Think You've Got It Bad?

My wife came home from dropping off our daughter at her friends house for a birthday party, marched into the bedroom and said, "We have nothing to complain about!" (I'd been fired three days before.)

The father of my daughters friend was just diagnosed with a brain tumor....











For the 5th time.










No surgery this time as the previous 4 didn't work. Doctor's say all he has left is to wait and die.












And I thought I had it bad.


Eric

So Long and Thanks for all the Flights

The contents of this post have been deleted by me.

The reason? While writing things down is good therapy for me, the events I wrote about here, the statements I've made here, can and will come back to haunt me. I do not totally trust my former employer to just let this go. So, on some very good advice, I am deleting the contents of this post. The only written documentation of what happened can be found through the NASA ASRS system (anonymous) or the NTSB.

Eric

Finally....Just a Pilot!

I am no longer in management...of any kind!

I had to take a little trip to Phoenix to the mothership to meet with the Director of Operations (DO), Chief Pilot (CP) and the head of the Air Medical Group (AMG). It was in regards to me filing a process improvement form regarding pressure to take flights. Basically, I upset the apple cart.

Turns out, the AMG head didn't like the fact that a Lead Pilot questioned the fact that his DO questioned him. Apparently, I'm not allowed to do that.

So...AMG Head hauls my butt to PHX, puts me up in a nice hotel, feeds me a meal, pays my mileage to and from SMF all for a 30 minute chat about how I shouldn't use safety reports to get back at my DO and CP and how he can't figure out for the life of him why they'd want me as a Lead Pilot and they have issues with my ability to check weather and how it's not the company's responsibility to make me happy in life.

Huh?

I didn't use the safety report to get back at my DO. They offered me the position (and I accepted against my better judgement) as there was no one else to do the job. It was a favor to a new employer. I can check weather with the best of them (just ask my crews!) and whoever said it was the company's job to make me happy in life???

When I had a chance to speak I raised my concerns that I had been pressure to force another pilot to take a flight he couldn't legally take, that I was being second-guessed from Phoenix about weather at a mountain airport I have been into more times than anyone in PHX, and that during the interview I was explicitly told, several times, that they wouldn't do that.

Yeah. Like that.

It all fell on deaf ears. The DO looked away. The CP looked down and the AMG Head brushed it off and started in on me again.

I found out what I wanted to know. The AMG Head isn't going to have a lowly Lead Pilot question his buddy the DO.

So I resigned as Lead Pilot. Something I had wanted to do for some time. I told them it had nothing to do with being hauled down to PHX. It had everything to do with not being in any kind of management position. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt thankyouverymuch.

My 2 years are up in October. I am giving this job one more shot. Many of my peers are recommending that I bail ASAP but there are other considerations.

I would love to go to FlighSafety International and teach KA200's to clients. Something I think I'd be good at.

But that entails moving to Southern California, something my wife doesn't want to do and I'm not too particularly interested in either as this is a bad time to sell. (I've crunched the numbers...it's doable but I lose quit a bit of the equity I've managed to accumulate. My house will be paid off in 12 years. I'd have to start all over with a 30-40 year mortgage. :( ) But it is an option.

We'll see how it goes over the next 5 months...

Eric

You're Going Through This...

....whether you like it or not!

That's what I'm hearing these days. A little devotion my wife gave me basically said (and re-inforced throught Sunday's sermon and Wednesday night's Bible Study) "I'm not going to swoop down and rescue you from this. You have to go through it. I'll be right there with you but you have to go through this. No...I won't tell you how it's going to turn out just know that I'm there with you and you have to go through this. You will be uncomfortable. I'm not going to take away any of the pain but you will not be hurt beyond what you can bear. You don't get to know what's on the other side so just look at me and keep going through it."

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you go through trials of any kind..." - James.

Eric

Cause and Effect

I've been thinking a lot about cause and effect. Especially as it deals with the way God deals with His children. I was a jerk at the USFS. I wasn't a good witness for God at all. I swore, laughed at bad jokes, told some bad jokes; not much very Christian-like. And I got arrogant. And I lost my job.

I flew freight, again, for about a year. It nearly killed me. I was pretty desperate and full of despair. I had "gotten right" with God and was doing okay. Then I got an offer from my current employer and the deal seemed pretty good. There were some things I knew going in that were going to be different. It was a different field of aviation altogether. I kept my mouth shut, my eyes open, asked questions and kept my nose clean. Except I started with the bad language again; the bad jokes. And I rationalized it away. Freedom in Christ, blah, blah, blah. Again, I was no different than everyone else. Even with the influence of other Christians at the base, I was a loser.

And this time, I did the right thing but am getting punished for it anyways. Why? Not so much that I called my bosses handling of the issue into question (I wrote him up for questioning a go/no-go decision), but I think I'm being punished for pissing God off by pissing on the blessing He gave me in the form of this job.

Great schedule; 7 days on, 7 days off. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Good pay, good aircraft, good maintenance.

I knew the job was a going to be different and, against my better judgment, I took a middle-management position as a favor to my new employer. I did the job but kind of begrudgingly. I really want out of the position but there was no one else to take it. And while I did it well, I did it with a lousy attitude.

And my attitude became lousy all over. My job. My dealing with upper management. My dealing with Dispatch. I wasn't arrogant again. I just wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid. I guess I questioned too much instead of "yes sirring" enough. I was hired to do a job and I was doing it but not to the liking of my boss. His style of leadership tends to raise my hackles (and those of others) and I started to push back.

In other words, I didn't follow Paul's admonishment for "slaves to obey their masters". I didn't follow the admonishment to "do all things with a glad heart" because I wasn't working for my boss, I was working for Christ.

And I wasn't doing all that.

Now I'm having to face the consequences of my actions. God has allowed me to go someplace very uncomfortable and I'm finding that God is not going to bail me out. He's going to let me go through this, not alone, He'll be there with me but I feel as a silent partner, not saying anything, just standing behind me, hand on my shoulder, moral support. He's going to let me suffer for my sins and hopefully I will learn. Again.

"I get it."

"Do you?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"I think so...this time?"

"That's what you said last time, and the time before, and the time before. Let's get it this time okay?"

"Okay."


I haven't really slept for the last 5 days. When I do, my dreams are confusing and anxious. My stomach hurts. I fear I may lose this job and leave my family stranded again. My kids are at the age where they will wonder why Dad can't keep a job? What's wrong with him? Why do we have good years and bad years?

And the one I'm afraid of...

"Why is my dad such a loser?"



I want out of this job. My wife and her friend don't understand. My friend does. My co-workers do. Others do as well but they are not my wife. The brochure was better than the resort. Not all is their fault, I bear partial blame. I am at the point where I don't want to go to work. I'm at the point where I don't even want to fly anymore. This job, combined with flying through severe turbulence a couple months ago, have made me skittish. I'm thinking about going to a simulator school to be an instructor but that would entail moving to SoCal. Something I hadn't wanted to do in the past and my wife really doesn't want to do, but I feel it is something I need to do. Get out of actively flying for a spell.

I need her to understand. I don't know how to tell her. She will get mad. She will yell. She will cry. She will feel let down by me. She will have a lot of baggage from her childhood rise up and dump on her again. I don't want to do that to her; I love her too much to cause her pain and yet I do cause her pain.

I feel as if God isn't going to suddenly make her understand. I feel as if He's going to let me do all the hard work this time...put pressure on me and our marriage. As a test. To see if we truly believe what we say.

I hate life sometimes....

Eric

Dear God

How do you pray? Do you bow your head and close your eyes? Maybe make a little steeple with your hands like you were taught in Sunday School? Do you cry? Do you sigh? Do you rant and rave and shake your fist? Do you cling to the verse that tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings?

Yes....I do. Have. Will continue to do.

We're taught to "go into your closet and pray". The 77's sang about it in a song called "Pray Naked". But we've become a rather vouyeristic society due in part to the internet and a general acceptance of airing everything we feel. So we post it on the web at DearGod.net.

I'm torn by what I read. I can commiserate, empathize and agree but part of me says we should do this in private. It helps me to realize that others are going through the same things I am but I sense a bit of whining in the posts. As if God is supposed to make everything all right. That if I post it on-line, I can let it go...for now. I sense that maybe someone will, later on, complain that, "God...I prayed. I poured my concerns out. I'm a Christian. And you didn't answer! What's up with that???"

Why do they do that? They're waiting for the big announcement. The neon lights. The lightning strike.

But they miss the still, small voice. God wasn't in the wind. He wasn't in the earthquake. He wasn't in the ruckus, the shouts, the ado. He was in the stillness of the air. He whispered in my ear and the cares of the world, the noise of life, the concerns of self drowned him out...

Dear God..."for your names sake, forgive my sins for they are great."

Eric

Speaking One's Mind...

...may not always engender you to the masses. Mostly, it will piss people off. Ignorant people. People with agendas that differ from yours. People who are just plain mean. And people who are just plain stupid.

Charlton Heston died over the weekend. He's know for his starring roles and portrayals of famous figures throughout history. He was a minority in Hollywood in that he stayed married to his wife for 64 years and was pretty conservative about his views.

He also said this a few years back. It needs to be read by every kid in every school in every grade through college graduation.

"Winning The Cultural War"
Harvard Law School Forum
Tuesday, 16 February 1999 I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be people."

There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best. There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty ... your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right.

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."

Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

Let me back up. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve ... I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know ... I'm pretty old...but I sure Lord ain't senile.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issues. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our Land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- Long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist. I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe. I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!"

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys-subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that "Blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, and new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it."

Let me read a few examples.

At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final copulation ... all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide Who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs --- the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not... need not ... tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team "The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name.

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their last names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.

Yeah, I know ... that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes." Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said, "black." But it's a no-no now. For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my grandson is a thirteenth generation native American ... with a capital letter on "American."

Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, "niggardly" means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who (a) didn't know the meaning of niggardly,' (b) didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are - by your grandfathers' standards - cowards.

Here's another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor's pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't shoot me."?

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.

But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr.King ... who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in VietNam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom.

But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me.

Let me tell you a story. A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so - at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was A cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black.

I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer" - every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

"I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF
I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF..."

It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that.

Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore.

"SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ... ."

Well, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said "We can't print that." "I know," I replied,"but Time/Warner's selling it." Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk.

When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard of the district attorney's office.

When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of regents.

When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school and block its doorways.

When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you...petition them, oust them, banish them.

When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, Crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ... boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree. Thank you.

Amen....

(edit)

I was listening to my iPod and this song came up...

As the World Turns
from the album "Vox Humana"
Words and Music by Terry Taylor
©1984 Twitchen Vibes Music (ASCAP)
I'm checkin' out, checking on a late night flight
LAX a horror show
Still I'd rather be here sweatin' out another take-off
Than living in the valley below
And I never get comfort in the earth or sky
It's my belief they're not my home
The world spins one way, but I go another
Against the grain, one often stands alone

1: As the world turns, it slaps me hard
As the world turns, it tells me I'm weak
As the world turns, I drop my guard
As the world turns, I turn the other cheek
I sing, Hey oh, slaps me hard,
Hey oh, slaps me hard,
Hey oh, slaps me hard,
I put it all together in the exercise yard
Dreams that die too easy in the vengeance of time
Some values given up for others
And this, I think, is the essence of our tragedy:
Our fallenness, our bond with one another
And you always hear about it in the evening news
You get it in the morning paper
But if you think it's always gonna be this way
I think it's gonna change, much sooner than later

Repeat 1

Many people wanting the elixir of youth
Through defeats and through disasters
Stifling the only thing that changes it all --
Love is what I'm going after
Achievements always falling into yesterday
I'm a pupil in an Intro class
New cars, travels, love affairs cannot provide
The way out of life's iron cast

Repeat 1

I think it fits.

Eric

Stealing from God...Ballsy

Here's the website.

This is real church folks...not the multi-plex, christian ghetto you see in suburbia..

Eric

A Short History of the Church of England

...by Eddie Izard (Language and really bad makeup alert!)



Eric

Good Friday

One of my favorite songs of all time...The Choir, "Beautiful, scandalous night."

"Beautiful Scandalous Night"

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

Follow Christ to the Holy mountian
Sinner, sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flows
For you and for me and for all

CHORUS
At the wonderful tragic mysterious tree
On that beautiful scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful scandalous night

On the hillside you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross, justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that pours
From our blessed Saviour’s side

CHORUS

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

CHORUS


We sang this at our church last year. The pastor introduced it as a "new" song to some and I grinned widely when he announced the name of the song. Then I was too choked up to really sing it and just let the words and music wash over me as I felt the weight of what the words were saying and what Christ had done for me, a lowly, unworthy sinner.

Eric