From the mind of Paul Jones

I don’t know if you are anything like me, if you are, you always encounter problems at the very end of a project. In my life, it seems to happen most when I am doing something technical, difficult or very labor intensive. I have it happen when changing brakes on a car, when writing computer code and most recently, when digging holes. I hope you are not like me, in that my past experiences put major roadblocks in front of me when I have something to do. It may be because I am hyper-analytical or that I have an un-useful idea of personal perfection that makes even the smallest projects too large to tackle or so complicated that I can’t summon the necessary motivation to get started. It is probably rooted deep in some childhood experiences I have yet to excavate, but it is something I actively war with.

Recently, I have been considering the idea of community and what that means as a Christian. When I chose to move into a less desirable area of Nashville to live, there was some sort of driving desire to connect with and serve my community, something I had no idea how to do. I have been digging into the Bible and trying to figure out what it is that is gnawing at me from the inside, something that isn’t satiated by a church community or a group of friends, something that is rooted more in a desire for others to know the Father’s love for them.

Several years ago, I had an soul-itch, an inner irritation that seemed to be drawing me to the foreign mission field. In the fantasies of my mind, I had conjured what that would look like, reaching out to people and introducing them to Christ. I had warm fuzzy thoughts of having some deep spiritual flow that would supply all of this need that the world had for Christ, something supernatural, powerful…. and completely unrealistic. It was when I was reading a biography of one of my spiritual heroes, James Hudson Taylor, that I encountered something that would shake my concepts and wake me from my foggy dream.

Taylor felt the calling to the mission field in China at a very young age, something that remained in him and motivated him into his early adult years. He too was caught up in the foggy dreams of the mission field. In his dreamy state, he imagined that by simply going to China he would suddenly be imbued with the life of faith necessary to live under harsh conditions with few lines of support and be fortified in a way to make the gospel effective. During one of his many moments of prayer he received a sudden conviction. How could he possibly expect to live by faith in China when he had no experience of living by it at home in England? This thought changed the direction of Taylor’s life and provided a solid foundation for the life of faith that was to mark him as one of the most influential missionaries of all time.

The changes that such a consideration had on him were powerful, several of them left my cheeks tear-stained as I read the accounts. Taylor learned something that helped me greatly; there is no grand tomorrow in which everything will be different, everything is as it is today and you must live now. I had some sort of fatalistic desire to be a missionary to the Muslim world, something that I knew could likely lead to martyrdom. I knew that ministry in such a place would require more than a sound doctrine, it required a gospel living, something I was pretty sure I didn’t have.

When I got over some of my dreamy ideas of missionary work, I began to ask myself if I was living any sort of gospel life. Sure, I was faithfully meeting with my local church, serving the Body in several different areas of service, I was offering my tithe, I was seeking the Lord in His word and yet I had some deep yearning to have a life that meant more to the people that surrounded me. I wanted to care for people in a way that I desired to be cared for and loved. I quickly realized that I didn’t need a foreign mission field, all the challenges that would press me into a genuine gospel living were right in front of me, in the homes of my neighbors and in the streets surrounding my neighborhood.

When I moved into my house in Nashville, the Lord presented my with some neighbors that are pressing me into such a gospel living. It didn’t take me long to discover needs right next door. Over the last two years I have been inwardly compelled to care for my neighbor Mrs. Dillon, a little 80 year old widow with many health problems and nearly as many family ones, with a broken body and a vivacious spirit.When I introduced my girlfriend to Mrs. Dillon, the need to become involved in Mrs. Dillon’s life multiplied. Kim, being a woman, was instantly endeared to Mrs. Dillon. Such a relationship allowed us to look more deeply at her needs and discover just how much she needs a helping hand.

I don’t intend to take you on a journey of my experiences with Mrs. Dillon, instead I wanted to take you into the place where love is tested. The gospel life is not easy, I think that is because it requires an exchanged life, much like the apostle Paul expressed when he declared, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” One of the first lessons that God began to teach me in this little experiment in community, is that there is no room for my self. I know that God has a sense of humor when He teaches me things, or at least I am sure He did when my lawnmower broke.

One of the ways that I became involved in Mrs. Dillon’s life, began with mowing her lawn. Before I moved in, my neighbor across the street, Napoleon, a man in his 60’s used to mow her lawn. I noticed him out there one day mowing and suddenly felt convicted that such an old man was mowing her lawn when I was perfectly capable; so, when the next week came around and I pulled out my lawn mower to mow my own lawn, I went ahead and mowed her’s as well to save Napoleon the trouble. Beginning with the first time I mowed her lawn, God began to teach me.

God’s teaching began when, with sweat pouring down under the Tennessee sun, I began to consider how I could shortcut the mowing and move the process along faster. Mowing my own lawn was taxing enough in the heat and an additional lawn was pushing my out-of-shape body physically. Almost immediately, when the thought to shortcut the lawn came to me, the phrase, “love your neighbor as yourself” seemed to ring out. I began to consider what something like that would mean in terms of lawn-mowing. I was astounded how quickly my analytical and legalistic brain began to argue for the gray-area and try to determine the absolute lower limit of what is required to love someone as myself.

How quickly I am mired in reasoning, but it was clear to me that if I had not shortcut my yard, I should not shortcut hers, so the scraggly areas behind the shrubs got mowed and I moved the trashcans away from the fence to mow the area where they sat, I think I even brought out the weed whacker and trimmed. I felt satisfied that I had fulfilled the law, and when my neighbor Napoleon commented on how good it looked, I felt pretty good about myself… but God had more for me to learn.

Some time, shortly after becoming Mrs. Dillon’s new lawn care service,  I was out doing my religious service of “loving my neighbor” when I ran afoul. While attempting to get a cut close up next to the house, I ran my mower over a grounding stake that sat was left over from some TV antenna that probably graced their roof back in the 70’s. Such a small thing contained my next lesson, and I’m sure God was chuckling over this one. CLUNK! It was some version of that sound that my mower made before the machine jarred violently and the engine died.

I don’t remember what I said, but I am pretty sure that some profanity was involved. I was not finished with the lawn and now my mower was broken, but the biggest problem was with my reasoning. Immediately I began to murmur. Why did this have to happen when I was “loving my neighbor?” If I had just simply stuck to mowing my lawn, I would still have a working lawn mower. What a way for me to be repaid for my love! Jammed packed in a twisted grounding stake and a severely bent lawnmower blade was revelation– what I was offering wasn’t love.

Ultimately, I bought a new mower blade (I probably needed a new one anyway) and I finished the lawn, but the revelation that I had that day would stick with me and I would continue to muse on. Eventually I would come to realize that much of what I was doing for Mrs. Dillon was motivated by some twisted sence of obligation and was not sourced in any sort of divine love or exchanged love. The challenge to develop community in love, is something that God is continuing to teach me, often at times when someone’s need bumps up against my personal issues.

I have plenty of personal issues and there are plenty of needs out there, so God has plenty of opportunities to perfect this kind of love in me. Most recently it involved holes. Mrs. Dillon’s house is in poor repair and Kim and I had identified several key things that we could do to improve Mrs. Dillon’s standard of living and make her environment safer for her. One of the most obvious, was her front step. Every day Mrs. Dillon would make her slow trek to the mail box, often to discover is empty. There are many hazards along that path for an 80 year old woman with such a broken and feeble body, but the greatest was her front step.

Much of Mrs. Dillon’s house was constructed in a shoddy way, but her front step was simply dangerous. A standard step has a 4-7″ rise and a 10″ deep base. Mrs. Dillon’s step had a 10-11″ rise and a 16″ base. There was only one step– and it was a doozy! I know that there is no way to help you understand how jacked-up this step was because just telling you inches most likely doesn’t help you at all, but I guarantee you that you are so used to what is standard, that if you encountered a step that was just an inch or so out of standard you would realize it immediately because your foot is trained to expect a solid surface after only so much drop.

To watch Mrs. Dillon navigate this step would probably be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful. Her stooped and broken body would move slowly out the door and head directly for the wrought iron  supports at the corner of her stoop, she would grip the iron and turn herself completely around and go down the stairs backwards. With such a large drop and no hand railing available, this was probably the single most dangerous thing that she encountered on a daily basis and something that had to be remedied.

I considered the options for fixing her concrete step and erecting some hand rails and Kim and I set out for Home Depot to price some materials. It turned out that iron handrails are really expensive and we had to come up with a new solution that fell within the available budget that was set aside to help care for Mrs. Dillon. Kim mentioned that her grandfather made some railing with iron pipe and I realized that pipe railing was quite common, as a matter fact, that was what I had for railing on my front steps.

I’ll save you the details and all the adventures had in getting all of the materials, but I will say, it wasn’t easy or straight forward. But Kim was diligent to remind me how much this was needed by my lovely old neighbor. I decided to augment the existing concrete step and pour a new step on top of the existing one. This was easily done, it took about a half and hour to build a form and another hour and a half to mix the concrete, pour it and finish it.

Once the new step was set and usable, it was clear how badly it was needed. I almost felt ashamed for waiting so long to get around to putting it in, but the pipe railing was another beast entirety. I have to actively resist telling you about all of the issues we had with the piping, things made me want to abandon that part of the project several times. The pipe was cut to specifications and threaded so that they could be connected together with angled fittings and all that pipe sat in front of my house for weeks waiting for me to get up the energy to do it. Every time I came home, I was haunted by the sections of black iron pipe that sat tilted precariously against the white vinyl paneling adorns the facade of my front porch.

I had even begun to screw together the parts to make the railing– a project I abandoned on day, leaving a partially built railing setting in Mrs. Dillons yard. Over and over, I told myself I was waiting for the energy, ultimately, I realized I was waiting for the love. I was sure that the railing portion of the project had gotten filed into the “obligation” drawer, something I could shirk and put off as long as I wanted to, something entirely devoid of love.

Eventually, my heart was rekindled and I set about to build a most excellent set of railings for my neighbor. I think part of the reason it was difficult to love my neighbor in this way, was because I knew the work involved was hard. Digging post holes for the pipes by hand is sweat work, made more difficult by the occasional rock or large root that seems to show up just to impede progress. Had already filled my mind with all of the possible difficulties I would encounter along the way–only to discover others I didn’t think about.

It turns out that my first set of post holes weren’t as difficult as I worried they would be. The dirt was hard due to the lack of rain, but for the most part no other obstacles appeared. But I am a cynic by nature and my mind began to think about the greater problems that would befall me with the next set of holes, but my worries were unfounded, the second set was even easier that the first. Before I knew it, I had the rails constructed and set in the holes. I poured in the Quikrete and voila, handrails, for the first time, Mrs. Dillon could go down her steps safely–looking forward.

But my story doesn’t end there, it goes further. The front step was only the first of two places that needed railings. Next up was the set of steps leading down to her driveway. Those steps were more traditional, but still dangerous for a little old lady to navigate safely. Through circumstances and compromise, I decided to only up railing on one side of the driveway stairs, a concession that I was happy about since it meant that only two more holes needed to be dug.

The first hole was slow going, the dirt was very dry and compacted. It took much more beating and hacking to get through the first six inches of soil. The post holes needed to be much deeper due to the length of the pipe, almost twice as deep as the front steps. After the first six inches, the soil was moister and the digging easier. Eventually, I reached a foot deep and had a foot more to go. After about four more inches, I experienced what I had dreaded. PLUNK! The post hole digger had met a large rock.

I pounded the rock with every large heavy thing I had to try and break it, but it would not budge. Suddenly, I was looking at a halt in progress, I could go no deeper. I considered back filling the hole and forgetting that railing, it was only marginally important anyway. But then I had another idea. Mrs. Dillon’s husband worked for Nashville Gas for over 20 years and had a load of tools for iron pipe. I quickly found a pipe cutter and after making some measurements, I chopped seven inches off the bottom of the pipe. The pipe was going to be plenty deep anyway, so the extra inches only meant the last posthole wasn’t going to have to be so deep since it was seven inches shorter as well.

With the finish line in my sights, I dove into the last hole. Now they say, Murphy was an optimist, but I am pretty sure he was a cynic just like me. Well, as I can normally expect, is something hasn’t gone horribly wrong already, the last thing you have to do usually will and the last post hole was no exception. At first, the dirt just wanted to crumble and the posthole digger couldn’t grip the dirt enough to pull it out, so I had to tear the dirt up with the tool and scoop it out by hand. After about four inches of digging– PING! I began hitting stuff that had to be pounded and dug out by hand. Inch by inch I ended up tearing up by hand, reaching into the dirt and working free stones, bricks and large pieces of glass.

The last post hole was not giving up without a fight and I had to go once more into the breach. Eventually, I felt a sense of victory as I tore out the last remaining piles of dirt and brick. After many hours of sweat and tears I had finally reached my final task, the final hand railing… only to discover the my calculations were off on the angle of the steps. Instead of a perfect 45 degree angle that I calculated, the steps ended up being much steeper, and the fittings that I used to construct the railing was going to have to change, that meant an evening run to Home Depot, which I hoped was still open.

I popped in and grabbed the parts I determined I needed, only to get back and realize that forgot one part. I considered once again abandoning the project and calling it a night. The sun had already set and I was working under the illumination of my truck’s headlights. But I knew I couldn’t just keep putting it off. I have a horrible track record when it comes to completing things, so I purpose for the happiness of my sweet old neighbor, that this labor of love would get finished that night.

Well I got the project finished, the posts were set and the concrete poured. I didn’t cheat the project, I gave it 110% Something I wouldn’t have even done for myself. I am prone to quit and abandon things too easily; mostly because I make them too complicated to begin in the first place, but ultimately, I felt plugged into a different life, a Life that didn’t want to quit, a Life that loved a little old lady and was willing to go the extra mile for her.

You would probably think that after such an experience I would be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor, to see the smile on an old ladies face, to know how much she feels loved and cared for by the Lord, but I feel altogether different. Much like Oskar Schindler as portrayed in the movie Schindle’s List, at the end of the film as he sees the faces of all of those Jews he saved, he begins to weep bitterly, “I could have done more,” he says, “I could have done more.” While my feeling is not as remorseful as Oskar’s it is the same. In moments where I feel that I am experiencing and building genuine community, I see so much opportunity. There are so many people who are broken and in need, who would know the love of the Father, if more of His people would exercise to show it.

I am cheif among the sluggards, drugged and stupefied by some sense of religious obligations and not motivated by a pure Love that is sourced in the divine. Something deep is calling out in me to love with reckless abandon. To meet the broken and battered of this world and extend a warm hand of love to them. Why after so many years of pursuing my faith in such purely doctrinal terms, following forms and practices that don’t reach beyond the walls of the church to speak and care for the lowly ones in this world, why now is the Lord stirring within me in this way?

I can’t help but reflect on a something I read this morning as I pressed deeper into my search for the Jesus that is revealed in the Bible, it was a portion in the gospel according to Matthew, where Jesus had been performing miracles, healing the broken; something that drew the broken to Jesus by the thousands. At the end of chapter 9 in verse 36 it says, “And seeing the crowds, He was moved with compassion for them because they were harassed and cast away like sheep not having a shepherd.” Continuing in verse 37 and 38, “Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is great, but the workers few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest that he would thrust out workers into His harvest.”

I have always heard this verse used in the context of winning souls or converts, but I don’t think that I ever registered the characterization of the “harvest” here. The harvest that moved him with compassion was the throngs of broken people who were in need of healing. These verses are followed immediately, in chapter 10, with Jesus giving authority to the disciples to heal people and sending out to do just that. Jesus, who is the Lord of the harvest, thrust out new workers, and the harvesting work they were doing was to “proclaim, saying, the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons…” (Mat. 10: 7&8).

But that wasn’t was struck me, what struck me was 9:36 when it says he was moved with compassion for the crowds because they had been “harassed”, one commentary suggests that the Greek word for harass here is related to a practice of skinning a sheep. The religious leaders did not take care of the people, instead the robbed them of their comfort and displaced them, leaving them to wander. It was these broken people the Jesus chose to reveal the kingdom to, these people without a shepherd. I can’t help but wonder why it seems the churches today aren’t filled to the brim with broken people.

In Nashville, we have churches on nearly every corner and I see the people coming in and going out, most are not the broken and the lowly. As a matter of fact, I have been a part of churches that seemed to weed out the needy ones, making the church an uncomfortable place to be. In my life, I have been ministered to more often by the broken and lowly in the church, those without respect, who live a life poured out on others while the people who are given the first place in the church are those who have it all together and can afford their rent and own a car.

Perhaps this is the last posthole in the church, the recovery of love. As I am learning, this love is not an easy way to go, because it demands everything from you. This exercise of this love is full of pitfalls and obstacles. But if we could begin to see how radically different life would be if we didn’t worry about stock markets and housing markets, if the only economy the concerned us was the economy of God, something that is building itself up in love, how radical would that be? What if we didn’t care about all the things the world cares about? What if 100% of our energy was exercised to actively love people, what would that look like to the world? Why not find out?

Ok, this is one of those blogs that is just going to be a personal rant; hopefully, with something of value included. In case you have been under a rock, are reeling from hurricane damage or only listen to your radio in the car you have no gas for, a very scary thing is happening on Capital Hill. It looks like the taxpayers are about to be a part of the biggest corporate bailout ever, to the tune of $700,000,000,000… yes, 700 billion dollars.

I think we are all aware of the skid that are economy in the US is on. There are many out of work and foreclosures left and right and the cost of living is on the rise. No doubt many Americans are feeling the pinch on their wallets and the politicrats in Washington are coming up on an election year– this is a very dangerous situation.

Seven years ago, I bought my first house in Phoenix, AZ and at the time, mortgage lenders were throwing around money. Not only were there $0 down loans, but lenders were allowing second mortgages on homes in excess of 110% of the properties estimated value. When I started looking for a home, I consulted with a friend who was a mortgage broker and he said I could probably get a loan for up to $300,000. I could not imagine that could be the case, but he assured me that with my job history and my stellar credit (something like 770 at the time) I could do just about anything.

Alarms went off in my head, something had to be wrong, but he assured me that there were people making less that I did with credit in the toilet being cleared for $250,000. Being the pragmatic person that I am, I went out and bought a home for $115,00… just about the cheapest quality home I could find in the area I wanted to live. At the time, man of my friends told me I was crazy to live in an area the had higher crime and “lesser quality” neighbors. The wanted me to live twenty miles away in their gated communities as they we certain that the value of their new homes would rise faster than my 1970s ranch home just outside of the city.

I was certain that I didn’t want to live in a new home. I had heard too many horror stories about community regulations and fines… nothing I had any desire to deal with. While I didn’t put anything down on the home, I did pay for all of the costs of the sale and I was off running the race of a homeowner.

During the next five years I knew man people that bought and sold. In Phoenix, the real-estate market began to take off and people were buying and selling with reckless abandon. They would move from one home and upgrade to something new, trading in equity for marble countertops and stainless steel appliances. Who wouldn’t? The mortgage lenders made it easy, making “creative” loans that made mortgage payments for expensive homes easier to manage.

I talked with a few friends that helped me understand their logic. Hey, get an interest only lone for five years, live in the house for two years (just long enough to avoid taxes on the profit) and upgrade again. The thought was that they could just live in the cycle forever getting increasingly more and more spectacular houses. I didn’t buy it. The market was growing across the board and if their $200,000 was worth $300,000 in two or three years, certainly the grander house was increasing value at the same rate, thus negating all the expected profit on the increase in value.

When we debated it, I explained that based on my understanding, the only way to profit in this way would be to:

1. buy only fixer-uppers so that sweat equity can be factored in… or
2. sell your house in the growing Phoenix market and buy your next house in market with less growth, say, somewhere in Idaho.

Friends swore up and down I was wrong and told me I was foolish for not “moving up” to something bigger and better. But I was fine where I lived. It was a blue collar neighborhood with no community regulations and only a mile from my office. Sure there was crime where I lived, my house was broken into once and so was my brand new truck just a few days from the dealer lot. But crime happened to other people in wealthier areas, but with the addition of a burglar alarm on my house and truck, I figured the benefits of owning a home where I lived was better than risking a dodgy housing market that was willing to loan money to people two years out of bankruptcy.

I knew someone who bought a $300,000+ home and they were one of the worst credit risks I knew– I wouldn’t lend them $100 if they asked. I guess in some way I was a little jealous, here I was someone who worked hard and earned good money who lives in a less desirable location than someone who shouldn’t even own a house, somehow that seemed wrong.

Add to my experience, that I had several friends who were mortgage brokers who work primarily in high-risk loans. They told me often about how they are constantly lending to people who they know will loose their house in a year or so. Just talking with them, they could tell how bad a risk they were, but they found people to loan them money. Mostly on ARMs and interest only loans that they knew they couldn’t afford once the balloon payment came.

I figured that there were plenty of balloon payments coming due in five years, and I didn’t want to be a part of that. Yes, it was tempting when banks would offer me $10-15,000 in equity loans… yes, borrow over 110% of your houses value… I almost rationalized taking out such a loan to pay off debt and upgrade my home… but I am glad I didn’t.

Eventually, the heyday was over. Investors had flooded Phoenix and driven home values up so high, that most people couldn’t resist taking out a second mortgage to play with the free money. I watched it happen and everything in my gut knew something bad was going to happen, things like that just don’t go on forever. Eventually, the bubble burst.

Phoenix was one of the overheated markets that preceded the housing market crash. There was once a time in Phoenix, when there were no more that 300 homes available to purchase, within one year that list was 13,000. Suddenly, all of those people who used those great loans to by an investment, needed to sell their homes, and there weren’t enough buyers in the market to buy them. Housing values tumbled, beginning with the most expensive homes, and people began to panic.

Soon, people began to learn that housing values had fallen. That $250,000 fix-up home with $30,000 worth of improvements is only worth $250,000 and that $30,000 investment has been eaten up by the loss in value. People began to default on their loans. All those investment properties hit the market, because rental values began to tank as well. It was just after the bubble burst that I sold my home in Phoenix. Because I had purchased at the lower end of the market and I had held equity more valuable than dreams, I was able to undercut the market and sell my home within 3 days of listing it. Houses in my area were so over inflated that I had 10 solid offers, 3 of which were asking price plus.

I ended up escaping the Phoenix bubble. As fate would have it, the person that owns my house now, can’t sell it for what I sold it for, they are trapped in it until they can pay some equity into it or housing values climb again. I ended up moving to Nashville, where the market was healthy and the value of the dollar goes further. When I first moved, I almost bought a house that was worth more than the house I owned in Phoenix… I say almost because I didn’t buy that house. I bought something much cheaper.

I looked at my money and my future, and realized that I didn’t want to be a person that spent my life servicing debts, so I paid off my debts, did some charitable giving, helped some that needed helping and bought the cheapest house that I could find.

Today, I am happy. I am not caught in that mortgage debacle. I invested in something I could afford and valued equity over any other possessions I could acquire. But I, unfortunately, was in the minority. Many people in America overbought. I have had several friends in crisis, some of which ended up in foreclosure. This makes me sad– they bought the hype. Instead of looking at the facts they trusted the marketing and some are paying dearly for it.

This brings me to the subject of this blog. Our government is watching the tanking mortgage market, stock market and the struggling economy and trying to figure out what to do. Recently, the government had to reach in with the FDIC and protect some banks that were bankrupt. As defaults on bad mortgages rise, and the bank’s assurity in steady housing values fail to provide insurance, financial institutions are reaching crisis mode.

Today, not only defaults on loans growing, but banks are wary of lending money that has any sort of risk attached. Housing is more affordable than it has been in years, but people can’t get loans to get into those homes. Enter the Federal Government. Seeing how much wealth was gained in those overheated years, they can’t help but see how much the collapse of that business has harmed the economy and they think they have a fix for the problem. Bailout all some of those companies that made bad loans.

What? Why would the government make a move to ensure that businesses that can’t compete in this market are still players? Sure, these foreclosures hurt, but many of those foreclosures are occurring on loans that should never have been made in the first place. Is it the fault of the home-buyer that they bought more house then they could afford? Yes. Even if it was because the believed the hype? Yes. If a bank has defaults and it closes, who’s fault is that? The bank. Why does the government need to prevent a normal market shakeout?

Sure it is painful, and yes, if I was in foreclosure, I would be happy that someone else was able to bail me out of a bad decision, but that doesn’t make it right. In my opinion, this move is really, really bad. All it does is prevent people who have made a bad business decision from experiencing the results of the bad business. In my opinion, it is like the US Government standing outside of a casino rebating people the money that they lost inside. Losing is part of what makes businesses better or at least allows those who do things better to win.

This reminds me of all of the insurance bailouts that happen after every major catastrophe. A hurricane his a major city and billions of damage occurs. Suddenly, a company who has taken people’s money for years says it cant afford to pay the losses. The government steps in a lets that company survive. Let the company survive, because what would we do without them? We would adapt and overcome like we always do.

Let Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae crash and burn and let the economy reel and let millions of people hurt. After such a bad experience, it wouldn’t be too soon that they would let that happen again. Sure, we as a nation would feel much better and still be drugged by the thought that we don’t need to look out for ourselves because Uncle Sam is doing it for us. Let the chips fall where they may. If a company makes a bad decision and crashes and burns for it, let it happen. Sure there will be residual fallout and collateral damage, but that is the circle of life.

In America, we used to tout the idea of free enterprise. The more our Government intrudes into that, the more mucked up it gets. Free enterprise has its own checks and balances, if someone isn’t doing something right or is missing something that people need, then someone else will come along and do it, that is what makes a fee market work.

Today, the government is looking to step in and help prop up a company that contributed to decisions that created this problem in the first place. This is not small action, $700 billion dollars is $2,333 from every American, or between $5,000 - $7,000 from every tax paying American! Does this sound right? Who is this helping? This is way too much money to treat lightly. If you oppose the waste of money in Iraq, you can’t possibly support this bailout. If you believe in fiscal responsibility you can’t support it. If you believe in the principles of the free market you can’t support it.

I say let it all burn. Let this house of cards fall, then maybe Americans will wake up and decide to take their futures into their own hands and not let it be dictated by phony marketing and politicrats. Wake up America, call your legislators and demand the rationalization behind such a reckless unamerican act!

UPDATE 9/26

I just learned that many banks were forced by government policy to provide sub-prime (risky) loans. While I don’t endorse to political slant of the following, it includes a great deal of important information about the mortgage “crisis”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH–o

At the moment that I am writing this, I am sitting on a front porch looking eastward at the waves of the Atlantic as they crash the beaches of Garden City, SC. Bodies are playing in the surf as families enjoy the last gasp of the summer season, and children try to forget that school is eminent. I am sitting alone on this porch, nursing a sunburn I obtained yesterday in my attempts to erase my beautiful Nashville farmer’s tan. The nursing of this sunburn is not so much to care for the pain, as much as it is a procedure involving gels and creams that reduce the strong possibility that any color I may have obtained will soon disappear in a disappointing flurry of peeling skin.

I have only recently regained an appreciation for the beach vacation. For many years, I disliked the beach– well, not the beach per se, but the “beach experience” that involves being half naked and exposed for long periods of time to the sun. I am not sure if my dislike began as a result of the many childhood sunburn miseries or because of the fact that, half naked, I look like the Pillsbury dough boy in swim trunks… perhaps a combination of the two. Maybe it began sometime about fourth grade, when I began to wear t-shirts swimming… partially because of sunburn prevention and partially to conceal my growing pasty white belly.

Regardless of how and why, I mostly resisted going to the beach until two years ago, when I returned to Phoenix in order to drive my VW bug to Nashville, and had a nearly religious experience. Early on my last morning in Phoenix, I got up and decided to jump into my fiend’s pool for an early morning swim. The water was cool and refreshing and the sun was just beginning to peak above the rooftops. I moved to the edge of the pool and pulled myself half way out of the water directly into the suns rays. For nearly twenty minutes, I rested there reclined as the sun rose and began to warm me. For the first time in my memory I enjoyed the combination of water and sun in a truly thankful way.

At that moment, my mood was even worshipful, as I appreciated God’s love for me in the warming rays. Now when I think of that moment, a verse from the Old Testament (Malachi 4:2) comes to mind. “… the sun of righteousness will arise, with healing in his wings.” In those few moments I experienced some healing, and afterward, I began to think much more enjoyably about the sun and surf; so, when I am tired and burned out, I often find myself having a longing for that special kind of healing.

For the last 3 months, I have been working on the television show Nashville Star, which, with its 12 hour work days, really beat me up. Add to that beating the fact that my girlfriend Kim and I were working opposite schedules that didn’t allow us to see each other very often, compounded even further by the fact that she was losing her apartment of 15 years and had to sell, chuck, move or give away a large volume of belongings, and (the worst part… for me) the need to actually move things from the 5th floor apartment during the hottest and most humid part of the summer, at the same time we are being needed for in the Nashville Star finale.

By the time Kim was moved and the show ended, we were both severely beat up physically and emotionally and in need of a vacation. Lucky for both of us, Kim’s family holds its annual beach reunion every year in August. This year, it landed perfectly at the end of Nashville Star. A month or so ago, I got the invitation to be included in the family event, an opportunity to meet Kim’s family was something I was ready for, especially if it meant a week-long vacation at the beach.

So, here I sit on day 3, a nice breeze is blowing, the sky is a bit hazy, but the weather is excellent. Humidity is low, the temperature is warm and the pool is cool. Between the beach, the pool, the seafood buffets and an enjoyable family dynamic, I am in hog heaven. The only bummer, it the intermittent Internet signal I can pirate from the condos next door. But ultimately, who cares about the Interwebs or the Olympics when you have the sun of righteousness arising with healing in his wings, just waiting with open arms to calm, warm and revive you.

What I hope follows this entry, is a series of blogs that offers a day-by-day summary of the healing.

I am sitting here wracking my brain, trying to think of some fun, witty or deep to write about, but my mind is tossed by a constant tempest and any safe harbor my mind finds, is quickly stirred again into frenzied sea. I can’t count how often I have an idea for a blog that never sees the light of day or is begun only to be bogged down by an excessive inclusion of detail and back-story. Often it is just an idea for a blog title that gets my mind thinking about writing, but lately… nothing has solidified into anything resembling a cohesive blog.

In some way, I think I need to exercise the demons of these ideas, so, they don’t continue to plague me. So, here will be my attempt at some micro-blogging– a blog title and a single paragraph of bloggering:

 I Enjoy Being Missed…

Occasionally, my world is viewed from a very negative perspective, and often I see the things around me as a litany of things that can, and possibly will, go wrong. Today is not one of those days. Everyday, when I leave my job, I have to take a short walk through a nature path to get to the parking lot where my truck is parked. I often enjoy this walk, as the path is lined with trees and a manicured garden which often causes me to walk a little slower than normal in order to take in the beauty of the man-polished nature. On this particular day, I was walking and noticed a couple walking toward me, so, I shifted to my right in order to allow them to pass comfortably. This was a very lucky happenstance, for as fate would have it, just as I shifted to my right, I heard a series of large splashes to my immediate left. I turned quickly to witness the source of the splashes, as a very large bird-turd splattered the sidewalk beside me creating a fourth splash. As I considered how my day may have begun, had I been the target of those droppings, I couldn’t help but think, how much I enjoyed being missed.

Ok, that wasn’t that bad, it may not have been a true “micro-blog” but, for someone like myself, who is usually prone to writing epic blogs, that was pretty micro.

It’s been more than six months since I’ve posted anything online. It is difficult to believe that, in the swirling changes happening over the last few months, I haven’t found at least a few moments to do a brain dump. I think I began a few blogs, but they were mostly based in some deep, theological wrestling and tended to be something that I couldn’t just bang out in 20 minutes.

At the moment, I am sitting in a room at the end of a long hallway of a large Hotel, keeping an eye on the cast of this next season of Nashville Star. They are all asleep, and I am killing time listening to a preview copy of my brother’s new record, Swallow the Sea, and feeling a need to create something. Over the last few years, my creative energy seems to direct out of writing, and what easier way to write than to dump something into the blogosphere.

The last six months have seen many changes in my life… like my attempt at a serious relationship, running out of money, learning to trust in God for my living, working in television production, making new friends, becoming an uncle again, witnessing suffering, attempting to experience and build community with my neighbors, watching God work in other’s lives around me, abandoning old personal issues and concepts… did I already mention learning to trust God, yeah, that has been a big one.

For someone who wants to know the details, learning to live life one day at a time has been a real challenge. But luckily, I haven’t had to do it on my own. Having my girlfriend, Kim, in my life has helped me take a new perspective on many things that I thought had been set in stone. In a way, she has helped me tap into the Paul of my youth, the one with dreams and a spirit of adventure… the one that loved laughing and found energy by being with other people. Helping me also to rediscover a God who is living and operative… who loves me and desires good things for me– a concept that experientially died in me long ago, when I chose to embrace theology and doctrine over a life of faith in love.

Right now, I am sitting in a chair, staring down a long hallway, waiting for signs of life. A housekeeper is making her rounds, and the cast is beginning to stir. I don’t know what the day holds for me, perhaps some adventure, perhaps just some rest. I need to return to my job, so I’ll close my brain dump for now. Hopefully, I have arced the last six months and future bloggings will come with more regularity.

Here’s to hoping

Well, today is the day… it’s been one year. I can’t believe that I left the life of a well-paid software developer to step out and chase a dream. A year ago, I had the plan to take a three month hiatus from work, write some screenplays and make my first short film. Over those months I had many false starts and complete failures which helped teach me what it really takes to make films professionally and it has been one heck of a journey… lasting nine months longer than planned.

I still haven’t made my first film and have have a trail of unfinished scripts and undeveloped stories that litter the path I have traveled over the last year, but I am so much closer to my dream than I have ever been at any time in my life. “Hurry up and wait,” is what that they said in the Army– a motto frequently relived on nearly every set I’ve been on over the last year. If you want to pursue a life in visual storytelling, it is something you have to be in for the long-haul, something I am having to consider as I recognize the first anniversary of my “creative hiatus,” and look forward at the future.

I have been living mostly on savings I set aside for my hiatus, but that money is now on it’s last leg and soon I will join the ranks of starving artist… now I am forced to ask myself if I am in it for the long haul. I can go back to software development and get paid lots of money for something that sucks the life and joy out of me, or I can take a risk and chase my dream into the dark places. At the moment, my mind is not made up, and the coming days will be filled with weighty considerations.

While I stew on my future, I am preparing to spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of friends that I have known less than a year, they irony is they all have some filmmaking connection to me. As I begin to consider the possibility of stepping, even temporarily, out of my pursuit of a film career, I am saddened. In nearly fifteen years I have not had such a sense of community and the indications of genuine friendship than I do now with the small circle of friends that I have developed over the last year.

I guess this only makes sense, as I have come to believe sincerely that that greatest asset in filmmaking is not what you have, but who you know. Developing friendships and building relationships are somethings that are at the core of this form of art. By it’s nature, it is collaborative and requires the participation of many people that you have to trust in.

I don’t have any idea what the next year holds for me, whether I will chase my dream or abandon it– I don’t think that really matters to me. What has been the greatest pleasure over the last year, has been meeting so many wonderful people, all with their own dreams and ambitions. While I would love to dive deeper into filmmaking I look forward more to the collaborations and relationship-building that are such an important part of the process.

However, I still struggle with my faith and how is meshes with a career in an industry that is filled with Godlessness and self-glory. Regardless of what I “think” about it all, I keep being led by circumstances an opportunities back into the film path. This has caused me to consider how such a career can permit me to “do all to the glory of God,” and I am continually brought back to the focus on relationships in this industry and how little the final film product has to do with it.

At the moment, I simply look to the Lord to open or close doors according to His will. My part in the whole thing is to be a person within whom God is working and speaking. There are many people who believe that the best way to proclaim the gospel is with words and teachings, I personally think that the best way (for me) to preach the gospel, is by living. If we segregate the world into believers and unbelievers we prevent the world from meeting God… God-by-proxy, as I recently described it to a friend.

What better way is there to “do all to the glory of God,” then to represent Him in every corner of life. Why confine the gospel to certain places, methods and situations? I don’t want to compromise who and what I am; I think this is one reason that I want to make my own films and tell my own stories. But until I am doing that, I need to be God-by-proxy while carrying lights, hauling equipment, running the camera and building relationships by genuinely caring about people.

No one can tell me what this next year holds for me, but I look forward to it, partially due to the uncertainty. This thought causes me to remember a quote from Watchman Nee:

If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.

I look forward to the conversations while on this journey.

November has been a very strange time for me over the last few years, it wasn’t until just now, that I realized how many major events occurred in the month of November over that last five years. I hope this year, it holds something good.

Maybe this November will simply be the first November in a long while that nothing significant happens– after the last five years, even that would be a welcomed change. Perhaps this is the month where all the lessons I have learned over the last five years helps me set sail on a new adventure. If so, I am looking forward to that… four sheets to the wind!

Tonight, I had one of those experiences that probably everyone has had at one time or another, where you are sitting in your car wanting to go inside, but there is something on the radio that has your attention fully in its grip. This often happens when I listen to NPR–some interesting story that I just need to hear the conclusion to. This time, it was NPR, but it wasn’t some journalistic story or a interesting interview, this time it was an essay. The story was interesting, about a young man who shirked a normal life to care for his mentally challenged brother. As the author narrated his story, and I was quickly caught up into his tale of personal sacrifice and of smelly adventures with a pet armadillo.

The plot thickened when the brother met a good woman, one who was able to overlook, and even appreciate, the arrangement in a chaotic appartment. Eventually romance blossomed and a marriage separated the brothers, while surrogates were hired to look in on and clean up after the less able brother. This arrangement seemed to work, until the arrest of that brother. After the arrest, doctors suggested that the limited oversight was not adequate and that it was in everyone’s best interest to have him placed in a home.

I cannot convey to you adequately the emotional resonance the essay evoked as it dealt with such a difficult personal decision. I was not only gripped by the story, I was being emotionally moved. I could feel the pain and sense of betrayal that hung in the air as a man with a busy life explained to his rather-simple brother what the doctors suggested. I felt a brother’s sense of responsibility as he rationalized away the desire to take his brother in to his own home as he provoked anguish from his sibling. “I’d rather die, than to be cooped up in some home with a bunch of mumbling half-wits,” he would explain. The greatest pain, to be forced to separate from his beloved pet armadillo.

As all good stories do, this reached a fever pitch at the end of the second act, when a call in the middle of the night brought news of his the sudden death of a needy brother. Running naked through traffic with his armadillo, the brother is hit and partially impaled, bleeding to death before the ambulance could arrive.

Listening, I wiped streams of salty tears from my cheeks–my heart sank. Tears continued to fall as the brother told of having to identify the body at the hospital before racing off to the scene of his brother’s death. I anticipated what was next, as the brother searched the area franticly until he uncovered, beneath a sheet of discarded plywood, his brother’s badly injured armadillo. He raced to the only vet in town, in the middle of the night, in attempts to save the life of his dead brother’s best friend. He prodded the man from his bed with aggressive pounding at his door. He may have failed his brother, but he was certainly going to do everything he could in that moment to save armored rodent’s life, a living tangible link his brother.

I thought to myself, this is heart breaking, how could someone live with such a tragedy, under the condemnation of abandonment? As I subjectively processed the story, the announcer read the title and the author, and then said something that really affected me, “this was a work of fiction.” I almost felt cheated, how could I allow myself to feel so personally for a fictional story? How could I feel such empathy for an invented character. Man, I felt like a wuss.

All of this happened while I was returning home after watching the new Wes Anderson film, the Darjeeling Limited. Before I left the house, I read an LA Times review of the movie, which seemed to pretty much explain the reviewers disdain for Wes Anderson’s movies. But the reviewer said something that returned to me as I contemplated my emotional reaction to the story of a mentally retarded man and his pet armadillo. The reviewer pondered the possibility that Anderson simply used his films as a way to work out his own issues. I think he meant that as a dig, but in the midst of contemplating art, it seemed extremely relevant.

Maybe a good part of the storyteller’s art is working through personal demons. I certainly think that is my draw to filmmaking–an attempt to tell stories the express my personal issues. Maybe that isn’t the heart of movie making in general, a great deal is to simply entertain. Perhaps that is why I like Wes Anderson’s movies; while they certainly entertain, they also explore deep personal issues of relationships and personal longing.

Over the last year, I have focused my energies in the direction of becoming a filmmaker. As I approach my one year anniversary, I look back on the last year and see a tremendous amount of progress. I still don’t have a personal project to show for my time and energy, but I have learned that actually filming the project is only part of the process. I have worked on a number of sets this year, some were enjoyable and others miserable, but every single one helped me see something–that I need to be making movies that tell my stories. I have yet to work on a film that I thought was worth making from a personal perspective. While simply working on projects offers me some excellent experience and knowledge, I also have discovered that my personal desire as a filmmaker is to tell real stories.

The stories that I want to tell are about humanity and struggle, about adventure and sacrifice. Ultimately I want to tell stories about redemption or man’s need or longing for it. I don’t want to tell redneck comedies or urban crime dramas. I don’t want to do horror or gore flicks. I have absolutely no interest in a film that fails to explore issues or has no themes. Maybe that means that I will never be a filmmaker who has films seen by millions, but I think that I am OK with that. Movies are works of fiction, a storyteller’s device to explore something and take others on an visual emotional journey with it, sometimes that journey is fun and at other times, dark and dangerous.

Maybe the stories aren’t true, but they often allow you to connect and explore emotions and ideas that are not only true, but relevant to life. I don’t know if Wes Anderson’s films are his personal therapy sessions, I suspect they probably are on some level, but that can’t possibly be a bad thing. Perhaps by realizing the therapeutic aspects, it will help me to spend more time writing and less time talking about writing. Certainly, that would be a good thing.

Last night, I raced out at the last minute to catch the final screening of the movie ‘Once’ at our local art house theater here in Nashville–the Belcourt. Man, some movies are just dripping with inspiration, this movie was the kind of film that causes me to leave the theater with the passion to get out there and tell stories. A short while before the film started, I bumped into my friend Stephen Lamb, who was at the same screening, and he mentioned he planned on going to see Katie Herzig with Steven Delopoulos, Sandra McCracken at the Basement. Several days before, I had placed a mental note in my head that Katie was playing that night, but like most things in my brain, the memory faded long before its usefulness had expired. Taking the reminder as a divine suggestion, I set my mind on enjoying a great evening of music.

Katie was headlining the night and went on sometime around 11PM. About three quarters of the way through her set, she announced that she was going to play her song Fools Gold, a tune from her album that will be featured next week on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. After the introduction, she explained that she had written the song with two other talented Nashville musicians, Kate York and Jeremy Lister and that Kate had planned to be at the show that night to sing the song with her, but that she stayed at home because of local tornado warnings.

It wasn’t but moments after this announcement that a slamming of a side door at the club announced to those nearby the onset of a storm. Soon, people began to peek outside as torrents of rain sprayed like heavy ocean waves crashing head first into the bow of a ship. Joining the waves were angry swirls of wind that tossed the tops of large trees in circular motions. I’m sure that there were some folks at the show who, after seeing the odd weather, began to think that Kate had made the correct choice by staying home. This notion would have been strengthened if, like me, they had been spying the small television on the opposite side of the club, near the bar, that displayed the scrolling weather alert and had a local weather guy pointing out flashing red areas on the radar heading directly toward Nashville. Some folks bailed from the show and other stepped out on the patio to observe Mother Nature and discuss random stories of tornadoes. I, on the other hand, returned my attention to Katie and enjoyed the rest of her set–after all the club was named The Basement, and isn’t the basement the safest place to be in a tornado?

The storm never produced a tornado in Nashville, and like the Big Bad Wolf at the door a brick constructed domicile, it turned out to be just a whole lot of huffing and puffing. One of those huffs of puffs happened to blow a chair off my front porch into my yard, upset some trash cans and littered the streets with leaves and branches. I returned home to a dog who was a little edgy, but otherwise in good spirits, despite her dislike for strange noises and cracks of thunder. I sat down on the couch and watched a show on the History Channel about some pending planetary doom via stored methane in the oceans and I faded off to sleep in an upright position. Sometime during the night, I awoke with a crick in my neck and shuffled off to bed.

I woke this morning with the expectation of cooler weather–it seems that storms often precede a cold front and I have been eagerly awaiting the final arrival of Fall weather. I popped out of bed fairly early this morning and after checking emails and reading some Myspace messages, clipped my dog to her leash and headed out for our morning ritual. The storm had brought everything I had hoped. The air was fresh and clean and the sun had begun to shine as it climbed higher into the bight blue sky. The air was crisp and cool, just the way I love it.

After walking back into the house, I quickly realized how stale and stuffy it was inside, in comparison with the fresh air outside. That was a situation that needed to be rectified–so, for the first time since I have owned my house, I moved from room to room lifting the blinds, throwing the open the latches and raising the windows. As I type, my house is wide open, the sunlight is pouring in and a fresh cool breeze is displacing the stale air. This is good stuff.

I don’t understand why I don’t do this more often… but I have a clue. As I started the process of opening my windows, I began to feel some anxiety. There is something about opening the blinds and giving the world a view into your life that makes someone, like myself, uneasy. Being open in this way causes me to lose some control. As people walk past my home, they might look in at me sitting on my couch typing on my computer. Even worse, the men working next door might hear me having conversations with my dog, as I expound on the reasons why she should not be barking at the small birds in the bushes or my neighbor Napoleon, across the street, as he heads out for his morning walk in the neighborhood to pick up trash.

It seems so much easier to keep the windows and the blinds closed–to keep the world at arms length and to control what others see and hear. Perhaps by hiding from them, I grant myself permission to ignore my problems and indulge my eccentricities. But certainly, it is much better to throw open the windows and displace the stale air. Open windows not only bring the newness in, but can remind you that there is a world out there that isn’t defined by four walls, a world of new experiences that is expansive and yearning to be explored. As I sit here this morning, I can’t help but feel a calling to escape what is familiar and set out on a journey of adventure and discovery, something I can’t have, tethered to this couch, to this computer, to this house–stepping out into a world that is beyond my control, where I am vulnerable and at risk in the hands of uncertainty.

There is something almost Abrahamic about the feeling I have at this moment–called by Jehovah into a life of uncertainly, resting only in one fact, that Jehovah is the I AM. Leaving the comfort of the land of my birth, being called into a new lands full of unknown enemies and unimagined dangers, a place where I cannot rely on myself and cannot control my circumstances. I can’t predict how long this feeling will last or how long it will be before I button myself back into my four walls and breathe stale air again, but for this moment, I stand wide open.

I consider myself fairly astute politically. I have voted since the age of 18 and I have been a part of two political campaigns in my lifetime–but today, politics is just plain crazy. Before I was old enough to vote, back in high school, I considered myself a Democrat. By the time I registered to vote, at the age of 18, I had swung back to my family tradition as a Republican. I think I did that mostly because I consider myself patriotic, and Democrats seemed very unpatriotic to me. There were several years in high school, when I was the only student who was standing for the daily pledge of allegiance. I think it was my sense of patriotism, that caused me, at the age of 18, to join the Army. Only a month after graduation, I shipped off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to learn how to become a soldier. Much of my sense of patriotism was inspired by Ronald Reagan — yup, I am a Reagan Youth.

It was barely a year after I joined the military, that I was headed to Saudi Arabia for the very beginning of Desert Storm– nine months later, and a firsthand participant in the horrors of war, I returned home a very different person, with some very different takes on politics and government. My time overseas caused me to hate bureaucracy, something I saw our government rife with. When I had finished my enlistment in 1992, I left the Army and returned to civilian life. By 1992, the country had seemingly swung liberal as Clinton had already begun what would become an eight year reign. After witnessing firsthand the impacts of bureaucracy in and on the U.S. military, I had a great deal of distaste for politics in general– but that was before I discovered Rush Limbaugh. Under the tutelage of Limbaugh’s three hour daily show, I began to understand the mechanics of politics and it suddenly became more interesting to me.  Eager to understand politics more thoroughly, I became a Political Science major in college.

In the early to mid 90’s, I was coming on board to conservative politics at a very exciting time, the apex of Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract With America’ which resulted in the sweeping of both houses of congress and becoming the majority party in the House of Representatives for the first time in over forty years. At the time, there was such hope for change. Finally, a conservative voice in America; certainly, I thought, there will now be sweeping change. What history ended up showing us, was that Republicans are no better at wielding power than were their colleagues on the other side of the aisle. In-party fighting, political corruption and abuse of power seemed to be everywhere. Eventually, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, lost control of power and retired his seat in congress rather than be demoted and probably fired from leadership. What happened to the promise of change? The changes of the Contract with America seemed somehow a pale glow to

Since the revolution in 1994, the government has become more bloated, intrusive and ineffectual as ever before in our country’s history. After eight years of Clinton politics and nearly as many of Bush warmongering, I think people are tired of business-as-usual politics and really desire some change. I think, for many Americans, that change might be manifested in nominating the first female or black candidate. At this point, some people are so burnt out on government that they just want anything but more Bush and I am with them on that.

Some years back, probably sometime after 9/11 I reconsidered my political position. What do I really believe about the role of Government? What kind of person do I want representing our nation. While the names may have changed over the years, my philosophy hasn’t I want a principled person in the White House, someone who believes something, someone who has something governing them, someone with integrity. I am not an issue-based voter. I don’t care what someone believes about this-or-that so much as I want to know what motivates them. Are they Clintonesque, in that they put there finger in the air before issuing policy decisions or do they stand firmly on some foundational principles. If those principles are solid and reasonable, I might find a reason to support them. It is for these reasons that I have sometimes supported fringe candidates like Perot and Forbes for President. It is also why I campaigned for Dole and initially supported W.

One thing I have learned about my philosophy, is that the principles that someone stands on need to be looked at carefully. While W. is a very principled person, he seems to follow principle over reason. Our quagmire in Iraq is mostly due to his pig-headed principles. At some point you have to be able to look at something objectively and leave room to change your mind– not because it is politically expedient, but because it is the right thing to do. W. should have realized that invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do, and instead of “staying the course,” he should have been working on a plan to extricate America from Iraq. Yes, we would have to deal with the fall-out, but I think having a divided Iraq and causing civil wars will eventually play it self out, it would also force the rest of the world to be involved. But that doesn’t protect of energy interest in the region does it? Should have thought about that before invading shouldn’t you have?

Anyway, that is not my point. Sometime before the last election I began to realign myself politically. I found that I am rather a purist when it comes to government and that I believe in less government and greater personal freedom. Eventually, I found that my personal beliefs aligned much more closely with the Libertarian movement and not the neoconservative Republican one. While my card still says Republican, I am still a Libertarian at heart… and the last six years of voting history supports that. But, while I consider myself a Libertarian philosophically, I really have a problem with the party… mostly because it is filled with pot-heads and conspiracy theorists that serve to erode the credibility of the party. For this reason, I don’t think that the Party will ever field a reasonable presidential candidate.

So, I tell you all of that, so I can say this: the 2008 presidential race is a mess. I don’t think I have ever been so tossed about by candidates. I think that my mind is in the same place as most Americans when it comes to what I want in a presidential candidate and a government in general… CHANGE. I want someone who is going to change things, to work on righting the wrongs and making our government more fiscally responsible. I want someone who is going to keep our noses out of other countries businesses and halt our attempts at nation-building. I want someone who will work across the aisle to do what is best for our country and not what is politically expedient. I thought I had that candidate of John McCain.

Being a former Arizonan, I am aware of McCain’s cowboy mentality. He seems to be a man determined to do what is right, not what is political. He bucks the system and works bipartisanly to pass bills that help America. I think he understands the need for a strong and well-equipped military, but would not be the kind of leader that wields military power recklessly. As soon as McCain announced, I joined his campaign. What followed was a big disappointment. Instead of emails that detailed issues and solutions, I started receiving regular pep-rally emails that simply begged for money. I wanted substance and all I got was politics. I fear now that McCain is going the way of Bob Dole– over handled and way too “on message” to be to separate himself from the host of other Republicans doing the same thing.

Disconcerted with the direction of the McCain campaign, I sought out to search for someone who was really looking at radical changes to government. As I dove into the major candidates, I found very little in fresh new ideas for change and that bothered me. I then stumbled on Newt Gingrich’s blog and started reading about his ideas in Transformational Government. His ideas peeked my interest and I checked to see if he had any aspirations at a bid for 2008. It seems that he was carefully considering it, but was waiting until after Labor Day to decide. Ultimately, he said it would depend heavily on whether of not Fred Thomson threw his hat into the ring– which he has.

At some point in the middle of this, I was talking to my brother and he asked me if I had heard about this guy who really seemed to have some grassroots support. He couldn’t remember his name… Ron something or something Ron… a guy with two first names. A quick search on the Internet introduced me to Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, doctor by trade and former Libertarian presidential candidate (1988). I read his profile on Wikipedia and said hmmm. Then I promptly forgot about him and went back to reading Newt’s book ‘The Art of Transformation’ and sending email questions to John McCain. Becoming quickly dissatisfied with McCain, I was also looking at Fred Thompson.

Everything changed for me two weeks ago when I stumbled on the documentary ‘America: Freedom to Fascism,’ which made me start thinking fundamentally about our government and it’s intrusion into our lives. I had never given the Federal Reserve or its control over our economy any thought. This thought caused me to dig a little deeper and do some more research. This research lead me directly into the Ron Paul camp. I spent quite a few hours watching Ron Paul coverage at FreeMe.tv and my mind is spinning, there are tons of reasons why I am ready to jump feet first into the Ron Paul campaign, but there are many reservations.

The first major issue, is that no one over the age of 25 seems to know who Ron Paul is. His movement is significantly Internet based and encompasses not only children below the voting age, but people from other countries. I watched a funny Ron Paul supporter video that ended with the declaration that they supported Ron Paul and they weren’t even American–how crazy is that? Sadly, it isn’t the candidate that I have problems with, it is his supporters. The majority of his public supporters are “issue-based voters”… something I really detest.

I am not an issue supporter. I will not vote for a candidate because of a position on any specific issue, something that I am afraid that Paul will get labeled with. People will frame him as an extremist candidate who wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade and eliminate the Federal Reserve, IRS, Board of Education and pull us out of the control of the UN. These are things that are part of his expressed desire, but there is a reason for it, that go far beyond the issues themselves. Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist, and all of his ideas stem from the overreach of government beyond their constitutional limits. I am definitely in line with his ideas, but I think that the grassroots nature of his campaign prevents his image from being managed. I think there is almost no way to prevent him from being portrayed as a cracked pot.

Ron Paul is for overturning Roe vs. Wade, something that can be twisted and turned to opponents favor, but while he advocates the overturn, he doesn’t stand for the elimination of abortion, he believes that is a State’s right to decide if it supports or not… what he is against is the Federal support of abortions. As a man who personally delivered over 4,000 babies, he is an advocate for the unborn. I am all for a federal repeal of Roe vs. Wade as long as people have the right to decide for themselves by influencing their state governments to reflect the will of the people or that of Sate law. Decoupling us from the federal teat and allowing us to govern ourselves more locally.

It is so easy for us to simply go for what is popular or trendy, I think that the democrats will probably choose their candidate based on what is trendy… probably going for Hillary of Barack because of their gender or skin color. What candidate is a candidate of change? Everyone is talking about change, but who actually has radical ideas that will move our country forward, improve our liberties and allow us the greatest opportunity for personal advancement. Many of the democratic candidates have ideas about reform that require more government. Health care and retirement… increasing the entitlements of our country and leading us into deeper and deeper debt.

If you have no idea who Ron Paul is, I encourage you to Google him and research his ideas for yourself. I think he is the most reasonable and practical candidate out there. Sure there are plenty of good men and women out there who are seeking to lead our country, but how deep are their fundamentals? How much new government would their policies create? How much do you know about these people really? It is way to easy to rest on celebrity, to go for a candidate that makes us feel good about ourselves, but will choices based on that rationality move us forward? I can’t say I have come to a conclusion yet, the good thing is that I have some time to research the issues more. My question to you is, is your candidate causing you to explore issues, or does their rhetoric simply lull you to sleep, convincing you that everything will be OK when they get to office. I personally lean toward the candidates that cause me to ask the most serious questions and lead me to understand the depth of my ignorance.