Flying All Night and Lost Luggage Adventure

Today is a pretty good day.

I have, 1) caught up on lost sleep, after flying all night via O'Hare with my spiffy new (and expensive!) overnighted US Passport. After all the hassle of obtaining that darned passport, I really wanted the Canadian customs agent to look at my Passport and squeal something like a teenage girl, "OMG, will you just LOOK at this shiny new Passport!!", whilst waving it in the ear and shouting, "Fellas, come look at this!" No such luck.

And, 2) as an added bonus, Oldest Daughter's luggage has been retrieved from the mysterious clutches of Air Canada and United, and their evil 3 day international conspiracy to screw up our vacation.

May I comment about the luggage thing for a moment? For that matter, this is really a rant about the subject of customer service and the New World Economy.

It seems as if the entire world of customer service has left the US and Canada altogether. Everywhere across the North American continent, whenever anyone has a need, asks a question, or needs support with software, there is not a soul in sight who can help. We are a nation of people who are unable to help ourselves, or for that matter, employ our own people to help us. We have become a sea of mouth-breathing people who sit in front of PC monitors with malfunctioning software, facing error messages. Dumbstruck, we reach for telephone assistance, dutifully dialing the 800 support line. We are helpless. When we need airline tickets, or just as an example, say, to find our lost luggage, we commence mouth breathing. We grunt something in a single syllable - pick up the phone and call, yes, you knew it was coming....

India.

I fear that some day in the not-to-distant future, we will wake up and find that the inner workings of all government, health care, the phone company, and all vacation planning will have been exported to the Indian subcontinent. This will be their final revenge for British Colonization.

Whenever I struggle with a mysteriously lost file containing every financial transaction I have ever made - my call for help (see, I am slack-jawed too!) is directed to some mysterious room in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, or Hyderabad. A demurring and exceedingly apologetic Indian person, who almost always has a single syllable westernized first name like "Liz" or "Tom" comes on the line to tell me that "I am so sorry, it's not a problem...". Unfortunately, there IS a problem, or I would not be on the line for hours at a time with a person 1/2 way around the world who is smarter than I.

Over the past two days I have been a part of The Incredibly Secret Luggage Confusion (as it shall henceforth be known). I need to add that The Luggage Confusion occurred 24 hours after the very near computer-induced cancellation of my reservation to join my family in Toronto by yet another lovely phone support person in India. During the past several days, I have been apologized to about 500 times. I swear it. The luggage support people can do wonders for your sense of false superiority. But, I don't want apologies, I want an honest answer about my luggage.

Phone support people of India - loosen up a little, enjoy your life, and please, just be honest with us silly Westerners. We need the candor on our end.

Below is a sample of the conversation I had yesterday with Air Canada Luggage Services (after an initial on-hold delay of 20 minutes):

Me: "Yes, this is Steven Norris, calling about lost luggage ticket number 54362. I would like to find out the status of my lost luggage."

Them: "Yes Mr. Norris, we are so sorry for your delay in holding, and for your lost luggage. We are now checking on this matter. Can you please hold again for a brief period?"

Me: "Ah, yes, if it will help you find my luggage." (Additional wait of 5 minutes - I can now hum for you ALL of the hold music they have!)

Them: "Hello again, Mr. Norris, we are so sorry. We do not have a status update on your luggage. But, we can tell you that your luggage may have left Las Vegas for Toronto. This also might have involved a flight to Orlando."

Me: "MAY have left Las Vegas? Orlando? What does that mean? Has it left or not? What flight is it on please?"

Them: "I am sorry, but we cannot give you that information"

Me: "Ok, then, can you tell me WHEN the luggage will be in Toronto?"

Them: "I am so sorry, Mr. Norris, but we cannot tell you that. The luggage must be confirmed to be located in Toronto, before we can confirm that the luggage is in Toronto, and is confirmed."

Me: (Now entering a dreamlike state of confusion) "So you cannot tell me where the luggage is, where it is going, or when it will get there? Do I have this right?"

Them: "I am so sorry, we cannot confirm that information."

Clearly, I was dealing with a room full of people who could not confirm whether they actually were even breathing. This was truly Orwellian. I will not bore you with further details, other than to say two things to complete this saga.

First, we received a phone call at 4:30AM from India with the following information:

"Hello, Mrs. Norris, this is Liz from Air Canada luggage services. I am so sorry, but we have no update on the status of your luggage. I am so sorry, but I am calling to tell you we have no status change. I apologize for the call, but I have nothing further to tell you. So sorry. Thank you. I am so sorry."

One would think they felt, well, a little sorry. Or maybe they just always feel that way. I mean, in 10 years they will probably feel sorry for us all; after they take over the world. The Phone Support people will subtly just lure us all into a stupor of absolute confusion.

Then they will occupy the Capital Building, and put us all on hold. Permanently.

Second thing. This morning at about 10AM, we got a call. This time, from the Luggage Dude at Toronto Airport. They had our luggage. We got it.

Welcome to the New World Economy.

The Wal Mart Death in All of Us

His name was Jdimytai Damour. He worked security at a Wal Mart on Long Island. He was 34, and now, he is dead, because, well, we need to have our stuff.

I have been haunted by Mr. Damour's death ever since the day it occurred, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when a mass of "Blitz Line" shoppers crushed him under the weight of their greed, lust for consumption, and lack of concern for others. Crushed by our sick culture, one that values material things over souls.

And then, several weeks ago, the LA Times ran a Column One Piece about this event, that got my attention again. I cannot get this out of my mind. Crowds are a strange thing. They have a psychology all of their own, and it can be a scary thing. But this event at WalMart was, to me, just about the scariest thing I have heard about in our country in a long time. If people are worried about taking God out of our schools, or gay marriage, this event, to me, deserves equal, if not greater attention. I think our souls are sick, not just those WalMart people, but all of us, me included. Let me tell you why.

Our Stuff
The WalMart waiting people had started lining up at 9PM on Thanksgiving night, in order to take advantage of holiday savings. Why did they do this? So they could get a $25 microwave, or a $5 blender, or a flat screen TV for half price. So they lined up ALL NIGHT, in order to save a few dollars.

Here is a novel idea, all those shoppers could have stayed home in bed. Then, they might have arisen late, to enjoy that extra Friday with family, or friends. But they chose to get up early and line up outside WalMart. So they could get more stuff.

Our nation is littered with self storage facilities - places we store our extra stuff. We have so much stuff, we need extra space to store it. A number of years ago, I was attending an investment conference where an executive of one of the largest self storage firms spoke. All of us commercial real estate analysts were interested in what shrewd things he would tell us about this interesting investment opportunity. He got up to speak, and this is essentially the entirety of what he had to say:

"Let's face it, the American people have a lot of extra crap. They come to us, and tell us they need a place to store it. But they also tell us they will be back in a couple of months to pick it up, and move it someplace else. Truth is, they never come back. And we just keep collecting their rent money. Every month. Thank you."

That was probably 20 years ago. We are not any different now, except that we have maybe two or three times as much self storage space.

What We Really Need
It has been said that the Temple of America is....the mall. I think it might be true. And then, perhaps is the self storage facility the graveyard? These are sad and bizarre edifices to our way of life. What have we created here?

The death of Mr. Damour has left me feeling as if we are a people without meaningful relationships, with broken souls, if you will. We are lost in the midst of our consumption, and we cannot find our way home. We trample those who get in our way.

Mr. Damour is a casualty of our American way of life. He is gone. I will pray for the family that he leaves behind, and hope that in a significant way his death will not have been in vain.

We need to stop all this shopping, all this consuming. We need to revisit our priorities.

Bring Back the Monkeys!

Today, for the first time in years, I sat through most of the Superbowl. I had hopes that the commercials would be, as is usually the case, better than the actual game. I was pleasantly surprised by the game, played in pouring rain, and in particular for a victory for Tony Dungy, who is a man of faith who has faced the most profound personal pain imaginable. A great win for a good man.

As for the commercials, the performance was pathetic. Sad, unimaginative, and uninspiring. If the commercials had been a football game, they would have had a final score of:

Brainless Beer Ads / Generally Uncreative - 84
Creative / Knee Slapping Funny / Inspiring - 12

A rout. The only funny moment was the ad for Emerald Nuts, which indicated something like "in the afternoon your blood sugar declines to the point where you fall asleep, and Robert Goulet appears in your office and messes with your stuff". I have this problem all the time. So glad I have found a solution.

One other item I must address. Careerbuilder needs to fire their ad agency; they are completely clueless. They have produced a series called "Career Jungle" that 1) is incomprehensible, 2) poorly edited, and 3) contains dialogue that is impossible to understand. Career Builder representatives have said that "We really want to talk about job dissatisfaction. So we have new TV work that talks about job dissatisfaction and not just bad co-workers". Oh please, people!

In my (alleged) mind, the chimpanzee campaign was one for the ages. Stay with what works. Can the ad agency. Bring back the monkeys!

Passive Aggressive Jesus

Sometimes it feels to me like the NBA has one up on the Church.

In the NBA, if you get fouled too hard, and then really ticked at somebody, the unwritten rule (until recently) was that you could get back up off the floor, and well, DECK that so-and-so. Fisticuffs as a solution. Pugilism to solve your “issues”.

Major League Baseball might also have a better way of dealing with anger than does the First Church of Wherever. Say some annoying 22 year old left hander with a wicked 104 MPH fastball keeps throwing high hard ones against your best hitters, sending them flailing to the dirt. Response? Your team can just wait an inning or two, and when Junior Lefty does it again, you simply clear the bench, charge the guy, and smother him in misdirected punches. It works. Afterward, while everyone looks sheepish and apologies to the press, inside, they probably feel really good about the resolution.

But we church folk are pretty darn pathetic when we get mad. Wait. Did I say mad? Oh sorry, I am a Christian, I don’t get mad. Matter of fact, mad might even be a bad word to say. Annoyed, yes, that is more like it. “Our patience has been tried”, we might say. We become, say, “slightly miffed”. “You know, Marge, I have a hard time with that person”, we offer to our Christian friends. But angry? Not us. Ticked off? Noooo thank you very much. Pissed? Gasp! Never. I just swore! We Christian folk often handle anger about as well as George Bush handles words of more than two syllables.

Here is the equation we church people seem to follow:

Christian person + Anger = Very Bad Behavior!

I think this is very bad math, for living life, and building the Kingdom.

More on this soon.

Wrinkled Missionaries, New Ways of Thinking

Lets face it. The old way of doing things is shot. Even the way in which we did things 10 years ago is full of holes. There are a few institutions, such as marriage, the sacraments, and the infield fly rule that still work well. But in large part, the old way of doing things, most particularly in the church, is over and done with.

So, what ARE we gonna do? Well, if we are Presbyterians, we form a Committee to study it, with a name like the Committee to Study It, or the Vision Committee, of the Next Century Working Group. Whatever.

Maybe as a part of our spiffy committee formations, we need to take a look back, and a look around at the rest of the world.

By the way, none of these thoughts are original, they are part of the Missional Church Movement, of which Presbyterian Global Fellowship is a part. God might just be doing something new. I have plagiarized large parts of this from here; the mind of Dr. Steven Hayner (friends of mine are friends of his). I have no shame.

The Early Church

In the first centuries the Holy Spirit pushed Jesus’ followers out of their comfort zones and into the Greek and Roman worlds—and beyond. About the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr declared: "There is not one single race of men whether barbarians, or Greeks, or whatever they may be called, nomads, or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, among whom prayers and giving of thanks are not offered through the name of the crucified Jesus." [Dial. cum Tryph., cxvii.] Within 3 centuries, new outposts of witness had been planted in all corners of the world—and in the west, Christianity became the official religion of the Empire.

God continued to work—and has done so to this day—calling, wooing, healing, freeing, forgiving, and engaging more people in the adventure of participating with God’s Great Plan.

But in the 4th century something began to happen to the church. As it became more and more accepted in the culture, and as there were more and more Christians, the Church began to be less of a movement and more of an institution (sound familiar?).

Even the use of the word “Church” began to change. Instead of referring to God’s people, “church” began to refer to a building—or a particular program activity. “We’re going to church.”

I have spent most of my adult life going to church. Well, at 48 years old, I am getting tired of going to church, I think I might like to be the church now.

More soon.

Warning! Abducted Parents!

Alright. I have to get this off my chest.

I am bothered by a growing trend among many of the Christmas "family pictures" we get each year in the mail.

The trend: missing parents.

If I am to believe what I see in our Christmas card photos, our country is slowly evolving toward families consisting entirely of children only.

It seems that there is a strange pattern developing in upper-middle class America; a problem that now appears to be near epidemic proportions. Parents are being abducted, or at least it seems to be this way, because they no longer appear in family photos any more! Our mailbox is stuffed to the brim with photos of kids..only. No adults.

I am about to contact the authorities on this. Each year, over the past 5 to 10 years, I have noticed more and more photos arriving in Christmas cards with the parents missing. Where, I ask you are, these parents? Have they left the country, skipped town, been arrested? Perhaps they just got too tired of the whole kid-raising thing, and have taken permanent residence at a luxury spa someplace? If that is the case, I want the address and directions; I may join them.

Or maybe the kids, realizing how much easier life is without rules, have just locked good ole' Mom and Dad in the basement or attic. Another possibility: abductions by space aliens. At this point, I think anything is possible.

I have one other theory. I think some of us older folk think that we don't look so good, particularly next to our young, vibrant, handsome, hip and lovely kids. We have more wrinkles, more chubbage, less hair, or more grey hair each year. And, if we are honest, we hate the way this looks. We are so yesterday, last year, last decade. So, we just send pictures of the kids. Its easier. Its like we, the parents, the couples who created these families in the first place (along with God) are dead. Gone. Deceased. No longer relevant or important.

This bugs me. What is wrong with us adults? This seems so American to me. We hate anything that looks even the slightest bit, well, old. And so, we have taken to heart what Madison Avenue is telling us - its only cool to be young. Old = looser.

Parents of America, unite! Say no to the advertising conglomerates! Include your frayed, tired, greying selves in your Christmas pictures again. This is what families are all about! Everybody, all together.

You are not dead. Not yet.

Miscellaneous Items; Fundamentalists and Failures

For some time, I have wanted to find helpful material for me to process my own thinking/struggling with the Muslim world and the mess our country finds itself in these days.

I have found help from someone I trust. My friend Julie has a post on an important voice in Islam who brings a form of clarity that is greatly needed. I think we should keep our eye on this. And, brace ourselves. I think we have not seen the worst of the radical Islamic movement yet.

Separately, but related are two bits on the whole Ted Haggard mess that really should be looked at carefully. My friend Mark Roberts has done a series on Ted Haggard and the burdens that pastors face.

And again, Julie, that energetic Bruin that she is, has written perhaps the very best thoughts on the set up for failure that the church creates in this piece "No Christian Cure....". Outstanding!

One more thing. James Dobson often makes me nuts. And here is another reason why. I would hope that should I commit a major moral failure (God forbid please!), that my friends would have the time to commit to standing beside me, and holding me up as I seek healing; no matter how ugly. Seems to me, I remember reading something about this once. Maybe, just maybe, Dr. Dobson might need to examine his busy calendar and see what priorities most embody the character of Christ. For me, standing beside a fallen friend is near the top of the list. But I am not as important, or influential, or busy, or famous....so perhaps I should just shut up.

There. I will.