Follow the Skittles...How ET got Home

ET followed the Skittles and got home. We long for home and there's some Rube Goldberg construction that gets us there. Look at all the unlikely stuff that comes together for ET. A little boy, a bag of something an ET has never tasted before, but like most mysterious stuff offered by well intentioned, it works, it gets ET from one place to the next. Then there's the phonograph thing and somehow it generates a signal and a message and somehow the message leaps through the unknown and somehow links up with home. Prayer maybe? Is this how prayer works?

I've gone back to the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me." I read the story of a young man on a spiritual quest who found a monk wandering in a forest. The young man asked the monk if it was possible to pray without ceasing. That was his quest, to pray without ceasing. The monk said yes and eventually taught the young man the Jesus Prayer. He told him to pray the prayer 12,000 times a day, day after day; until the prayer filled every moment.

ET then takes that wild bicycle ride. Wouldn't you love to have such transportation? Ever dream you can fly? Isn't that every dream: flying through some unknown where you are everything in the dream, everything all at once. Sailing through the light of the super moon and beyond, returning to shadow and earth and the place so grounded that even the unknown and ultimately mysterious can find you right there where the bicycle lands.

I cried during ET, not once but kinda got started and just couldn't stop. All the wonder-mystery bound together in boundless love and a dream coming true because a little boy and an unlikely stranger worked and worked and worked to pray it all into reality- that always makes me cry. ET Home. Yes, ET HOME.

See any Skittles lying around? I see them or I see something. What is that?

Reading Mark Twain, "Life on the Missippi" or how a mentor makes all the difference no matter how difficult the life

Life on the Missippi gives Mark Twain's account of how he became a steamboat pilot, and a fully formed adult: lesson by hard lesson. Reading his story I see the good life earned by an effort engaging every possible latent gift and talent, creating new gifts and talents as necessary, using one's whole person to attain a personal dream, delighting in the difficult drama of growing responsibility and deepening awareness of capability.

Twain's success seems due in large measure to his mentor, the licensed Steamboat Pilot who took Twain on as a "cub". I attribute my success to my mentors, licensed preachers, old hands who knew everything from how to dress (I didn't), to how to act among those of higher station (I didn't), and who revealed to me the "yes, but how" of ministry, in all its complexity. A mentor is the greatest gift a chosen dream can contain. Pay attention to this gift. Open it, use it, play with it; never letting a day go by that the mentor doesn't surprise you, challenge you, teach you, and say to you, in some way, perhaps spoken, but not necessarily, "You're important. I care about you." Remember your mentors. When you give thanks, give thanks for them.

My mentors kept the game interesting. I could have gone out on my on and tried to do it my way. I doubt I'd have lasted five years. I'd have quit from boredom. Having mentors meant learning new ways, pushing aside old ideas, finding viens of gold in the oddest places and mining them with the strangest tools and using the raw, rare discovery to shape something worth the creative investment.

I need a new mentor. I don't need a guitar buddy or golf buddy or a sailing buddy. I need a mentor who knows this river named retirement. I need help keeping the game interesting, or else I doubt I'll last five years. "Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened".