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Late Night Driving with a Clear Conscience

June 30, 2006 By 3 Comments

I got home from work fairly late last night. I finished up with the ship and walked down the gangway sometime around 1:30 AM this morning. Not a big deal, really. All part of the job and everything went smoothly for once.

I was driving home with the tunes blaring to help keep me alert. You need to be when you are driving around town at those hours to keep a safe distance from all the cars that weave back and forth or drift out of their lanes.

It is amazing to me the difference in drivers sometimes. I use the cruise control whenever I can when I’m on the highways and the by-pass and I pretty much set it to the same speed all the time. Sometimes I’ll be one of the slowest cars out there with everyone whizzing by. Other times everyone is going 15 MPH slower than I am on the same road. My speed didn’t change. Savannah is weird that way. And last night it seemed I was in a rocket ship because everyone was going slooooowwww.

I’ll tell Gorgeous sometimes if we’re heading home a little late from something, “Watch out for that one. He’s drunk.” She doesn’t understand how I can say that with such certainty. But there was a time in my life…

Police Cars at NightAnyway, I tuned into my neighborhood sometime around the 2 AM hour and it looked like there must have been a bad accident, flashing lights everywhere. Lots of blue lights mixed in with the amber from a tow truck.

My first thought was “Oowie! That doesn’t look good.” Then I did a quick mental check to see I knew of an easy way around by an alternate route because it had been a long day, I really just wanted to get to bed. And in my experience Savannah’s Finest isn’t particularly concerned with traffic flow around accident scenes. They’ll block major roads way longer than they need to in the interest of safety.

But hey, they’re allowed. They’ve got guns.

Well I saw they let a car go around what must have been the wreck so I decided to just suck it up and wait it out. It turns out that was a good call because I’d run smack into a DUI checkpoint, not an accident. And on a Thursday night even. Go figure.

I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I figured it out when I saw a line of police officers beside the road, each one talking to a driver. So after presenting my license and proof of insurance (and saying a quiet thank you for our secretary who’d just given us our new insurance cards) I was on my way home.

As the officer was handing my documents back he yelled to his team, “We’ve got another one trying to cut through!” I wondered to myself it that was someone trying to avoid talking to the police, or someone just trying to get past a traffic tie-up.Savannah Police Car

The whole thing got me thinking how nice it is not to be concerned about an encounter with the police. They say people who often drive drunk get to be experts at spotting cop cars. It is probably because of the rush of adrenalin that hits their system when they see one, knowing what could happen.

Paul explained this principle

For the authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong. So do what they say, and you will get along well.

And it is true. When our conscience is clear and we know we’ve done nothing wrong we worry a whole lot less. I was completely unafraid of talking with a representative of the Savannah-Chatham Police Force, even when it was approaching the two o’clock hour. That lack of fear hasn’t always been the case…

Given a choice, I prefer no fear. Besides my bed at home sleeps better than any accommodations Chatham County would provide at that hour!

Enjoy! And stay safe this weekend.

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A Little Rain Must Fall

June 29, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Last night it rained here in Savannah. It was pretty heavy at times with lightning crashing all around and lots of wind. The kind of rain where the National Weather Service keeps breaking in on the radio to tell you about it and warn of potential hail on the pocket change scale. Fortunately they weren’t comparing it to fruit. Hail on the fruit scale can be pretty scary.

As I’ve said before, I like rainy days. I even like the bad storms. There is something awe inspiring about watching the uncontrollable power of an intense storm. I especially like sitting someplace dry like a screen porch and watching the storm rage around me.

On Deck of Container ShipYesterday I got to be right out in it. And that’s not so bad when you are dressed for it. Unfortunately I wasn’t. When I went up onto the ship it was sunny and a steamy 95 degrees. Sure there were clouds in the sky. And I’d even heard the NWS break into the radio once as I was heading out to the port. But they were talking about stuff a couple counties away from where I was. And I distinctly heard them say something about very little apparent motion to the storms they were talking about.

But then you can’t trust the weather guessers, can you?

There I was huddling out on deck under a container trying to keep dry without so much as a jacket. I’d make dashes out into the deluge to snap a photo or two and then right back under cover. Then the water started collecting on deck and I found myself standing in a small river.

Rain at the Container TerminalI don’t even mind so much getting wet, especially when I know I can go straight home after the job to get dried off and a change of clothes. The digital camera and the cell phone don’t deal with it so well, however. Funny, that they weren’t even what I was worried about. My paperwork was far from dry. Nothing like a little downpour to make your notes bleed all over each other.

During the job was not so bad because I could sort of camp under cover. The real trick was getting back to my car. It was a bit of a hike. And there was no cover. In the end I was pretty soggy.

Jesus gave us an interesting perspective on the weather. He said this about God:

He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Why is that profound? Well for one thing it doesn’t matter who you are. The weather that’s happening is going to happen to you.

It also means that God is no respecter of persons. He is going to give all of us the balance of rain and sun that we are going to get regardless of what we might “deserve”.

In the end there is still nothing we can do to control the storm when it decides to rage.

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When People Don’t Plan

June 28, 2006 By 14 Comments

How do you respond when someone makes life more complicated for you?

Do you ever see it coming before the problems get there? If you do, does that make it easier or harder to deal with?

Complicated Flow ChartI’m pretty good at seeing why things might go wrong and developing contingency plans to deal with them. Much of my career has involved problem solving and I’ve found prevention is one of the best ways to deal with most of them. Several of my job titles have even had the word “Planner” in them.

What is it Ben Franklin said? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

Gorgeous says I’m a bit of a “hole poker”. She says that I poke all kinds of holes in plans and any plan that survives my efforts ends up being a pretty stinking good one. I tend to be pretty good at seeing why things won’t work, and as a result lean toward the “glass half empty” way of looking at things.

I would prefer to be more of an optimist.

But I’m not – yet.

That’s why I get especially frustrated when people do things that become a hassle for me. Way too much of the time I see the hassle heading at me.

Like today. We got called to do a job by a shipping company. The problem is, there are a whole bunch of things that need to happen yet before we can do our part. Some of them have to be done by a vendor of the customer of the company hiring us. And the vendor doesn’t currently have a very solid reputation of coming through.

In the words of Jayne Cobb, “I smell a lot of if coming off this plan.”

I am working at becoming more optimistic. I try to keep in mind that we will still get paid for the job (eventually), and probably even more than if things went smoothly. I try to remember that if it was easy, anyone could do it and they wouldn’t need to hire us in the first place.

But too often my mind reduces the optimism to so much “blah, blah, blah.”

The adage, “A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” doesn’t really hold true in my line of work. I still get to deal with the emergency. And often it is completely unnecessary.

How do you respond? Do you tend to see how things might work, or what might go wrong?

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Are People Naturally Good or Evil?

June 27, 2006 By 27 Comments

Let’s talk about a core life philosophy question. This question is really the starting point of all religions. Even the passionately non-religious have to answer this question if they are going to be honest about their beliefs.

Are people by nature good, or are they by nature evil?

By that I mean do people have the natural ability in themselves to successfully determine the morally right from the morally wrong and consistently choose to do the right things in their lives?

Humanism is one broad spectrum of philosophy that says people are generally good in that they are quite capable of making right moral choices.

The Fundamentalist preacher on the other hand will tell you that you are a sinner, Jesus wants to save you and you are doomed without his help.

Now my point here is not to start a debate about the finer points of Humanism or Christian Fundamentalism. I’m not an expert on either and may very well be inaccurate in my characterization of one or the other. I ask that you cut me some slack in that department today.

My point is to look at the question at hand, and examine one of the core qualities of people in general.

And I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have my own ideas on the issue. I look at the world around me and I see very little evidence that people are naturally good when left on their own. A quick scan through the news headlines reinforces that view. Or look at just about any toddler. Most of the time one of the first words we ever learn is “Mine!“

But what I’m really interested to see is the evidence on the other side. I looked at it once and came to my own conclusion. But maybe I missed some things. Can anyone show me how I’m mistaken? Are people really good at the core?

Believe it or not, I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong here. Just leave a comment and show me.

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Success Tips from Forest Gump

June 26, 2006 By 7 Comments

Forest GumpWe watched Forest Gump again last night. I get a kick out of it because some parts of the movie were filmed right here in Savannah. I was shocked to see that the movie originally came out 12 years ago. Holy smokes! Where did that time go?

Watching the movie again got me to thinking. What are some of the things about Forest that made him so successful? Even though the movie was pure fiction, could some of those same things apply to us?

Here are some of the things I came up with:

  • Forest was intensely loyal to his friends. He did some really crazy things for his friends Jenny, Bubba, and Lt. Dan. And a lot of the time he was doing good things for them in spite of the way they treated him back, not because of it. Especially where Jenny and Lt. Dan were concerned, Forest helped them in the face of abuse and even after they repeatedly told him they didn’t want his help. They didn’t deserve his friendship, but he gave it selflessly anyway. Often times that same loyalty to his friends paid unexpected dividends that made him more successful than he would have been with out it.
  • Forest was incredibly focused in the moment. He didn’t worry about what might happen if things went badly. He didn’t often let himself get distracted by the why’s behind what was going on around him. Forest just stayed wholly in the moment and did the best he could where he was right then.
  • Forest assumed the best in people he met. Whether it was a drill sergeant, folks at the Black Panther party, the guy who liked to use the f-word a lot, or the girls he met with Lt. Dan, Forest always gave people the benefit of the doubt, and treated them with respect. And he only ever got aggressive or challenged folks if they actually physically assaulted him or one of his friends.
  • Forest accepted the reality of the world around him. Forest knew he wasn’t smart. He knew Lt. Dan lost his legs. Even so, he never let those things get in the way. He never felt sorry for himself because of his own weakness. He just accepted it and pressed on doing the best he could. Forest treated people’s weaknesses as matter of fact, not as something to be glossed over and hidden. Contrast that with Lt. Dan going on a multi-year pity party.
  • Forest invested time and effort into his endeavors. Forest talks about spending years in the army, playing ping-pong, shrimping, and running. Some things he was naturally good at it like running, ping-pong, or the army. Others, like shrimping, he was a miserable failure at initially. But that didn’t matter to Forest. He invested the time and effort it took to get good at the things he knew he was supposed to do.

I know there are tons of other things about Forest that could help us get more out of life if we adopted them into our lives too. But that should be enough to get most of us started.

Enjoy!

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How Do You Relate to God?

June 24, 2006 By 9 Comments

I’m having another long discussion with Dan Traube back at my Class Warfare in the Church post. We pretty much disagree (again) but that’s OK. The whole discussion has got me thinking.

How do we relate to God?

Most religions are about connecting people to God. When I think about some of the major religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Shintoism, I see that they are all very different.

Yet they all have one thing in common that I can see. Each of them have some sort of set of rules or guidelines that a person must follow to reach spiritual fulfillment. There are things a person must do and others that they must not do if they are going to “make it” in these religions. Many Christians do the exact same thing.

But Jesus completely tossed out this idea of rule keeping.

The biggest conflicts he had were with the religious leaders. They were the best rule keepers and really didn’t like what Jesus had to say. In fact Jesus made them so angry that they conspired to have him killed to shut him up.

What sorts of things did Jesus say that got the religious leadership so worked up? Here’s one example

I assure you, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.

Jesus said it was a simple
two step process.

  1. Listen
  2. Believe

That’s it. According to Jesus, that’s all it takes to be acceptable to God. There’s no special sacrifice required, no long pilgrimage, no heroic deeds or great quest, and no list of rules to follow.

A lot of people don’t like that. They want it to be hard so they feel like they’ve accomplished something when they get there. That’s the only reason I can figure so many Christians have added on such an overwhelming list of rules to the basic things Jesus said.

But the bottom line is that Jesus taught that we don’t relate to God by keeping a list of rules. We relate to him as a person relates to another person, by hanging out with him and having conversation and dialogue.

And by doing that doesn’t mean that we are being disrespectful of God or reducing him to our level of an ordinary person. Just like we can converse with a King or a President and still respect and honor his position, we can relate to God on a personal level through the person of Jesus while still honoring and respecting him.

In one way, rules are easier on our end. With a list of rules we can measure how we are doing and figure out where we stand in our relationship with God. We can feel pretty good when we pretty much are keeping to most of the rules.

Did you know that God does allow for folks to relate to him on the basis of rules? It’s true. The down side is huge, though!

First the standard is absolute perfection in keeping those rules. For your entire life, past, present and future. And it covers both thought and action. If you ever break any of the rules once in the tiniest way then, “buzzzz. You must leave the island.”

There are no second chances and no allowances under the rule system. Either you are perfect or you are out. Oh, and you have to pick the right set of rules, too.

The standard is impossibly high. But you are free to go that way if you like.

OR you can do it Jesus’ way:
Listen and Believe.

It sounds ridiculously simple. What’s the catch?

The catch is that when you choose to do it Jesus’ way, you will find yourself able to follow the rules on an ever improving basis because the change will come from the inside out.

We blow it completely when we try to change from the outside in by forcing ourselves to follow a set of rules to change our behavior. The results from the rules first approach are always far less the results from Jesus’ way.

And that is doubly true when we try to get other people to change by following a list of rules!

So here’s my question:

How do you relate to God?

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Signs and Questions

June 23, 2006 By Leave a Comment

SignsLast night I was feeling pretty zombified and didn’t have enough brain power left to do much of anything productive so I poked around what had been recorded on TIVO and found Signs. I’d seen it before, so I figured it was a good choice because I could turn it off and catch the end some other time.

In the movie the Mel Gibson character has a speech where he says people basically fall into two categories. There are those who believe that someone’s watching out for them arranging miracles in their lives, which gives them hope. And then there are those who believe that they are completely on their own, anything good that happens is just pure luck. He ended his speech with a series of questions

See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Those are good questions. How would you answer them?

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Finding Hope

June 22, 2006 By 2 Comments

Yesterday traffic was backed up on the way into work because of an accident. A red Monte Carlo had deposited itself wheels up in the median. For me it was a very minor inconvenience. I work weird hours anyway so no one even noticed that I got to the office 10 minutes later than I planned.

But for whoever was in the Monte Carlo I’m sure it was a pretty big deal. The whole thing probably messed up their day pretty badly.

It is amazing how quickly things can change in life. And unexpectedly too. I’m sure that driver didn’t wake up and think, “maybe today I could upend my car in the median. That would be a trip!” Yet he ended up dangling from the seat belt a bit before 9 AM just the same.

The truth is we don’t know what the day will bring. The Bible says that it isn’t our place to know (as much as we want to!) James tells us

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Life is a fleeting thing. That’s a good motivation to make the most of today. But it could also be pretty stinking depressing. I mean how are we supposed to go on with the knowledge that it all could turn to disaster at any moment?

Is our only hope to adopt Chuck Noland’s philosophy?

“I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. And who knows what the tide could bring?”

That’s the way most folks look at life. They think that if they keep breathing long enough, they might get lucky and something good just might happen to them. Maybe fate will smile at them one day. They invent some hope to cling to. Otherwise life would just seem too pointless to carry on.

The good news is that life doesn’t have to be that hopeless. We can have hope for a fulfilled and meaningful life. Even though the uncertainty remains, we can know peace. Jesus said

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

If Jesus overcame death and walked out of the tomb they buried him in, then He has the authority needed to offer us actual hope for a life full of meaning and purpose.

And that is a genuine encouragement whenever we find ourselves hanging upside down in the median of life.

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Cats and New Things

June 21, 2006 By 6 Comments

Boys Stare OffThought I’d share with you this morning what happens when we bring any new furniture into our house. For some reason the boys instantly claim it as their own. And that, my friends, is one of the reasons why we buy masking tape lint rollers by the caseload in our house!

Some friends of ours were moving and decided they didn’t have room for the table and chairs and gave them to us. Gorgeous and I thought the set would be a good way to finally set up our breakfast nook.

How silly of us! We have simply provided a nice sleeping place for Their Majesties the Cats. Both boys were sleeping when I went take this photo. Low Rider is pretty challenging to sneak up on, though. He wouldn’t look away, hence the evil looking green eye flash. Fat Boy on the other hand lost interest fairly quickly.

Why is it we tend to obsess about our stuff? Especially when it’s new. You should have seen us trying to get all the cat hair out of those green cushions before we had a bunch of people over for dinner the other night. And no one even sat in the chairs!

Yet our couch that we’ve had for years, that we pretty much ignored when we were getting ready. The boys have completely taken over that couch. It’s theirs. We didn’t bother wasting the tape to clean off the hair. Yet the couch was full of people for hours while we played a board game after dinner.

Talk about a double standard! And it isn’t even remotely logical. Yet there it is, staring us in the face.

We tend to take much better care of our new stuff than we do of our things that have been with us for a while. Why do you suppose that is?

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A Non-negotiable for Success

June 20, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday we took a look at how to define success. David and Dave both had some great insights and shared what how they evaluate success.

Now that we have an idea what success is, how do we get there? If success can come in many flavors, are there any critical ingredients that are universally required for success?

Just like you can’t have an apple pie without any apples, what are the non-negotiables for success?

The first one that comes to mind is this:

Success Requires Action

Look at any story of great achievement and you will universally see that something was done. The Bible heroes all did things. Leaders do things. If you want to be successful, eventually you have to get into motion.

I once heard someone say that a universal property of life is motion. All living things move at some level. Even with something like a tree, if you look close enough, say at the individual cells, there is motion. (Of course not all motion is life, but all living things have motion.)

Do you want to be alive? Do you want to make a difference? Do you want to achieve something? Then take action!

Christians especially can seem to have a challenge in this area. I’ve heard all kinds of preachers say things along the lines that we are human be-ings, not human do-ings. I get their point. Just the same, nothing is going to happen without action.

EeyoreI can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some Christian who feels stuck and discouraged in life say, {cue the Eeyore voice} “I’m just waiting on the Lord.”

There comes a time, after all the plans and the prayers, when something has to actually be done if anything is going to change.

Perhaps, just maybe, God is wanting you to get off your butt! Stop moping around! Be bold! Take action!

I once heard someone much wiser than me say

Without work there is no miracle.

The Bible says that when God does His miracles, He is working. (“On the seventh day, having finished his task, God rested from all his work.”)

There is a time for waiting and resting. For most of us that time has long past.

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