“In prison, those things withheld from
and denied to the prisoner become
precisely what he wants most of all.”

—Eldridge Cleaver
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He would be free, he thought.

Free from the prison of his unhappy circumstances.

Free to live life as it should be lived, to greet and seize each day. Savor it. Extract from it all he could. To live. Really live. And be free to share his passions with the “love of his life,” his soul mate.

He had a wife. And family. And a very successful business he had patiently nurtured over the course of many years. Wealth. A beautiful new home. On top of a hill, sur- rounded by trees and fields and a pond.

But his soul was empty. He chafed to live. To be free. He threw his energy into many different things. Missions. Flying. A new church group, founded from the ground up. He even bought an old church house and donated it to the church group.

He was voted into office as a church leader. Not an elder. A team, they called it. He was one of five. Took his turn occasionally preaching a sermon. He waved his Bible and peered over his bifocals at his audience from behind the little podium. Forcefully proclaimed the Word. With darkness in his heart and death in his soul.

Because something had happened.

He had found the “love of his life.” His soul mate. There was only one small problem. She was married to someone else.

Despite that, they launched into a passionate affair. In secret, as such things always begin. It seemed so exciting. The affair was different from all others in history, he felt, because it involved them. He convinced himself it was not wrong, but right. The affair continued for about a year, with increasing intensity.

He envisioned the future, when they would be together. When they would be free. And begin a new life. In a faraway place.

Then one day, almost exactly one year ago, he made some bad decisions. Let down his guard. Showed up at a public event. Displayed for all to see his devoted attach- ment to her. Trailed around after her like a smitten puppy. The relationship was exposed. At least a part of it.

The proverbial crap hit the proverbial fan. A major explosion followed.

He bluffed. Lied. Blatantly. Pounded his fist on the table. Wept some crocodile tears. Claimed it was not what it appeared to be. Figured the full force of his aggressive personality would overwhelm any inquiries.

The bluff worked. For awhile. And the lies. But not for long. The truth eventually clawed its way to the surface. Was proclaimed from the roof tops. Flew across the land like a lightning bolt. In all its raw and bloody details. He staggered from the blow.

Unknown to anyone, he had traveled to a large southwestern city and bought a big house on two acres. For himself. And his soul mate. By then, she had left her husband and moved to another large city, not that far away from the city where he bought his big new house.

His big new house was a beautiful place. In an upscale neighborhood. Perfect views of the mountains. And high-desert sunsets. A place to be free.

And so he left. His family. His church. His business. All his friends. Moved two thousand miles away to his big new house. With its beautiful views of the mountains and high-desert sunsets.

Now I can be free, he thought. He changed his first name. New life, new identity, and all that. Hiked the mountains around his big new house. Tanned in the sun. Bought a new convertible. Lost some weight. Let his hair grow long. Whitened his teeth. Took dancing lessons. So he could dance with his soul mate.

It was fun. He felt free. For awhile. But he was alone, mostly. And strangely empty. His support structure evaporated. Old friends no longer spoke to him. Or hung out. Or returned his calls. Slowly, realization dawned. Of what he was becoming. An outcast. A pariah. Persona non grata.

But he still had his soul mate. He clung to the relationship. It was all he had. She came to see him. For a long weekend. In his new place, his big new house with its beautiful views of the mountains and high-desert sunsets.

She was all he wanted. All he’d ever dreamed of. But he wondered, deep down, if she really felt the same. If she was really true to him, in the big city where she lived when they were apart. Deep down, he also knew the answer.

They flew around in his plane, a twin engine Barron. One day, as the plane was just off the ground, a wind shear nearly brought it down. He struggled for control. For a brief second almost lost it. But somehow, he got it back. The plane bucked, then steadied. And straightened.

A crash would have killed them both. Provided tons of dramatic sermon fodder. For a lot of preachers. For a long, long time.

But it didn’t happen. Because he was who he was, he figured. Such things couldn’t happen to him.

Now and again he went back to his old home, the area he’d left. To see his family. To conduct business. But he discovered things had changed. Drastically. No one wanted to see him. And no one would. Not his old friends. Not even his children. The realization sank in deeper. What he was. An outcast. A pariah. A person not welcome.

He always returned alone to his big new house two thousand miles away, with its beautiful views of the mountains and high-desert sunsets. Alone, with his freedom.

One wonders. Had he been able to fathom the actual costs, would he have made the same choices? Danced to the same piped tune? Way back, when the affair began? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not. But probably.

In illicit matters of the heart, once certain lines are crossed, there comes a point of no return. Where perceived delights of instant gratification override any measured con- siderations of the terrible price. That the Piper will always require. Always. With no exceptions.

So he finally has it. By the bushel and by the truckload. The “freedom” he craved. So deeply, for so long. And finally pursued. And grasped. And held onto. At the cost of all he accumulated, all he treasured, relationship-wise, over a span of almost fifty years.

But what is true freedom? And does he really have it? And what is he now?

He is a wicked man. Living in darkness. With a hardened heart. With death in his soul. He is also a lot of other things.

But one thing he is not.

He is not free.
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It just doesn’t happen. Not like that. Magically. At the last minute. When what must be done gets done, against all the laws of probability. When underdogs bristle, rise up, and seize the prize. And suddenly, the inevitable crowning ceremony dashed, exposed in shambles for the shell game it was.

But wasn’t it something? WOW, as one reader commented. What a game. It was without question the best Super Bowl I’ve ever seen. Maybe the best ever. Certainly one of the best.

I hosted my usual two Super Bowl guests. My brother Steve and my friend Paul Zook. I don’t like to be around a lot of people; it detracts from the business of watching the game. Paul watches one football game a year. The Super Bowl, at my house. He and Steve have been coming now for probably the last five or six years. Paul always asks which team I’m rooting for and picks the other one. It works. Makes it lively.

I had plenty of food. Cheese, meat and chips. And a great pot of my award-winning (in my own mind) secret formula chip dip, which includes but is not limited to hamburger and cheese and salsa, all heated up in one gooey mass. My guests must have liked it, because they sure ate a lot of it.

I warned my guests that if New England was leading by 20 points or more by halftime, I would shut down the party and send them home. They chuckled and kept right on feasting on chips and many bowls full of my award-winning chip dip.

My thoughts on the game. Tom Brady spent a lot of time in a position that I liked a lot, lying flat on his back looking up at the domed roof. The Giants’ defense dominated. Harried Brady. Hit him. Sacked him. He was shocked. And stunned. And out of his rhythm all night. And the amazing thing: that Giants defense did not get one off-sides penalty all night. They simply overpowered the Patriots’ offensive line, causing an uncharacteristic number of false starts.

Watching the entire game was exhausting. Because you knew, just knew, as surely as the vile Bellichek was wearing that ratty cut-sleeve hoody of his on the sidelines, that the Patriots were going to pull it out at the end. Sure enough, they scored with less than three minutes to play. Steve and I just looked at each other. But I forced myself to watch it to the bitter end.

And then Eli Manning got his moment in the sun, and in front of a disbelieving world, coolly rose to the occasion and performed like a champion. The last drive of the game will quite likely go down as one of the all-time classics in football lore.

The sequence of events.

The final drive. Eighty-three yards. Every snap from center in the shotgun formation was low. Eli had to reach down for the ball. Every time. A fourth and one. An almost-interception. A near-sack, then the magic escape, the desperate throw, and equally magic catch. The touchdown a few plays later almost seemed like an afterthought. You knew they were going to get in somehow. Such magic just doesn’t happen, not on the last drive of the Super Bowl. Once, maybe twice in a lifetime. That it all clicks. That the football gods smile. And that your team wins against insurmountable odds.

After the touchdown, Steve and I joined about ninety million other people (out of the ninety-seven million watching in this country) in one long delirious shout of triumph. And high-fives. Paul Zook looked glum and pretended he didn’t care. Which he probably didn’t.

The Patriots almost reached the summit. They had their hands on the latch of the golden door, and were pulling it open. To enter in triumph. To claim immortality as the greatest team ever, in NFL history. But suddenly their hands were slapped away, the golden door slammed in their faces. At the last possible minute, they failed. Tasted the agony of bitter defeat. It will haunt them always.

They had a remarkable run. Winning 18 straight games. But many of their players are old. They were hanging on for this perfect season. A lot of them won’t be back, I think.

They had another problem. During their remarkable run, they dissed a lot of teams. Ran up the score. Classlessly. Ruthlessly. So it was easy to hate them. And so much the sweeter when they stumbled and failed at the exact moment the ultimate prize was in their grasp.

I still respect the team. And some of the players. After the game, Tom Brady was a class act. He answered all questions. Honestly. Unlike his coach, the vile Bellichek, who dissed the Giants and the game by leaving the field before the game was officially over. And muttered clipped, one-word answers in the post-game interviews.

It was great to see Coach Coughlin and Little Manning celebrate. Redemption is sweet. And Little Manning is now no longer just Payton’s little brother. He is Sir Eli, knighted victorious on the battlefield of blood and fire. When the chips were down. Before hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. The slayer of one of the greatest teams ever to play the game.

In politics, Super Tuesday has come and gone. Not that I watched any of it. Or any of the talking heads. It appears that McCain pretty much has the Republican nomination locked up. I can’t imagine how that happened. But it did.

I WILL NOT vote for him, should he be the nominee. I just won’t. And I encourage my readers not to, either. He might as well be a Democrat, from his atrocious voting record. On speech. On global warming. On immigration. He’s Ted Kennedy’s buddy. I believe Hillary would do less damage to this country than McCain. Not that I’ll vote for her. I’ll probably end up writing in a candidate, maybe Ron Paul. Or voting for the Constitutional Party candidate, if they can get one on the ballot.

Happy Valentine’s Day (to those to whom it applies).

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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the
lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the
myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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NOTE: THIS POST CONSISTS OF MY OPINIONS ONLY
AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED OTHERWISE.

He stood there at a little table in the foyer of the Vincennes University Student Study Hall building. A large man with side-swept dark blond hair, dressed in suit and tie, his stomach bulging over the front of his pants. He was giving away free phone cards, after you filled out a little paper with your name and address.

I ignored him the first day. The second day, I returned his smarmy greeting and stopped to chat a bit. He wanted me to fill out the paper and get a free phone card. I refused, but chatted amiably with him for a few minutes. As I moved to leave, he stopped me. He was having a meeting that evening, he said. I looked like just the kind of guy he needed, charismatic, outgoing, and clearly intelligent. A go-getter. Would I be interested in attending?

I should have known better, but his flattering words swelled my head. So I assented. He gave me the place and time of the meeting, but evasively refused to divulge any more details. Nevertheless, at 7 PM, I showed up to see what it was about.

There were about a dozen students attending. All of superior leadership quality, of course. The large-stomached man now had an accomplice, a short chunky man with a crew cut who was obviously a superior. The meeting began with the short chunky man introducing himself. He was from Kentucky (the next state south) and ran a successful business helping other people. That’s exactly how he phrased it. He owned two houses, drove a Cadillac, and earned several hundred thousand dollars annually. He was rich. And didn’t mind preening about it. All by just helping other people, he reiterated again and again. It all sounded a bit loopy, I thought.

Eventually, after talking about every single aspect of the business, after drawing charts and graphs on a little chalkboard about all the products people use and how much they are expected to consume in the next umpteen years, after much discussion about every detail except the company they represented, the truth emerged. These guys were Amway men, and we were their targets.

My heart sank. All this time wasted, for this. After they opened for questions, I raised my hand. “You gained all this wealth just by pushing Amway?” I asked.

It was an unfortunate question. The short chunky man shot straight up like someone had stuck his butt with a pin. His bristly hair actually stood on end as he glared at me. “I am NOT PUSHING Amway,” he snarled angrily. The transformation was astonishing. From piously talking about helping others to seething rage in less than ten seconds. And he WAS pushing Amway. But I shut up.

Somehow, before the evening was over (and I could never figure out quite how it happened), I found myself in a room with the large-stomached man and two other students. Large-stomach wanted me badly as a rep. He intoned a five-minute speech, then a dramatic closing statement. At its conclusion, the first student leaped to his feet, grasped the man’s extended hand and said “YES,” he wanted to join. Large-stomach welcomed him and smoothly turned to the second student, who also leaped to his feet with an excited “YES.”

Large-stomach then turned to me. Two down, one to go. I was the real target. I could feel it. In response to his dramatic closing, I ignored his outstretched, inviting hand and simply said, “No.” The poor man deflated visibly like a punctured balloon. The other two students looked askance. I looked defiant and soon got out of there. And so ended my first encounter with multi-level selling.

From that and one other experience I learned what to do when someone approaches and claims to have a “consulting” business and wants to talk to me about working for him. I run, not walk, out’a there as fast as I can.

I have wondered briefly at times over the years where Large-stomach and the short chunky man ended up and whether they are still pushing Amway. All to “help” others, of course. I’d guess Large-stomach is not, as he was desperately trying to get his own “network” off the ground when he accosted me. The short chunky man may well be, since he did achieve a measure of success. If the stories he was spouting were true, that is.

Amway has been around for a long time. And it has always sold quality products, usually at quite inflated prices. Still, I have no problem with that. You don’t have to buy. But I do have a problem with its method of recruiting salespeople.

From the Amway/Quixtar foundation (although the connection is deliberately clouded, and technically may not exist), Orrin Woodward spun off a new entity some years ago. It was called “Team of Destiny.” In the years of its brief but baneful existence and meteoric ascendance, it ensnared and severely damaged the lives of thousands, all single-mindedly pursuing a shifting grand illusion that never existed in fact. The pro- mised land, where milk and honey flows, always over the next hill. Weekly meetings. Tapes. Rah, rah. Work five years and you’ll never have to work again. The money will just roll in.

It was all a lie, of course. Some lost all they owned. And more. Much, much more. Including some people I know from way back.

After sweeping through the land like a raging wildfire, devouring the hopes and dreams and tireless efforts of a multitude of entry-level peons, Team of Destiny morphed again. Now it’s simply named “Team.” And it’s skulking and slithering around out there like an insidious viper, inflicting its mind-numbing poison into a lot of very impression- able but otherwise decent people. The Team version is particularly dangerous because it infuses into its presentation a generous sprinkling of “Christian” teachings.

I don’t claim to know all the intricate details of either organization. But I do know this: Membership involves reading the foundational motivational materials, listening to an endless stream of tapes that must be purchased, and meeting at least monthly with other Team members to discuss what you are learning and how you are applying that wisdom. And one more thing. You must proselytize with all your heart. And soul and strength.

The “Team” Bible

For all I know, the Team leadership materials have a lot of truths in them, and the concepts applied may be quite beneficial. I will even concede that as fact. Why, then, attack Team as destructive?

If you are a Team member reading this, you may be turning purple and screaming at your computer by now. Such colossal ignorance, you may be thinking. For any current Team members I have a simple question: Could you spend one evening, or even one hour with me, socializing or just hanging out having a beer, without once mentioning Team in any way? Without trying to recruit me to join? Without returning to the subject again and again, regardless of where the conversation would naturally flow? I’ll answer my own question. You could not. You would not. You know it. I know it. And something about that is very, very wrong. Disingenuous, skewed, weird, creepy, out of whack.

Are you, as part of the Team, increasingly associating only with other Team members and not so much with old friends you have known for years? Don’t you ever pause to wonder why some of your old friends no longer answer their phones when you call, and why they seem to avoid you or make excuses when you want to “get together?”

I’ll tell you why. It’s because you are a pest, a blight, mindlessly spewing a perpetual flood of formulaic gibberish. Because your relationships are now based almost exclu-sively on others’ acceptance of your message, you are no longer real. Or genuine. You think you’ve found the truth. The rest of us haven’t. And people can tell. The fakery. The plastic smile. The forced cheerfulness. And always, always, your obsessive insistence on discussing the Team leadership concepts. Trust me, it gets old, fast. You are undermining existing, long-standing relationships. And you are destroying the core of who you really are. Soon there will be nothing left but a hollow caricature of what you were or might have been.

To really become involved, you must surrender your soul to the cause. With each monthly tape, each monthly meeting, you must get pumped up for the next. You have to live it. Breathe it. Speak it. Keep yourself psyched up. Preach the message, both to gain new converts and to sustain your own faith. It’s one-dimensional. It’s cultish. It’s religious.

And it’s a shame that good people are losing their friends and their credibility by spout- ing an endless stream of “leadership” psychobabble. They are not leaders. They are brainwashed sheep, pretending to be leaders. People who feign interest in your per- sonal well-being, but who really aren’t, because they are no longer interested if you reject their overtures to join them in smoking the Team leadership “crack pipe.”

Anything that requires all your conscious efforts all the time, to the exclusion of almost all other aspects of your physical and emotional and spiritual well-being, is dangerous and ultimately destructive. Any scheme that promises “you do not have to work, the money will just roll in” is deceptive, and ignores the most basic of economic principles. And appeals to the lowest common denominator of greed and sloth. That, in a nutshell, is why I so strenuously oppose Team (of Destiny). That, and because I know its source.

If you are a Team member and absorb nothing else on this post, absorb this: In my opinion, Orrin Woodward is a false prophet, leading you to a place you do not want to go. Sooner or later you will reach that conclusion. Probably later, after you are strand- ed alone in the wilderness, your life and relationships in shambles at your feet, your $65.00 per month, or whatever amount it is, frittered away like so much dust in the wind. It will happen. In a year. Or two. Or five. I have seen it all before. I will see it again. You can choose not to let it happen to you.

Ultimately, the Team version, too, will fade away. Into oblivion, as the last one did. Once its leaders have fleeced their tens of millions of dollars from their naïve and gull- ible flocks, they will be off on something else. Preaching a repackaged message to a new flock, a fresh group of impressionable souls desperately searching to fill a gaping void in their lives. The leaders won’t hesitate. They will close Team down. Pick up and move on. Leaving in their wakes the decimated ruins of thousands upon thousands of devastated relationships and damaged lives, strewn about like so much twisted wreck- age after the storm has passed.
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Last Monday evening I watched President Bush deliver his final State of the Union Address. Well, I watched a little of it. Just enough to taste the history of what was his last such speech. Mr. Bush has aged greatly in his seven years as the most powerful man in the world. As they all do. He looks just a little worn. But he defiantly went after Congress on several issues and defended his decision to invade Iraq. While I’m greatly irritated at Mr. Bush for his prolific spending, I can’t help but like the guy. He is who he is, with few pretensions. And somehow, I think history will judge him much more kindly than the current crop of nattering liberal talking heads. In fact, I’d stake a sizable bet on it.

We were honored this week to host my brother and family, Titus and Ruth Wagler and their active little boys, Robert and Thomas. Elmer and Susie Yutzy and daughter Kayla Joy (and baby whose name I failed to note) traveled with them. They stayed at Steve and Wilma’s while here. As owners of the Midwest Truss Company in Bloomfield, IA, they came to the area to check out a few truss factories for ideas for expansion. Guess things are booming the southern Iowa.

All pictures below taken WITHOUT permission.

Ruth, Titus, Thomas and Robert

Thomas and Robert

Thomas, Johann Lapp, Robert and George the dog

Elmer and Susie Yutzy and Kayla Joy

They weren’t around long, arriving Tuesday afternoon and leaving Thursday morning. But was good to catch up with my brother, as I do not see him that often. He came and spent a few hours at the office with me on Wednesday morning.

Happy Birthday to my oldest brother Joseph, who hit the Big-60 Wednesday, Jan. 30th.

Finally, GO GIANTS. Kick the vile Patriots. We can all dream.

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