If I could only give three words of advice, they would be “tell the truth.”

If I got three more words, I would add: “All the time.”

People lie for lots of reasons, often because it seems like a way to get what they want with less effort. But like many short-term strategies, it’s ineffective in the long-term. You run into people again later, and they remember you lied to them.

And they tell lots of other people about it.

–Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture

Tis the season for political statements and promises, so this one really rang my bell this morning.

Of course it’s good advice for not just politicians, but also preachers, elders, doctors, teenage sons, lawyers (especially lawyers), short-order cooks and floor sweepers.

By the way, I’m pleased to report that Ocular Fusion is now the #1 Google hit for the word “Pauschisms.”

Rock on, Randy. And have a great weekend, everyone.

Numbers One, Two and I ran the Cotton Row Memorial Day Run in downtown Huntsville this past Monday. None of us had been running much lately (I’ve had a bad case of “turf toe” since February), so a 5K for fun (and to get the t-shirt) seemed about right. We were running late, so we ended up at the back of the pack at the start.

As we stood there waiting for the gun to go off, we suddenly heard the people around us applauding and cheering. We looked up and saw the very last 10K finisher (it had started nearly 2 hours before) crossing the finish line.

He was a very large African-American man, about 6’4″ and I would guess around 400 lbs, who was “sprinting” for all he was worth. But what really got my attention aside from his heft was his entourage. He was being escorted by five very fit and trim military-looking types who had apparently run the course with them. I have no idea who they were, but my first thought was that they were some kind of medical support crew that race organizers had arranged to have run with him.

I’m all for people losing weight, achieving their goals and getting a fresh start, but the whole scene struck me as a little reckless, especially with all the heat and humidity that morning. But I sincerely hope he uses his finish to go on to even greater things (like a 150 lb weight loss).

When the gun went off, it took us a couple of minutes to weave our way through the mass and really get going. Number One finished first, and then Number Two with me bearing down on him at the finish. We were all pretty slow, but it was fun and satisfying. And there was pizza and ice cream at the finish.

Where was Number Three you ask?

Sleeping in.

While rummaging through the attic of my memories last week, I stumbled across another long-lost treasure.

Most residents in the nursing home where I worked during college had long since given up on any more hanky-panky and directed their remaining physical and mental energies toward more fundamental aspects of survival, such as chewing slowly without choking and making sure they didn’t throw off their pacemakers by getting a little too close to the microwave.

But there were a few who were hanging on tight and had a reputation for being real pistols. Especially that retired banker who use to “make his rounds” each day as he slowly pushed his walker from one nurse’s station to another. It didn’t matter if you were a male or female employee, you really had to watch his hands. He was an equal opportunity grabber.

But not Ol’ John Turner. He was 95-years-old and had been faithful as the day is long to his wife Mamie. They’d been married for 70 years and she was barely 87 herself–talk about robbing the cradle. The two of them shared a room together, Ricky and Lucy-style, and he was often on my assignment list, so I got to know him and their story well.

I got the impression that they had created a wonderful life together, and judging from steady stream of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that flowed through their room on a near-daily basis, they’d gotten busy early and left their mark.

But there wasn’t a lot of conversation these days between the two of them. While Ol’ John was spry and fit as a very-worn-but-still-playable fiddle, Mamie had Alzheimer’s. He would spend his days sitting beside her bed, feeding her meals, carrying on various monologues about what was going on in the room next door or about that summer vacation to Myrtle Beach with the kids back in ’23. Every now and then when I walked in, he would be gently brushing her long, soft hair which always gleamed white and bright like a halo.

One day I was picking up their trays when Mr. Turner grabbed me by the lapels of my uniform and pulled me close. I could tell by the serious look on his wrinkled face and the gravity of his stare that he had something very important to tell me. I was once again about to be on the receiving end of The Wisdom of the Ages.

“Mamie called out to me last night,” he whispered conspiratorially while pointing over his shoulder toward his wife. “She wanted me to come over there and get in bed with her.”

I had not heard Mamie say a single word the entire time I had known her, so this came as a surprise to me. I was intrigued.

“So, what did you do?” I asked, setting the breakfast tray back down on his bedside table.

“Well, I didn’t do anything,” he replied.

“Why not?”

With a glint in his graying eyes, he looked at me sternly and said, “Well, son, when you get to be my age, you look down there and you realize that there ain’t no more lead in the pencil!”

He then broke into a broad, mischievous grin, slapped his knees a couple of times and went into such a fit of wheezing laughter that I thought I was going to have to call a Code Blue.

That old geezer. He really got me, didn’t he?

There ain’t no more lead in the pencil.

There’s no telling what might have happened had Ol’ John lived long enough to see the rise of Viagra.

I haven’t had a fit of laugh-induced asthma like this in a long time.

Leave it to The Onion to leave me reaching for my inhaler.

I was 28-years-old when I graduated from optometry school and finally gained that long sought after title of “doctor.” No more “scut work” for me, I thought. “Let respect flow like a river, and money like a mighty stream” was my motto.

Oh, if only it had been that simple. We moved to Nashville where I started a residency in ocular disease at a large ophthalmology clinic and referral center near Vanderbilt. One of the first patients that I saw in the clinic there stared at me in disbelief when I walked into the room and declared, “And what high school did you just graduate from?” She wasn’t smiling when she said it.

But that was the least of my problems. The entire staff of the clinic, from the front desk receptionist to the lead technician, had misgivings about turning this skinny, baby-faced greenhorn in the white jacket loose on their patients. Most of them were women who had never graduated from college, much less something as difficult and arduous as professional school. How dare they!

It turns out that the previous resident there had been very “patient-phobic” and had spent inordinate amounts of time in her office writing case reports and “doing research” which was just fine with them. But I was eager to jump into the fray and get my hands dirty, which meant more work for them. They conspired to make sure that I had as few patients as possible and as a group went to my residency mentor and told him that they didn’t think I was experienced or mature enough to take care of patients independently.

And they had a point. I really wasn’t (especially the difficult, tertiary care patients who comprised the bulk of the patient load). But that was the whole point of a residency, to gain that sort of experience, and my residency preceptor told them that and reassured them that he would be close by to lend a hand if I needed it.

When I found out about that meeting which had taken place behind my back, I was pretty steamed. But after venting to my preceptor about how mere staff ought to show a little more respect to someone who had just received his first batch of checks from the bank with the “Dr.” printed prominently before his name, he said something that has been lodged in my mind ever since:

“Want respect? Earn it.”

Eventually, after demonstrating to the clinic staff that I could get it done in the trenches, I did earn their respect. I was invited to stay at the end of my year of training, and worked there for nearly two more years. Those same staff members who had dismissed me at first eventually looked to me as their “go-to” guy when things got rough. But it wasn’t they who had changed so much. It was me.

I’ve tried to take that lesson learned during my first year of residency and carry it with me throughout my career. It came in handy when I moved to Huntsville and started with my current employer and was shown my office and clinic area on the first day; they were both empty.

Those words of advice from my residency mentor rang in my ears as I built my present clinic from scratch, taught students, wrote and published articles and lectured at meetings (often for little or no pay) in order to climb the ladder toward “tenure.”

I repeated the words to my students and reminded them that if they didn’t take good care of their patients or demonstrate to their colleagues and other professionals that they knew what they’re doing, then the initials behind their name would stand for nothing and do them little good.

And I tried to remind them–and show them–that they must find some meaning in their work, especially since that’s what they would be doing for the majority of their lives. The words of The Preacher:

“Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.”

–Ecclesiastes 5:18-20

I think The Preacher had a hard time seeing any sort of eternal significance to the work performed on earth, and frankly, most days, so do I. But what else is there to do but labor on?

But maybe, just maybe, the “here and now” and eternity are not as far apart as we might think at first glance. One of my favorite reflections on work comes in, of all places, a Jim Carrey movie. In Bruce Almighty, Carrey’s character Bruce Nolan finally sheds his “scut work” job and gets that long-coveted TV anchor position and even a chance to “play God” and run the universe. But at the outset, God, wearing a janitor’s uniform and in the form of Morgan Freeman, reminds Bruce that eventually he’ll have to come back and help “clean this floor.”

When Bruce finds out that being the Big Kahuna is not all that he thought it was cracked up to be, he finds himself back in the empty warehouse, with broom in hand and a look of peace and sublime satisfaction on his face, sweeping in synch with his Creator. After all his grand visions, Bruce discovers that there is no “scut work,” that any task performed for and with God that adds order to and helps stem the chaos of a degenerating (or is it regenerating?) creation can be meaningful and fulfilling.

I think about that scene sometimes as I drive to work and try to summon up the courage and strength to get in there and do it again. I think about the words of my residency mentor: Want respect? Earn it.

And I pray: Lord, make me of some use to you today. Amen.

Regarding the various times that I worked construction jobs while in school, there are really only two words that need to be said.

I’m sorry.

Sorry for the outlet covers that were put on upside down, sorry for the insulation that wasn’t stapled in correctly, sorry for that door that just won’t shut quite right.

In numerous subdivisions and neighborhoods throughout the Southeast United States, homeowners are starting to do a double take at some of the so-called “quality craftsmanship” of their suburban executive homes and declare: “Who the @%#$&*! put this thing together?!”

Uh, that would be me, and I like I said, I’m sorry.

But you see, that’s what you get when some jackleg contractor decides to slap together as many houses as possible in no time flat. They hire cheap, inexperienced laborers, some of them with fresh college degrees, to pick up building supplies in old, dilapidated pickup trucks with no air conditioning, huge holes in the mufflers (if there’s a muffler at all) and three speeds on the column which are really only two and half since the shifter always sticks just when you get ‘er up to about 45 mph.

And after picking up 2x4s at Lowes, the contractors task those workers with jobs which in a perfect world would only be performed by experienced, unionized master craftsmen. The result is a house which looks Southern Living-perfect from a distance but will stay that way only if you’re not too concerned about fine details like trim that reaches all the way to end of the wall and if you don’t lean too hard on the banister rail.

The first time I worked construction was in Searcy, Arkansas in the spring of 1985. I had taken a leave of absence from the PhD program in clinical psychology at Virginia Tech in order to “find myself” and figure out if I had chosen the right career path. I figured a little time getting in touch with my “inner blue collar working guy” would do the trick. Well, that, and I was engaged to be married to the future Eyegal who was finishing up her senior year at Harding.

So I found a room to rent for the spring and a job working construction for a relatively young Harding grad who was a contractor and shall remain nameless, although his last name did closely resemble that of a semiaquatic rodent known for building dams in the darnedest places. There I was, one year out of college, basically a graduate school dropout, working a $5 an hour construction job (hey, it was good money in ’85), with no immediate prospects. My future father-in-law looked on anxiously at all this, and to his credit, he didn’t say a word (to me, anyway).

That entire spring can be summed up simply by describing my first morning on the job. I was dropped off at a new house project with instructions to work with a crew of brick masons and do whatever they asked me to do. I was told to start sweeping the mortar dust from some of the sidewalks and had been doing that for just a few minutes when the entire crew decided to take a break. Since I was now an official brickmason’s assistant and a valuable member of Team Mortar, I decided to take a break as well.

That didn’t go over very well with the furry rodent, uh, I mean The Boss Man, when he stopped back by a few minutes later. He yelled at me for slacking off already and told me to get back to work. I started to protest, summoning all the rhetorical skill of my bachelor of arts degree, but then I decided to let it go. Even the mortar guys thought it was a little unfair since they were taking a break too, but nobody exactly leaped to my defense.

Later that morning, I actually got to stick a shovel in a wheelbarrow full or mortar. I was supposed to heave it up onto some scaffolding where the masons were, but nobody told me about how hard I needed to turn my wrist in order for the mortar to land where it was supposed to.

You probably know where this is going by now. Down came the entire shovelful of mortar on my head. Oh, the hoots, hollers and catcalls which followed: “Whoo Hoo, check out the COLLEGE BOY, evra’body!”

Mercifully, they came up with something else for me to do after I had cleaned off a little. As the future Eyegal helped pick the dried mortar from my hair while feeding me dinner at the threshold of the door to her apartment later that evening (I say the threshold because that’s where I was sitting since Harding rules did not allow so much as my big toenail inside the door), I knew then and there that there was no future for me in brick masonry. No siree, I was going to have to find myself a career more suited to my talents and gifts, preferably one that didn’t involve shovels.

So one afternoon I told the supervisor that I needed to find my calling in life and asked if I could knock off for the afternoon and go over to the Harding career library. By that time I had developed quite a reputation as a handyman and figured that he would say no since he couldn’t do without my help, so imagine my surprise when his face lit up and he exclaimed, “Yes! And oh, by the way, take as much time as you need.”

Once there, I had spent a few minutes thumbing through career pamphlets when I spied a slick little brochure from the American Optometric Association entitled “Your Future in Optometry.” I had never even considered becoming an optometrist before, but after a few minutes reading, I was hooked.

I decided then and there that I would become an Eyeguy and spend the rest of my life actually working on something that I could fix with my hands and be done with it rather than spinning my wheels doing psychotherapy or shoveling mortar. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things.

Over the years, I’ve had several third-generation optometrists as students, people who knew from the time of their earliest memories that they would carry on the family tradition. When they’ve learned that I decided on optometry as a career in about 15 minutes after reading a brochure, they usually sit there silently, their mouths agape, thinking, How could anyone have put so little time and thought into choosing their career?

I’ll tell you how. Sometimes you’re so desperate that you just have to make a decision and go with it. I bet none of them had ever picked dried mortar from their hair.

I worked with the brick masons several more times that spring. By the end they had actually grown quite fond of me, and when I told them that I had decided to become an optometrist, there was much rejoicing. They reassured me that they thought it was a very good career move.

I worked construction jobs a couple more times while in optometry school, but by then I was well on my way to a white collar, air conditioned professional career. I endured those 100 degree Birmingham summers well because I knew that the day was coming soon when I would be rid of my “scut work” jobs forever and I would finally get the respect that I deserved.

Or so I thought.

To be continued…

These days when college students come home and seek out summer jobs, there’s a good chance that they’ll find themselves doing what has become the Main Task Of The Day, without which life as we know it would cease to exist: Data Entry.

Tippity-tap-tippity-tap. It has not always been that way, though.

In the summers following my freshman and sophomore years of college, I worked as an orderly at a nursing home in Rocky Mount, Virginia. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that they would hire a skinny, inexperienced 19-year-old kid for a job that involved providing direct patient care to a very sick and fragile population. But considering how difficult, and sometimes dirty, the work was, I suppose they may have been desperate enough to hire just about anybody.

I may have had a day or two where I followed someone around and learned the tricks of the trade, but very quickly I was in sole charge of getting a group of 7-10 residents up each morning and preparing them for their day, even if that day consisted merely of watching TV and drooling on their napkin in the dining hall.

For the more self-sufficient who could take care of themselves easily, that might mean merely stopping by their room to make sure they were okay and had everything they needed. For the bed bound or more mentally challenged, though, it meant getting them up, showered, dressed, feeding them breakfast from their trays and eventually getting them into their wheelchairs or walkers and to their favorite perch before family members and visitors started to arrive.

And then you had to watch them like a hawk. If family members arrived to visit and one of them had soiled themselves while you were off taking care of another resident, there was usually hell to pay. So you got in a habit of checking them regularly, employing the “sniff test” and other more tactile measures to ensure that they were clean, and if they weren’t, whisking them back to the room for a quick change that would make your average NASCAR pit crew green with envy. And by the way, this was in the days before the large adult diapers (eg Depends) came along.

Or worse yet, if a family member arrived and Granny, in an Alzheimer’s-induced stupor, had “decided” to blow the joint, then woe be unto you. I can remember more than one frantic “search and rescue” mission mounted on the grounds of the nursing home that eventually spilled into the surrounding streets of Rocky Mount.

I quickly learned that if you wanted a break from the get ‘em up, clean ‘em, feed ‘em, change ‘em grind, that you could drive the van and take patients to their doctor appointments, many of them all the way in Roanoke. With many of the doctors running behind schedule, it was easy to blow a whole day that way if you played your cards right. I can remember sitting there in the waiting rooms, reading magazines and thinking that I was glad that I wasn’t up to my elbows in, well, you know, like I usually was. Needless to say, I volunteered to drive the van with great frequency.

I also learned some very important lessons on those trips. One day, I had just finished loading Mrs. M into the van after her ophthalmology appointment. I started up the van and headed up a pretty steep hill when I heard a little squeal. I looked into the rear view mirror and saw Mrs. M, her eyes as wide as saucers, starting to roll toward the back of the van. For an instant, I had a vision of one of those Barbara Streisand farce movies with Mrs. M rolling backwards through the streets of Roanoke, barely missing cars, pedestrians and workers carrying large, plate glass windows, with me in hot pursuit.

Although I had forgotten to lock down the wheels on her wheelchair, fortunately I had remembered to close the back door well enough. To this day, although the floor to my office is perfectly level, I always reach down and lock the wheels on a patient’s wheelchair when I do an exam. There are some lessons learned that stick with you for a lifetime.

I discovered anew in those two summers how cruelly ironic life can be, how you can come into this world, helpless and fragile, and after a few decades of competence and self-sufficiency, how you can go out the same way you came in. It was humbling, backbreaking work that often left me mentally and physically drained at the end of the day.

But it was good for me. I learned that, like Professor Pausch says, no job was beneath me. It may me realize that all my pat answers fell way short of explaining life’s conundrums. It made me more patient and empathetic. It made me realize that I too would probably someday break down, grasping for whatever shred of dignity I could salvage, hoping that there would be a kind person nearby to help break my fall. That’s not something that 19-year-olds typically spend much time thinking about, but they probably should–at least a little.

And it was there at the nursing home that I learned to speak fluent Geezer. I joke about this, that someday I’m going to be on an Airplane (just like the movie) and the flight attendant will be having a difficult time understanding the octogenarian in Row 10 Seat C and she’s going to get on the intercom and ask, “Does anyone here speak Geezer?”

I’ll raise my hand confidently, just like Barbara Billingsley, and declare, “Excuse me, but I speak Geezer.”

When you speak Geezer, you speak slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly and in a low to midrange tone which is the frequency that the elderly hear best. You keep things as simple as possible as you attempt to explain complicated conditions to them. Mostly, they want to know, “Am I going blind?” or “Am I going to die?”

You listen at least as much, and usually more, as you talk. Although they may not remember your name from the beginning of the encounter when you first introduced yourself, they will remember wonderful stories from the distant past, many of them chock full of pearls of wisdom, and sometimes if time permits, I like to just sit and let them talk away.

But I think the most important thing about speaking Geezer is being able to offer up words of hope. No matter how bad the eye condition is or how fast the tumor is growing, I search hard and always try to find something good to say, some word of encouragement that will make them smile and reflect and find something in their situation that is going well and for which they can be thankful. That’s not always easy, but the effort often pays off if you try hard enough.

Many times, even something as basic as an eye exam takes on a confessional tone toward the end of one’s life. I often times feel like a priest rather than an optometrist. Many are like that man in Saving Private Ryan, asking the Large Questions such as “Was I a good man?” or “Did I make a difference?”

Do you realize the effect that all of this has had on me? How can I prance around pretending like I have all the answers, that right religious doctrine or correct politics is the end-all, be-all, when I have cleaned up human excrement and sat at the feet of such humble and wise counsel all these years?

And now, I’m much closer to “Geezer-hood” than I was at the age of 19, and as I look up and see my waning years picking up a good head of steam and starting to hurtle like a runaway wheelchair toward my plate glass window of a life, a question gnaws at my mind:

When they arrive, will anyone be able to speak Geezer to me?

It’s been well documented that there is a growing sense of entitlement among young people today. I have certainly seen that in my classrooms.

Graduating seniors have this notion that they should be hired because of their creative brilliance. Too many are unhappy with the idea of starting at the bottom.

My advice has always been: “You ought to be thrilled you got a job in the mailroom. And when you get there, here’s what you do: Be really great at sorting mail.”

No one wants to hear someone say: “I’m not good at sorting mail because this job is beneath me.” No job should be beneath us. And if you can’t (or won’t) sort mail, where is the proof that you can do anything?

–Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture

This particular Pauschism is dedicated to Number One Son and all his college friends who have returned home and started their summer jobs.

Come to think of it, maybe I’ll do a series next week on the various “scut work” jobs that I had during my school years and what I learned from them.

Yeah, maybe I’ll do just that. Have a great weekend everyone.

My friend Scott was all over this early on, but he’s considerably more culture and music-savvy than I am. I can be hip too, but usually it’s 6-12 months later than everyone else. Just call me “post-hip.”

But you can take my word for it, the movie Once is everything the critics say it is: mesmerizing, enthralling, ethereal, transcendent, and all the other fancy, multisyllabic adjectives that have been used in the hundreds of reviews that have been written. It is a tour de force of powerful storytelling employing a minimalist approach: a shoe-string budget, hand-held cameras and a simple narrative arc told in a naturalistic manner and setting (the streets of Dublin, Ireland). But, ironically, it’s the thread-bare simplicity that lends the project such profound authenticity.

And the music: Oh my! With the soulful, Irish vocalist Glen Hansard on guitar and the charming Czech Marketa Irglova singing and playing piano, it’s a soundtrack that you will want immediately and which will worm its way into your brain for days. Good luck try to get “Falling Slowly” out of your head (not that you’d want to).

I noticed something else too. Once reminded me of Juno in that it gives some meat and heft to what is all-too-often a thin skeleton of a phrase: “Family values.”

Both movies depict characters facing temptations and tough, less-than-ideal circumstances who ultimately work their way through gritty times and “do the right thing.” All that comes in the midst of a small scattering of profanity and f-bombs (the opening scene is a little unnerving in that regard). But by today’s standards, I thought the raw language in Once was relatively mild (perhaps it should have garnered a PG-13 rather than an R-rating) and worth enduring to experience such deep and meaningful narrative and music.

Hansard and Irglova won an Academy Award for Best Original Song this year and are now touring the country on their “Swell Season Tour.” And yes, they’re coming to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on September 24th and we’ve got tickets (happy birthday, Eyegal)! For you locals, they’ll also be at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee on June 13th.

As you can probably tell, I’m smitten with this movie and its music. For me, “once” is not enough–I need more.

I’ve been examining patients 20 years now, and I’ve been able to gauge America’s growing trend toward obesity by how difficult it is to fit my patients into a slit lamp.

A slit lamp is the microscope that sits on a swinging table that I use to examine the front of a patient’s eyes. Back in the late 80s when I was starting out, I hardly ever recall having difficulty getting a patient into one of those. But over the years, the increasing girth of the average American belly often has a patient forcing themselves against the table and gasping for air as I try to do an exam.

I’ve altered my technique a bit to compensate and often have the patient scoot up on the edge of the chair and lean forward so that gravity takes over and the tumor, er, I mean stomach, drops toward the floor out of the way.

And it’s not just your stereotypical Southern fried chicken-eating, Budweiser-guzzling guy either. Most of my women patients are overweight too, and with the larger bellies come larger breasts which make for some awkward moments when it comes time to use the slit lamp. Normally, I try to size up the situation, so to speak, before I start and make the adjustments so as to avoid needless embarrassment. Some patients notice what I’m doing and figure out why and are obviously red-faced, others just laugh it off.

As it turns out, slit lamps aren’t the only pieces of equipment which are begging to be biggie-sized. The retired ragin’ Reverend and now undertaker Greg (aka, “Stoogelover”) visited Disneyland recently and noticed (with no small amount of rejoicing) that the ride “It’s a Small World” was closed for repair.

He overheard a worker tell someone the reason: The boats were “dragging bottom” because the average American bottom is so much bigger than it was in the 1960s when the ride was built.

Folks, if that worker is correct, then that’s sad (or maybe “saggy?”). We have no business pointing our fingers at anyone over food shortages when “average” Americans seem to think that they absolutely can’t get by on less than 3,770 calories a day.

“It’s a Small World?” Not anymore.

Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby once said, “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

And here’s the rest.

I’m going to go ahead and lower expectations for my community column which will appear in this Sunday’s Huntsville Times. I know that many will be expecting a Mother’s Day Special, but it ain’t happening. Sorry.

Here’s the truth: When I was coming up with a topic for this month, I completely forgot that my column would appear on Mother’s Day. In fact, I didn’t realize it was this Sunday until, oh, about 3 days ago (and my deadline was a week ago Thursday).

If you’re looking for an ode to get you in the mood for honoring your favorite mama, then you’re barking up the wrong tree, my precious coon dogs. I suggest you check out Garrison Keillor instead. Someday, when I grow up, I want to write like that man.

So what did I write about? I’ll give you a hint:

And they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.

If you remember where that line came from, then you’ll be one step closer to figuring it out.

Boom-de-yada, baby. And have a great weekend.

Earnest is better than hip.

I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.

Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface.

“Hip” people love parodies. But there’s no such thing as a timeless parody, is there? I have more respect for the earnest guy who does something that can last for generations, and that hip people feel the need to parody.

–Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture

What would you do if your doctor told you that you only had a few months to live?

I heard that question posed to an audience recently, and the questioner went ahead and answered it for everyone present: “Well, I’m sure that we would all spend the remaining time telling everyone about Jesus and how much he has done for us.”

The question was a good one. The answer? Well, it seemed a little odd and incongruent to me at the time. I recognized it as “Church of Christese,” code for “get out and door knock or go on a mission trip.” Maybe that’s not what he meant, but since the question and answer were left hanging with little clarification and practically no meat to the bones, that was the impression that was left with me.

It was as if a “proper” preordained answer had been shoehorned to fit into the sacred space reserved for very private reflections on a matter of utmost, even ultimate, importance. In fact, knowing how staged and managed everything is these days, I think the shoehorn analogy works quite well.

Our friend Barbara died recently of a brain tumor. She had been battling bravely for two years, and in keeping with the openness and sharing that characterized her charismatic Christian faith, there was not a single health care provider or fellow patient who had not had Barbara grab them by the lapels at some point during that journey and have her ask pleadingly, “Is there anything that I can pray for in your life?”

And she stayed that way all the way to the end. But when she was told in mid-March that all options were exhausted, that the tumors were growing uncontrollably and that this time she really, really did only have a few weeks left, you know what she did?

She gathered up her family from far and wide and they all went to Disneyworld.

An image of Barbara in her Mickey Mouse ears popped into my mind when the speaker asked that question, and I thought: I would do what Barbara did. Or maybe Rome and Florence (never been to either but want to go badly) with a side trip to Lausanne, Switzerland to meet Brady and his family.

Or maybe I would do a spin off of Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” and try to come up with a “Last Blog.” Randy is the Carnegie Mellon professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer, and I had heard about his lecture last fall but had never listened to it until I was browsing in Barnes and Noble recently and happened upon his recently released book.

I sat down in one those comfortable chairs with a cup of coffee (half high test, half decaff–it was afternoon after all), and started reading some excerpts. It seemed to me that Randy was probably a Christian (he is) but didn’t spend a lot of time using “Jesus-speak” to describe his experiences. In his own words, this is what he was trying to do:

I was raised by parents who believed that faith was something very personal. I didn’t discuss my specific religion in my lecture because I wanted to talk about universal principles that apply to all faiths–to share things I had learned through my relationships with people.

The result is a lecture and book that are infused with love and wisdom and give sound, practical advice on how to live a full life, chasing and fulfilling your dreams and loving the people you encounter. It’s more about creating a “little heaven on earth” now than it is about “saving souls” for some distant and ethereal heaven down the road.

I can feel my life changing for the better as I have come to know Randy this week. His book and lecture are focusing my eyes in a way that no overtly “Christian” book, sermon or church service have in a long, long time.

I think sometimes we feel pressure to say the all the right things at the appropriate times when our hearts may be telling us something entirely different. Randy’s work these past few months is evidence of a heart touched by God, and the result is a both a reliable guide to living life now, and when our time is up, laying it down with grace, humor and class.

It may very well be that the best way to live a life of faith is not to spend as much time yapping in a language and dialect that many will not understand, but instead to live well-grounded and lovingly–speaking a more universal tongue–and letting those around us draw their own conclusions.

Actions really do speak louder than words.

While the main attractions on the Huntsville Pilgrimage Association Home Tour this past Saturday were the collection of historical houses and the beautiful Episcopal church downtown (be sure to click on “Home Tour”), there were some other interesting sights as well:

Bill Gnade, are you responsible for this?

Well, you know what they say: It all begins in New Hampshire.