A Day for Reflection

Rain drips from the eaves while birds flit from limb to limb and the cat watches with coiled intensity. How is it that we can observe the world around us and be so blind to it at the same time? We look at the lives of others and know exactly what's wrong and usually don't hesitate to tell them about it. It's when we look closely at our own lives that we tend to shy away from the harsh truths. We can't withstand those deeper delvings into all the flotsam and jetsam that passes for thoughts and emotions. The real guts of us that we try to hide when we think someone's looking. The stuff we drag out in the middle of the night as we're falling asleep and poke at with a sharp stick to see if it's going to hurt us in the dark. Well, guess what - it BITES.

Epiphany: My life is filled with small, meaningless pursuits that keep me entertained so I don't notice the emptiness. During a conversation recently, I stated that "I have no joy in my life. I have moments of happiness but I'm discontented and restless." My discussion partner concluded that my joyless life needed God to make everything better. God...what does that mean - I need God in my life to give me joy?

My initial reaction to this pronouncement was disturbing. Immediate denial; later, I examined that denial to find the truth of it. Religion makes me cringe; I can't abide most of the trappings of organized religion. I believe in a Supreme Being whether that being is called God, Allah or Ra; I don't believe it matters because they're all connected - one and the same. Every culture around the world has at least one Supreme Being and some have more than one. The Mayans had many Gods and Kukulcan, the feathered serpent, has been tied to Atlantis's Tehuti, Egypt's Thoth, Sumer's Enki and Peru's Quetzalcoatl. I don't believe in coincidence either. Our cultures define for us by what name we call our god.

Religious ceremony and rites also give me pause. Sacrificing virgins? Goats and chickens? Blood and life sacrifices are beyond my comprehension because I don't truly understand the purpose of them. I suppose if I knew what lay beyond the death of the physical body I might understand it. A release of the spirit into the next world, that I get. I have many thoughts on this but that's for another time. Meditation and prayer makes sense to me. Clearing the mind allows for peace and calm to enter the body, driving away the stress, and opening the mind to greater possibilities within ourselves. Prayer has many functions: to say thanks, to ask for help, to praise, to ask forgiveness. Preaching bothers me, especially the old-fashioned hellfire and damnation sermons. Old Testament preachers (southern Baptist, revival tent preachers from my childhood come to mind) stand at their pulpits, thumping their Bibles, shouting about sinners and point accusing fingers at the congregation. Are you going to HELL?! they shout. New Testament preachers teach their followers the lessons of Jesus during his time on earth before he sacrificed himself for us sinners. Another sacrifice and more blood. Reconciling the two halves of the Bible has always been a problem for me. Suffice it to say, that I'm a believer in the teachings of love and forgiveness without judgment. To me, love and forgiveness without judgment means there is hope - hope for a better tomorrow, a better world, a better afterlife.

Years ago, I rejected the pissed off God for a loving God that forgives sinners like me. So few people are able to lead lives without sin of some kind. In fact, I don't know anyone that doesn't sin, one way or another. We are doomed to failure from the day we're born as humans. Human nature, in and of itself, presents a daily struggle to suppress our baser instincts in order to attain a more God-like spirit. Mostly, we fail at this. We lust and envy; we are prideful and wrathful. The best we can hope for is to be forgiven for our faults and allowed to pass into a better world. If it were otherwise, I'd have thrown in the towel long ago.

Now all that brings me back to my current situation. My simple mind took that statement about needing God and created a formula that gave me an answer I could accept without reservation. For many years, I've equated God with love. So, God is Love. God = Love. Ah ha! I'm missing Love from my life. If I had love in my life, I would find my joy again because love is about sharing and there is no joy if there's no one to share my life.

Damn, I wish it would quit raining. All this introspection depresses me.

One Week at a Time

We made it another week. Maybe that's all we can do right now and if so, then so be it. Now the goal is to keep the doors open till next Friday. One week at a time.

I'm still sort of shell-shocked at how things have been going. And it's not just us. The "big" companies are having their own problems and when things go bad for them, it affects us as well. Recently, AMD had some issues come to light when the Sheriff's office sent deputies out to enforce a lock-out of the employees due to non-payment of property taxes. It cost AMD $8.8 million to get those doors open and people back to work. Of course in the last two weeks, AMD also announced a layoff of 35% of its Austin workforce; that's 1200 employees locally. I'm notoriously bad at math but my numbers say 420 people lost their jobs. And that's not all, when vendors submitted invoices for payment on open purchase orders, those vendors were informed the POs had been closed out. Now follow me here - Imagine you're a small company and your largest customer is AMD and they've just informed you that they aren't going to pay their bills. What? They owe you thousands of dollars! You can't pay your vendors who are also clamoring for their money; the bank wants payment for the line of credit they extended to you a couple of months ago when AMD refused to pay any invoices during December; and aside from all of that, you have your own bills to pay, which are already late, and your employees know that getting a paycheck might not happen this week or even this month. How do you not lose hope that everything will work out? How do you keep from throwing in the towel and saying "I give up"? Coming from someone who's watching all this from the playing field, my answer is simple: I don't have a clue but as long as the door's open and the lights are on, we'll be there - one week at a time.

NOTE: We are NOT the small company mentioned above but we know them and know all this to be true.