What sword would you die on?

"In difficult ground, press on; On hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge; In death ground, fight."  - Sun Tzu


"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  - Jesus (Matthew 6:21)


Where is your heart?  What sword are you willing to die on?


Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is oft quoted by generals, CEO's, athletic coaches, computer obsessed hermits, and other wannabes of all stripes.  You have certainly had bosses who embodied the mind of Sun Tzu, and you bear the scars to prove it.


Sun Tzu has much to say about victory. As a morally inadequate leader, he used his most astute observations about the human condition to make decisions about how to manipulate his own men to win in battle, with little or no regard for their lives.  Hence the above - inscribed for the successful to consider, or for the morally inadequate, like Sun Tzu, to use to their own advantage.


Know that there is TRUTH in what Sun Tzu said.  Each of the above is what will occur, if you consider examples from your own life, when you are cornered.  


In difficult ground, the instinct is to press on.  This is why parents send their adult children mercifully out into the world to make their own way, even though what they would prefer is to keep them home near the fire.


On hemmed in ground, your native savvy for survival will chemically elevate your brain to its highest acuity, its sharpest edge.  When there's only one way out, you get smarter, really quick.  You will find it easy here to recall examples from your own experience.


Only in death ground will you fight to the death, and should.  In death ground, your "fight" instinct will by your very nature kick in unless your will to live has already been impaired by other conditions, such as depression or learned hopelessness.  Fight or die.


Sun Tzu knew these things, and deliberately put his soldiers on Death Ground when he knew he needed them to fight with all they had.  Still, you can use his observations for what they are worth, which is a lot.


These conditions are actually simulated in everyday life all the time.  The question is, what do you consider to be difficult ground, hemmed in ground?  


What do you consider to be death ground?


Where is your treasure?  What is worth dying for to you, even figuratively speaking?


There was a terrific special about Sun Tzu on the History Channel this week, equally as informative as Thursday's edition of the X-Factor, which I will address later.  To illustrate the Death Ground Theory of Sun Tzu, the commentator referenced the Battle of Normandy.


Here goes Amateur History Lesson 1A, straight from the only slightly informed brain of this hippie historian. Please be forgiving as you read, considering that my primary concern in high school was the history of social movements and related policies, not the classic Presidential and military history to which high school kids are normally treated.


So, carrying on, it appears that in 1944 the best option for landing on enemy territory dictated a beach attack, which would leave American troops on Hemmed In Ground. Eisenhower scrupulously concealed his plan with subterfuge. He diverted Hitler's attention to a fake fleet of blow-up rubber tanks, planes, jeeps - the works - all of which he kept elsewhere, to trick Hitler into thinking the attack would occur not on the beach at Normandy, but at Calais.  


Seriously.


Eisenhower's forces deflated and moved the decoys repeatedly in the dark of night to simulate what would occur with real inventory, going so far as to use rollers to simulate the tracks that would have been made in the dirt as they moved.


On D-Day, faced with the tack-tack-tack of bullets pelting the shells of the very tanks that temporarily shielded their faces, American troops confronted the reality that they would soon step out onto occupied soil, sitting ducks, even in spite of the decoy maneuvers.  The front line was sure to die.


No retreat was possible.  Death Ground.

Line after line of men was cut down. Lifeless or dying bodies - bunkmates and brothers - stacked up in the doorway, steaming, as the men at the back awaited their fate, or their destiny.  Horror crouched mere inches from their faces, the hot stink of blood thick in their nostrils.  


Their response?  To storm out with guns blazing, penetrating deep into Hedgerow Country.  From Death Ground to Hemmed-In Ground: their destiny.


In the Hedgerow Country, where centuries of dense growth blocked even the fiercest tank penetration, only hand to hand, gut to gut combat was possible: knives, guns, garottes, bare fingers.  Nazi soldiers lay in wait in the darkest corners of the maze.  Each boy's consciousness had to achieve its highest level of acuity to survive, had to remain on highest alert, shot with adrenalin.


Eisenhower, with his men blocked as they were by the now accursed hedges, bombarded the nearby Caen to lure the Nazi forces out of the labyrinth and into the light.  Subterfuge.  Victory.  Unimaginable loss, and incomparable courage.


It causes me to wish I'd paid attention to the World War II unit more closely.  American balls out courage is demonstrated there in remarkable ways.


As we watch ourselves, and our friends and neighbors, it's clear, sometimes painfully so, where their - where our - treasure lies.  In daily life, rarely do we find ourselves lying in wait behind a pile of dying soldiers, committing our souls to a cause so large our brains cannot grasp it in the moment.  Our fight or die instinct presents itself in more mundane ways most of the time.


We have instincts waiting for a cause, and we choose our causes every day.  This is how our small worlds are shaped.

Example: on the X-Factor (Fox Network) this past Thursday, little Rachel Crowe, just thirteen, was eliminated from the field of musical competition only five short steps from victory.  She had sung her heart out, week after week, throwing it all down, fight or die, against people more than twice her age, for her treasure.  


Music. Performance.  To be herself.  "If I were a boy."  Treasure.


When the news was announced that this would be her last night on the stage before millions, only a moment of shock flashed over her face.  In an instant, she melted to her knees, then to the floor.  Then, the heaving gasping sobs came, then a bawling noise like a child whose mother has just died.


Then, standing, she faced her mother.  No one had died.  Yet she confronted her:  "Mommy, you promised me.  You promised I would win."  Still fighting, mindless of the national crowd, fighting to the death for her treasure.


But then a shift came.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw judge Nicole Scherzinger, so abject herself that she couldn't speak.  Scherzinger had been the one who could have saved her to sing another day, but instead had thrown her to her fate, on the other side of the hedgerow from her treasure.



But what did Rachel do next?  Did she attack, garotte, stab the one who threw her dream on the ash heap?  

Not at all. Instead, she turned to her greater treasure: the compassion that resides in her child soul, and then to its twin in her judge, her friend.  She momentarily set aside her loss, not so large and permanent after all, and turned to what really mattered - to comfort her grieving friend, to thank an audience and a fan base who had loyally supported her - a true princess, if you remember the tale.


It was not so different with fifteen-year-old Drew Ryniewicz the week before, who upon her elimination simply said through her grief-stricken sobs, "You need to know that Jesus loves you.  That's what I really came to say."  Treasure.


Where is your treasure today?  The answer to that question daily shapes the outcomes of your life.  The answer shapes your soul, and its destiny.


Make a conscious choice about what your treasure is today.  Know that, in the end, you will likely be called to die for it, either literally or figuratively.  Are you ready?  Are you willing?


What sword do you want to die on?  How will you instruct others, with the manner in which you choose to lay your life down?


Comment below, and tell us.

Bible time: Why worry now?

If I wanted to make some money and could get somebody to bet with me, I would bet that you have worried about something in the last twenty four hours.

More likely the last twenty four minutes.

And I would win.

Not I, you say.  I am a positive upbeat soul, a veritable Alfred E. Neuman.  What, me worry?

Hold on, now.  Ask your mother if you worry.  Or your wife, or husband, or kids, or boss, or co-workers.  At least one of them would tell you different, you worry wart.  I guarantee it.

Worry by our very nature waits, crouched in our bowels, a primeval survival mechanism born back when the earth was still steamy and moist with its own birth, and unimaginable violence lurked in its deepest, blackest places.  Worry lives in us so that we can be ready in case a tyrannosaurus rex (did man co-exist with those?) or a serial killer jumps out, or a flood fills the cave we live in.

The worst that could happen, back when the world was new, was just a whole lot more LIKELY to happen than it is today, here in this age of antibiotics and education and law enforcement and subsidized housing.

Still, there is plenty to worry about.

Indeed, awful things still do happen.  We know what they are.

Just as often, mercy intervenes, when it is not yet our time.  I am reminded of a friend who lived in Half Moon Bay with his wife and toddler, back in the '70's.  It was a crystal blue day with a stiff chill, characteristic of Peninsula towns, and the extended family was gathered with neighbors out front, roasting corn and chicken on the grill, trading stories and sipping spiked punch, while the babies waddled and dug in the dirt and played with the kittens. John Barleycorn Must Die and Cream and Paul Butterfield blared out through the front door from the stacked turntable inside.

How quickly it happened, there while they celebrated.  A moment turned away, and my friend's toddler was face down in the shallow pond, dark stains of green water already soaking up the sides of his red overalls - still as death.

His mother turned, saw, screamed, dropped her cup, panic cutting her from throat to gut in a single stroke.  She was halfway there in less than a second.

But even quicker, the neighbor's goose, on the scene before the mother ever reached her baby's side, had snatched the baby up by the straps of his overalls and flipped him onto his side, out into the dirt.

Seeing the child who had grown up as his own, he had crossed the yard in two gallops, wings outstretched like a squawking barnyard angel.  The baby's plump cheeks lay flat, pallid.  Then, one cough, one gag, a rush of green.  An ambulance ride with a new teddy, gifted by the EMT.  Safe.

Sadly, that goose, soon to become famous in the front page story that followed in the local paper, was declared in violation of zoning ordinances within the week and seized, possibly to become some government official's pet or Christmas dinner.  One never knows.  But even in spite of this, he had fulfilled his destiny, had made a difference in his brief goosey life.

Yes, things we don't like will happen. But so much GOOD, so much warm, so much organized and safe and beautiful will happen right alongside the bad things to soften the blow.  We have so much to be thankful for.

Most important, we must ask ourselves the question:  Do I BELIEVE?  Do I believe in a higher power who organizes my life, who has mercy on me, who sends barnyard angels to save me?  A higher power who loves me?

I do.

I believe that Jesus is the living Son of God, on this Sunday.  That God came to earth in human form to show us what love looks like, that He allowed us to kill Him on purpose so that He could become a Soul that would be our Holy Spirit.

He breathed His Spirit into John's mouth before He left this earth.  He breathes it into us whenever we ask Him to.

I believe that He is our daily Counselor who lives within us and moves us with His own hands to do His best in this world.  That He rescues us every second, and that if it appears He will not rescue us, He has so much better planned for us that we can't even see yet.  That it might even be Heaven He has for us, right now, today.

Believing this requires trust.  He will teach you to trust, if you ask.  But you have to ASK.

Worry is good when it moves you to prayer - to ASK.  Worry is bad when it simply moves you to greater worry.

Bible time:

Genesis 10:13 -15.  I have placed my rainbow in the clouds.  It is the sign of my permanent promise to you and to all the earth.  When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with everything that lives. This was written back when the earth was still fresh and wet with its own birth, and really wet from a super big flood that required Noah to trust.

Psalm 37:1-2.  Don't worry about the wicked.  Don't envy those who do wrong. For like grass, they soon fade away.  Like springtime flowers, they soon wither.  Given by God to David, a man after His own heart.

Matthew 6:28-30.  Why worry about your clothes?  Look at the lilies and how they grow.  They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.  And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?  Straight from the mouth of Jesus, the right hand of the Three in One.

I believe, and have seen with my own eyes, that there are barnyard angels lined up to get me to the perfect destination He has planned for me. He moves them with His own hands to save my bacon every day.

I believe I must trust Him and do as he expects - must listen to His small voice instead of the clamor of my own worry - especially in case it's my job to be someone's barnyard angel today.

I am a worry wart, I confess it.  I must lay it down and pray through it every day of my life. There is SO much to worry about.

But there is ever so much more to be thankful for.  What a life!  What a sky!  What a beautiful warm fire.  My family - there are no words.  I love my job so very much.  Thank you, Jesus.  Thank you.

I love you.  He loves you more.  Don't worry.  Be happy.

Une semaine de vacances

Tomorrow, I go back to class, after a week's vacation.

Despite the title, and the French movie trailer below, you will find no French in this post - at least not any good French.  This is simply because I don't speak any, although I wish I did.

I have under my belt three quarters of French I took at Berkeley, 1973-74, seated close beside my then-budding antagonist, who stars in the novel blogged below; that's it.  Didn't use it, lost it.  C'est dommage.

In spite of this fact, toward the end of this past week's vacation from teaching, I began dreaming in a kind-of French (I think it's French) that I don't understand.  Is it real French?  Peut etre!  I hope so.  Still, I don't understand it.

I think I may know why this is happening.

In 1980 or so, at the end of a perfect summer, I saw a French film with my first husband, "Une Semaine de Vacances."  That's the film's name, not my first husband's - curse of an English teacher, to notice those things.

He was a musician, a trumpet player, and had the most alarmingly deep green eyes flecked with hazel and blue any living woman has ever seen.  We were happy, my husband and I, in those brief days.  We were in LA for a while so he could play his horn, and we both taught school:  I junior high English and photography; and he elementary music, traveling from place to place like the Pied Piper, packing clarinets and saxophones and flutes and trombones as he went.

The sadness of it, that we didn't know how happy we were back then.

Anyway, we were coming on to the end of one of those long lazy summers that teachers enjoy when they still don't have the encumbrances of house payments or credit debt or bad health.  No summer school to worry about, just the endless summer and each other, year after year after year.

That summer we had spent a lot of time at the beach, and at the zoo taking photographs, and at Brand Library on the glorious front lawn thumbing through art books.  Brand Library is the legacy of Leslie C. Brand, built in his sprawling estate El Miradero, and features the most magnificent collection of arts materials, including monographs, I have seen anywhere, among other treasures.  A virtual paradise for a musician and his artist bride.

That summer in particular was a hard one to let go of, to go underground again for awhile, out of the sunshine, back to the here and now.  Maybe somewhere inside I knew what we had right then wouldn't last forever, that it wouldn't weather the dry steady wind of daily family living.

Somewhere around the last day of that summer, we wandered into a little French film at the multiplex cinema in the Encino Galleria.  There were no more than 50 chairs in the hall, and we were two of maybe ten people in the whole place, huddled together with our lattes and butter cookies, to go with the subtitles.  "Une Semaine de Vacances."

In the musty dank of the theater, Nathalie Baye was in the car with her husband, about to be dropped off at the junior high where she taught French (her equivalent of English, comme moi).  Real film, on the reel.  You could hear it.  Clickety-click.

With her through her car window, we could feel the familiar cacophany only made possible by the very young, bristling with their junior high-ness, bumping and slapping up against one another, creating heat ripples of naive life-blooded energy in the air as they passed.  Their gutteral Frenchisms gave them a certain extra-ness, sharpening their edge somehow, making them - more.

The warm pressure of his arm bolstered me, deep in our huddle against the AC.

Together with her, we made a break for it, jumped out of the car and ran for our lives.  Free!  A week's vacation - voila.  Almost to be equalled later by Albert Brooks quitting his job in "Lost in America," but not quite, since it was teachers.

God bless her husband.  He covered for her.

That ninety minutes or so, we hid in the French countryside with our heroine, wondering what it would be like to run off and change our names and travel the continent and never be seen or heard from again.  There was a bliss in this wondering that I can't quite conjure now in the practicality of my advancing age, even embracing the gentle rocking of welcome life changes I'll blog about sometime in the future.

In the end, she remembered who she was, our heroine.  Like resting on the beach after surfing, she was ready for the board again, her feet knowing exactly where to go, how to shift her weight to stay abreast for a long ride.  A natural.  She loved the white-hot brilliance of her students, just as I do mine.  Ils sont epatants, she said.  Oui.  Je suis d'accord.

So after this week, une semaine de vacances, I'm ready to roll, in love again, at least till Christmas.  Being a solitary soul for the time being, they are my only love, only second to my own grown babies and my dogs.  They have been the iron strand that has tied my life together through everything, always different, but always somehow the same.

Epatant.

The Astro-tude example: "Network" revisited

The entire nation was treated to a display of callow youthfulness last week when 15-year-old Astro (I thought he was twelve until somebody set me straight) threw a classic temper tantrum on the TV music contest "The X-Factor," after viewers placed him in the bottom two.

Media have been awash with play-by-plays of the meltdown, as if what he had done were only a few cuts below a game-losing play in the Super Bowl, or a national disaster.

He's fifteen, for Pete's sake.  Cut the kid some slack.  Or maybe you think we should take him out back and beat the crap out of him.  Obviously I'm kidding.  Are you?

We have gotten way too entitled in what we believe we have a right to see on television.  Not too long ago, there WAS no reality TV - only the 1976 movie "Network," starring Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway.  Consider "Network" to be something like Orwell's "1984," only for the future course of television instead of for the whole world.

When my compatriots and I first saw "Network" in our callow youth, some 35 years ago, we were dead certain it could never happen here.  The sheer outrageousness of it all - only in the movies could such a thing happen.

Most of my main characters, if you have been reading my novel "Corners" (blogged below), would have felt the same way.  On the other hand, the "alternative" ones would have expected it, even embraced it and participated in it, if given the chance.  But I digress.

In "Network," one of the major affiliates decides to program a new series starring a fading newscaster (Finch) who is beginning to lose his mind, making him out to be some kind of soothsayer.  He makes predictions on his own national show and systematically melts down week by week, in front of the viewing audience, as his mind reaches the breaking point.

In the fictitious world of the movie, this makes for awesome ratings.  He whips the nation into a shared frenzy with his ranting, inspiring millions to hang out their front windows and scream, "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!" (which is a boomer mantra to this day, by the way).  To the Network, this simply means everybody's watching!  Good sign, says the Network.

In the movie, advertising commitments go through the roof.  Viewership is at an all time high.  Then, disaster strikes - Finch's diatribes go too far even for his smarm-drunk audience, and ratings drop precipitously.  The Network has to "take him out" by hiring revolutionaries to assassinate him on camera (newsmakers!), thereby restoring a winning lineup.  

In 1976, "Network" was considered a cautionary tale.  Not so today.  Today, minus the revolutionary assassins, it's reality.  Reality television, that is.

Consider Russell Armstrong, husband to Taylor Armstrong, of the "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."  In the wake of nationally televised accusations of spousal abuse combined with financial strife, he killed himself.  Killed himself - that's right.  Even after his death, the episodes depicting the real-life events that precipitated his demise, already in the can as the tragedy occurred, are being aired weekly as we speak.

Also consider "Bad Girls' Club," a literal blow-by-blow aired weekly on the Oxygen channel, which is supposed to be the women's network.

On "Bad Girl's Club," young ladies with obvious mental illnesses and/or addictions - or whom I am guessing have been raised  in extreme poverty, or with incest, abuse, or neglect - live out their dysfunctions before us, trapped together in a network-funded house.  They beat the hell out of one another; engage in alcoholic binges, orgies, and other gratuitous sex; mortally insult one another; steal each others' boyfriends - and the beat goes on, so to speak.  In other words, the suffering and shame which have been visited upon each of their hearts and souls through their saddest life experiences is exploited for our viewing pleasure.  Heinous.

What poor Astro went through in front of us was at least a relatively run-of-the-mill, albeit less than perfect, childish episode.  Being a child, he did not deserve to be exposed in his spoiled and callow glory in front of us all.  He deserved simply to be severely scolded by his beloved mother and sent to bed early, grounded with no cell phone or computer for a week.

So how is it he came to be so exposed?

In a massive brain fart of bad judgment, the Network recently amended its policy to allow children under the age of sixteen to strut the reality stage, right alongside 21 and 30 and 40 and even 60 year-olds, on the field of competition.

Why?  Because they're just so doggone FASCINATING and exotic, these kids, to be that GOOD and that young at the same time.

Sick.  This is just plain unvarnished bad policy, not to mention bad for the very kids the Network purports to help.

To know that this is deliberately exploitative, all you have to do is watch the Network announce the surviving X-Factor contestants each week, "in no particular order."

They hold the results of the very youngest contestants - 13 and 14 and 15 years old - until the bitter end.  As each one is grandly announced, their result is held dangling and twisting over a chasm of silence as the audience waits and quivers in shared terror with them.  Then, the names are read, one at a time.

Watch as 13-year-old Rachel collapses in breathless sobs on Simon Cowell's breast, barely able to stand.  The heartless Simon, moved to tenderness, strokes her back and holds her till she gathers herself enough to walk off stage.

Watch as 15-year-old Drew chokes on her own tears, clutching her shirt as she staggers off in a combination of shock and relief, not yet sure of her joy in it all, moaning.

You can't tell me that isn't staged to deliberately squeeze and wring the softness of their youthful hearts, bruising them just enough to entertain us.

Astro stumbled, God bless him.  He needs an afternoon reading the book of James, not to face his own shame on national television.

We and the FCC and LA Reid and Simon Cowell, and every other grownup within reach, deserve a horsewhipping for allowing a Network to do him that way, for allowing him to stand there in the first place.

But not Astro.  Astro simply deserves the gift of time with his mom, another couple of years to grow.   Most important, he deserves to be GUARANTEED, by the very industry that tried to eat him alive, that he will have a place among their brightest stars one day - when he's old enough.  And when that happens, we need to be standing there, forgiving him.

On being a free radical: thoughts from a Teen Mania mom

I am a former Teen Mania mom.  I shall preface my further thoughts on that with a few musings.

First, I missed you all last week.  I failed to blog because I was busy working on losing my home, a very 21st century boomer thing to be working on, I'm afraid.  This, too, will be a blessing.

As a result of and in spite of losing my home, I'm free today, thank you Jesus.  I will now not have the encumbrances of crushing financial obligation, heavy repairs, yard maintenance, refurbishment, or other such earthly chains on me when I retire in two years.  I can very simply go back to my roots in the San Francisco Bay Area, if I time my lease right.

That's the free part.  And yes, I'm still a radical in many ways, too, albeit lost temporarily in the Great Central Valley of California.  Like free radicals which are found in the wild, my nature is to drive processes, regulate them, or flip them on their ear till they're free-wheeling in black space.  Sometimes, I get trapped in a box.

I'm a mom.  I'm a born again Christian.  I'm a hippie.  I'm a pro-lifer.  I have run for office.  I'm a Democrat, sometimes.  I support PFLAG.  Nuff said.

If you have any further questions, link up with my main character, who lives in my novel Corners, blogged in full below, from bottom to top.

Back to business.  As a former Teen Mania mom, I was dismayed when I found I had missed last week's MSNBC special, "Mind Over Mania," especially now that it has been pulled down from You Tube.  My daughter saw it, though, and she had a few things to say about it.  From what I have heard, the special reviles Teen Mania without mercy.  I will have to see it one day to decide for myself what it does.

My daughter was class of 2006 from Teen Mania's Honor Academy, the focus of the MSNBC documentary.  My son was almost, within two weeks, class of 2007.  They had very different experiences, my daughter and son.  In the end, I believe both benefited from it greatly, in radically different ways.  My son may tell you different, but the best part of him has Mania written all over it.

The Honor Academy (HA) is the youth-driven engine behind the traveling teen revival, "Acquire the Fire," and the worldwide missions program "Global Expeditions."  Run virtually exclusively by kids between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four (there are usually no more than two people older than 24 on the 400-student campus at any given time, and those two are nearly impossible to reach), the isolated HA campus possesses an aura, even an undergirding value system, of radical youth, much like the communes of the '70's that my cohorts and I frequented in our younger days.  And these kids are radical, know it - souled out believers in Jesus Christ, and they are as youthfully human as the day is long.

We learned of the HA at a packed Acquire the Fire (ATF) event at Sacramento's Arco Arena, on one of those junkets my church used to roll out to in the '90's and early 2000's, my Sequoia stuffed to the gills with youth of every stripe.  ATF is designed, staged, recruited and put on the road by teams of youth, your kids and mine, who have signed on for a one-year stint or more at the HA.  My daughter was ATF Call Center when she was there, my son Global Expeditions (GE) Call Center.  HA interns do everything from recruiting and deploying missionaries and youth pastors, to booking speakers and musicians, to rolling out buses filled with intern cast and crew.  They stage hand it, act it, clean it up, fundraise it, train it, acquire passports and visas for it, you name it.


They have a Teen Mania Board and donor list studded with the greats in modern Christian leadership to back them up every step of the way, too.  Endorsements come from the likes of Jack Hayford (Former President of the International Church of the Four Square Gospel and now President of The Kings University), Josh McDowell, TD Jakes, Randy Phillips (Promise Keepers, President), Mike Bickle (Director, International House of Prayer), Joyce Meyers, George Barna.  And the list goes on.

The Honor Academy campus is located in pretty doggone deep East Texas, about forty minutes east of Tyler between Van and Lindale, out in the land of unannounced hot August T-storms.  It is the former home of legendary worship musician Keith Green, a man known to many as the daddy of modern worship.  Green was killed there on his own airstrip in a small plane crash, still young and at the peak of his career.  The Vineyard Church which he helped inspire, now a denomination found in places across the country, remains a Sunday morning destination for HA interns to this day.

Ron Luce, a born-again believer who grew up raised by Jesus with no earthly father figure, acquired Green's property and converted it into the HA, which features brick buildings constructed to withstand the rural East Texas winters, and a miraculous monster pool featuring a towering water slide and recreation area.  The "Back Forty" is acreage on the property using for trainings and exercise, as well as for meditation.  The Back Forty is where ESOAL (Emotionally Stretching Opportunity of a Lifetime), the activity now made infamous by the MSNBC special, takes place each year.

ESOAL is something like boot camp - REAL boot camp, without the bullets. There is mud. There are blisters.  There are teams charged with surviving together and pulling buses out of the mud with nothing but boards and ropes and each other.  In ESOAL, they become prepared to be missionaries in the field, to find their way home with no direction, to literally carry their crosses beside one another, to be humble.  In ESOAL, they know exactly who has their back and exactly who holds them accountable.  It is only one of the many stretching experiences interns sign on for when they enroll.  My daughter made it most of the way through ESOAL, but rang out at the disgusting food opportunity.  My son had to opt out of the whole thing for health reasons, and his reasons were honored.

During my daughter's ESOAL experience, Hurricane Rita hooked northeast right into their event and dumped buckets of rain, then fizzled.  I remember watching the white whorl on the Weather Channel and praying.  They marched on.

This is one of the times when the grownups show up, and there they stay for the duration.

At the HA, you commit to a code of honor.  You promise purity while you are there.  No smoking.  No drinking or drugs.  No inappropriate fraternizing with the opposite sex.  No lying, cheating, stealing.  No internet.  If you fall, you are honor bound to confess first to God and then to the Honor Council - the Council is kids, true - who will make a recommendation on your behalf about what is best for you.  These recommendations can be harsh, no question.

I have grieved over many of the recommendations - precious young men and women sent home for kissing.  A downtrodden street child who had paid his own way and now glowed from head to toe with the Holy Spirit, sent home for sneaking a cigarette.  A boy almost at the end of his year, sent home for reading his lessons from the forbidden internet instead of from the book.  Still, all of these young people had ridden the edge before.  Many more were forgiven and given study activities or work detail to help reset their habits.

During my son's year, he struck out on a driving trip to Arkansas with a fellow intern, keeping a promise to visit a childhood friend who also had wanted to attend the HA.  The only problem was, there was a tornado watch in effect.  Somewhere around Texarkana, his car spun out along with about three other cars, fishtailing and whipping around 180 degrees, then sliding sideways and slamming into a road sign against the passenger door.  As he told it to me from his cell phone at the roadside, his door had simply popped open and he was standing on the road, absolutely safe, he knew not how, beside his car when it was over.  And so was his friend Oscar, somehow.  Saved by grace?  I believe so, as does he.


My daughter believes she was similarly blessed while out there.  A big rig apparently passed through their car from its right to its left as they rode in the left lane on Highway 20 back from Dallas in the rain, three little girls crammed in the back seat reading their Bibles.  They were sure they would die.  They are convinced of what they saw instead, all five of them.

Is Teen Mania a cult?  I have several rules for declaring something a cult.  In a cult, the leader declares himself Lord. He stops at nothing to keep you tied to him - lies, theft, denial of your basic human needs.  Nothing is voluntary.  The leader wants your very life, forever.  A cult never ends.  In a cult, you can't go home, because they will find you.  In a cult, even your parents can't get you out without a paid kidnapper and a de-programmer.

Does Teen Mania engage in these practices?  Absolutely not.  Are the young people highly zealous in their pursuit of recruits, and highly zealous in holding them accountable once they are there?  To be sure. Highly.

Anyone signing up for the HA or an overseas mission who is younger than twenty-one should in no uncertain terms have a parent on deck who is prepared to step up and BE A GROWNUP; a parent who is ready to stay tight with the two grownups on campus, if you can find them (be ready to HUNT if necessary); a parent who is ready to send a car if possible, to send care packages, to send cash for sundries, to make sure the minimal monthly payments for food and lodging are attended to.  Your child will need a parent who is ready to be there on the phone in the wee hours of the morning when your child's determination begins to flag, to assure him that he has your earthly love as well as the love of Jesus.

Yes, I am a former Teen Mania mom.  I will be the first to tell you that Teen Mania is not perfect, because nothing earthly is perfect.  It is a radical experience, no doubt.  But then, that's how we roll, my babies and I.  That's how we roll.  Radical to the bone.

Chopped: Cooking for the 21st Century Boomer

If you're a boomer (and you probably are if you're reading this), you certainly watch the Food Network, at least occasionally.  And if you watch the Food Network, you have probably seen the cooking contest program, Chopped.

(Digression:  How does this relate to Corners, a novel, you ask?  Answer:  Shelley was the deli girl, remember?  She created gourmet catered dishes out of her imagination from almost nothing when she was a school girl.  But then I am not Shelley - at least not entirely =)  Still, Shelley grew up to be a boomer, didn't she?  Hmmm.  Back to business.)

Chopped always features four real life, better-than-the-average-bear chefs competing against each other for $10,000.  Each week there is a winner, and sometimes, at the end of the season, they have a really big contest in which all of the weekly winners get together and cook their socks off really fast, cut themselves, drop boiling water, curse, throw down their aprons in displays of poor sportsmanship, and compete for a lot more than $10,000.  Now that's some good television.

In the course of these weekly rituals, the contestants are each given a basket with three or four "mystery ingredients."  These they must include in their dishes or be chopped, unless one of the other chef-testants really screws the pooch and produces a dish of such horror that it can barely be eaten.

These "mystery ingredients" may include such things as durian, which is a fetid foul smelling tropical fruit; quince, brains, chicken feet, jelly beans, and whatever else the producers dug out of the sofa cushions.  At the moment of tasting, the adventure comes in watching the judges approach the quivering morsels impaled on their forks as if they were eyeing a live possum at the end of an animal control stick.

There is an obvious application for the 21st Century boomer here.

As the housing market and the economy have gone SPLAT, we boomers just don't have the disposable income for fabulous gourmet cooking that we used to have in the 80's and 90's when we all learned to be foodies.  Instead, while struggling to pay the monthly note on our underwater-and-drowning homes, we are digging in the sofa cushions to find ingredients for our evening meal.  This is all while dreaming about the days when we used to moan and roll our eyes over gourmet take-out, or whip up a little butter and vanilla poached lobster tail or baby lamb chops rubbed with rosemary, olive oil and garlic.

We have a need to make our leftover lemon hard candies, year-old ground sage, and apple cider vinegar taste like Mario Batali prepared them right there in our own kitchen.

So last night, in the spirit of Chopped, I honored my pledge to spend not one thin dime off the budget and raided my pantry.  In it I found raspberry jam and about a half inch high of elderly crystallized balsamic vinegar.  In the fridge, I found a skinny WalMart chicken and bag of oranges from September, soft but still useful.  En garde.

The bird got marinated in the juice of all the oranges (they were actually pink inside, like grapefruits - I'm not sure why; maybe they were ossified grapefruits) along with a little chopped rosemary that grows by the front door, some sea salt and ground pepper; then basted with olive oil (giant tin can from Raley's - lasts forever and cheap) and a blend of the raspberry jam, balsamic, and some of the orange juice.  Next, roasted the whole thing, cut in quarters, in an aluminum baking pan at 375 for about 45 minutes (just kept checking the thigh joints till the juices ran clear).  Popped a couple of scrubbed potatoes in next to the pan, no foil, with a vent cut in the skins.

While it all hung out in the oven, I dug deep and found a can of refrigerator biscuits I had never used because I accidentally bought the ones flavored with honey.  Sauteed some slightly wilted broccoli florets in a fry pan with a little olive oil and a shake of garlic salt while the biscuits browned.

When I pulled out the bird, its juices, infused with sweet orange and rosemary, had risen about one third of the way up the pan and created an amazing simmer sauce - a little fatty, so I drained it - that left the bird succulent and redolent with chicken-ness.  The oil, raspberry, and vinegar had developed a fragrant, crackly skin, beguilingly golden and flecked with berry seeds and herbal bits.  Miraculously, everything hit the table at once.  And everything disappeared down to the last crispy potato skin, laden with sour cream and dripping with butter, in less than ten minutes.  Sigh.  All that, 1408, most of the family, and some Yellow Tail to wash it down.  Foodie heaven.

Boomer-ism is about making it happen and letting the sun shine in, come what may, is it not?  There's something about the chips being down that bring out the best in a boomer.  What's your experience today?  Are you up?  Are you down?  Have you turned that frown upside down?  Share, and if you have a favorite sofa cushion recipe, share that too.

Closet reality

Now and then I watch one of those reality TV shows about people who hoard.  I have to confess I can't watch them too long, though, because they pinch just a tiny bit where it hurts.

I have one closet in my house that I would consider a hoard.  My children know about this closet, and they are nodding their heads and moaning in affirmation right now if they are reading this.

This closet contains certain of my garments that date back to 1990.  For those of you who are old enough to think that sounds like yesterday, it's actually 21 years ago.  This same closet contains virtually all of my garments dating back to 1994.  There are teddy bears and other stuffed items that belonged to my children when they were little, too, from the late 80's.

Wow, you may say.  I bet that's a lot of garments.  And why back to those particular years?  What the heck?

First of all, cut me a little slack here, because it's only one closet.  So let's move on to the details now, in a general kind of way.

1990 to 1994 were probably among the best years of my life, second only to 1974 to 1978.  (That's one important reason why my first novel, blogged in full below, if you scroll a while, is set from 1974 to 1978.  But I digress.)

Those were spaces in time - the late 70's and the early 90's - when I was entirely my own woman, free as air, relatively manless for the most part.

During those times, I was beautiful.  This is not just me talking here, or my mother:  I was, objectively speaking, clock-stopping gorgeous.  Probably not coincidentally, I was also transcendently happy, in a clueless sort of way.

In 1990 for a few fleeting years, I was even chic, I am told.  My skin was seamless.  My eyes were bright.  My hair was thick and full and fell into place.  I was fit and trim enough for all practical purposes, as Emily Webb's mother would say, and aerobically fierce.  I was powerful in my chosen field, and rising.

I think I stopped throwing clothes away when I first knew my life was not going to get any "better" for a while.  Granted, my life did not get any worse, either, at least not at first.  But in 1994, I will suffice it to say that I got . . . caught up.  There is no finger pointing here.  This is my fault.  I was a big girl and had full knowledge.  But get "caught up" I did, and thus began a sad, gradual descent that took almost twenty years to get in check.

So I have every single garment I ever bought from 1994 to today because 1994 was the year the slide began.  That was the year my hair went white.  That was the year I started imperceptibly gaining weight, little by little. That was the year that surprise, then denial, then sorrow, then bartering, then anger, then resignation started gaining ground -  one by one at the molecular level, seeping in like tulle fog on a Merced October morning.

Oddly, I have always been resilient and astute in almost all other things during these many years, as those who know me will tell you.  But in this particular fog-machine area of my life of which I speak, I have lived gobsmacked and blindsided past all recognition all these many years, and all the while working like a mule.  Go figure.  Am I sorry I did it, sorry I hung in?  I can't say that I am - while there was not what I can name as "happiness" in it for me, at times there has been the satisfaction that comes from labor well intended, and from that a deeper joy.

I did my level best in my ham-handed way, trying to please Him as I did; and He has said well done, and set me free.

Today, I'm going in with Hefty bags and cardboard boxes.  I'm going to pack those garments out one by one, starting today, just the way they went in.  I will pack out the party dresses from the beautiful years, the wedding dress from #2, the work clothes from when I was important and thin - all of it.  I can do that because today I am free, from the inside out, from the molecular level on up.  One day in 1994, I turned a corner and stayed there for a really long time; but today I see a new corner, and I intend to turn it and run as fast as I can.  That's all the detail anyone needs to know to get the gist.

Our hope lies in getting up and finding a new corner to turn the minute we get our wits back about us.  That's what I'm doing today.  I can feel my wits, and they are razor sharp!  Praise God!

Do you have your wits about you today?  Please share.  God bless, and happy cleaning.