Christmas letter 1998
Well, here it is Christmas morning. The presents have been opened--the special coffee cake has been eaten. We settled back into our normal operating mode and to continue on with the day. A part of me is joyous for the day and a part is hollow for what it is not. As I look back through the years it seems it was always this way. So much of Christmas is expectation, which inevitably leads to disappointment.
Jesus and Santa are quite related in a certain way. Both are looked at as a Savior, but as you grow you realize that they can only do so much for you. As parents, we have to be Santa; as spiritual beings, we must try to be Jesus. Not just for an hour, a week, but for every moment of every day. We only deprive ourselves, and those around us, when we don’t. When we let go and let Jesus help us, it is no doubt easier. Ultimately, though, if we do not make the choices that help to keep us moving with life, we reap what we have sown.
It is always curious to me how this date was chosen by the church elders to signify Jesus’ birth. Other cultures of distant past worshipped the return of the light as a most sacred day. It was the day when new life could begin to stir, for the approaching darkness and cold began to subside. Long has the winter solstice been celebrated for this -- many thousands of years. Jesus, more than any other being in our history, represents the same kind of new life. His birth represents the beginning of a new age for our species, a time when people began to recognize what it meant to be human and to see the light of a better way to live. A time when people saw that they gained more with cooperation than corruption, led better lives because they took the time to love a little bit more and hate a little bit less.
These days it is no doubt a crazy time to be alive. The outer world accelerates at a pace never before witnessed in modern history. Our leaders more and more prove to be little more than poor role models for ourselves, and our children. So what does that lead us to? Should we put faith into other leaders, or is it maybe time to put our faith more fully into what truly pulls the strings in life. Casting stones is convenient (it always has been), but it only serves to deflect attention from our own path. Every time, without exception, that we judge another, we serve only to weaken their spirit and ours. And, are we not all children of God?
I think that hollow feeling I have comes from the part of me that still believes in fairy tales and wants Santa to approve of me and shower me with his presence, that wants Jesus to approve me and shower me with His grace. What I know now, though, is that Jesus never stops showering us, that magic exists as much as we allow it to be; that us and only us decide what our lives will be. When we turn away or cover our heads, we don’t have the eyes to view the majesty of every little and big thing that happens in this world. We fail to see that God is behind every blade of grass that turns, and in doing so we step out of the garden and into the cold, hard world. Let 1999 (2017) be the year when each one of us remembers who we are as God’s children and live accordingly.
Joe Neyer
December 25, 1998
Vision and Finishing Well
Vision and Finishing Well 2/18/15
My Grandfather, Alphonse Neyer, was a quiet man. I knew him and the room he spent much of his time in--together- the smells of the tobacco pipe, the fresh fragrances and soft hues of the African Violets he liked to keep in the side room with the flickering fluorescent bulbs, along with the rest of the foliage in this room toward the back of his house. The room had walls of levolor windows, the little 4” wide glass slats that open to allow the room to cool, and Grandpa was usually in there smoking his pipe when I came over to visit. Either in this room or out in his gardens pulling weeds; that is what I remember most about my Grandfather. A quiet man, down to earth, flannel shirts….
He said one thing to me directly that I recall vividly. Looking me straight in the eyes, Al said, ”Joe, you can do it wrong one hundred times, or you can do it right once.” That quick phrase stuck with me, along with the hint of cherry tobacco and the moist feeling of a greenhouse room. I was not even a teenager when I heard those words, yet they made it somewhere most words did not find purchase at that time in my life.
The book “Too Much Fun Dying to Stop Now” is a message to facing fear directly, facing our own mortality and being okay with this. Maybe a bit more than just ok, the book is about accepting the fact of our own mortality, and in this very acceptance living quite well, absent the fear so prevalent in our actions and reactions around death and dying.Writing this book has been the biggest ‘project’ for me since building Big Song Music House in 2008. Anyone who has seen a show or performed there understands the level of detail, care, and love that went into the creation of this venue that serves so many now. Of course, I want this book to represent the same level of love and concern for all involved (in this case the readers) so what is incorporated in the work can be felt on many levels and endure down the line of time. To that end, I am reaching out to you all here and others elsewhere to help me in finishing this project the way it can be finished well. The goal is to be able to finish and pay for all the artwork/graphic design and to be able to do a ‘first run’ or printing of at minimum 200 paperback editions to be delivered to this garage floor I see before me now. To achieve that goal, I have looked into “go fund me” and other fundraising places, but decided to keep it small and ‘in house’ with you all first and the larger circles that open as a result of so many people caring, sharing, loving and interacting.
After putting on my General Contractor hat over the last week or so to look into all the costs associated, I am now comfortable knowing what it will take to finish this book the way my Grandfather Al instructed me to think about work long ago. The goal of the fundraiser is to at minimum meet the costs foreseen, which come out to $8,900.00 total. In order to achieve what is stated above, to get the book all the way through the artwork, editing, formatting and other details as well as printing costs with quality material etc., I need help from others. The fundraiser is strictly anonymous donation and not tax deductible. I offer no ‘rewards’. Any size donation is appreciated and goes to the finishing well of a book that will remain after this writer is gone.
Any project we are involved in will bear the fruit of the energy and love we put into it, be it a bathroom, a song, a kitchen remodel or writing a book. Fun was always a prerequisite on my job sites when building. It still is today and in the writing of this book. Glioblastoma is not always fun and yet it is a big part of my life on the daily, practical level. If I resist the facts of the condition the day is more difficult than if I accept and work with the state of my being each day. All form begins and ends--we see this everywhere in the universe of matter--and yet the outer reactions to escape this fact of our temporal existence demonstrates the fear that underlies these responses being blindly followed along. When we turn to face impermanence, death, to knowing we will end someday, what are we really afraid of? What we do not know, perhaps? Look closely to this question and see what you discover; no one else can look for you.
If we learn to have fun with whatever is happening in our life, the resistance to change we were likely taught is not what drives the reaction any longer. We are free to enjoy and be present to each day as it unfolds before us. Many days with glioblastoma are not much fun but they are uniquely the same as any other day is, in that I am present to what the day brings. That sense of ‘home’ is never lost, no matter what the day carries with it. The joy and the fun are left with and in the work, to be enjoyed and felt by others down the corridors of time.
Thanks, Alphonse Neyer, good advice. And thank you all, for helping this message about facing fear and living well get out to the world. We are all in this world together and the more we interact and share, the stronger we all become.
joe