Despite the humor of my last post, the last few weeks I’ve been in a funk, and I’m realizing it was for several reasons.

First, let me say that financially, we’ve had a couple of atomic bombs dropped on us recently. About two weeks ago the riding mower that my in-laws gave to us a couple years ago stopped working. You might think, well just buy a new mower, right? Get rid of this one? But it’s a zero-turn-radius Dixon, which costs several thousand dollars…so discarding it never really felt like a reasonable option. The engine apparently threw a push rod, which meant that rather than trying to actually repair the engine itself, a cheaper and easier alternative would be buying a new engine.

I was able to find one on Ebay for just under $500 with shipping, which I was greatly relieved to find…but still, it’s $500 we hadn’t quite itemized into the “Lawn and Garden/Landscaping” portion of our monthly budget. And also, the engine I bought needs an exhaust system which didn’t come with it, a new throttle cable, and of course, we’re having it installed for us…which all add to the cost of these repairs…

Also, we found out this week from our orthodontist that both our boys will be getting braces in the next couple months – and both are needing to have teeth pulled. While I do have excellent dental insurance, it’s still a motherload of information for us to process through. And our orthodontist informed us that we have to pay one lump sum up front, and then pay monthly dental bills up front, for which we then get reimbursed through my dental plan.
But still, I heard someone once say if you have a problem that money will fix, then you don’t really have a very interesting problem…

What I think really started me down the road to this mild depression, though, was seeing a person in our community die in a car accident.

Mrs. Page was a local teacher greatly, greatly loved by her family, friends, and students. She passed away about ten days ago in a car accident, an event that roared into the community like a tornado and left a lot of people feeling completely devastated. And knowing her family, her death just seemed inconceivable. Her husband has cancer; her son is in remission from two forms of leukemia; her dad passed away of cancer this last year, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer around the same time her dad was…

I have this image in my mind, a sort of representation of the way our lives are lived, and it’s this: I see myself walking on a long plank of wood that’s balanced on a fulcrum. The plank represents the amount of time we hope we have to live our lives – eighty years, maybe? ninety if we’re lucky? – and we start out walking along the plank on a steep incline.

Those first years you live seem to take forever. You’re a kid, and it seems like all you want to do is get to the next stage, whatever that is…first, you want to be a teenager so people will stop treating you like a child, then when you’re a teen, you want to be old enough to drive…and then you can’t wait to be old enough to move out of your parents’ house and get your own apartment.

Then, we’re often looking to get married…then, we want kids…more job experience to get a better paying job…then a comfortable retirement…

And for me, I think what’s really put me in a funk these past few weeks is feeling like I’m already at the fulcrum, like life is suddenly rushing me forward faster than I can handle, I’m wishing for the next step, and the next step, and not living in the moment.

Somehow when this teacher died, I started realizing how many people I’ve known that have passed away. Just in the time I’ve been at Albion, I’ve seen maybe two dozen local people disappear…

Blanche, who worked at the bank I used…I came in one Monday afternoon, and found out she’d passed away that weekend.

Bobbie, who used to work at a local liquor store…he was shot and killed by a fellow employee…

Mr. Seiler, who used to own a car dealership and several other businesses across the country. A heck of a nice guy with very salty language, who always drove big, fat American cars and complained that the Japanese could design a reliable car, but never a comfortable one. He died five or six years ago…

Gary, the local AAA insurance salesman who had a bad fall a few years ago that he never really recovered fun…he ended up dying about two years later.

I could go on, but you get the idea. And all these people I’ve listed are only people I’ve known through work. There are perhaps a couple dozen more I could think of that we’ve known through the community we live in, through our church, etc.

I was thinking about all of this in relation to the fulcrum metaphor, and I realized that if we live long enough, we all come to a point in our lives when we have more close friends that have passed away than are living. That thought really hit me hard for some reason, and I think it’s because it says something about human existence and human suffering.

There is no question that life for all of us will be hard, the only question is: will it be bearable?
I finished reading the Book of Matthew, yesterday, and flipped through the concordance in my Bible to find references for the word ‘hope’ – and I ended up in Lamentations, which seemed to feel somehow right, a representation of where I’ve felt I’m at…and perhaps the only way to end this post:

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:19-24)

After a short hiatus, UnlimitedLicense is back. During the past few weeks, the sabbatical I was on allowed me time for inner reflection, for careful consideration and meditation…even enlightenment.

Oh, one thing I need to add here for the boys in our Revenue Department: “This week’s enlightenment is brought to you by Budweiser, the King of Beers! When you need enlightenment, reach for a Bud – this Bud’s for YOU!”

Okay, with that out of the way….

How about a horribly embarrassing story???

Okay, actually that’s not really true, reader. YOU shouldn’t feel embarrassed about what I’m about to type, only my BROTHER should feel a little trepidation at this point.

On May 27, 1975, James was born into our family turning three Stroddys into four, a nice round number that we settled on from that point forward. So with him turning 34 this week, what better way to celebrate than by dusting the cobwebs off a few stories from our childhood at his expense???

The summer I was twelve – which would mean James had just turned six – I begged and pleaded with our mom to let me ‘baby sit’ him, rather than sending us to the babysitter we’d previously been with all year. I was old enough, right? I could handle this responsibility, yes? And besides, it wasn’t like there was anything complicated in hanging out with a kindergartner…

I typed the term ‘baby sit’ in the previous paragraph in parentheses purposely to indicate a couple of things. First, I don’t think that what I did that summer in any way involved ‘sitting’ on anything, or even really any ‘baby’ for that matter – which I guess just goes to show I had no idea what I was going to really be doing when I volunteered for the job…And second, I don’t think that what I ended up doing that summer would really line up very well with what babysitters usually do.

Don’t get me wrong, reader. I didn’t lose my brother, I didn’t burn the house down…Nothing major really ever got broken or anything like that.

It’s just that nothing really constructive was accomplished, either. We’d sleep in until maybe 9 am, then watch lousy morning t.v. while eating three or four bowls of Lucky Charms or Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, followed by a game we’d invented that was a sort of hybrid of indoor football, wrestling, and Olympic sprinting that involved James starting on one end of the house and trying to get past me and into the living room doorway, eventually jumping into the room and sometimes onto the couch.

But that’s another blog post…

So things were going pretty well, except that James kept wanting to do things that I, with a wisdom far beyond my twelve years, didn’t think he should be doing.

I don’t really remember what the things were exactly that he wanted to do, and it doesn’t really matter for the point of this story. Because with me at age twelve – and him at age five – we disagreed about everything, all the time, day in and day out.

We argued about what we were going to do that day…what we should have for lunch…what he should be wearing…

And it’s this last one that provides the most embarrassment for him, and consequently, the most amusement for you.

He came down one morning wearing nothing but a green t-shirt, which doesn’t in itself seem odd, kids wear that kind of thing to bed all the time, except he was wearing his like a pair of pants, with his feet through the arm holes, the shirt tail hoisted up to his neck, and his, err, derriere hanging out of the neck hole for all the world to see.

He thought this was hysterical. And I did, too, for the first few minutes. But then when I told him he needed to get dressed (why, exactly, did I tell him this? I’m not sure – we weren’t going anywhere, no one was coming over…hmmm….) he just kept laughing and jumping around and doing a little leprechaun dance with his butt hanging out.

“Get dressed,” I said in my most serious voice.

He danced and laughed.

“Jamie, seriously, you need to get your clothes on,” I said, trying to sound very stern and grown up.

Still, the dance continued.

“Look, are you going to get dressed, or not?”

The dance continued. Apparently implying his answer was ‘not.’

And so, with no other option I could think of, I shoved him outside our front door and into the bright sunshine on our front porch, at which point he still danced, but it was a different sort of dance, changing from one of merriment and frolicking into the sort of panicky thing a person might do if he found he was on fire with no immediate source of water around to put it out.

I didn’t torment him too long. When I started to see traffic pass by and people looking at him from their cars, I thought somebody might call the police so I finally let him back inside.
Which all goes to show, I guess, what a horrible idea it was for me to have this responsibility at age twelve.

But also shows how DEEPLY I cared about my brother’s personal hygiene, right? That I would take the time to patiently reprimand him about his choice of attire, pointing out the inefficacy of his choice of wardrobe, how drafty it might feel were he to go in public dressed this way…

So nearly thirty years later, here we are.

Run Free and True, Dancing Half-Naked Leprechaun Boy!!! Run Like the Wind!!!

And happy 34th…

Regarding the Miraculous...

"The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering, but a supernatural use for it." -- Simone Weil



I’m not a Bible scholar by any means, but I do try to read something from the Bible every day. And right now, I’m plodding through the book of Matthew.


I say plodding not because I’m not enjoying it – I am, very much – and not because it’s taking longer than I want it to. It IS taking me a long time to get through, but not in a bad way. Rather, as I’ve been reading, I’m finding that Matthew is becoming one of my favorite books.


From what I’ve read, Matthew paints one of the most fascinating pictures of Jesus -- and there are so many passages that I find very slippery and mysterious, and I’m taking joy in my lack of understanding it all.


As the first of the four Gospels, you might think it would paint an easier, more direct picture of Jesus. And yet, the more I read, the more I find that, even as someone raised in a very conservative Christian church, there are more and more parts of it that I don’t remember reading before.


I’m about halfway through it right now, in Chapter 15, where Jesus, after again confounding the Pharisees, performs more miracles, including healing a Canaanite woman and feeding four thousand people near the Sea of Galilee. Earlier in the book of Matthew, he’d already healed the sick ‘throughout Galilee’, healed a man with leprosy, healed a Centurion’s servant, healed two demon-possessed men, healed a man with paralysis, brought the daughter of a ruler back to life, and healed the blind and mute.


I have read that many branches of Christianity read these stories of the miraculous in different ways. For some – like the church I was raised in – they are meant to be taken very literally; we see Jesus in a direct, overt way, bringing supernatural power to touch people and heal them. We’re supposed to use this as an example, to ourselves grasp that power and act as Jesus did. The fact that many of these people had suffered for years only demonstrates how the power of God is able to overcome any difficulty, regardless of history or circumstance.


But for some Christian traditions, the stories are meant as a kind of allegory. Maybe Jesus really did heal many of these people, but that isn’t necessarily the point – rather, the portrayal laid out in the four Gospel books is meant to provide a framework for the Church, a guide to what is possible through the power of God. Jesus brought compassion and healing to the lost in society, and we are encouraged to do the same in whatever way we can, though it isn’t necessarily supposed to mean we’re doing these things supernaturally.

Much of this was explained more eloquently and in better detail in Brian McLaren's book, "A Generous Orthodoxy."


Both views, I suppose, have validity, and there’s a danger inherent in being closed to either idea. On the one hand, if we ONLY believe these miracles are meant to be taken literally, at face value, then what do we make of instances in which people pray for healing and it doesn’t happen? And if we ONLY have an allegorical view of the miracles Jesus performed, is the Church selling itself short by not allowing the power of God to work to its full potential?


But beyond these ideas, a third one came to mind as I was reading. And that is, that it seems to me Jesus always granted the miraculous to those who had no other hope of finding healing or relief. When he feeds four thousand people in Chapter 15it isn’t just because they’re hungry: “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.” (Matthew 15:32) They are perhaps miles away from any food source…


In contrast, the Pharisees and Sadduccees come to Jesus in the next chapter, and ask for a miraculous sign from heaven; and they are quickly rebuked. “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” (16:2-4)


I guess from all of this, I take away two ideas…first, I see the underlying message being spelled out that God helps those who help themselves – we’re not to rely on the miraculous when it isn’t necessary, because that isn’t what faith is about. Handling poisonous snakes for the sake of doing something dangerous to prove the power of God is beyond foolhardy – it’s in violation of what we’re meant to be doing with our time and effort, especially when so many people are suffering and need our help.


And second, I believe, the miraculous is real…it’s just that in the present age we live in, it’s becoming less and less necessary. Is there a necessity to miraculously stretch tiny amounts of our food to feed the hungry, when our real problem in feeding the poor in places like Africa is one of distribution? We have enough food to feed the world…how do we get it to people in countries ruled by dictators who refuse to give that food to those who need it most?


But that’s not to say it’s NEVER necessary. We still pray in my church. We still pray for the miraculous, for healing, for peace. People will always have needs that aren’t met by modern medicine or modern conveniences.


I hope we never sell ourselves short in this respect…

A Brave New Prophetic Voice: Condi Speaks

“Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.” Prov. 20:11


I was fascinated to hear former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s response to a question asked this week by a fourth grader.


The former Secretary of State was taking questions from a group of students at a school in Washington D.C. According to the Washington Post, the questions weren’t screened (oopsy…) and after several ‘innocuous’ questions (language used by the Post) a 4th grader then asked this:

What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?


And her response, after first explaining she didn’t want to criticize the Obama Administration, was quoted in the Post as this:


"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country. But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country. I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die. . . . Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying to protect the country."


Let me add, here, that I am:


--An Evangelical Christian

--Generally a Moderate Conservative

--Traditionally a Republican Voter

--In the 36 to 64 demographic

--Middle Class

--A Midwesterner


…and her response makes the hair on my neck stand up, and it gives me a sense of dread in my stomach.




I won’t make a comment on whether or not we should be waterboarding people to get information -- it isn’t productive, in my opinion, at this point in our history and the past is the past; I won’t comment on whether waterboarding meets the technical definition of torture as outlined in the standards of the Geneva Convention we’re supposedly adhering to, because that isn’t the point of this blog post; and I won’t even comment on how hypocritical Rice’s words are, especially in light of the fact that our actions were so disgraceful that we invented a new term – “extraordinary rendition” – to allow other countries to do what we didn’t want to be accused of doing on American soil.


Beyond all of these things, though, let me say that with regard to any and all of the detainees we took into custody under the Bush Administration – from the people being held at Guantanamo Bay to the Abu Ghraib prisoners to any of the foreign nationals we hauled all over the globe – to suggest that what we did to these people was necessary because of the fear Americans held after 9-11 is perhaps the biggest miscarriage of justice created by the Bush Administration.


We were in essence being told that we were spineless; we couldn’t make our own decisions; we needed the government to take care of us; we didn’t have the courage to return to the normal routines of our lives.

Because approximately 3000 people died in a series of terrorist attacks.


For reference, about 40,000 people die each year – 100 each day – from car crashes. This month alone, more people will die from car accidents than were killed on 9-11.


And there are still many cars out there on the road; should we be terrified of them? We are much more likely to die from a car crash than a terrorist attack, and the men who carried out the attacks of 9-11 are all dead.


This all brings to my mind what we did to Asians during World War II in the name of ‘fear’; we couldn’t have a bunch of Asian people just wandering the country, could we? After all, we were at war with Japan. So in the name of protection, we locked up thousands of Japanese-Americans in internment camps around the United States.

Perhaps most ironic of all, for me at least, is the method the U.S. used to create
internment camps: The Executive Order.

And this was exactly what George Bush used throughout his presidency to side-step the guarantees, the checks and balances, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution set up.

So was it right to send the Japanese to internment camps? Was this fair? Was this justice? I’m sure at the time, being asked these questions, people were responding with answers about necessity and taking 'extraordinary measures during extraordinary times'…and that this was only temporary.


And yet if we just repeated these types atrocities, these types of human rights violations, under George Bush, were those 'extraordinary measures' really temporary? If the Bush Administration got to do whatever it wanted to in the name of protection, have we made any progress???

Since 1944???


Oddly, I feel a sense of relief. Not that we, the United States, tortured, of course, and not that we won’t do it again. And the fact that these things are out in the open doesn’t really make me feel any better either.

Rather, I’m glad that with the Bush Administration hopefully behind us (and getting farther every day) we can finally begin to move into a new phase in which the international community doesn’t despise us for saying one thing and doing something else.

And hopefully get past using 'protection from terrorism' as a justification for our actions...

Worst...Night...Ever...

What is the worst nightmare you’ve ever had???


I’ve always had a great relationship with sleep, we get along really well – I’m generally not the type of person who has difficulty in falling asleep quickly or with staying asleep once I’m out, but last night…


Wow. I think I had the second worst nightmare I’ve dreamt in the 40+ years that I’ve been a professional sleeper.


The absolute worst nightmare I’ve ever had occurred about eleven years ago, when our son Ethan was still an infant. He was at the crawling and climbing stage, walking but not really comfortably yet. And in that dream…


…I have Ethan – his tiny little infant body, held precariously in my left arm – as I’m climbing a structure that reminds me of the Watson/Crick DNA model I learned about in seventh grade, the double helix that’s like a ladder. The room – but it isn’t a room, not exactly – rather, the space I’m in is all black, black background with no form or shape, and I’m climbing very slowly up this ladder-like model one hand-hold at a time.


And as I get to the top, I’m relieved because I’ve made it, though who knows why I’ve been climbing…and then it happens, Ethans wiggles as I’m trying to hold him, and he topples from my arms, off the top of the ladder-thing, and I snatch at him to try and stop him from falling but he goes falling down and I realize I’ve failed as his body slips away from me…


…and I wake up. Didn’t really get much sleep that night at all, I’m afraid.


But last night’s was almost as bad,…


…because it’s Ethan again, only this time the 12 year old Ethan. We’re all (I’m not sure who ‘all’ is) in a basement, concrete walls, damp feel, dank smell, and the lighting is creeping me out, because it’s fluorescent but there aren’t any fluorescent lights overhead, the light source is coming from somewhere unseen…


But we’re all searching just the same, it’s like a scene from a t.v. show – wandering down long tunnels, and two girls are in trouble and we don’t know if we’ll get to them in time. I think they’ve been kidnapped but I’m not sure…


And then someone yells out that they’ve found ‘the door’, and sure enough, as we all rush over, Ethan pushes through to the front of the crowd and opens the passage, a twenty inch door that he steps through. He goes in because he has the cutting tool, a thing made of plexiglass but shaped like a ray gun you might see in a ‘B’ sci-fi movie.


So he’s through the first door, in a small passage that is barred by a second door to the right. It’s this second door he’s going to use the gun on, and he holds it up, waits for a second for it to charge, and I see, from where I’m standing outside the room, that as the ray gun goes off, it lights Ethan’s face up like he’s watching an atomic bomb go off in the distance. There’s no explosion, the gun just sort of melts the door away…


And I rush through the two doorways. But the two girls that I thought would be there aren’t. Instead, the sense of dread crashes on me like a tsunami as I see a large pile of leaves and sticks with a red phone cord coming out of it, leading to a red phone on the ground in front of me. I pick up the receiver and listen.


There’s a tremendous amount of static in the background, but it’s a recorded message that plays over and over, with the voice of the older of the two girls saying very matter of factly (though I can barely hear her), “Better hurry up…time’s running out…”


And I suddenly know what to do…I drop the phone to the ground, climb over it, and begin digging through the pile of leaves where I realize the two girls are buried…and a second later, a hand comes reaching from the ground, and I try to pull her out…
…and I wake up.


At this point, it was around 2:30 in the morning, I think. With the dread I was feeling, I couldn’t let myself fall back into the dream, because I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to that. And then I heard a loud ‘thump!’ from downstairs? the basement? outside on the deck? I wasn’t sure, and I ended up getting out of bed checking every door and every room in our house, but nothing was there.


Then, about ten minutes later, Gillian woke up for the first time. I say first, but truthfully, after I finally got her back into bed I don’t think she ever really did get back to sleep until the morning. At one point, Lissa got up with her, tried to get her to calm down, and then brought her into bed with us. This lasted about fifteen minutes, I think; I can only take a foot being stuck into my back so many times before I start to get a little testy…

But as I'm writing all this down I'm wondering about the significance of the two dreams. Specifically, why are my two worst nightmares involving my oldest son? Is there any thread, any relationship between the two dreams other than him? And for any of you reading this who are interested in the whole dream interpretation thing (and I know a couple of you are) what's the significance of the pieces I remember?

(Um, is there something really wrong with me???)