INCITE

I failed to keep a daily account of the first phase of our move to Fort Collins, Colorado, and so I will here attempt to summarize.

On Friday, July 3, we flew Allegiant from Las Vegas to Fort Collins and were met at the Loveland-Fort Collins Airport by Rachel. Rachel drove us to the Marriott where we rented a 2009 Subaru Impreza from Hertz. We picked up Five Guys burgers (and the vegetarian equivalent) to feed the crew who had already driven to the new house. After eating, we started settling in. Steve’s sister, Allison, and her husband, Dennis, were a great help. The realtors who had helped us with the purchase, Dave and Margo, provided us all with pizza for the evening meal. Mary and I inflated the bed we had shipped ahead of us and spent the first night in our luxurious new bedroom.

On Saturday, July 4, Mary and I met my dad, Earl, and his wife, Rhonda, and traveled together to see the new Greeley residence my Aunt Esther had just moved into. Her daughter, Dalene, son, Gary, and his wife, Maureen, were all there to share an Independence Day picnic prepared by the staff. Dad and Rhonda then returned to Fort Collins with us to see our new place. They then headed back to Littleton while the settling in to Ridge Runner continued.

On Sunday, July 5, I experienced the utter joy of reuniting with my (virtually) lifelong friends, Paul and Rob. Rob came with his wife, Suzy, and their daughter, Kelly. Paul brought his granddaughter, Alison, who was delightfully nine years old. The three of us had not been together since going to Chicago for Neal’s wedding in (we’re guessing) 1994. Known as the Three Musketeers at Arvada United Methodist Church, we regaled our captive audience with tales of old that continued even after everyone else got up and left. One of the great things about returning home will be being closer to family and friends.

Monday and Tuesday, July 6 and 7, were dedicated to completing the move in earnest. Rachel and Steve needed, of course, to be at their work which allowed Mary and me to spend some cherished time together. Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s and Sears are all wealthier after purchasing blinds, lawn mowers, and many of the other things that apartment dwellers don’t need (Rachel and Steve were included in the selecting and purchasing, really!) Tuesday evening we all drove down to Westminster to select and purchase a dining room table and chairs, drove by our old townhome and ate supper at the Village Inn where we often ate after Rachel was born twenty-five years ago. I definitely felt like an old man on the drive home as I tried to assimilate how much everything had changed since we left in 1984.

Each lunch hour was spent with Rachel and Steve, and on Wednesday, July 8, we were introduced to the delightful Café Vino. Anticipation was running high for the arrival of Mom and Kim from Billings. They arrived about supper time, and so we had a fantastic dining experience at Jasmine Gardens and then showed them the new house. We spent the day Thursday with them, starting with breakfast at Ridge Runner and continuing on to tour Fort Collins. Kim redeemed the behemoth by carrying a load of big things from the apartment to the house that would never have fit in our tiny Japanese gas sippers. Kim and Kirby had lived here while they were going to school, and she also had to assimilate the many changes. After breakfast at Charco Broiler, Mom and Kim returned to Billings on Friday when Mary and I put the final cleansing touches on the apartment.

Today, we bought fresh produce at the farmer’s market which Mary cooked up in a delicious stir fry; the first home cooked meal in our new house. Dalene and Tommy came over this afternoon while we were potting plants that we had purchased at the market. Tomorrow we will wing our way back to Las Vegas and turn Ridge Runner over to the care and safekeeping of Rachel and Steve. Lunch blogs will resume on Monday along with work. Accompanying pictures can be found on the “photos” link. Life is good.

I suppose that after 39+ years it is predictable that Mary and I sometimes think the same thoughts (and yes, there are many times that our thoughts are quite disparate) as we did today. Encountering a snag with the details of their closing postponed Rachel and Steve’s receipt of the keys to their new house, but things appear to be back on track. But Mary and I both thought about what a marvelous, miraculous thing it is to live in a country where this kind of transaction can even take place. We are the beneficiaries of a freedom unknown to much of the world, and we have our courageous and wise forebears to thank. We recently viewed the John Adams series, and that revived the patriotic feelings of four years ago when we toured some of those historic places. It is a good and proper thing to remember those who founded this great country, but that doesn’t let us off the hook to assume the reins of responsibility for continued progress. If I could ask President Obama one question this Independence Day, it would be, “How may I help?”

In a little more than an hour from now, Rachel and Steve will be closing on their new house in Fort Collins, Colorado. My predictable parental interest is compounded by the extraordinary fact that Rachel and Steve have invited Mary and me to live with them. This back to the future return to multiple generations living under the same roof was prompted by many conversations about greener, more economical living. From my old hippie days (my apologies to the real hippies; I know I didn’t qualify) came the question of communal living, of sharing resources and responsibilities. Why should four, six, eight, however many people involved require their own individual residences with separate kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Predating the “can’t we all just get along?” question by quite a bit, it seemed that giving up idiosyncratic privacies would be a small price to pay for the overall benefits. It is hard for me to express the degree of satisfaction and gratitude that comes from knowing that my children aren’t eager to dissociate themselves from me once they’re adults. Anyway, the hope is to be blogging from Fort Collins a year from today. That is going to entail a great number of details which will be the focus of Incite for the coming year. I understand if that’s not very interesting to you, dear reader, but it is important to me…and it’s my blog! As always, comments are welcome and may prove helpful as we wind our way toward home.

It’s kind of hard to believe that this old man’s ramblings have been going on for over three years now. Prior to the gift of Incite from Rachel and Steve, I was trying to work my way through a self-imposed exile from the church by way of a supposedly cyber-ministry. If anyone is interested in taking a look at how that went, just click on the Profile link at the right and you will be taken to the archives of that rather sorry endeavor. I have not found it especially easy to be “called” to what I understand to be a prophetic ministry when no one can hear it but me. It is humbling and somewhat embarrassing to realize that what seems critically important inside my own head is often not a shared concern. The question of sanity is legitimate, and I repeatedly remind myself that the little voice within is symptomatic of pathological delusion. Hence, the therapeutic value of Incite. Something akin to one’s home being a castle, I find blogging to be the safest place to be crazy. Here I can be audacious enough to challenge the greatest powers in the world from the safety of relative anonymity. Here I can be presumptuous enough to believe I have something to say. Here I can pretend that I’m part of making a better world, and no one is the worse for it (perhaps with the exception of you, dear reader). Tomorrow should prove to be somewhat historic in the life of our family, and with the achievement of that milestone I intend to turn the corner and head Incite in a new direction. Fear not, however, because I won’t be able to shake off the lunacy that easily. I’m just looking forward to new and different ways to express my insanity.

Gratitude is the key. Not the “thanks for the gift (that I’m going to exchange for something I really want)” kind, but the genuine kind that comes from the realization that it is a miracle simply to be alive. Selfish greed thrives when gratitude is absent. Generosity is thwarted by the perception of insufficiency (i.e. not sharing what you already have because that might leave you without enough for yourself), while the perception of sufficiency generates a voluntary desire to share. Few things in life are so simple, but widespread gratitude can change our world for the better.

Incite
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My rant about Adam Henry is going to be cut short by a much timelier, but related, subject. The image we have of Jesus of Nazareth is one of a man much too polite to call anyone an Adam Henry, but that may be because we don’t understand the full meaning of ‘hypocrite’. The gospel accounts reveal a man not at all reluctant to call a spade a spade, of a man not afraid to point out the ‘sin’ of hypocrisy. The ball is presently in the Republican’s court with John Ensign and Mark Sanford confessing to extramarital affairs, but a report on NPR this morning rightly pointed out the bipartisan nature of what seems to becoming a characteristic of men in high places. The blade slices a little cleaner, however, against Ensign and Sanford because of their display of righteous piety that seems to come more easily to the Christian Right. Disparaging homosexuals, pro-choicers, and, in general, intellectuals as void of family values was shown as the blatant hypocrisy it is when these men violated the sacred bond of marriage. “Why do you attempt to remove the speck from your brother’s eye when there is a log in your own?” The real violation of this ilk is not just being human—which each and every one of us is—but the presumption of superiority based upon a particular ideology. If these men have an ounce of decency left in their wretched souls, they will resign from public office and devote themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal, even those who aren’t God-fearing Republicans.