Why Have You Abandoned Me?

It is not widely known, even among Christians, that when Jesus was hanging from the rough, splintered cross, dangling between the heavens and the earth, between God and humanity, bleeding and struggling for air, his anguished cry, "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was not just an anxious plea of separation, but a way of quoting the entirety of the psalm begun by these same words. What began with profound loss that no one but Jesus himself can truly and fully know ends ...like this:

Psalm 22 NIV‬‬

[24] For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

[25] From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.

[26] The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him— may your hearts live forever! [27] All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, [28] for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. [29] All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive. [30] Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. [31] They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!

https://psalm.bible/psalm-22

From the world's most tortured pulpit, an abused, mangled, scourged lump of flesh wheezes out praise for the I AM. Every bone in his body is intact only so that every nerve can fire messages of utter pain and alarm to his brain. Joint after joint dislocated, heart striving to keep each cell with enough oxygen so that the agony and misery can continue, not able to stop its mad pace even as it too struggles, the body of Jesus must continue until it is utterly spent to the last moment, and in the middle of these moments, he praises God.

No one but Jesus could do that. Utterly worthy is the Lamb who was slain and yet lives forever more!

None of us are unacquainted with pain. We know it, some of us more intimately than others. Physical and emotional pains put tears in our eyes, tears God has promised to wipe from our eyes. This wouldn't be possible without the reckoning Jesus established there outside Jerusalem on Skull Hill. 

He lives now, today. Not even death can keep Jesus down. It helps to remember this on days when I can't get up. All of us live with a disability. Even this psalm points it out to us: "...those who cannot keep themselves alive..." Or as Morrison said, "No one gets out alive." Only Jesus lives. He is still physically alive. No kidding! If it weren't true, why would the psalm point out the difference? Jesus can and does. He laid down his life willingly and then took it back up again. The picture God gives us of baptism, and of Israel passing through the Red Sea. When you pass through the waters (of death), I will be with you, He promises. Only He will never abandon you.

Growing By Layers and Sounds

Something I'm realizing the more I get older is that seldom is anything what it seems on the surface. Things have layers to them that veil differences both stark and subtle. 

Artichokes in Layers

A favorite of mine in late spring is the artichoke harvest! In the days of 365 a year produce, we've forgotten the seasons force scarcity on humanity. Grandparents would recall to me how special oranges at Christmas were. But artichokes remain scarce all year except for late spring. May and June, I love the smell of artichokes boiling, the salt and butter melting together, and the irony that we're actually eating a thistle! Maybe it's the Scottish ancestry in me. 

The artichoke flower has many layers to it. Boiled fresh artichoke is at least a 20-minute appetizer! you start on the outside and the very smallest leaves are also the toughest and most difficult to eat by peeling off, dipping in butter, and then scraping the very tips of the petal for the meat with your teeth. As you work your way in, you find that you can't just go straight towards the center. The petals are broad and interlocked so that finding a free petal is constantly away from where you peeled the last petal. You work your way in, and dozens of petals in, you realize that they are much more tender and have more meat available. 

Eventually, you arrive at the center, where the petals are purple tipped and more akin to translucent film than actual petals. You can easily pull these off. The center contains the seeds, something that the person teaching me how to eat this delicacy called the "choke" in artichoke. 

I asked her what she meant and she said, "well if you get one of these in the back of your throat, you won't enjoy it."   

I deemed it good advice and scraped them out gently with a wonderfully handy tool called a spoon. What remained was the cup or bed that nourished the seeds. The heart is made entirely of the meat you've been nibbling at for nearly half an hour! A quick quartering with a knife or fork yields four bite sized morsels that after a quick dip in butter yield an experience not unlike rapture for me. It is the culmination of the entire affair that from store to stomach takes at least 100 minutes! Like fondue and other shared culinary experiences, it can't be rushed and must be enjoyed. 

Mixing Sound 

As I grew up, I loved listening to music. A friend introduced me to Broadway musicals and thereafter I discovered Chariots of Fire and the beauty of movie soundtracks. I guess that's a good reason why music is usually an emotional experience for me. Born in the early 70s, I was just in time for the fabulous 80s! I won't bore anyone here by telling them how or why those years were so good (mostly) for music, but when I compare it to today's music, I realize how right Jesus' parable is when it says:

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

- Luke 5:37-39 NIV

The old is better, and it was only natural that I wanted to learn how it was made. That was the reason I took advantage of my church's need for sound technicians and I got trained in live mixing performances. I learned gradually that there's much more to sound mixing than making sure the microphones are on and keeping feedback from happening! It took time, but God gifted me to mix well enough to go on the road.

You learn that a sound tech is often the least appreciated member of the performance. You've done your job well if no one notices your work. When a sound tech gets noticed, it's never good. What are some complaints I remember?

• "I can't hear the words!"
• "The guitars are too loud!" (oh, guitars! The bane of church sound techs!)
• "There's a dead spot in the corner. I can't hear anything."
• "It's so loud! Can you turn it up/down?"

You're responsible for shaping the work of 3 to 20 or more people into something tens to hundreds or thousands of people hear. No one person can take responsibility for everything, but a sound tech carries a larger burden than most anyone in the group. The only exceptions would be the vocal lead and the drummer. No sound tech can overcome a bad vocal lead or drummer. 

In a nutshell, a performance sound technician takes every voice, every instrument and using electricity, shapes, mixes, and amplifies it at the correct levels so that the audience hears a harmonious and comprehensible performance. The good ones are never noticed. The great ones make the group seem like more than it is. One of the best "compliments" I ever received as a sound tech--and believe me, we remember them!--was when I was accused of using a tape deck to augment the performance with other instruments they heard! Despite what I told them, they refused to believe the tape deck was just for the multimedia presentation (a la Larry the Cucumber's Song of the Cebu), a trio of slide projectors and a professional voiceover track. I loved it because I really knew what he was talking about, but didn't dare claim it was just good mixing and some talented musicians.

I knew intuitively that harmonies between instruments can actually multiply so that the music becomes larger. It feels thicker, more substantial and it can flow together so well you'd think it's magic. Truly, it's an art and a science. There's mathematics and theories and stuff I can't easily explain, but with a good mix, you can actually combine three instruments in a way so that they sound like five or seven. It's something I can do only with practice, and even the best need some time to put it together in a performance. Like chefs, teachers, and doctors, there are the good, the bad, and the truly great. 

Around the time I came back from that road tour, I had a very unique experience that shaped my life in ways I'm still discovering. I know not everyone believes in the gifts of the Spirit or that they can be correctly applied in and to the church, but I do. I went with my folks to hear a preacher who was known informally to function in giving prophetic words. In short, that man called me out of the crowd, without any prompting from me or anyone, and told me among other things that I was to get my heart out of secular work long term, short term is ok, but that God had plans for me long term. Part of that would be to keep pressing into God. Immediately, God gave me a visual of what that looked like.

Have you ever studied the temple of Israel? What I remember of my education in a Christian school tells me all of the following. The first and second temples both had a Holy Place that only the priests could enter. There were special, sacred items in that room. But the far end of that room was partitioned off with a curtain. Behind the curtain was the Holy of Holies that one priest could enter on a single day of the year to perform special rites. In that room, at least initially, was the Ark of the Covenant, the very place where God rested on Earth. The Ark was protected by the power of God and non-Levites who mishandled it were killed by this power. The curtain that partitioned the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was more than your mom's curtain set. Some scholars believed (I was told) the curtain was several feet thick, composed of curtain upon curtain upon curtain to prevent anyone from seeing into or mistakenly entering the Holy of Holies. It was considered all one curtain, however it was structured. It was to save lives from being blotted out because they were not protected by the blood of the sacrificial lamb.*

I am often awed when I consider what it says in the Gospels, that the moment Jesus Christ died on the cross on the hill of death overlooking the main road into Jerusalem, the curtain in the Holy of Holies was ripped in two. Can you imagine what the sound of several feet of fabric being ripped by the power of God actually sounds like? Consider too, what it means: the ultimate sacrifice of the Lamb of God blots out the sin in us and allows us to enter God's presence with His holiness and not ours.

The picture of pressing into God was of me in a mirror-like representation not unlike an 80s video like A-ha's Take On Me or Howard Jones' You Know I Love You (Don't You?). I was pushing into a liquid and yet solid curtain of God that was a powered and resistive experience. Like I could press in a millimeter at a time as much as I could possibly stand and yet pressing further took every fiber of my being. It was as if I was a priest pressing through the curtain with that sacrifice to do what God wanted and what I needed! 

Since that day, I've been working, intently, to press into Him. I still feel the power and the resistance both working in my life. I couldn't back out if I tried! It's also been like an artichoke. The first layers were tough and I didn't like it much. Yet I kept going. Today it's delicious and tender, flavorful and memorable! And yet, I can't take a shortcut to the center! I am working my way around, taking in the circumference of what God reveals to me of Him. 

Hearing God, Ezekiel compared the sound to the voice of many waters, or a waterfall, or floodwaters, depending on the version you check. Most languages are ill-equipped to make the comparison to what is practically indescribable. Like multiplying instruments and vocals in mixing performances, it gets layered and nuanced and suddenly you're hearing so much more!☧

* - I hope my parents got what they paid for at that school, because it sure wasn't a bargain in terms of the social experience. Some cursory research has borne out at least some of what I knew.

Bono, U2 On Jimmy Kimmel Live

On May 23rd, 2017, U2 were in LA after their concert at the Rose Bowl promoting their 30th Anniversary Joshua Tree Tour on Jimmy Kimmel Live. I missed it, but my DVR did not, thank God. Otherwise, I would have missed this very helpful and fruitful exchange below. I've actually gone to the trouble of transcribing it myself.

Kimmel: Bono, I've heard your story of how you travel around the country, and you spoke to many senators, many conservatives, many Republicans, in your fight against AIDS, to help you. You worked with not only President Clinton, but really with President Bush, very closely. Is President Trump someone you would like to meet with and work with?

Bono: Yeah, the ONE campaign, we work with everybody and [it] works, and on our board we've got conservatives and liberals. Our thinking is that you just need one thing to agree with somebody on, to start a conversation. And the fight against extreme poverty we thought was worth a conversation with anybody. However... [brief pause] [audience laughter] ...Everything's different now. It really is. [The] game has changed. And I have so much respect for a lot of the people who voted President Trump into office. I really understand. I understand that anger. I have some of that anger myself, coming from where we came from. I understand people being disillusioned with the political process and they think the body politic is sick and whatever. But I don't think President is--if you'll allow me to say this--I don't think he's the cure for this problem, and I think he might even make it worse. And I don't think there's any evidence in his life that he has the people who are hardest hit in mind, and that really saddens me. Because, I know he likes to see their faces in the crowd, but I don't think he wants to know who they are when they go home. And that saddens me. Again, it's with great respect for Republicans that I know and love and their party I admire. It's just [that] this is a different thing.

K: I get the sense that you guys love America more than 99 percent of the Americans that I know. [audience laughter and applause]

I don't doubt it. I love her too, enough to be distraught (at times) over her future. The most important thing for me to remember is that God has not brought her, or us, this far just to drop us now. Regardless of your politics, pray for America, please.

You could do worse than to... Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. -- Micah 6:8

I did bold for emphasis, but only to reflect their emphasis in speech.

Senses On Overload, Mister Spock

ME/CFS is neurological. It's not just all in my head, but that's where it starts. To witness, it causes serious sensitivity to all my senses. When I am in a flare, it causes my eyes to be sensitive to light to the point where any bright light produces a hangover-like ache that can trigger pain to refer down my neck and shoulders. On bad days, tinnitus symptoms go from normal to bad and make my ears very sensitive. Because I live with a small child or two at times, this makes any screams or even loud crying very painful.

But it's not just eyes and ears. My sense of smell can be very strong. If something is cooking, I will often be the one to tell anyone when they have less than a minute to save their meal from burning. That's handy, but it often isn't handy or helpful when someone doesn't listen and the house is filled with aromatic cremains of "botched meal." Smells I didn't grow up with, like cauliflower or beans being softened up in a crock pot, are extremely uncomfortable and can leave me queasy. I've had entire meals ruined by a single burnt side dish when my nose gets in the way.

Feelings Stronger

Perhaps the strongest sense I feel so very strongly isn't sight, hearing, or even smell-taste, it's touch. When I'm sensitive, little irritations like clothing that's too tight or rough, or skin that's too dry or too wet or sweaty, or even just a casual, accidental brush of someone walking by. I've had people brush by and it feels like they took all the nerves in my foot and sent every sensation in every neuron's memory all at once up my leg into into my head. WOW!

It's one thing to be dealing with the flu-like malaise and crushing nerve pain and brain fog, but to suddenly have the rush of a thousand different live-wire sensations running up your body to your brain, it's a bit like smashing your finger. Suddenly, the fatigue, the pain, and the fog don't matter a bit. The brain overload of someone merely brushing my foot pad with their leg as they walk by has me grasping my thigh and verbalizing--loudly--electrical shock and sensory overload. They didn't do anything, which sometimes is the worst part of ME/CFS.

Not Just A Sensitive Type

I don't just mean having sensitive nerves. I have had sensitive nerves ever since I was born. I had the genetic test recently to prove it, actually. I feel pain more intensely than most people. I have "Spidey-Sense" ability to tell when the oven is on from anywhere in the house not by smell but by feel. I can usually tell when a stove burner is on even when I'm in the next room. Why? Because I was burned often enough of as a kid. Burns are insanely painful, and they teach your neurons to remember what heat is. They're sensitive, but it's not the same as the ME/CFS sensitivity. I also have had tinnitus, which is why I became a sound tech. I needed some way to keep the music at church within my pain tolerances. Until I was in my late 20s, I didn't realize other people don't hurt when certain audio frequencies were hit. I figured everyone heard and felt what I heard and felt. "When did you realize...?" is a game I sometimes still play.

For this reason, I have what I'd like to call buffers. Just like you'd put foam in a pillow to fluff it up or put blinds down to block most of the sun when you're driving into the sunset or sunrise, I have buffers that take the edge off. Sometimes, I run out of them and I miss them. But here's a short list of

My ME/CFS Sensitivity Survival Gear

This is the stuff I use to put a buffer between me and a world of hurt when my nerves just can't cope.

Foam Earplugs

They're just dime store variety ear plugs but sometimes they are more valuable than gold! They are used in dozens of industries and hundreds of employers buy them by the box of 500. Strangely, what non-users don't always realize: earplugs do not usually make you deaf to all sound. They're meant to filter out a lot of it and let you hear the meaningful parts like when someone's shouting at you to get out of the way before you get squashed. Unless you're jamming two or three of the things in at once, you can usually hear people talking with normal voices for the most part.

But the high end of the sound, the treble that your parents HiFi had, the sound that the tweeters were there for and the stuff that sends most tinnitus sufferers through the roof? That's filtered. As well as some of the low range, bass, the thwup-wubba-wah-thwup-bup-owww sound that goes through walls every time the kid with the sub-woofers drives by, that's filtered to not hit your ears as much. And if you're not using them when your ears are nuts, you need to.

Earbuds

It's one thing to not hear what can drive you nuts. It's another thing entirely to need to not be where you are. How do you discretely escape while your friend is driving you to an appointment?  Having a pair of earbud style headphones are like having earplugs with the ability to cover up whatever is grating on your nerves. They're not just handy. They can be life savers, especially when you're travelling. 

Until God gives me something to match my eyelids for my ears, a pair of earbuds is perhaps the best way to disengage the world, with one exception and that's ...

Over The Ear Headphones

Ok, I can hear it now. "Steve, come on! You've already got earplugs and earbuds. Why do you need over the ear headphones?" Trust me. There are benefits and tradeoffs to each, and OEH fit a real niche.

Plugs are low tech, depend on nothing but your ability to roll them between your fingers. They don't get twisted up or wrapped around your neck if you fall asleep with them in. They function no matter what. Buds travel well, provide an aural sensation that you can focus on or simply use to cover up the worst of the noise. OEH don't travel so well, despite what that kid with the "Beats by Dre" headphones at the airport might have you believe. When you are in your "coccoon" at home, they work to isolate like no other, especially if you purchase a reliable "active noise cancelation" tech built in. It cushions all the painful noise you can't take in. Plus, they physically cover your ears in a way the other two just can't.

Add to this the fact that some have microphones and most have a volume control that is independent of the device it's connected to means you can soften things out without having to tweak every device you plug into. It's convenient. 

In the next post about Sense and Sensitivity, I'll cover the other senses and what else I use to set things right, or at least cope with symptoms until they improve.

This post is dedicated to my firstborn, Skye. Happy 20th baby! So much has gone right since I saw you arrive! I am the proudest papa on the planet!

Worry Will Not Bring Life To You, But Something Else Will

Worry is nothing but a missed opportunity to pray to the God Who obsesses about you more than you do. Prayer is meant to be a dialog with the Holy Spirit Who lives inside you. Communal prayer is not just a way to bear one another's burdens fulfilling the law of Christ, and love, but it is the only way to reliably bring the living Christ into your presence. In this way, we return to the Garden, the foretaste of eternity, and we advance what John the Baptist called the kingdom of Heaven.

Politics, Shakespeare, Decency, and Legacy

I don't usually do politics on my blog because I don't want to sacrifice the eternal for the temporary. That said, there are times when we must speak to the issues facing us. Now is one of those times.

This may not count for a whole lot, but I can certainly say that I will not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or any other year. She has character flaws that make her the Lady MacBeth of America. On the other hand, I can also safely say that I will not be voting for Donald Trump in 2016 or any other year. He has no decency. I will not "vote with my middle finger" because, very simply, a decision made out of anger is always regrettable and usually without a fair appraisal of what one gets in the trade.

Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

My dream candidate is Dr. Ben Carson, who, if the Republicans had the wisdom in 2008, would likely be ending his second term as President instead of Obama. In that year, the Republicans, Lincoln's party, would have reaffirmed their precious legacy by nominating the first black candidate for a major party. Now, if the Republicans choose Carson, they will just look like they're late to the party.

Carson reflects a lot of what I believe and he has the wisdom that few politicians have. He's not shrewd or manipulative, and he is a patriot. He's not as green as I would prefer, but he is still a breath of fresh air that we all could use. Short of running for office myself, which I've contemplated as all patriots should, Carson is the closest match.

I want Carson. I hope for Carson. I pray for Carson. Whether that's what God wants, I have yet to see.

New Direction Contemplation: To Boldly Go...

I am thinking about a  new series for my blog, writing my own thoughts on Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) , going episode by episode and finding out what I can and writing what I remember, think and feel about it. While I grew up with Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)--with the Balok puppet scaring my 4 year old mind and scarring my psyche for years, TNG was the Trek I came of age with.

It's going to be unique if I go forward with it. I mean, I am about as mellow as I've ever been in my life but I still feel passionately about things. Fewer things, but things that are at the core of me. For example, I am very strongly pro-life and I don't think that's ever going to change. I'm also very passionate about my faith, now more than ever. God is everything to me. I cannot be me without my love for Jesus the Messiah. Likewise, I'm a husband and a father and I can't be who I am without my desire to secure the future for my children. My life has been changed by all these things, my heart and my perception of everything is shaped by these life experiences, and strangely it has also been influenced by Star Trek, a show I simply followed for entertainment, a respite from the world.

I say strangely because Star Trek as a whole until 1991 was created by a humanistic atheist, Gene Roddenberry. He wrote TOS as "Wagon Train to the stars," a western where a ship replaced the wagons and planets replaced the arid western scenery. He wanted to articulate a future where humanity had survived and not wiped itself out with nuclear wars. Yet, with TNG, Roddenberry was convinced it would be his magnum opus, and he wanted to push it further to the ultimate direction, where humanity was no longer the 3 year-old child fighting over toys and chits. He wanted to paint his version of humanity having arrived at it's humanistic ideal, a utopian dream, nothing else and nothing less. Humans were still flawed, but the flaws were not born of selfish need and petty desires.

Why is that a problem for me? Well, as a parent, I know that there is something within every child that comes forward with needs and wants that will not be ignored. Needs, like food, warmth, attention, and dry diapers, and wants like toys, snacks, and activities that entertain, will drive that child to verbalize, point, crawl, grasp, but also drive them to scream, shove, and take without regard to others. We may teach them how to work with those desires and to keep their actions civil and kind, but that takes time and each child has their own response to the education, which is borne out over the course of that person's lifetime. The best turn out to be "good people." The worst are usually sitting in a prison for years or decades by the time they're done. My faith tells me that sin has corrupted mankind and the world around him. No one ever has ever perfectly adapted to those needs and lived a life free of defects. No one, that is, except Jesus Christ, Whose divinity and humanity were fully real, but completely under His control. The rest of us, we fall short, and that's the best definition of sin.

Gene wants us to, via the suspension of disbelief that is given to a show or theater production, accept that the childish needs that drive us all our lives, the ones that made Gene himself act so "worldly" as to have a 15 year affair with a mistress even while he had children with his second wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. He was a man deeply flawed in some ways but in others knowing the truth of his own standards, grappling with his sins, and refusing to believe that his hunger for Eden was a lie. His caricature of God, never reflected better than when he wrote the character of Q in the pilot of TNG, was exactly what an atheist believes God to be, unsympathetic judge and petty rogue with nothing more than a chip on his shoulder to prove mankind is a "savage child race."

I find myself at once rooting for Roddenberry's vision and at the same time sadly SMH at the things he got fabulously wrong. Writers, which were used like tissues and toilet paper in the first two years of TNG, were constantly at odds with the idea that people in the 24th century didn't have the conflicts that they do today. If people didn't have conflicts over money, sex, and power, that eliminates nearly all the dramatic fodder for the writers contemporary with TNG. For someone who had enough drama in my life at the time, the ideas of Trek and TNG in particular sounded appealing. It was a way to see life as it could be if people merely lived up to the ideals they aspired to. For someone who didn't get "people" in general, it was really the ideal escape when all the other shows out there were just more of the same old stuff.

TNG was the final articulation of Roddenberry, a man who is on his own pedestal, having been granted his own sainthood in the minds of so many fans out there. The Great Bird of the Galaxy, as Gene had accepted the nickname, came home to roost. Was he going to lay an egg? What would emerge out of TNG? Like every birth and every creative process, the beginnings were awkward, messy and troubling at times, especially the first two seasons, but Trekkies kept the series alive long enough for the show to find its feet. It's survival gave us something unique and its legacy is one that kept the Trek franchise surviving into the 21st century and perhaps beyond. It's for that reason alone I should consider writing about it.

Also, a wise writer recently told me that before 40, a writer should write for others and that after 40, they should only write for themselves. While I have my doubts about that specific an age bracket, I do know that I need to articulate some of my world, because more and more of it is being swallowed up by the new one that I don't quite recognize. So we'll see how far I get. I hope to make a serious go of it. Who knows how far I can get?