IF IT LOOKS BAD THEN IT PROBABLY IS

Dear Archbishop George Lucas,

It’s time to go.

To be fair, you are not alone. The Catholic Church is rotting from within, from the top down to the people in the pews. Incremental change is ineffective in a time of crisis. The time for formal listening sessions and public relations blunders has long passed--it’s time to overturn some tables.

In every published word you have spoken (that I can find) regarding the scandal in which your archdiocese is currently mired, you’ve made it clear that it hasn’t been you who failed--it has been the policies to which you have adhered. Your explanations for future change are a constant, unceasing chorus of self-talk disguised as responsibility where you give voice to your own doubts and failures by nervously negating them in front of your flock--a constant dilution of your voice, thanking lay people for the generosity of their criticisms, and treating the “thanks” of your parishioners for your listening as a substitute for the gravity of accepting that your very actions placed them in the position to have those criticisms in the first place.

NORFOLK FOREVER? (OR: GET YOUR SH*T TOGETHER AND STOP ACTING LIKE TOMORROW IS GUARANTEED)

What if we lived in Norfolk, Nebraska for the rest of our lives? With no family within four hours, only two other family members in the same state, and two families scattered in every imaginable way and direction, Norfolk has some things going against it. Depressing things.

Yet Norfolk offers almost everything that many people have said they want in their hometown--it’s small enough to feel safe, big enough to support a family, remote enough that it’s largely populated by people who were born in the area, and slow enough that it will probably be the same town when your kids have kids of their own. Omaha doesn’t check any of those boxes, and Lincoln is full of people who are just taking a break before they move to their mountain homes in Vail.

JESUS NEVER HAD TO DIET

I’ve spent the past two years trying to remove things from my life--dieting, selling cars, getting rid of possessions, cutting expenses, and focusing less on loose relationships and more on a small core of friends and family.

This was partly done out of a self-diagnosed need. In the case of my diet, I was 15 pounds overweight. While that doesn’t sound like a big number, my clothes weren’t fitting comfortably anymore. It was time to either make a change or buy new clothes, and clothing isn’t very high on my list of spending priorities--especially when an ongoing basement project provided more interesting ways to spend money.

RIGHTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

When words lose their power and honesty is not welcome, silence follows. Silence is often not merely appropriate--many times, it is the only honest part of a broken relationship. Broken is broken, regardless of mutual acknowledgment.

Logic is useless in a mind which defies, denies, or ignores reality. And honesty is not welcome in a relationship when problematic stories are expected to be believed without question and wrong actions are expected to be allowed without correction.

While it is true that everyone has the right to be wrong, rights have consequences. No one wants a spouse who defends his or her behavior on the basis of “rights.” Having the right to mistreat a love one is about as useful as claiming the right to speed when a police officer is standing next to your car. Rights aren’t the same as being right, and--codependency aside--the consequences aren’t always within the control of the offending party.

When one side of a relationship starts dictating the terms of the conversation because they are tired of having their stories picked apart, that’s cause for honest silence. It doesn’t matter if their stories are full of holes, nor does it matter that a new, equally hole-filled story will take their place once the initial stories meet resistance. What matters is that honesty is barred when faith is expected by those whose constantly-shifting stories confirm the lack of basis for their expectation.

Silence isn’t the same as giving up; sometimes silence is the only honest part of a relationship. What power do words have when logic is useless and honesty is not welcome?

DEALING WITH WALLS

The primary goal of a wall is to avoid moving. Most walls are designed and built with this goal in mind. So, if your goal is to make a wall move, you have to understand that you’re attacking its strength.

Attacking a strength is a good way to lose.

Walls come in many forms: a closed mind. Delusion. Thoughtlessness. Intolerance. On…and on…and on.

You can’t change someone’s mind when it is closed. Honest conversation is impossible when you’re talking to a person who believes their own lies. And logic is useless when you’re dealing with someone who refuses to think for himself.

Dear D.L.,

…and now we’re more alone than ever.

There were five people in agreement on what needed to happen.

Less than a week later, it was down to four.

And now--six months later--only two people are following through on the actions which five originally agreed upon. Those two people are the problem--everyone else has moved on.

This was never about the yelling. The yelling was one of the many symptoms of an abuser who refused to take responsibility for his actions.

Short and simple: the abuser still hasn’t taken responsibility.

Nothing has changed.

Those who have moved on have simply moved on. No one else talks about this situation every night. It’s fixed. It’s over.

Nope.

Truth sounds like hate to those who hate truth. Silence confirms this, and silence says more than an endless stream of delusional explanations ever will.

Dear D.L.,

I should have written this before last Friday, but it’s tiring when you’re expected to be the only one who comes up with answers. So a post-weekend prediction--which proved to be true--will have to do.

You hadn’t visited in almost six months. You didn’t call, write, or give any explanation for your silence. You let your wife--who was all to happy to put on a good front, to tell everyone how much you’ve changed--do all the talking for you. You took the easy way out, thinking that the passing of time would replace the explanation you refused to give.

Time won’t heal this one. You want to us to come back in the water because you’ve stopped being a hurricane. But you haven’t acknowledged what you’ve done. You haven’t expressed any remorse to anyone, with the exception of the codependent enabler in your life who will always coddle you and tell you how much it wasn't your fault. You’ve just stopped raging (this is second-hand knowledge--please confirm), with the hope that everyone will forget. But how can anyone believe what you refuse to acknowledge?

Last September, there were six of us in a room. Five of us all agreed on what had to be done: you had to make visible, outward changes, and that the rest of us couldn’t go back to acting like everything was normal until you did. But you wouldn’t even admit your fault when we gave you specific examples of your abuse. You blamed your victim, you denied your responsibility. You had no idea what was important in your life, you professed to love an occupation that clearly makes you miserable, and you refused to take responsibility for the changes you need to make in your life.

You know how this situation came to be. For 46 years, no one has ever held you accountable. Your family, for all of their virtues, cowered in fear of you. When you blew up, no one called you on it. You just expected everyone else to get over it--and if they didn’t, that was their fault. You just moved on, as though it was your place to do so. You'll be lucky if that trait doesn't continue into the next two generations.

Which brings me back to this past weekend. You want everything to go back to normal because you’ve been behaving--but in three days of visiting, you didn’t even acknowledge the change in your behavior, much less the reason for the change. But I can give you the simple version: an outsider came into your family and showed you a mirror. You--and everyone else in your immediate family--has now seen who you’ve been, who you are, and who you’re going to become if you don’t take responsibility for your life and make dramatic changes as a result. Incremental changes are already obsolete, and your continued silence will only make things worse.

Things don’t have to get worse. They can get better--you can decide to make changes. This is not as good as it gets. The present situation is not the best we can do. What we (and by "we," I mean the rest of us) are dealing with right now is trying to make the best of a broken family--and fixing broken things is what you do better than anyone I know. Fix this. Fix it now.

Dear D.L.,

Why do you miss me? Stop waiting for me to fix this--only you can make a positive difference in our relationship.

Here's a short list of ways:

Go to marriage counseling. You're not going to listen to anyone in this family when they try to help. You can't tell the difference between sorrow and guilt at this point--and without remorse, you're just behaving.

Schedule your own doctor appointments. Don't make someone else do it; take responsibility for your own life.

Cook meals, pay the bills, and do the laundry--basically, if you don't feel like doing a task at your house, that's your cue to do it. Your wife treats you like a toddler because she believes you'll fall apart if she doesn't do literally everything for you. Is she right?

And tell everyone to stop speaking for you. They offer nothing more than excuses anyway.

The truth of the matter is that this could be fixed in short order if you would put half as much effort into healing our families as you do into finding the best price on fence posts. And if you come back with "I'm going to try harder, and we're going to take it slower," remember this: an alcoholic who drinks less, or slower, or in a more relaxed fashion is still an alcoholic.

You need to change. Drastic change.

THE KETO DIET

Keto Mounds!

So. The Keto diet. It’s worked for me—I started 2017 at 160 lbs. Yesterday I saw 148.8. I'm not one to take shirtless photos in the mirror, so no picture evidence will be offered without payment. But I'm happy with how I feel, and that's not something I say lightly.

The Keto diet is a variant of what most people know as the Adkins diet: the famous low/no carb diet. The Keto diet, however, focuses more on fat and less on protein than the Adkins diet. But the bottom line is pretty simple: no carbs. No bread, no fruit, no sugar. And while that probably sounds like a terrible combination—a high-fat diet with no fruits and limited vegetables—I’ve probably eaten healthier in the last month than I have in years. I’ve had more salads than ever, and I’ve rediscovered the fact that I really like brussel sprouts. 

BABY FATHERHOOD: ABOVE ALL, MAKE IT FAIR

New fatherhood is a matter of focus. What matters the most in any marriage? The love of husband and wife. It goes without saying, but when it goes unsaid, it's easy to forget. And that doesn't change when baby #1 arrives. It becomes more important.

The role of a new father is to serve his wife. That's it. You may think "I can't do anything, she has to do all of these things, all I can do is change diapers, etc." Yes--there is truth there. Mother Nature is sexist. Mothers dominate when it comes to breastfeeding, nurturing, and emotionally attaching. Fathers tend to think that they are relegated to support duty in many areas. And while that is true, it's a destructive perspective that leads many husbands to lazily refuse to do all that they are able to do.

You can change diapers. You can get your wife a cup of water with a straw when she is breastfeeding. You can learn different ways of holding your baby so that you can help to calm it when it is upset. You can learn to use the 5 S's of calming a baby for naps and nighttime put-downs: shush, suckle, swaddle, shake (jiggle, for everyone who just rended their garments over the term), and side-turn.

You can take the baby for a walk so that your wife can take a nap.

If your wife uses a breast pump, you can clean all of the pump parts. In fact, you SHOULD clean all of the breast pump parts--pumps may be awesome in terms of the flexibility that they offer to breastfeeding moms, but they are inconvenient, cumbersome, and deserve to be hated by those who must use them on a daily basis. Your wife has to use the pump to fill the bottles--she should never have to clean any of those damn parts. That's like having the same person do the dishes after cooking every meal--it's an unfair arrangement. Be a man, not a male: make it fair.

BACKLASH

Trump's victory was a backlash against political correctness. The left created Trump's supporters--he literally could not have won without the left. 

Accusations of racism, sexism, and a countless number of -ism and phobia labels created Trump's supporters, and every effort to double down only drove more people to join them. The racist wall, his sexist words--his politically incorrect nature attracted people who have for many years been told that they were racist or sexist for holding thoughts that were deemed to be offensive.

Every new accusation from the left alienated more people--even those who considered themselves liberal and left-leaning--as each new accusation held a heightened offense over a smaller and/or more specific grievance. Trump greeted them with open arms by showing them that you can, in fact, say what you believe--and you don't have to give the time of day to those who would rather label you. That's exactly what Trump did.

Cultural appropriation. Misogyny. Islamophobia. Xenophobia. Racism. Sexism. Bigotry. The list of labels kept growing, and the brush used to apply these labels got wider and wider as the election went on--and it eventually got so wide that the very people who applied the labels could not avoid being labeled themselves. Amy Schumer comes to mind, as she was accused of cultural appropriation when she made a parody of a Beyonce song.

Political discourse is dead when you accuse large segments of the population of being racist. And when your side keeps finding new ways to kill discourse, you're going to lose. You're going to lose debates, you're going to lose people, and you're going to lose elections. Third party voters didn't elect Trump--you did.

DEAR GAYS,

The left chose Islam over you.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, all of the cool kids on Facebook raced to get that hip rainbow overlay for their profile picture. Your news feed was full of friends* who couldn't wait to remind those homophobic Christians that their hateful marriage amendments had failed.

If you didn't feel like a pawn after that spectacle, then the silence which has followed the killing of 50 gays by a Muslim man should leave you with no doubt.

The left has its religion, and it has nothing to do with your rights. Islam is the religion of the left. You were never anything more than a token that the left wanted to claim to protect from the the group the left wants to shame out of existence: that being, anyone who doesn't abide by its politically correct, privilege checking, greatness eliminating, false-equality enforcing rules. The left is full of people who are quick to accuse others of hate, racism, and sexism when they do not abide by the left's rules, and you were only going to benefit from that as long as it didn't infringe on the left's religion.

MUSLIMS? BIGOTRY? NOPE THE PROBLEM IS GUNS

Where is the social justice outcry against Islam after the shooting at a gay bar in Florida? Facebook is clearly struggling to fill my feed this week. 

When Christians from Westboro Baptist Church hold signs, it's national news. They are called racists and bigots. They are rightly ostracized and shunned. But no one goes out of their way to make a distinction between Westboro and other Christians. When a Christian does something racist or bigoted or wrong, social media doesn't fill up with stories explaining how that one person is an outlier. When a Catholic priest molests a boy, all Catholic priests are suspects. And Catholics who support priests are deluded deniers. And so on.

DEAR D.L.

For many people, it's too late to change. It's too late for them to recover. Their body or mind is too far gone to heal itself. You see these people in dialysis or nursing homes for a while, and then they are gone. At some point, your body can no longer heal itself, and your mind can't find its way back.

You are not one of those people. You have taken steps to get your body back to a self-healing status, and your body has responded. You have highs and lows--and while you don't always seem to know where you are, you do know where you don't want to be. While that doesn't necessarily help you find your destination, it does help you know the areas to avoid. Sometimes that's what success looks like--I know, because much of my success is due to nothing more than simply avoiding disaster.

Your body will recover remarkably as long as you continue to choose what is good.

Your mind will find peace if you spend time in the company of those who have your best interests at heart.

LAWS VS. TEACHINGS...FORCE VS. CHOICE

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered," contrary to natural law, and separate sexual acts from the gift of life. The same Catechism teaches that marriage is a covenant by which a man and woman are joined for life, for the good of the spouses, and the procreation of children.

In short, the Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality and marriage are not compatible. But that's not what this blog is about.

The use of a constitutional amendment to legally define marriage as being between a man and woman was never a moral approach. That's what this is blog is about. Beyond those laws which prevent murder and theft, laws only serve to determine the number of people standing at the business end of a government-wielded gun. As any law can only be enforced by force, coercion, and confiscation--all of which are, in the case of same-sex unions, far more destructive than the acts they prevent--the Church (or any of its members) should not advocate the use of a voting booth to force others to live in compliance with Church teachings. 

If the immorality of any type of government force is not reason enough to avoid writing laws in order to enforce one's faith, then the creation of division should be considered as well. Legally forcing outsiders to live by Church teachings (regardless of if done in defense of natural law or Church teachings themselves) creates a man-made divide between believers and unbelievers--and force and evangelism are, to put it lightly, at odds.

HOME

I have never known such innocence. As I watch your dark eyes change to blue, I can't help but ask what I can do to help you to stay just as you are. When the days are dark and the nights are cold, what can I do so that you can't breathe without knowing the love that I have for you?

All of your toys are simple, and everything I touch is complicated. Every time I try to simplify and cut things out, I only seem to find a more complicated way. What I would give if I could help you to see the precious few things which matter through the overwhelming number of things that don't. That you could see what would matter to you ten years from now, and allow that to help you ignore all of the noise that you hear today.

I would sing this to you, if it had a tune. There will always be a place you can go when this world wants to wash away everything that makes you sweet, your innocence feels like it holds you back, and you are rejected for living the principles that everyone else is content to merely talk about.

Do you know where you can go?

Long after the day comes when I can no longer carry you away from your tears, this home will still be yours. When your confidence is gone and you can't see anything beyond the floor, this home will be your new start. It will be here to remind you of why you are sweet and let you see the priceless value of your innocence. If you are rich in nothing but soul, you will be rich when you are here.

CITY OF NORFOLK, NE: "LET'S PLANT 150 TREES [ON S. 7TH STREET]"

The City of Norfolk, Nebraska is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2016. The City of Norfolk Tree Advisory Board has set a goal of having Norfolk residents plant 150 trees in honor of the anniversary. The following information is under the Tree Advisory Board's section of the city's website, anyway:

Be a Norfolk Tree Bud!

Trees provide beauty, shade, windbreak and wildlife habitat in our community. Be a Tree Bud and help support trees in the Norfolk area. 

There are many ways you can be a Norfolk Tree Bud. One way is to contribute $2 on your water bill to purchase, plant and care for trees in Norfolk. Just check the box on your water bill that says "Sign up to add $2 charge to each water bill for trees." Or signup online!

You can also plant a tree. For guidance on what trees are best to plant in the Norfolk area see our Tree Considerations list.

It's the 150th anniversary of Norfolk so plant a tree, take a picture of you and/or your group that's planting the tree and send it to dbecker@ci.norfolk.ne.us and we'll post it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/norfolkne and we'll put it on our website at www.ci.norfolk.ne.us/parks/150trees.htm.

Say no more, Tree Advisers. I know exactly where to stick every one of the trees purchased through the water bill system. If the City of Norfolk and its Tree Advisory Board are serious about increasing beauty in the city, it would be most effective to plant the trees in (1) a publicly visible location (2) where the trees would not only replace an eyesore, but also (3) passively prevent people from trespassing by turning private property into a creeping expansion of the city's ugliest parking lot.

THE 18 STEPS THAT BROUGHT ME HOME

EMPTY

When there wasn't a small enough box to hold everything that I would bring into my marriage.

UNPREPARED

When, after having spent my first post-college year working a retail job, I moved to Norfolk because my future wife had a job there. 

SMALL

When I saw in myself none of the things that I believed a husband should have: money, a successful career, or at least the prospect of having one or the other. A husband, above all, should provide for his family.

AIMLESS

When I saw endless reminders that I couldn't aim to be successful when I didn't even know where my target was.

BLAME THE WEATHER!

In 2014, Macy's stores blamed cold weather for poor sales.

2/25/2014: Sales and earnings full year 2013, ended Feb. 1, 2014

In part, poor January sales were due to the unusually harsh winter weather across much of the country. At one time or another during January, 244 Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores were closed because of weather, and the business remained sluggish until Valentine's Day,” he said. “Once warm spring weather arrives and our full assortment of fresh spring merchandise is in place, we believe customers will return to a more normalized pattern of shopping.

Fast forward to 2016. Sales not so good. Weather too warm!

1/6/2016: Macy’s, Inc. Reports Nov/Dec Sales and Updates 2015 Guidance

The holiday selling season was challenging, as experienced throughout 2015 by much of the retailing industry. In the November/December period, we were particularly disadvantaged by the historically warm weather in northern climate zones where both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s are especially well-represented. About 80 percent of our company’s year-over-year declines in comparable sales can be attributed to shortfalls in cold-weather goods such as coats, sweaters, boots, hats, gloves and scarves.

Weather is hard. Or maybe this is what happens when a business closes stores, buys back stock, and runs a bunch of commercials about how great its products and service are while its product and service levels decline.

AMMON BUNDY: "YOU NEED TO DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS"

Done.

Ammon Bundy has created a country & western version of the Occupy movement: he has assembled an angry but inarticulate group of people, with government replacing Wall Street and gun rights have taken the place of marijuana legalization. 

The group's grievances are far too micro to be driven by principle. They have taken over a wildlife refuge in response to the prison sentences handed out to Dwight and Steven Hammond, two ranchers who lit fires which spread to federal land. There are apparently other references to the "unwinding" of federal ownership of lands, but nothing specific enough to suspect principled motives.