Insane Earthlings

I started my first job with one goal in mind. Save enough money to buy a car when I turned sixteen. I was twelve at the time. I worked at a campground/marina on a large lake in North Carolina. I cleaned bathhouses, drove the garbage truck, mowed grass and slung weeds. For three summers, I spent all day Saturday and Sunday manning the gas dock. I started out at $1.85/hour and worked my way up to $2.85/hour. Several weeks before my sixteenth birthday I started shopping for a car. It was 1981 and I had saved $2,250. I would check out the classifieds every Sunday to find a cool car that I could buy with my savings. Every car that I liked was a little out of my price range. At the rate I made per hour, it would take months to have enough money to get the car I wanted.   I watched as my friends showed up at school in Barracudas, Mustangs, Camaros, and Trans Ams.   Their parents were footing the bill. My Dad had promised that if I saved enough to buy a car, he would cover the...

I was ten years old and I had captured the silver ball with my left flipper.   I held it firmly as I surveyed the surface of the table below the glass. I checked to see if the “special” light was on. It was. I could let the ball roll to just the right point near the middle of the flipper and then tap the button hard hooking it left and down the drain that crossed the trigger for the “special.” It meant sacrificing my last ball to get a new game and five more balls to play. Suspended, I weighed my options. Free game or keep the ball in play, go for the spinners, rack up some points, and go for a new high score. I was addicted to pinball. I wasn’t a pinball wizard; I was a pinball junkie. The owners of The Game-room were my pushers. I remember the first marked quarters handed out like candy. I felt a rush of adrenaline the first time I drew back the spring-loaded launcher and sent the ball rocketing up ramps, through spinners, and bouncing off light-up bumpers. Ding-ding...

Yesterday I attended the funeral of my father's life-long best friend. His funeral was exactly one year from my own mother's funeral.  This past Monday we had a small family gathering on the one year anniversary of my mother's passing. We met at the columbarium where my mother and my niece are interred and memorialized. I decided to mark the occasion by sharing an experience and a statement about my beliefs concerning the nature of our existence. My thoughts on this subject are always changing and my mind and heart are open to new perspectives and possibilities. I structured my thoughts for this occasion in theological terms. I could have easily substituted secular language and used words like psyche or consciousness instead of soul. The infinite instead of God. But all of the possible uses of language fall short when attempting to describe the reality that remains hidden from us. Our brain is encased in bone. We only have five measly senses to make sense of everyt...