ODD THING, THIS "BUCKET LIST"

Yikes!  Oct 26 my last post? Odd. This one of the three I participate in is my favorite.  Few visit; sorta private.  This would leave you to believe I'm delinquent or dead.  Not yet; "dead" that is.  Guilty on "delinquent."  May I explain?

Been caught up in my passion...legacy building.  It's my swan song, my "finishing well" focus.  It's living with the grandwonderkind, daughter and soninlaw for weeks at a time and writing; living it and writing it.  Writing these days is compressed stuff.  Blogging on http://www.gendads.com/ and http://www.legacydad.com/ and doing queries to editors of major mags in vairous readership cultures. (Harder than writing the actual article). The book, Generational Fathering, not so much.  Soon will pour four isolated days each week. I hope. We'll see.  You can watch the progress on http://www.generationalfatheirng.com/

THREE GENERATIONS OF COWPOKES

This brings up the "bucket list". Yes, I'm still working on the five-year statistical framework of my fourth stage prostate cancer. If it were you, would it be a good thing? It is for me. Forces focus and value to each minute, each activity. Multiplied by 365, that just ain't that many days. Does 1852 sound like a lot. It didn't yesterday. Today it's 1851. "Yikes!" again. Which is why I go to my bucket list. Revision 6 or 8 or something. But, I do like this one I shared in a blog comment.

Before I share may list, let me share this. My son's life was transformed JIT by reading "Sacred Romance" by Curtis and Eldredge. He died six months later of cancer. He both announced and demonstrated the "romance" notion. Chapters 11 and 12 are a gateway to "getting it," to understanding what the journey is all about. "Coming Home" is a clue. Life of my 75 (or so) years is preparation for the rest, the un-countable years into eons into eternity. I'm ready. Soooo, dear friend, my "Five Year Window" frames my look out on to the Coming Home scene with Jesus and the Heavenly Hosts smiling and singing, probably dancing, too.

Well here 'tis:
A REAL Bucket List...as in "kicking the bucket." A narrowed and definitive window to Walk With God, love my wife more and better, family and friends, too. Rest of the bucket list gets less important, less urgent. Funny how the urgent "geterdone...NOW!" list is so much shorter. Yes, The Book(and speaking on Generational Fathering.com), and the Elk hunting trip as a passage rite for the oldest two grandsons, finishing the personal testimony tract--AND using it. Rest of the list is in 8 point type. Long term legacy stuff tops that list. Like maybe a trip to India with four grandkids so they know the world is bigger and poorer than they thought. A visit to the Cameron Clan homeland in south-central Scotland. Short term semi-legacy stuff like, magazine articles and blogs galore, return to Alaska with whole family( and revisit a Ketchikan high-lead logging site of my youth) and take the family by train to Denali, one sky dive (not toooo short a legacy, I hope), my Wheaton College 50-year class reunion, maybe one more beach honeymoon with my still-beautiful, still-alluring and fun bride. That's a pretty full five years. Bonus time will be spent hardening the foundation of our grandchildren's future as lighthouses for the dark generations of the future, maybe pitching in with daughter and son-in-law's dream ranch for intensive full-family therapy.

WHEN THE ONCOLOGIST CALLS AND THE LORD SAYS, "Son, ..."

Think back on it, even just a little.  Do you realized how many times from our youth onward we who know we belong to God's family through our spiritual rebirth talk about "the end"?  My most recent "end times" phrase has come allive...so to speak.  I pray the author of the ditty they call an epitaph on my tombstone will include it.  Yes, it comes from deep within my personal and spiritual DNA; "Finish well."  "Wait!...Hey, what do you mean, 'FINISH'" ?!!

 

What if, suddenly, there is a number attached? Like a date, like so many years?  Like 5x365=1826..."more or less," so to speak?  It's the material of novels, drama, and comedies. Here's how USA Today put it: "Death bites. But dying while healthy, rich and free enough to drink life to the last drop is getting great press, thanks to 'Bucket List'".  The comedy about living to the fullest before you "kick the bucket" is three years old and still people are circulating things like, "100 Things To Do Before You Die".  It's great sport.  Unless there's a time frame.   

At lunch after our oncology consult, Carolyn and I drew up a bucket list, and
Read more »

SPOSE THEY'LL FIND HIM...THE "BAD GUY"?

Dunno.  Prolly not.  Finding the "Bad Guy," I mean.  Caps indicate proper (or, in this case, "improper") noun, a name.  The Devil? No, 'he" is really an "it". 

Confused?  So's everyone, even the Urologist and Oncologist.  They don't say "confused" because they are paid a lot--A LOT!!--to know stuff but not tell stuff.  But their eyebrows lift in response to "Where's it going?"   "How far along?"  "How long?"

The "bad guy" ain't there.  In the world of blaming Bush and almost anyone/anything else, I suppose we could pin this one on God.  Yea, the Sovereign One, Creator of Heaven and Earth.  Jesus, we are assured, is the creative agent AND the "Sustainer" of earth.  And health.  Let's blame them.  I do. 

After all, it is a mean, onery, vengeful Judge who carries out the punishment for sin just like He said He would. Blame Him, not Adam who stood by passively as the Snake cajoled his wife.  He watched her succumb and didn't even lift the Garden hoe to the Snake's head.

OK, enuf bloggish sermon.  I do blame God for the extraordinary life that has no explanation but Grace.  It's been a long one, in and out of more danger than a Tuesday evening of TV.  Seventy years worth and, they tell me, probably ten years or more to go.  At least I know what my schedule is. Sorta. 

So, other than Adam (and Obama is just as related to him as Bush), ain't no one to blame.  You take the Whole Story to account and recognize every day we have is a gift from the Source.  

Romans put it this way in 5:17(Message)  If death got the upper hand through one man's wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?

Have you visited the book site recently.  I just did.  I LOVE it.  (Which is why this is a break in my headlong effort to meet a book proposal deadline).  http://www.generationalfathering.com/  Subscribe, why don't you?