On Tuesday, I have a new bike coming that I ordered from Pullin's: a Surly Pacer road bike. Good for daily commuting, long all day rides and light touring. I've been bike commuting almost every day for the past year at least. The job I work requires a lot of meetings with people, and if things are going well, I don't spend much time in the office. This, along with the general culture of business people, led me to believe that I needed to drive to all of these meetings. So I did that for the first four years of my job. Everything else I had done before that, I had done on my bike. I've been on a bike since Mom sent me to school on one when I was 7. When I played trumpet in the school band, I would strap it to my bike rack with two bungee cords. When my friends and I were 16, working, and driving cars, although we loved our cars we would elect to ride through downtown in a bicycle hive of teenage angst and destruction. We did that because we spent money on our bikes too. At least for my generation, this type of thing was just an extension of Chico culture. Our super athletic friends would race mountain bikes or do crazy freestyle BMX tricks. Our heftier friends would cruise around on cruisers, lazily drifting through the streets with backwards hats on and beer disguised in Big Gulp cups. My best friend and I rode single speed 24" BMX cruisers. They were super fast, simple, light, and they seemed frictionless on the coast. I swear mine could coast for blocks.  

Sometimes I walk angry

My first embrace of religion was Orthodox Christianity. There was a little bookstore on 4th St. called The Heavenly Realm about 13 years ago that was a mission of the Russian Orthodox Church. There was a nun that ran the place and a big bearded priest that would give services in the basement to a group of five to ten people. The nun was wonderful and we had amazing conversations. She must have barely been 30 at the time. I picked up my first prayer book there, a thin red Orthodox prayer book that I used daily, following the morning and evening prayers, which were very long and ritualistic. At twenty, they were exactly what I needed. At twenty-one, the cross on the front of it was tattooed on me manually by a Thai tattoo artist with needles on a bamboo stick. I think I'm part Orthodox.

I was called to jury duty today. Since we are a family with one car, and Coleman needed to get to school after I needed to be at the County courthouse, I opted to take the bus system. A quick word on public transportation: I love it very much. I love it philosophically and in practice. When I lived in Sacramento, I almost never drove to work the whole time I lived there. It was all about the light rail and a bicycle. There is enormous liberation in being without the car. You don't have to look for parking, you don't have to buy gas, but most importantly, you don't have to drive. On the bus, we're free to contemplate, stare out the window, read a book, pray, drift off to cramped sleep, whatever. And, you'll still end up exactly where you need to be, light as a feather, carrying only what you need. On your feet, walking the rest of the way like a human being. This is all awesome about the bus, but even better, is the communion with the other people on the bus. Striking up conversation at the bus stop is just about the easiest place in our society to have a conversation, and it will be a real one, with real people. These are the people I'm the most comfortable with, the ones on the bus, the ones that shop in thrift stores, not because they're trendy, but because they've always had to shop in thrift stores and they wouldn't feel comfortable shopping in other places. What madness to you have to be under the influence of to spend $200 on a sweater anyway?

At the jury waiting room, I sat and read from a book I'm reading about Theology. I've had it for years on my shelf and finally decided to crack it open, in hopes of being more articulate when expressing the biblical answers to the very large cosmic questions. What I found was that, plus insights that were mind bogglingly deep, under layers of understanding and logic. This was not an easy subject, this science of God and eternity, but it felt so good on my mind and my heart. The chapter on the Trinity was jaw dropping in its explanation of the very difficult doctrine. Seriously, I needed to read this book and I was studying it with my little pocket bible to reference scriptures all morning. In terms of spiritual food, it was eggs, bacon and buckwheat pancakes: very filling and delicious.

Eventually, I set it down to give my pondering a rest and to talk to my neighbor in the chair next to me. We are called to love our neighbor after all, after we first love God with all of our beings. After swimming in the depths of Theology, I found myself very much so in love with God, and needed to spread that, so I engaged my neighbor. I didn't say much, just listened as she volunteered lots of information about the struggle she's been having with one of her children who is diagnosed as having a hyper disorder or some such thing the doctor told her. The decision to medicate him pained her and her husband she said. I didn't offer much of a response to her beyond just loving and listening. She was in a bind, with a lot of professional people telling her the kid needs pills, but a lot of familial elders telling her that her husband was ten times crazier when he was a kid. And now, he's a good man who provides for the family and works hard, doesn't watch TV because he still can't sit down for very long, but all the better because he's incredibly productive and handy.

Anyway, diving in to my elementary book on Theology (Theology for Non-Theologians) brought my mind to new places that were very warm and consuming. It somehow brought me closer to God today, and made it easier to love freely.

My friend, who I won't name here, has become an Objectivist. Objectivism is the pop-philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, and other books I haven't read. People like Ron Paul and most free market economists are Ayn Rand disciples. There are academic papers by real philosophers that poke holes all over Ayn Rand's arguments, easily found online if you're interested. But I'm pretty sure my friend has yet to read them, and proclaims that what he's learned from her has changed his life for the better. Okay.

So I haven't heard from him forever because he's not a friend-keeping type, and I googled around and found a blog he was writing. One post was called the King of Absentee Fathers and was an essay about how ludicrous the idea of God the Father is, and how Christians are insane and in the Bible God causes destruction and acts a lot like an abusive and absentee father. It's an atheistic argument that has been regurgitated many times. But, being the simple man that I am, I had to go and comment on his post.

I know what you're thinking, one of two things: either that I walked into that, or that yes, God is an absentee father figure from antiquity before science brought us out of the darkness of our own fear of the unknown. Maybe we'll try to dive into the nature of God a little later in this blog, but back to my comment.

The comment was a bit nasty, pointing to the current state of his life and employment, and that according to his philosophy, he was little more than a barnacle on the great whale of human potential, and what a contradiction! I typed in a little bit of sting because I was pissed off about his slander of God, his total misunderstanding of the faith was so frustrating. 

It took about five minutes before I felt bad about what I had wrote. I was the blessed one, what right did I have to swing on him? I felt like I had just shoved a blind man who was ranting a little too close to my face. Where was my compassion, my love for him?

Today, in the morning, I realized that I had acted like Peter, the strong headed apostle. He loved Jesus deeply
(and cowardly denied him later), and when it came time for Christ's betrayal and arrest, Peter drew his sword and cut the ear off of one of the Romans who had come to put Jesus in chains. Peter was going to kill the bastard, even after all he had learned and been shown about love and the Kingdom of God. He immediately reverted back to war. That's what I had acted like with my friend. In the Gospel story, Jesus stops Peter and tells him that whoever lives by the sword, will die by the sword, and then he touches the Roman's ear and makes it whole again. After this miracle, Jesus gives himself to the unbelievers, those that would torture and kill him. And they did, fulfilling God's redemptive plan, whether they believed in Him or not.

There were so many parallels. The Roman hadn't had his ears opened yet, so this was just another Jewish holy homeless man to arrest before he could get home and enjoy his evening. Peter was clumsy and bloody, just like me, just like the Church, never carrying love as abundantly as Christ. But Jesus came, reprimanded Peter, showed him the error of his ways, and gave the Roman his ear back, giving him ears to hear.

 

Their feet are getting big for their
chicken legs, their knees knobby as door knobs
The big hiking boots on their feet
got nice and muddy with Mom and Dad.

As it should be
on any winter Saturday with this much sun
in the blue sky
the sky with the rainclouds hanging low
in the distance
the rainclouds with
the prison-shoulder bad attitudes.

We discovered a waterfall
that none of us had ever seen before
it was perfect timing, one of those
that only exists a day or two after
the rain stops falling.

My youngest said that I could
take a shower in it,
he stood tippy toed on
the mossy rock with me
and stretched his arm out
until some waterfall drops
landed on his hand.

I was so proud of them.
We hiked up a steep hill
gained about 600 feet or so
and then found a new way down
the whole thing was a good
2 miles of hiking
and those boys were with me
all the way, no problem.

Being the father of boys like these
is like standing in
the warmth of the sun
in the cold breeze of the canyon
with my jacket open
to let the sweat cool
watching the hawk soar
twenty feet above us.

Here's a neat video of one of Earth's greatest cathedrals...

<p>Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.</p>

I'm watching my boys put together their new little lego sets at the kitchen table, Coleman is following the directions with precision like an engineer. His science mind is mighty, that one. Anna gave Coleman five children's books that were about sixty pages each, and just a little above what she thought was his reading level. I know it's unbecoming to boast about your kids, so I apologize for that now if anyone who happens to read this is bored. I tend to forget these little things within a few months so this is for my memory bank. Anna told Coleman if he could read the five books out loud and correctly, that he would receive a new lego set to build. She figured it would take him at least all weekend. Well, he had it done before I got home from work on Friday. Apparently he was holding out on us, keeping some ability to himself, which is pretty cool because it means he hasn't been a show off. Now I'm watching them build their lego sets, I buckled and bought Sawyer a little set too, so he didn't feel totally left out. I'd be more hardcore than that if it wasn't for Anna, letting him feel the sting of being left out sometimes, especially since we were buying the set to reward his brother. Not everything has to be done for both of them. Well, I buckled by looking at Anna's face when I had made it known that was my intention, to let Sawyer go without this one time. I guess my position on that wasn't very rigid, because her softness quickly defeated my rigidness, which by the way is one of the counter intuitive truths of martial arts, that there is more power in softness and relaxation. I've lost my rigidness with most things, it rode the back of my pride out of me at some point. That's still happening I think. Both the pride and the rigidness are still escaping like steam from a kettle. Sawyer keeps asking me to help him follow the lego directions but I'm engrossed in writing and coffee right now, and not in that order. It's early and wet today. I should help my little one. Happy Saturday. 

Suddenly, I found myself with my legs crossed, leaning back in a plush chair, sipping on Darjeeling tea, hearing myself speak intelligently about new business ideas and strategies, with another business person, while my worn out shoes: shameless-30-something-Dad-loafers stared at me and said, "Dude, can you believe this shit? Wasn't it just yesterday you were lugging around packs of cigarettes and working in cafes and drinking gin and tonics every night? What's up with the new jeans? Have you been going to Costco or something?" And then I said, "Actually casual, fun-loving-yet-restrained loafers, that was more like eight years ago buddy. And yes, I have been going to Costco, and these jeans look good on me...my wife likes them. Time flies right?" The guy across from me was probably experiencing this same phenomenon of the male, internalized, eternal boyhood, yet like me, was also at total peace with his long graying mop and pioneering Holy Spirit beard. I have the graying, but not the pioneering beard. This is partially what brought us to that moment, not his beard, but the joy in the idea of carving out a living in partnership with someone else. That joyful prospect, for me, is rooted in boyhood, it's the same feeling as getting away from your Mom to dig a fort in a field full of star thistles.