sight. Like, say a husband is trying to hide a stack of centerfolds from his wife. He might place said folded pictures of naked ladies in a non-descript car parts box on a high shelf in the garage with other like boxes.

A good wife would take a casual glance in her man's work area, see a bunch of dusty old boxes and move on. Not an ADHD kid. For a kid like me, there were treasures in every non-descript box, shelf, cabinet, drawer, purse, wallet, etc. So when I came upon this brown, cardboard box on a high shelf in the garage, I treated it with the kind of awe and respect one would treat a minted and rare postage stamp perched on an ancient envelope from some era in time when they used horses to deliver the mail.

It was 1975, I was 9 years old and a rather lanky kid with thick, horn-rimmed glasses that weighed down on my nose so much I usually had a lightly bruised feeling in the front part of my face. For some reason my hands were as calloused and dry as a grown man's would be, had he spent the entirety of his life on the range, gloveless. I looked rather like a colorful Q-tip as a boy of 9. My head was larger than my body, and my body was thin and featureless.

I had seen my Mom's bare hip one time at the age of 7. It was the most I had seen of the female form in person, up until then. She had bared her hip to me to prove that she too had gotten a shot and that I was not the only one suffering after that particular doctor's visit. I agreed that her war-wound was as grisly as my own and that I did not have so much to complain about that day.

Aside from the bare hip, I had seen everything the sponsors would allow on the TV show The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Cher would often wear strapless blouses and mid-riffs and short skirts and such.

So I pretty much had a good idea of what a clothed woman looked like, but... I was curious about what was under the clothes. I am not sure if that had as much to do with being ADHD as just being a boy who had already seen what a boy is made-of first hand.

Dad was at work. It was Summer, and Mom was at work in the home doing her usual cleaning. There was a door between me and her. To reach the boxes I had to climb on top of Dad’s workbench, and stand on the edges of my toes. After grabbing a box, I would work it off the shelf, squat down and place it on the bench, hop off of the bench and then bring the box down to floor. The first couple of boxes each had their share of cool surprises. One was a greasy heavy car part that came off of an engine. I remember making grooves in the dirt with my one good finger-nail, having gnawed off the rest. Some of the dirt crumbled off onto the floor of the garage.

I placed the part back in the box and placed it back on the shelf exactly how I had found it, making sure to rub a little of the grease onto my hands. After all I was a mechanic just like my Dad at the age of 9 and mechanics get dirty. It was fairly easy to place it in its exact spot, because the settled dust had left a perfect outline on the shelf around the four edges of the box.

The other box was half-full with stacks and stacks of receipts and other paperwork. I looked over a few with a serious studious face as if somehow my understanding of these documents had something to do with my place in the household. I imagined myself exchanging money for a piece of paper like the one in my hands and in the box, oh how the sales person and folks in line marveled at the large wad of money I pulled out of my pocket (mostly ones). I placed the papers back in the box adding a few smears of grease to the top sheet as I placed it exactly where I had found it and closed the lid.

After retuning this box to the top shelf, I grabbed the next non-descript box and shifted it off of the shelf. As I did this I nearly fell off of the workbench due to the extra weight. It was definitely heavier than the others. I remember thinking the good stuff is in here.

I wrestled the box to the floor. The box itself was square and about 10 inches on each side. It was about a foot deep and the four flaps on top were configured in such a way as to close the box without tape or any kind of fastener. I sat on the garage floor, with the box flat on the ground in front of me, my legs resting on each side of it, and tugged upwards on one of the corners causing the other flaps to suddenly rise up and open the box. Dust particals filled the air and I breathed in enough of the dust to make me sneeze out loud. Even more curious, I wiped at my face with the back of my hand as I peeled the top of the box open to get a good look at what was inside.

My curiosity subsided when I saw the stack of papers. More Papers. I remember thinking I should seal these back up and place them on the high shelf rather than waste my time looking for treasures, but there was something different about these papers. They were shiny and uniform, not like the receipts I had just rifled through. The top sheet was white with black print on it, and it was crisp and sharp looking, not like newspaper or like a receipt would be.

I reached inside casually and pulled out the top sheet. It was thick, and obvious to me that this was only a part of a larger sheet of paper. It was folded into thirds. I tried to read what was written on the sheet, but as I opened up the paper to see it in full size I realized that there was color on the other side. Bright, beautiful colors. This was a picture, and one from a magazine obviously.

I remember opening up the large piece of paper and then turning it over to reveal a bright, glossy image. I sat there staring in awe. I don’t know for how long. After awhile I realized that what I was looking at was something I should not be looking at – something I would not be allowed to look at had my parents known. I quickly folded the image up and put it back in the box. My heart began to race and I started to look around quickly. I wanted to make sure no one had snuck into the garage with me. It was quite possible that Mom had come into the garage in that one moment (or was it several minutes?) while I was staring at the girl, and she could be sitting right behind me on the floor watching me, catching me. I would have been so embarrassed.

I quickly turned to look behind me. No one. I sighed heavily, swallowed hard, shifted a glance around the room and pulled the centerfold out of the box to peak at the image again. Skin, lots of skin, and hair -- hair in places I had no idea people grew hair. I decided that I could look at this image, but only in increments, because if I heard anyone coming I would have to return it to the box and pretend that I was doing something else entirely. The truth is, I had no good plan for getting caught. Anyone walking into the garage at that moment would have caught me with my hands in the cookie jar.

I visited the box regularly that Summer and the following year. At the age of ten I could actually read the interviews of the girls in the pictures and understand them a bit. Sally liked long walks on the beach and a brisk game of Croquet on cool spring evenings with a glass of wine. Maria loved family and spent her Summers at home in Puerto Rico with her abuelita and also riding horses. So much to learn. These were the first books I read as a child, the first stories I learned along with the misadventures of Curious George, Dr. Seuss, and other Children’s readings.

Each woman was an individual, each beautiful in her own way, and each naked and smiling, as if pleased to be able to show this young man what all the mystery was about. I remember feeling close to those women and knowing them by name. I made several trips to the garage in that year and a half or so, and I never got caught. No one ever walked in on me whilst I was learning the ladies. No one ever seemed to suspect that this 10 year old had so much knowledge about women – more than a ten year old should.

It was the Summer of '77. I would turn 11 in 3 days, but there was an early birthday present waiting for me in that garage. It would be to my great disappointment that I would find a clean 10X10 square framed in dust on that high shelf above the work bench where the box used to be. The box was gone. It had disappeared as surely as it had once arrived, suddenly and without announcement. Lacy, Terri, Sally, Maria, Anita, Jennifer, Theresa -- all of them – gone from my life like forbidden friends. I had no one I could go to and request their return, no missing persons reports to fill out, no one with which to bemoan my loss with. This was my little secret and I kept it all to myself.

In the Summer of '75, I uncovered a mystery in the box. In '76 I made friends with the people in that box, and in '77, I lost them all. I was 11. :)

When I was Just a Little Girl...

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Just read an article on Huffington Post that made me think back a bit to when I was a kid. I know weird, right? I never talk about being a kid. Okay, that was admittedly a bit of sarcasm. I frequently talk about my childhood, but that is because I think childhoods are important. I think they shape us into the adults we become.

The article by Kristen Wolfe entitled Dear Customer Who Stuck Up For His Little Brother was about a teenager (around 17 YO) who in fact defended his little brother’s (10-12 YO) decision to choose a video game that had a female lead character in it and a purple controller for the game against his own father who was threatening the child with bodily harm if he chose these things.

The father stomped off angry and the boys, though emotionally affected stood firm together. It is an amazing story. The father wanted his son to choose something more “manly” apparently, something with guns or zombies in it, but the boy insisted that he wanted the girl-game.

I thought about why the father was so insistent and I think it is because somehow he believes that if the boy chooses more manly games, then the boy will somehow grow up to be… more manly. The opposite argument also works in this case, if in fact the boy plays with girl-games, then he will most likely end up to be gay, or a girl – which is one in the same for this father obviously, and both are anathema to the father.

But, is this assumption true? I mean, when I was a young father raising my boys I think I felt like it was my job to mold my boys into “men.” And my definition of men was something like this father’s. It was tough, strong, manly, or masculine, or macho, and straight, not gay. I was deluded into believing that somehow just by the toys I let them play with, the clothes I let them wear and the things I let them do, I could somehow make this sort of thing happen.

So I only let them play with toy cars and trucks and other stuff like that. When kids were playing dress-up and putting on dresses, I did not allow them to play that way. I made crude jokes about gayness and gay people in the home to make sure the kids knew that this was not an acceptable way to be. I did everything I knew to try and control their future outcomes. I believed that I could somehow, prevent gayness, or create straightness if you will.

Years later, I am convinced that I was wrong to try and do this. I also now realize that being a man has nothing to do with a person’s sexual preference. After all, there are plenty of tough determined men in the military stationed in Afghanistan right now on behalf of our country who happen to be gay.

I realize also that there is no way for a father or mother to create or foster or nurture or make kids grow up to be straight. You can certainly make them miserable by trying -- as the father in the article certainly was able to demonstrate. I don’t know what the scene was when those boys got home or in the car on the way home, but I can imagine that it was not a pleasant one. Just because dad backed down in the store it does not mean that the discussion was over.

Here’s another thing, does playing with cross-gendered toys mean that you have a gender identity issue? Does a boy playing with Barbies make the boy instantly gay? Does a girl playing with a set of tools make her a lesbian? What is wrong with people?

When I was a small boy I distinctly remember that my favorite person in the world back then was my Mom. She was a SAHM, who took being a Mommy to the nth degree. She saw it as her duty to spend every waking moment with me, caring for me, playing with me, reading to me and talking with me. She also did a fair amount of cleaning.

Seriously, a lot of cleaning. I don’t mean like dusting and then sleeping. I mean hard core cleaning. I honestly think she was a bit OCD However, when she cleaned she would play the most beautiful music. While most Moms of that day were listening to top 40 stuff of the 70s or Motown, Mom would play her Doris Day records from the 60s. I grew up listening to Doris Day and singing “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera.”

My favorite toys back then were a plastic toy vacuum cleaner, a few dolls and a golden brown teddy bear, appropriately named “Goldie.” She had a husband teddy bear named Ted. I think he was actually doing my dark brown teddy bear (Markeesha) on the side, but that is another story. These were a few of my favorite things.

You know why? I wanted to be just like Mom when I grew up. And she seemed to favor these things, including the vacuum cleaner. It’s a miracle that my favorite toys weren’t an old dust rag and a mop and bucket, considering how much Mom cleaned. No, instead it was toys that could let me play like my Mom. I wore her shoes around the house too and liked to make things with her.

Guess what, I'm not attracted to men in the least. So, there you go. My worst moment as a child growing up? The day my Mom put all my girl toys in a plastic bag and I never saw them again, including my Goldie bear. I cried and cried and cried. It was heart-breaking.

Maybe she too was afraid of her influence on me. I still believe that spending all that time with Mom and playing with tender toys and listening to Doris Day and having my Mommy wipe me down with a cold wet wash-rag and stay by my side all night when I had a fever made me into the caring and compassionate man I am today. Thanks Mom. I forgive you for taking Goldie away.

“When I was just a little girl, I asked my Mother what will I be. Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Here’s what she said to me.” “You will be a good man, John. You will.”

The Night (of the living dead) Before Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:28:00 +0000

The below story is a Christmas gift from my little brother (Darrell Martinez) to me, my family and subsequently all of the folks that read this blog.

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'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through our apartment, not a creature was stirring, except our four cats. I mean really, try and keep four cats from stirring -- it can't be done. The stockings were out, hung from coat hangars on the kitchen door. The Christmas lights were on, tangled and tied around the balcony... with care, and the tinkle-dribble sounds of two fish tanks hung in the air. We slept quite soundly, long used to the noise, of those damn four cats and all of their toys. Anthony in his Snuggie® -- hogging the bed, and I in my Decepticon® PJs sleeping the sleep of the dead.

When all of a sudden I awoke to such racket, like a loud sawing-grinding-vibrating repeating grating... oh that was just Anthony snoring... nevermind, I went back to sleep. But, I woke again to the shattering of glass,so I crawled out of bed to kick some cat-ass. Out to the living room I stumbled in vain -- ready to bring down that mad Christmas kitty-pain. But Oh! With my bleary half-shut eyes did I see, but Santa himself-as plain as can be. He had come through the patio windows as we don't have a chimney. He was all covered in mud and looking quite dingy. His hat was all torn and he held in his hand, the leg of a reindeer that had been gnawed-on quite bad.

He smelled of a sewer that had puked up rancid meat and I hoped against hope that he couldn't hear my heartbeat. "Murr-aah?" He moaned, as he looked right at me. "Fuck!" I exclaimed as my shorts filled with pee. Then, here he came running and the blood in me surged, I knew that this Christmas-hell-beast needed to be purged. From my home, from this holiday, from this block at least - so I tackle-blocked his ass back down to the street!

Over the balcony he flew and fell with such a clatter, that the neghbors next door came out to see what's the matter! Chang, Bang and Tian -- the Asians next door -- all fell to Santa's blood thirst in a scene of much gore! Santa grabbed onto Chang -- grabbed him full in the face--and blood and hair flew all over the place. Bang screamed out shrill and then tried to run, but Santa got to him quick -- the end to Bang-Sun! Tian just stood there quite frozen in fear, and Santa smashed him hard with the bloody foot of his deer.

Down went Tian and Santa did feast. And I knew in my cockles I'd have to "sleigh" the beast. So onto my laptop -- I flew with such speed, and posted to facebook my dire Christmas need. Then into my closet--I rummaged for the sword, that had been won on Ebay--for a hefty reward. Then out to the lot--I ran with much haste, for this crazed undead Santa I needed to waste. People were running now, all this way n' that - and Chang, Bang & Tian were up from their nap. Returned from the dead, though not quite entirely --They chewed on that annoying dog from the bitch in twenty-three. I dispatched them most quickly--with a sword through the head. "Must finish this fast and return to my bed!" Santa had vanished, screams all around, so I followed the noise and guess what I found. A bath most bloody-to my eyes did appear, of my neighbors all falling to brain-hungry reindeer.

With a red suited fat-man running around quick, I knew in a moment -"His ass I must kick!" Then he roared ugly, up to the sky, and 'round came his minions in the blink of an eye. Half-eaten and bloodied I chopped them as they came. As Santa shouted and groaned, I downed them by name. "Die Dasher! Die Dancer! Die Prancer and Vixen! FALL COMET, FALL CUPIT, FALL DONDER AND BLITZEN!" Slashed the tops of their heads, chopped at them all! Slashed away! Chopped away! Diced away all!

Then bloated but hungry, Santa came for me fast, it was finally time that I dispatched him at last. His eyes shined at me, crimson. Oh yes, very scary. His cheeks were all a'torn, his nose dripped of cherry. His lips curled back to bare broken teeth, I drew up my sword and threw down the sheath. I put my blade in his face and slashed at his belly. his gut spills out thickly like a bag full of jelly. He lunged at me sharply, his finger grazing my nose. Then I gave him a nod and up my sword rose, In a bright slash, in a grand swooping sweep- I took his head off cleanly and he fell in a heap. With a twitch and a quiver he died once more, not knowing what nightmare he encountered before.

I kicked at the corpse of the old elf in red--making quite sure that the hell-beast was dead. Then came the town clock - clanging out twelve, and I laughed when I heard it, in spite of myself. So I turned 'round quickly and shouted out right - "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-FRIGHT!"

-- Darrell Martinez 2011

I want a GI Joe with the Kung-fu Grip

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:22:00 +0000

When I was a kid I remember having such definite dreams about Christmas gifts. One year I was sure I wanted the GI Joe with the Kung-fu grip. Not sure what the draw was for that man-doll back then. I just knew it would be cool to have one. He had a tiny little fist that was separated in half at the palm and when you flipped the lever in his back down his hand would close into a magical kung-fu grip that could fuse carbon steel. Well, I never really tested out the whole metal fusion thing, but I was convinced it could happen.

The cool thing about GI Joe toys was that there was no GI Joe cartoon back then, no GI Joe Movie, nothing. GI Joe was an imaginary character that did not exist in reality or in TVLand or the Movies. At the time, my favorite cousin in-law was actually enlisted in the Marine Corp and away from home serving in some place called Vietnam in a war that affected me very little at the time other than the absence of one of my favorite playmates.

Jodie looked a little like GI Joe. So, it was easy to imagine that when we were fighting crime with GI Joe, Jodie was there taking out criminals left and right with his kung-fu grip. When we were saving the damsel Naked-Barbie from Ken’s chronic domestic abuse, Jodie was there rescuing the poor girl and sweeping her into his arms after high-kicking Ken in his bronzed-tan face. Of course it was only temporary, because Jodie was married to my favorite cousin Sandy, and Naked-Barbie was always convinced by Ken’s multiple apologies and bouquets of plastic flowers that life in the dream home with Ken was all she was good for. For some reason Barbie never had clothes on in my house. I think it was a bit of a trade-off we made. See, I grew up with four brothers, no sisters. So, it makes sense that Barbie would be naked, thus… Naked Barbie.

The year after that it was Stretch Armstrong. Stretch was a rubber man that was filled with what had to be radioactive jelly. As you tugged on his arms and legs they would stretch to the furthest extent of the rubber making him the amazing stretching man. That is until Stretch developed ulcers in his armpits and the inguinal region of his crotch. Not just ulcers, but bleeding ulcers. That gooey clear jelly stuff would get on you and it was a little like getting rubber cement on you. It did not come off easily, soap and water did not work to remove it. It took days for that stickiness to go away. Kids I knew back then that owned a Stretch Armstrong are now dead from cancer. Just saying.

Life is easy when you know what you want for Christmas isn’t it? The question is fairly benign, but if you think about it, when you know what you want for Christmas, you know a lot. You probably know what it would take to make you happy, and that is more than most folks can say. Sure, sure the obligatory response is, I just need my family and I will be happy, or I just want to be home with those I love and around my friends. But, when we are honest, most of us have settled for realities that are far from what we REALLY want. Isn’t that true?

I mean do you really have the greatest job in the world? Maybe you do, but most people, the lucky ones are somewhere between “well at least I have a job in this economy” and “I get paid and it’s not complete torture.” Many others hate their job.

Are you really with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life? Is there really such a person? Do you even like your kids? Is there really just one thing that you could receive at Christmas that will make your life significantly better? Is there? Be honest. Do we really even have something in our head when asked “what will make you truly happy?”

Life was so simple when I was a kid. That GI Joe, Stretch Armstrong, Huffy bike, roller skates – those things made my life wonderful as a kid. They were all I needed to ensure happiness that year. Maybe Christmas is about making our kids happy by getting them that one thing, but for adults it’s about learning to be happy without that one thing. Maybe Christmas for adults is about longing, awaiting, expecting. I mean, the thing about Christmas is this. Jesus comes, but then he goes doesn’t he? He goes in such a gruesome way. Life is kind of like that. The things we long for, the things we await, they do come eventually, but then they are only around for awhile and then poof – their gone.

That is why we learn to appreciate what we have. It’s not because we can’t go out there and get better. It’s not because we are doomed to only have a little. It’s because we know that everything is fleeting, everything temporary. Even when we get exactly what we want, we almost always have to give it up. On top of that, we almost always want more, don’t we? More.

We learn to appreciate what we have because, what we have is just like all those other things. It is just as temporary, just as fragile, yet just as good. As we get older we learn that everything and everyone have a lot in common. That toys break, that family is just that – family. They are part of you. Anything you don’t like about them is probably your fault, because they are really part of you and you of them. That the perfect person we thought we wanted to be with proved to be crazy, sickly, or perfect for some other guy or gal. That the job we thought we wanted, turned out to actually just be “work” in the end.

Maybe Christmas is about realizing that nothing is right, everything is wrong. It’s about knowing though that things will be better one day. It’s about longing, awaiting, expecting for that perfection. It’s about Jesus, and other stuff. I wish each of you a very Merry Christmas. Love what you have – who you have, and if you find yourself longing for more, join the rest of us in that longing. It’s called being a grown-up, welcome to it.

Maybe if Naked-Barbie caught on to this strange kind of Christmas Spirit, she would have left Ken eventually and gone to a shelter for women, taken him to court, divorced him and gotten the dream house, sold the house and went to college, and ultimately built a life for herself of “not enough” like the rest of us.

Would you lie with me?

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:45:00 +0000

Relationships are the most important things in existence. I am talking about marriage, family, friendships and communities. Sure there are a lot of things that get revolved around these relationships. Things like the finances, or the living situations, the work, the church, the stuff. There is so much stuff.

In the song “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol, it conveys this idea, that the most important thing in the world, right now, is us. We get so hung up on everything else. All of these other things are simply distractions from us.

Things are necessary in a life, don’t get me wrong. Without a job us (we) may have to live in the street. Without a church there would be no focused attention on God and community and love, but without us there would be no church. God knows this as well.

I am convinced that Jesus came to earth to tell us about us. In the Sermon on the Mount the very first thing that Jesus talks about is the fact that EVERYONE is us. Everyone counts -- the poor, the persecuted, the rejected ones of the religious system -- everyone is us. There is no them.

We are all us. Jesus came and said once and for all, all of you are Blessed, all of you count, all of you are part of us. (Matthew 5:1-11) He stood up for all of the people that were previously left out – the them of their day.

Not only that, but he spent the next several hundred words painting a picture of how we go about including them with us. Next he talks about how we have got to stop concealing our love, our joy, our excitement about each other. We have got to let our light shine before others. We can no longer hold back – hide behind the silence of our religious code – turn our backs to the injustice of exclusivity.

"In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16)

Then he redefines words like “adultery”, “murder”, “divorce”, “retribution”, all in an effort to promote the singular idea that we are to care more about others than we do ourselves. He redefines the laws of the land supposedly given to them by God, but interpreted through the filter of the religious scholars of their day, but with no filter.

Jesus comes as a God-man to speak a message of us to a world expecting something completely different. See, the entire story of God is like that, as discovered in the Bible. From the very beginning God gave up Adam and Eve to each other. He told them to stay away from the bad fruit for upon eating it they would surely die, and together they conspired to disobey God.

So what does God do? He kills them right? Of course not. He turns them lose and gives them a full life together. Because ultimately it was not about obedience, not about the rules, not about sacrifice. It was about us.(Gen 3:21)

Later on in the Old Testament, the Hebrew people listened to God enough to determine that they were to be a Holy nation, but what they failed to hear God say was “so that you may be a blessing to ALL nations.” (Gen 18:18, 22:18, 26:4 Ps 72:17, Gal 3:8)

From the beginning our religion was corrupted with exclusivity, separatism, and nationalism. So much so that the only way that God felt he could once and for all get through to the world was to come here himself, become one of us, and then speak the words of God for all to hear.

Those words are: "ALL of this -- ALL of it, is about us. Nothing else matters." The Israelites thought sacrifice was more important than blessing nations and built an entire system of sacrifice to appease the God (they thought they knew) based on their experience with other Gods before Yahweh. However they failed to see the value of us.

God sends Abraham to the mountain to “kill” his only son Isaac in an effort to teach Abraham to stand up for his only son and reject the way of other Gods even in the face of God himself, and what does Abraham do? Without even questioning God, He tries to kill his own son to appease the God (he thought he knew), to the point that God has to send an angel to stop him. (Gen 22:11-12) The story is in Genesis Chapter 22. Here is verse 1:

"Some time later God tested Abraham."

One has to honestly ask what God was testing Abraham for. Was he testing Abraham for obedience, sacrifice? Or was he testing Abraham to see if he understood him as a loving compassionate God that values us above sacrifice and obedience? After Abraham seems to fail this test of listening, you don’t see very many more conversations between him and God in the Bible.

It’s as if God realizes that Abraham does not get it, nor will he ever. In fact the discussion itself begins with just God and Abraham, but ends with Abraham and an angel (that God presumably sent). God seemed to not even want to address Abraham after this.

Yes, he passed the obedience test, but he failed the even bigger test of us. This is a simple truth, but it can be life changing once you grab a hold of it. What if nothing else in the world were important but you and your significant other right now at this very moment? What if that friendship that is dangling by a thread for whatever stupid reason, is the most important thing ever and you are about to let it go?

What if it’s not about how you play the music, what you preach on Sunday, what your attendance is like, whether or not the kids love it? What if the value of church is the people? What if the politics and the social issues and the cultural issues, and the categorizations, and labels and divisions, and the party platforms, beliefs and religion and all the other STUFF -- what if they are all just a distraction -- a big game -- things to take our minds off of us?

If I lay here. If I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world? Forget what we’re told, before we get too old. Show me a garden that’s bursting into life.

Stuck!

noreply@blogger.com (John Martinez) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:38:00 +0000

So last night my brother called us from Massachusetts and said that he may be coming over to visit on his way through to somewhere in Pennsylvania. He is a truck driver and is always on the road headed somewhere. So this was kind of a rare opportunity to hang out with him for a few hours while he was on a mandatory rest period.

He mentioned that he would be coming in 3 hours or so and was wanting to know if the weather was okay. Well my first instinct was to say no, it is certainly not okay. Which I did, and then quickly retracted thinking that maybe the weather would get better. I told him I would call my wife, Tammy (otherwise known as The Weather Lady). Tammy assured me that the worst of the snow storm would be over by 3:00 PM that day. She also mentioned that the southern route to PA might be more dangerous because of ice and sleet as opposed to snow.

It was 2:30 PM and so I told my brother to come on to Albany and I gave him the weather report that Tammy gave me. Me and Tammy then went to the grocery store because we wanted to cook him a good home cooked dinner and we had a few things to pick up.

He made really good time and called to report that the 90 on the east side of Albany was "pure white." He said that other than the cars he sees that were mostly tossed here and there stuck in the snow or being pulled out he could barely tell there was a highway in front of him. I told him that should probably clear up by the time he gets over the bridge into Albany.

Parking

On another note I had to think about where the best place to park might be for the 70' truck since it is not like he can just park on the street. I knew that my office was a great place to park because it is an industrial park. There is plenty of parking for trucks near my office and no one would even question him parking there. However, my office was about 40 minutes to the west of us, meaning that he would have to drive more in the snow for nearly an hour. He had mentioned in our phone conversation that he only had about an hour and a half left of driving before he was required by law to park the truck.

That was when he was about 30 minutes out. Tammy and I decided that the school parking lot next door would be the best bet. So I scoped out the parking lot next door and found him the perfect spot prior to his arrival, problem was I underestimated the size of his truck and had not realized that getting the truck into that spot might be a bit difficult.

Stuck

So I decided to have him follow me when he arrived and I led him towards the school parking lot down a small side road. The idea was that we would make sort of a U-turn into the parking lot and park the truck next to the school.

Here are some photos:

Do you see those trees there at the apex of the UTURN? Yeah, well they were literally covered in thick hard ice that itself was covered by about 8 feet of snow. So we could not see them. In fact picture the entire area covered in snow with about 4 inches on the ground. Well as you can probably imagine when my bro took the turn, the underside of his trailer took down the top layer of snow and then sort of got jammed onto those trees and ice.

He was stuck. He tried backing out the same way he came in... stuck. He tried pulling forward...stuck. His wheels were spinning with no traction at all underneath. I was sick. Here I am the younger brother trying to put my older brother in a safe spot - a place where he can just park and come over and relax -- and we now had a situation that would take us hours to actually resolve.

In my head I tried to imagine what kind of tools we would need to get him out. I thought of using a shovel and just digging under the trailer to see what might be holding him in there so tightly. I imagined that a bulldozer was what we really needed to come in and just move the mountain next to his trailer. The whole time he is in his truck trying to go forward... then trying to go backward... over and again.

I prayed. God please get him out of this mess. God please don't let any cops come by. God, did I mention I wanted a plow attachment for my truck this year and Tammy said "no?" I stood there in the falling snow and prayed and tried to tap into God's wisdom for the situation, and that's when I noticed them.

Perfection Roofing to the Rescue

My brother's rig was blocking half of the traffic on Essex street, but people were able to go around and they did. But there was this truck. With a plow attachment (you know like the one I wanted for my truck?). It was just sitting there.

The truck in the image is not the one I saw, but I wanted to give you a visual. This truck was dark blue and had one of those V-type plow attachments. I decided to walk up to it to see if there was a problem, when low and behold two guys come out of the truck and meet me halfway between my bros stuck rig and their plow truck.

I filled them in on the facts of the story. "My brother is a trucker. He came here to visit me. I recommended parking here. He got stuck." These two guys tried talking my brother through to no avail. The wheels on the truck were just spinning and spinning. Next thing I knew one of the guys comes up after having gone to his truck and busts open a brand new bag of salt. The two of them begin cupping handfuls of salt together in both hands and putting it on the ground where the wheels of the truck met the pavement.

This was in an effort to melt the ice below. Moments later -- still spinning. Then the guys went to their truck for a little bit while we continued to try and think of a solution. I thought the guys had given up on us when one of them comes up to me and says, "We have a solution -- this is gonna work."

"Your brother needs to disconnect his trailer from the rig and then move his truck out of the way leaving the trailer right here." He gestures a lot with his hands like so many New Yorkers do. "Then he..." gesturing towards the guy in the plow truck "...is going to come over here and plow the shit out of this area." gesturing towards the ground. "Then your brother can come back and hook up to the trailer at an angle and push the trailer back off of the snow bank. Then he can disconnect again and then come in straight at the trailer and reconnect to move on into the parking lot or back out, or whatever the fuck he wants to do then." He smiled.

It was one of those moments where the lights just come on in your head and you think yeah, that's what I would do. I got my brother's attention by letting him know that this guy has a pretty good idea and then the guy told my brother in the exact same fashion that he told me. Forty five minutes later after plowing nearly the entire back parking lot of the school (800 sq feet) the truck was unstuck and my brother was parked and everything was okay.

These guys moved like experts, jumping in to help my brother back his truck up safely as spotters, flying through that parking lot with plow down moving the snow out of our way, and directing traffic like trained policemen. Afterwards the guys told us they knew of some better parking just a block away that they would be more than willing to scope it out for us, and so they left to go ensure it was as good as they remembered.

I looked at my brother once they were gone and said "I wonder what this is going to cost?"

"I asked them and they said 'don't worry about it'" He said.

"Really? Wow."

"Yeah I think I am going to at least give them 30 bucks, I mean that is at least something." Looking down at a handful of cash .

I thought about how I did not have any cash on me and felt a little bad because this was a short payday for us, meaning rent is due and the surplus is little. I really had only a few crumpled up dollar bills in my front pocket. As we were deliberating, a vehicle owned by the school system showed up and I asked the guy inside if it would be okay for my brother to just leave the truck there overnight and the guy said it wouldn't be a problem and to just leave a sign in the window with a phone number.

Later the guys from Perfection Roofing came back and we told them that we were just gonna leave the truck there and they agreed that it would be a good idea. We said our thank yous and our goodbyes and as they were about to leave, my brother handed the cash through the window to the guy driving. The guy responded by pushing my brother's hand and the money back at him saying "No thanks, man."

My brother stuck the cash back in his pocket and I told the guys "Thanks a lot," that I was a pastor at the church around the corner and if they ever needed anything to let me know. The driver then said "well if you guys know anyone that needs some roofing or snow removal done have 'em call us." He pointed to the sign on his truck door that said "Perfection Roofing."

Then the guys left. The rest of our evening involved a lot of eating, some beer drinking and family time. It was pretty great and my brother headed out early this morning, fed, rested and sufficiently familied. I don't quite know how to thank those guys from last night, but to me they were like angels sent by God to help. They knew exactly what to do and they did it, then they left without demanding anything else from us.

Amazing. Here is their web site. http://perfectionroofingny.com/index.html If you are in the capital region and need some roofing or snow removal done, I highly recommend these guys -- I got a good feeling that they are as committed to doing great work as they are to helping out a trucker and his brother on a snowy wet night in a bad part of town for free.