29. Need another Horse for the Race.

Oh gosh, where do I start on this chapter? Another generalisation, Americans are usually very reluctant to speak about politics. But this was election time and many many people were free and open to discuss Cain verses Obama. What a blessing and an eye opener it was to be here during this season.

In my experience, with some exceptions, it really is true that the south is Republican and the north is Democrat. One of the rather confused exceptions in the north is the Church. I would think that most of the Church in the north is Republican, but there is a very strong and healthy Democratic wing. I think that most of them are hiding. Why? Well as a friend said to me, “When I say that I am a Democrat, then my Christianity is doubted. As if I cannot love God and be a Democrat”.

As I see it, and as I understand a lot of American Christians also see it, the American electoral system is fundamentally flawed. America desperately needs another horse in the race. I mean as a Christian, I could not vote for either the Republican or the Democratic parties. I just couldn’t do it. I could not vote for the Republican stance on healthcare, its treatment of the poor, its love of the death penalty, let alone the Bush administration’s violations of human rights in its international prisons. But on the other hand, I would have a very hard time voting for the Democratic stances on the legalisation of prostitution and its liberal stances on genetically modified food and clone cell research. Then we start on the whole breakdown of the family, gay marriages and gay couples and single people adopting kids. These issues and many more from the right and the left are at the spearhead of Christian politics. These are things that we are often scared to talk about. Wouldn’t it be nice if even one party was allowed to come forth and collectively talk about these things? America needs, at least, a centrist party. But the problem is there would be no point in voting for them. Because of America’s electoral system, a centrist party could never gain any power.

Many other countries in the world have a ‘mixed member proportional representation’ system, or simply MMP. At a national level, rather than being a ‘first past the post’ system, the larger left and right parties, depending on how many votes they accrued, are usually forced to form a coalition with smaller parties. Not only does this stop the larger parties from becoming democratically-elected dictators but it also gives a lot of power to minority parties. It means that if you are so inclined, then it is worth voting for the Green party, Christian Democrats, Legalisation of Marijuana party, Gay Marriage party or whoever else takes your fancy. These smaller parties actually get some power and can either make changes and/or prevent the far right and left from getting polarised.

Polarisation in politics is very dangerous and very much seemed to be where America was at when we visited.

The smear campaign seemed to be part of your average street Democrat’s arsenal. Democrats often just looked at the Bush administration and laughed at it, as if it was just some long bad joke. Though unlike most Republicans, Democrats were willing to talk policy, with healthcare being near the top of the list. Though Hilary often got a hard time in Democrat circles, many Democrats didn’t care which one of them came to power, they just wanted the Republican reign to end.

And as for the Republican camp, either they could not speak policy or were not willing to. Most of their conversations were focused on…. and non-Americans I kid you not, I was totally gob-smacked the first time I heard it… many of the Republicans we met were focused on Obama being a terrorist and a Muslim. My friends are intelligent, I just cannot understand how some of them could think this way. Of course they could be right, I mean Obama could have somehow evaded all of the security checks that he must have gone through during the early days of his political career and presidential campaign. Not to mention the hordes of Republicans who are probably still looking for chinks in his armour. We could discover that the next terrorist attack on American soil was orchestrated by none other than its President, unlikely, but possible.

Then there is the Muslim thing. As I understand it, we vote for the person who is best qualified to lead our nation. We vote for the person who has the country’s best interests at heart. We don’t vote on grounds of religion, or do we? If a Muslim is the best person to run the country, then what is wrong with that? As a Christian I would much rather have a Muslim run my nation than an atheist or even than someone who doesn’t have a belief structure. Of course if a Christian was campaigning for a party that I was affiliated with, well then if her or his policy was sound, I would vote accordingly. But I wouldn’t blanketly just throw out a candidate based on religion, race or gender.

Anyhow this has been a horrible and boring chapter to write, I am looking forward to writing my way into O’Hare airport and discovering that the USA has voted in a new President. Not a black one, not a white, but a multi-racial and multi-cultural one.

Next week read about Betsie and the worlds most expensive goat track

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta!

28. The Chapter where I Lose my Friends.

Well first I want to talk about race. Not a Lance Armstrong race, but race. I still have fond memories of my first few minutes ever spent in the USA. Some fourteen or so years back, I flew into a beautiful San Francisco sunrise. I was so excited, I was travelling with an empty wallet and a youthful lust for adventure. Everything was new and exciting, I was even fascinated by the toilets that were full to the brim with water. Well actually at first I just thought that they were broken, I couldn’t comprehend at that stage that people would actually willingly waste so much water. America has changed, I did not encounter one sailable toilet this visit. Anyhow back to the airport and race. It was on a moving walkway in San Francisco airport where at the ripe old age of twenty six, I spotted my first ever black man. I was fascinated, I had never ever seen chocolate-coloured skin before. I rushed up to him on the walkway and stood there all of a few centimetres behind him and just peered at the back of his neck. I still remember clearly that his skin was different shades of chocolate. It did not look real to me, I fought the temptation to lick my thumb and see if I could smudge off the blackness. It was a weird, freaky and exciting experience. Unfortunately I was unable to overcome my natural shyness and actually talk to the person.

The point is, I had no idea that all these years later I would not have had the chance to actually talk to a black American peer. I did meet two black Americans in the Philippines, one was some kind of weird Muslim-witch-gun-smuggler guy and the other was a healthcare professional and a friend of a friend.

Fair enough, my American friends are mostly middle-class and are mostly either conservative evangelicals or teetering on the liberal end of the evangelical class. So naturally enough these people’s churches and their friends were mostly white. But the fact that I have yet to speak to a black American peer, shocks me. And what about the Hispanic population? There are almost as many Hispanics in America as there are white people, why did I not meet any of these people?

We did meet one person of colour. We went to this kind of cool party, but it was one of those parties where everyone knew everyone and no one needed to meet Sharon and I or this Japanese dude and his girlfriend. But when there are four Nigels(94) in a room, then a party can be a party. We sat down with this Japanese dude and his girl friend for ages, in fact to pass the time or maybe to create boredom we explained to them the rules of cricket. This party conversation was one of two encounters I had with a coloured person during this American visit. The second person I encountered was at a Sunday morning church service. This inner-city church probably had about twenty to twenty five percent of its congregation coloured. It was beautiful to see and I was excited of the possibility of hopefully getting to speak to a coloured person. I simply wanted to find out what kind of people they were. After church a group of about six of them stood in the foyer drinking coffee. I am shy and not naturally good at meeting new people. So I stood just on the outside of their circle hoping that one of them might actually bring me into their conversation. It seemed that in the foyer black people were speaking to black people and white people were speaking to white people. I watched these black people, they didn’t really act a lot different, I mean their hand gestures were stereotypically more exaggerated than many of us whities. But they looked normal, I hung off this group for about five minutes, couldn’t pluck up the courage to just bounce on into their conversation and after a while just gave up. But one of their kids was on all fours on the floor playing with a toy red fire engine, so I got down on the floor and played with him for a wee bit. This kid was the second coloured person with whom I interacted.

But that was my peer to peer encounters, all of them. However, really I did meet lots of Hispanic and black people, oh yeah these people groups were everywhere. That is everywhere in the service industry, serving us whities. Like airport check-in staff, gas station staff, rental car staff, department store staff. However, well-to-do stores had white people serving in them and cafes almost entirely had white people serving and drinking in them. I was totally shocked that multi-cultural America was a land of ghettoised social classes that a shy person like me did not have a chance of breaking through during a four week visit.

I once listened to a conversation between a male Russian and an American college student. One was advocating socialism and the other was advocating democracy. What an eye-opener into both cultures it was. The American dude seemed to be pushing strongly two lies. The first was that in American democracy, the person with the most votes wins. Not true, look at Bush verses Gore in 2000. Don’t worry about that, the other lie that this young white American lad was pushing forward was that the USA was the oldest democracy in the world.  This is total trash and for goodness sake I hope this ignorant lad did not learn this in the school system. If universal suffrage is the hallmark of democracy then the USA did not become a democracy until 1965 when the black people were permitted by the whites to vote. With this in mind, then I can somewhat understand the existing economic racism in America. I am not saying that this is an intentional racism, but I am saying that holding an underclass of people hostage to the freedom of political power until 1965 is a wound that will take many more decades to heal and balance out. And to me that explains, fire-truck kid exempt, why one hundred percent of the black people that I encountered were serving me. I felt like a slave master, which clearly in American society is another healing but open wound. Why are we oppressors so stinking slow to become aware of, repent of and to attempt to rectify the injustices that we for so many years took advantage of? And of course in our segregated classest societies we mostly, but not necessarily totally, still unintentionally benefit from the wounds of racism that we created. We are still happily and firmly entrenched at the top echelons of society’s ladder.

Sure Obama is now the president, but one black man at the top does not come anywhere close to balancing out the millions of black people at the bottom of the ladder.

I can understand the Hispanic immigrant populations taking time to crawl their way up the ladder, that’s cool. But still, as I understand it there are quite different expectations on them in America’s school systems. Thus it appears that the playing field may not be level here either.

I just want to say that, like seemingly all of Britain’s colonies and attempted colonies, America never was white and any chance of making it a prominently European cast off culture were given away with the arrival of the first slave ship. So how about we reach out a little more and start trying to understand our African American and Hispanic American brothers and sisters? And for goodness sake let’s get that notion un-wedged from deep down inside out hearts that somehow we are slightly superior to people of other races. And maybe we are slightly superior, but that is not because of the colour of our skin or of the ethnicity of our forefathers, it is because many of us and our European forefathers are guilty of being the conquerors, colonialists and oppressors. What is slightly superior anyhow? All of our blood runs red, if our kin has been held down by ourselves or our forefathers, let’s lend a hand from our hearts and fight for emotional, economic and political equality.

And then there are the American Indians. As we say in Lithuanian ‘Aš nieko nesuprantu’. Or I very much so do not understand. But I will talk about them in context later.

Please forgive me if I have offended your nationhood. I am just an opinionated Kiwi who was blessed enough to be a visitor of your wonderful land and to meet many of your wonderful people. What would I know after a four week visit? I can tell you a not-so-secret-secret and that is, that most of our nations which were settled by the British have the same struggles.

For next issue, don’t miss my horrible chapter about a race that needs another horse..

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta!

[singlepic id=349 w=320 h=240 float=none]

Just thought just in case anybody was interested that I would endeavour to explain my process of writing.

I guess the first thing to remember is that I never meant to write this story. It is all done by memory and lacks attention to any detail that is worthwhile. This is intentional and what I like the most about my writing.

My favourite place to write is in cafes. There I can think, the hub and the bub of people talking, cups clanging and of course the cappuccino machine foaming, seems to just kick me into action. Usually I manage to sit on the one coffee for a few hours and write hard. Though in cafes I do miss google and dictionary.com. The luxury of cafe writing is something that is usually reserved for holidays. It is during my holidays where I manage to get ahead of my blog. Usually the latest chapter posted at out for lunch was written a minimum of three weeks earlier.

I have a day job, unpaid but a day job. out for lunch and late for supper are my hobbies and are designed not to conflict with the other six days of the week. I write like clock-work on Monday mornings between breakfast and the gym or between 10am and 12noon.

Naturally enough I start with making the coffee. Coffee is important to my writing, it is my comfort drink and no doubt the caffeine helps as well. Next it is time to wake up the computer and release the jazz from its file. Jazz because it is groovy without words. I cannot think words and listen to words at the same time. Oscar Peterson is by far my favourite artist. Then I open the file that is marked by a tree and titled ‘Ziploc’, followed by opening out for lunch, google and my dictionaries. Next I amble into the kitchen and gather my coffee. My favourite coffee is a fare trade organic Caffe L’affare. But anything fair trade and organic works well for me. Next I log into facebook and often tweeter and let the world know what I am drinking, to whom I am listening and that I am writing the Ziploc Bag.

Now I am ready to start the process. The first thing I do is go over the corrections from the last chapter whcih Sharon checked. I am dyslexic and the frustrating side of that gift is the many spelling and grammar mistakes that I make. Then I read through all of the previous unchecked unpublished chapters. This makes Sharon’s job easier and also helps me get into the zone. Once all this is done, I write.

Writing for me is like surfing. I just float out there on the waters of my imagination continuously scanning my peripherals waiting for the wave that is going to carry me in. So what this means is that I just start writing the story, knowing that sooner or later I will get excited about something in the story. I always like to write about the other side of the coin, so often when I am writing I start gazing at the art on my desk and turning over the coins of simple subjects; when I find an interesting one, the creative juices start flowing and all of a sudden I am on the wave enjoying the journey. Next thing I know the two hours are up and it is time to push the save button. I do use my photographs and our old journey itinerary to help my memory, but when I get in the zone things are surprisingly clear.

The last thing I do in the morning is print any chapters that I have checked and give them to Sharon to check during the week. Then I am off to the gym.

After the gym, after lunch and after an episode of ‘Star Trek’ I return the Ziploc Bag. It is time to put it on the blog. With practice this has become a relatively simple affair. I add the ‘read about blah blah next week blurb, put my Paypal donation button on and then post it. After it is posted and checked on-line, I add the link to the chapter on the Ziploc Bag page and the blog sidebar.  And then finally when America comes on-line I facebook and tweet that the chapter is posted. And that is how it is written.

It is my dream and hope to put it in book form and sell it. The book will have a few extras that will not be available on-line. This is my bait to lure you into a sale. Among other things I plan on adding an extensive and funny glossary of ‘Kel slang’.

Any money donated or earned through out for lunch and late for supper to date goes straight back into my art. I am also very keen to invest into other artists who believe their artistic abilities are a gift from God and who exercise a kingdom approach to their art. If this is you and you are trying to find your artistic feet, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you so much to all of you who have been reading, I do enjoy your comments on facebook and at out for lunch, please keep them coming. And thanks to all of those who indirectly help make both out for lunch and late for supper possible.

And that is me for this wee boring blurb, hope it was helpful.

Cheers Kel

The art on my desk is a Lithuanian calendar that lacks February and November.
A Tomas Seckus painting of a child.
And a Brian Nisbett photo of a Scottish loch on a trademark overcast day.

Thank you so much to those of you who provided this. I am very much so looking forward to my cafe writing week in September. I will keep you informed of the adventure. Cheers Kel

Hey next month I will be needing to write in cafes. Please help make this possible by adding to my coffee fuel fund. Previously I have written in the Hotel Pagegiai cafe, Pagegiai, Lithuania and in the Katiyas Tejai Tirgotava, Sigulda, Latvia. These were both very good experiences, cafes are definitely my favorite place to write. So please help be get ahead and keep America the Land of the Ziploc bag weekly.

Thank Guys.

Cheers Kel

27. A Dire Warning for all Readers.

I know that thus far, you, the tortured readers, have got used to my chronological, royal Oxford English, overly intellectual, terribly factual and frustratingly unopinionated style of writing. I am intrigued that as I have blogged these past twenty six chapters, you have found it necessary to leave comments, and to facebook me your opinions. This has been much appreciated, but for the next chapter we just need to take a break from the status quo, to sit back, grab a wee cup of strong coffee and get uptight.

For indeed in the next chapter I am going to talk about stuff, stuff in the purest sense of the word. Stuff that either passed in front of my eyes or through my ears during our North American shenanigans. Chronology is out the door, in chapter 28, I will be pop-corning stuff and events. I will be monologing from Redding to Madison, Star to La Crescent, all in the one overly simple sentence. Things are going to get a little out of hand and way out of order, but rest assured it will just be for one or two chapters.

The reason for this is that I do not want to reveal the political and social views of my friends. I mean I did not plan on writing this story, how would you feel if your mate(93) visited you for a few gruelling days and then blogged your conversations to the known universe? So far my friends have been very grace-giving and amused if not bemused. But if I was suddenly to say that my New York friends thought that Sarah Palin was an alien spy, sent to earth to study Russia from her front room, to read all of the un-named local Alaskan newspapers and to infiltrate the American hockey Mom fraternity, well then they would have good reason to be either proud or justifiably peeved at me. Especially because many of the people I visited during this trip are well known by my facebooking, tweeting and blog-reading buddies.  So in an effort to put some ice on a possibly heated conversation, the subjects of politics, race and possibly a few other things that could flash through that wee mind of mine will be confined to a couple of pan-American chapters.

So are we settled on that? Good I hope so, if not well then perhaps you should stop reading and pick up the story again as we drive into Canada. But for now, please put your seat belts on and suck down that coffee.

If you are game enough, come back next week to read about sailable toilets and American democracy from 1965.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta!

What, how and why?

‘Twas 2008 when God blessed us with a trip to the USA, euphemistically known as America. What is that about, ‘one nation under God’ claiming the name of a whole continent as its very own? I learnt on this trip that America was  full of anomalies. Well actually I think I learnt that during my early addiction to ‘The Dukes of Hazard’. For sorry Lithuanian-based-Kiwis like myself, America is one big cultural hazard.

Don’t get me wrong, I survived it, loved it and ate too much. But as the fat faded from my belly, the juxtapositions trampolining in my brain just would not rest and I mean would not rest. I was tormented with such questions as ‘why is the mid-west neither in the middle nor the west?’ The great American phenomenon of therapy was needed. Hence the ‘Ziploc Bag’, my self-medication, came into creation.

I did not mean to write about my trip. I just woke up one morning and thought, enough is enough and ever since I have been trying to write it out of my head.

This is still a work in progress. Chapters are being edited, a glossary and other add-ons are yet to be written. But please feel free to read.

Chapter 01. Leaving

Chapter 02. Chicago

Chapter o3. Southwest Airlines

Chapter o4. California and the rental car

Chapter 05. Just Two Stops

Chapter 06. Redding

Chapter 07. The Healing Service

Chapter 08. The Sunday Services

Chapter 09. Farewell Redding and California.

Chapter 10. Idaho

Chapter 11. Steam boat

Chapter 12. Grandmother ship

Chapter 13. Not Williamson’s Orchard

Chapter 14. Is it heaven or is it Texas?

Chapter 15. Where did that year go?

Chapter 16. Puss-Filled Pimple

Chapter 17. Fredricksberg

Chapter 18. The Cafe that I forgot the name of

Chapter 19. Pumpkin Head

Chapter 19a. A hiccup on the road. Help needed!!!

Chapter 20. Hallelujah

Chapter 21. A Truly Sacred Institution

Chaprer 22. My Weird Friend

Chapter 23. Giving Thanks and Taking Thanks

Chapter 24. The Church bit

Chapter 25. A Most Ridiculous Command.

Chapter 25a. coffee fuel

Chapter 26. Good bye and fare ye well Texas

Did you enjoy it? Please leave comments on my blog and let me know. Also though the price to produce the ‘Ziploc Bag’ is minimal, please feel free to donate towards its production. Its production is costing me money and I am un-waged.

Once again please feel free to

towards its production.

Watch this space for more.

Cheers

Kel

26. Good bye and fare ye well Texas

Well, leaving Texas was a simple and sad affair. First we Honda’d to the outside of town to visit the evil-empire of Wal-Mart. I like supporting the independents and the little fellas but from time to time I capitulate and visit the multi-nationals, thus helping the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. The real world is the River Walk, full of mystic and imagination, Wal-Mart on the other hand is the stuff of horror stories, full of voidness, nothingness and totally stripped of any resemblance of the celebration of humanity and our mono-theistic God. But unfortunately in order to find a soap bag I had to leave the celebration and sortie into the void.

However the void did throw up one little hellish surprise for me. I needed a wee soap bag size conditioner bottle. Gotta keep that goatee nice and soft. I figured I may as well buy a full one. Oh my goodness, how do you Americans do it? The celebrations of scent in this bottle of conditioner, conditioned me into an out-of-the-void, out-of-this-world-experience. Smearing that stuff under my nose took me to the celebration of South East Asia, coconut trees, romanticised humidity and boco salad(88). This stuff smelt so good that the temptation was for this man to miss his flight and spend the rest of his day in the pinnacle of the celebration, commonly known as the shower, conditioning his goatee. Oh yes, God really does penetrate hell.

Moving right along, I blessed China with the smallest possible portion of our wallets and returned home for my final dose of cold, yummy Texan bbq ribs and for our wiggly fare ye wells. Yes and yes, it was photo time. A tripod, two cameras, four adults, three kids and the hot Texas sun. The sun would not have been an issue if this dumb Kiwi had understood earlier that it is better to take such photos inside. My outside attempts had everyone squinting and screwing up their faces, looking about as attractive as blubbering Klingons. So on the advice of the Texans in the situation, we moved inside and clicked our way through a half dozen wiggly kiddied photos. Photos that are doomed or destined to spend the rest of their life either stuck in the vaults of a computer or chilling on the door of a Baltic fridge. Cool eh!

So as sad as it was, and all hugged up, we Honda’d south with a camera full of fresh memories. We were, or at least I was, many many bbq sauce pounds heavier as we entered San Anton airport. It was election day and not just any election day, but nonetheless the day that the first black person was to become the president of the world’s only superpower. Consequently and I don’t know why, but the airport that was a colourful mass of sweaty humanity only last week was now almost totally empty. It seemed that we were the only people flying into Chicago on election night.

Before we were even allowed to check in we were approached by a typically friendly and smiley  Hispanic American woman wearing the uniform of some kind of security person. She scanned our bags and made sure that our water bottles were empty. It was a little bit freaky, because really, practically no one was in the airport. A few check-in staff, a few police officers, a security person and the three of us. We said our good byes to our friend, thanked him for dropping us off, crossed through the security quadrant and set out to find check-in. From check-in the priority was to find a television, this was election night and very soon the results would start rolling in. I think most people in America realised deep in their hearts that McCain did not stand a chance. It was just a matter of seeing how much he would lose by and of course everyone was interested to see just how Obama would win. So we sat down and watched some of the exit polls, but we were mostly too early.

I actually had to go ask an attendant if they could turn up CNN for us so that we could listen. No sooner had they done this than did people start congregating around our tele. A slightly overweight man with a brief case and a hard hat sat down beside me. I lent over to him and asked him who he was voting for? His Houston accent replied ‘Obama’. Flabbergasted at meeting someone so far south of the Mason-Dixie line who actually was willing to mention Obama in a positive light, I asked him why? He went into a long speel about healthcare and taxes. I was fascinated and then asked a whole heap of questions to see if he was Christian or not. The answer was he seemed to be a Bible-belt casual believer, but perhaps not the classical evangelical definition of Christian.  We talked for a while and then we jumped in our numerical ordered Southwest queue, checked for final election results and jumped on the plane.

Our first stop naturally enough was Houston, and it was here where three quarters of the plane emptied out. There were perhaps about six of us left for the final election night leg into Chicago, Illinois. Our flight was delayed for quite some time. On the previous leg a whole bunch of Southwest employees had commuted home to Houston. Naturally enough they all had pretty much identical khaki uniforms and flight cases. It seemed that one of these employees had inadvertently taken one of our hostesses’ bags, things were quite tense for a while, the flight crew and all six or so passengers were worried that her bag had been stolen by a bad-egg passenger. It was a good time to glean more election results from the ground crew and an excellent chance for me to have a final bash at hassling the wonderful and fun Southwest cabin staff. This time I did a quick calculation on how many empty seats there were on the plane and suggested that the democrat hostess should give me the corresponding amount of bags of peanuts. The hostess’ face taut into a Southwest sly and cheeky smile, which meant that even on election night and one bag down, she was willing to step up to the crease and come in to bat(89). Barely decipherable from a now huge cheeky grin came the words ‘Sure, if you think you can eat’em all before you get off the plane, you can hav’em’. Oh she was whacking the ball over the boundary(90), but my goodness, the fat lady had not sung yet, I jumped into the grandstand, bounded up the stairs and caught that ball before it went out of the stadium. My reply was ‘Sure I will give that a go’. It probably meant that I would need to eat about a hundred bags of peanuts in the next few hours. But shoot what a great election night memory this was shaping up to be.

It was about at this time, when the missing cabin bag was found and we received our last election up-date, which incidentally was something like ‘It doesn’t seem that McCain has much of a chance, this is Obama’s night’. While we were taxiing down the runway, my cheeky hostess produced a huge bag of many packets of peanuts and said ‘You can eat’em now or take them home’. There was no need for another innings(91), Southwest and their excellent fun service had won our cricket test match(92). I gladly received the peanuts. We ate, farted and pooed peanuts from Ontario to Minnesota, they where God’s provision for snack food for the next two weeks of road trips. Thank you Southwest Airlines.

And with California, Idaho and Texas behind us, here ends the flying leg of our journey, but before we start the road trip leg, I want to talk politics and other stuff.

Texas is behind us now, but come back next week and hear about race in the USA.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

25. A Most Ridiculous Command.

Now, correct me if I am wrong. Rivers run, or rivers flow or maybe they meander. In the mountains of New Zealand, the rivers fair dinkum fly down the hill. That itself creates an interesting riverside picture, ‘Kids sit down or you will get your hair wet’. But in San Anton, Texas, just below street level the river actually gets up and walks. And that was the second thing on our schedule that afternoon, to go into town to see the river walk. But first we had an important visit to a couple of clothing stores.

Lithuanians have really long narrow feet. I wonder if they think my short stubby things are as weird as I think theirs are. Lithuanians are also mostly tall and thin. They make really good clothes, with  horrible colours. I have always said that Lithuanians dress to extremes, extremely stylish or extremely pathetic. Foreigners are instantly recognised here. Presumably when Lithuanians see us walking down the street they have a little cack(82) to themselves and comment on the short fat people with the boring comfortable clothes. What I am trying to say is that I just cannot buy clothes there. They either cramp physically or cramp my style. We had both been given quite a lot of money to spend on clothes, this was a huge blessing for us and this was our first chance to spend it.

Our friend stopped at two no-name shops before we finally stopped at Mecca. I cannot remember the name of this particular Mecca, they all blur together for me, perhaps it was something like ‘Bass Pro Shop’. I immediately had a problem upon entering the store. And I kid you not, right at the front door was a sign which read ‘Please check all firearms and bows at customer service prior to entering the store. Thank you’. I was flabbergasted, I was not expecting America’s gun-slinging capital to be so up front about such things. So being an honest person, I found customer service, whipped into the back of my trench coat and pulled out my long-bow. Then from my extended front right pocket, I pulled out my sawn off shotgun, from the other side I declared my Soviet souvenir Kalashnikov. Then there was my Glock 9mm and my machete from my right leg, not to mention my 357 Magnum strapped to my ankle. I had to have the magnum, just in case the rest failed. Yes I jest. We all know that this arsenal couldn’t all possibly fail outside of a movie. The only death that happened here was me killing myself laughing in disbelief over the sign. It would only be in my worst nightmares that I would own such a collection of destruction, but if I did, I would wear it all into this shop as often as I could, just for the fun of having to declare it. I wonder what they would say? ‘Do you have a seventh weapon to declare sir?’  Or ‘Sir may I suggest you check out our fly-fishing department’. Or how about ‘I see Sir that you clearly understand that at Bass Pro you get more bang for your buck’. Do you think they would manage to keep their service industry smiles? It doesn’t bear thinking about; the only dangerous weapons that I took into the store were my jandals and my kick-boxing wife.

Well the shop was yet another popsicle paradise for me. I needed a one-hundred thickness breathable fleece, a pair of trousers, didn’t need any pants and I also needed a soap bag(83). All of the soap bags that they had were mega expensive and large enough to make a good waterproof house to accommodate a small Philippino family. I mean how big can a tooth brush and razor be? I know Americans can be big people, but their teeth and facial hair I presume are all pretty close to the same size. Next I searched for trousers. World, this is one of the greatest things about America, its trousers are all labelled by waste size and leg length. What a clever stupid idea, do any other countries do it this way? I had no idea what size trousers I wore. The overly-smiley shop assistant clearly expected me to know and was rather bemused when upon requesting me to relinquish my size, I lifted up my shirt to show him my waist hiding under a Texan-rib-filled-pudgy belly. But clearly I was not the first idiot to intersect his gun totalling store. He took a quick painful glance at my barbecue sauce rolls of flab and stoically announced in a rather prophetic voice, ‘Ah you must be a thirty four’, and he was right. My thirty four was too long for this half-pint, so I grabbed a couple of different lengths and after five minutes in a changing room the size of a Lithuanian flat, I had a pair of trousers. As for the fleece, well here I stumped the bundle of smiles serving me. I asked him how I would know that this fleece is breathable? In my good ole Kiwi days, the words fleece and breathable were synonyms, but after two years in cheap Scotland I quickly learned that if fleece and cheap are synonyms, then fleece and breathable are not. I found a fleece that seemed perfect, could have been breathable, but was the wrong colour, it clashed with my hair. So in the interest and excitement of walking rivers, I decided to delay my fleece purchase until we were up north in the colder, wilder climates of Wisconsin. So kacking again at the firearms sign, I rushed out to the car, where both my friend and my favourite kick-boxer were waiting.

As far as cities go, San Anton is like the western suburbs of Sydney, flat, boring and with way too many cars. But here we were and ironically enough we Honda’d into the same multi-storied car-park that me, myself and my friends parked in some twelve years previously though this was where the similarities ended. Last time I was sitting on the back of a pick-up, cradling my cowboy hat whilst playing my harmonica. I can still remember that we were followed through the car-park by a bunch of gawking kids in a bright purple, mag and trim infested, irritatingly nauseating exhaust-piped Ford Escort. Yuck, a perfectly good Escort ruined by kids who couldn’t understand that if they saved the money they had spent on all the extras, they could have afforded a car they actually would have wanted.

So as you would expect, we exited the car, walked through a very South East Asian looking-shopping centre and out onto the river. Well actually we are not Christ figures, or at least not outside of Sundays. We walked out onto the River Walk. Now listen carefully because I am serious. Outside of Texas I am the only person who I have ever heard talk about the River Walk. The San Anton River Walk is, and you can quote me on this, the world’s best kept secret. It is simply the world’s coolest humid intersection of nature and city. I don’t know how to describe it to you, but I don’t mind O.D’ing(84) on coffee trying. The place reeks of atmosphere; the humidity, whiffs of food,  waves of music and lapping water created an ambiance so tangible that it is practically surfable. It is like they have picked the best of everything and slapped it into a micro-cosmos, the result is way cool and way other worldly.  I like this place and have never succeeded in spending too much time here.

It was November 3, but yet this micro-cosmos actually had a Christmas tree. I guess that they wanted us to have that happy merry feeling all year round. Of course it wasn’t just any tree, it was rather large, situated on an island that served as a roundabout for river boats. I mean you have to imagine this humid H2O hallucination. It is all set below street level, if you are good you can spy the odd street level car bridge. It is totally flanked by sub-tropical trees and Texan mile after mile of outdoor-indoor luscious restaurants, each emitting food fragrances of nationalities from the far-flung-four-corners of the known universe. And everything is hallucified through the blueness of the water, the greenness of the trees and the gentle flowing humidity. If only I had had a rusty old car bonnet(85), cause I could have surfed the so, so thick ambiance. When Davy Crockett said ‘You can go to hell, but I am going to Texas’, he for sure had the River Walk in mind as his version of Texas Heaven.

I have a natural fear of crowds, they freak me and that is not just because they smell. This place was overflowing with people, though they were overwhelmingly white English speakers with a splattering of brown Spanish speakers. And kids, lots of stinkin’ carpet-crawling snot-gobbling weans. There seemed to have been some kind of kids’ convention happening and we seemed to be stuck between their buses and their convention centre ten minutes before the opening curtain. Their shiny white faces were rushing, pushing and prattling all around us, or perhaps I should say all around our ankles. It was like being swamped by a pack of man-eating chihuahuas at the final sunset of their Ramadan. If this in itself was not scary enough, there was no stinkin’ fence between the river and the pavement. I was more scared of the kids than I was of the water. In fact a nice cool dip would have been appreciated, but that was simply a no go, mostly because of the prospects of death by the bow of a megaphoned-tourist-infested-pleasure-craft and there were lots of them. It may come as no surprise to you that generally speaking the fat people were being sailed, gawking at us from these boats and the thin people were walking on the river bank gawking at all the fatties.

Our friend led us through the maze and miles of riverside walks. We stopped for Chinese at one stage. That is Chinese food but here we made a fundamental error. The English was quite clear, seats are for sitting and steps are for stepping, but as independent thinkers in the heart of Texas we overcome the English language and sat on the steps to enjoy our Chinese.

We followed this up with a perfect finale to the evening, we found a jazz bar. What a wonderful wonderful Neverland experience. The jazz bar had a coupl’a three old fogies(86), just a jammin’ and laughin’ out their jazz. It was that American thang of enjoying your work again. They were having a hoot(87) of a time, each following and leading each other, with their greying and balding heads, bobbing back and forth. Drums banging, sax saxing, guitar ringing and voices cackling. Though this  Neverland had allowed their voices to get old, Tinker Bell had obviously sprinkled enough fairy dust for their minds and antics to be as youthful as ever. The Jolly Rodger had obviously sailed by, because it had deposited America’s rudest waiter for us. This dude was a pirate too callous for the Neverland River Walk, he was just rude and came close to ruining our jazz experience. I would not be surprised if America has not revoked his citizenship by now. Not only that, he did not sell either Dr Pepper or Root Beer. Well a fairy-dusted-capitalistic-American-Neverland would not be complete without a great big glass jar full of coins into which to empty our appreciation. And this we did, before floating back to the car on the remnants of a great atmospheric evening. The drive home was long and quiet, with the fairy dust not wearing off until the morning.

If you are ever passing close to Texas and yes the south of England is close enough, then you simply must allow yourself the minor detour of bonnet surfing the wonderful Neverland atmosphere of the San Anton River Walk. Like a pilgrimage to Mecca, it is simply a non-negotiable. Thanks Davy Crockett for the great tip.

Hang around for my next edition to hear of our sad good byes to good ole Texas.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta (Kiwi for thank you)

24. The Church Bit

It has been so long since I have regularly done Sunday morning church, that I had forgotten that air of excitement and activity that happens in the family home before the tradition of Sunday morning church. I was expecting to enjoy this service for perhaps quite different reasons to the previous weekend’s services. Knowing the character, personality and some of the history of my friend and his family, I was correctly expecting a comfortable and somewhat Texan encounter with the creator of the universe.

Our friend, being the Pastor travelled in alone early, but the rest of us arrived just as the first service was finishing. The car park was full, people were going in, people were going out and everyone seemed to be talking to everyone, it all resembled a very well dressed and very well organised country train station on race day. Except being Texas it was the men wearing the wide-brimmed straw hats.

We decided to go to Sunday School. Sunday School for adults is an American phenomenon, I have never seen it anywhere else. At this stage most Kiwis probably have a vision of real live grown-ups, sitting in a circle on the floor playing games before cutting out shapes which represent that Blind Bartimaeus couldn’t see anything. Once again Kiwis, your isolation disadvantages you and in this case many of the people present probably could have only managed a one-way descent to the floor boards. Instead we sat on hard pews with all the other Bible or God junkies. My definition, in this case, of a junkie is someone for whom church just isn’t enough and who needs to subject themselves to a Bible study either immediately after or before their church service.

I think the elderly lady leading actually taught about Holy Spirit. It was quite a refreshingly strong and powerful Bible study which invoked quite a bit of intriguing discussion. Once again I almost needed to repent of my preconceptions, I had somewhat expected to get a little bored listening to an elderly lady lead a Bible study, whilst I shared wooden pews with the elderly, in front of a whiteboard in what I defined as a traditional church. Oh, how smug and judgemental we get from within the comfort of our own denominations. At the end of the lesson we and what we do were introduced and everyone gathered round us and exercised that life-giving tradition of prayer. It was great. The previous week people had mostly prophesied over us and given us hope and expectation for things that may come and now this week people were praying that God would equip and empower us for that possible journey and for what we are doing now.

Upon leaving Sunday School, I did feel somewhat refreshed, but I also felt a little like Blind Bartimaeus, the church lobbies were so full that I could not see a thing. Our host was trying to guide us, but having a husband as a pastor and three kids to manage meant that she had much larger fish to fry than gathering coffee and getting her guests to the less traditional service at the other end of the building complex. But alas, once we got in the correct lane, the flow took us past the coffee, past throngs of chatting people and into our seats. ‘Less Traditional’ is a interesting duo of words to use. In my experience as soon as a Christian or probably any other group has met a couple of times, there are people in that group who will all but kill you if you decide to do things a little differently. We in church are about as untraditional as you can get, but still we have people who will buck the system when we try to do things differently, the worst or best example of this being a time when we tried to give some money away. The previous two times we had given it to the same lady. But this time we were trying to give it to someone else who we thought had more need. We altered our tradition and some struggled with that. However it could have been a lot worse.

I had not long been in my seat when the kids turned up and reminded me that I should have never grown up. Us grown-ups on Sunday mornings get to worship God through drinking coffee and standing up and singing. Where as the weans in this church on Sunday mornings got to worship God through sitting down and colouring-in. The kids seemed to have been given crayons and colouring-in books by the children’s church. I would love to colour-in for worship, especially if I could colour in on blank pages. Those pictures in colouring-in books are like recipes for me, merely possible options of what could be done. Anyhow we are supposed to be worshipping God and we are most definitely not supposed to be distracted, which in itself is an interesting and not necessarily correct notion. Sunday morning worship is exactly that, it is the worship of God. I would suggest that God doesn’t just want you to focus on him through every little moment of worship. Yes he should be the centre of our lives, but during worship allow him to distract you, allow him to remind you of the places he has taken you and the people he has introduced you to. God for all of us, is anchored in the context of our lives and experiences. He is anchored at the intersections where our lives and experiences collide with other people’s lives and experiences. During worship, sing your heart out to God, tell him you love him, but also allow him to take you on those happy distracting journeys and to show you why you love him and why you should worship him. And if you are like me and are still lost in the mystery of God and don’t come close to understanding the ‘why war’ and ‘why kids are dying in Africa’ questions, then worship is a time to bless God with your faith and humility and a time to let him know that you don’t understand the big picture. And let me tell you a secret, even the really brainy don’t understand the big picture, we are all winging it on a prayer, we are all like blind Bartimaeus worshipping through colouring books. That is why it is called faith! Why? Because it doesn’t take answers to worship God, it takes questions, thus it takes faith. But yes I agree, answers are so, so nice.

Anyhow the worship set was a little different to how I usually like it, I am not used to people talking or giving notices in between songs. But as far as I could hear, the worship was perfectly culturally relevant. It sounded like Garth Brooks(80) leading a Hillsong band(81). And I hope that for any Texan reading, that that was a compliment. The kids disappeared to children’s church after the chorused country twanged worship set finished. The teaching didn’t stand out, I vaguely remember that it somehow related to aspects of the dreaded Halloween. I remember concepts not sermons, so it is not inherently a bad thing when I don’t remember, especially after such a good Sunday School.

One clear negative thing though, I am pretty sure that the Bible asks us not to lead others into sin. At the end of the service I was fraught with temptation. Often when you go to new churches, they like to embarrass all new people by asking them to raise their hands. I am not sure why this happens, perhaps it is so the regulars can identify them, thus knowing to be kind to them after the service and to make sure that they give them a warm hearty invitation with no ulterior motives to return next week. But here they did it a little differently. Sometime during the service they said that ‘if you are new here please feel free to grab a welcome pack from down the back’. No one was about to unintentionally embarrass us into returning. The welcome pack was a coffee cup full of chocolate, book marks, the pastors’ calling cards and general church information. This is where the temptation came in to play. Suddenly I was a thinkin’ and a schemin’. How could I get two of these welcome packs? Like one for Sharon and two for me. Could I get one for my first time at Sunday school and one for my first time in the less traditional service? Or could I come back next week and pretend that it was my first week again? Anyhow I made the kids jealous and grabbed my coffee cup full of candy and made my way out of the room. But in the foyer all these lovely people kept on stopping me and introducing themselves and asking me if I was new here. I never raised my hand, do I have a big red X marked on my forehead, how do they know that I am a first timer? Ditch the chocolate-populated coffee mug Kel you twat, and then you can stop explaining that you are passing through.

Well, as it turned out I still had the key to the Honda in my pocket and I was keen to know if the pastor had his own car-park within metres of the church door. You see we all have mostly stupid barriers that stop us going to specific churches. These barriers could be the ‘war and African kids’ thing, or possibly the ‘pastor is a Democrat’ thing or it could be the ‘they pray in tongues or they pray to idols’ thing. But for me it is the ‘does the pastor have his own car park right in front if the building’ thing and ‘why can he not walk through the car park like the rest of us?’ thing. I am sure my mum loves me because I am such a deep objective thinker. And the verdict was, my friend who is a pastor in this church and probably was one of the first to arrive that morning actually parked his car in the furthest corner of the car park thus allowing everyone else the privilege to park close to the building. Glory hallelujah and other nice religious words, God is real, I can worship here, my Texan friendship can survive and I AM NOT FICKLE!

Anyhow I mosied around outside the church, just filling in time. I knew that with our friend being one of the pastors that every Tom, Dick and Harry would have something very very important to share with him before they went home this Sunday morning. I wandered inside and bumped into the kids, they also knew that they were in for a long wait. Pastor’s kids all seem to have the same look whilst waiting for their parents to finish their post-church conversations. It is a look that says, ‘I don’t want you to talk to me because I am the pastor’s kid, I don’t want you to talk to me because I am the one just standing here bored, waiting. But I do want you to talk with me, but only if it is because you value me and actually want to talk to me.’ The four, or should I say, the three of us boys played while we waited, we poked faces at each other through the glass door. It perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate thing to do, especially when church members were trying to leave through that very same door. But it was fun and we only managed to squash four fingers in that door.

Then our Halloween lady came out and wanted to show us their children’s church. In most of the churches that I have been part of, the kids meet in whatever left over space there is that the adults are not using. Maybe a kitchen a hallway or something like that. But no, not here. We followed her down into the basement. After seeing the little monsters the two days before, this seemed like a rather appropriate place for them.

And here in the basement all of America’s Halloween secrets were revealed. Their children’s church was rather similar to how I imagine Pakistani terror camps to be except the terror these kids were training for involved trick-or-treating. We walked into an awesome monster-training labyrinth. Training rooms for all scenarios. First everything was brightly coloured, clearly this was a direct ploy to building up a resistance to massive amounts of sugar. Then we went into a stage theatre room. It was here where the kids got to experience dressing-up in the scariest of all costumes and where they could practise their most contrived methods of ‘trick-or-treating’. It was an ingenious idea of the church to give the kids such a facility, but it didn’t stop here, oh no, we were just warming up. Across the hallway was a movie theatre. Here the kids could watch methods that had previously worked and learn how terrified housewives respond. No doubt the most important use of this room was to subject the kids to massive amounts of monster terror. The kids need to be desensitised to the sight of gory monsters, there is nothing worse than children showing fear when out on the field or front yard. Up the hallway was a kitchen. It is in this room where the kids not only practised overdosing on and building a resistance to massive intakes of sugar, but also where they learn to identify what are the most potent kinds of candy. This is very helpful for them when trick-or-treating. When a terrified home-owner presents them with a bucket of candy to pick from, kid monsters need to be able to make an instant decision. ‘Can I grab all of that candy, or if I can only get a handful, which candy is the most potent and destructive?’ Then there were theory based rooms. In these rooms I expect that the kids learn lessons like ‘Don’t scare the home-owners too much before you get the candy’ or ‘it is always best to enter the home-owner’s property on the footpath with a cute smile, but once you have your candy, then feel free to scare the pants off them and to leave through jumping excitedly over their front lawn.’

I know that you know that I jest. But they were amazing children’s church facilities and thus endeth another American Sunday church service. From here we went home, lunched and prepared for our visit to one of my favourite places and to one of America’s best kept secrets.

Hang around for my next edition to hear about a heavily armed Kel and a jazz cafe.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta (Kiwi for thank you)

23. Giving Thanks and Taking Thanks

I had celebrated Thanksgiving a few times, but never actually in the USA. The first time that I celebrated Thanksgiving was actually a thankful time. We were a bunch of students at a School of Discipleship in Canada. We were mostly young, dumb, single and thought that we owned the world, we were genuinely thankful that God had given us everything.

Sharon and I often personally celebrate Thanksgiving with a burger and Budweiser. Any excuse to thank God is an excuse well used.

Our nightmare Thanksgiving experience was whilst we were in leadership at a ministry training college in Scotland. We were the poor hapless suckers who purchased the food and had the final say over the menus. As a treat for our American students, we decided that we would have a special lunch with an American Thanksgiving slant to it. Bad idea! We mooted the idea to the students, who were immediately excited. Foolishly we asked them if there was any special food that they needed, very quickly we had quite a long list of things that UK supermarkets just didn’t carry. The real problems arose when the students started debating what were the non-negotiable traditions according their personal cultures. Things got quite heated and naturally enough the Scots stoked the fire by presuming that, if the Americans had a Thanksgiving, then they would have a Burns Day. It ended up being a strange, high-pressured day for us, our American students had somehow managed to secure the whole day off for the celebration. I very quickly learnt that Thanksgiving is much more about family tradition, food and football than it is about being thankful for the harvest. Poor God seems to have been stuck in the Thanksgiving backseat along with healthy, unselfish family community and relationships.

I am pleased to say that our early Texan Thanksgiving was a much more pleasurable experience. We were away all morning so missed the stress of cooking. I think that was partly engineered by our cooking host. The church Youth Pastor and his family arrived and we enjoyed a wonderful meal together. And for some bizarre reason and I’m not sure what that reason was, I was the only person who knew how to carve the huge turkey. Speaking of bizarre, the time and place where I taught myself to carve a turkey was at that afore mentioned Scottish American student Thanksgiving. It seemed no-one could carve the turkey there either. Hmmm, what does that say about a nation, when in my experience everyone knows just how the turkey should be cooked and everyone knows just how to eat it, but seemingly no-one has learnt how to serve it? I don’t know, once again I don’t understand.

After the meal, for the sixtieth billionth time in Texas, I played lightsabers. Anyone who has a young son or grew up on Princess Leah and Star Wars knows exactly what a lightsaber is, but for the uninitiated, let’s think of it as a sword thingy. The young lad(79) with whom we were staying,  sometimes his wee brother, and I would spend what seemed like hours whacking the proverbial crap out of each other. He was strong and he was quick. Our arms and torsos were covered in bright red painful welts from our pretend battles. Being a quarter of my age he had much more stamina than I and would usually wear me down before he came in for the final game killing blows. My advantages were that I was much bigger and uglier than he was, so intimidation coupled with the fact that I could fight equally with my left and right hands, allowed me to hold my own. I made him suffer, but our suffering didn’t outweigh the joy of whacking the crap out of each other.

Sharon and I also spent some time with his older sister. I have forgotten the ages of these kids, but she was still knee high to a grasshopper. We took her out onto the street, gave her my camera and suggested that she take a photo of God. Most adults would struggle to do such a thing, we seem to have an inherent need to intellectualise everything or at least put such things into some kind of value box that encapsulates our understanding. Whatever, we are just way too clever for this kind of thing, but give this task to a wean and you will see God in places that you never dreamt that he would be. And when we had finished we took these photos of birds, flowers, cats, cactus and so on back into the air-conditioning, buddied them with her favourite song and turned them into a movie. It was so much fun.

Then the kids were sent to bed with a story. The adults all breathed a sigh of peaceful contentedness, subconsciously pre-empting the next conversation. One of the hard things about pastoring is that the lives of the people we pastor are all confidential. So if ever we want to talk about people and situations, we need to talk in the abstract and only then to well-trusted, non-judgemental people. Anything less is usually nothing short of gossip. But here we were, two pastoral couples from opposite sides of the pond, with neither knowing the other’s flock.

A possible example of our conversation could have been something like this: ‘Sigh! Do you have anyone in your congregation, sigh, who just won’t recognise, sigh, that your wife exists? Sigh! And what do you do about it? Sigh!’ And the possible answer could have been something like this: ‘Sigh! Oh yeah, sigh, we do, sigh, we have no idea what to do, sigh, we have one person, sigh, blahdy blah blah, sigh sigh, blahdy blah blah, sigh!’ When pastors who are friends get together we tend to dump on each other and it feels so good. We share wisdom, complain, moan and get excited about things that appear to work. The great bit is that if we did speak out of hurt or get a wee tad judgemental, the other totally understands, has been there and empathises. So we felt safe to  speak freely and to let go. I don’t know how to explain it any better, but I think we can all relate to the safety in an equal status and experience-trusted relationship, even though in this case the couple we were with were by far our superiors. I did leave Texas emotionally lighter and a good few kilograms heavier.

Hang around for my next edition to hear about  Pakistani terror camps, church and me not being fickle.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

Ta (Kiwi for thank you)