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A Candle In The Wind – Part 1

Part 1 – Risking

I was reading a book the other day, when this phrase struck me: “Life is like a candle in the wind”. Of course, it’s hard to say those words in my mind without hearing Elton John’s voice in the background. Nevertheless, the words stuck with me for several days, and have had the little brain cells scurrying around quite a bit.

Image from eraspark.com

Every step of every day, we’re surrounded by creation and destruction, birthing and dying. As I type these words, the last of the leaves have fallen from most of the trees here in Colorado – some of them wrenched off in the snowstorm we had last week. The air is full of that wonderful smell that autumn surrounds us with, as the high plains tuck themselves in for the winter.

A couple weeks ago, the birds were tearing through the seed in my feeders at a voracious rate, as those migrating south use my place as a fueling station. Some of those birds will make it, some won’t. Just yesterday there was a Goldfinch on the ground below the feeders. He seemed too exhausted to fly. When I went to him to try and lift him to the feeder so he could rest there and eat, he scurried beneath some Hyssop. I want to believe he’ll make it, but he might not.

Several weeks ago, when my brother and I were driving some back roads in Kansas, we came across a group of trees draped in butterflies – there must have been tens of thousands of them. I imagine they gather on the trees and rest until the right wind comes up, then they probably get up into the wind and let it blow them south. On the ground was the evidence that not all the butterflied would make it – the same wind that took their comrades south to safety would take the flame of life from a few.

We’re surrounded by flames of life. Each of us is just one of those flames. We like to think of ourselves as particularly special – flames that are more important that the millions of other flames around us.

But to be special, don’t we need to let the flame of our life burn openly and brightly, where it adds encouragement to those around us? And in doing so, we expose it to the wind that could blow it out in an instant. It’s the paradox of the Flame of Life – it’s meant to burn openly and brightly, which means it’s always at risk.

Helping 106 – The First Step

Overcoming The Fear Of The First Step
By Robert Shelden

We’ve published a series of posts about “Helping” in the past, and Robert’s discussion of CYAR (Colorado Youth At Risk) is a great addition to that series. Welcome to the forum Robert, and thanks for the contribution!

A number of years ago, I was exposed to a non-profit, youth mentoring organization called CYAR (Colorado Youth at Risk).  CYAR focuses on transforming the lives of teenage students through community -based mentoring and intensive training.   Like many people, I had a desire to “give back” to my community in some meaningful way and CYAR appeared to match my social values. Continue reading “Helping 106 – The First Step”

Failure’s Creative Juice

A niece recently posted something on Facebook that made it clear that she felt some failure in her life. I have no idea what the issue was – I haven’t really gotten into the commenting part of Facebook yet – I’m mostly a lurker. (I think that’s what they call us…) I suspect it was something small, like a grade on a test that was lower than she wanted, something like that.

The issue isn’t really important anyway – the important thing is the failure, and the need to celebrate it.

Sounds odd, I know, in this culture where we’ve tried so hard to make everything about winning at all costs, and measuring people by their perceived “successes”. But I really believe in failure as one of the most important components of a truly successful life. Surviving failure well and finding the creative power therein is a critical skill in moving “forward” in life. Continue reading “Failure’s Creative Juice”

Cycling Across The West – Sedona to Tuba City in Arizona

Bicycling Across the West
Day 12 – Sedona to Tuba City in Arizona

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
~ Crowfoot

Today I meet my friend Dave, and we complete the rest of the ride together. Our original plan was to meet at the Grand Canyon and ride from there. However, we’ve talked on the phone and changed our route a bit in response to concern over a section of road we were going to ride on. The road we’re concerned about is Highways 163 and 162 in Arizona and Utah, which takes us through Monument Valley. Dave’s experience on the road as he was driving down to his starting point was that it was very narrow, lots of curves, no shoulder, and lots of RVs.

We’re both fine with all of that – down to the RV part. My experience with the lack of safety and courtesy on the part of RV drivers so far on this trip has me pretty concerned about that section, and Dave feels the same way. So we modified our planned route, and I’m meeting Dave in Flagstaff this morning. From here, we’ll ride to Tuba City today. I’m clearly upset that we’re compelled – out of fear of our lives – to change our route because so many RV users are either incompetent or inconsiderate drivers. But it is what it is.

Riding through this upcoming section, the thing that makes bicycle trip routing difficult is the space between towns. There are only so many places where a motel exists, and we need to be able to fit a daily ride somewhat neatly between those spots. Our original plan, in fact, included a 140 mile day because of that difficulty. That’s a long day in the desert if the winds aren’t kind… Our new route keeps most of our days down to a little under 100 miles, though there’s one or two that go over 100 miles. Continue reading “Cycling Across The West – Sedona to Tuba City in Arizona”

Find That Life

Last week I did a post (and an email for those on my email list) titled “Live Well”, juxtaposing the notion of living long with the notion of living well. A friend sent me the following quote during the week, which relates well to the post:

“We have defined holiness through what we separate ourselves from rather than what we give ourselves to.
I am convinced that the great tragedy is not the sins we commit but the life that we fail to live”. 
  ~ Erwin Raphael McManus from Chasing Daylight

As I write this post, it’s Sunday morning, and all over the western world, folks are preparing to go to church and worship. Well, at least the 20% of Americans who actually attend church on an average Sunday morning. (Note that the number is far less in other western countries.)

But what is “worship”, and is that what’s happening in churches across the country? I was raised as a Lutheran, whose family fell away from church when I was fairly young. In my 20’s, I reconnected with church, and we were extremely active in our church for 15 or 20 years. I rarely attend a church today, and it’s precisely because of that question I raise at the beginning of this paragraph – what’s really happening in most churches? Continue reading “Find That Life”

Dad of Divas Highlights Neil in its “Dads in the Limelight” series

Chris with the “Dad Of Divas” website posted an interview with me on October 6th. It was a fun interview to do, and I post the questions and answers below. Thanks much to Chris for posting the interview – I really appreciate it!

Tell me about yourself, (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge)
First and foremost, the concept of “limelight”. Most of us are in some form of limelight in one way or another. In my case, as I was raising my family, I spent time in executive positions that were high-visibility, as well as organizational limelight such as congregational president and lay pastor, or facilitator of large group events.
At this point in my life, my children are all grown, and the shape of the “limelight” has changed. I’ve moved myself away from executive positions with high visibility, and have concentrated my life on my passions, primarily writing. I write books, articles for periodicals, and blog regularly. I hunt and fish more than I ever have in my life, and spend a lot of time doing the long-distance endurance bicycling and bicycle touring that I’ve come to love.
These passions and others generally form the context of what I write, and the undercurrent is generally a strong sense of spiritual “place”.
Winter Hut Trip in the Rockies with Ian
Tell me about your family
My wife and I raised 3 children, who are all grown at this point. The oldest is 30, the middle one nearly 28, and the youngest is 22. The youngest is a woman, the two older are men. They all live very close to me in the Denver area.
The oldest and I operate a construction company together, primarily landscape design and implementation. The middle one works with his brother and I, and goes to school when he can. The youngest just graduated from college, and is at a fork in the road considering graduate school.
I love having my kids so close to me. I love all the time I’m able to spend with them. I love that they continue to be such an integral and important part of my life.
What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?
I think it may be the concept of learning to be a good incubator rather than trying to be a designer. It was so easy for me, (especially early in the fatherhood process), to think my job was to try and define the shape of my children as they developed. In fact, much of what we learn in our culture about parenting focuses on trying to shape our children.
As my children grew, I learned that there was a shape inside them that was emerging, and for me to try and alter that shape was only going to be destructive. A lot like the sculptor who “releases” the shape inside a block of wood, I’ve come to see my job as a father as one of providing a good environment for the “shape” of my children to emerge.
Most of us probably have many “shapes” that might emerge, depending on the environment around us. In my opinion, being a good father means providing a healthy environment, and looking for the shapes that might be trying to emerge – encouraging those that are most healthy.
At the end of the day, our modern nature wants to play G-d, and wants to be the “creator” of children. We want to mold them and shape them into what we want – usually some facsimile of ourselves. I’m convinced this results in heartache more often than not, and is counter to the ability of the child to become all they can become. It’s a tough thing to realize we’re not G-d, but just an incubator with the hard job of maintaining a good and healthy environment.
What advice would you give to other fathers?
First, see and feel your ego, and put it aside when it comes to raising your children.
Second, observe and listen to “elders” as they interact with your kids – they’ll have lots to teach about what they learned on the journey you’re on.
Third, realize how strong, resilient, and adaptive humans are. Don’t try to be the perfect dad – just be a good and loving one. You’ll make some mistakes, and your kids won’t feel any impact at all of most of those mistakes.
Seeing that you (or your position) are in the limelight, how have you come to balance parenthood and outside life?
I think integrating our professional persona with our parental persona makes good sense. For our kids to see us behaving in our outside life is a good think. It makes it tough for us to do the hypocritical “do as I say not as I do” thing, doesn’t it? When we take this approach, it forces some of that balance.
In addition, becoming very actively involved in the things your kids want to do forces another level of balance. When my kids were coming up, I was always coaching their soccer teams, building school projects with them, or whatever else was part of their life.
I remember our annual Christmas party at a place I worked as an executive for many years. I’d always played Santa at the party. One year, as I sat with the kids around me at the party, I noticed my little daughter giving me a little extra scrutiny. As Santa left the party, my wife asked my daughter about Santa, and my daughter informed her that the man had been her father.
I should reveal that she was a pretty smart little cookie, and when she was 15 or 16 we finally called her on the whole Santa thing, as she’d been playing along for years. She said she’d figured it out when she was 6 or 7, but liked playing along. The boys were in on it with her.
I tell this story to highlight that integration I was talking about. My kids saw me behaving in my professional life in a manner consistent with what I “preached”. They saw me in leadership and high-visibility positions within the community, practicing the behavior I talked about at home. They saw me step into the shoes of Santa to try and bring joy and hope to the hearts of children, and they decided to reflect that joy back to me by continuing to play the game with me long after they saw through the ruse.
College Graduation
What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with?
Oh man, what a good question. Of course there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly, but I’ll focus on the good.
I recall a few really stand-out guys that made huge impressions on me as I was doing my “growing up” as a father. It’s easy to think that as a father, you are “due” respect from your kids. It’s easy to have a picture in your mind of how children should behave and interact with their dad, and to try and “teach” this to your children.
However, the lesson I learned many times from a few really good role-models was that “respect” wasn’t something you “taught” children, it was something you earned as a father. When your kids see you model the behavior you tell them is good, and they see you live a life that is honest and honorable, they come to respect you.
That respect has no value in and of itself, but it is the foundation that allows the real relationship to develop with your kids. They learn what honor and honesty looks like, and learn to discern behavior based on integrity as opposed to talk about integrity. From this, they learn how to find and develop relationships of value in their life as they grow up.
What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far?
Don’t view fatherhood as something you do for 18 years or 21 years while your kids are “growing up”. View it as a lifelong journey you’re making with your kids. I’ve found that with each year that passes, my relationship with my kids just keeps getting better.
I see lots of folks who fear the coming teenage years. Hey, we all go through the teenage years. For a few years, our brain cells get marinated in a toxic blend of hormones that makes us stupid. That time comes, and it passes. My boys tell me often that when they hit about 14 or 15, they couldn’t believe how stupid I became. They wondered how on earth I could manage to dress myself in the morning. But then, as they moved into their 20’s, they say they were amazed at how smart I seemed to suddenly get.
Don’t take it too seriously – just be the best person and the best father you can be. It’ll all sort out in the end, and you’ll start to get your brain cells back…
What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?
I think most of my favorite memories from when my kids were young revolve around vacations we took, and activities on those vacations. Building sandcastles with my daughter on the beach in North Carolina. A bicycle vacation along the rail-trails in Wisconsin, where the boys would ride ahead a couple miles, then drop their bikes and gorge on wild raspberries until we caught up, then jump on the bikes and do it all again – their little sister singing and cooing in the trailer behind my bike as we rode. Hiking in old forest in the Smoky Mountains, my middle son sleeping soundly on the top of my head as he rode my shoulders. My little daughter sleeping soundly in my arms all day long on a cruise ship, as I moved around the decks and enjoyed the bliss a father feels when his child sleeps safely and contentedly in his arms.
If I could do it all again, I’d make sure to take more vacations. For me, it was during those times that I could leave everything behind and really connect with my kids.

  

Hunting with Jesse

Cycling Across The Southwest – Sedona

Day 11 – Resting in Sedona

“Once, it was so damned dry, the bushes followed the dogs around.”
  ~Nancy Dedera

My friend Dale is a former boss from many years ago. He’s a guy who was always renowned for his hard-hitting style, and his relentlessly demanding style. I helped him build his companies up into a tiny little empire, then I got bored and went on another of those eclectic little careens I talked about in this post. Dale and I parted as good friends, and a few years after I left he sold his companies and became very financially secure. Well, wealthy really.

I was busy careening… Continue reading “Cycling Across The Southwest – Sedona”

Sukkoth

As I write this post, the Jewish calendar is bringing a little known but intriguing holiday to a close. After the High Holidays have passed each year, the holiday of “Sukkoth” requires the faithful to move from the comfort of their homes into temporary “huts” constructed on porches, backyards, and driveways. I’m sure there are many dimensions to this holiday, but the aspect I’m fascinated by just now is the shift of focus from materialism and greed as the center of our lives over to a focus on spirituality as the center of our life.

There are traditions within many religions that draw the worshipper into a time of asceticism, though in our comfortable and pampered life we like to ignore these traditions whenever we can. It’s just so much bother, you know, and really, isn’t it much more efficient and enjoyable to just do the fun traditions?

Sukkoth doesn’t seem to be about asceticism just for the sake of sacrifice. Rather, I get the strong and consistent message that it’s more about separating myself from the vast material comforts that I enjoy, in order to bring my focus back to my “place” here on earth, and how my actions and my life impact Creation as a whole. Like the short moment of prayer many families share as they sit down to a meal, letting us take a breath and truly appreciate the gifts and bounty we’ve been given.

Focus. As a hunter and a birder, I use binoculars (or field glasses) a lot. When using them, it’s important to move them to your eyes, then away from your eyes. Back and forth, seeing the big picture, then zooming in on detail. So long as my eyes are seeing the world through the glasses, they don’t have the ability to see the big picture.

Day to day, we’re so focused on “bringing home the bacon”, or “getting ahead at the office”, or even on watching the football games or “face-booking”, that we fail to see the big picture. We walk through life with the binoculars against our eyes. (Try that sometime, by the way, and see how quickly you stumble and fall…)

During Sukkoth, we take the binoculars away from our face, and see the world around us. We see our place in the world, and spend a little time understanding how our actions impact those around us. In our “me-oriented” culture of selfishness, we like to focus a lot more on “rights” than on “responsibilities”. We like to think we can do whatever we want within the law – that this is our “right”.

Reminds me of this old story, “A man in a boat begins to bore a hole under his seat. The other passengers in the boat with him protest. ‘What concern is it of yours?’ he responds, ‘I’m making a hole under my seat, not yours.’”

We’ve undergone a radical and dangerous transformation in our culture in recent years, resulting in a consumer-based economy that puts more value on “cheap” than it does on “right” or “good”. Our homes and driveways are filled with the results of this destructive transformation. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, over half of them are large corporations – less than half are actual nations. My vote as a consumer might matter more in the world today than my vote as a citizen of a nation. How wisely do I vote?

While I’m not Jewish, I think I can learn a good deal from this holiday. I’ve never taken the time to see a relationship between Yom Kippur and Sukkot in the past, but I see it this year. My need for atonement reaches deep across the world I live in and my place in that world. Creation, atonement, and my place in the picture.

A week spent eating and sleeping in a cardboard hut might do me good.

This year, as I spend my time living a simple and sparse life in the woods while I hunt, I’ll think a lot about Sukkot. The time is always a very spiritual time for me, but this new understanding opens a path for even greater reflection and meaning.

And I’ll be sure and take the binoculars away from my face when I want to walk…

Live Well

I was chatting with a health nut the other day – someone extremely fastidious about what he eats. I greatly respect the super healthy habits that he’s developed, and learn from him every time we talk about how to eat more wisely.

This particular conversation was unusually enlightening. Charlie, (that might be the fella’s name), for some reason veered off into a discussion of why he’s developed such healthy eating habits. Turns out he’s developed these great habits because he wants to live a long time, and wants to do all he can to ensure a peaceful death.

Hmmm. I’m not sure about the “peaceful death process” part of the equation. Seems like no matter how healthy our living is, our death is almost a crapshoot. Maybe it’ll be a peaceful and gentle process, but maybe not.

But the other part of the equation really intrigued me. I like to stay healthy as well, but the conversation really brought my motivation into focus for me. While Charlie focuses on a long life, I tend to focus on a full life. Sure, it’ll be fun if it lasts a good long time as well, but what I really care about is that I maximize whatever minutes, hours, days, and years life still has in front of me.

While Charlie will pass when the cake or pie comes around, I rarely do. And every now and then, I truly cherish a good chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes slathered with gravy. Of course, I can’t eat like that all the time, and need to work hard to make sure I’m burning the calories I’m taking in. Eating chicken-fried steak all the time would diminish the relish of it when I do get it, and I’ve learned I can’t possibly burn enough calories to eat like that very often.

But now and then…

Image from Natalie's Killer Cuisine - natalieskillercuisine.com

It’s a balance for me. There are things I enjoy that aren’t healthy – like chicken-fried steak. There are also things I enjoy that require really good health – like cycling. I need to strike a balance that lets me pack the most joy and adventure and bliss and contentment into my life as possible. Sometimes the wonders I want to pack into my life conflict with one another, and I need to find a way to make them all stay in balance.

It’s all about how much I can pack into life, not about how long I can make life last. In the end, death is the only way out, and maybe it’ll be gentle or maybe not. I’m reminded of a story Garrison Keillor tells, about how he wants to die peacefully in his sleep like his grandfather did, not screaming in terror like the other people in the car he was driving as it flew off the cliff…

Live well.

“When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” 

  ~ Tecumseh


Playing Catch

I was fishing with my brother a week or so ago. We’ve developed a habit of bringing our baseball gloves when we go on fishing trips, and finding a little time to play catch in the afternoons. As much as I always enjoy the fishing, I’ve got to say I enjoy those brief moments of playing catch just as much.

My baseball glove is a leftover from 40+ years ago. Back then, I saved up for quite a while to buy such a nice glove, and carefully oiled it and broke it in through thousands of balls thrown and caught. I’ve oiled it now and again through the years, so it’s still serviceable today. I’ve always kept a baseball tucked perfectly into the pocket of the glove, to assure that it stays molded with the memory of the thing it’s meant to wrap itself around.

Through all the moves and changes in my life, that glove has somehow stayed tucked away in my drawer. It’s survived the many bouts of “cleansing”, where I give away or throw away everything I’m not using at the time.

It slips so naturally onto my left hand, and feels so “right” when it’s there. The ball falls from it into my right hand. I feel the laces touch my fingers just right as I’m rocking back onto my right foot and my right arm falls away behind me. My right arm and shoulder roll easily into an arc above my head and my wrist snaps lightly, I release the ball, and watch as it goes to the exact spot my mind’s eye was seeing.

My glove folds around the ball as it returns to me, snapping with a sweet “pop”. As the ball hits my glove, I’m already rocking gently through the motion of sending the ball back to my brother.

Back and forth my feet take me through the familiar motion, my arm arcing and releasing, my glove popping. A familiar rhythm that became part of the fabric of my being during a time when my heart and mind and soul were learning to become the rhythm that is life. Just as the glove has maintained the memory of the baseball it’s meant to  hold, my body has maintained a memory of that easy rhythm of the game.

Letting my body fall into that familiar memory does something to my heart and soul too. The gentle rhythm of activity that feels “ancient” to our muscles releases our mind, heart, and soul to fall back deeply into ourselves. A bit of a “renewal” I suppose, like drinking from an ancient and well-guarded spring of water so sweet it never leaves our memory. Continue reading “Playing Catch”