A Day in the Life of Chaos

  As you age everyday is a mystery.  In the morning you wake up and like a computer booting up do a systems check.  Knee working, back not hurting, headache nope feel fresh, urinary system functioning, the list goes on… everything okay… check… it’s going to be a good day.  Then the morning routine kicks in.  A handful of pills and a cup of coffee.   Salvador Dali At some point there is a certain realization that nothing will ever get better.  When you have a car you can at least buy a new set of tires.  There is a good chance that they will work as good as the original ones if not better.  Every time I have to replace some part of my house I always ask the service man how this new version of whatever I had will make my life better.  Typically they will shrug and give me a look that says, “Just wait for the bill.”  Sometimes, not to be defeated, I will pore over the service manual or promotional material and relish the smallest detail.  I definitely did this when I had to spend 13,00

There is a demon in the mist.  It rears it's terrifying jagged body with razor sharp edges as it emerges from the dark like a flame from the deepest bowels of Hell.  It burns and it tortures, it makes its presence known through the agonizing moans that seem to take over our voices like a body possessed and in need of exorcism.  It's body scrapes and tears us like the claws of a rabid animal dragging against the soft flesh of the belly.  Only some of us know this pain.  It is not universal, it seems to be more congenital.  For some reason some have a propensity for it yet no one really knows why.  Women have generously claimed it is the closest pain a man will ever know to child birth yet as one friend reminded me, at least child birth has an eventual positive outcome.  At least a woman can relinquish her pain to an epidural.  I am now in the midst of my second major bout with kidney stones.  The term seems rather innocuous, it conjures images of a smooth pebble resting peac

Something happens starting in your forties and moving on.  Up to this point we live our lives independently.  We spend years separating ourselves from our parents and learning how to function on our own.  Sure, parents are always there to help out with advice or to fix something but we are mostly focused on establishing our own lives and families. We have our own children now and they have so many needs.  We have jobs and mortgages to pay.  When something breaks we have to fix it, when its time to eat, we have to make it.  While all this is going on at some point in life our parents start to need us more.  It can happen very slowly and often we don't even perceive the change yet it happens. As I look around at my friends who share my age I can see it happening.  These days I see it quite brilliantly in the life of my father who is now in his 60's and has a mother in her 90's.   I see it in the life of my dear friend Peggy whose father in law spent his final days with them

Recently former and possibly future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a minster from Arkansas and darling of the conservative Christian community gave a speech about health care.  As a minister I anticipated words filled with compassion for the sick and care for the poor.  This was after all the message of Jesus.  Throw out the money changers in the temple and care for the down trodden.  Had I lived prior to 100 A.D. Jesus would have likely found me to be a great sympathizer.   Well Minister Huckabee spoke concerning the issue of the new health care reform, specifically the new law that now forbids insurance companies from not insuring a person with a preexisting condition.  No longer can an infant born with a condition be denied.  No more can a person with a medical problem be denied coverage and sentenced to either death or poverty in the face of medical bills they can't afford.  While I would think Minister Huckabee's Christian leanings would have caused him to laud