The Ancient and You.

It is mid April now, and where are we? We are slowly progressing in our being moved in. I have never felt moved in before...I am not actually sure if I am supposed to. It does make me irritable to not be moved in though, just ask Emily.

If any body where curious as to how I am doing, I would tell them, I am doing very well. That is to say, I am overwhelming blessed, and yet discontent. My wife and children warm my heart to no end, and I know I am not deserving of this. Yet as always, I long so much for more of G-d. We are more spiritually alone here than ever before, at least that is how I feel. I certainly do not despair for a lack of G-d, in fact, I feel necessarily close to Him. It is just that I want to be caught up in His movement and I just don't feel that, or see that very much.

Lord, let me walk in your shame and glory. Let me burn with your humility and let me be a servant to all.

A bit of moody.

Have I mentioned before that I probably have a "seasonal mood structure"? I think it MIGHT run in the family...but there it is... with a cyclical precision that I have yet to chart, I get...moody.

The last couple of days have been such. I think I might be justified in feeling this way a little bit. It has been 6 months since I lived with my family, and 2.5 to go. I woke up alone last night and stared at my uniforms in my closet, at the rank insignia on my sleeves, wondering what I was doing so far away from my beloved family. It's obvious on a logical (yet bizarrely illogical) level what I am doing, taking care of my family the best way I know how. This time is almost over, but that doesn't change the mood.

I just plain miss my family. I get to see Emily for nice four day weekend this weekend. But even this strikes me as somewhat insane...how much effort (baby sitters, plane tickets, hotels, waivers for staying out of my dorm etc etc) it takes just to see my own wife for a couple of days. It can just be very...strange. I sometimes start to get sick to my stomach like I'm stuck in a terrible dream.

And the happy ending. I'm not "in the depths of despair" for certain, that would be just plain pagan of me...

For crying out loud, try your best not to take love and comfort for granted.

Thrill us.

Michael Jackson died.

CNN and FOX news have been blasting this to the exclusion of all other news. As if nothing else in the world was happening, or everything that is usually reported was just filling time until something important happened...like the death of the King of Pop. Never mine the revolution in Iran, or the pending war with youngest-brat-child North Korea.

At first I was disgusted at the amount of emotion Michael Jackson death was causing people who didn't even know him. But then I remembered that I was saddened (granted, not to tears) by the death of Paul Newman. I tried to justify it, "Paul Newman stood for something, he was a Man." But that's an equal argument to any that could be offered up for reasons why the death of Mr. Jackson should cause such a commotion.

So are we that sad that somebody died? Not really, you see, Michael Jackson died, but so did 25,000 (source: UN World Food Programme) people from hunger alone. That happens everyday, and we don't feel sad everyday. So it can't be we are sad that somebody died, maybe we just are sad that we don't have the comfort of knowing that, if we wanted, we can wonder what exactly Michael Jackson is doing...right now!

I think it's actually part of the discovery that something is not right. Death of loved ones is crushing, but we all know it's coming. Death of stars and world leaders is unerving, everyone dies...and we don't like that. And we are right not to like it...nobody is supposed to die. That's not the way it was supposed to happen. But we like comfort, and it's comforting to have celebrities, perhaps, it is also comforting to get upset when they die.

Michael Jackson died.
So did 25,000 mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters.

Oh yeh, and Farrah Fawcett did too.