To all who visit: relax, enjoy and welcome to my life:

"Life is not of getting but of giving."

Sunday, July 5, 2015

The Grey Man ( fiction)

Prelude


Where do you stand?

I almost recognize the voice in my dream, asking me the question. A memory of a voice from the distant past. I knew not to answer “I stand on my feet”. The voice did not beckon a flippant reply.

Where do you stand?

I heard my voice answer. Where it came from, I don't have a clue, somewhere deep and unbeknownst to me. But it was my voice and I was answering this voice coming from within my dream.

“I stand in the gray, between the light and the dark, in the gray between the black and the white. I stand between the Angels and their brand of righteousness and the Demons and their brand of evil. I stand on the side of free will. I stand balanced on the knife edge. I stand on my own.”

Where do you stand?

I answered your question, I will not waste my time or yours in repeating the answer. Now answer mine, Where do I stand? I hear the voice chuckle as I awaken from my dream, his answer echoing in the twilight of my fading dream, “on your own, where else, on your own”.   

Milestones, Lines Crossed and Stubbed Toes.

Milestones, Lines Crossed and Stubbed Toes

I was looking over my life after the passing of my mother, and saw the different passing’s of time. Looking it over, there seems to be rites of passage into different age groups or maturity levels. Funny as to how, as I have gotten older, I can see these lines drawn on the calendar of my life. These lines have very little to do with age but more to do with the level of maturity that Life seems to judge me ready for.
When I was younger, it seemed like they were all little type things. The first time I walk to school by myself. The first time I was allowed to ride my bike alone. The first time I was asked to go to the store to pick something up for my parents. These little pebbles of stone upon which a foundation of trust was build between me and my parents. Sort of like Life was judging me worthy as I grew. Time kept rolling on and the level or bar of who I was to be, seemed to get raised, whether I wanted or not.
The raising of the bar was not based on accomplishing a task but more on the way I handled a situation. When I was 13, I started to work for my Dad out at the campgrounds in the summer. Seemed as I got older, I discovered, I liked having money in my pocket. It was the typical mowing grass, brushing the camp sites, minding and stocking the store, and on occasions cleaning the fish the campers, tourists caught.
Cleaning fish can be a disgusting job in the summer heat of Minnesota, with the flies and mosquitoes buzzing around. But, every day I would be out there, doing what I was supposed to do, and earning money for my savings account. Being a father now, I can respect the Life lessons that this taught me and I can see now, how it was crossing the line from carefree summer time into maturing, growing up, into Life. The bar of responsibility rising as I grew.
Now not all of the passages came about from something good. Sometimes the bar rose as a result of my stupidity. When I was 15 on Halloween, a buddy of mine and I kind of stole some beer from the local grocery store. I say kind of, because we were obviously not of age to buy it, but we did leave the money for it at the register. But in truth, I guess, we did steal it. We were not out to cause trouble, we just climbed up on the high school's flat roof, drank the beer, smoked some cigarettes and watched the young kids trick and treating on Halloween.
Well, on the walk back home, we were taking the alley way, and the local policeman, checked on us to make sure we weren’t up to no-good, smelled beer on our breath. That earned me a ride home in the cop car and my buddy a ride to the station to wait for his dad. Being the youngest in my family, I was not the first of my family to be brought home in a cop car. Actually, you could say I was holding up the tradition of my brothers and sister in doing so.
My Dad was not happy, not happy at all. When the whole story came out, and I actually was honest about it, it was the first and only time my Dad ever hit me. Being a father, I can understand, and even at that time, thought it was justified. It was just the consequences of my own stupidity.
The next morning my Dad carted me over to the grocery store, so I could talk to and apologize to the owner, which I did, and that led to another story for a another time. But the dynamics between my parents and me and for that matter my brothers, sister and I had changed. The bar had raised, and Life no longer saw me as a boy but as a young man. My parents and siblings saw me as growing up.
Yes, I had done something stupid, but it was in the handling of it, and in the standing up and taking responsibility for it, that Life raised its expectations of me. While my Dad was angry for the stupidity part, I think also he had some pride in knowing he had taught his son how to handle the situations that arise out of my own stupidity.
That really is the how and why of it. It seems Life just keeps putting in little pop quizzes and how I answer them is where I am at on its bar graph. The odd thing about it all is that I may not know about the quiz at the time of it, nor will I know if I answered correctly till some time down the road.
It is like setting up a long line of dominoes, and I never know if they are going to fall true until I put them in motion. As the chain falls, it suddenly stops, one domino is out of place, so I have to take the time to put it in place and then let the chain begin again.
That is how my Life is. The out of place domino is a quiz question I answered incorrectly, or a passage I should have turned right on but turned left instead. So I have to go back and redo it, hopefully learning from it, so that the rest of the dominoes will fall in order or in other words, my life will run smoothly.
As with Life, I seem to learn more from my mistakes than from the things I do correctly the first time. I am grateful to my God for allowing me this perception. I seem to have made many mistakes in my past and I am bound to make more in the future, but in knowing that I am not doing it on purpose, or with intent, allows me to continue to live an open life, one lacking in the fear to take a risk and see what will happen. Having this faith in my God gives me the opportunity to expand my life and thinking. To grow in life as I think is His desire for all His children.
As a father, I want my children to experience Life. I know sometimes there will be scraped knees and hurt feelings. That being the price of living, growing and loving. Hopefully I am there to sooth the pain and help them make sense of it, just as He does with me.

Funny how being a father crossed one of those milestones without my knowledge of it. That line that Life must have thought my capable of living, and the God of my understanding knew I was ready accept.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Coming Soon: The Sheppard's Path

hi all, well no i have not stopped posting although it may seem that way.  coming soon, something i call "The Sheppard's Path" and yes it is along a Dirt Road ..lol... will also be on Facebook. look up Traveling Down the Dirt Road on Facebook for other stuff.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Light into darkness, understanding dawns.

written before my move back to the US


Sometimes bringing light into the dark.

     I have been praying for an answer to a question as my life gets ready to move into another phase of my development. I have been asking “of where can I be of most use?”
     As my life here in Germany ends, I am pretty much free to go and do whatever I choose to do. I will always be a father, and I look forward to the visiting and visits but the need for me to be here is slowly ending as my daughters grow.
      So, what do I do? I can pretty much live anywhere I want. While not financially rich or anything, I do not have to search for a way to make a living. So this is freedom? I needed some guidance as to “huh now what?
      The more I have prayed, the more and more this answer keeps coming up. Be of help. Be an example of my love and give a hand where needed. Not exactly clear cut instructions. Not go down a block and take a left. Leaves a lot to be inferred and up for interpretation.
     So I asked for guidance, and more guidance. When I was drinking I had some dark times. Not exactly my favorite thing to look back on. I barely lived through it the first time, why relive it looking for answers? I honestly keep coming up with God’s love.
     When I drank, I wanted, needed someone’s approval of me. I turned to looking for a sexual answer. I figured in my drunken state that if they, (whoever they happened to be) thought I was good enough then I must be okay. Drinking filled up 99 percent of the hole in me but the center was still crying alone. This desire and drive to be whole, this need for validation of who I was, led me to many, many stupid, self harming decisions.
     From A to Z if you can think it, I most likely did it, looking for something to fill the spot in my soul that screamed when I was alone. This was thankfully, before the internet, so I was limited to what was at hand with which to satisfy the urge to be filled. I am not going into specifics, but needless to say I did not find what I was looking for there anymore that I found in the bottle.
     Then came sobriety and that filled the hole in a good way. But as with life, it keeps going on and it was easy to lose sight of the past. The internet came in to its own, and I got married, and as it got bad in the marriage I started looking again. On the internet I found chat rooms. I started chatting with all sorts. Good, bad, young and old, they all seemed to be looking for something. Usually sex, and I thought, wondered, would that fill the hole in my soul?
     Now it’s only chatting right? I was only thinking about it and not taking any action on it. Just chatting, trying to get some relief from this self imposed loneliness. I have said many, many, times I could rationalize, justify anything into being right in my mind. But in my heart and soul I knew I was wrong.
     The more I looked, the more I was saddened. For the answer flared up in me bright and strong, that this was stupid, harmful and just not right. It was like being a broke child in a candy store. It served no purpose and was of no use and did not belong in my life.
     Now God’s love is a funny thing. Here I was condemning myself for being stupid, and he just whispered in my soul, that being human means learning from your mistakes and that his love for me was as strong as ever. Being a father I know that, I would do anything to keep my children from harm, but that some lessons in life one must live though in order to get perspective, grow, and learn from.
     I knew his love for me was still there from the way my life was. But in reflection, it added a thought to my thinking. How alone must those people on the net feel? What has shaped their lives this way? Why are so many looking for something when the answer lies within?
     I quit the chat rooms as my life got busier and busier. I was too busy being a father and working to play stupid games. My life had filled with the proper purpose and I was trying to live up to my end of the bargain. So that all kind of fell into the memory department as something for a later day.
     The thought came to me a couple months ago, that I should look once again into this. I was not looking to fill anything missing in my life this time. I was instead looking to see if my initial perceptions were right.  If the sadness and loneliness was as real as I remembered.  
     I looked and found that same thing. While some were just the normal chat type rooms, on cooking, or cars or sports. In every room there was a sexual component in it. Always someone trying to find someone to fill a need in them. In the adult chat rooms it was even worse. It seemed to be a matter of how strange can one be, how off the path must one get in order to get the attention they want. I sat back, thought, contemplated, prayed and rolled this over and over in my mind. Why? Why were people doing this? What where they looking for? What answers were they seeking? What was missing in their life that made them look so deep into the darkness?
     I have heard it said and read it, that in each of us is the fundamental belief in God. Though it may be covered up by experiences in life, ego, pride and disbelief, it is still there waiting patiently to be found. Once found, life truly begins. Once I found it, it created a hunger for me to learn more of this God of my understanding. But until it was found I had the sense of separation, that something was missing.

     I have that inside feeling, that gut feeling, that this is what those on the net who are searching are looking for. That they are looking outside themselves to fill a hole that can only be filled from within. How to get someone from point A to point B?

More to come...................


Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Back in the USA

So I am back in the USA, freezing in Minnesota, with more posts to follow. Love and Laughter folks, love and laughter.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Ah spring, OK more is coming: a letter

Dear Friends,
     I realize I have not been posting much lately, truth be told, it's spring.  I am currently finishing the last two chapters of my second book, procrastination has been kicking my back side. And in the next week there should be some posts on what I consider to be fundemental to a long lasting sobriety.
The four types of sobriety, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. A key as to why I think some people never seem to grasp this way of life and you see so much heartbreak as a result.  It is realatively simple but until one knows, one doesn't know and is bound due to lack of knowledge and understanding, to make mistakes. But just knowing is not enough, one has to believe and take action for it to be effective.
     So in the next couple of days, I will be posting on all four and my experiences and belief brought about by my actions.

Love and Laughter

Larry

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Second Book is coming, hopefully sooner than later

Hello all,
     Well my next book will be coming soon, I hope.  The first one just flowed out, this second one is more a slow drip from a clogged coffee maker. It seems I get on a roll and then poof, I am lost out at sea, drifting from subject to subject.  But since it only took 51 years to do the first one, I should cut myself a little slack I guess. I will be looking for some proof readers and reviewers if anyone is interested, please let me know.
     Like the first one it is non fiction, a continuation of the first sort of. I told myself I would not start the third book, a fiction type, till the second was done and over with.  Oh well, guess what?  I lied to myself, and have already started the third, Premise is basically, a guy stuck between the eternal battle between good and evil. He and his companions fall into the grey area, and work to balance the scales between good and evil. Again will be looking for some to proof the first story, so any takers?

thanks all.
God Bless
With Love and Laughter
Larry