You know, even in the midst of what I believe to be significant issues within our country, serious moments within our family, challenges before us for all of us to face I still stand in total jealousy of any major city that can boast a winner in any sport.

How can it be in 200 hundred combined years of Chicago team baseball that we have exactly one, that’s right just ONE, World Series champion.  Unbelievable.  Pitiful.  Sad.

How can it be that every single time our supposedly professional football team plays in a big game against their rivals to the north they lose- usually by a lot or in the last minute of the game.  Unbelievable.  Pitiful.  Sad.

At least we had the Bulls in the 1990’s (I wasn’t here, I was living in Florida at the time), the 1985 Bears (I was likewise living down south), the White Sox in 2005 (I was at a sales meeting in California at the time, the final three games of the Series sweep), and the Blackhawks in 2010 and 2013 (I was here for those at least).

In the end what difference does it really make?  Except for the fact that this year I watched the final two games of the year with one of my sons and watched the Bears lose 54-11 and then, today 33-28.  Unbelievable.  Pitiful.  Very, very sad.  They missed the playoffs and the team to the north did not, thanks to this single and unbelievable and pitiful and sad game.

But tomorrow is another day and 2014 is another year, a new year, and I hope that it is all that I hope that it will be for me and my family.

I hope the same is true for you and yours as well.  And, sorry to all you folks to the north, but I hope your team loses to the team from San Francisco next weekend.  Somehow, and unfairly so perhaps, it will make me feel a bit better.  Hell, a lot better.

For now I just swallow a bitter pill- again- and I trust that after today the world will continue to go on.

Sorry for the weak entry but I did not have time to enter anything this morning before the game that I almost swore not to watch- for obvious reasons.

Here’s to Monday.  Here’s to next year.  A very common wish here in the Chicagoland area, year after losing year.  Pitiful and sad but really not unbelievable anymore at all.

tick tick tick went the clock  beat beat beat went my heart   bang bang bang went the gun

when is it okay to show your hand?  when are you allowed to speak your mind?  when is it permissible to state your case?  when can you really show your true colors?    how long does it take to bide my time?  do I immediately rest in peace or is there a restless period that precedes it?  how does the sublime exactly become the ridiculous and when, precisely, does mourning become electra?

sitting on a snowflake, waiting for the bands to come.  i think that my mind has done its time and that it is now time to move on.  but to what and where and when?

simple silence broken now by words conveyed

hardly spoken to one whose time had gone but somehow wrapped in magic

returned for a single chance to reconvene with its progenitor-

at then once creation done and set upon, the course, the course remains

for all to see not clearly, not fully, not simply but still

driven and replayed.

over and over and over and over again

as I was talking things over with king arthur he made a very interesting observation about life in camelot.  he told me that while all the knights believed they were of equal voice all about the table-round it was not actually true and had never been true.  he made them believe it in order to keep the peace until he had established complete command and control and then any individual dissenter would be dealt with by the rest of the table dwellers- a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye and a knight for a knight-he was then able to consolidate his power across the lands and make his word divine law in all places.  in all things of any importance he was king and lord.

that was then and this is now and I have no completed idea of whatever happened to the king but I do know now that all that he believed in and held dear has survived to this very day and is even indeed and in short thriving beyond what even arthur might have imagined in his wildest imaginings.

for today it is not as obvious but a much more insidious and in total completed type of control that the lord and king seeks to have and is developing over his subjects.  they do not even know in most moments  that they have in fact been assumed and consumed by the long fingers of the tightest control yet made possible.  of life and limb of living and dying of all that is of any even slight consequence to the masses does the magistrate now reign supreme and gladly and calculatingly so.

thus have we come and here do we roam to and rest upon.

all may not be well and all may or may not be lost but it stays stubbornly true that it has come to pass and come to stay.

we opened the gates and it is we who had brought the wolf then to our door and across our threshold and into the open hearth of our very abodes.

and it may now appear that there is no escape.

The year grows short.  2013 is running out and there is so much that was not done, not by many, not by me.  There are still 4 days left though.

I really hope that the new year is better than this past one.  It wasn’t a horrible year, just not a good one in a number of ways.  Still, for every bad thing that happened I think I can balance it out with something at least partly positive, maybe even a bit more so.  Maybe the final accounting does not balance completely but it comes closer when you try to spin it positive.  Even if you know you’re spinning it there is something about it that makes you feel at least a little better.

And sometimes feeling a little better is all it takes to make the next day, or week, or month, or even year seem a little better in advance.

What have you done in 2013?  What will you do in 2014?

I need to be a better dad and husband.  I need to shut up and listen more, like I used to before I figured I knew everything.  I need to eat better and exercise more regularly of course- probably like most everyone else.  I should be a little less up tight and worry less about things that just really don’t wind up mattering much.  I want to get my new businesses started and I want to be successful again.  I want to not worry about money, and life, and things as much as I have these last 12 months.  Relax and enjoy what time remains for me.  I want this coming year to be a happier one for my wife and kids and the small remaining families that we have.  I want my kids to excel in school, in music, in drama, and in the sports they choose to continue playing.  I want every day to be one that we can all remember with some degree of happiness and gratitude.  For nothing is promised or held firmly in writing for any of us and tomorrow may not come for any one of us.  That is what is life and has always been.

I want my life to amount to more than it has to date and I know it’s not too late for that if I just have the time and if I just work as hard as I need to, as hard as I know that I can.  I want to set goals and then accomplish at least a good number of them.

Outside my kids are building a snow ramp so that they can sled down the short hill on our yard and then catch some air and fly through it with excitement and big smiles.  And the sun is out and shining on all that white snow out there and it is bright and a beautiful day.  It was foggy, very foggy, this morning but it seems that now God is here.

That’s the way I would really like for my life to be like from here on in, starting in 2014.  Build the ramps and catch the air.  Enjoy and laugh and smile and just be so glad that I have what I have, to realize always that I have had a good life and may still have some very good and wonderful times and years yet ahead.

Since I want to believe that then I will.  How I look at it and how I feel about it is, in the end, up to me now isn’t it?

And it’s the same for you too- you just have to believe.

I failed to make an entry yesterday.  It was Christmas and I guess the day just kind of got away from me. 

Did you have a nice Christmas day?  I think that we did though it did snow.  Again.  I’m just waiting for my climate here to change.

This is that sometimes strange, quiet time between Christmas and the new year.  It is a time to reflect on the past year, on the holiday season we have been having, and on what it is that we will try to make different about the coming new year, 2014.

I really do believe that 2014 is a most critical time for our country, for our future.  It is a mid-term election year and one in which I feel we will vote to decide what kind of country we choose to be.  We won’t be able to fix all that is wrong, that’s for sure, but we may be able to stem the waters that are rushing now upon us and threaten to take us so far down river that we may never be able to return.  It is THAT important as far as I can see it. 

You have to be ready to state your position next year America- stars or stripes, left or right, progressive or conservative, Democrat or Republican, slave or freeman.  It is THAT important as far as I can see it.

I will have much more to say on all this over the next few days but, for now, take a moment to take stock in what is really important to you and your family, to you and your friends, to you and your livelihood, to you and your church, to you and those out there like you.

And after you have done that ask yourself who is really seeking to lead us, to head us in that very same direction.  And I do hope that you decide that direction is one of returning to the type of country we had once been and the type of country that our founders had originally intended and from which we have strayed so far and for so long. 

Funny thing about creating a monster is that it always seems to end up turning on its creator and devouring him in the end. 

Let us vanquish our monsters and return ourselves to what we should have become by now.  And that is not a country taking the long, slow walk, the final walk, toward its prescribed and final destination of doom.   That should not be us, it should never be us.

I for one will stand up.  I for one will, having now wised up, rise up and seek to bend the path of our unfortunately obvious future. 

Will you wise up too America? Will you, CAN you, wise up and then rise up along with me and others like me?

It is not yet too late.  There is still time for us to take back that which has been wrested from us these past many decades.  I at least hope so for all our sakes.

Do you hear what I hear?

Do you see what I see?

Do you know what I know?

If Jesus was real, and I believe that He was, I guess I wonder why He came to earth when He did.  And, also, why He had not come before then or why He has not come since then. 

Surely if there was a time when He was needed it would have been sometime in the last 100 or so years.  Right?  Like, we could really use Him don’t you think?

Has He come again only to be ignored?

If He was killed by the Romans as history indicates, is it possible that He has indeed been back and was killed, like back then, before He had a chance to make His presence known? 

Is it possible that He is here now among us today or has been here over the last millennia, simply biding His time until the time is truly right?  And if He is God why would He have to show up ahead of time?   In fact, why would He have to come here at all?  Couldn’t He just fix things remotely?

It is a wonderful story and it has inspired not a simple few but millions, probably billions, to believe over the last two millennia.  Who am I to question any of it?  And why would I do so?

Don’t get me wrong, I do so want to believe- and I do believe, in something- but the story is so simple as to not be believed.  I just have too many questions and, therefore, too many doubts.

I guess that I have always felt this way but did not really express it. 

I know that true faith is the ability to overcome your doubts and reservations about things, about people.  I know that it exists even when we say we trust those who have proven themselves not to be trustworthy.  It is faith and faith alone that prevails in such cases.

Where is my faith?  Have I lost it?  Why?

I envy those who believe without reservation.  At least they say they do and who am I to doubt them?

I want to believe because if I don’t then what is it that I really have left when all else is gone, my life included?  I don’t want to be damned for doubting but I have to be honest.

I do so want to believe that this is not all there is but, if there is more, then when does it ever end?  Never?

When I was a young child in a Catholic grade school the nuns taught us about the Holy Trinity.  But why are there three Gods needed and which one has the final vote?  Those types of questions always messed me up.

They also taught us that God is like a circle- He has no beginning and has no end.  I would try to fall asleep with my mind running around that circle, endlessly, never finding the start or finish.  And man did that ever mess me up.

Guess I am just forever messed up.

So please believe and pray for me that one day I too, again, may do the same. 

I love You Jesus.  And Merry Christmas.

This time of year always reminds me of Mr. Priestly from the old neighborhood where I grew up and lived until I went to high school.  Christmas, the church, and the Priestly’s.

The Priestly’s were an older couple who had three grown kids who had moved out but still visited quite often.  They lived about three houses down from us so I had known them all of my young life.  We liked them and they seemed to like us though my dad would sometimes make fun of Mr. Priestly and the fact that he always kept his summer lawn in tip-top, manicured shape.  Ours wasn’t quite so nice looking given all the neighborhood kids we always had playing on it.  It seemed a happy lawn though while the one down at the Priestly’s sometimes seemed a bit sad and lonely to me.  It is hard to determine such things when it comes to grass though.

Mr. and Mrs. Priestly were religious church-goers, attending every Sunday and, after he retired, attending every morning of the week as well.  Mrs. Priestly had gotten a job after the last kid left so she only attended on Sundays and all necessary holy days, the days of obligation I think they used to call them.  They both attended Tuesday night novenas- I know, because I used to go with my mom before she died.  I think she was hoping for a last minute divine intervention that never came because she did die when I was in the sixth grade.

The Priestly’s also did a lot of work at the church- he being an usher and her helping with the choir and in the rectory on weekends.  After my mom died we still went to church but my dad did not.  I think he was mad about unanswered prayers or something like that.

Not long after my mom died the neighborhood began to change.  A few black families had moved in a mile or so to our north and it seemed to be a major topic of conversation among the neighbors, on the street, as well as outside the church, after mass.  I hardly took much notice as I was spending too much time being a kid and trying to make sure my dad never knew the full extent of some of my youthful activities.  I was just a bit wild but managed to steer clear of officially significant trouble.

The message in church was loud and clear- we were all to love and respect our brother man (and woman) no matter his or her color.  They never mentioned religion or any other distinguishing identifier.  Just color.

I remember hearing Mr. Priestly preaching a similar thing many times on the street outside of his house as the neighbors would gather to talk on a summer’s eve.  He seemed pretty solidly opinionated that we should all “hold our ground” and “not sell just because of the Negroes moving in.”  Somehow it didn’t seem to sound much like brotherly love- more like brotherly exclusion or avoidance.  Still, I was young.  What could I possibly have known?

The fall after my mom died we were away for the weekend.  Funny, though we hardly ever went away for the weekend, we did that weekend and I’ll be darned if I can remember where we went.  When we came back we saw the For Sale sign up on the beautiful front lawn at the Priestly’s and not a sign of anyone around.  We heard that Sunday night from the Ablesons that the Priestly’s had moved out late that Saturday night without as much as a word to anyone.  The Ablesons had been away that day and arrived back home near midnight, just in time to see the large, unmarked moving truck pull away.  There was no sign of the Priestly’s then either so they must have left before the truck.  No other neighbors had seen either Mr. or Mrs. Priestly since Friday afternoon and they had not been in church on Sunday either.  They were just simply gone.  We didn’t find out until weeks later that they had moved to a far south suburb, into a small home that someone said they had purchased earlier in the year.  Imagine that.

Well the church and some good neighbors continued to preach the good word and suggested we all stay put and welcome the growing number of our new neighbors.  But the Priestly move seemed to light a spark under a lot of folks and within a year and a half we were pretty much the last white family left on our entire block.  Me and my sisters were getting harassed more and more as time passed so my dad finally decided it was best and safest for us if we moved as well.  It was the end of the summer just before I started high school. 

We took a huge loss on our house (guess my dad wasn’t the best financial head) and I said goodbye to the few friends I still had a few miles to the south.  They were starting to move as well.  All fleeing south along with the Priestly’s I guess.

We moved a bit north and further west.  We moved in with my grandmother.  I thought about the Priestly’s just a few times after that and wondered what they were preaching in their new neighborhood. 

The last time I ever gave much thought to the Priestly’s I wasn’t sure what Mr. Priestly was saying to his new neighbors but I was pretty darn sure that he and his wife were heavily involved with their new church, wherever that might have been.

Do you know much about the Constitution of the United States of America?  Do you know anything about the founding of this country?

Do you know who your representatives and senators are?  Do you know that there are different offices held by ELECTED SERVANTS OF THE PUBLIC for state and federal governments?

Do you know who your local, county and smaller, public servants are?

Do you know who your local school board members are?

In any of these cases, assuming that you know who these people are, do you know what they stand for and how they have voted, IF they have voted…not like in the case of certain officials who may simply vote “present” (as in “yeah, I am here but I don’t want to leave any evidence of what I am really all about”)…eh?

Do you know that you have not just the right but, as originally envisioned, the duty to make your own opinions and positions known?  That you should work to change the things that you do not believe in and, at the very least, vote in all elections to let your small voice be added to the chorus?

I have known many of these things but have not acted often enough to prevent what I see as a drifting away from the things I hold most important to the lives of me and my family, of my friends and neighbors.  I need to do more, much more.  And I will.

Do you know your history?  Do you know what has happened to people and countries when things went south?  Do you think it could never happen here, to me, to you?

How much time do you spend watching mindless TV shows or playing video games or watching sports or drinking at the local watering hole?  Would it be correct to guess that we all spend anywhere from 3-5 hours a day doing these things and others?  That’s somewhere around 30 hours a week on average.

When did our need for personal entertainment surpass our responsibilities of being good citizens, of being sufficiently informed to make informed decisions on as much as we possibly can, of spending time helping or gently coercing our kids to learn, of being good neighbors (of even knowing our neighbors), or of pushing back on all the not-so-good things that are constantly being pressed upon us?

Is it all that hard to reserve a few of those 30 hours for such important things?

When did we shirk all of our personal responsibilities for our personal pleasures?

You know it’s true.  If you disagree then just keep a simple log that tracks how you spend your time during a typical week.  You would be amazed I think.

Do you know your governments?  Do you really know the schools your kids attend and what they are being taught?  Do you know enough math, science, language, reading, history to help your kids with their homework?  Do you know enough about finances to make sure that you plan well and stay out of trouble?  Do you know how to clean up your front yard, dress a little nicer when you go out, conduct yourself with class and composure, wash your car, comb your hair, perform proper personal hygiene, paint your house, vacuum your floor, clean your windows, display decent manners in public?  Do you know how to be kind and gracious to a stranger, regardless of his or her color, ethnicity, religion, or apparent appearance?  Do you know how to put down and ignore your phone when in a crowd, on a plane, in a restaurant, or driving your car?  Can you learn to lay off your car horn just because you are in a hurry or in a bad mood?  Do you know how to forget and forgive enough to make the future a potentially better place to be?  Have you ever listened to (really) good music with a positive message or tried to play an instrument and express what is inside of you?  Have you ever kept a diary that allows you to review your experiences and search your soul a little bit, looking perhaps for a way to be a better you?  Have you done anything in the last 6 months to improve yourself?  Have you recently made a personal sacrifice for a family member, a friend, or someone you don’t even know?  Have you tried acting kind instead of tough, understanding instead of demanding, listening instead of talking, caring instead of being aloof, thinking just a little bit longer before acting, hugging instead of hitting, walking instead of sitting, getting away from your dependencies, loving your kids or your parents or even yourself just a little more?

Maybe you have but if you haven’t are you strong enough to at least try?  We can’t change things alone as much as we can together and if we all move in a positive direction a little bit more each day we might be able to improve our lot and get back just a little bit closer to being real Americans as originally envisioned not just by our founders but also by a lot of good folks who have lived and died in search of the very same vision along the way.  Perhaps here you have your own personal hero who you can emulate.

If you’re happy with where we are at and where we are going absent anything, or anyone, standing in the way, then I cannot reach you.  But if not, then wise up, and rise up.  Learn and be heard.  Learn and take action.  Learn and live better and be proud.  Learn and help those around you to do the same.  Learn.  Learn.  Learn.

Learn and maybe we can all stay free.