cracked my windshield and the moral is.....

TOP TEN POSITIVE THINGS ABOUT CRACKING MY WINDSHIELD 

1 - No one got hurt
2 - People in the Home Depot lot felt better about themselves as they looked at my windshield
3 - Apparently I have superhuman strength 
4 - The glass industry is thankful
5 - I have been thinking about a new car
6 - I am now thinking I need to be extra careful with my circular saw and router today
7 - It really is a pretty big crack....this is no wimp little tiny crack
8 - I got to hear other stories of cracked windshields
9 - This will definitively give my wife and I something to talk about tonight in the car
10 - I really needed something to write about


Two additional thoughts - the song Nobody's Fault But Mine is running rampant through my head now AND "we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose" 


k...time to go plug in the router

why I believe in God

Why I believe in God, any q's feel free to ask. Thank you.

1.  There is good and evil
2.  Hearts and love- Love is real. Love is beautiful. I know God w/my heart.
3.  I see God in the beauty of everything, the sun, the moon, the stars and more importantly in people
4.  The Holy Spirit- I can feel the wind, but cannot see it. When everything is right. I feel the Holy Spirit
5.  Other, I see God in other people. All you have to do is look.
6.  The bible is the most powerful thing I know. It's words are alive and they grow.
7.  The hard heart. The disbelief and strength of the hard heart is in of itself enough to make me believe.
8.  I talk to God and He talks to me.
9.  The one thing that I know- God is THE only truth I have ever found in life.
10. The name of God...His name scorned, trashed and adored.

for what it's worth at the end of the day (and the beginning) His name, His word, His love sustains me.

thumbs up for rock 'n' roll ! ! ! !

There's this ultra cool youtube vid of a kid who just learned to ride his bike and his dad asks him to relay the experience. 


"I feel...I feel...I feel...I feel happy of myself"


"Everybody! I know you can believe in yourself!"


"anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it" Jesus


I love watching and listening to little children. They are so precious and so ready to trust. I will not forget when our youngest son Taylor asked me for the truth....the truth about Santa. I felt like Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men when he spouts off about the masses not being able to handle the truth. I didn't think Taylor could handle the truth. But I asked him, "do you really want to know?", "yes," he replied. "No, Taylor, do you REALLY want to know the truth?", "yes, daddy, please". "Okay," I said, and then I told him the truth. Taylor got angry with me, so very angry, would not talk to me and cut me off for two days. No words, just hurt, anger and sorrow. 


Taylor believed whatever we told him. Blindly, innocently and without question. I watch and listen to young children and they believe in God that way. When Jesus says we must receive the kingdom of God like a little child, I want to do so. BLINDLY and INNOCENTLY and WITHOUT an OUNCE of doubt. I want that doubt to shrink into oblivion. 


I am sorry for not having enough wisdom to not ever lie to any of my children about Santa. I should have started with the truth there. They all turned out a-okay though. 


More importantly I want myself and family to have that belief, that BLIND BELIEF in GOD. 
That INNOCENCE. that trust. 


I want to always "feel happy of myself" and declare a "thumbs up for rock 'n' roll" and a thumbs up for God. 

e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

EVERYTHING

EVERYTHING

EVERYTHING

life is wayyyyyy to short. the days seem to just tumble by, as if they were a ball rolling down the hill. speeding up, rolling oh so fast. so fast that the ball hops and skips and jumps over every obstacle.

HOLD THE BALL

Cherish it.

feel the ball.....feel LIFE....feel e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g  coursing thru your veins. BE POSITIVE! Be happy.

embrace life, people...smile it changes everything


:)

guns & music

I learn a lot of good things from song lyrics. 


In 1976 sometime in April as I was completing the 8th grade and a few buds were going to go to a concert. I got permission to go and even though I didn't know who any of the bands were I did the usual walk from Hilltop, NJ to the Record Museum (store) in Deptford Mall. For 14.00 dollars purchased my first concert ticket. The date of the show was to be June 14th and there were about 6 of us going of whom I only remember two of them. Kenny Mohr, my best friend at the time and Jim McGranahan.


It was something else. Dicky Betts and Great Southern, The J. Geils Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Frampton. Just waiting to get into the open air Philly landmark JFK Stadium (site of Live Aid) was a trip. Let's just say the bearded southerners in '76 were a bit overwhelming for this young sheltered suburban kid to get. I did a lot of staring and growing up that day. 


I didn't know what partying was in a 70's concert scene and needless to say there was a lot of beer being confiscated upon entry as there was a sweet smell wafting throughout the day. Me and Kenny,really Kenny, had somehow got a hold of the mini truck with all of the confiscated beer driving in the stadium and snagged two american Budweisers each...they were warm and some might say hot. Drinking that coveted hot beer in the sun and being about 13 years old with an empty stomach was not necessarily a good thing. 


Dicky Betts didn't play long and somehow we felt they left the stage early due to inferior sound. J. Geils ripped it up....a serious party band. Now I had also purchased Skynyrd's double-live album (pictured above) prior to the concert and I knew all the songs. Sweet Home, Freebird, Gimme Three Steps and so on. The one song that had lyrically really stuck with me was Saturday Night Special. It struck a chord with me. Here's this band that is really the crown of Southern Rock singing against guns. The last bit of lyrics in that song go like this - "Well handguns are made for killin', they ain't no good for nothing else, so why don't we dump 'em, to the bottom of the sea".
I always thought that that was wisdom right there. Even back then, at 13 years old. I couldn't see a purpose for a handgun. They really ain't no good for nothin' else. 


Today whenever I hear Do You Feel Like I Do it forever reminds me of carefree summer days. It was over a year later when three band members and several others would suffer a tragic death with the band in a plane crash.


So why don't we, dump those handguns people, to the bottom of the sea?

 "before some old fool come 'round here, gonna shoot either you or me".

Spring has Sprung

The garden is one of my sanctuaries. A place of work, reflection and meditation. 


It is a place that soothes my soul, that transcends moments into actual moments. 


Life takes on special meaning in the garden. It is here that things live and die. It is here that things grow and mature. 


I'd like to think that by spending time here, I grow, mature and learn to appreciate the details and beauty of life. 


Pictured are dwarf irises that have been growing for many years. Some years they come up in the snow. The grape muscari are also just starting to flower. I want to get some more miniature tete a' tete daffodils for next year. 

Sundays // Pancakes// Jack Johnson

Mar and I hit the road Friday afternoon to get away before she goes away. Not sure I just get that thinking just yet, but hey....I'm going with the flow. 


We took the long way here and as we are getting ready to head out we are going to do the same and take the l-o-n-g way home. 


Yesterday we hiked the Delaware Water Gap, not a long or tough hike by any means, but I must say. I am getting old. This stuff does not come as easy as it once did. 


It is so quiet here, up in the Poconos with nothing really doing and no where to go and nothing to really worry about. Some fine living. Just fine.....For the last few weeks this one thought keeps running through my brain.......the simple life

How I long for that. 

Our lives are anything, but simple as all this stuff of working and earning to live take place. I lose sight of the real hard-core reasons that make me peaceful and serene.

This is what I want and long for....serenity. 

I don't think it takes a weekend jaunt to the Poconos or a secluded Blue Lagoon beach to gain peacefulness. No, I think that state of mind is self-inflicted. And by "self" I do mean our attitudes and desires. Our acceptances of what's real and false and by what we choose to believe and not believe.

My wife and I love watching the television show Parenthood and the crazy (but, maybe not so crazy) thing is so do our children. Sean, Aryn and Taylor. Mind you Taylor did not take to this easily and had to be coerced and coaxed into watching, but now that he has, he enjoys it. I think what he enjoys most is watching it together. A family watching family. 

It is while watching Parenthood,  that that simple life takes place. 

It is while hiking the AT among the moss, that the simple life happens.

It is while typing this blog, the sun streaking through the windows, that the simple life takes place. 

It is while driving on a Friday night on unknown roads that follow the curve of the river, in the dark, in the pouring rain with drifting radio stations, yes even here, is where the simple life happens. 

It is while having pancakes on a Sunday morning with Jack Johnson playing, this is the simple life. 

The simple life is how we look at the days, and the hours, and the minutes, and the seconds that is what determines our simplicity.