Good bye Grandpa...you will be missed but never forgotten

Some of you asked for a copy of the words I gave at Grandpa's burial service.  Here they are in the unabridged format...of course the reading might have differed at parts because it was tough to keep my hands from shaking and my eyes from tearing up. All my love and comfort to all of you...already the sun has started to shine on my life again and I feel Grandpa's comforting spirit in my life. See most of you on Easter!!!!

It is hard to find comfort or strength in the midst of the loss of such a great man.  However, rest assured that Grandpa has departed this world and is resting now with our Father.  Even now he is smiling down upon us all and giving every bit of his strength to us in an attempt to bolster our spirits and ease our pain at his departure.  The passing of great men is always marked with sadness and a fond remembrance of those things he left behind in our hearts.  Our family has learned that there is no ailment that a good dog can’t cure, that as long as the floor mat doesn’t slip through the floor of your car then it’s good for another year, and that burnt orange is always in season. 

But these humorous examples aren’t the things that will stick with us, they aren’t the ideals that we will pass on to our children.  No, it will be his selfless compassion, unconditional love, and generous spirit that we will remember for generations.  For as long as I can remember Grandpa has been our sanctuary, our lighthouse in the storm of life, and our bastion of all that we love.  Irregardless of our condition upon entering Grandma and Grandpa’s home, we knew there would be a welcoming embrace awaiting us.  He accepted all, loved all, and forgave all. 

It is important to acknowledge that we would not be here today were it not for grandpa and his tremendous love.  The phrase “all because two people fell in love” has never been better articulated by the gathering of people here today.  Each and every one of us has enjoyed the blessed life we have lived because of Grandpa, he is and always will be our cornerstone upon which this family has been built.  In the midst of the great sorrow that is in my heart I can’t help but reach for comfort from our Father and he provides it in his word.

In the past few weeks I have prayed, thought, and meditated on the word legacy.  Our legacy is the mark of who we are, what about us is different, what parts of us will live on after we have departed this earth.  Christ was intimately aware of his legacy; every action he took was intentionally building toward a definition of his legacy.  You see Christ understood that only so much of his legacy would be under his control; there was only so much he could do during his life on earth.  Ultimately, his legacy may have been lost in that closed up room in Jerusalem…but yet he trusted his followers to carry his legacy.

Grandpa left us with many gifts but the greatest of these is his legacy that he entrusted to us.  You see it is our responsibility to carry forward that legacy with love, bravery, and a passionate belief in it’s power. It will be our duty to teach our children and our children’s children the very things that make our family so great, the very things that we cherished and now miss about our beloved grandfather.  Our every interaction from this moment forward is a reflection of the man grandpa was, in essence our lives will serve as grandpa’s legacy.

Using their passionate belief and fervent love, Christ’s followers created a legacy that has spanned thousands of years across an entire planet.  The power of legacy is unmeasureable and if in the midst of our sorrow and our pain if we turn in towards our responsibility of maintaining grandpa’s legacy then I am confident we can create such a legacy that will be remembered for generations to come.  That “our” grandchildren will be remembered for their compassion, their love, and their selflessness and that those traits came from the man whom we say good bye to today would be the most powerful gift we could give our grandfather. 

He was a man without equal… and he will be missed but never forgotten, forever carried in our hearts and our lives. Please pray with me.

Father.  We come to you fresh with grief at the departing of the cornerstone of our family, the man who made Christmas twinkle with his smile, made us laugh at Easter with his acrobatics, and made us cherish this beautiful place.  We ask that you lift us up and bless us today as we have lost him who brought us strength, him who was our foundation, and him who we loved with all that we had.  We ask that you comfort us now and help us to look forward as grandpa would have wanted us to; to look forward to the horizon and see that the sun is shining brightly on our family.  Allow us to see the many blessings that grandpa bestowed upon us in life so that we may bestow one upon him in heaven, his legacy.  Help us to honor his love and compassion with our very lives.  Thank you for your gift of life everlasting.  May you smile down upon us this day father, with grandpa at your side, watching over us, protecting us, delighting in our presence…In the name of Jesus Christ we pray…Amen     

Out of the Garden and into Happiness

I keep thinking this will be a regular thing and then am shocked that it has been many months between my postings.  My own delusions threaten to overwhelm me...

As many of you know I am transitioning out of one role and into another at my job and I am very excited to see where this new position takes me.  My old position was getting quite stagnant and it was ready to move on.  A friend told me in the midst of a somewhat stressful transition process that "we must never become too complacent to not demand those things that we truly deserve."  His words hit a place deep in my heart and have resonated with me ever since.  Much of what I have written about on this site is about self-confidence, recreation, and constant self-discovery.  Somewhere in the last 6 months or so I forgot to apply these same concepts to my own life and began to feel despondent.  I had hit a glass ceiling called apathy and I had not even realized it.

As we move through life we must enjoy the journey but always remember that it is a movement through life and that what is safe and comfortable is not always what is required of us.  The notion of creative destruction ism is what has driven economies for millennia, perhaps we should explore some of those same concepts in our own lives. Refusing to disregard past mental schemas that are outdated and inaccurate is just as inefficient as it would be to type this on a typewriter and distribute it by hand.  We must be willing to destroy those things in our mind and our lives that are holding us back from our future potential.  Often times these are mental struggles in which we are destroying concepts, ideas, and trains of thought that have become detrimental to our health and happiness.  Occasionally we need to move our physical location, change our friends, cast off indulgent possessions; regardless of what part of our life needs to be destroyed we must acknowledge that the only power these schemas and possessions have over us is the power we give them.

There are two things in life that have an intrinsic static value attached to them: a human life and the passing of time.  All other values in the equations are variable and must be adjusted constantly in order to find the proper balance.  Unfortunately our brains are hardwired against changing value assignments and in situations where it should be simple to walk away from places, ideas, or activities that are ultimately causing us harm it is actually quite hard to destroy our previously assigned value.  These value associations are important to our development as humans and essential to categorizing our life in a meaningful way.  What is most important is that we acknowledge the extent to which how we assign value runs our life on a daily basis. Once we make this recognition we are able to determine whether our previous value assignments make sense in light of our new goals or position in life.  Our mind does much of this naturally for us in terms of material possessions but it becomes a much more difficult process when fellow humans enter into the equation.

As an example of this process think about the last time you moved and recall packing up the boxes, deciding what should go and what could probably just be thrown away.  I imagine the emotions were running quite high for some items. It almost felt as if certain items were calling out to you, begging to be brought along. I imagine some items had very specific memories attached to them and thus established a bridge to a past you that should be cherished and remembered fondly.  As a personal example every 6 months or so I go through my clothes and purge some items that have either gotten too worn out or that I just don't wear anymore.  Every time I come to the same pair of jeans that I have had since I was 17.  They are really more threads than jeans now, they don't fit too well, and I never wear them; every time they get put back into the drawer.  Why? Because I bought them in San Francisco in the midst of a summer that was incredibly transformative for me and they are an embodiment of all that I experienced in those three months.  I have attached such a high value on this completely inanimate object that I pretty much can't bring myself to throw it away.

Now jeans are a rather mundane and somewhat harmless attachment, but what if we became attached to a particular schema (perception of the world) that became outdated and was actually holding us back from correctly perceiving the events that our life in the present.  This attachment becomes dangerous and potentially harmful as it begins to dictate who we are in the future based on events in the past.  Now as I have said before we all carry such schemas and we must in order to not go crazy.  However as our friend Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Thus, when we carry a set of values or perceptions of the world despite the evidence in front of our face projecting a very different picture we are only moving slowly down the road towards insanity.

Despite the mildly incoherent writing above I would like to finish strongly and decisively.  We must allow ourselves to be continually surprised and awestruck by the world outside of us.  A man who is surprised by nothing has nothing left to live for.  Only when we open our hearts and minds to recognize themselves can we truly walk with a purpose.  I implore you all to never get caught in complacency of the heart or trapped in schemas of the past for it is a dark place and the world melts to an endless grey...I know, the last few months I have felt it... But today the sun is shining brightly and I am reinvigorated to cast off complacency and demand from my heart, mind, and life the happiness I deserve.  The garden is not where we will find the answers to the real questions in life, we would never be content there for very long... No, we must daily walk out of the garden and into the wilderness if we want to experience all that it means to be human.

With Great Love,

Trevor

Just too cool not to share

Ok, this may not be everybody's thing or exactly what I have posted in the past, but too cool not to share.  This guy is a Talent Show Instant Win Card!!! 

The Christmas Story

It appears that I only take time to contemplate and actually write my thoughts down near holidays.  So here is my Christmas post.  Written after some time of reflection and after another fantastic evening at Grandma's with the family  I have spent over 20 years of Christmas' with.  With my love here goes...

What is the central message of Christmas?  Is it the love of Christ?  Is it the act of giving gifts?  Is it the time spent honoring those we love with our presence and our joy?  Or are these just by-products of a more fundamental truth?  I believe the answer lies in the very beginning of the Christmas story. 

The story starts with a birth, the story begins with hope.  What can be more hopeful than the birth of a child?  An empty canvas with all the colors of the world available to be painted upon it…a life unburdened with the sorrows the world and our fellow man can offer.  And what a hope this particular birth brought…the hopes of generations of peoples on the shoulders of an infant.  And what faith does God have in this story; to pass the continuing of His kingdom, the hopes of His people, and the continuing of His very being to the son of a carpenter. 

What faith in the goodness of his creation does God show?  Why does he trust that His son’s message will be carried?  In the hearts of a few men and women was the mission passed to and yet it burned as an unquenchable fire in the bellies that could not be denied.  What led them to risk and ultimately lose life over Christ’s message?  What pushed them to the very ends of their earth?  It was hope. 

Jesus offered a glimmer of hope; for many long looked for and for others a deux ex machina (aid unlooked for).  He was a calm voice in a wilderness of doubt, a healer in the midst of no cure and a beacon of light in a sea of an infinite darkness.  Christ’s birth set in motion a chain of events that shook the very foundations of the world upon which we and our ancestors have existed and continue to exist.  If for nothing else this one fact would both comfort and embolden me.  Our life is intrinsically tied to those who have come before us, those we encounter in our journey, and those that we leave behind; the impact we can have on all of those journeys is one of incredible magnitude; that which should never be taken lightly, but always taken with hopeful hearts.  This day among all others we should remember Jesus Christ, his birth, and the hope it offers to us.  His life is a testament to all that is good in this world.  I ask that on this day we cast aside our doubts, lean not on our fears, and plunge forward into our lives with a child-like belief in hope; understanding that, as every artist knows, our canvas is as filled with as many possibilities for joy as it was the day we were born.  We must believe in the vision of joy, pick up the brush filled with hope, and paint the pictures of our lives in vibrant strokes of yellow. 

To those that I love the most in this world, Merry Christmas!

A Life of Love

I have been doing a lot of staring out of train cars watching what have been some quite beautiful Chicago sunsets. My mind runs beyond its limits on most of these days and so it is time to attempt to summarize some of the disparate thoughts that have been swirling around. Again I love it when you comment or write back as it helps me in my thought process and often gives me new ideas and opinions to consider. I hope this finds you all with overflowing happiness as we close in on my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. We truly have so much to be thankful for and it is unfortunate we have only way day to celebrate our thankfulness (many other cultures dedicate whole weeks to celebrate their major achievements or ideas I think we should adopt these practices into American Culture, besides more time off). So without further ado here are the thoughts I have been having most recently in a somewhat loosely summarized manner.


My life philosophy has become quite simple. I have really trimmed it down to two main ideas; my own happiness and the happiness of those people around me. Christ understood this concept best, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” You see he understood a part of our fundamental nature that informs every part of our life. He understood that we are incapable of expressing to other people that which we don’t feel about ourselves; namely love. Satisfaction or confidence with ourselves is not enough, it falls short. We must be able to see ourselves as God does; immaculate beings created out of love, designed for love, God’s last and greatest creation. It is in this light that our capacity for love is unleashed and knows no bounds. I am not claiming that you can only love yourself through Christ, but I do believe we have to see ourselves as Christ does; His greatest creation, made in His own image, His precious. If we see ourselves as somebody’s precious, somebody’s greatest creation, made in somebody’s very image than it enables us to realize our worth and value; and thus love, protect, and cherish ourselves in a way that is infectious and quite literally overflows into the lives of those people around us. Thus, bringing us to the real reason why we love ourselves; in order to more effectively accomplish the primary mission of our lives…loving others.

I believe we were created, were given life, in order to become vessels for God’s love (or if you want, just insert love instead of God’s love if that suits you better.) Regardless the value we offer the world is the amount of happiness we can bring other people during and after the time we have on this planet. Our early years should be spent accepting challenges, cultivating empathy, and receiving love from those who watch over us (parents, siblings, relatives, friends, etc.). As we grow in maturity and experience so too does our compassion and empathy. Unfortunately, this is quite the dream scenario and in many instances challenges prove to be too tough, the love from others is not delivered in the abundance we require (if at all), and the love we need to feel for ourselves never manifests and thus empathy is stunted and rarely if ever surfaces. This makes self-awareness difficult, because it is all too easy to push off our problems on others failings or go the route of instant gratification through any number of long term self-destructive/selfish behaviors. However, courses can be reset, new memories formed, and in an instant of self-reflection we can redefine ourselves and our capacity for love.

We all harbor deficiencies, shame, and guilt over the lives we’ve led, the decisions we’ve made, and the times we have fallen short of our own or others expectations; but the difference we must recognize is that each passing moment we are reborn into a new world. Every step down life is at a crossroads and we can continue to reinforce our previous decisions, alter them slightly, or radically change course. We can recreate ourselves in a blink of an eye. The world at large may not be as quick to recognize this change, which is why we need to stay the new course as proof of our new persona. Of course without proper self-reflection this road seems to constantly move at breakneck pace and every direction seems fraught with peril and danger. This of course adds excitement, but also fear and further opportunities for indecision. But what is most important (and most difficult) is that we not allow ourselves to be controlled by the ashes of our past, but instead invigorated by the excitement of our new future.

But alas, our minds love what is comfortable; we seek security exactly twice as passionately as risk, we are twice afraid of losing as we are of gaining, and our brain is designed to take our previous experiences and analyze them to inform our future decisions. Therefore, lastly I would advocate for an out of body self awareness that can only be achieved through what I call peaceful argument (others might say spirited debate). This is a process by which a subject is engaged with his/her own experiences weighed and measured against both the experiences of the collective and another person who feels quite differently from you. Steel that has been forged in the fire by an experienced blacksmith comes out of the fire much stronger than when it went in. (In the process the metal takes quite a beating and often changes its shape, going in as a hunk of rock and coming out a polished and beautiful instrument.) It is only when we listen with both ears, heart, and mind to the opinion of others that we actually hear what they are saying and contemplate those ideas and opinions on a level that gives honor to that person and their life. I have more to say on this, but this is a good enough starting point and hopefully I will follow up in the next couple of days with Part II of this part of my mind.

Seasonal Beauty

Last Friday the seasons changed…I’m not sure why but it took me by surprise. The mornings became dark and a chill sets in around my thighs as I wait for the train. However it is still early and the steam rises up over the lake and creates a canvas upon which the sunlight applies oranges, pinks, greys, blues, and the occasional deep purples with broad, deft strokes. Each morning is a new portrait and the most wonderful part is that with each passing moment the portrait shifts, takes on an entirely different identity. Perhaps Monet understood this concept as he painted the same pond over and over again. Realizing that the same place held an infinite amount of beauty that could only be unlocked through years of observation under a variety of conditions; but eventually, I imagine he succumbed to the reality that he had not enough years, nor paint and canvas to capture the true beauty of the pond. This could be thought of as a moment of absolute despair, a true reckoning of a hopeless mortality. However I would like to believe that Monet, as an artist, was in pure exaltation.


The beauty of a mere pond unable to be accurately portrayed, grasped, or explained despite a lifetime of study… What does this say of God’s more complex creations, what of the morning sunrise, the waterfall in the wilderness, and of course that which all men find most beautiful in this world, woman. That I should be given ten score lifetimes to discover the beauty of woman and still fall short delights me. God, in his infinite wisdom, made beauty the most elusive prey. Happy Hunting I say!

Exploring Loneliness

The idea that God knows everything about me is perhaps the most comforting part of his nature. As the waves rolled into the shore of Lake Michigan today and the sun painted cotton candy pink across the hazy blue sky I reached back into the wellspring of memory. Walking down the beach holdings hands with the summer girl, watching Trapper sprint down the sand in the fading light out the back window of our jeep, the crab bake with the fire so high it burnt the clouds, a late night an empty heart and no one singing, the shock of water warmer than the air, a full moon, a dark sea, and my greatest friends of all time in arms reach, and an ocean so raw it was obvious the water was indeed God’s untamed spirit. These memories are forever locked into time and space and only I have the ability to recall them at will. This is the ultimate loneliness. A lifetime of memories and a quest to be understood, perhaps that is a definition of humanity. But of course our comfort must come from God the creator who is, in a word, amongst. This loneliness is what drives us towards spouses and community. It is the basic emotion that drives us to social groups instead of isolation and never have I understood it as much as I do know, writing alone on a beach with only the gull’s cries and the waves comforting brush against the earth.


It is getting cold as the sun sets. The cool breeze chills my skin, warning me of the frost, ice, and snow that is to follow in the months to come. My hair pulls back in the breeze and I am reminded of a similar night on a spit of sand surrounded by water on the Sea of Cortez. My hands are beginning to shake and the lightless decoy sets come to mind my gloved hands frozen between my Dad's steaming naked hands. The city glistens from the last rays of the fading sun and this new merger of myself, space, and time create another memory that will be recalled in some distant future. Just as the light fades so must we, but for now I will remember myself and trust that my memory is protected by my God and that collective will be treasured as much as I do now.

Walking back with my hands in my pockets I was dreaming of what could be and I passed two boys aged about five playing in their front yard. One came running out of the bushes holding the front of his pants and said “I gotta go inside. I got some on my pants. Guard my scooter buddy” I still have a smile on my face…it was a strangely beautiful moment. It does not surprise me one bit that Christ spent much of his time amongst children! I pray that in our adult lives we still have that “buddy” that will guard our scooter as we take time to clean ourselves up from one of life’s many pitfalls.

“Guard my scooter buddy.”