Commencement is a grand event, and because I serve as one of the WTS vice presidents, I get to march in the processional.  I’d be quite content tonight simply sitting among the assembled parents and spouses and friends, but I do have to admit I get a pretty good seat this way.

It is also our Alumni Day. (Sexist grammatical note: “alumni” is the plural of alumnus, a masculine word in Latin, and technically I should also be using alumna/alumnae throughout this article, if one follows Latin grammar when writing in English. If you are offended, please forgive me.  I’m trying not to make this too cumbersome.) Because I am the seminary’s Vice President of Advancement, our class reunion luncheons and the alumni dinner are under my department.  I wind up getting pretty good seats at these events, too.  We will honor distinguished alumni Vicki Menning and Gordon Laman tonight at dinner, and I am sentimental enough to know I will be choked up by the stories of their long and selfless careers.   

But may I tell you about two things I will be especially thinking of today?

The first concerns the class reunions.  We have wonderful groups gathering for the 40- and 50-year reunions, and, for the first time, we are doing a 60-year reunion.  There are some real giants in the class of ‘53, like Elton Bruins and John Hesselink, and it will be a joy to host them. Members of these classes are coming from coast to coast to be here. But there is also the 25-year reunion happening today.  It is my class – the class of 1988 – and, following a trend that’s been happening for many years, there won’t be a large group gathered.  Why?  One could say that it is because most of the 25-year folks are still working for a living, and that would be correct, but I suspect there is something else going on. I think about midlife, and wonder if some people don’t want to come back because they aren’t at peace with how their lives and ministries are turning out.  There can be more tears than laughs at the 25-year reunion.  Lives in ministry were launched two and a half decades ago that are not stories of unparalleled success.  There is pain, grief, and loss.  Even those whom others view as great successes have harrowing stories.  I imagine many prospective reunion attendees asking, “Do I want to go back and try to explain how my former church chewed me up and spit me out?”  or “Do I want to go back and tell a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years about my marriage ending?” 

Then there are those who left seminary and took a dramatic right turn or left turn.  I am aware of folks at both ends of the political and theological spectrum of the Reformed Church that do not like us.  Some of them are our alumni.  I could go on a rant about people who graduate from an institution and later turn against it.  They chose to come here in the first place, seemed to enjoy themselves at the time, and now have no use for us.  There is something there that rubs me the wrong way, and if plied with restoratives and stimulants I could make quite a speech.  But I won’t.

Anyway, there aren’t many returning from the class of ’88 today.  When you invite about 50 people to your party and four of them attend (and one of them is you), it makes you wonder.  I’m wondering.  What should we do with the 25-year reunion?  I’m not sure.

But the other thing I am thinking about is the beauty of what’s going to happen tonight.  The aforementioned Drs. Bruins and Hesselink are going to participate in our graduation ceremony and help send our latest group of freshly-minted pastors out into the world.  Jesus told his disciples to go out as innocent as doves and wise as serpents.  The Western Theological Seminary Class of 2013 has the innocent as doves part down.  I guess we’ll see in 25 years about the wise as serpents part.  And I know I’ll get choked up – just like I’ll get choked up listening to the stories of our distinguished alumni at dinner – watching the graduates leave us tonight.  There is something holy and sacred and breathtakingly beautiful about the whole day, the pain of it as well as the glory. 

I feel haunted by Boston, and armed with some “Boston questions,” I went to see Dr. Dennis Voskuil, former President and current Professor of Church History at Western Theological Seminary. Dennis did his PhD at Harvard and retains deep ties to the Boston community.

I went to Dennis because it bothers me that a sporting event was targeted.  I “get” why the 9/11 terrorists chose the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  But why the Boston Marathon?  And beyond that, I went to Dennis for help understanding how to put all of this together theologically.

“I lived in Boston for five years,” Dennis told me, “and for the last four years I served a Methodist church about four blocks from the spot where the suspect was captured.  I know the area -- I can imagine the streets where the shootout with the police took place -- I even know that gas station where the suspects were spotted on a security camera.  That’s the part of Boston where I spent the most time – Watertown and Cambridge.  Watertown isn’t an upscale suburb; it is middle class, full of row houses with lots of diversity.  These are hearty, family-oriented people, very much part of the fabric of Boston life.” 

What is Boston life?  Sitting in Dennis’s office, I noted he has replaced his standard issue seminary waste basket with a large Boston Celtics trash can.  “You have to understand sports in New England.  It’s unlike anything I’ve encountered elsewhere.  It’s deep in the culture.  The Red Sox are New England; there is a cultural loyalty that is unparalleled.”

Why target the marathon?  “It isn’t just the marathon; it’s Patriot Day in Boston, a unique and special holiday.  It’s Boston’s holiday, nobody else’s. Kids are off school, the Red Sox play at 11am, the whole city seems to come out for the marathon – if you wanted to strike out at Boston, that’s the way to do it.”

I feel like the Boston bombers belong more in the class of the guy who opened fire at the movie theater in Aurora or the elementary school in Newtown.  Maybe I’m putting too fine a point on it, but these acts feel more “cultural” than political.  I find it easier to rationalize those outside our culture who hate us than those inside who commit outrageous acts of violence.  What drives them to want to kill innocent people? Is it just mental illness?  Or is there something else happening?

And then there are the theological questions.  What am I supposed to take away from this? I feel nothing but sadness in every direction. 

I asked Dennis for some theological insight.  He deferred to his son Karsten, the pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, telling me of the sermon Karsten preached on April 21.  Karsten was born in Boston and baptized in Watertown (what a great place to be baptized) and, like his father, still holds Boston deep in his heart. 

The text was John 10, about the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.  Here’s some of what Karsten said:

“We saw some of the worst of human behavior, but even more, we witnessed some of the very best of our humanity as well.  There were so many people showing this goodness: serving others before serving oneself, caring for the needs of strangers instead of taking advantage of the moment . . . so many people responded in ways that certainly glorified our Good Shepherd.

“’My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me.’  They follow me by running towards, not away from victims of violence.  By facing, not running away from, the skeletons in our own closets.  By bearing witness to God even when all seems chaotically out of control.  By trusting in what God can do in the most difficult of moments, even if the blood on the sidewalk is still fresh.  By teaching our children how grace defeats hatred.  By loving even persons we want to loathe.”

The Good Shepherd walked towards Jerusalem, knowing full well what awaited him there.  His sheep follow him, and we follow him closely when we, like all those who helped in Boston, walk toward those in need instead of running away. 

I’m not done with Boston.  Maybe I’m not done with Boston because I’m supposed to learn what it means to follow the Good Shepherd from it.  Thanks be to all those heroic souls who ran to help.      

Steve wrote: “There is no promise that by following Jesus your dreams will be fulfilled. Your dreams will be changed.”  Amen to that.  Here’s a little of my own story of the death of a dream.

In the fall of 2009, I was sitting on the couch in my house in the Netherlands listening to an old song by Dan Fogelberg which was titled, ironically enough, Nether Lands.  Here’s a You Tube link.  Yes, I’ll admit today that the song might be a little overproduced on the whole orchestral effect side of things, but that day in 2009 when I heard him sing, “Where do you go when you get to the end of your dream?” tears filled my eyes.  Suddenly there were words to go with all the inner turmoil and angst I’d been feeling for months.  I was in the Netherlands, doing what I thought was going to be my dream job, living where I thought I was going to live the rest of my life, and I was profoundly unhappy.  Unhappy personally, unhappy professionally, just plain unhappy.  I felt like the wrong guy in the wrong job at the wrong time not only in the wrong place but in the wrong country on the wrong continent. Fogelberg’s question was my question.  It is the question of mid-life.  Where do you go when you get to the end of your dreams?

Off in the nether lands

I heard a sound

Like the beating of heavenly wings . . .

 I wasn’t sure at the time if the sound I was hearing off in the Netherlands was the beating of heavenly wings – nothing about my experience felt heavenly at all.  It just felt rotten.

 And so I left.  Left my dream job.  Left the country and continent where I thought I would live out my days.  Left with my tail between my legs.  Opened myself to the well-meaning judgments of others in statements like, “What was that all about?” or “It’s hard to fail publicly, isn’t it?”  Had I failed?  I didn’t think of it that way.  I thought I had learned what I wasn’t supposed to be doing, but others saw my experience as failure.  Yikes. Is there anything more taboo in our culture than failure? 

 I’ve heard successful authors talk about the “how-you-saved-my-life” letters they get from their fans, and I could write a few of those letters myself.  (In fact I have written one of those to Frederick Buechner, but that’s another story for another day.)  In the months following my job resignation and return to the states, my life was saved this time by reading Falling Upwards by the Franciscan father Richard Rohr.  It was Rohr’s insistence that my experience was normal that helped me the most, along with his invitation to see my “failure” as an entry into a deeper experience with God.  Rohr borrows the concept of “necessary” or “legitimate suffering” from Carl Jung and says surely this is what Jesus was talking about when he said the only way to save your life is to lose it.

 I`ve seen the bottom

And I`ve been on top

But mostly I`ve lived in between

And where do you go

When you get to the end of your dream?

Well asked, Dan.  As Rohr says, if we are on any sort of spiritual trajectory at all, some event, person, death, idea or relationship will come along that we simply do not have the ability to deal with.  This is the only way God can get us to let go of our egoistic preoccupations and go on a further and larger journey.  None of us can engineer it, and it feels horrible to be in the midst of it, but what’s so bad about failure that leads you to deeper and better places?

The cornier the album the better.  He gave his aunt Englebert Humperdinck.  He gave his uncle Jim Nabors.  He gave his cousin Jimmy Swaggert. (Who knew Jimmy played the piano?) And he gave my dad, his grandfather, an album of gospel music by the “Old Pea Picker,” Tennessee Ernie Ford. 

My dad loves Tennessee Ernie Ford.  When my dad unwrapped the album, he walked across the room to his record player and put it on.  Yes, my dad has a record player, the same one he’s had since the Carter Administration.  He has no MP3 player (he doesn’t know what an MP3 is) or even a CD player, but there is a combo turntable / cassette player in the family room, waiting, I suppose, for just such an occasion as this.

Tennessee Ernie started to sing about Jesus in that beautiful, deep bass voice and within a few seconds my dad’s eyes had filled with tears.  Suddenly, my son’s joke was no joke, and the gift of his goofy albums had been transformed into something wonderful my son never imagined. 

What was Tennessee Ernie singing?  Among the songs was Peace in the Valley, written by Tommy Dorsey in 1937.  You can hear Tennessee Ernie sing it by clicking here.  Take a minute.  It’s worth it.

Where did Tommy Dorsey get those lyrics?  They’re right out of the pages of the Bible, and much of the imagery is from the Book of Isaiah.  Some of it sounds like Isaiah 65:17-25, where Isaiah shares a vision of what the new heaven and new earth are going to be like.  It’s a vision captured in two simple words: justice and peace.  Children won’t die, all people will live to the fullness of their years, people will enjoy the fruit of their labors, all the creatures of the world will dwell together in harmony and we will be so intimate with God he will say, “Before they call I will answer, while they are still speaking I will hear.” 

Yesterday, of course, was Easter, and among the things that Jesus’ resurrection means is that Isaiah’s vision of peace and justice isn’t just a dream but will one day be reality.  Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15 that Jesus is the first-fruits of the resurrection, meaning there are more resurrections to come.  The last enemy to be destroyed, Paul says in that glorious passage, is death.

I’m not trying to deny reality or sell a bunch of pie in the sky.  I only want to say that Easter is a season for us to take a deep breath and realize that much better days are coming.

There the bear will be gentle,

and the wolf will be tame,

and the lion will lay down by the lamb.

And the beast from the wild

will be led by a child,

and I’ll be changed from the creature I am.

There will be peace in the valley for me someday,

there will be peace in the valley for me, I pray.

No more sorrow and sadness, or trouble will be,

There will be peace in the valley for me.

Amen.

On the back of the album is a photo of a “First Reformed Church” someplace, and some of the band members have Dutch last names, so I’ve probably already offended several people who recognized their uncle on the album cover.

But really?  Chances are you already knew your uncle was a dork.  I have nothing against dorks.  Some of my best friends are dorks.  My kids would tell you that I am a dork.  But I think at least I’m savvy enough not to market my dorkiness in the name of Christ. 

There is a great legacy of dorkiness in the church. Do you remember the old Christian satire magazine The Wittenburg Door?  They used to award a “Green Weenie” for the dorkiest thing in Christendom every month, be it somebody’s 50-foot-tall aluminum Jesus or the latest ranting by a televangelist.  The Heralders album cover photo probably would have qualified. (By the way, back when the RCA published its own magazine called The Church Herald I always wanted to form a touring group of gospel musicians composed entirely of guys named Harold and call them The Church Harolds.  But I digress.)

Anyhow, I’m all for bringing back the Green Weenies.  And to get a new round of Green Weenies rolling, I’d like to award one to the History Channel’s less-than-epic mini-series called The Bible.  Frankly, I’m amazed that we’ve gotten three episodes into this debacle without another member of The 12 commenting.  But I suppose there is a plausible explanation – no one is watching. 

Besides the fact that Noah sounded Irish (I kept waiting for him to say, “B’gosh and begorrah, on you go, two by two, and keep your mitts off me Lucky Charms”) and the strange fact that Samson appeared to be a Jamaican dude with dreads, the biggest failing of the History Channel’s dramatization of the Bible is that it’s boring.  What’s surprising is that the mini-series is produced by the husband and wife team of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, he of Survivor fame and she of Touched by an Angel.   Those shows weren’t nearly as boring (or dorky) as what they’re doing to the Bible.

The problem is money.  They don’t have enough of it to spend in at least two significant areas: actors and special effects.  I haven’t watched all of The Bible, but I did see enough of Moses to laugh at his attempts at wild-eyed gazing.  I said aloud to the screen, “This Moses is a dork.” That’s not good. 

So, I started dreaming about my own production of the Bible.  Who should direct?  Peter Jackson?  Steven Speilberg?  How about the Coen Brothers? And who should star?  Here are a few random actors I’d like to see: Tommy Lee Jones as Pontius Pilate, Geoffrey Rush as Abraham, Sean Penn as Judas, Christian Bale as Peter, Michelle Williams as Mary, Helena Bonham Carter as Mary Magdelene, and Gary Oldman as Jeremiah.  What do you think?  I’d love to see your suggestions for casting the Bible.  Who should play Jesus?  What a challenging role.  And for that matter, who should play Paul?  What do you think?  By the way, don’t believe it when you get a sneaking suspicion that only dorks sit around and create their dream casts for the Bible.  You can do it. Just remember when you’re casting any quartets to only feature four people. 

He spoke about the tremendous privilege and awesome (a correct use of this trivialized word) responsibility the pastors carried.  If I heard the story right, on that horrific Friday the parents from the Sandy Hook Elementary School were sent to the community firehouse to meet (or possibly not meet) their children.  Besides first responders and local officials, the only other people invited into the firehouse were the town’s pastors. The pastors said all they could do was be present; indeed, all they could do was embody the ministry of presence.

What struck me as I listened to this beautiful story was that the pastors were from vastly different traditions.  They hold different positions on any number of theological, social and political issues.  But in the face of the Newtown tragedy, those pastors made a conscious decision to act as one body.  They decided one community memorial would be held, and until President Obama invited himself to the memorial, they had decided no one would preach.  The shootings happened two days before the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday traditionally marked by lighting the pink candle that represents joy.  They decided none of them would light that candle that Sunday.  The Catholic Church was hardest hit – nearly half the victims were Catholic – and other congregations opened their buildings to host visitations and post-funeral receptions for Catholic families.

Dan Aleshire’s point in telling these stories was to argue for the significance of pastors (and by implication the significance of theological education) in modern life.  While I certainly agree with him, I was also moved by the beauty of the pastors working as one body.

I’m currently working on the marketing plan for my seminary.  One of the first tasks in marketing is to differentiate yourself, to tell the world why and how you are different from others.  I feel that pull all the time in a variety of ways.  It’s not necessarily bad.  But how does that fit with the great New Testament theme of unity?  And why does it take a tragedy for us to stop heading in the direction of proclaiming our differences and turn around and act as one body?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a day spent with Kathleen Norris and her interest in etymology.  One of the words she did an etymology of was dogma.  She told us that originally dogma meant the things a group of people agreed on.  It was a unifying word.  Today, dogma seems to send us in the opposite direction. The word feels divisive, not unifying.

I’m the naïve guy who wrote in this space a year ago that I thought the Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Reformed Church in America should merge.  I wrote that piece in those halcyon days before last summer’s RCA General Synod, which cast shadows on whether or not the RCA can even hold together, let alone merge with others.  General Synod is on the horizon again, and the word on the street is that in the various Classes fracturing overtures are being prepared for this summer.  I wonder how further dividing and subdividing will help the witness of the body of Christ?  Before you answer too quickly, consider how dividing simply mirrors a world already so split.  Those on the “dogmatic purity” side of things want to save us from cultural capitulation, but isn’t it cultural capitulation to act like everyone else?  Around the globe nations joust with nations, at home our political system is stuck (and now the whole nation learns the word “sequestration”) and in any neighborhood disaffected people regularly murder their fellow citizens.  Can we differentiate ourselves by staying together despite our differences?  Can we model respectful and loving disagreement without dividing?  Can we be one body? 

Since I heard Dan Aleshire’s message, I can’t get the image of those Newtown pastors acting as one body out of my mind.  Somehow the words “Gonna lay down my sword and shield” and “Ain’t gonna study war no more” seem appropriate.  May it be so. 

I’ve just read two British novels, written over 150 years apart, that make that point. It fascinates me that of all the titles ascribed to Jesus, the one he rejected was being called “good.”  No wonder -- these novels show how difficult “good” can be.  (Both books also, in their own way, skewer the Church of England, but that’s another topic for another day.) 

The first is How to Be Good by Nick Hornby.  I loved Hornby’s movies About a Boy and An Education and gleefully jumped at this book when I found it tucked away amid the treasures of a used bookstore.  Hornby is hilarious and compassionate and insightful and all of these qualities pour out in this novel.  Katie, the main character, is a good person; she cares about third-world debt and homelessness, she “saves the odd life” as a doctor and she’s a wife and mother.  Except she’s not that good at being a wife or mother.  She’s married to a lout who writes a newspaper column called The Angriest Man in Holloway (the name of their London suburb), and she opens the novel by asking for a divorce.

What happens next surprised me.  Instead of exploring the pain of a relationship going south, the novel takes a wonderful twist when Katie’s husband undergoes a dramatic spiritual awakening, aided by a mystic named DJ GoodNews.  “I believe all the things you believe,” he tells her, “except I am going to walk the talk.”

As you may guess, it is no easier being married to a saint than a lout.  He compulsively gives away the family’s Sunday dinner and various other possessions (including a computer), tries to convince the whole block to take in runaways (a few do with very mixed results), and forces his children into bringing home social outcasts (also with very mixed results).

The novel asks several profound social, moral and theological questions, but you are laughing so hard they never feel preachy.  (I love books that make me laugh out loud when I’m reading them.) I’m not sure I knew how to be good after reading the book, but I did know I’d read a good book.

Equally compelling but very different is Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, a book Henry James called “the history of an old man’s conscience.”

The Reverend Septimus Harding, a cello-playing, kind-hearted aging clergyman is warden of a charity house for a dozen infirm laborers.  His position is a church sinecure, providing a generous income for simple duties, and his position becomes the center of controversy when a crusading young man wants to expose corruption in the church.  Events spin out of control over time (in today’s world this would all happen in a 24-hour news cycle), and even though eventually all parties involved drop their pursuit of the matter against the warden, he feels compelled to resign his position.

Should you continue doing something you have become convinced is wrong even though those around you have absolved you of wrongdoing?  The warden’s resignation placates his conscience, but no one is the better for it.  The very clear implication is that it is better to do compromised good than to follow a path of righteousness that helps no one.

Is that right?  Before you get on your high horse, I’d argue it happens every day in all of our lives, businesses, churches and schools.  Being good is complicated.  And I love novels that engage me and make me think about the complexities of life.

Instead of allowing you a high horse, please indulge me while I ride mine for one hundred more words.  I want to ask you to read a novel.  I know too many Christians who do not read fiction.  Too many of us only read books about Christianity and too many pastors only read books about being a better pastor.  Need a place to start? I just gave you two good suggestions.  If those don’t strike you, may I suggest Moby Dick or Watership Down or The River Why instead?  Any of them will do, because all great fiction is about the same topic: life.  Church leaders suffering from predictability and blandness may find new life by spending time in the company of great writers. 

What are you reading?

Nugget one about writing: She was asked how she physically writes – if she uses pen and paper or a computer.  She said she uses pen and paper and recommends the same for two reasons.  First, using pen and paper slows you down enough to consider the weight and importance of each particular word.  Second, it helps you self-edit and shorten what you write.  Computers make it too easy to write too much.  I could go on about this, but that would only prove her point. 

Nugget two about writing: She was asked about editing and she said, “Anyone who thinks his or her writing doesn’t need editing is an amateur.” 

Nugget one about words: If you’ve read books of hers like Dakota or The Cloister Walk you may recall that she specializes in etymology.  Her love of word origins helps make her writing unique, and I asked her about the etymology of several different words, including “gossip.”  The origin of that word is in the word Godparent.  A Godparent was originally a gossip.  How words change over time. But she reflected on the devolution of this once holy word and said, “Perhaps church prayer chains are a way to recover the sacred use of gossip.”

Nugget two about words: In her most recent book Acedia and Me (which you really ought to read), she uses the word “demon” often.  I looked in vain throughout the book for an explanation of what she meant when she used this word.  Not finding one, I asked her.  She said, “I don’t know.”  That was not the most satisfying answer, but one full of wisdom.  How I wish there were more latitude for saying “I don’t know.”

She gave a fascinating lecture on faith and culture and talked about how the publishing world has changed over the past few decades to be much more open to Christian content.  As evidence of this, she read several poems, all with overtly Christian messages, which were first published in secular publications.  Apparently, she reads poetry at every event she does.  She is on a one-woman crusade to preserve poetry.  (There are worse crusades to be on.)  One of the poems she read was one of her own named Imperatives that simply lists a number of commands from the Bible.  I’m reprinting it here, and I would invite you to capture the full meaning by reading it slowly and aloud. 

Imperatives

by Kathleen Norris

Look at the birds
Consider the lilies
Drink ye all of it
Ask
Seek
Knock
Enter by the narrow gate
Do not be anxious
Judge not; do not give dogs what is holy
Go: be it done for you
Do not be afraid
Maiden, arise
Young man, I say, arise
Stretch out your hand
Stand up, be still
Rise, let us be going…
Love
Forgive
Remember me

It all started Monday evening.  Instead of greeting me at the door with his normal two spins and a mild leap, my canine companion Maury stayed on the couch and simply raised an eyebrow in my direction.  We had moved from Grand Rapids to Holland a few days before, and I wondered if he were expressing some sort of previously repressed doggie-angst towards me. But something else was wrong.  He could hardly move.  By the morning he lay on his bed and looked at me with a “You go on about your day and don’t mind me while my life slowly ebbs away” look that made me genuinely worried. Who among us can stomach animal suffering?  Not I.  Or is it “not me”?

Regardless of the grammar and of being new residents, we found a vet and were in his office when it opened that morning.  “I wasn’t expecting that,” our new vet said while reading Maury’s temperature, and my first thought (which I wisely kept to myself) was, “Neither was Maury,” and my second thought (which I also kept to myself) was the old joke about the British doctor who was going to write a prescription and pulled a rectal thermometer out of his coat pocket.  “Uh oh,” he said, “some bum’s got my pen.”

But I digress.  Turns out Maury had a fever and some sort of infection that set up in his hind end parts that made walking and sitting next to impossible.  He is now taking three pills regularly, which, our new vet demonstrated, he enjoys embedded in cat food.  There’s just something about pork liver.

I won’t tell you how much this cost.  Can you put a value on the life of a beloved pet? (Don’t answer that.) Moving is expensive, and then there are inevitably unforeseen things that pop up.  One must always be ready to calmly deal with the unexpected.

Which is why I kept my composure that afternoon when my wife called and gently screamed into the phone, “The hot water heater has burst and there’s water flooding the basement!!!”  I won’t bore you with the details – I mean who gives a rip about another’s plumbing issues (not I and not me) – but I will say that I feared I was turning into my father when the plumber arrived and I thought he looked 12 years old.  I felt better about myself when my wife whispered, “Do you think it’s wise to trust our plumbing to a middle school student?” 

Suffice it to say junior fixed the problem and then presented me with a bill the size of the Gross National Product of Uruguay.  His bill made the vet’s office look like a thrift shop.  I could have had a dog sled team treated for what the plumber charged. 

But all is well now.  Maury is better, we have hot water, the basement has dried out, and pitchers and catchers report soon.  Life is good even though we hit a bump now and again.  Previous generations couldn’t get their pets (or themselves, for that matter) cured by antibiotics and never had the luxury of hot water heaters.  All is well, life is good and we’re lucky to be alive in this day and age.   Who cares about a few hundred unexpected dollars being spent?  It’s only money and I won’t miss it a few months from now.  This luxuriant and generous attitude helped me not even care as I watched the plumber drive away and noticed that the garage door wouldn’t shut. 

Let’s face facts.  Last year I was thrown under the bus a few times.  This stuff isn’t rocket science, you know, so I’m hoping by the end of the day to have marked improvement.  It remains to be seen if this will be true going forward, but I’m as happy as a clam at high tide or a lark or a witch in a broom factory or a mosquito in a nudist colony.  I don’t want to burn any bridges here, but truthfully my writing has literally been the best-kept secret on this blog.  It’s epic. Amazing.  Awesome. I don’t like to blow my own horn or beat my own drum but I’m an unsung hero. Oh sure, I’ll admit I avoided a few hot-button topics like the plague last year, but I’m simply trying not to shoot myself in the foot or bite the hand that feeds me.  Sometimes I spun my wheels, but that was when I felt as confused as a baby in a topless bar. Wait, was that over the line? Go too far? Cross a boundary? Break an unwritten rule? Hit the point of no return?  If so, I humbly apologize.

Although I have no excuse, truth be told I’ve grasped at a few straws because I’m a few fries short of a Happy Meal and not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Sometimes I feel dumber than a box of rocks or a bag of hammers or the guy who fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.  I give it my best and do my all and jump on things like a hobo on a nickel but occasionally I push my luck and my true colors come through.  I guess at heart I’m just a few guppies short of an aquarium.  I think I have a screw loose.  Big hat, no cattle -- if you know what I mean.  I think I woke up on third base and thought I’d hit a triple. You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.  Get my drift?  Smell what I’m stepping in? Feel my pain? I mean it’s as unavoidable as death and taxes, like white on rice or stink on a monkey. 

If you are like me, you know it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to write this blog.  I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that some of the other members of the 12 are accidents waiting to happen. I mean there are a couple of elevators around here not going all the way to the top floor.  I won’t name names, but let’s just say a certain someone isn’t quite the chip off the old block we were hoping he’d be.  I don’t want to get down and dirty or throw any low blows or add fuel to the fire, but frankly there is someone here who doesn’t measure up because he hasn’t figured out that there is no I in team.  He wouldn’t go for broke if his life depended on it.  He’s about as popular as cigarettes on the Hindenburg.  He’d mess up a two-car funeral.  He has all the personality of a snail on Valium.

That’s all I got.  I just want to say that I am pleased as punch to be one of The 12.  I resolve to do no harm and above all to be a go-to guy and someone you can rely on in a pinch or in the clutch or when the chips are down. If what I write doesn’t do it for you, if it doesn’t hit the spot or tickle your funny bone or make you stop and think, please remember, once and for all – and if I’ve said this once I’ve said it a hundred times -- that it’s not you, it’s me.

Thanks a million.