I'm in the process of writing a book right now, also titled 'Lamentations of a 20th Century Man.' It's difficult to call myself a writer just yet. I'm more just a typist.

Trying to write a book does help me know and understand some things. I think 'I know why the caged bird sings,' and why guys like Hemingway and Joyce and Tennessee Williams drank so much. If they'd grown up Southern Baptist like me, perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps they would have had fewer demons and learned the finer things in life like sweet iced tea on a hot summer day. Then again, perhaps we wouldn't have Ulysses and For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Glass Menagerie, and our  cultural pyramid would be a mole hill. So, 'Salud' boys and girls.

Actually, I threw off my Southern Baptistness a long time ago, and have been trying to shed the skin of fundamentalism for several years now, and I've come to truly love a fine glass of Spanish red wine sitting near my computer keyboard. Saying that might draw sneers and shaking heads from some of the people I grew up with who believe that it is the very practice of that fundamentalism that will secure me a place in God's Kingdom. And of course, they'd be wrong. It is a belief deficiency, I think, that bundles God's Kingdom in a neat little package of all our own little arrogant ignorances. It certainly may still get those who 'walk that talk' into the Kingdom, but they simply may be the most surprised at who else is sitting at the supper table.

Whenever someone asks what my favorite color is I usually say blue, but my closet indicates an affinity for brown.

Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living (which is what all men, particularly, get asked) I never know what to say, but the first thing that always comes to mind is, 'father.' I am someone's 'Dad.' That seems right to me, and should be good enough. Whatever else it is you're wanting to know really isn't how I identify myself, and isn't something I really care to talk about.

When folks supposedly thought the world was flat, I assume that means they thought it was somewhat like a coin. They had to know it was 'round,' just like everything else up in the sky, just not necessarily global. It's the 'global'ness of Earth that I like the most.

So far, all I've heard is that every single human being on Earth has red blood. Dark-skinned people have red blood. Creamy skinned people have red blood. Gay people and Popes have red blood, and so do Tibetans and Greeks and Iranians and Mexicans and Eskimos and Republicans. All God's children have red blood, and in Genesis 1 (or maybe 2) it says that 'God made Man.' Doesn't say 'God made Creamy Man.' 

So it is perhaps our greatest sin that we walked away from the presence of our Creator and began a long journey around the globe, away from the withering fig tree and away from love and goodness, and immediately began speaking different languages and pointing out all the differences of those left in our wake. And, as Mr. Springsteen says, 'It's gonna be a long walk home.'

I wish I were taller, and I wish I knew how to spit and whistle better. I wish I could see the angels that I know are around me. I wish there were no such thing as money. I wish there were only five television series on t.v. and that they were all five as good as 'Breaking Bad' and 'House of Cards,' which I think would actually eliminate a great deal of wasteful channel surfing. 'Jeopardy' would, of course, always come on at dinner time.

I do not understand the significance of God creating Woman from Man's side, creating her second rather than first, but I do know that in most cases, Woman is His best creation, full of beauty and laughter and wisdom and innocence and sensitivity. The idea of not being lustful must surely have more to do with an allegiance to that journey back to Eden than it does with the one away from it.

I believe God loves us, very, very much. All of us. I believe He calls 'all of us' to return to His side, and see the plans He has for us. I believe we who are on the journey were given very simple walking orders; to love, to feed and care for the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the weak, and to love. And to love.

There are characters in the Bible (and they may exist in the Koran and Torah, as well) who look an awful lot like those today who call themselves 'believers' but whose energies are more often spent trying to legislate morality. They believe, and they will tell you so, that that is their calling. Even those who actively denounce this journey we are on don't always look quite as much like the enemy as those who see themselves as God's police.

I live in Albuquerque, where on almost any given morning of the year, a balloon might fly over your house. The seasons change at a fairly slow pace, and the oak and elm and aspen and cottonwood turn bright and deep gold and red and 'Amarillo,' Spanish for yellow, in autumn. The angels spend a lot of time here, especially in the spring, summer, and fall.

There are tender mercies all around us, and we would be better humans if we stooped down more often and became part of God's work.

It's gonna be a long walk home.

Jeff