Tools of My New Trade....

I actually had to go back and read my own blog to see what I've posted since I made my career change back in August.  For 30+ years these were some of the tools of my trades:

I applied for and got the "new career" back in August and exchanged nailers, screw guns, saws and job sites for a new set of tools and a cubicle.

Yes, that is a Dunkin Donuts bag on the desk, with a "chocolate glazed" in it. It is 30 cents more to get TWO donuts and coffee than one donut and coffee and I can't resist a deal.  They just opened a Dunkin Donuts 4 blocks from my house and work.

And yes, that is a two monitor set up (my school provided laptop and a second monitor). I NEVER imagined I'd be geeky enough to require two monitors, but after getting a good case of carpal tunnel from cutting and pasting Excel Spreadsheet info on 65 students all day on a single laptop screen, I'm a convert.  FOUR monitors might even be better.  It is unbelievable how much data I have to keep track of.  After 5 months I still have some learning curve left to navigate.

Anyway,  the main problem for the past 5 months has been that once I got the new job, construction picked up.  Someone told me that I should have an estate sale and get rid of all my construction tools because if I didn't I'd always go back to it.  They were right.  I've ended up working "side jobs" every night after "work" and every weekend for the past 5 months.  16-18 hour days have been pretty common.  It has been a mixed blessing because we owe the IRS about $10,000.00 and a lot of back medical bills. The other issue is, I'm still not comfortable with the career change.

I had my 90 day evaluation and I know I'm "IN".  I know I do a good job because I put my heart into it and the administration has recognized that in a performance evaluation.  Everyone in the office likes me.  I bring some new skills and talents to the organization.  Job security is not an issue.  But 30+ years of self-employment dies hard even if you are going broke doing it.  When I'm self employed my destiny is in my own hands.  If I work for an organization I can lose everything on a whim of an administrator or a budget cut or an ill-worded email or a lapse of judgment, and I'm on the street.  I like being at the mercy of my own devices than being at the mercy of what, in the end, is a corporation that makes decisions on factors that are out of my control.

So the new career is going well all in all. I like the job. I like the people I work with. I like the kids I "guide".  Not to mention every two weeks money magically appears in my checking account.  It's not much, but it is more than I've seen in three years regularly.  There's a lot to be said for that these days.

I don't have a whole lot of deep thoughts about all that right now because I just got home from work and work and I had a donut and coffee 14 hours ago and I'm hungry.  Hunger trumps philosophy.  And maybe that's deep.....

I'm Back....

Well. It has been a while, hasn't it.  Time flies when you get sucked into Facebook.

Seriously. I started out on FB a couple years ago as "Moo Turtle" to have some anonymity and keep the "friends" list down. I'd heard of FB overload. I avoided the "number of friends competition bug". But, I couldn't turn people down who found me.  Before long I was spending hours a day commenting on wall posts of dozens of people I'd never met.  Yeah, it was fun, but it eventually consumed me.

A couple weeks ago I had to confront the reality that Facebook was virtually my "community".  I disabled Moo Turtle. I have to admit I didn't abandon FB entirely.  I now have an account with nothing recognizable except my name. I won't "friend" anyone I haven't met face to face, and even then it has to be someone that I have enough connection to that an email once in a while won't do.  We'll see how that works. I know now I can click a delete button and not look back.

So. I want to get back to what I loved doing BFB (Before Face Book): writing, cartooning and podcasting.

A lot has happened the last 6 months.  It will take a few blog posts to chronicle and comment about.  The basic outline is this:

1. New career:  screw guns, hammers, ladders and saws to Excel Spreadsheets, email, cubicle and reports.

2. Old career: as soon as I got a new job, construction picked up. Can I leave my old lover?

3. Family: Parents are aging, health issues, uncertain futures, children with new horizons.

4. Goofodoxy:  Church related issues, transitions and hard decisions about Church.

5.  General observations on life, cancer, cars, ice cream, TV's, carports, dogs, turtles and stuff.

If you used to follow closely, I hope you will check in once in a while again.  It may take me a few weeks to get back into the swing of blogging (which, by the way, has been deemed "old school" by the Twits). There's a lot going on and in between dealing with what's going on, I hope to chronicle it here and make it worth your time to check in.

Lucy! I'm home!

How Architects Can Drive a Priest Crazy

Thanksgiving and Casinos

We weren't sure we'd have Thanksgiving with my parents this year.  My Dad is recovering from a severe case of diverticulitis. My Mom is worn out caring for him.  When we called over the last week to check on them, she sounded tired, more so than usual.

We called a couple days ago and they said, come on up for Thanksgiving.  They don't travel so we drive the 100 miles to see them these days.  Mom didn't want to cook. NO ONE cooks in her kitchen but her.  We offered to bring the food, but she didn't want to clean.  NO ONE does dishes in her sink but her.   So they suggested something I never imagined I would ever do in my life:  Thanksgiving Dinner at the buffet at the casino near their house.  "The food is really good," Mom said.  I know it is because we've been there for lunch with them before, and for a Mother's Day buffet she wanted to go to one year.  

Of course I said, "Sure! That sounds good, Mom!"  even though it sounded... weird.

So we spent the afternoon with my parents watching episodes of "Hillbilly Handfishing" and car shows and went to the Casino for what was, in actuality, a really good buffet. During the meal Mom kept saying, "...and we don't have to do dishes!" 

I never imagined ever in my life having a meal at a casino, much less aThanksgiving Dinner buffet.  

But I never imagined being so thankful that my Dad and Mom are still around to have dinner with at all. I believe this Thanksgiving is more precious than all the others we've shared before. 

First Nativity Fast Fail

I'm buying a Thanksgiving turkey, fixin's and wine.

The "trailer park-ish" woman in front of me at the grocery store check out buys a pre-made Thanksgiving dinner, ice cream, some fruit juices and two packs of cigarettes. She sends the bag boy back because he didn't get "100's". 

She tries to pay with a credit card and it is maxed. She tries to run the card three times.  She says to the cashier "it's all I got", and tears up. She has to leave her basket. 

I could have paid for her groceries. I thought of paying for them. 

But I didn't want to pay for a pre-made Thanksgiving dinner and cigarettes. So I said nothing and watched her walk out the door empty handed.

I hope God doesn't treat me the same way.

New Congressional Fashion

In an unprecedented move, Congress has passed legislation requiring all elected officials to wear NASCAR type suits to display their corporate sponsorships. We have the best politicians money can buy, we may as well know who has purchased them.  Here, Senator Harry Reid models the new "Political Sponsorship" wear.  (I'm not picking on him in particular... his head just fit.)

DANGER!

The most awesome warning sign on earth.

You can now buy it here and help me pay my $10,000.00 tax bill from last year for raiding my retirement account in order to keep my house and feed my family because there was no work for almost 3 years. 

Share the link, promote the product on your FB, Twitter, blog etc.

Thanks.

Buy it HEREhttp://www.zazzle.com/danger_ninjas_and_pirates_and_laers_and_s_t_poster-228883956496116923

Ecumenical Loaded Questions

Muddled Musings this Morning

I was reading someone else's blog a few days ago and they mentioned they've been blogging steadily for four years which is like being 100 in "blog years".  I realized I missed the 7th anniversary of my blog this past July, which means I'm dead, on life support or have dementia in blog years.

One of the things that real life forces me to do (sometimes) is look at my life realistically.  For the past 3 years I've been virtually unemployed and had lots of time on my hands.  It was easy to spend a few hours a day cartooning and writing, and it was a distraction.  The blog went from 10-12 hits a day to 7-800 a day (not that I was counting.... but yeah, I was counting for a while).   It is amazing how fast the hits drop off if you don't post something more interesting than what you had for breakfast every other day.  But that's not the point of this post.

A lot has happened in the last couple months.  New careers for both me and the Missus have rearranged a lot of our life.  The Church we helped start and have served for seven years is going through a positive and healthy transition after years of issues (that I have avoided blogging about).  After fourteen years of doing Church planting and being at the epicenter of major crises that ended up in pastoral and leadership changes in two different Mission parishes we've helped establish, we decided to take a break from leadership roles.  For the good order and sake of allowing the new leadership to establish itself, we essentially left the parish and our friends (and we are all still good friends, there is no animosity at all).  The new leadership agrees that is a good thing I'm not there, but I agreed to be "training wheels" at Reader's Services to teach the new Readers and help them when there is no priest serving a liturgy.  So, we've been visiting various Churches and friends, but also spending more time visiting my parents instead of leading Church services and refereeing dysfunctional Parish Council and hierarchical meetings. 


The reality I've realized lately is I'm not really missing leadership, nor am I missing saying stuff.  I suppose I could write it off to just plain burn-out.  I could spiritualize it and say that after 14 years of radio shows, podcasts, blogs, building monasteries, serving altars and doing Church planting I've realized it all ran on vainglory and ego and I'm finally humbling down and shutting up and getting a REAL spiritual life now.

I could see it as the "demon of the noon-day" and a temptation to be lazy and quit after spending 14 years getting "street cred".

I could see it as a sabbatical.

I could see it as I've been a con-man Jacob and I'm finally getting my "Rachael" after working 14 years being wed to "Leah", the ugly wife I was tricked into (let the Biblically literate understand), but I'm not sure exactly what "Rachael" is or if I will recognize her if I meet her.

I could say all this musing about this is just more evidence of how vainglorious I am, that I'm not all that, I'm not a Bible character, my rumination about it all is pointless because I'll rewrite the history in my head six months and six years from now anyway (and I really don't ruminate about it all that much, actually) and maybe I just need to live in the present moment and not prognosticate about the "whys" and "heretofores".

After 59 years one thing I know is you cannot tell what kind of plant is going to grow from a seed of Providence.  Nothing I've started, finished, quit or avoided, whether with spiritual intentions or evil, has ended up like I believed it would.  Why should the events of this present time be any different.

So maybe I'll just fall back on being a Christian. Love God. Love my neighbor. If I blog or not, podcast or not, be here or there or not, in the end all things will be well.  All things will be well.

Real Life Kicks In

Ever since I got a "real job", and finishing latent construction commitments it seems I have little time for blogging or reading and commenting on other blogs. 

I have a lot of thoughts and ideas for blog posts and podcasts but not much time to flesh them out. 

Hm. Maybe after three years of virtual self-unemployment I've encountered real life once again. 

On the other hand, I've been having this inner urge to sit down and shut up and take a break from being "out there" so much.

But that's another blog post/podcast in the works....

Thanks for checking in on the blog.  I'm liking my new job. 

More coming.... some day soon.

Orthodox Parades in the Old Country

We Can. If Only We Would....

Rye Barcott was a student at the University of North Carolina who spent a summer sharing a 10-by-10 shack in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. One night he awoke with diarrhea and stumbled to the public outhouse. He slid onto the cement floor and vomited as his bare body hit puddles of human waste.
He left his soiled pants outside the hut, but when he went to find them later they were gone. He was directed to another hut where a stick-thin girl, with missing clumps of hair, had the pants, scrubbed and folded, in her lap. Barcott said softly, “I’m grateful,” and asked her why she had cleaned them. “Because I can,” she replied. A week later, she died of AIDS and her body was taken in a wheelbarrow to a communal grave.
- From "The Rugged Altruists" by David Brooks

H/T Orr

First Week on the New Job

Well.

I've put in my first 40 hours on the new job.

I can tell right now that having to be in the office at 8 and having to put in a "true 8" sitting in a chair on a computer on an office network that blocks anything not work related is going to seriously cut back on my blogtime (posting and commenting), facebook status updates and podcasting. My life is over.

I discovered after three days that my office wardrobe was seriously under stocked. All of my old office-worthy clothing was nearly 30 years old and 4 inches of waist ago. The only time I've had to dress up in the last 30 years has been for two weddings and a couple of funerals. At the last wedding I had the pants from the previous wedding let out two inches so I wouldn't have to buy a whole new suit. Other than that, everything I've had to wear to anything formal has been hidden under a black cassock. As long as I was wearing decent black shoes I could have been nekkid and I was good to go. So, it was off to Goodwill.

Way back when, I was a bit of a clothes hound. Maybe it's the old "art major" in me but for some reason when I'm shopping clothes I scan a rack and inevitably my eye is drawn to the most expensive pair of pants, shirt or accessory. I admit I've owned $75.00 ties and $200.00 pairs of pants... way back when I was making the kind of money you weighed instead of counted. But for 20+ years I've been counting, and I don't have to count very high these days. So I have to somehow reconcile my "eye" and my "wallet".

One word: Thrift stores. (OK, two.)

Not that I'm into "labels", I just know what I like... but I found a little over a week's worth of worthy office attire at Goodwill for under 80.00. Pants, shirts, ties, most of them indistinguishable from new off the rack. Because I've never needed brown shoes for the last 20 years, I did have to buy a pair of new brown shoes that cost me the same as my entire wardrobe. I know enough to know the same wardrobe at Macy's or Dillard's would have been well over a grand. I actually had to spend more on my construction clothes because those kinds of things don't make it to Goodwill and I had to buy them new.

Anyway, that was an anticipated part of the career change. It's kind of mundane for most of my readers I'm sure, but when you've been wearing carpenter jeans and a white T-shirt and tennis shoes to work for 30 years it's a big change.

Years ago, I would have bristled at the thought of having to dress up for "the man". But I've come to realize that a certain amount of "chameleon competence" is not a bad thing when navigating life and the various environments one finds one's self in. The issues of fitting in are far deeper than what drapes your body. If a piece of cloth offends or creates a barrier then I've created a hurdle that has to be overcome before I can begin to address the deeper issues of what separates human beings.  Of course I realize I could dress like a homeless person and press an issue on that level, but if that is a huge issue I won't be around long enough to influence any change anyway and the relationships are lost.  But that's not the point.

I haven't really escaped construction.  I got in the office early Monday morning and no one else was there yet. The offices had moved the week before and furniture and boxes were still stacked all over the place.  I moved some stuff around and found an old wooden desk in one of the offices. The center drawer was in three pieces from the move. I went out to my truck, got my tools and glued and clamped it.  It turned out it was the CEO's desk I fixed.  I went in to remove the clamps and put the desk back together and he asked who I was.  I told him and said this is my first day on the job, I had gotten there early and decided to make myself useful since I didn't know what else to do except what I used to do until my boss showed up to show me what new thing to do. We had a nice talk.  Not a bad first impression, I suppose.

I also started a job last Saturday that should have been a one day project.  It has turned into a week plus another 2-3 days next week because of changes and complications.  I've been working through my lunch break at the office so I can leave a half hour early to go work on the remodel project.  In the meantime this week I've gotten a half dozen calls from people wanting me to do construction stuff for them.  So I've been putting in 14 hour days this week and will continue on into next week.  That's not all bad since we need the money.  I can make more for a few hours after "work" than I will for the eight hours at my desk.  But I know I can't do that for long.  It's Friday afternoon and I'm fried and I have to go to work all weekend.

It is interesting being a total "newbie" at something once again.  I have basic computer skills which are essential for the new job. What I don't have is familiarity with the software and educational environment I am working with.  It is intimidating to be given a link to a website that you have no clue what it does, means, contains or how it fits with what  you are supposed to be doing.  Then you given 3 more of the same and you have to just play with them, click around all the dozens of menus and sub-menus to figure out how they all fit in the big picture and integrate all the information you get from each of them and put parts of each of them back into those same websites.  Of course I have a mentor, but he has his own job to do and part of my job is to take some of his job, so along with the learning curve I was handed a few dozen students and had to set up my own record keeping systems and get all of these kids started in all of the schools' programs in the meantime. Needless to say, even with a mentor there were plenty of opportunities to feel stupid and overwhelmed.  I know I had to ask several times stuff like, "Ummm.. WHICH website is it that you sign a kid up for/get this information from...?"  I've always told my employees there's no such thing as a stupid question, but it's still easy to FEEL stupid when asking one when you KNOW you've been told how to do that before.

Of course nothing is as simple as it looks.  "This is the procedure to do this..." Then the first batch of kids I got happened to be "exceptional cases" in the software and procedures. What should have been straightforward processes ended up taking me deep into sub-menus and different administrative procedures to get them enrolled and on track. It wasn't until the middle of the week that I got a true straightforward process. But, now I already know the hard stuff.

It's amazing how much of the same information needs to be stored in different places. I think I've cut and pasted more stuff than I have total in the past 15 years.  I've discovered more than a dozen Excel tricks and discovered two dozen more issues that I need to figure out what the tricks are to fix.  I can already see that keyboard short cuts are the key to survival in this job.  

So far I like what I am dealing with both in terms of the technical aspects of the job and the interaction with parents and kids.  I can see I'll be doing some "hand holding", tech support, coaching, encouragement, tough love and just ordinary information giving about the educational system/requirements.  It's not too much different than running a crew of 55 drywallers, really.  

Things I can see right now:

I need to change my eating habits. I'm going to be a blimp in about two months if I don't.  I sit down in my chair at my desk and except for bathroom breaks I don't get up again for 8 hours. If it ever drops below 110 I'll walk to work. My new office got moved to four blocks from my house. 

I need to say no to "side work".  One day a week, two in an emergency.  All work and no play makes s-p a dull boy and a bad blogger.

We need to budget.  The Wifey got a teaching job this year. Between the two salaries we can make ends meet if we're careful. Cool thing is we are both 10 month contracts, we could actually take vacations in the summer if we're careful.

I like the people I'm working with. I liked them in the interviews and staff training.  They get better every day. 

So, there's 40 hours in a nutshell. The nice thing is, no regrets and no red flags.  Yeah, I can do this.

How Bishops Should be Transferred

At least it would be more fun to watch...

Orthograph #141 - Testimonies

On Growing Old

An expanded podcast version of "Older and Pithlesser" on work, pride, youth and death at Steve the Builder

Lilliputian Liturgies

Getting Older and Pithlesser

I'm turning 59 in five days. I've never been much into birthdays and milestones and "passages". My 20, 30 and 40th birthdays went pretty much by without any sense of "gee/wow-ness" or movement toward or away from anything. My 50th birthday was an existential awakening. I'd been through the standard Red Bugatti mid-life crisis (yeah, I really had one), divorced, blended family etc. etc. (not that all that is normal, but it is the fodder of a John Updike novel).  But even during and after all that life did not seem particularly finite or "particular" in any real way.  I walked through it with the sense of appropriate angst, guilt, shame, joy, apprehension and uncertainty that one should feel when life is all akimbo, but it was just "life".

When I turned 50 I stared at the number and it was as if I stepped outside my door thinking it was midday and saw the sun setting.  The dusk of my life was in front of me, undeniable and darkening.  No matter how I cut it, my life was more than half over, more than likely I had about a quarter of it left to me, if that.  "The days of man are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth... Our days like a spider have spun out its tale. Our years number three score years and ten, and if we be in strength mayhap fourscore years, but what is more than these but toil and travail?"  I was old enough to see the truth in that, I just never thought it applied to ME.  But on my 50th birthday it did.  My life was on the downhill slope and I was still sheet rocking and lifting heavy stuff for a living.

For 30 years I've been doing construction because my college degrees would land me a 13.00/hour job.  When you're 35 and invincible, construction is a good living.  When  you're 58 and have been doing it for 30 years it is a hard living and one false move can mean a torn tendon or ligament that will put you in bankruptcy.  The frequency of "six ibuprofen and three beer" nights increase.  You just learn to live with chronic pain, move slower and don't "be a hero"... you ask for help to lift and move stuff.  Without any health insurance and another option to buy groceries on the table you live in fear of an accident, a miscalculation, an untimely muscle spasm or just plain exhaustion that will end up in a career ending injury. 

A month ago I interviewed for a new job.  It was not just a "job", it was a new career.  Actually it is more like my original career working with "at risk" kids and families.  At 59 my youngest has graduated from high school and cosmetology school.  The Wifey has finished her teaching recertification for Arizona and found a teaching job after 30+ years of staying home with the kids.  Between the two salaries on paper it looked like we can pay our bills if I do a "side job" here and there.  I got the job.

It was somewhat of an affirmation that after 30 years in construction and pushing 60 someone thought I had something on a "professional level" to offer an organization other than repairing their drywall or building them a new office.  But the reality is, I have been self-employed for 30+ years.  It will be an adjustment to be working for "the man", punching his time card, asking him for days off and taking his allotment of vacation.  I can't just pack my tools up and go build a Church or a monastery for three weeks anymore.  I know it will be an adjustment, but I also know I pretty much HAVE to make the adjustment, just like I made the adjustment from ministry to construction 30 years ago out of necessity.

Fifty nine is a strange birthday. It has an anticipatory facet to it that is sobering in a way that actually turning 50 or 60 doesn't.  My parents are in their mid 80's and we're waiting for "the phone call" about my Dad. I'm his age when his parents passed away. I get AARP's magazine and it tells me every month that I'm on the cusp of the "retirement decade" and I have nothing.  The past 30 years have been spent on groceries, house payments, electricity, stuff to raise our kids and a trip to visit family now and then (but not nearly often enough).  The only things we have of value are memories, a wonderful bunch of kids and a couple of cute grand kids.  Everything else is a liability and worth less than we paid for it.  But in the grand scheme of things, if I make it another eleven years to three score and ten, I won't regret investing in those things instead of a 401k. 

So, here is to change.  I know there are more  changes on the close horizon that I did not apply for, cannot fully prepare for nor predict.

So, here is to having more life to remember than to anticipate.  It is an odd place but thankfully I do not find it frightening or depressing.  The dusk breaks into a new dawn and I'm looking forward in peace to the last and eternal dawn.  There's something to be said for that, even if I'm punching a time card for the man.

Stages of Conversion

I don't think I have ever lifted a complete blog post from someone else's blog (though I've quoted and recommended a few... very few).  Silouan posted this on Facebook and I read it. It is about the process of "converting", something many or most of us have done.  I'm posting it because I don't want to take the chance that you won't take time to click the link.

Wisdom, let us attend!
____________________________________________
It doesn't seem to matter what version of the Christian faith you join, because this seems to be a near-universal process:

Phase 1: The Cage Phase
So you've found your new tradition, and you've finally discovered all the answers to life's problems encompassed within it. You've also read a few books that explain how every other Christian tradition (especially the one you just left) has absolutely ruined the piss out of the Christian faith as a whole. As God's apostle to the unconverted, it now falls upon you to save the world (especially your friends and family in the old tradition) by enlightening them as to just how perfect everything is about your new tradition and how stupid and wrong everything about their current tradition is. It is very important for you to have a blog during this time so that you can enlighten as many people as possible.

Phase 2: Addiction
After having ruined all your relationships from your past life, you are now disillusioned with the willful ignorance and impiety of all those outside your new church. Let the heretics stew in their heresy. It is now time to busy yourself with drinking as much religious Kool-Ade as you possibly can, preferably until your skin becomes the same color as Purplesaurus Rex and your body's pH levels are completely thrown off. You need to read every theological or devotional book you can, buy lots of the assorted trinkets associated with your tradition, and make lots of pilgrimages to either theology conferences or monasteries, depending on how your church rolls.

Phase 3: Apostle of Renewal
You've recently noticed that most of the other people in your church are not nearly as obsessed with it as you are. They aren't reading those books, and they aren't buying all that crap you've strewn your house with. They're more concerned with paying the bills than why those awful sectarians are wrong. They even have friends outside the church! Many of them are not aware just how right and perfect their church is, or how great their lives would be if they would just fling themselves with total abandon into the kind of obsession you yourself have. This is clearly a problem that must be fixed, for it threatens to destroy the purity of the faith. As God's chosen agent of change, you busy yourself with trying to whip up everyone in the congregation into the same frothing devotion you yourself exhibit.

Phase 4: Beaten by Reality
You've finally faced the harsh truth: The people in your new tradition are, at their core, a whole lot like all those people from your old tradition that you despised so much, with all the same foibles and failings. You give up on saving the world, on restoring your tradition to its purity, and have lost your confidence that God himself has appointed you to fix everything. You've discovered that your new church in fact has a lot of ugliness in its history, has a lot of jerks in its power structure, can't solve all of life's problems, and isn't always all that consistent or believable in what it teaches or what it does.

Phase 5, Option 1: The Rat Leaves the Ship
Clearly, you were had. You thought you had found the One True Perfect Tradition, but you were deceived. You know what you must do--find the tradition that really does get it all right, because it must be out there. Back to Phase 1 for you!

Phase 5, Option 2: Complete Disillusionment
You have realized, perhaps after going through this cycle several times, that you are perhaps the only sincere, thinking Christian in the world. Everyone else is a hypocrite or a dunce, and all these corrupt denominations and hierarchies have ever accomplished is completely screwing up everything. Completely embittered at the idea of organized religion, you isolate yourself in order to go be a true follower of Christ without all those awful other people screwing things up. If you meet some like-minded folk, you start meeting up with them in order to transcend organized religion by organizing a religion. It's very likely that you eventually realize that all religious people are deluded fools and become an atheist or agnostic.

Phase 5, Option 3: Partial Disillusionment and Accommodation
After facing the harsh reality in Phase 4, you've further realized that phases 1 through 3 ought to be renamed "Jackass," "Nutjob," and "Know-it-All," respectively, which suggests that you are, for the most part, much worse at being a decent human being than all those people too stupid and impious to realize how awesome your new religion is. While many of the reasons that you had for joining your current tradition remain, and thus so do you, you decide it's time to cut yourself, your church, everyone else's churches, and rest of the world some slack.

On B.S.

I spent a couple weeks in Montana visiting my sister and brother in law.  I've met him a few times, but hadn't spent much time with him. Like me, he is a construction guy with college degrees. My sister told me Todd has insomnia and stays up at night and writes.  She said it was good stuff.

I got him to let me read some of his essays.  I brought the hard copies home with me and told him he should set up a blog and if he didn't I was going to steal his stuff and pass it off as my own because I'm running out of stuff. So, he set up a blog. He's posted up a few essays and more are on the way, on work, life, economics, faith, God, and recently one on "bullshit".  A quote:

"There are other forms of bullshit that don't mean anything. Food packages will say things like “30% less fat.” 30% less fat than what? A block of pure fat? “Fresh Frozen Food?” “Fresh Pickled?” “Fresh Smoked?” “How are you?” “I'm fine.” “Mission Accomplished.” “That's really something.”

Bullshit is not new, and philosophers including Kant, Hume, Locke, Hobbes, and Frankfurt have attempted to define it and its role in society. I think by this point we have become so glazed over by bullshit's residue that we can at least recognize it by contrast to what it is not. It seems that when you see something that isn't bullshit, it is striking. When someone speaks a simple truth or does something genuinely good, it momentarily captures our attention as if it were something rare and precious. The Lord gives us the darkness so we can see the stars." 

 

From my brother in law's blog  "Truth, Ire and the Night" 
Check it out, check back frequently.