Dear Navin.

Navin R. Johnson, despite your insulting comments regarding words I have recently made up (and are attempting to get Websters to recognize) I will attempt to push on with the post I had in mind. But you know what? I got so pumped up reading your words, I knew it must be you. And I couldn't be mad. No one else can take words, and make those words into what a man of letters such as Dan would call phrases, sentences and yea....complete thoughts like you can.

By the end of the post I found myself standing up, clapping. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster until my neighbors began to get unruly about all the noise my shopping cart was making. I dried the single tear from my eye, and vowed to live each day as a hobo should. As if its his last. As if a renegade boxcar would glide down the phantom tracks of Hillsborough street, leaving him flattened in front of "The Q Shack" where perhaps earlier in the day he had been given free leftover okra and BBQ.

Last night I went to my friend and his wifes house for a college and career shindig. I wore my finest of T-shirts. We ate delicious burgers and talked about coveting, believe it or not. How when we want more than what we have been given we lose the ability to enjoy what we have been entrusted with to cultivate ourselves.

Create, Give, Receive. Its a pattern that is told in the creation story. God created man, gave him eve and received satisfaction from his work. And it was good. God created a garden in the east of eden, gave it to Adam and received satisfaction from his work.

Other than the flying, its one of the big things I like about work. Cultivating the work I've been given to do in the building a flying and fighting team. In cultivating others to develop their own expertises that brings them satisfaction in what they have created, and contributed and enjoyed in the process. And also in helping them recognize that they are capable of creating and contributing in a powerful way.

It's not always that good or easy though. Work can be a pain sometimes. Life ain't perfect for many hobos in this world anymore. But man was made to cultivate, create for a purpose and enjoy the works of his hands. To plow fields and watch crops grow, to shape wood, iron or gold into bridges, houses or WWF wrestling championship belts.
To be a devotee, lover, guardian of an idea, a way of life, a woman, a place on earth they want to call home.

Theres a difference to your days if you recognize it in the small moments of satisfaction, laughter or camaraderie.

Do what ya gotta do to keep in the sun fellas.

Aubrey, you all right...