The God of the Cattle on a Thousand Hills

Our First Year of Retirement

When Carol and I had decided to retire she made a declaration, “We must not take on any ministries or make any permanent decisions for the first year, we just need to take everything as it comes, evaluate ideas and requests and then pray throughout the year as we expect some ebb and flows to emotions washing over us during this critical life transition, if an opportunity is in front of us after the year then we would make our decision together fasting and prayer.”

In a one year period of time after our retirement (October will be the end of the year for us) we will have gone to Kona, Hawaii to serve for two months on the Youth With A Mission school base, will have entertained Zhenya, his mother, his sister, Heather and Ryan for a month or so, we also will have gone through three months of Prehab physical prepping for my double knee replacement surgery, then the surgery, followed by three months of Rehab, which, with God’s blessings, will have prepared us for our two week visit to Heather and Zhenya in St. Petersburg, Russia in August, before we head down to Lausanne, Switzerland to work on a Swiss Youth With A Mission base for two months, the Swiss ministry work will put us squarely at the end of our decision making year.

The surgery has proven to be wildly successful as both knees were bone to bone, causing painful mobility over the past four years but especially while serving in Hawaii.  Working and helping YWAM bases around the world is a major blessing for us.  We would love to find bases around the world to serve and experience.  But only if I could work, without the surgery we could not have served in Switzerland with Lausanne’s severe steep hills, nor enjoyed any hikes or walks in the Alps, but now it looks like we will have no limitations for any physical work.  God has been so great.

The Swiss base has been in contact with us and are very, very excited for us to come and help, this makes us feel so special to be needed for God’s work for this wonderful spiritual school. We are praying that, like Hawaii, Switzerland will be filled with new friends and new unique ways to serve God. We have been spending our time studying up on Lausanne, the base and surrounding Switzerland, we have been reading books, viewing DVDs and reading any magazine articles on Switzerland.

It is quite remarkable to think that we won’t be as much tourists as residents in Switzerland, thinking of the massive privileges of staying in one location for months as we work and interact with the people is mind boggling, only under God’s watch care can two poor people travel with meager skills to live, experience, and help God’s people around the world. He is truly remarkable in His loving care for His servants. One of my life dreams was to one day visit Switzerland, and when Carol and I added up how we could financially retire, one of the things not on the docket was traveling, we would have enough money to live O.K. in Mission Viejo, but we would not be able to travel, which was very sad to me as I wanted to experience God’s earth before He called me home, now within just one year of retirement we will have stayed in Hawaii for two months, Russia for three weeks, and Switzerland for two months, wow!

When we get back from Switzerland in October we will sit down and evaluate what God is saying, how He is leading and where we are to fit in for our next thirty year ministry. But even now we have planned to serve a YWAM base in Spain in 2012 and double that with a 500 mile, five week walking pilgrimage across upper Spain, we will be camping and staying in youth hostels as we carry our backpacks on this very famous Christian pilgrimage route that’s a thousand years old, Walking the Camino de Santiago if we time it right we will be in Pamplona for the “Running of the Bulls,” we are already preparing for this trip, it is supposed to be easy, here’s a lead from a website “It's easy to walk across Spain on the Camino Francés. You just follow the yellow arrows, the scallop shells, and the modern road signs of the Camino de Santiago. They might be painted on the road or on a pile of rocks or mounted on a metal post, and they'll lead you 770 or so kilometers (478 miles) from the town of St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, to Santiago de Compostela near the west coast of Spain.”Cool huh?

But right now our service dedication is to our church and YWAM, other than that we will wait on the Lord.

A Senior Moment

Norman P. Murray Senior Community Center

The name is offensive, not Murray, Senior. It’s a new grand building built on acres of land with streams, water fountains, and outdoor seating areas that could accommodate a thousand people, the grounds are filled with appointed flowers, trees and shrubbery that adds to the modern Craftsman style of both acreage and edifice, but playgrounds and outdoor exercise equipment can’t stop the offensiveness. The places smells of ointment and is filled with the barely mobile convalescent.

It’s a new place I’m thinking about using for writing, the accoutrements are magnificent, even breathe-taking, but the seniors may prove to be too distracting. I apparently can’t write when I’m depressed, and the seniors that fill the crevices’ of the Murray center are depressing.

Four of them (three men and a woman, all unconnected) have been playing bridge next to me, every once in a while one of them would have to stand to stretch his calf’s, he was disheveled, unkempt and quite, his playing partners were not quite, they started fighting, one held court has an important person, one of the men became quite upset at the woman, apparently her folly was bridge stupidity which cost the man the game. The important person started yelling at him for making a big thing out of nothing, but the loser begged that winning was important and the woman caused him to lose because she didn’t have the sense (twice) to lie down.

I wanted to lay all four of them down.

To my right a heard of seniors arrived for a used clothes sale (20% off everything but jewelry and underwear) which was being held in a way to small room, I don’t know if they were pushing each other to get to the items, or just stumbling, but there was too much body friction for my taste.  I also realized that the Murray center is not a library, old people are loud, young people are too, but for very different reasons.

I had to go out and take a nap on one of the outdoor sofas by a rolling stream, it was warm and peaceful and empty, my eyesight is not that good anymore but I didn’t see any walkers or walkies, so the potential for an unhindered rest was high. My only fear is that someone would see me lying down and assume the wrong thing.

Rested,  I got up and went inside to write something, anything, this was it, I haven’t written anything for two months due the surgery (drugs and pain don’t help writing focus).

The writing is brief, stunted and rambling, but I hope it’s not offensive, but at least it’s a writing restart.

How to Comment on one of my Posts

I've got a step by step blog post on how to comment on any of my posts, people are still saying they can't leave a comment. See the blog post by going down through my posts, it's clearly titled and easy to follow, I think the date was March 5th, you just have to click on anonymous

Lost Amid the Noise (A true story of the lostness of self in the teen years)

(NOTE: This is an illustration from Lesson #2 of my book "STORIES," which is a book designed for dads to enable them in bringing their children to Christ through their own stories as they share the Gospel Story.)

I was a Chameleon.

Finding out that I was a Chameleon was not a proud moment.

A Chameleon is a lizard who often changes colors according to the environment he’s put in. I often won  Chameleon’s at Fairs in the 50’s. These Fair prizes were given to those who threw darts well at balloons, or could toss rings around bottles, or could land on a lucky numbers when the music stopped. The Chameleon’s had little gold chains around their necks with little gold leashes with a safety pen at the end, once one the prize giver would pin the Chameleon to your shirt, where you could watch him turn color to match your shirt.
I don’t ever remember one dying on me, but neither do I remember them lasting over a week at home. I loved Chameleon’s because they were so cool, and they announced to all who could see me that I was a winner. But in my wildest dreams I never imagined that I would turn into one.

I was a good, fun loving kid who had a great, fun family and a lot of cool friends. Life was full of laughter and playing, that is, until I got into Jr. High School, it was there that I began to change my colors, and often. At about the age of thirteen I’d began the natural separation from my parent’s all watching eye, it was at this age that bad ideas and bad people started having an influence on me. New people put new, risky opportunities in front of me. At thirteen some cool guys taught me to smoke (a habit I wouldn’t kick for twenty years), a year later they taught me to steal from stores, as well as drink. My grades started falling as my lying to my parents increased; I started getting in trouble at school, as well as with the police.

As a Chameleon I adopted my friend’s thoughts, ideas and habits. I had no identity of my own; I became the type of person I was with, I changing colors and thoughts with no thought to the consequences.  It wasn’t just the trouble that caused me trouble, it was being lost amid all the noise my friends where making. I no longer heard my parents voices when were separated by school and work, we entered a different and sad world my parents and I, I missed them, but this was my new life, they worked, I went to school, I walked home with new influences who afforded me way too many chances at being bad, because I wanted to fit in and be popular, I became a Chameleon who was attached by an invisible chain to the social shirts of my friends. Whoever I hung around with was who I acted most like; the need to fit in with other teens is such an overwhelming pull that not even great family home life doesn’t seem to squash. 

Now all of a sudden in just a few short months I was having trouble with teachers and others in authority,’ fights with other kids, ditching school, not doing homework, which would lead in a few years to arrests, jail, drinking, and even drugs. My new social life even had prison and death as doorways into a, alien world previously unknown, once good friends had now become sellers of drugs, and a few got sent to prison, while three were killed because of drinking, drugs.

Every father, I think, re-visits his own boyhood when he plays with his son. And by the same token, every small boy shares his father’s passions, until puberty interposes the desire to break free, this breaking free has a false face, when a young person breaks free he begins to discover things he thinks his parent never knew. When everything is new to a young person they awesome it must be new, and it seems to him that the newness of experiences is worth the loss of his parents approval, and it is through this loss that a more serious loss occurs, the lostness of self. In our teen years we all sadly become Chameleons, changing ourselves to match our social surroundings, and giving ourselves away under the intoxication of all things new and lustful. Doing homework, chores, going to movies with our parents and playing ball with them suddenly become oppressive in comparison to the freedoms that independence brings.

The terrible thing about teenage freedom is that many of its excesses bring a sort of death, a deadness of the soul, and in some cases a life time death sentence through habits too strong to break. A great emptiness filled my soul, but I couldn’t find a way out, the social pull was too strong and too powerful, being important and included was more important than being a good person, I was lost with no interior compass. I was a Chameleon with no chain to anchor me, these friends started drifting away, people I gave my life away for now became invisible, no one really cared for me, they just cared to have chaotic fun, in an instant it seemed I was alone, with a wasted past and no future, no friends, no goals, everything vanished. I felt like I was naked and thrown out on the street to make my own way in life.

When I was a teenager I didn’t know Christ, my parents didn’t know Christ, nor in fact did I ever know a single teenage person who knew Christ. Freedom and independence was our teenage religion, while chaos and bad habits became our spiritual clothes. A question I asked myself, almost too late, was how did a good kid become so troubled and lost, and why after so many years of folly did I escape, when so many of my friends didn’t.

It wasn’t until Jesus Christ came into my life that I found myself and was able to stop all the chaos and madness that being a Chameleon brought into my life. It was through God that I found my moral compass, my inner being and my direction in life. It was at this time that I was able to stop all the noise the crowd was making, and when I did I heard God, it was this great moment that I stopped being a Chameleon and became Dick Worthington, child of God. My inner voice which naturally knew good from bad, was lost at thirteen and stayed lost until I was thirty, which was hampered by the teen social noise.  

I wouldn't gain my inner voice back until I'd been married and had three children. This was my life's dividing line, before Christ I was a Chameleon hoping that the next person I became attached to would make me whole and happy, it wouldn't be until Christ that I was able to find the "me" that God had created me to be.

We are all created special, but it isn't until we become like Christ that we'll ever realize it.  

“STORIES”

·         Dad, share about your teenage years, where you ever a Chameleon, if so explain how it happened and how it affected you.

·         Youth, share if you have ever felt like a Chameleon, what are the influences out there that you face every day?

·         Discuss the following verses as they relate to God’s desire for our present and future lives as it relates to us being held captive by Chameleoness: “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back from captivity. Jeremiah 29:11-14

A Winter in Russia

A Winter in Russia

As a struggling writer, or better put, a struggling want to-be writer, I’m told to read great writers, especially descriptive ones. Right now, at this very second,  I’m sitting at the Mission Viejo Library, it’s 12:53 on Thursday, March 24, 2011, and I’ve settled back down to my writing desk having just come back from lunch at Berkley Dog restaurant. I had two Louisiana Hot Link Sausages with fried eggs on top, along with Russian mustard, as well as Spicy Maui Onion mustard's, along with a Diet Coke. I ate the two dogs in quick fashion; not quick from hunger, but because I didn’t eat the dogs buns.  By the way, not eating bread makes all meals wonderfully light and amazingly quick. I ate them with a plastic fork and knife, eating dogs with a fork and knife was an amusing curiosity to the Berkley Dog staff, eating with an audience is unnerving, it’s too much concentration, eating with onlookers diminishes flavors.

While eating I was reading Owen Matthews “Stalin’s Children,” a tale of three generations of one family living in Russian from 1920s-2005, the reason I’m reading this book is twofold, first I have a vested family interest in Russia, which is my second county by heart attachment, the second reason is because Owen Matthews is a genius at descriptive writing. The Library has become my writing office and it’s here that I’ve been writing my book “Stories,” and writing always requires breaks from writing, breaks are needed whenever a fog arises in the writers mind, there is no schedule for this fog, it just appears, walking around causes a small breeze to usher out the fog.  So wandering the isles is a breeze creator, reading quick stories from magazines, headlines form newspapers, or looking over the substantial free movie DVDs also helps to increase to lift the fog. A side benefit in these wanderings is discovering more books to read, a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon Fyodor Dostoevsky, six copies have been checked out for the last two weeks, but today after lunch I’d been informed that Fyodor made his way back, so I checked him out.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic “Crime and Punishment,” is a book I’ll start reading today even though I haven’t finished “Stalin’s Children,” Dostoevsky’s book is THE standard of descriptive writing, in it he describes Russia, especially St. Petersburg where my family lives, supposedly in a stunningly vivid detailed arrangement throughout the novel. I can’t wait.

Since I’ve been to Russia twice and listened countless times to my daughter’s descriptions of Russia in winter, I thought I’d share the section from Owen Matthew’s book I just read at lunch, which describes the Russian winter that his family experienced as well as he himself when he came back to Russian to live as an adult journalist.

“Winter in Moscow comes down like a hammer, crushing out light and color, beating the life out of the city. It closes overhead like a pair of musty wings, enveloping Moscow in a cocoon, cutting it off from the world. The city begins to look like a black and white dreamscape, disorientating and subtly disquieting. On the streets steams of huddled figures hurry through pools of dirty yellow light before disappearing into doorways or the Metro. Everything becomes monochrome, the people in black leather and black fur, the city swathed in black shadows. In the underpasses or in shops, the only places one sees people in bright light, faces are pale and strained and everything pervaded with the wet-dog smell of damp wool. The skies are dirty gray, low and oppressive.

Every winter I spent in Moscow I had a sense that the world was closing in on itself, shrinking into a state of siege behind double-glazed windows, taking shelter in the fug of state-provided steam heating, and that we were powerless in the face of this overwhelming force of nature, fragile, unable to do anything but accept our lot.

Like my father must have done, I found Russia not just another country, but a different reality. The outward trappings of the city were familiar enough-the white faces, the Western-style shop fronts, the neoclassical architecture. But this European crust only sharpened the sense of otherness. Instead of reassuring, the distortion of the familiar was even more disturbing. Moscow felt as surreal as a colonial outpost on which some distant master had tried to transplant grimly imperial architecture and Europeans fashions. Underneath all the affectations the city’s heart was wild and Asiatic.”

Could you write a description of your city through the seasons, try it; the outcome may make you more alive in the place you live. Despite Owen Matthew’s heavy description of Russia in the winter, he loved her even more because he observed her vividness’s.

Observation is a form of centering on the “Otherness’s” of life, “Otherness’s is healthy medicine.

PERSPECTIVE

What sets you off?

What trips you up?

What undoes you?

Why does what makes your day, week, month, year, and life miserable, not affect someone else?

Why doesn’t a bad thing affect everyone the same?

 Why do some people leap off of buildings, or get a divorce, while others going through the same stuff become stronger and better?

Why are some people bitter and others better?

If life offers us all the same bad porridge, why are some bears better bears, while others become bad bears?

Why is one hair in your soup too many, while one hair on your head is not enough?

Isn’t the development of our attitudes a matter of perspective?

For my leisure reading I’m reading Owen Matthews book “Stalin’s Children” which is the true account of three generations from one family who lived in Russia during the 20s all the way through 2005. Owen Matthew is the grandson whose grandfather, Boris Bibikov, a dedicated Red Army officer, was killed by Stalin’s “Purges,” which saw ten million other good Russians killed by the madness of Stalin’s paranoia, Boris’s  wife Martha, was also accused of being an opposition member against Stalin, and was put in prison for eleven years, leaving their two girls, Lyudmila, age 4, and her sister Lenina, age 12 to be ripped from her arms and taken to one of the thousands of Stalin’s orphanages. The two little girls would face years of extreme abuses, isolation from each other, never to see their father again, nor able to see their mother until many years after her freedom.

Lyudmila would contract a life threatening case of tuberculosis in one of her many orphanages, this sicknes would ravage her body for the rest of her life, causing a sever limp. Lenina would become little Lyudmila’s mother until she too was taken from her sister. Owen Matthews studied reams and reams of documents, interviewed survivors of the purges who knew his family, as well as interviewing the two girls (his mother and aunt), their husbands, and his grandmother Martha. His story is a detailed account of the horrors, deprivations, beatings, near starvation's, and conscript work these two children endured during Germany’s attacks on Russian and their lives under Stalin.

To read through Owen Matthew’s docudrama makes one feel sad and puny, putting yourself into these children’s shoes seems unfathomable while sitting in a Starbucks, drinking my Vinti Misto, listening to Coffeehouse Rock, with climate controlled temperature. Could I have been as strong as these too little girls, how would I cope if I were there parent? Reading this book is an exercise in shaking my head and my spirit.

The stunning thing about Lyudmila and Lenina is not that they survived, but that they survived so well. Owen Matthews tells of thier racked bodies, physical deformities and hardships unmanageable, but which did not alter these girls’ happy dispositions. Too little girls that faced a mountain of obstacles with a mountain of tears only to come out with such great happy outlooks, but how is this possible when they saw limps floating in the rivers they played in, dead bodies as flotsam passing them as they picked berries for the starving soliders, mass herding from orphanage to orphanage, years in a hospital with the worse medical help one could ever see, but none of it deterred them from happy adult lives. Even in their adult years after being reunited after Stalin’s death, they saw more terrible times, three days after Lenina was engaged to her handsome, Red Army husband, she learned that he had his leg amputated by saw after his car hit a road mine on the way back to his outpost. The would be married for almost forty years and when asked about her husbands amputated leg she couldn't recall which leg it was.

Lyudmila was Owen Matthews’s mother, Lenina his aunt; he offers this explanation as to how in the face of unimaginable hardships these two girls remained upbeat, positive, and happy, “…these two little girls somehow remained happy, positive and trustful throughout their life probably due their perspective, they saw so much destruction, death, mayhem and despair which others had to face, they felt blessed to be together, and to have survived while others didn’t. Life for them could have been worse, so they took the beatitude of trials as blessings for personal development, what doesn’t kill you will only make you better."

Each one of us will either be a victim or a victor from our experiences.

Everyone will go through the test of fires, no one is excused, living on a broken earth will constitute experiencing a bucket full of sorrows.  We can either make lemonade that others want to buy, or suck on soar lemons that others will want to avoid.

Whining is not dining.

I saw a man with no legs and thanked the Lord for my shoeless feet.

I thank God for my era, my location, my day, my opportunities and for all of my blessings.

Counting blessings is the perspective man needs to survive.

Counting blessings is the nectar God sucks off, it is the sweet aroma that makes its way up to His throne and which releases his love into our hearts.  This is the cause and effect of our faith.

“Spirituality”

 A few mornings ago, Carol and I were having our morning devotions reading a chapter of Romans and a chapter out of Philip Yancey’s book “I Was Just Wondering,”(Yancey has remained my favorite thinker). The morning’s chapter was entitled “Dastardly Deeds of Deflation,” in which Yancey proposed the idea that words retrogressed over time instead of progressed, he called it a relentless deflation over the centuries, an overwhelming pattern of words leaking away their meaning over time.

Take silly. Nobody wants to be called silly, it means fatuous, ridiculous. Ironically, the original Anglo-Saxon word meant one who was happy and blessed with good fortune. Similarly, the word idiot started out as a respectable derivative of a Greek word describing a person peculiar in a proper sense, meaning private and nonconformist. Eventually, the word became so peculiar (another deflated word) that no one wanted to be an idiot. Or consider sincere. Scholars believe that this word drives from sculptors’ use of the Latin phrase sin cera, meaning “without wax.” Sometimes a deft worker of marble would use wax to patch over unsightly gouges or scratches in his finished work of art; a flawless, honest work that needed no such makeup was called sincere, without wax.

Dallas Willard in “Renovation of the Heart” writes about spirituality, another leaking word in today’s world, Christians are always evaluating their spirituality, as well as other peoples, “Am I very spiritual, is he very spiritual, I’m lacking spiritual focus, or, his sermon lacked spiritual depth.” But is Spiritual a Christian word, and what exactly does it mean, or more importantly what did it mean at its conception, and has it been deflated over time?

Traditionally, many religions have regarded spirituality as an integral aspect of religious experience. Many do still equate spirituality with religion, but declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world has given rise to a broader view of spirituality. There has also been a growth in the scope of use of the term "spiritual."

Did you notice the deflation? “…but declining membership of organized religions and the growth of secularism in the western world has given rise to a broader (deflated) view of spirituality.

Last week I’d walked to the Mission Viejo Library (about a mile from the house) to write, when lunch time arrived I walked across the street to a Tie/Chinese restaurant where I could take my time reading James Bradley’s “The Imperial Cruise,” a book on the dastardly deeds of Teddy Roosevelt and his terrible legacy of white Anglo-Saxon racism around the world, which we are still feeling the effects from, if you like history this book will stun your preconceptions of our country.

The restaurant had three wooden tables outside. The day was startling beautiful, full of warmth, smells and sights, the surrounding green hills, Saddleback Mountain, a river bed, and the tree lined streets were punctuated by a story book breeze, sitting outside was my choice except for two loud women sitting at one of the end tables. I went inside and it was worse, louder and more crowded, I chose the other end table hoping that the breeze would blow the women’s words away from me, reading takes concentration, and voices penetrate reading decorum, this is of course why library’s have a silence policy.

I ordered Satay Chicken with no rice and a glass of water, simplicity is strengthening. The breeze and the women were not accommodating, one was young, the other her mother’s age, the mother type had her back to me but not her voice, and she was loud and opinionated. She was a prototypical “trying to hard older women” who can be seen in hippy hangouts across America, her hair was died coffee barista red, with steaks of black, it was cut short like a man’s, I sensed hostility, on the back of her neck was a Chinese script tattoo, she had a man’s thin tank top with no bra.

Her personage was as unavoidable as her pontification.

Reading became impossible.

A spectacle was center stage.

The coffee barista was postulating about her spirituality, I strained for any Christian semblance, but Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and some form of Taoism was her spirituality. The women started disagreeing over Yoga positions as well as they’re benefits to one’s soul, the younger was as strong, and as opinionated as the older, and sincerity shrouded their table like a satin table cloth. Then another woman, whom the younger one knew, came over to their table, she also was a spiritual woman, she taught Buddhism and Yoga someplace in the city, the three got into it, the red/black hair lady got up and started doing Yoga positions in the parking lot, the Yoga teacher countered, voices arose to articulate they’re expertise’s, the tattooed one was the most ardent, all three got up in order to help their articulations. Suddenly the three High Priestesses of spirituality had developed a parking-lot church.

I looked down at my Satay only to realize it had vanished, I suspected observant befuddlement as the cause, being lost in thought can make people drive right by their off ramp without knowing they have been driving for some time.  

The etymology of Spiritual: “…Original usage in English mainly from passages in Vulgate, where the Latin word translates Gk. pneuma and Heb. ruah. Distinction between "soul" and "spirit" (as "seat of emotions") became current in Christian terminology.”

The dastardly deeds of deflation has now made spirituality every man’s truth, political correctness is the new police, Christians don’t dare enter into parking-lot debates, every man’s spiritual thoughts are acceptable, all that is, except the Christians. Mention Christ in public and you won’t gather a church; you’ll gather a lynching mob. Everything is acceptable except the original.  

I walked back to the library full from lunch but empty, watching people deflate the truth of spirituality is demoralizing. There are now billions of spiritual experts covering every form of thought, their observers shake their heads, and head home with a resolve to just mow their lawn, mind their own business and  leave spiritual life to the fringe people with red and black hair, tattoos, as well those Christians who look like me.