Family

Family

The greatest gift that a man can have as shades of gray and white fill his hair, mustache, and beard, is family. Three of my children got married and now Chris, Rachel and Megan are members of our family. After many years, Cole (in the orange sweat shirt), has returned to us and we celebrate is presence in our live. This weekend we met his lady, Sierra and already we love her.
C.C. (my youngest son) has put a new kind of door handle all all of our doors because the old ones hurt his mother's hands (Arthritis required a different kind of handle. He rewired a shag lamp and put a better switch on it and helped me haul stuff to the dump. Our new projects are putting in wood flours and new bath room fans, and he is in charge of them. I am his assistant and I enjoy mt time with him.
Chris and Jennifer have brought our granddaughter Zoe into our lives and they have opened their hearts to us.
Tom and Rachel are looking for a house and they send us pictures of homes that they bid on We love them and celebrate their happiness.
Megan has a kind, loving grace-filled spirited and a beautiful smile. She shares her life with us and we count it a blessing.
Jean and Pat, and Carolyn were there for us when during the hard times after I left the ministry.
We have adopted Fowler into our family. We look forward to his wedding. Fowler and I have been exchanging thoughts in e-mails. When we are together we smoke our pipes and talk about important things.
This may sound like personal stuff, but it is also the beautiful essence of family life.
My second oldest son Tom helped us many times out of love. We provided us with a new dishwasher, refrigerator, washer, and computer and ask nothing in return. His love humbled me and filled me with joy.
The oldest son Lee visits us about every other week. He brings us new knowledge and ideas, food for thought about the world we live in.
Chris has the courage to be open with me and he teaches me about relationships. Sometimes we smoke our pipes together and enjoy our pipes.
Jennifer is a wonderful mother and she shares Zoe with us. She has a sweet and caring heart.
I am blessed by God with a wonderful family.

Bear

Accept No Imitations

Accept No Imitations

Life is like the old prospector sifting river sand in hopes of finding gold. Sometimes we sit and wait for the mother lode and throw the small nuggets back into the river.God may give us many small answers to our big prayer for whatever we value or need. Frankly, I don't know what I do with the mother lode that many people seek. Pleasure, fame, and wealth may in fact be cheap imitations of real happiness. It all depends on how we define gold. God doesn't seem to desire to make me rich. I am glad that he decided to give me a family that loves me and cares about me. I wouldn't trade them for all of the money in the world. I see wealth, pleasure, and fame as fool's gold. I am not against people being rich and famous or enjoying pleasures. They can be good and even healthy if we put them in the right perspective. Too often they turn our attention away from God.

Some people strive to be the best of the best, which means that only a few of us can be the best. I believe that what God makes of our lives is not only the best, but is also a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God. I like to watch track and field events on TV. Every athlete. has trained hard to win a gold, silver, or bronze medal I am inspired by all of them because the least of them accomplishes things that most of us can't do. To ascend to that level of physical prowess requires a disciplined routine and a commitment to excellence. The limelight is not God's light.

Robert Schuller tells the story of a janitor who took an impossible look at the possibilities of his life. He decided to prepare for and run in the Boston Marathon. Before that, his muscles and joints saw very little physical exercise. His dream wasn't to win the marathon; it was to finish the race. Though he eventually won many marathon races in the senior division, he was always content to be all that God would make of his life.

If we strive to be someone else, we end up being an imitation of another person. In work and play, and goals and dreams, God will make something out of our lives that is genuine and real. I listened to a man who had a PHD and a six figure income. God called him to leave his job, his income and hi s life style, and teach at a small college created by overseas missionaries . It was there that God helped him to find and be his unique and genuine self. God wants us to reach goals that don't leave us being strangers to ourselves.

The question is, do each of us want to be ourselves, the person that God created us to be.? A Chinese woman was pressured by her parents to study hard so that she could be a medical doctor. It was clear that she had the intelligence and the drive to succeed in medical school. One day she awoke to the really that she wanted to earn a Fine Arts degree and become an artist. It was a difficult choice because she knew that her whole family would be disappointed. She succeeded in become an artist and it worked out well for her. Perhaps that is what we mean when we say, "Be true to yourself."

Bear

It Makes we Wonder

It Makes me Wonder

The Centennial Trail is just a short walk from where I live. When my wife and I walk together we see awesome sites and we are filled with wonder over what God has created. God has filled are world with beauty and it fills me with joy.
Life is not always beautiful, especially when we are hurt or disappointed. The miracle of life is beyond my comprehension. God has put all of our parts together, and they work together to be a human being. When I grow weary I think about that.
God created each of us and the scriptures tell us that God said, "It is good." Wow!
They also say that God knew us when we were in our mother's womb. I ended up leaving my mother's womb at nine pounds and fifteen ounces. Women know that giving birth to such a big baby is hard and painful work. Yet, nothing is more exciting than the birth of a child.
One author wrote, "God leaves his fingerprints on our living souls." None of us are accidents. God knew us before we were born. Every one of us is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God. It doesn't matter how things turned out at our birth.
I have great compassion for parents who struggle with children that were born with physical problems. God does not love any of those children less. God cherishes each of his children and each life is sacred in his eyes.
My sister Joan dated a man whose son had a mental handicap. He always greeted her with a hug and his presence helped her to see God's love. I have been honored to be the pastor in weddings for mentally handicapped people. It was obvious that they loved each other.
A nun at a Catholic hospital asked me to come and baptize a dead baby. The mother requested that, and the nun knew I would help. My tradition was to place a red rose on the alter to celebrate the gift of life, and a white rose to affirm a that a person had gone on to be held in Jesus loving arms. The mother handed her child to me. There were two flowers on our table, a red rose and a white rose, and a potter's hand made baptismal bowl. I read the whole infant baptismal ritual, and the mother responded to the questions. I placed the baptismal water on the baby's head. There was a large scar there from the autopsy. Death and darkness left the room as God accepted the child into his arms. We could all feel God's presence and the mother found peace in God. I was filled with wonder and awe over what God did. The mother looked into my eyes and said, "Thank you."
The denomination that I serve baptizes infants. Some feel that baptism must be by immersion because it represents the death and resurrection of Christ. I don't deny that , nor do I choose to argue over the meaning of the sacrament. I do know that infants were baptized during the first three centuries of the Christian church. Baptism is a sacrament, a rite of inclusion and we ask the Holy Spirit be a part of it, and do what human words and will can not do. When we baptize an infant or a child, or an adult, we ask God to accept this person and be present to help him or her draw close to Jesus Christ. The body of Christ, present during the baptism, makes a vow to God that they will accept the person and demonstrate Christ's love. Adult's are at an age that they can choose Christ, but children may also choose to accept Christ.
I will leave the theologians to debate the issue and continue to offer God's sacrament of baptism to infants. Paul baptized his jailer's whole family.
I am filled with awe and wonder over the power and presence of God in the sacrament of baptism. It is one of God's wonderful gifts to us.
In the normal day to day events of our lives, our souls hunger for us to open our eyes. and fill them with awe and wonder over what God has done and is doing.
In each of those moments we feed our soul, and we are transformed by the love of God.

Bear

Our Inner Child

I met a man who was rich enough to buy what ever he wanted. He showed me the $60,000 boatthat he bought a few years back and told me that he didn't have time to use it, that he had neverbeen out in his boat. He showed me his beautiful home and confessed that he didn't spend muchtime there with his wife and children. He made a lot of money, but his job took up most of his time. He belonged to a church, but most Sundays he was working.

It was evident that his wife and children loved him, and they wanted to spend time with them. He felt that that was impossible because he needed his job to give them a very nice home and lots of expensive stuff that they enjoyed. The truth is that he was trapped in the all American stress for success track. Everyone saw him as a winner and yet he had lost all of the important things in life.

I met a woman that spent several years with a company moving from one job to the next. Each new position demanded more of her time. Just after she got the job she had dreamed of, she had a baby. She decided that it was important to spend time with her husband and her child.
She performed well on her job, but her supervisor wasn't satisfied. He made it clear to her that her job required more than forty hours a week. She would have to work some nights and weekends to keep up with her clients and all of her paper work. Her reply was "I have a family and I need to spend time with them." She stood firm on her position and a few months later she lost her job.

I suppose that my ink drawing looks strange to you. Two men are wearing pajamas, "jamies," with bunnies and teddy bears. Their pajamas represent their inner child, a part of them that is nurtured by having fun and playing. It may sound cliche, but families that play together stay together. It's difficult for each of us to take care of our inner child because with live in a stress for success society.

There are many wonderful benefits from taking care of our inner child. We will be healthy and we will live longer. Stress is a key ingredient in most illnesses. It breaks down our immune systems and we feel tired and sick. Play actually frees our minds to solve problems and it releases our creative energy. Play not only reduces our stress it releases endorphins and we arel happy. Play helps to prevent depression. Often when we play, we laugh and giggle together. Norman Mailer proved that laughter can cure illness,

He was far away from home and he was very sick. The doctors kept him in the hospital and constantly interrupted him with tests, but they didn't have any success. He had them stop the tests and treatments and watched many funny movies. His inner child emerged and released him from his illness. Soon, he left the hospital healthy and happy.

I would like to reveal a well kept secret, "God likes to laugh and have fun." I would be barred from most churches if I told them that they were too serious and solemn. I am not denying that we need to deal with our sins, but at the end of the week our worship service should give us some healing and hope. Instead, we may hear sermons which make us feel awful.

I gave a sermon at a church and used a Power Point presentation to celebrate God's love and God's desire for us to have wonderful peace and joy. The many scriptures came with beautiful pictures. I watched people weep with joy and relief. God touched the inner child that he created in each of them.

A man in that church told me that I presented a sermon for fourth graders and the people needed more. I should have hugged him and said, "WOW!!!!" It took me a long time to see that what he intended to be a scolding was really an affirmation of my success. Jesus said, "Unless you become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of God." He also said, "Let the children come to me!" Have we forgotten that we are the children of God?

If we take playing and having fun seriously, some one will be sure to say, "Grow up!" Our answer is simple. We know how to take responsibility and we have an excellent work ethic, but God also wants us to have fun and laugh. I take that seriously because my life depends on that.
David wrote psalms, but he also knew how to dance. He danced when his son Absalom died and his world came crashing down on him. I believe that God danced with him in his time of grief. When we are very sad we lose the rhythm of life and we need to find it again. "Sorrow lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning."

Bear

The Man in the Mirror

I am getting ready to do two things: make picture boxes to hang on the living room wall, and make scrapbooks for my children so that they can look at the changes in their lives and looks.
Each photograph has captured memories. My ink drawing allows me to see myself in perspective. The mirror seems to be magical in some ways, but it also becomes an appropriate metaphor for our lives.

The man outside the mirror is looking at the image of the physical person that he once was, thin and hansom. When I look through my collection of pictures I see how my body looked and various stages of my life. When I look at my body I see that I am not the physical man that I used to be,

What I can't see in the mirror are the changes inside of me. I lost my job at Daybreak on the fourteenth day of February 2009. I spent my last year there teaching students who abused drugs or alcohol or both. They came to live in the inpatient treatment center for an average of forty five days. They came because their addiction was ruining their lives, because the drugs and/or alcohol had changed both their physical bodies and the persons inside them.

Many of them had been abused physically, sexually, or verbally or all those ways. Drugs ans/or alcohol eased their pain, but their addiction took control of their lives, took away all of the good things that they should have enjoyed as they grew up. In that sense they stopped developing when they started taking drugs, Their chronological age may have been sixteen, but their developmental age might be twelve or ten, or even eight years old. Their behavior matched their developmental age. Most of them had a problem with anger and a lot of pain.

I was verbally abused by my stepfather throughout my high school and college years, and even after I got married and left home. Three other things affected the man inside me. My parents were divorced when I was eleven years old. My mother remarried when I was thirteen and I had to leave the my home in Tacoma, leave all of my friends, and move to Bellevue. My father died of cancer, Hogkins disease, when I was fifteen. I was angry with my parents because they got divorced, even though they still loved each other. I was angry with my mother because she got married again two years after the divorce and my stepfather wouldn't allow me to take my dog, Taffy, with me, and Taffy was put to sleep, died. I was angry with God because God let my father die. I was angry the man inside me was wounded and full of pain.

It took me many years to heal and to understand the man inside my body. Some of the wounds were very painful to deal with and it took along time to find the courage with face them and find a healing, I had good days and bad days and it seemed that I had no control over them It took time to discover how much that God loves me.

The man inside of me had to deal with the fear that the people he loved would abandon him. They proved that I was wrong by standing with me, and loving me. Love is the most important ingredient in healing. They gave me the hope and courage to continue my healing journey, and most of all that were willing to forgive me,

The physical man that I am has been affected by age, and that part of me wasn't happy about growing old. The man inside me has grown and changed and he is a much better person. Most of my days are good days, but occasionally I feel sadness and shame.

All things are possible if we have patience, faith, hope, love and the courage to persevere. There are no instant healings or quick fixes. We have to choose our healing everyday. It's hard, painful work, but it's worth it.

Blessings for you as you continue your journey,

Bear

Standing on the steps a journey begins
a little boy wearing cowboy boots
and lots of attitude
as he looks at life.
He can not imagine what awaits him.
He can not predict the weather
in each of seasons of his life
that lay ahead in the seasons
spring, summer, fall and winter
that messure the years and changes
that will shape him him, please him, tortment or tease him and
fill him we heart racing, quick passing, all embracing love.
His experiences have only allowed him to read
the first pages of the book that will contain
all of the chapters of his life.
Some believe that each sentance is written by the stars.
I watch them read their horocsopes each day in the newspaper.
Others believe that a divine hand has touched their lives
and left fingerprints on their souls and has made a specific plan
that will guide them through mortality to a promised land.
When I wore boots and lots of attitude at the tender age of five
I met God, my creator, and I knew the reason for my life,
and I defied the rules and the tradition of my church
just eight years old was I, and formally baptized.
I knew then that my life was not an accident,
that I was chosen and called by God
to wear the yoke that Elijah the prophet
and Paul the missionary evangelist wore.
Later I learned that God knew each of us before the dawn of time
before God created the world and blew into the clay the breath of life
and first living being, the first human being, became a living soul.
Later I learned that God knit me together in my mother's womb,
and already had seen all of the days of my life, that I am still living the pages in the chapters of the book of my days that were written with with great love and compassion.
I have read pages from future chapter in advance on occassion, which means that I have had visions, and they have come to pass. I have come to new places and I recognized everything that was there.
You will shout to me, "What about free will?" I will answer, "There is God's will and there is the will of an evil enemy who seeks to seduce us and destroy our lives." There are moments when we are free to choose God's will, or become slaves of our worst mortal enemy, but not every moment is a moment of choice. Something must awaken us, and soften our hard hearts, and shout to us, "Whoever Jesus Christ sets free is free indeed."
Frredom in error, false freedom, is believing that true freedom is doing whatever we want to do. That is the freedom of folly which come from a place in our hearts that caused angels to fall. I call it intellectual suicide because the wisdom of man is foolishness compared to the Wisdom of God.
Too much attitude must humbled on our knees as we surrender our will to God,
and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior. Only then can we live and experience that pages and chapters that God wrote in each of our books, long before the dawn of time.

Pride, Posture, Pain and Purpose

The Reasons for Heresy

We have the freedom to give any meaning to God's Word that we choose. Our response to what we read depends on several things. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Many people have opened their hearts to God because God's Word never comes back void. I'll give you scripture references/bible verses in mt next blog.

When our hearts are open we can find the true meaning of God's Word as it speaks to our personal circumstances. We experience who God is and we discover how much God loves us. We find God's gifts of mercy, grace, and forgiveness and we have the opportunity to recieve them.

Jesus often shared "Those who have hears let them hear and those who have eyes let them see." God is willing to open our eyes and ears so that we can see who God is and so that he can speak to us and allow the Truth to set us free.
God has chosen to give us free will, and allows to decide if we want to see and hear.

I learned early in my life that we can't make anyone see or hear God. Four things often get in our way: our pride, our posture, our pain, and our pupose

Pride has to do with how we see ourselves. Some people believe that they are intelligent enough to discover all they need to know on theor own. Others believe that they have wealth, power, and success because of their own efforts and don't need anyone's help. Life for them is the survival of the the strongest, the smartest and the best. Pride prevents them from asking anyone for help. They see God as a security blanket for the weak, for the losers, for those who don't have what it takes to make it, to succeed. The Word of God is unimportant to most of them Some rewrite it to justify what they want to do or how they live their lives. Some preachers have turned the bible into a instruction manual for those who wish to be rich, famous, and powerful. The bible says "Pride comes before a fall."

Posture has to do with how we treat others. Satan fell because he believed that he could be a god. New age religion offers that opportunity, and it appears that there are many levels that may be achieved. Scientists believe that they what they have discovered is the truth, that we have evolved from lower life forms. Science seems to be their god and the bible is a book filled with myths. In our country success has become a god, along with wealth, power, fame and a higher standard of living. Those who have more, win more, are more popular, tougher, and so on, are better than others. Those who have less deserve less. Our heroes are those who win and winning is everything. It matters who wins or loses. Winning is what life is all about. There is even a label for this. "the best of the best." Jesus challenged the posture of the scribes ans pharisees and said, "If you want to be first in the kingdom of God you must be the servant of others." Many preachers measure their success by their salaries and the size of their churches. Some of Jesus' disciples argued/fought over their position and rank in Jesus' group of twelve. His response was to wash their feet.

Pain is a common reason for rejecting God. A young man shared with me that he was raised by his mom. She asked the pastor for some help and he said he would send some one over. No one came. When she asked her pastor about that, he had nothing to say. A woman lost everything because her husband decided to divorce her and marry a younger woman. Her friends at church stopped having lunch with her, and she lost her position/volunteer job in her church. Her church rejected her and abandoned her. Victims of rape, incest, physical abuse, and a variety of painfull trajedies often blame God and ask, "How could a loving God allow this to happen to me.

Purpose is our plan, goal, or lack of both. What we choose to do becomes our destiny, our future and our tomorrow. That is the essence of the most important decision of our lives. If we choose Christ we must surrender our will and serve him. That requires sacrifice and it may include pain and suffering. We can choose what the world has to offer: wealth, power, fame, and a opporinity obtain success.
That requires another kind of sacrifice, our souls, our salvation, and our intimate relationship with God. The phrase, "To thine own self be true," can create a selfish attitude. It an also embrace the life of a humble servant of God.

Heresy is born in the womb of four mothers: pride, posture, pain, and purpose. They often determine how people experience God's word, by making them blind and deaf. They prevent us from seeing God and hearing his Word for our personal circumtances and God's offer of grace, mercy, love and salvation.

My son, Tom drew a picture of Apollos for my book. You are free to find your own meaning for my son's creation. God has given us free will. Each of us must choose how we will use it.