Anger Management

I started thinking more about all the HEATED debates taking place all over our country, especially about health care reform, but about other stuff too. Debates and arguments that can turn pretty nasty in town hall meetings, on the street, on cable news channels and especially in the halls of our government buildings. The things that some people say about our government and each other really astound me in this "Christian" nation of ours. We only seem to be Christian until our wallets come into play and then all the gloves come off. We don't decide to change anything about our lives until money becomes involved. Do you remember when gas prices were up to $5 a gallon? Before that people were scrambling like hungry animals to buy SUV's, but when fuel prices skyrocketed people were scrambling trying to sell their SUV's. Suddenly people were buying small cars. Suddenly the auto industry was finally making more fuel efficient cars. It was money that did it or, at least, the fear of losing it.

Now it's health care. People are angry. Maybe now that there is fear of our government controlling health care we will start taking better care of our bodies to keep from having to go to the doctor as much, to keep from buying expensive drugs. Maybe we could actually make it more expensive to buy fast food and less expensive to buy fruits and vegetables. We believe that our party's politicians have our best interests in mind. But they seem to be too busy spending our money on plane tickets to see their mistresses.

I thought about our government and I thought about us, the citizens of this great country and came across a couple of pieces of scripture that we should reflect on from time to time. It couldn't hurt and it would probably help a little with our anger management.

Romans 13:1-2 "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves."

James 4:1-3 (this goes for our politicians, too) "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures..." (keep reading through verse 12 if you want)

Dead Batteries: Putting Love to the Test

I was running late for work. My keys came out like a silver flash, my front door was locked, and the car was started. Because of the time of the day--about 12 noon--I decided on route number one, because it would be easier to turn left from my street. I made it to the first major intersection and waited in the right-hand, left turn lane (make sense?). My fingers tapped on the steering wheel as I watched the dashboard digital clock (a math teacher I had in high school told the class once that the clock moves slower if you watch it) so this day I did. I was staring a hole through it.

Then the driver's door from the car in front of me opened while the light was still red. The driver, a short, stocky, older gentleman with thinning, white close-cut hair and glasses stepped out. He walked to the car next to him (left-hand left turn lane) and spoke to that driver through his window.

My first thought: he's asking for directions. My fingers tapped faster, the air conditioning kept me cool. The light was going to turn green any moment. I muttered,"Get back in your car, get back in your car, get back in your car." The man turned from the driver's window and headed back over to his car. My heart rate slowed. But before he reached for his door handle he trotted over to the car on his right which was stopped at the light and about to go straight. He spoke to that driver for a few seconds then turned and faced my car. The light turned green. What!? What are you doing?!

His car sat motionless in front of me as cars in the left-hand turn lane curved out of the lane and into the huge intersection. I was trapped. I imagined the seconds speeding by. I played the phone call to my manager in my head. The air conditioning was no longer helping. I spoke to myself and to the man approaching my car hoping he would hear me through the wind shield,"The light is green! Go back to your car! I'm gonna be late for work."

He tapped on the glass next to me. I rolled down my window.

"Yep," I said.
"Uh, can you help me jump start my car? I've got cables."
I huffed.
"Well....I'm gonna be late for work, but yeah, I can help you. I have to make a phone call first."

It was done. I called work and let them know I would be late and what the situation was. All around me traffic was zooming by. Here I was in this busy turn lane at this hectic intersection. It was hot out. It was humid. I was late for work.

The man said,"I was hoping that other guy was going to help me but he didn't think he could get his car pulled over from his lane in front of mine to jump it. Can you pull around and get closer?"

"Pull around? I don't think that's gonna be possible out here. Is your car a stick shift?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Well, we should probably get it out of the way here and push it over into the gas station across the intersection so we can jump it there."

I told the man to put the car in neutral so I could see how easy it would be to push. It was a little toyota and rolled easily.

"You get in and steer and I'll push it through the intersection." I said as the first beads of sweat formed on my head. The gentleman hopped in and I hunched and braced myself against the trunk and watched the light like a track star waiting for the gun.

Green. I heaved. The little car rolled slowly at first, but within a couple of seconds I was building speed. As I pushed harder I realized that the man could probably just "pop" the clutch and get the thing started. Anyone who has a stick shift should know about popping the clutch. So I kept pushing, drops of sweat stinging my eyes. No clutch. No car jerk. I was getting pissed. I was hot. I was late. My car was still parked back in the turn lane. I would have to cross two busy streets which would take several more minutes, just to get back to my car so that I could wait another couple of minutes at the light to drive it back and take another couple of minutes to jump his car.

The man's toyota rolled up the driveway and into the gas station parking lot. It slowed to a stop and the man got out. Sweat starting showing through my shirt turning the color dark. With shortened breath I said,"Why didn't you pop the clutch? Have you ever done that before?"

And that's where the whole thing finally struck. It struck like a hammer. The man answered,"I'm so sorry. I've been in chemo, so my head's been a little fuzzy lately."

My heart sank and my mind raced back to the very beginning of this ordeal. I told him that I'd be right back and jogged back to the cross walk. I waited for the green walk signal. Several minutes it seemed. It turned. I jogged across one boulevard and waited for the next signal...for several minutes. It turned. I jogged across and got to my car.

I drove out of the lane and through the intersection into the gas station, facing my car to his so that the jumper cables would reach. We hooked 'em up; electricity brought his little car back to life. The gentleman, with his short-cropped, white hair and round glasses thanked me again and again. I said no problem at all. Anytime. I drove away to work.

Mission Accomplished?

I had failed. I failed. God had given me the perfect opportunity to show the world who and what Jesus is and I blew it. I thought about the beginning of the situation with the man and regretted the way I spoke to him. I was disappointed in myself. When others heard this story they said,"Well, don't beat yourself up about it. You were the one who was actually out there helping him." And they're right. I was out there helping him, but I was empty when I did it. I immediately thought of verses from Paul's letter to the Corinthians when he spoke about actions without love. 1 Corinthians 13 is used so many times as part of a wedding ceremony, but it applies to so many situations:

"...If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give my body to hardship, that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs....it always protects, always trusts, always perseveres."

I was worried about being late for work when really, knowing the owner and manager at work, they would have appreciated the fact that I gave up some of my time to help someone in need. Work would still be there when I showed up.

Some people volunteer at a rescue mission. Some people serve the community through their church. Some people work with non-profit organizations like Habitat For Humanity. Those are amazing ways to serve and I would encourage anyone to find those channels and get involved. But those channels can also make things a little too convenient. We get an email or a phone call letting us know of a service opportunity and we jump into the car and go. We show up with a smile and our "Christian" badge on and take it off as soon as we leave. But sometimes God can present opportunities for us while we're on the way, while we're just walking around staring at the cracks in the sidewalk. We need to lift our heads to take note of the people around us. We have to keep our hearts open to those trickier, more hidden situations that God sets before us when we're not expecting it. Ones that we didn't get an email about. On his time not ours.

I arrived at work and everything was fine. Ultimately, I was only about 15 minutes late and no one seemed to care which made me feel worse about my earlier actions. I asked God for forgiveness and went to work, hoping that I would be ready the next time.

Uncle Ray's Wild Ride

My uncle Ray died on January 19th 2009 at the age of 73. I never did know that much about his past, where he was born, what his childhood was like. But I always enjoyed the time I spent with him. He was always smiling or joking around. In his healthier days he was an accomplished golfer. In fact, I remember when I was a kid, going to a driving range with he and my dad in Los Angeles at night. I thought it was strange, people out there at night hitting golf balls under giant stadium lights.

Uncle Ray was sort of an “Archie Bunker” type character. He could be a curmudgeon, but he had a tender heart. He was deeply in love with his wife and his children and loved being around family.

This is a story about how my uncle Ray Peña’s life began:

One afternoon he and my aunt Terry were driving home when Ray, who had been having some health problems, had a heart attack, lost consciousness and slumped over the steering wheel. Terry, seeing that he had passed out and realizing that they would both be in serious trouble, grabbed the wheel. She couldn’t reach the break pedal and wasn’t strong enough to lift his heavy, limp, leg off the gas pedal.

She began flashing the lights and honking the horn, doing her best to control the car, almost hitting other vehicles on the road, including the car belonging to the son of a local minister. Oddly, an ambulance happened to be a couple of cars behind them. The ambulance driver, noticing the car ahead of them swerving and flashing its lights, realized that Ray and Terry were in trouble and began following them so that they might offer some assistance.

Down the road, at the convalescent home, it was break time for a few of the nurses that work there. It was a nice day and instead of taking their breaks at the rear of the building, the nurses decided to go out front and enjoy the sunshine.

A few minutes later the Peña’s green, Toyota Avalon, heading straight for the convalescent home, veered from the street, jumped the curb and came to rest in the lawn a few feet from the nurses on break. The tires left a streak of black rubber marks across the sidewalk and deep, muddy impressions in the grass. Next came the ambulance and out jumped the EMT’s who raced to the stalled car. Aided by the nurses, they carefully pulled Ray from the driver’s seat and laid him out on the ground. My aunt Terry watched helplessly as they charged defibrillator. An EMT placed the paddles on Ray’s body and shocked him back to life.

Not long after the Toyota “arrived” on the convalescent home’s lawn, followed by the ambulance, a third car pulled up driven by the minister’s son who offered spiritual assistance. It just so happened that the son’s father preached at The Golden Harvest Apostolic Church, a predominately African-American church.

The minister’s son stood there on the lawn with Terry as life entered back into Ray’s body. He was in the hospital a couple of days and released with a brand new defibrillator in his chest (which, by the way, he told his wife before he died to get the doctors to just take it out so that the family could sell it and use the money). Time passed and Ray recuperated, but eventually his other health problems persisted and several months later he went back to the hospital where he eventually died.

The next morning it snowed in Charlotte, beautiful, soft snow. In the afternoon, I spoke to my aunt Terry on the phone. She talked very little about his time up to the end. She instead spoke more about their wild car ride months before. She said, “After that, something was different about your uncle Ray. If you would have known him when he was younger you would see how different he was.”

Ray was never really a spiritual man. And although Terry was faithful (she had grown up in a Spanish-speaking Baptist church) and went to church often, Ray usually stayed home. Now, I used the phrase, “predominately African-American church” earlier because spirituality and attending church didn’t seem to matter much to him and I think old Ray was just indifferent when it came to black people as well. But something happened to him that day laid out on the lawn. He pieced the story back together: He passed out at the wheel leaving Terry to steer from the passenger side. An ambulance just happened to be behind them and the nurses that usually took their breaks in back of the convalescent home were out front this time and could offer aid. And when he found out he had almost hit the minister’s son and his family and the son arrived to stay with Terry, I think at that instant he could finally hear the sound of Jesus’ voice. A voice he didn’t quite acknowledge for so many years before, but one that spoke loudly to him now. He told Terry that he wanted to start going to Golden Harvest even though he had never been to an African-American church.

He was saved in that church. At 73 years old he asked the Holy Spirit into his body and to take control. Ray had told the minister one day after a service that he wanted him to speak at his funeral “whether he liked it or not.” My aunt Terry told me on the phone, “I was so happy that he had accepted Christ that I told him, ‘If this is where Jesus wants you to go to church then that’s where we’re going’.” She seemed giddy about his conversion and after he had passed on she was very calm saying, “I just know in my heart that he’s with Jesus now. He seemed so comfortable when he passed which gave me so much peace, too.”

She wanted to have the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul” played as people walked into the chapel because she said, “That’s how, I think, your uncle Ray felt when he passed. And that’s how I feel, too.”

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But, Lord, ‘tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh trump of the angel! Oh voice of the Lord!
Blessèd hope, blessèd rest of my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

"I Won't Take Nothing To Turn Around"

From their beginning in the late 1930's at the Talladega Institute for the Blind in Alabama, the Blind Boys of Alabama have traveled the Gospel Highway several times over. Their careers have spanned seven decades, they have won four Grammy Awards and have toured and recorded with the likes of Bonnie Rait, Solomon Burke, Ben Harper and Peter Gabriel. I even had the honor and priviledge to open up for them one night at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, CA.

Here is footage of The Blind Boys of Alabama doing "Too Close To Heaven" around 1963 with Clarence Fountain singing lead. It's a little glimpse into the earlier days of the Blind Boys, before the world-wide fame and tour buses. And even though the film is shot over 20 years after their inception, their performance, in my opinion exemplifies what great gospel singing is all about. Watch the footage and see what it means to sing to God and and to sing because of God, lifting up your voice with your entire body.





Amen.

Prices and Habits

Gas prices are rising in our country every day. I put gas in my car yesterday at around $4.17 a gallon for regular unleaded. I'm a working musician so I really feel the crunch. Luckily for me I drive a small car that gets close to forty miles per gallon. Here's the thing: We as Americans complain and complain and complain about gas prices going up and how hard it is to get to work and how our household budgets our tightening down because of these outrageous prices for gasoline. But in Europe, people there pay about 8-9 dollars per gallon for fuel.

I drive a lot for work, to and from gigs; sometimes great distances and so I see a lot of cars on the road. And I've started noticing a few things. For one, with all this complaining about prices, people don't seem to be changing their driving habits at all. I still see people screaming down the freeway as fast as they can, 20 plus miles over the limit. Some of the biggest cars drive the fastest. These gigantic SUV's that get 10 miles to the gallon are driving faster than almost anyone else on the road. But it's not just SUV's. Even more compact, fuel efficient cars are zooming by, too. Those cars lose their fuel efficiency when they're taken to speeds that fast. A person shouldn't be driving a car that fast down the freeway anyway. I see people do this all the time, even with kids in the back seats. I read an article where the author asked why people drive some of the bigger cars and usually the answer was that they felt safer and that they wanted their family to feel safe. Let's just hope nothing happens when they're barreling down the road at 85 mph.

So if you're going complain about gas prices, just be sure to start after you've done just about all you can to control your own fuel situation. If not, we can still keep making donations to the church of Chevrotexarco and watch 'em laugh themselves silly all the way to the bank. Or, if we can just hold out long enough, we'll be able to use ethanol to fuel our cars......and eat corn for every meal.

Coyote Congregations & Train Engineers

The summers growing up in my hometown were always hot, still are. The sun baked down at the peak of the afternoon, sending most of the creatures into the shade and softening the asphalt on our street. The yard dogs panted beneath the cover of the broad-leafed mulberry trees while their owners stayed inside seeking cool, humid relief from their swamp coolers. The kids in the neighborhood usually tramped from each other’s houses, barefoot, sprinting across the scorching streets, sharing swimming pools and slip n’ slides. Come to think of it, I believe the only things that didn’t seem bothered by the triple-digit temperature were the “red” ants that jittered about their tiny little hills between the sidewalk cracks and along the dirt roads. We would stomp around their dens or disrupt their food-gathering caravans and soon the whole colony would be pouring out of that sandy mound like lava busting out of a volcano.

We lived on the outskirts of town next to an orange grove, an alfalfa field and farther on down the road, a plum orchard. The heat settled into the dirt and pavement and as soon as the night and moon would allow it, it radiated back up into the evening atmosphere, creating this amazing smell of crops and earth, composting plants and irrigation-ditch water. In the middle of the night the farmer's sprinklers came on in the groves, soaking the soil beneath the trees and giving the possums and jackrabbits something cool to drink. With the evaporating irrigation water this agricultural aroma would linger heavy and low throughout the entire valley floor. I could smell the bitter scent of the waxy citrus leaves and from over across the street, behind our neighbor's house, came the musty smell of the green alfalfa.

The nights are very still during the summer. There is rarely a breeze. I would lie awake in my bed with the windows open sometimes and let that thick summer air drift into my room. A heavy darkness looms through the whole neighborhood at that hour. The black sky would drape itself over the tops of the redwood trees in our yard like a circus tent, dangling its millions of little bright stars down so close, it seemed, that if you jumped high enough you might be able to grab one and pull it down. There is a street light near our house but it doesn’t seem to do any good. It flashes on at dusk every day, but it lost its fight against the night so many years ago that it just hangs its head and shines down only because that’s what the city pays it for.

Two of my favorite sounds in the whole world are the sounds I could hear outside at night while waiting to fall asleep. They are distant sounds, both, and to this day I haven’t heard better. Way off in the middle of the groves I could hear the laughing and crying and carrying-on of coyotes. They would congregate on one of the narrow, dirt, truck roads that divide the rows of orange trees. There may have only been ten, romping out there under the moon, buy they sounded like a hundred. I would sometimes see only one or two of them during the day, lanky and wire-haired, trotting along the side of the road with such indifference. And every so often, while my brother and I would be playing in the groves, we would see one and try to chase it as far as we could. This never went too far, though. The “hunted” coyote would slow it’s gait for just a second to let us catch up then would break from the turnrow, into the trees and disappear. But several hours after sundown it seemed like every one of them had gathered for the coyote social event of the year. They would raise their voices together and bark out an eerie song that sometimes sounded like choruses of children yelping out in the dark.

On other nights, the heavy, metallic boom of train cars being linked together echoed into my room. The freight yard, with it's intersecting tracks of the short-line San Joaquin Valley Railroad and the Union Pacific, was planted right between the big fruit-packing house and Filbert St. It was about a mile from my house and the coupling of those boxcars sounded like the distant report of cannons being fired. During the day the freight yard wasn't much more than a dry, dusty lot to ride our bikes through after school. Occasionally, we would hop up into the idle, graffiti-covered cars and pretend we were hobos. But it wasn't until the middle of the night, that the train yard really came to life, and the blast from the train’s horn as it crept out of the yard, could be heard from miles around. As a kid, I used to imagine myself riding high up in the engine's cab talking with the engineer about the load of oranges and lumber we'd be towing; laughing, telling stories and drinking hot black coffee from thermoses in the dark morning hours (it's funny because at that time I was too young to have been drinking coffee. I just knew that’s something that adults and movie cowboys did. So of course, I wanted to).

Things have changed a lot since those summer nights of my childhood. When I come back home I can't hear the coyotes as much anymore. They stopped hosting their canine parties when the farmer who owned the groves retired. In fact, his son sold much of the land away and the orange trees next to our fence became houses. The plum orchard was turned into another neighborhood and the alfalfa field got plowed under to make way for an elementary school. But nowadays, when I’m visiting, I open the window of my old room at night and just before sleep overtakes me, that same pungent, valley air drifts in through the screen, inducing faded dreams of coyote congregations and train engineers. My breathing slows and as I turn on my side, I can still hear the freight cars rumbling in the distance like thunder.

Memphis Snow

Memphis, TN Feb. 2, 2007 1:34 a.m.
photo by b.h.