The Soundtrack of Our Lives--Part Four (The End)

I can understand why someone wrote the song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."  I began singing it in my mind as we drove across the San Mateo Bridge toward the City by the Bay.  The Bridge we crossed was about 5 miles long and the temperature at its beginning was 20 degrees hotter than at its ending.  It is amazing to drive that short of a distance and to see the thermometer in the car dropping with each mile you drive.  Driving in San Francisco was much easier than I had anticipated (at 2 pm) so we found the place where we would be staying, a nice small apartment that is owned by an equally nice couple, and began to settle in.  The apartment is below the owners' own house and opens to a garden that is a perfect place to relax with a drink so we did.  We sat for a while and enjoyed the quiet of birds chirping and water flowing in fountains as a gentle breeze blew around us.  It was truly an oasis in the city because the freeway we had taken to get there was only a few blocks away but you would have thought it was miles and miles away.  We had earlier bought some sandwiches at a local grocery store and sat on the grass in Balboa Park and eaten them so we felt pretty mellow, just enjoying nature at work in this wonderful place.

The explorer in me began to emerge, though, and I could not sit much longer than an hour or so without needing to get out and go so, having received instructions from our landlady as to how to walk across a pedestrian walkway suspended above I-280, we set out to explore and to find a park she had described that sounded as equally beautiful as her garden backyard.  My wife has a nifty GPS devise that can be used by those walking as well as drivers so we set it to pedestrian mode and began to receive its instructions as to how to find the park that was our goal for the evening.  The GPS must have decided that we needed more exercise due to our large lunch so it sent us way out of our way, up and down those famous San Francisco hills.  We saw the park in the distance, far in the distance, and decided that we preferred to take a street that we been told contained a nice little French cafe and bakery.  So, we put the GPS aside and began to walk down a street with nice houses broken up now and then by a business.  Soon, we were in a business area that had a variety of stores.  We did find the French cafe but after looking at its menu posted in the window we decided that we were not hungry enough for anything substantial.  A organic grocery store with a little sidewalk sitting area called to us and soon we had latte and tea and enjoying people watching for a while.  We walked around the store and looked around and decided it was a mini-Whole Foods Market that had some great looking items but needed few of them except for some milk and juice and cereal for breakfast the next morning.  Taking the sidewalk in front of the store, we soon learned that it was the most direct route from our B&B to the subway station (BART).  If we had taken that street instead of the circuitous route we had taken, thanks to our GPS, we would have been there much sooner, howbeit with much less exercise.

After a very nice night's sleep with an open window looking out over the garden and morning coffee in bed, we rose and had breakfast and then set out for the BART station.  Since we had gone by it the night before, we found it easily and got our tickets as easily and soon were on the train bound for the Embarcadero stop.  We emerged from the subway station with banks and other financial institutions around us and found our way  to the Ferry Terminal Marketplace, a huge hall with many small stores mostly selling food items.  We laughed at one shop that advertised it had, "Salty Pig Parts."  There was a cheese shop, where we would later return and buy some really great cheese (Cowgirl Creamery) and some salami to go with the sourdough bread we bought, and a Peet's Coffee where we bought two coffee drinks and sat outside on a bench to bask in the sunshine and look at the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.  There was an affectionate sea bird modeling for us whose photo I took just before he took off toward the sea.

We walked along the Embarcadero way toward Fisherman's Wharf intending to have lunch down there when we decided we did not have enough time to go all that way and still get back to where we were to meet our tour of the city at 2 pm.  We saw a diner car, the kind that they have in the northeast US where you can get some really great food, called Fog City Diner, and decided to stop in there for lunch.  It is adjacent to a park where people were making all kinds of music.  The food was delicious and both of us ordered the same item and enjoyed it tremendously.

We were directly on the trolley line so we waited for a while and caught a very full trolley to take us back to where we began so we could catch a van that would take us to a bus that would give us a tour of San Francisco for 2 1/2 hours.  I had bought our tickets online before we left home in order to save on them so we were picked up and delivered to the tour station and soon were on board a comfortable bus that drove us all around the city.  The driver was either Italian or Hispanic and did not have a complete grasp of the English language so it was a bit like listening to Ricky Ricardo describing what we were seeing but I could catch enough of it to understand and sometimes would translate for our other passengers, two of which were German/Italian people from Switzerland who expected some form of translation devise to help them understand but it was not provided.  We saw Fisherman's Wharf, a very busy place, and the huge park where there is an outdoor amphitheater where musical productions are held, as well as the houses called Painted Ladies that are Victorian houses in many colors.  The houses were featured in the opening of the 1970s-80s era TV show, "Full House" along with the park across the street from it.  We also drove through the Haight-Ashbury part of town that still looks about as wild as it did in the 60s.  We concluded our tour near Fisherman's Wharf where we walked around a while.

The best thing we discovered in Fisherman's Wharf was the Boudin Bread Company, that has been making sourdough bread in San Francisco since the city was founded and even survived the Great Fire of 1909.  We took the tour and read the history and chatted with a docent and sampled the bread before buying some to take back to our place with us.  Bread in hand, we walked along till we could catch the trolley again to take us to the Ferry Terminal Building once again to purchase our cheese and salami and then catch the BART train back to our B&B.  Once there we had a delicious authentic San Francisco meal sitting in the tiny kitchen in our apartment near the garden.  Peace and rest at last.

The last part of our trip was to Yosemite National Park.  We collected Bo and Bushy the next day and continued our trip.  We drove to the house we had rented which is just north of Mariposa, CA which is the western gateway to Yosemite.  Mariposa has a lot more businesses for a town that is not much more in population than Weimar, Texas but I suppose that is because of its connection to Yosemite.  It has a fairly large supermarket where we bought supplies to take to the house we were renting.  For three days we enjoyed the house and had a cook out, toured the area, even going to see one of my wife's cousins that lives in Fresno, and spending one day in Yosemite National Park.  I liked Yosemite a lot but it is quite popular with Californians and is crowded no matter the day you visit.  We encountered road construction quite often as we drove in the area and had to sit and wait many times, making it not as enjoyable as it could have been. The roads have to be fixed sometimes, though, so why complain?

The trip ended as it began, with a 3 day drive, across the deserts of California and Arizona, the vast wastelands of New Mexico and west Texas, and finally back home.  We drove over 5700 miles and paid a high of $4.95 a gallon for gasoline the last day before we left California (near Palm Springs).  It was a great trip and I would love to do it again.  This one was the sampler since we had never been to California or Oregon.  We enjoyed what we saw and did and found people out west as friendly as people back home.

The End....of the story of our travels for now....Who knows?  It may come up again someday.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives---Part Three

The house we rented near Bend, Oregon was really large, sleeping 10 easily, with an upstairs that we hardly used and two bedrooms downstairs.  It had a really nice kitchen in which we prepared many meals and a large living room with a wood stove for heat in case it was needed, which it wasn't, although the morning temperatures were in the 30s on all the days we were there.  Our two dogs, Bo and Bushy, had another playmate as our daughter brought her dog, Kiwi, which is our grand dog.  Kiwi is a Lhasa Apse, white with long flowing hair.  When she is laying very still, she looks like a little girl when you look down upon her.  Laura and Michael and Kiwi were with us there for four nights.  We explored the area together, going out to Paulina Falls and hiking the path to the overlook and then down to the floor of the forest where the falls lands.  We went into Bend and had drinks and snacks at the Deschutes Brewery which is the oldest microbrewery in Bend.  We drove down to Crater Lake and looked at it from every possible angle before returning and having a special dinner for Michael to celebrate his birthday (which is actually yesterday as I write this but we were not going to be with him so we wanted to celebrate early.)  Michael was very good at getting a fire to start in the outdoor fire pit and we cooked hot dogs and s'mores one night and sat outside and admired the stars above us.  After four days, we had to tell them goodbye as they left to return to their home in Washington state.

Doris and I and Bo and Bushy then set out for San Francisco.  It was quite a drive from Bend to the Bay Area so we broke it up with an overnight stay in Redding, CA.  We drove from Bend to the quaint town of Sisters and then over MacKensie Pass, which has a large volcanic field as you approach the summit from the east and a massive forest as you drive down the western side.  There were huge black boulders of volcanic rock everywhere and no trees on the eastern side.  There were trees everywhere on the western side, forming a canopy of trees over the highway.  The MacKensie River flows through the area between MacKensie Pass and the city of Eugene.  It is wide in most places and flows adjacent to the highway.  We drove through the scenic farmlands with produce stands here and there.  Doris took naps off and on as we drove along and I listened to NPR to stay focused on the highway.  I could have taken a nap too but someone had to drive and it seemed like I was nominated.

When we reached Eugene, we got on I-5 going south toward Redding.  We still had a lot of Oregon to go through and quite a bit of California before our destination.  We had not had lunch but kept putting off finding a picnic spot, thinking none were to our liking when we looked at them while driving down the interstate.  We finally got off at a gas station to fill up again, our last time in Oregon.  That is another thing about Oregon which is very odd.  They do not allow you to put in your own gas.  They and New Jersey (I was told by a gas attendant) are the only states in the union that forbid drivers from putting gas in their own cars.  Each time we bought gas in Oregon a gas attendant would come out and take my credit card and stick it in the gas pump (as I do many times each month) and then put the gas in the car and then give me my receipt that the pump printed out.  One time they actually washed the windshield as they did back in the 60s but most of the time that is all they did for us.  I never knew why they have that law in Oregon.  Is it because they do not trust their citizens to put gas in their cars?  Is it because people need jobs and that creates jobs in places where they are none in other states?  Is it because someone sued the state of Oregon over an accident at a gas station so they decided no one could pump their own gas?  I do not know but it feels very strange to allow another person to fool around with my car when I can do what they do just as well as they can.

We reached Redding just after dark and were ready for rest.  There is not anything very special about Redding although you can go to Lassen Volcanic National Park from there, according to signs we saw.  We did not, but we did pass Mt. Shasta again and I took some really great pictures of it just before sunset, giving it a rather pinkish glow.  We started out again for San Francisco the next morning and passed large groves of trees on which olives and pistachio nuts grew.  They must grow more nuts in California than anywhere in the world.  We saw massive groves of nut trees of many kinds.  We saw huge groves of olive trees too.  How great it is that California has such a great climate and fertile fields.  They really do supply the nation with much of its produce.

We passed Sacramento and took the highway that led to San Jose (Do you know the way to San Jose?  We do...the GPS led us right there.)  We did not go all the way to San Jose though because we were going instead to a little town called Sunol where a place called "Happiness Country Kennels"exists.  We had called ahead and made reservations for Bo and Bushy to spend two nights there while we toured San Francisco.  The webpage for the place looked great and I talked to a person on the phone from home before we left and they sounded nice but how do you know if a place is reputable just by talking on the phone?  Giving up our dogs to these strangers was a matter of trust.  So, we found Sunol and the kennel and took our little ones in there.  Bushy is never fond of going to the kennel and she begins to shake uncontrollably when she enters the door.  Bo just looks around here and there as if to size up the joint.  The woman behind the desk was all business, which bothered Doris.  She shushed us when we were telling her about our dogs and that made Doris a bit peeved.  I told Doris later that it was a cultural difference.  Texans tend to talk on and on and Californians are not as loquacious as we are.  Anyway, we soon left our canine cargo in the care of the kennel staff after taking them back and inspecting their quarters.  It was all clean and neat and the people receiving them seemed very caring.  So, Bushy and Bo were locked away in their little home away from home for two days and we were off to explore the City by the Bay.

Okay, I cannot finish it now, so look for more to come.    

The Soundtrack of Our Lives--Part Two

So, with Big Sur behind us, we drove on into the night to Sacramento and then the next day to Bend, Oregon where we met our daughter and son-in-law and granddog, Kiwi, for four days of fun together.  On the way there we had to stop off in Redding, California, to pick up hamburgers for our daughter and son-in-law from a burger chain called, "In and Out Burger" which they have in California but not in many other places.  (They are moving into Texas, I was told by the man at the counter when I ordered the burgers, so look for them in the big cities of Texas soon.)  Doris and I had two burgers ourselves and ate them at the really nice covered patio provided.  They were dog friendly so Bo and Bushy also joined us there and we enjoyed the food and sat on the patio as the comfortable northern California breezes blew around us.

Back on the road, we continued toward Bend, passing Mt. Shasta, one of the volcanic mountains of the region, and turning off I-5 at the town of Weed.  Yes, there is a Weed, California.  They even sell t-shirts that say, "I Like Weed" on them.  I was very tempted to buy one to wear around town but thought the better of it since I would not want to embarrass any of my parishioners.  We took the road that would take us directly to Bend and began our trek, stopping to change drivers at a rest area.  There we encountered one of those quandaries that many of us do as we travel.  An old grey custom van, rather beat up looking, was parked near the end of the vehicles in the lot. A woman was sitting on a bench at the rest area so that other travelers would have to pass her in order to get to the rest rooms.  She held a sign that said, "I need money.  Hungry and broke" or something like that.  I really got a bit peeved by her placement and as we took the dogs out of the car to walk them, I walked way around her so I did not have to pass her way.  I noticed a placard giving a phone number to call to report any suspicious activity at the rest area so I actually called it and reported her.  Now, I know I am supposed to be very sympathetic to the needs of all human beings but the rather cynical part of me took over and soon there was a California Highway Patrolman coming into the parking lot of the rest area.  He must have thought I was the culprit who called this in because he walked directly toward me and asked me if I did.  I gave him the information and admitted calling and he thanked me and began walking toward the woman.  By that time, we were finished with our business at the rest area so we got into the car and continued our drive toward Bend.  Now, before you judge me harshly for being unsympathetic toward this beggar, later on after we stopped for gas in the edge of Oregon, we passed another rest area and the same old van that was at the one in California was there.  You could not miss its distinctive appearance.  We guessed they must have left the rest area after we did and then passed us when we stopped for gas.

Oregon is a beautiful state but it has some quirks that were hard to figure out.  One is that the speed limit on their non-freeways is never more than 55 mph.  Coming from Texas, where you can drive 75 on Hwy 71 between Columbus and El Campo, it was hard to keep the needle right at 55.  Doris and I both would drive between 60 and 65 and we were regularly passed by cars with Oregon license plates.  We did not want to bring home a souvenir from Oregon that would require us mailing in some money once we got home so we tried to at least keep it under 70.  Oregonians did not do as well; most of them sped by us driving 75-80 or higher.  We reached Bend around 4-5 pm and found the house that we were renting for four nights and followed the directions given to us to get in--Look for a lock box, put in the code, and retrieve the key to enter.  So, I followed the directions to the letter and put in the key to turn it and the key quickly broke off in the lock, giving me the large end.  I could fish the skinny part out of the lock but there was no way to enter the house.  I had been given the phone number of a woman who was supposed to be the caretaker for the house but after repeated tries of calling it and still could not get an answer, I did not know what else to do except break a window to enter.  Doris advised against such action, and probably wisely, so instead we headed for the public library.

We found the library which was just a few miles away and entered wanting to use a public computer and noticed that the library closed at 6 pm.  The time was 5:55 pm.  So, we asked the library person to allow us to use a computer and explained our plight and she sympathetically said, "Sure, you can use a computer until 6 pm when the library closes."  I signed on and began typing as fast as I could, writing an email to the man from whom we were going to rent the house.  We found the house on a website called Vacation Rentals By Owner (VRBO) from which we had rented several houses before.  The man and his family lives in Georgia but they have this vacation home in Oregon and rent it via the internet.  I began to type an email to the man and was nearly through when I heard a voice say, "The library is now closed" at which time the computer simply turned off.  No warning or chance to save one's work....you were just finished.  The librarian sweetly came by to swoosh all who were at computers out of the library and we were out in the cold (actually not very cold) once again.

I remembered that we had brought our laptop computer but wondered if the library had wifi so that we could use it so we got it out and sat at a bench outside the library and got it going and sure enough there was a signal from the library to use.  Not knowing how long the signal may be available, I went to the mail site again and began typing a letter to the owner of the cabin once again.  This time I pushed send and off it went.  We found a local gas station/store and used their facilities and as we were driving back toward the cabin my cell phone began to ring.  I did not recognize the number but picked it up and the owner of the cabin was calling me.  He apologized for what had happened and said he was trying to get in touch with the caretaker and she would call me soon.  Then, he said he was calling from Bangladesh.  He was on a business trip there and was just leaving the place where he was staying when my email dropped into his IPhone.  Wow--how amazing is that?  Here we were in Oregon and he was calling from the other side of the world to tell us that he was trying to call a person in Oregon to try to help us.  Modern technology---we sometimes laugh at it and discount it but sometimes it is very amazing.

So, we went back to the house and waited around and soon a car drove up with a friendly young man in it who profusely apologized for our situation (turned out the key had broken before).  He opened the door and let us in and our Oregon adventure had begun.

Look for Part Three on a computer screen near you soon.....  

The Soundtrack of Our Lives- Part One

You know I have songs stuck in my head...it happens all the time and I usually can't get rid of them for a long time, and then a new song takes the place of the old song and so it goes.  We just returned from a two week vacation, a driving vacation to California and Oregon, and I had songs ruminating in my brain all along the way while we drove across the prairies and deserts and mountain passes of the West.  We loaded up our car with our luggage and our two dogs, Bo and Bushy, and all of their gear (they bring along as much stuff as our kids used to bring..gosh) and set out on our journey near the end of September.  We drove to Fort Stockton, Texas the first day and rested overnight before continuing on the next day to Phoenix.  ("By the time I get to Phoenix..." was the song in my head that day but I only sang it aloud one time.  I was thinking it a lot though.)  We drove across the prairies and badlands of New Mexico and Arizona, seeing the vast wastelands and open countryside, amazed at how much open land there is with fences near the roadsides but nothing on it.  If we could move many of those people in our most crowded cities to this vacant land, how much elbow room would they have?  Of course, why would they want to live out there in the nothingness unless someone put in some modern conveniences to lure them there?

We passed through Tucson easily and arrived in Phoenix just in time for the evening rush hour.  We learned that Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time like the rest of us so they are on the same time schedule as California during DST days.  So, they were two hours behind Texas and we gained two hours in one day of travel.  We fought the rush hour traffic in Phoenix and arrived at our hotel about 6 pm and after taking care of the needs of our furry traveling companions, I found the local El Pollo Loco that was next door to our hotel and brought back a bag of Mexican food to the hotel and we rested again.

The next day we got on the road with Ventura, California as our destination.  Ventura is on the west coast just northwest of Los Angeles.  It has that cool, comfortable coastal climate so we wanted to reach it that day and enjoy that cool air before heading northward.  One has to cross the desert between Phoenix and Los Angeles so we drove as fast as we could (speed limit plus 5) and saw lots of saguaros and Joshua Trees and other cacti that we did not name until finally we reached Indio, California, the first town you come to as you emerge from the desert.  We drove on and spotted Palm Springs, Thousand Palms, Palm Desert, and Desert Springs (a theme emerges it seems) until finally needing gas we stopped in Riverside and paid the first of our $4 plus per gallon fees for fuel ($4.23--which made me gasp but I got over it because the price only went up from there.)  We had lunch in Riverside and then got back on the road, bound for the LA area.

"LA is a great big freeway, put a hundred down and buy a car...." That sound began to pour out of me as I began to fight the famous LA traffic.  To be honest, I had great fear about driving around LA.  I had always heard it was the most terrible place to drive in the world and you wanted to avoid it at all costs.  We got our friendly GPS lady to take us just north of downtown LA so we could pass through Pasadena and Hollywood and other places whose names I had only heard but I had never been there.  Surprisingly, we made it okay driving through the LA area.  I found out that they drive just like the folks in Houston and Austin.  They drive faster than the speed limit, cut off other drivers, and weave in and out of the traffic so I did the same and much to the surprise of my wife who was holding on for dear life, we saw the Ventura Freeway and soon arrived in cool, comfy Ventura.

Ventura was the first city in California that I really liked.  I was so surprised by it.  It was definitely cooler than where we had come from and felt really great (high 60s).  It is an agricultural area and had fields with pumpkins in them.  We had dinner at a little casual seafood place where we ordered fish and chips and ate them at a picnic table outdoors fighting the cool wind and the sea gulls that had gathered to help us out.  The fish and chips were good but there were so many of them that we could not finish them off so we got a box of fish to take with us (the gulls got some of the fries) and then walked over to the seawall to see the Pacific Ocean in action.  The wind was a bit high so the waves were too and they came crashing onto the shore, just like in the movies.  The Pacific Ocean seemed rather threatening that day but I bet on a sunny day with low wind it would seem very welcoming.

The next day was our day to drive up Hwy 1, the Big Sur Highway.  We started out on Hwy 101 (a rock group from the 70s-80s had that name but I did not know any song of theirs to sing) and passed through Santa Barbera, which is a beautiful city with mountains to the east and ocean to the west and vineyards everywhere (I would love to return there someday) and soon saw the turnoff to Solvang so we turned east fore about five miles until we reached the picturesque Danish village.  Solvang is the Fredericksburg of California, except much larger.  Many buildings have facades that look Scandinavian since Solvang was settled by Danish pioneers who went west long ago and since they did not find gold they found tourism instead.  One can enjoy Danish pastries and coffee at a sidewalk cafe and stroll the streets looking in the shop windows and that is exactly what we did, walking our two dogs, who got admiring glances from passersby.  They were very good until another dog approached, and Bo, who never went to Obedience School, would jump at his leash and want to attack it.  We had to pick him up and calm him down and tell him that we were okay and he did not need to protect us at that moment.  He got so mad at other dogs who dared to pass by him.  We did not drink the coffee but we did buy pastries and ate them in the car as we left Solvang and headed toward Morro Bay.

Morro Bay is home to a huge rock, which is more like a really large hill, that sits hear the bay in the town of Morro Bay.  Scuba Divers and surfers in wet suits were jumping into the waters and soon emerging to wash themselves at the changing station adjacent to the walking path that we took from the parking area to the rock and back.  The rock is the center of attention in the town and has been a landmark to pioneers and travelers for centuries.  We walked the nice boardwalk there, letting Bo and Bushy use up some more energy and then got back in the car, bound for Big Sur.  The two main roads 101 and 1 divided soon and we were on the Big Sur Highway, going north toward San Francisco.  We took Hwy 1 and soon were on a two lane road with many stops for road construction and learned that once you are on the road you cannot get off of it until it ends nearly 100 miles later.

Big Sur has been in our vocabulary and public knowledge for a long time.  I had seen pictures of the waves crashing on the rocks down below all of my life.  I had heard its name through the years and expected it to be a tremendous sensory experience.  I guess I set myself up for disappointment.  It was not what I expected at all.  Perhaps that is because as one goes north and looks over at the ocean, there is a well constructed wall in many places that was built to prevent southbound drivers from falling into the ocean.  It does its job well because not once did I see anyone falling into the ocean on our trip but I also rarely saw waves crashing onto the rocks below because the well constructed wall prevents northbound drivers from seeing the ocean below except in the far distance where it is not doing anything except being the smooth ocean it usually is out in the distance.  So, the Big Sur Highway became this never ending series of curves and hills with occasional road construction thrown in that would not end until you emerged from it at Carmel By The Sea which was off of it.  I think if we had driven northward first on another highway and then had returned on Big Sur Highway we would have enjoyed it more.  Also if we had planned to spend a night along its way at a motel or campground and really explored the area we may have had a better time on it.  Our next trip there we will know what to do.

This ends part one of the journal of the journey.  Look for the next installment soon for the journey has only begun.  Much greater things are in store....

Getting Ahead in the World

What is the goal that most people have when they reach adulthood?  The main goal, even before they think about finding a mate or buying a car or a house, is making money.  Most people begin to think about what they will do in life to survive and have all the things that they desire to own.  This part of the decision making process leads them to the next...if I want to have all the things that I desire, then how will I get them?  Choosing a career that will open the doors to buying the things we want is a fundamental part of the process.

When I graduated from high school, I knew that I was going to college.  My father was a construction worker and I had watched him go out into the rain and the drizzle and the fog and the heat to do his job.  He went out early and came home late and most of the time came home really dirty and sweaty.  He had to take a shower as soon as he came home because of how grimy he was.  He endured the terribly hot Texas summers for many years.  One day he told me, "You had better get a good education or you will end up doing what I do for a living."  My dad was not ashamed of what he did to make a living for his family but he thought that his kids could do better than he had done because they had the advantage of educational opportunity that was not available when he was younger.  He had to quit school in the third grade because his family needed him to work on the farm to help raise food because the Great Depression had set in and the poor farmers in Titus County, Texas had to constantly farm in order to survive.  He and his brothers all helped out on the farm until finally the Civilian Conservation Corps came along and picked them up and took them to New Mexico to build state parks and roads and paid them 75 cents a day to work for them.  They sent home most of their earnings to help their family.

So, I knew I was going to college when I was in high school but I had no earthly idea what I wanted to do.  I loved language and learning and studying history and decided to be a history teacher.  I had a teacher named Mr. Puntes who had inspired me and I wanted to be like him in many ways.  I never even thought about how much money school teachers were paid.  I just knew I enjoyed learning about history and wanted to teach it.  I began my college career with a major in history but ran into the language requirement (four semesters of a foreign language in order to teach history in public school?) and soon changed my major to elementary education with a minor in history.  I took 24 hours of history instead of 36 hours but could teach more things meaning I would have more job opportunities.  So, I finished college and got my first teaching job and signed a contract to make the grand sum of $6000 a year for the first year.

I had a friend who graduated from the same college the same year but his major was environmental science.  His first job paid him $12,000 a year.  I learned as time went on that the value of what one did for a living was not based upon what one knew but the value was based upon how society valued that profession.  School teachers have been underpaid in this country and most likely in every country throughout modern history.  Perhaps there was a time in the ancient world when teachers such Greek philosophers were paid well but I imagine European teachers and in other countries have always been paid less than others in the working world.

I once saw a saying about teachers that said something like, "If you can read this, thank a teacher."  The truth of that saying is that everything one knows, one learned it from someone else who taught it.  Highly paid professionals in the health care world benefit from others who taught them their craft.  Even sports stars and those in the film industry learned from others so that they can do what they do.  We know what we know thanks to others who share their knowledge with us.

This week I will share a story from the Bible with my congregation that has Jesus lecturing his disciples about what it means to be the greatest person of all.  Jesus' definition of "great" does not match the definition that most people in today's world hold.  He said, "Whoever wants to first must be last of all and servant of all."  He then called a child to sit with him and said, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."  This was remarkable in the ancient world because children were considered to be nuisances and not really worth having around until they had achieved adulthood.  They were just mouths to be fed and trouble to be handled.  Jesus' welcome of children said that those who are the greatest are the ones who invite even the weakest and most troublesome into their presence.  Greatness is achieved, not by what you know, but by how you live among others in our world.

I am glad I was a school teacher for 15+ years.  I never made a huge amount of money but I learned a lot and shared a lot with others that I hope helped them.  Our lives are great when others can remember the kindness we showed them, the patience with which we listened to them, and the wisdom we shared with them.  "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" is a motto that was said in the teaching field many times when I worked in education.  I think it is a motto of life and living that is valuable regardless of what we do to make a living.

Easy Living

How good do we have it?  What a soft life most of us have, or at least in comparison to that of our parents or grandparents or others who lived in their generations.  Here in Texas, I live in an air conditioned home, drive an air conditioned car, work in an air conditioned office, and really hate to sweat unless I am exercising on purpose and then want to break a sweat to prove I have done enough exercise.  I live in a home that is all electric so when the power goes off I can do nothing except sit and look at the walls and maybe read a book  and hope it does not get too hot until the power comes back on.  Luckily, the water flow continues in the house because it is not dependent on electricity but everything else in the house is.

I have been very spoiled, my wife likes to tell me, because I grew up in a family that had air conditioning since I was 6 years old.  I have never known the unairconditioned life.  My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a home that has never had air conditioning.  Her family lived in a farm house built in the 1940s by her parents and grandparents and other relatives.  They all pitched in and built the house as a family project and the house today remains much as it was when it was built in the 40s.   There is no air conditioning and you could not add it because the wiring is not able to support it.  My wife grew up on a farm where they grew much of what they ate and she and her sisters helped to grow and pick the crops and sometimes sell them at a farmers market.  I was spoiled, again she says, because I rarely had to pick crops.  We grew crops just because we wanted to, not because our economic lives depended on it.  My dad had a job that paid him well enough that he could buy all the food we needed.  If we did not grow something, we still had plenty of food to eat, thanks to the local grocery store.

So, I guess you can say that I did have it pretty easy when I was a child growing up in the 1960s.  My challenges began when I graduated from high school and went to college and then went to college some more and began sorting out life.  Independence brings with it the challenge of supporting oneself and ones' family by grabbing ones' own bootstraps and becoming what one would become in order to live and enjoy what life offers.  The life I have now is partially due to the education that I acquired and the motivation to obtain that education, knowing that if I did not get a good education, then (as my dad told me) I would have to work out in the unairconditioned world around me (as he did).  I love air conditioning too much to do that.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."  (8:34)  What does it mean for 21st century Christians to "deny themselves"?  How do persons "take up their cross"?  For me personally, a somewhat middle-aged North American man, to deny myself does not require me to turn off my air conditioning or to do without electricity.  Instead, it speaks to me each time I have to decide whether I feel like going to the nursing home to see members who live there.  Will I go and put myself in that place where they live, leaving behind (at least for a portion of an hour) the world in which I exist or will I find an excuse to use so as not to have to fulfill my calling to that task?  The need to "deny myself" happens to each of us when we decide to act on behalf of another rather than doing what we would want to do as comfortable North Americans.

Taking us the cross is another matter.  It happens as we continue to live the Christian life as well as we know how and to act and speak and do as we think Christians would rather than in a selfish or unloving manner.  It happens as we pattern our lives after the Christ of the Gospels who choose to give of himself in every way rather than to take the easy way out.  Taking up the cross is a daily event.  Sometimes it takes deliberation but most of the time it is a natural reaction in life that happens because it is something we do because it is part of what it means to live the life of a Christian.  Taking up the cross is expressed each time Christians act as they think Christ would act while living among other human beings.

Is the life of a Christian easy?  Is the decision to be a Christian easy?  It may be in North America where Christianity is the dominant religion.  In fact, in most churches, we make it very easy for persons to become Christians and to become part of a local church.  We do not require a lot out of them.  Most churches simply ask people if they will be loyal to a local church and support it.  Some churches define being loyal as supporting the church with your "time, talent, and treasure" or giving your "prayers, presence, gifts, and service" but even those terms are rarely defined.  What part of  your treasure should you give in order to be considered loyal?  How often should you pray?  How much time is required?  We leave it up to the individual to make those decisions and answer those questions, as we should.  If the method of becoming a Christian is easy, then is the Christian life expected to also be an easy one?  Many people think so and think that when hard times befall them, then something has gone awry.  Perhaps at that moment is when they need to consider if it is the time to deny oneself and pick up the cross and follow.  The challenges of life may be the cross we all bear as we attempt to negotiate this life and what is demanded of us daily.

Just Who is This Jesus Anyway?

Jesus Christ lived about 2000 years ago and we still cannot figure out just who or what he was.  Christians and non-Christians alike debate his humanity versus his Godness.  The Early Church and those who followed them hashed out the various doctrines about the Trinity and each member of it and when they came to Jesus they even wanted to know what his body was made of and what he was like when he walked the earth.  Some thought that he was only human when he was on earth.  Others thought that he was only God, almost walking on a cloud.  They debated and argued and hashed it out until finally they came up with what we call "The Nicene Creed" in 325 C.E.  In it they finally declared that Jesus was "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father..."  They also decided that he was "fully human and fully divine."  I don't know how that works but they needed the assurance that even if Jesus looked like a human being, he had the divine spark working within him.

People have asked questions about Jesus through the centuries, questions concerning his childhood, his life as a young adult, his entrance into ministry.  People have wanted to know "at what point did Jesus discover who he was?"  Did Jesus know from the time he was born that he was the Messiah or did it gradually grow on him as he lived among humans and learned what humans were--the good, the bad, and the ugly?  Was Jesus just a regular kid, kicking rocks and wrestling around with his friends?  Did Jesus socialize with other young adults in his town or was he more of a loner?  Was Jesus shy as a teenager or was he the center of attention wherever he went?  Was his baptism the first time that he recognized his divine nature when the Holy Spirit descended upon him or had he known that he was "different" for many years?

Some of the ancients tried to decipher answers to these and other questions about Jesus through reading books about Jesus that never made it into the Bible.  Those "nonbiblical gospels" relate stories about Jesus that were so different from the stories in the four Gospels of our Bible that the compilers of the Bible canon could not include them.  The boy Jesus who could walk on mud puddles or make a mud bird come alive did not seem to be in the same category with the adult miracle working Jesus.  The sayings attributed to Jesus in some of the books do not seem to reflect the same thinking that is included in the Gospel record we have.

We still would like to know if Jesus' humanness dictated to him what he did more than did his godliness or if all things about Jesus were equal especially when we consider stories such as the one we have in this week's Gospel lesson from Mark.  The story is about a Gentile woman coming to see Jesus when he was in Tyre asking Jesus to heal her daughter.  Jesus was trying to get some rest so maybe she woke him up from a nap and he was fussy but when she bowed low and made her request, Jesus basically insulted her saying, "It is not right to give the bread for the children to the dogs."  People today may not mind if you compare them to their Yorkie or Schnauzer or Great Dane but in the ancient world, dogs were not our lovable household pets.  They were more like buzzards, looking for dead animals or people to devour.  They were considered nasty, unclean beasts that people would chase away and of which people were afraid.

The woman whose daughter was ill did not let Jesus' insult to her made her run away.  Instead, she replied, "Even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table."  Jesus must have felt reprimanded by this woman who crossed two social barriers to get to him (women were not to approach men, Gentiles and Jews did not speak to one another).  He told her to go home knowing that her daughter was well--and she was.

So, could the Jesus whom we consider to be sinless, faultless, "God from God" learn something from another human being that he needed to learn?  Could the human Jesus in his humanity, in the moment when his tired, weary body was speaking to him have said something less than loving to another human being and then learn from what he had done by way of a Gentile woman?

If Jesus was truly human and one who "was tested as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15c), then is it not possible that Jesus was a human being with human feelings and emotions, and with a body that got tired and weary and had aches and pains, as we do?  If such a Jesus was human in this way, then he could learn from other human beings, and I think stories such as this show us that part of Jesus that we need to consider.

As Christians we affirm the divinity of Christ, but we also have to affirm that Jesus had flesh and blood and bones and was biologically as we are.  Jesus had the help of the divine in what he did when he walked the earth but if he did not experience what other humans experience in every way, then how could God truly understand what it meant to be human?

I love television programs where characters are placed outside of their natural elements.  The Beverly Hillbillies had mountain folk who found themselves in the richness of Beverly Hills, California and did not know how to live in that place.  The aliens on Third Rock from the Sun were constantly learning what it meant to be human and to feel human.  The smart guys on The Big Bang Theory are always trying to decipher relationships without using a computer to assist them.

Jesus was not in his heavenly element when he roamed the earth.  He was just like you and me, just one of the gang trying to sort out what life was about.  Certainly he was special, divine, much more than the average human, but when he was murdered by the Roman government, his death proved just how human he was, blood dripping down that mechanism of cruelty to which he was attached.  He had pain like any other human being and knew what it felt like for a human to suffer because he suffered greatly.  Maybe that was the last lesson he could learn from others on the planet---humans sometimes insult and hurt each other in ways that cannot be described.