The French novelist Marcel Proust once said:
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

If you embrace this concept and open new eyes to the possibility of discovering something new, you also embrace the danger of being a rebel, a heretic, a hapless dreamer.  When, finally, others also open their eyes to see what you've seen all along- then, you're known a a visionary.

You might live a lifetime in the silence surrounding you, as a prisoner, or worse.  You may face the inquisition, the scorn of the masses, even martyrdom for trying to share a glimpse of your vision.  All of those are far happier fates than closing one's eyes and dying the death of mental and spiritual blindness.

Are you a dreamer?  Are your eyes open?  Ask yourself, how many senses does a person have?  With what senses do we perceive our world?


Has the answer started a flood of thoughts and memories in your mind?  If you're like almost everyone you immediately think: "FIVE!"  Of course!  Five...  Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision....   

Six!  Balance.  The sense so often forgotten, but vital for us to move or even stand.  In such a small way, most every grammar school teacher has been usurped by the reality that there are more senses than the text books record.

But the books!!!  Why, if it's not in the books how can we trust it, embrace it as reality?

At least six senses.  My own count is at least seven when you include the sense of spiritual perception.

If one who sees with new eyes is called a visionary, what is one called who exists with a new spirit: a child of God.

Mark 8:22-26

Even after he was healed the blind man still had to open his eyes.  Jesus gave him vision but it was up to the man to open them and be open to the world that opened. 

Ezekiel 36:26

That is the promise of God to the world.

2 Corinthians 4:18

That is the start of the journey of the visionary.  Each of us sees a different part of this existence.  Our shared lives create the canvas upon which the story of eternity is written.

Do you have eyes to see and the vision to open them to the possibility of something greater?  Do you have a heart to love and the passion to give yourself to impart eternity in those around you?

<3

In one of those creative moments between sleep and being awake I had the following stream of consciousness:

Understanding God's mind and spirit are not easy.  No, it is like navigating a moving labyrinth, one that has walls and paths that are in constant change.  Should you get lost and try to turn around you might no longer find the path from whence you came.  If you turn forward again you might not see the path to where you were headed. 

If you stop in place the walls may close around you.  Then you will be forever lost in finding the path and be forced to climb high walls where others might just walk around.  Through constant progress, however, you will travel the maze, learn its ways, anticipate the change. 

You may never reach the end, have full knowledge of the many and varied paths, but you will be richer for the experience.  You will have journeyed where others have merely walked in circles.  You will become one with the experience and the labyrinth where others have fallen into madness and disillusion.

Like life itself, it is not (or at least shouldn't be) a pursuit of a finish or completion, but the pursuit of a constant and infinite journey.  (note that the above applies for the mind and spirit of women as well..)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

How about those family values?

Yeah, read it.  There's no small section that summarizes it so you'll have to read the whole thing.  It's worth it.

As if Mccain's continuation of the GWB plan wasn't enough...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/02/goldfarb/index.html
From the link above:

Bill Kristol today proudly announces that one of his Weekly Standard staff members, Michael Goldfarb, was just named the Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign. Last April, this newest McCain official participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Afterwards, this is what Goldfarb wrote about what he thinks are the powers the President possesses in our country:

Mitchell's less than persuasive answer [to whether withdrawal timetables "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?"]: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."

True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.

The gist of this is that McCain has appointed to a high position of leadership within his campaign a person who advocates "near dictatorial power" for the president.  If McCain is elected this person will undoubtedly be appointed to a high profile position in the White House.

Beyond that, take a look at McCain's record from 2001- 2008, voting for Bush at most every opportunity.  Four more years of the Bush doctrine is not what our country needs.  Food for thought.

This blog is for my sisters in faith and friendship.  It's a great quote I found randomly on someone's profile and thought it would be inspiring to share. 

After googling for it, I finally sourced it to Max Lucado:

'A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ
That a man should have to seek Him first to find her. '

When I read it I was just struck in awe at the beauty in its truth and simplicity. 

I just wanted to share that and say to my female friends to remember that and wait for a great guy to find you while he's pursuing God, and to my male friends to first pursue God with the faith that you'll find your girl along the way.

Peace and love.
dan

It came a couple days ago.  I had been expecting it for years.. well, that or a call or a visit.  It came, finally... the letter from my dad apologizing, telling me of life events that have finally, maybe, caused a change that will stick.

For those that don't know, my parents divorced when I was two.  My mom left my dad because of his issues with alcohol, drugs, and neglecting to be much of a husband and father.  We moved to Apison.  Between stints in local and state jails, he stayed in Chattanooga.  The last time I saw him, I was fourteen or fifteen.  The time before that I was twelve or thirteen.  The time before that I was about seven or eight.  I saw him just about once a year on birthdays from age four to seven/eight.  I only have a handful, literally, of memories.

The longest conversation we have ever had was when I was fourteen or so, all for about half an hour, which covered the usual cordialities of people who had not seen each other for a long time, but not diving deeply at all into what needed to be said.  Since then, there's been maybe a birthday card and another postcard or so, but nothing else until the letter. 

My mom was never trusting of him.  She didn't out and out try to keep him away, but she certainly didn't invite any reconcilliation process. So, I didn't expect much until I was eighteen anyway.  That was almost seven years ago, though.  Nothing but a post card in that time until now.

The letter starts out with him saying he had wanted to write it for a long time but did not know what to say.  He goes on to say, something I already knew, that his life was filled by alcohol and drugs for so long.  I'm sure some of you all can relate, but most of you can't.  Most of you have no idea what it feels like to have a parent love alcohol and drugs more than you.  Anyways...  my dad continues on about some of his ins and outs with the law and jailtime, about recovery and relapse, recovery, relapse, repeat...

In the second page of the letter, my dad tells of recent health problems he's had while in state prison- two heart attacks in the last four months, surgery, and being bound to a wheelchair now.  He writes that the doctors say it's probably permanent, but he hopes to walk again.

The rest of the letter asks the questions you would expect, asking if I'm married, if I have kids, if my brother has had any more, how my mom is, can we send some pictures.  He writes he is sorry for all the things he did not do, for not being the father my brother and I deserved.  He writes that he took after the father he never had and took to the bottle like the father he never had.  Near his close he asks me to have a "chance to know the man I never knew as a child."

 

 

You may have noticed, or maybe not, that there is very little emotion in this entry.  It's not as if there were no tears reading the letter.  There were.  It's just that have such a thick wall of scar tissue over this wound in my life that I don't know if I can take being wounded over and over again.  But, I digress…

 

My dad didn't give specifics beyond saying his sentence ends next year, but looking up his prisoner number online confirms he is eligible for parole in April of this year and the sentence is over in March of 2009.  I've long expected this letter and the start of this journey.  It had been one of my greatest fears of the man to die without having started it.  There have been countless times in the last seven years I have wanted to find out where he is, but I've always been unable to take that step.  I expected him to be older, hopefully a bit sobered (literally and figuratively).  I knew he would likely be somewhat frail due to the effects of substance abuse over most of his fifty years and jail time that probably totals five or so years.

He's taken that first step.  I certainly will respond back and take another step with him.  While I've long waited for it, the long wait has made one thing almost unbearably difficult- how do you act as a son to a father who has never been that?  The things that a father does for a son, teaches to him, imparts to him, those things I've come about through a haphazard life.  How do you call someone "dad" who offers you none of the things a dad gives a son?  How do you respond to a repeat felon, recovering drug and alcohol addict, dead-beat father when you are the opposite, when all you've ever wanted is to be the complete opposite?

 

This isn't as if he's returned to me in my young teens, when he still can give life lessons to help me be a man.  I'm in my mid-twenties, solidly employed, well educated, well respected by everyone that knows me.  Though not yet a parent, I have been a mentor for others.  Strength I have found through various means I have already passed on to other, younger men.  Except for being a father and husband, those things I most sought out and missed having from him I've already become and shown that way for others.  Even those remaining things, being a great husband and father, he cannot teach me.  He can show his own failed examples as a tragic warning, but I already know those lessons.

 

I look around me at my friends, most of whom have great dads, and I know they can never fully understand.  My friends, mostly still in their mid-twenties or younger, are still able to look at their dad with a deep sense of awe and respect.  They are able to look at the journey of their fathers with the hope of filling those shoes and being able to be a man worthy to be called their dad's son.  I look at my dad, or at least the remembered image I still have of him, and ask if there is any possibility that he will ever be a man worthy to call himself my father.

 

If I look or seem distant or pensive to you, know that it probably isn't about you, but about trying to respond to my dad and how I try to find sense in things.

<3 to all

    Well, do you?  Do you speak and understand it enough to really be up in arms about people who don't?  Why are you up in arms (what does it really cost you personally)?  What is it that you like about English that makes anything else inferior (or is it that you just see non-English speakers as inferior)?

    So many questions.   This topic stems from an online conversation between various people on a wireless industry related forum that I visit (not phonenews...).  Since it's one of the few places I visit anonymously, I'll just use some paraphrasing of that conversation.  Among the things said by various people, "I refuse to talk Spanish." (You must mean I refuse to speak Spanish. Perhaps you should look into Spanish, it's easier to learn and English clearly isn't your forte.)  "I'm a jerk that believes if you live and work here you should learn English."  (Well, I believe that you should make an effort to learn the host country's language, no disagreement there.  However, I'm not a jerk about it as you so self-righteously describe yourself to be.)  "I'm close-minded, but other countries don't tolerate this."   (So, how do you know this?)  (list of various countries...) they'll tell you to piss off."  And finally, "I've never been out of the country, but I can't imagine anywhere being as tolerant as we are."  (eye roll)

    Yes, so super tolerant!  The people in that conversation seemed completely oblivious to the fact of how multi-lingual most of the rest of the world is.  They must not know about how if you are in France you learn French, some German, a bit of Spanish... oh, plus a little language called English.  If you are in most of the developed nations of Europe this is the pattern, you learn your language, plus enough of your country's neighbor's languages to get by, plus English.  In Asia, you learn your language, plus at least a little of your neighbor's language, plus English.  Around the world, it's the same thing.  Many Americans, by contrast, seem to have developed the duality of miseducation and intolerance that says, "If you're in my land you damn well better learn my language, but I already know English so I don't have to learn anything else."

    Sadly, much of those who believe that would never be able to construct that sentence on their own.  Perhaps we should have a new rule for immigration- if you are not developmentally disabled and still can't properly use your own native language after thirteen years of publicly funded education, then you either shut up about immigrants and foreign languages or we trade you for one of those immigrants who is actually going to try, immigrants whose kids will undoubtedly speak English better than your kids in about ten to fifteen years.  That seems like a fair compromise, no?

    After complaining about the language, they usually move on to, "they take our jobs."  Really?  Do they?  Seriously?  For realz, yo?  Whose?  So, your job security is threatened by an immigrant fresh into America who speaks little or no English, who has minimal job skills except for raw manual labor and a real desire to work hard and be productive.  Wait, come to think of it, the desire to actually work and be productive might actually scare some people...  But, I digress.  If you are American, if you have any education or any work experience then you should have nothing to worry about.  You aren't "competing" with immigrants for your job, they are doing jobs you don't want. 

    My brother is a carpenter, a job that many immigrants are taking up.  Is his job in jeopardy?  No, most decidedly not.  Having education and lots of experience, those immigrants turn my brother from a lower tiered worker into a supervisor.  My mom has an eighth grade education and cleans for a living.  Is her job in jeopardy?  Again, the answer is no.  While having limited formal education, she speaks the language and has decades of experience that make her nearly indispensable to her employer.  Coming from a working poor family that has worked its way all the way up to lower middle class, my family should be among those most threatened by immigrants.  Yet, we are not.   We are a family that actually works, though, and doesn't make excuses about how other people interfere with our jobs.

    So, why then, do people not like the Español?  I'm still waiting for reasonable answers to that question that don't involve self-righteousness or veiled racism.

 Both GW Bush and Hillary Clinton, among others,  are trying to come up with solutions to the depression in the real estate market caused by rising foreclosures among those with sub-prime and adjustable rate mortgages.

For anyone not familiar, a few years back the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to record or near record lows in order to stave off a mini-recession when the tech stocks dwindled the stock markets from their turn of the millennium highs.  While that was a good move, it went too far and was kept their for too long.  Mortgage and real estate companies, sensing the opportunity, created new types of loans to attract people with the new cheap and easy money (read- debt).  Brokers, mortgage officers, etc all helped fuel this debacle by lowering credit history and income requirements, extending oversized mortgages to those with undersized payment and money management capacities.   Their primary instrument for this was the rise of the adjustable rate mortgage as well as interest only loans.

A normal mortgage says, "you will pay me principal plus x% interest for x-years."  An ARM says, "don't worry about anything, the first two to five years you'll pay interest only, easily affordable."  The problem with this is that many of these loans your payments are actually less than the interest rate, resulting in what's known as negative amortization.  You'd pay and pay and pay those cheap monthly mortgage installments and after a year your principal owed would actually increase because you gave less in payments than the overall interest rate.  Your hope was to "flip" the house and property while the real estate market was still "hot" and you'd never have to worry about that pesky little problem two to five years from your move-in date- the moment your interest rate jumps from that low intro rate to 10, 11, 13, 15%.

When that happens, you see your monthly payment jump $300 or more, sometimes much more.  Suddenly, that cheap and easy house you thought you had has become a stress inducing, money devouring, bankruptcy dealing monster.  You try to flip the house as your real estate agent and loan broker recommended, a ploy that sounded great way back in the early 2000's, but, sadly, that "hot" market was only hot because of those just like yourself.  Now, the market isn't just dry, it's Death Valley parched.    Not only is your mortgage suddenly hundreds more per month, but the value on your house has plummeted 10- 25%.  Even if you had a buyer in this Brave New Market, the new market price for your little gem of a property is significantly less than what you paid for it, while you have little or no equity in the house you've been paying only interest on for the past couple years.

Sound dire?  You bet it is for tens of thousands of home owners and families, maybe into the low millions.  That's where the government is now wanting to step in, given that it's campaign season and all, to try to help their fellow voters Americans.  In varying ways and to different degrees, politicians who ignored the buildup of this mess now want to come along and play rescue ranger, fixing interest rates for loans that are now out of control.  It sounds great at first hearing, "keeping interest rates and loan payments affordable for working families," but it fails to allow our market economy to correct itself.  It gives an easy out, comparatively at least, to the owners who signed ARM loans, to the loan companies that wrote them, and to the investment banks that gobbled up the loans in investment vehicles.

Imagine a street where responsible Joe signed a normal static-rate mortgage on a house he could really afford, and his neighbor Tom, who signed a teaser ARM to get into a house 150% of what he really should have.  For two to five years now, Joe has paid his mortgage on time and kept his household together responsibly.  Tom, on the other hand, only had to pay a portion of what he should have and he blew the rest of his money on a fancy vehicle and all kinds of random toys.  Imagine that this market crash comes along, then these Federal bail-out plans, a bail-out plan that lets Tom keep his house at the lower rate he never really qualified for, keep his toys, and effectively to have paid less for the last few years than his responsible neighbor Joe.  Joe doesn't get anything out of the bail-out except for the nagging sense that if only he had been more rash he might have gotten himself all those toys and then signed up for his bail-out, sealing in a new fixed percentage.

Now, there are indeed thousands of people who are victims of predatory lending practices, people who signed on the dotted line but really had no clue what they were getting into.  This bail-out helps them, for sure, but it does nothing to the companies that engaged in those practices.  Their customers get bail-outs and can keep paying them, so those companies make their profit one way or another.  The bail-out has another unfortunate effect- it gives little or no discouragement to companies in the future who might try to repeat the behavior.  If these companies had to deal with their own bankruptcies, it would show the whole system that it isn't something tolerated to scam consumers and run off with all the profits while the government fixes everything up.

That isn't how a healthy free market economy works.  In a free market, those who invest poorly should pay for it, restoring balance.  The cost of housing was driven through the roof, several times, in the rush of years past.  Now, the best hope in restoring that balance is to let those prices fall back to the reasonable levels they would have been without these ARM's.

If you bail out too many people, you keep the housing values artificially inflated, effectively pricing responsible potential home owners out of the market- potential home owners such as myself.  When the housing bubble started I didn't know much about real estate, being about eighteen or so at the time.  At the height of the heights, though, I could have easily jumped onto the bandwagon.  I had and have great credit plus a good paying and stable job and could well have gotten into the boom.  I didn't know then what the extent of the situation was at the time, but I did know exactly what ARM meant.  It was pretty simple to understand- pay less now and pay a lot more later.  That wasn't something I was very interested in, so I stayed out of the housing market.  Now that the bubble has burst, those such as myself might be priced out of the market unless some of the ridiculous prices fall to more reasonable levels.

Here's to the hope that our government understands these concepts and cares more about the long term health of the real estate industry and our economy overall than about short term, campaign season gains.

...dan