The Shack - Argued

The folks over at The Kindlings Muse have a podcast up at their website discussing the pros and cons of the book "The Shack".

It's runs close to an hour but it's well worth the time. They make good points about allegory and story in modern evangelicalism or rather the re-discovery thereof...

Eric

I Blew It...

The Jehovah's Witnesses were out today, canvasing the neighborhood. I tried to avoid them but the old lady and her very young helper hung around until I popped out into the garage. I noticed them and quickly scooted back in. Too late! She rang the bell and I got to talk to...well...she did most of the talking.

Anyways...

She went on and on about how the earth was once a paradise and how God was going to suck all the evil people off the earth and how governments were killing the earth and how...well...the bottom line was she was well on her way to telling me that this earth, the one we are on today, will, once again, become a paradise for all of us to live on.

I said, "This earth?"

She said, "Yes."

I said, "This earth is going to be destroyed. A new heaven and a new earth will be created. Read your Revelations."

(Revelation 21:1
[ The New Heaven and the New Earth ] Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

See also....

Isaiah 65:17
[ New Heavens and a New Earth ] "For behold, I create new heavensand a new earth,and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.

2 Peter 3:13
But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.)

She said, "Oh" and then "Have a nice day." Then left.


What I really should have said was...

"We believe all life resulted from a giant sneeze by the Great Green Arkleseizure and we're waiting for the return of the Great White Handkerchief"....

That's what I should have said! ;)

Eric

$200,000 Mortgage for only $500 a Month!!!

You.

Stupid.

Git.


If you fell for this you bear some of the blame. But not all. Most of that goes to...well...watch this video. It explains it better than I can.




My bank, Wamu, with whom I bank and have/had my mortgage (we refi'ed last week with another lender) is now Chase. And Wamu's current CEO is getting his $18 million in severance. I'm going to his house to piss on his plants...


Eric

I Win.

My EDD appeal that is.

My former employer claims that I "willfully violated company policy" which, in EDD-speech is, "misconduct connected with work" which is defined as "...a substantial breach by the claimant of an important duty or obligation owed the employer, wilful or wanton in character (emphasis mine), and tending to injure the employer (Maywood Glass Co. v. Stewart - 1959)."

The employer has the burden of proving misconduct. Which they didn't.

The law goes on to say, "On the other hand, mere inefficiency, unsatisfactory conduct, poor performance as the result of inability or incapacity, isolated instances of ordinary negligence or inadvertence, or good faith errors in judgment or discretion ar not misconduct."

The verdict?

"It is therefore found that the claimant (me) was discharged for reasons other than misconduct connected with his work and he is not disqualified for benefits..."

So, I win.

Thank you God. Prayers answered. Wife relieved. We live to see Christmas!

Eric

I'm....

....thisclose....

Eric

One Man's Landing...

...is another man's non-landing.

I just got back from my EDD Appeal. My former employer, at roughly $600-$700 expense, flew my former Director of Operations, to Redding to explain the company's side of the story because, "there is no one at the Redding base who is familiar with the situation."

Pardon my French but....


BULL.

SHIT.

The Base Manager was part of the whole firing shebang. Lying dirtbags.

So the DO and I are trying to explain to the Appeals Judge just exactly what a landing in an airplane is. I was even accused by my former boss for not knowing the FAA's definition of a landing.

Huh?

What a crock!

So my former DO makes it sound like I was still "flying" when I raised the gear by saying I was not fully "landed" when the incident occurred. I, on the other hand, took what he said and refuted it. I had landed. All three wheels were on the ground. I had applied reverse thrust to slow down. I inadvertently raised the gear. I screwed up. Some have. Some will.

My former DO was chastised by the Judge for trying to bring up other issues unrelated to the firing. The Judge set him straight. The Judge also got the DO to admit he doesn't know if the pilot followed the checklist or not. (I did.)

All in all, don't want to go there again. It's a 50-50 shot now. It all depends on who the Judge believes when it comes to landing. But basically, my former employer painted a picture of me as a rule-breaking, non-conformist who willfully violated company rules and damaged a $2 million dollar aircraft on purpose.

I really wished the Judge had allowed the other issues to come up as it would have given me excellent opportunity to, once again, state that the Director of Operations, knowing and willfully, ordered me to order a pilot to violate Federal Aviation Regulations.

What really cracks me up is the company is spending money to defend themselves to save approximately $4000 in unemployment benefits. This is a company that spends 4-5 million dollars on helicopters. Then pays more to outfit them. This is a company that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in the aviation industry and makes only some of it back. This is a company that pays it's pilots damn good wages but is balking at $4 grand? Go figure.

I'm going to play some poker on the PS2 now to cool down...

Eric

Dinked By God

I've been reading Job lately. It has come up in my daily reading. It also dovetails with what I'm going through personally. (Caveat...while I've lost my livelihood, I still have my family, some money and better health than Job!) Even my counselor mentioned the connection. He called it...

"Being dinked by God."

And I didn't like hearing that. The God of love is now dinking with me? What the hell for!! I need to be dinked with ? What about all the others out there who really need to be dinked with?!! (Politicians, lawyers, terrorists and welfare-cheats come to mind!) What did I do to deserve such treatment? I mean, I was pissed!

Then he said something that confused me, pissed me off more and made me stop and think.

He's dinking me because He loves me.


For some of you this is a conundrum. An oxymoron. But it is a common theme in the Bible. Not just Job. Think of Peter. Thrice denying Christ after being told he would. Jonah and the first submarine ride. Jacob working 7 years for Rachel only to get Leah. Joseph being sold into slavery. (And what good Jews his brothers were..."No! Don't kill him. We can make few bucks selling him to this traveling caravan!") Jesus saying that you had to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Him to experience the good news. Paul, beaten 39 times three times, shipwrecked twice, stoned, jailed and left at sea for a day and a night. And he was the one God said, "you shall take the good news to the gentiles and I will protect you."


He's dinking me because He loves me.

And wants me to be something else, something better. And my counselor seems to think that God ain't done dinking with me yet. Severe turbulence penetration, termination from my job, PTSD, and rejected for unemployment all seem to be the latest means of dinkage from God.

I can look back throughout my life and see the hand of God's dinkage all along.

And it still pisses me off.

(I'm working on that attitude...really...I am.)

But I'm accepting it more each day. It's not easy (which also pisses me off) and it's not fun (which also...you get the idea). But it is needed.

I thought about it. The way God has been treating me. The way He uses it to make me grow. After my initial, "That's totally not fair" I realized I was doing the same thing to my own son. To make him better, stronger, more able to survive in the world. And I realized that my own Dad did it to me to make me better, stronger, more able to survive in the world.

I have to move beyond the anger and see what God is doing. And frankly, I can't see shit. Maybe the blinders are on. Maybe the anger is coloring things. Maybe the despair has bogged me down. Or maybe I'm in the fog for a reason and I need to trust that I will break out in time to see the lights and make a safe landing.

Eric

The Shack

As you can see from the sidebar, I'm promoting the book, "The Shack". There's been some controversy over this book (Check out Thunderstruck.org for other reviews.) One of those controversies is the fact that the book references God as a black woman, Jesus as a Jewish Laborer and the Holy Spirit as an ethereal Asian woman whose name in Sanskrit means "wind". There are those that have gotten all "het up" about the characterizations that I think they've missed the point.

Those characterizations are plot or literary devices.

You know? Plot devices? Like John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"? C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia"? Literary devices. Characterizations designed to portray or convey a meaning, not necessarily an actual representation.

And if you've read the book it works.

(If you haven't... you can stop reading as I'm going to explain some things but will stop short of giving away the whole story. But I'd prefer you to read on as I wrote it and think it's a pretty decent analysis!)

The main character, Mack, must face his preconceptions of God, Jesus, The Spirit, love, hate, and forgiveness. To give him a jolt out of his "Great Sadness", the writer knocks the legs out of his preconceptions by describing God, who goes by the name "Papa", as a black woman. The image is very reminiscent of the Oracle in the Matrix movies even utilizing pop culture references like having God reply, "let me know how that works for you" when Mack makes a statement about how he should act or respond to the tragedy that brought on his "Great Sadness".

And what's wrong with that? What better way to shake one's preconceptions of God the Father by portraying Him as a black woman? Theologically correct? No. Literarily interesting? Yes. Our idea of God the Father is biblical. And it carries a bunch of baggage as well. We tend to super-impose the characteristics of our earthly fathers on our heavenly Father. Which for some people is a good thing, for many it's not. But, as the reader, it does get your attention in the same way it gets Mack's attention in the book.

And what about Jesus as a Jewish laborer? Dresses like one. Smells like one. Has dirt under his fingernails like one. We, in evangelical Christianity, tend to like our Jesus as the long-haired, fair-skinned, hippy-type peaceful saviour. Not that there's anything wrong with that but we also tend to forget that before His three year ministry claiming the good news of heaven, he was a carpenter. A blue-collar worker. His fingernails were probably dirty. He probably has a few nicks and cuts from the wood. His thumb was probably a little mashed from getting smacked by the mallet a few times. He probably didn't bathe but once in a while so he probably smelled of b.o., wood, sap and pitch. Not exactly the clean-cut 3-year Jesus we like to picture.

And Mack has a hard time reconciling this laborer who likes to build stuff with the man who hung on a cross. And I'd bet, so would we. Because it busts the image we have of what Jesus looked like. (Read the book...please...there is a wonderful scene where the Laborer Jesus and the 3-year Jesus are reconcile and the reader's eyes are opened through what Mack sees!) It shakes our conception of a man who walked around, was all holy, raising the dead, changing water to wine, healing the sick and preaching the good news. We see him in our mind's eye as we see him in the pictures from Sunday School or in the back of our bibles...clean, dressed in white, hair and beard immaculately combed.

And the one that plays upon the word "spirit" in the bible. The Holy Spirit. We think of spirits as ghosts, hence the Holy Ghost moniker as well. But to portray the HS as an ethereal Asian who's name is Sanskrit for wind...we just can't have that heathen name attached to the Third Person of the Trinity now can we! That's sacreligious! That's...that's...

That's a literary device as well. How do you picture the Holy Spirit? As a spirit! Right? And yet, the Holy Spirit is God as well. There's a couple of scenes in the book where Papa and Sarayu remind Mack that they, too, were there on the cross. They, too, died for man's sins. They, too, experienced all Jesus experienced. And that gives Mack pause. And it should give us pause as well to remember God is 3-in-1. And to shake things up more, Mack notices that when Sarayu, the spirit, hugs him, he can feel her! And it's not some cold draft like you hear and read about. It's warm.

The Shack. Literary devices. Preconceptions shattered. All to help the reader travel the same road, experience the same experiences the main character in the book does. Is it the bible? No. Is it good theology? I'll let the theologians argue that. What I do know is that the literary devices work. It made me look at God in a different way. It made me look at love and forgiveness and sacrifice in a whole new light. It made me cry and laugh and appreciate the gift of written word given to us by our creator.

So read the book; not with an open mind for that just makes it easier for your brains to run out. Read the book with a broad mind. Expand your conceptions of God and love, forgiveness and sacrifice. And if you can't, let me know how that works for you.

Eric

PTSD...I Have It.

Yup...here's the story why: Story.

So I had my first counseling session regarding the incident above. Which also directly related to the story I related Here.

Why did it take me 6 months to seek help? Typical bull-headed, male-ego reasons. Thought it was something I could just tough out. You know, "this kind of stuff happens in this industry" etc. Turns out, screwed my up more than I thought...no...more than I was willing to admit. Once I did, my wife told me I needed to seek help. I found the DSM on-line and looked up PTSD.

DSM-IV-TR criteria for PTSD

In 2000, the American Psychiatric Association revised the PTSD diagnostic criteria in the fourth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR). The diagnostic criteria (Criterion A-F) are specified below.
Diagnostic criteria for PTSD include a history of exposure to a traumatic event meeting two criteria and symptoms from each of three symptom clusters: intrusive recollections, avoidant/numbing symptoms, and hyper-arousal symptoms. A fifth criterion concerns duration of symptoms and a sixth assesses functioning.

Criterion A: stressor
The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following have been present:
1. The person has experienced, witnessed, or been confronted with an event or events that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others.
2. The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: in children, it may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior.

Criterion B: intrusive recollection

The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in at least one of the following ways:
1. Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: in young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.
2. Recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: in children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content
3. Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur upon awakening or when intoxicated). Note: in children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.
4. Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
5. Physiologic reactivity upon exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event

Criterion C: avoidant/numbing

Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the following:

1. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
2. Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
3. Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
4. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
5. Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
6. Restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
7. Sense of foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

Criterion D: hyper-arousal
Persistent symptoms of increasing arousal (not present before the trauma), indicated by at least two of the following:
1. Difficulty falling or staying asleep
2. Irritability or outbursts of anger
3. Difficulty concentrating
4. Hyper-vigilance
5. Exaggerated startle response

Criterion E: duration
Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in B, C, and D) is more than one month.

Criterion F: functional significance
The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Specify if:
Acute: if duration of symptoms is less than three months
Chronic: if duration of symptoms is three months or more

Specify if:
With or Without delay onset: Onset of symptoms at least six months after the stressor

(All that's marked in red is what led me to seek counseling.)

Soooo...I have PTSD. Wonderful. Now I have to deal with it. My counselor, who said he'd wished I'd contacted him sooner and, looking back, so do I, said I have to re-tell the tale over and over again. Talk about it with others. Go back and fly planes on nice, smooth days. Realize that I'm alive, no one died, I had the shit scared out of me, no one died, what I went through was most likely a one-time experience, I'm a good pilot, I didn't do this on purpose, I will survive.

So I'm talking about it here. I will talk about it with my wife tonight when she gets home. I'll try to talk about it amongst my aviation peers.

It's amazing sometimes what can shake us to the core. What can rattle us to our foundation. Most of us see it on TV or read about in the paper or hear about it from others and silently, almost reactively, thank God it wasn't them. "There, but for the Grace of God, go I" is the phrase that I used to say. Now it is I who has gone there and, but for the Grace of God and a mighty updraft, I'm still here. We never see it coming. Or if we do, we can dupe ourselves in a matter of seconds that it won't happen to me even as the we see the word "GREYHOUND" two feet away. I used to think I could handle anything. That death didn't scare me. I knew I was going to die and yet I didn't want to. I fought it. I had two lives that were my responsibility on that plane. Yet, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I died it would be okay I just didn't want them to feel any pain. I didn't want to feel any pain. But I didn't die. I'm alive. And shook up. But there is hope, always hope.

"Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved." - Psalms 55:22

I have that on a sticky note beside my computer. I pray it every day.

Eric

Things I've Learned That I Already Knew

I belong to a web forum for professional pilots called ProPilotWorld. During one of the conversations about where aviation was headed, one guy wondered if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. His "name" was Spudskier. "Occam's Razor" had this response...

Spud,

There is no tunnel.

You are rafting down a long river. There are calm stretches of water where the scenery is gorgeous and the ride is peaceful and fulfilling. Sometimes these intervals of calm allow you to reel in many fish and savor the pure joy of just being on the river. You'll be Water Rat in The Wind In Willows. ("...believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing, half so worth doing as - simply messing around in boats!")

Other stretches are roiling Class IV rapids. You can't control where the river is taking you, or how quickly you'll move. You can try to steer from one side of the river to the other, but you might not be able to avoid all the rocks. Your butt will always get wet in the rapids, and during the particularly long stretches of whitewater, you'll find yourself asking, "Why the heck am I on this river!". You'll see others, in perfectly good rafts, go over falls that will destroy their rafts, and all their possessions.

My personal observations suggest:

1. The boats where everyone paddles together tend to do the best over the longest stretches of the river.
2. The paddlers who remain the most flexible don't get injured as badly when they hit the rocks.
3. Worrying about the rapids is sometimes worse than riding them.
4. It's a good idea to save as many fish as you can during the calm stretches.
5. It's possible to enjoy most of it if you can remember why you're on the river in the first place.

Good luck!

This got me thinking.

What have I learned recently that I already knew?


1. Never Get into Debt
- You don't need a boat and 3 cars
- You do need to plan
- You do need to take care of your family and home

2. You Can't Do Everything
- Pick something you like and stick with it
- You might not be any good at the those other things
- Some of those things might be good at but are just not called to do them

3. God Loves Me
- I don't deserve it but He chooses to look at me through Christ
- He shall never leave me forsaken
- He will provide my needs not so much my wants
- I may not be able to see the end of the journey but along the way I can know that God has not lost one yet

4. Wiener Dogs are Great Pets
- So are Beta Fish
- Gold fish, not so much

5. There will always be someone who is better off than you, worse off than you, smarter than you, dumber than you, older than you, younger than you, fatter than you, thinner than you, more righteous than you and less righteous as you
- Don't sweat it...they aren't you and you aren't them


I'm sure there are more.


On another note having to do with my post on WAITING, the lyrics of "More Power To Ya" by Petra have been rattling around in my head these last few days. Especially the part that goes, "good things come to them that wait but not to those who hesitate. So hurry up and wait upon the Lord..."

It's like I've decided to admit that I had blinders on and things I knew are being made known again. And I'm seeing them in a whole new light.

More later...

Eric