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Showing posts from 2010

Miss You, Dad

September 26, 2010 was the day my father passed away. In the time since that event, I have been unexpectedly serene. Though I long feared facing the loss of a parent, something that is an almost universal rite of passage, the experience has proven to be a source of reassurance and comfort. My father wasn't one to show his pain, and the cancer that eventually took his life progressed undetected as he stoically endured the initial discomfort. When I learned of his terminal condition, I knew immediately that it wouldn't be long before he passed on. As it turned out, we had two months in which to say goodbye. It was a tender mercy, as it turned out, allowing me to reach a place spiritually where I could be comfortable when God actually called Dad home. During those first few days after his passing, I recalled a lifetime of memories as I composed his eulogy. The following words are from that tribute, which I gave at the funeral October 1. Ronald Allen was to those who knew him a tr

A Prayer and a Promise

Some events force us to acknowledge where we are in life, and how we got here. In the wake of my son Benjy's life-threatening experience I have been doing just that, evaluating and re-evaluating what I’ve been doing with my time on earth. I suppose everyone feels some emptiness when they think of things not said or done, things that would have made a real difference in their lives, and those of others as well. For a parent, such lost opportunities are especially painful to contemplate. We see with time that while we may have done some things very well, there are myriads of things we wish we could revisit, applying the wisdom of experience and age. If we only had those choices to make again. In my past I have been frequently too concerned with my own welfare and the quality of my own life. I once thought I was missing some invaluable life experiences, and in many ways that was true. Poor choices have a way of propagating themselves, and each decision I made too hastily ended up limi

A Long Night's Journey Into Day

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I'm at work. It's 5:30 a.m., not too early for me to be here, but when I have no pressing assignments, it's pretty strange to find myself sitting at a desk that's clear of work, pondering the universe. So I decided to journalize my thoughts, trite though they may be. This has been, as Spencer W. Kimball once described it, a "silent, sleepless night." I have been up since precisely 12:00 midnight, enjoying some rare mental and spiritual space, knowing somehow I would not get to sleep, but not getting upset or worried about the day ahead. I feel, in a strange way, more energized than usual. My mind feels free, confident, and relaxed. My attitude is one of illogical optimism. And I know why. I used to struggle with my sense of disempowerment, frustrated that I hadn't yet solved many of the major issues that have plagued me for what seems to be my entire life. I'm not talking about world hunger or peaceful coexistence. Scratch that - maybe I have been wor

Where Did the Stawberries Come From?

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Okay, so my references to geometric logic and strawberries was a bit oblique. Here’s a clue. If you still don’t get it, I highly recommend the movie (or the book).

So What's Wrong with a Little Magic?

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Some of the people I talk to say I engage in “magical thinking.” They maintain that I sometimes ascribe illogical outcomes to actions I take, or on the other hand I tend to attribute the cause of some experiences and developments to strange, mystical factors. It is decidedly untrue, and I can prove it using geometric logic, a branch of reasoning I learned from Humphrey Bogart. Just because I think there are causes for certain things that are not immediately apparent, and just because I don’t always trust my subjective impression of reality, and just because others may think I am illogical, there is no reason to assume I am necessarily wrong in my thinking. You see, I am convinced that we are all affected very much in our lives by the thoughts of others. Wait, before you line up to sign my commitment papers, let me explain. We all have prejudices, ways of categorizing what we experience. It's not malicious. It's a means of survival in a complex, confusing and sometimes downright

Blogging in the Fifties (Sort Of)

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Long before we had PC's we had typewriters. Not electric, self-correcting models, but mechanical boxes with levers and rollers. I hear there are still a few of them around (in museums). This snappy model (pictured with me at the "keyboard") wasn't too bad. At least I thought so. It didn't really have a keyboard. Instead, it had a round dial with the alphanumeric characters on the edge. Pressing the "space bar" pushed the top-most character against a ribbon, resulting in real words, accurately spelled without exception by a seven-year old author. That was how I "wrote" in the fifties, laying the foundation for a brilliant blogging future. Now I still write in the fifties - my fifties, that is. It's almost as fun now as it was then. I only hope my spelling has improved - just a little.