Dear XXXXX,

I experienced something this week that I feel compelled to share it with you. I was traveling this week and flew back to Indianapolis on Thursday. As I was headed out of the terminal, six Army enlisted types turned the corner and fell in to my left. I have no idea where they were arriving from, but their uniforms all had the sand-washed look that I’ve come to recognize. As we cleared the walls around the security area, I could see a large crowd gathered with lots of expectant family and even a news crew. I quickly stepped through to the side away from the families and looked back to enjoy the reunions as I continued my walk. From the crowd, I heard a girl’s name yelled in what I would best describe as a shriek. I immediately recognized it as a mother calling out to her daughter with a passion that only a mother could muster. It wasn’t merely an outburst to gain attention, but instead an uncontrolled outpouring of emotion. It was simultaneously one of the most heart-warming and heart-wrenching things I’ve ever witnessed. It brought me to tears then and it still brings a lump in my throat thirty-six hours later.

Through this simple scene, I was granted another sliver of understanding in the world where you and your compatriots dwell. Even though I am privileged to work with some of the best sailors in the Navy, at the end of the day I’m just a civilian. Even when I go spend a few days at sea, I’m the guy headed back to port when the sub turns out to sea. I can observe their service and dedication, but I can’t comprehend their sacrifice. I’m an appreciative spectator, but have no more understanding than when I watch in wonder as lightning flashes across the sky. You and the good folks you serve with are deserving of utmost respect by those of us on the outside, but we lack the insight to comprehend the full depth of your service. However, even with my limited comprehension I am fully cognizant that you and your family stand separated so that my family and I can enjoy peaceful times together. From the very depths of my heart, I wish to pass along my most sincere thanks and best wishes. I will continue to pray for your safety and your family until you are safely home.

V/R,
Curt

-Crying with Beth on the phone when she called to let me know Marvin and Suzanne were loaning us a truckload of storage totes from Ace/Ben Franklin. Imagine deciding on the spur of the moment to pack up your entire house in about eight hours. We needed boxes and were overwhelmed trying to figure out how to get them. They were the first to come through when we didn’t know where to turn and lots of other folks followed their example in the days that followed.

-The rugged beauty of Ted Higgins as he carried our TV over his head out through the flooded yard. I would like to place this in the proper context by saying that I hadn’t slept in about 36 hours.

-Lying in bed after that first day, praying for Jesus to come back and take us to heaven so I didn’t have to deal with rebuilding this stupid house.

-Our private little church service with Dad, Mom, John, and Deb on John and Deb’s porch on Sunday morning. I’ve had a lot of powerful worship experiences, but never one where I’ve been in such abject need for God to intercede in my life.

-My Grandpa Lewis sitting outside in his car, crying for us. He told me he couldn’t bear to come inside to look at the damage.

(Who am I trying to kid? A few of these did more than put a lump in my throat. I cried over some of these and I pray I always will.)

As I wolfed down my spicy chicken burrito on Monday night, a group of school kids returning from a day trip in Washington DC invaded the restaurant. I witnessed one of the girls in the group walk out of the restaurant with a salt shaker hidden in the crook of her arm. I’m sure she’s been the queen of eighth grade this week for the stunt, but really, a salt shaker? I can hear them giggling at the lunch table, “If anyone needs salt, they can stop by Samantha’s locker…tee-hee-hee-hee…”

Airport shops make absolutely no sense to me. I walked through two concourses trying to find post-it notes. In my mind, that’s a common item a traveler might need. None of the stores I perused in the Dulles airport had post-it notes. When I asked the clerks in some of the shops if they carried post-it notes, they all looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. However, it’s very reassuring to know that you can buy a replica junior astronaut uniform at the Smithsonian shop or a $300 fountain pen at the Montblanc store. You never know when you’re going to be in a pinch between flights and need to purchase a high end writing instrument.

What possesses a woman to wear obscenely high heels to the airport? And, no, this isn’t an invitation for feminists to enlighten me about the oppression of women. I’m asking why women who appear to be fully functional humans wear ridiculous shoes when they know they’ll be trudging long distances through the airport with a pretty good probability of needing to walk at a rapid pace to catch a flight at some point. The gait produced when hurrying across a concourse makes every woman look like it’s her first time wearing heels and fairly screams “I’m a classy broad!”

Saw an extremely white girl in a hemp dress sporting some nasty dreadlocks. To me, dreads just aren’t a good look unless you’re a member of the Marley family. I’m not being racist, it’s just my opinion that pasty white folks should probably avoid them if they have the motor skills to wash their own hair. She was moving pretty quickly through the crowd, so I’m assuming she was late for her flight to the next Phish concert. They probably ran out of room on the clapped-out school bus.

And finally, there are still way too many people wearing a Bluetooth ear piece as a fashion accessory. Really, it’s just silly. Think about what you’re saying… ”I’ve got enough money to hang a $29 piece of electronics on my ear.”

Our theme this year is “Damaged Goods” and we’ll be looking at the emotions God blessed us with and how Satan perverts those emotions for his influence. If you’ve ever struggled with the concepts of love, lust, hate, apathy, selfishness, and guilt, then you need to be part of our discussions. We plan to examine all of these things personally and with frankness so that God can reveal His truth and will to us. Make plans to be with us.

Lincoln’s opinion on abstaining from vices: “such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.” (pg. 150)

Lincoln: “I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch anything on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.” (pg. 164)

“And while Lincoln rarely swore, he found Seward’s colorful cursing amusing. On one occasion, as Lincoln and Seward were en route to review the troops, the driver lost control of his team and began swearing with gusto. ‘My friend, are you an Episcopalian?’ Lincoln asked. The teamster replied that he was, in fact, a Methodist. ‘Oh, excuse me,’ Lincoln said with a laugh. ‘I thought you must be an Episcopalian for you swear just like Secretary Seward, and he’s a churchwarden.’ ” (pg. 387)

Fred Seward on Lincoln: “Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments, but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an unselfish heart.” (pgs. 400-401)

(After Lincoln was shot) “The first telegram went to General Grant, requesting his immediate presence in Washington. ‘The President was assassinated at Ford’s Theater at 10.30 to-night and cannot live…Secretary Seward and his son Frederick were also assassinated at their residence and are in dangerous condition.’ The dispatch reached Grant at the Bloodgood Hotel, where he was taking supper. He ‘dropped his head,’ Horace Porter recalled, ‘and sat in perfect silence.’ Noticing that he had turned ‘very pale,’ Julia Grant guessed that bad news had arrived and asked him to read the telegram aloud. ‘First prepare yourself for the most painful and startling news that could be received,’ he warned.” (pg. 742)

“At 7:22 a.m., April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was pronounced dead. Stanton’s concise tribute from his deathbed still echoes. ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ “ (pg. 743)

(An assassination attempt was made on Secretary of State Seward at the same time Lincoln was shot. An attempt to stab him in the head resulted in serious wounds to his jaw.) “News of Lincoln’s death was withheld from Seward. The doctors feared that he could not sustain the shock. On Easter Sunday, however, as he looked out the window toward Lafayette Park, he noticed the War Department flag at half-mast. ‘He gazed awhile,’ Noah Brooks reported, ‘then, turning to his attendant,’ he announced, ‘The President is dead.’ The attendant tried to deny it, but Seward knew with grim certainty. ‘If he had been alive he would have been the first to call on me,’ he said, ‘but he has not been here, nor has he sent to know how I am, and there’s the flag at halfmast.’ He lay back on the bed, ‘the great tears coursing down his gashed cheeks, and the dreadful truth sinking into his mind.’ His good friend, his captain and chief, was dead.” (pgs. 744-745)

To me, it just didn’t taste orange. In my young mind, orange should taste like oranges or at least something citrus-like. Orange Kool-Aid tasted like nothing orange or orange-related that I had ever experienced. It simply tasted like it was lacking.

Today I made some punch that required orange Kool-Aid. It didn’t require an entire pitcher of orange Kool-Aid, so I was left with about a quart. On a whim, I decided to sample the leftovers and found it to be quite delicious. This leaves me in quite a muddled state of affairs. Did Mom have a mental block when it came to the orange Kool-Aid formula? Are my childhood memories flawed? Could my tastes have changed? Have I been wrong all these years?

What can we learn from our little science lesson? Well, the most obvious thing is that if you believe Fruit Loops clump in a bowl due to the forces exerted by their electron shells, you’ll probably believe anything that sounds even remotely scientific. You probably also believe the toilet spins the other direction south of the equator and that Al Gore is a scientist. Remember, just because someone throws out a bunch of technical terms doesn’t mean logic was applied.

Have you ever heard anyone say, “My Cheerios are clumping together in specific patterns?” Of course not. That’s because our senses don’t pick up the minute differences between individual Cheerios. Our brain simplifies a bowl of Cheerios with very slight differences into a mass of tiny brown circles. The reason Fruit Loops clump by colors is because our eyes see the colors and our brain realizes a pattern. We see colors we have already learned and recognize, and then we organize the random scattering of colors into patterns. Our brains desperately want to capture and organize information to simplify the world around us so it can focus on important things like personal safety and fantasy football statistics. If we committed all the resources in our brain to studying Fruit Loop colors, we’d probably end up stabbing the spoon in our eye.

So, here’s the million dollar question: What other patterns are you seeing in your life that aren’t real? Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly capturing and organizing the colors and patterns of all the Fruit Loops swirling around us every day in this giant cereal bowl that we call our life. Think about the patterns you are comprehending and how those patterns make you behave…and get that spoon away from your eye.

In this dream, I was stuck in some poorly made horror movie. There were several people I knew in the dream and we were in a big crowd scene. Each person in the crowd had an opposing villain that was attempting to torment their prey. My villain was a sinister clown-type guy with a bunch of little marbles on strings. I’m not really sure of the intended purpose of this device and I don’t remember being particularly afraid of the device during the dream. However, I recognized this fellow was a bad guy and likely had extremely sinister plans for his undefined device. While attempting to find something to defend myself with, I found pool ball in my pocket and threw at him. Surprisingly, he seemed terrified of my newly discovered weapon and even more surprisingly, I found an endless supply of pool balls in my pocket. Every time I stuck my hand in my pocket, a pool ball was ready for the taking. So, I ran after my antagonist, chucking pool balls and rallying my friends to do the same. We soon turned the tide on the villains and began to pursue them. During this pursuit, I became aware that Gary and Jake had joined with me in a sort of “let’s get ‘em boys” sort of way. At that point, I realized something astounding was about to happen because the music in the movie had morphed into the sort of triumphal, heroic melody you often hear in poorly made movies. The villains were climbing up on some kind of a loading dock and I realized this was the point in the movie where I saved the day. I reached into my pocket and retrieved the decisive pool ball. I could tell by the way this particular ball felt in my hand that I held an object capable of changing the course of the universe. The stars were aligned and the villains were arrayed on the loading dock in such a fashion that this one pool ball would bring their demise. As I began my throwing motion, I realized that I was unable to raise my arm. At first I thought some evil force might be restraining me, but I came to the realization it was simply because Jake was standing too close and I didn’t have room to raise my arm. As a result, the villains escaped and were able to regroup, as villains are often fond of doing. Luckily, Jake and I were able to make our escape when we flagged down my parents as they drove by. Feeling relieved at being out of this sinister location, I was soon horrified to look back and see we were being pursued by a maniac on a motorcycle. We got stuck in traffic, which worked to the advantage of the maniac on the motorcycle since he was able to zig and zag through traffic. As he drew near, Mom started unlocking the car doors in case we needed to escape. I keep re-locking the doors while trying to explain the benefits of locked doors, i.e., keeping the maniac outside the vehicle. We were finally able pull out of traffic onto a country road and began to speed away with the maniac in pursuit. I noticed Pop was swerving all over the road and when I looked forward, he was messing with the overhead console. When I questioned him about the unnecessary messing and swerving, he stated he was trying to cancel his On Star service since he didn’t really need it. I questioned the validity of his decision, to which he responded with a challenge to name one reason to keep the service. I screamed, “Because there is a maniac on a motorcycle chasing us and it would be nice to be able to contact someone to say, ‘Help! There’s a maniac on a motorcycle chasing us!’ “

That’s all I remember from the dream unfortunately. No epic battle. No conquering hero. Just a trailing off into nothingness as the maniac on a motorcycle drew nearer. So, any of you amateur psychologists want to take a crack at interpreting this dream for me?