My favorite memory

She appeared at the far end

of the chapel in the woods

looking for all intents and purposes

like an angel.

Dressed in flowing white

and holding the hand

of her grandfather,

who had his best suit on.

This was the time

the only moment of life

when everyone would see me crying

but I didn't care.

As soon as they saw me

they all turned to look

and then the music started.

She was so beautiful

I couldn't hold back

the tears.

And now

fifteen years later

I'm so grateful

that I got to be there

for my own wedding.

It isn't easy being green (a recipe for instant but strange self care)

"Gross, Dad." The kids are not excited about the idea that they will soon be recruited into the ranks of the healthy. They much prefer to snack on pudding cups and English muffins. One of my daughters is allergic to wheat, so we seek to support her in any way we can. I drink a homeopathic smoothie every morning. I'm the only one in the house who hasn't been sick since before Thanksgiving. And now the rest of the family is starting to come around. My wife has decreed that we're going to get a case of SuperFood, and the kids are going to be required to have some every day.

My mother died at 62 of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease.) That horrible disease claimed her motor functions within a matter of months, and her life within a year of diagnosis. You can well imagine that I do what I can to stave off the onset of such a disease if, in fact, it's coming for me.

So what do I put in the smoothie? I'll tell you, it's a little unconventional. I also can't recommend this mixture for everyone. I'm a 40-year old man with a slight belly, so I take the prostate support version of this. You should contact a naturopathic physician in your area to get a more specific recommendation.

Before loading up the blender, I take a teaspoon of fish oil and a teaspoon of organic apple cider Vinegar (to support the function of the Pancreas.)

Anyway, here's the list of what goes into the blender: 

1. Half a cup of frozen berries, or one cup of fresh berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, or mixed berries) 

2. Three to five standard ice cubes. (More if fresh fruit is used.) 

3. One banana. 

4. Two tablespoons of raw pumpkin seeds. 

5. Two tablespoons of ground flax seeds. 

6. Two tablespoons of Dr. Schulze's SuperFood blend (contains such ingredients as chlorella, blue-green algae, wheat grass, and spirulina.) 

7. One quarter teaspoon of Human Micro Flora. 

8. Two Aller-C capsules. 

9. One B-complex capsule (with Thiamine). 

10. One half-teaspoon of buffered Vitamin C powder. 

11. Five ounces of Almond Milk. 

12. Eight ounces of Water.

I blend all this until it's creamy, then chug it down. I find that this concoction gives me more energy and boosts my metabolism.

When I feel like a cold is coming on, I up the dose of Vitamin C to a teaspoon.

So far, this method has worked for me. When I was sick last year, this smoothie helped me recover in record time. And with God on my side, the body heals itself like nobody knows.

Moving to Portland

The day dawned bright and sunny, a perfect California moving day. We were bound for Oregon, with the promise of closeness to family and a new, better-paying job. We had found a house under construction and were committed to purchasing it. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

I picked up my friend and we drove to the local UHaul dealership. I requested the truck I had reserved over a month prior.

"Well," said the cashier, "it looks like we don't have any trucks available for out-of-state one-way moves today." 
"What? I made the reservation over a month ago, and confirmed it last week!" 
"I'm sorry, sir, we don't have any trucks available to go to Oregon." 
We went back and forth like this for a few minutes, and I realized that I was going to either lose my temper and possibly regret my actions, or we were going to have to go elsewhere.

I felt cheated. How could a company do business like this? We made some calls and finally ended up with a great big, yellow Penske truck that drove like a Cadillac. The only problem was that it had to come back to California. So many people were moving away from the Bay Area in 2001; the truck rental companies had insufficient inventory to supply one-way movers.

My wife had gone on ahead with the kids in the minivan, and I still had a car to bring. My father agreed that he would bring the car and meet me halfway, when the time came to return the truck. Our great friends loaded the truck and wished me well. I rolled the door closed over all our belongings and set off. As I wished San Jose well, I adjusted my 34-year-old buns in the seat, and hunkered down for a 17-hour drive into the night.

I-5 is a trucker's paradise. These loud and long behemoths dominate the night, often trailing two or three boxcars in their wake. My majestic Penske, so bold in the daylight, became a doddering nuisance among the rightful rulers of the roadway. As they rumbled by, often at speeds over 90 miles per hour, I wondered at the lack of police presence on the open road.

Being graced with a relatively small bladder, I was forced to stop every 100 miles or so to relieve myself. I sensed an uneasy camaraderie with the truckers, once we were out of our vehicles and exposed like so many turtles without shells. They walked upright and urinated like men, although I knew they were human avatars of metal gods, released to earth for only a moment before being chained back into their thundering cages.

I drove through the night. When I felt drowsy, I pulled off the road and slept for 20 minutes at a time, grateful to be moving along without a real schedule. The next day, I pulled into Portland with bloodshot eyes and a fresh perspective.

My impression of long-distance moving does not mean the same as that of someone moving, say, across the country or around the world. But for me the move to Oregon rises among the memories of my life for a number of important reasons.

First, it was at a time that I had lived half my life in California and half elsewhere. I romanticized my early life in Oregon, hoping I could one day move back to my childhood home at the base of Mount Hood. But California represented freedom, and sunshine, and it was there that I sobered up for the last time to date. So it wasn't easy.

Second, this was the first real opportunity we had as a family to make a big move that would change our whole lives. Sure, we had enjoyed some success with jobs and homes, but this meant a whole new community and a different experience of family. My wife was ready to leave her matriarchal family and launch in a new direction. We had a false expectation of being able to connect with my mother on a longer term (she passed away a year after we moved) but a church family stepped into the void, and we have enjoyed deep and meaningful relationships with friends.

Third, it was the physical separation of my son from me (born to my girlfriend in 1990, the year I sobered up). I see him now on scheduled visits (and he has achieved frequent flyer status on Alaska Airlines) but there is an open wound on both of us from that separation that may never heal. My girls sometimes forget him in family prayers or wishes, and for that I am sorry.

But overall, the move has been positive. We have enjoyed increased health and vitality as a family, and have been able to address some long-standing issues with debt and emotional maturity. I recommend that type of move to anyone.

Vignette: Shame

"How can I possibly go on feeling like this?" thought Peter. He shook his head but he couldn't get rid of the thought. His mind and stomach were linked by a churning, writhing darkness. He felt like vomiting, and involuntarily lurched forward. The feeling was madness itself: the guilty, rotten overture of what he'd done, dripping like acid onto the soft, dying core of his very soul. Shame on you. Shame on you. The long-dead voice of Mrs. Fremont smashed against the sides of his skull, and he was blinded. Grasping in the darkness, he turned on the car's radio and feebly scanned through the stations until he found something old and soothing by Pink Floyd. He turned it up and took a breath at last.

Then it was on him again. The darkness overtook his mind and threatened to destroy him. "There must be something wrong with my brain," he thought. "This happened so long ago, and it still affects me so deeply."

His eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders tensed with the overwhelming stress of the shame. His head was pounding with the questions: Why had he done this thing? Where could he go? How could he have become like this, so demoralized, so weak and helpless? The remorse was immense, condemning, shaking its bony finger at him. Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.

Peter shook his head to reject the messages. He fumbled for the key and found the ignition. The engine roared to life, and as he gently eased the transmission into reverse, the dank fog in his mind began to lift. He pressed the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun violently in the gravel. He slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop, smacking the back of his head into the headrest.

Now he could take a good, deep breath. Peter looked out into the dark Oregon countryside. Across the road he could see a barn and some quietly shifting cattle. "No one out here but me and these cows," he thought with a wry smile.

The neon sign of the rural wrecking yard reflected in the darkened windshield. 24 HR TOW. 24 HR TOW. Shame on you. Shame on you. "That's enough," thought Peter.

He flipped on the headlights, and the reflectors lit up on the two-lane road about 40 feet away. He threw the car's shifter into gear and stomped on the accelerator. The muffler roared as he spun the tires in the gravel, all the way out onto the road. When the spinning wheels hit the smooth asphalt, the car careened right, then left, and then found its groove and leaped into the night with a howl of relief. He was headed south, Cherry Vanilla was wailing on the radio, and he was free. But still, he hoped that somewhere down the road he could find real freedom. Freedom from these thoughts, this shame that haunted his waking moments and sometimes even his dreams.

Judge not, lest ye be judged

When I was a child, I heard homosexuality condemned in the pulpit, and I read in the Bible about God's wrath pouring out on evildoers in general, and homosexuals (and others) in particular. I developed a pattern of discerning between "us" and "them." At one point as a teenager, I thought it was my duty to condemn those who practiced homosexuality. I was deathly afraid of anyone who purported to be gay, and I developed a vitreous rejection of that lifestyle and the people who practiced it.

When I was first trying to get sober from my own drug and alcohol addiction, I had another friend who I later found out was predatory toward some of my other friends, and even made an advance toward me. It became something of an uncomfortable joke, until one young man was deeply hurt by him, to the point of considering suicide.

When I was recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, I had two roommates that were homosexual. They became my friends, and although both of them relapsed into drug addiction, I was grateful to be friends with them during that time.

Last year, I heard about a ministry in Chicago that reaches out to male prostitutes. Their mission was announced on Dr. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" broadcast as "Emmaus Ministries." This ministry seeks to restore these men to a right relationship with God and other human beings, by going to where they are, walking with them, and meeting their deep needs.

Around that time, I started going to a church which had the stated mission of "Christ, Community, Culture." This is a Bible-teaching church which is serious about taking the love of Jesus to the folks who need it, including homeless people, drug addicts and alcoholics, thieves, liars, adulterers, students, old folks, children and families, prideful professionals, and yes, homosexuals.

Yesterday I heard a sermon about the mission of God, and it has begun to change me again. The pastor told us that it is not our mission to regulate sin, or to monitor anyone who sins. The entire sin issue was dealt with once and for all by Jesus, the perfect missionary. He completed his mission, and then as we learn in Hebrews 10, sat down to wait for his enemies to be made his footstool. The mission has been accomplished. Now Jesus is overseeing the spread of his mission.

The pastor also told us that lifestyle evangelism is a myth. That the gospel must be transmitted verbally. Of course, when our lifestyle does not match the verbal presentation, then no-one will want to hear us proclaiming the gospel. So when we look to Jesus, the only one who can say he did this life perfectly, we see the model. No other human missionary can be our model. And when we look to Jesus, and his healing and embracing of the lowest and most sinful people of his generation, we see that he was most condemning of hypocrisy and legalism among those who were supposed to be the caretakers of the religious community. How can we stand in judgment of anyone, when we know that Jesus died and rose again to restore us to a right relationship with God and each other?