Self worth

An account of 2020’s Covid19 World Attack

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was getting dicey and worrisome for everyone. The quarantine was working somewhat, but the death toll was still climbing everywhere. The news-room personalities were beginning to visibly sweat, and it wasn’t the stage lighting. Cameras were fixed and it was obvious there was only one camera and no director for various shots and video inserts. Just one camera, and no one behind it. The ‘personality’ with a rumpled suit was reading off paper in front of him (no prompter) and the weather didn’t have any green-screen and the prognostication was very vague.

Grocery stores had empty shelves, but that was all right because the parking lots were empty too. Gasoline was down to 75 cents but no one was buying except medical and military. Pleasant driving if you wanted to risk it. Roadblocks and interstate driving enforced with the national guard. No one moved unless you have paperwork displayed on the plates, fore and aft. The bridges were secured.

The phones still worked and the power was pretty good. Amazingly, there were still areas where the fiber carried the internet but the load on that pipeline was enormous. Many reliable and local updates on where latest food and scavengers were moving and advice on security measures. Very little panic. Neighborhoods and townships were unifying and assistance grew within them.

Medical triage and field medic people were in big demand and local connections worked pretty well. After the alerts where the looters were predicted, these honorable people were available to friend and foe alike. The locals began to see something they had not seen before. Compassion and a love for their fellow man, almost impossible to understand. When asked about this, the the medics and doctors would smile and reply with an understandable Gospel. Before it all, the immediate response to a faith message was “great, they’re going to tell me how I can be just like them if only I follow the rules” Now there was serious response to the joy found in listening to the Lord.

There was dialogue and questions. Then we began to reveal how much we thought and felt about this similar ‘bad’ behavior in ourselves. Certainly we were not saints but somehow happy and …well, free. No rules given, just paying attention to the hunger for human contact everyone was experiencing.

The somewhat simple explanation from these medical volunteers was easily understood. Many times there was a demand to have them visit again if possible. It was was new. There were no suits and ties, endorsement of connections. No tracts or phony glad handing. Real missionaries. The calmness and strength of these volunteers was what everyone needed. The usual isolation and fear of each other was being replaced with community and trust. After a short while, safe housing was set up for the desperate roaming families and civilization started to come back to stay. There was no doubt that Jesus had done a miracle and there was great hope and strength spreading throughout the land.

Norm Peterson and Jack Gator

Quotes That Allow Me to Write The Truth

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship to God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while it goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. … Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013),

Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere conversationalist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slandering or silence. …G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), 

Was there a moment known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped for joy?

…Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)

O be calm and quiet all by yourself is hardly the same as sleeping. In fact, it means being fully awake and following with close attention every move going on inside you. It involves a self-discipline where the urge to get up and go is recognized as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is really close at hand. It is the freedom to stroll in your own yard, to rake up the leaves and clear the paths so you can easily find your way.

…Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)

 Here is my examination at the beginning of Advent, at the beginning of a new year. Lack of charity, criticism of superiors, of neighbors, of friends and enemies. Idle talk, impatience, lack of self-control and mortification towards self, and of love towards others. Pride and presumption. (It is good to have visitors – one’s faults stand out in the company of others.) Self-will, desire not to be corrected, to have one’s own way. The desire in turn to correct others, impatience in thought and speech.The remedy is recollection and silence Dorothy Day (1897-1980),

Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise.. A. W. Tozer (1879-1963)

It must be admitted that a few clergymen glory in the contrast between their status and that of ordinary Christians. They accept obeisance as a natural right; they monopolize public praying; they learn how to keep themselves in the limelight. There is something about the pastoral office which makes the temptation to egocentricity especially powerful. This is partly because the successful preacher is regularly praised to his face. His mood seems a far cry from that of Christ when He girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His followers.

… Elton Trueblood (1900-1994)

Atomic Child

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was 80 years ago when the City of Hiroshima was destroyed. It was exactly my first birthday. August 6th 1945. I just saw a friend holding his one year old child Sunday and him toddling off after he reached for my hand. D day was exactly two months before I was born, June 6th 1944. Those things got me to thinking about my life and betrayal by the world. It led to war and destruction and the loss of millions of lives. Lust and greed fueling it.

As many of us, I was betrayed. My best friend in the Navy did so. My first love and fiance left me secretly. The girl I was in love with when I lived on the West Bank had a sexual liaison while we were staying with my father in California. Dad was betrayed by my mother. When my girl visited an ‘old friend’ while we were at my Dad’s, she slept with that friend. My dad’s response when she returned late that night was: “they all do that” It got to be normal life for me.

I grew wary and found it impossible to get involved with anyone, especially women. I never knew why really, as many of us do, we just think these sorts of things are normal life. There are details of my life about these things that I do not reveal, they are too personal and harsh. Even for this writing to the public and my family. Just like the world’s history. I will some day.

Then today, while I was reading about WWII and all of these thoughts were prancing about in my mind, The sun came through the building storm clouds. It shone right on my face as I sat in the living room with a history book in my lap. I heard: “ I was betrayed by my friend too, and I know exactly what you have been through” Comforted and even cradled I was overwhelmed. “I will never betray nor forsake you” Words from the creator of everything.

The last time I was betrayed was the newspaper Editor that printed these sorts of things I write. Too much Jesus and we will have to let you go he said. I am comforted and affirmed now when I remember my response: “Will you then allow me a final column to tell my readers I can’t write a column every week, that it’s a burden”? It was printed and I did not betray him and the owner of the paper. It was a lie of course, but it seemed like the decent thing to do. After all, they would not print the truth of the matter.

The friend that sold me out for his addiction in the navy converted to faith in our savior Jesus shortly after I visited him on his dead bed in Maryland. I was permitted to see him pass into Eternity on the exact time he died thousands of miles away. He told me as he disappeared , “It’s better than you said!” It was a turning point in my life to say the least of it. His wife was comforted as I spoke with her later that day.

There is no room to prevaricate about the state of the world now, it is filled with anger and betrayal and is not surprising to me. The words I heard when that glow of the Son warmed my face this morning are timeless and eternal truth. I am loved and held forever. Norm Peterson “the Gator”

Dream Connection

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

How do you teach a method of connection? What do we connect with? Or who do we connect with? The biggest question for me what is connection? The topic just ‘happened’ to come up in one of the myriad books that I leave around the house. You know, or are, one of those people that read when eating, before sleeping, when waiting for those two things. Skimming, flipping through chapters, some of the pages dog-eared in a good place to start again.

So, the topic of connection was in one of those scattered piles throughout the house and it stopped a thought train with screeching brakes and a trail of sparks on the tracks of otherwise placid reading. Connection. Why would I want to connect with someone I have never seen, but just read about? A connection in a dream about Hemingway I just had? Why try to connect with a great author that has left the world decades ago? There is a way to connect with him by reading his writing and taking notes. Was the dream a connection with my memory, one which I have been missing or ignoring for decades? The dream seemed to be from my best friend who told me important things.

It was a vivid dream. I was in the big city and drove by a splendid home that triggered a memory of connection. I went up the sidewalk to the familiar home and was welcomed in by several people that knew me. The memory of living across the street and being mentored by Hemingway when I was a boy flooded in. The books from the fabulous library loaned, hours sitting with ‘Papa’ and being told, someday I would be writing truth with skill to make images with words. Stories of adventure. The dream ended with one of the daughters telling me it was so good to see him again and would I like to stay for a while?

There was a loud noise that sounded like explosions and I was awoken suddenly with a strong wish to remember the dream by writing it down. At four in the morning. (The sound sounded like the summer people having fun blowing things up.) It was only the family dog.

It seemed the dream was a message from my self. Deep in rem sleep, dredging up ‘connections’ that surfaced as reality sleeping dormant. Or was the dream a connection with someone else that had spoken it? I write about life, but to develop a story like this one was ego and wish palpable. Still remembering the dream knew what the connection was and with who.

It was encouragement and confirmation from the greatest authors ever known. “Keep writing, stay steady and tell the truth . Don’t try and make your writing original, write the truth and and write the story as best you can and originality will come forth.” Indeed, the question of ‘what is truth’ was asked centuries ago and the answer was silence. The truth of that life was obvious and the words written about that life still capture and hold us. When truth is revealed, it is a beauty sought.

Sometimes only five words can take your breath away and be remembered forever. Connection. As coming awake again from the dream of life. The reason, the hope, the answer to so many questions. The book that can be read again and again that speaks and shakes our inner man with it’s truth. A book worth dreams awake or asleep. Dreams of destiny and worth.

I was stopped on the sidewalk soon after this column was printed and directly asked; “did you ever live in Spain where Earnest lived?” I answered yes and he furrowed his brow and walked away. I did not mention that when I lived in Spain I was in prison for six months for evading a murderer and running from the military police. It affirmed the column’s legitimacy for that man. It was fun to tell that truth, I left off the prison detail.

As Johnny Cash said: “Sooner or later, everyone comes back to Jesus. The Bible, It’s pretty good.

Norm Peterson

God’s Grease Monkeys

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was at a time when I was very enthusiastic about community service. Problem was, I didn’t have a clue why or what that looked like. From earliest days, I was a loner, growing up selfish and smug. Protected. Stuck in the usual ways. Find pleasure and personal peace. The voracious appetite for self importance and recognition. We all have that, it’s impossible to see real land when in the middle of the ocean. We feel alone and adrift most of our lives. A lifeboat existence.

I was an automotive shop owner/ mechanic, and and doing well at making a living . By an amazing coincidence, I chanced to see the head line on the Sunday edition of the Star and Tribune. ‘God’s Grease Monkeys’ Perfect fit! New to the faith, eager, and I had the usual images of what that meant. Be nice and get extra points for doing something for a stranger. It was in the Bible somewhere. God likes that stuff after all. God himself is pretty nice and that seemed to be the ticket for theological success!

I read on and the article outlined a garage in the cities down south that repaired cars for people that had little or no money. Perfect! A shoe-in for me. I picked out a few hand tools, a code reader (that would show the one’s in charge I was a professional and serious)

I showed up and they gladly put me to work. An oil change and a headlight bulb or two for starters. On the floor of the shop. Later, the next month, the staff figured I could do more complex things and assigned me a brake job and a tail light. That helpful team even stuffed my Volvo station wagon with food that was part of the Grease Monkey outfit! “Spread it around your neighborhood” were the instructions.

Right. My neighborhood is primarily lake homes and farmers. We ate most of it and gave some bagels to a fellow mechanic in town. Isn’t that what freezers are for? It was good food, veggies, breads and canned goods. Once a month I went down there, I connected with another mechanic as well and we developed a friendship.

I was racking up God points and then the inevitable for all car ministries occurred: The repeat ‘customer’ with yet another car, and another after that. Judgment time. Point blank. No mercy. The Ministry was buying the parts too. Tires, wheel bearings, blower motors, filters, window regulators (look it up) and lots of light bulbs.

When questioned about those things, often the car owners response would be “oh, I sold that one you fixed a while back” There was disappointment and later, much later, I realized they are just like me. Then I Felt used and ineffective. Just like I usually felt. God seemed silent on the matter, and I needed help in hearing Him. After all, they couldn’t afford to fix their vehicles and this was a way out of financial distress.

The concept of a ministry involving my repair skills still made sense though, and a short time later I started another one, closer by with my new church and friends. Same thing happened. ‘Why am I doing this?’ “I’m just being used!” This time I was ready to listen to the Lord.

“Correct Norm, you are being used. What are you learning, what is happening to you? Do you find joy no matter what, do you connect with Me and talk to me? I will show you things beyond your dark curtain that will give you great joy! It started to dawn on me that I was not praying, not abiding and not listening to Jesus. Why am I here? Good question!

I got better after that. It took some time, and eventually I began to get serious about these things and started seeing and listening to Jesus. The attention I always craved was always there, from Him. I surrendered leadership. Not instantly as most of you know. Eventually I began witnessing to the owners of the cars we were repairing. Now the question came from the car owners! “why are you doing this?” There was, indeed an answer now, a somewhat surprising answer to everyone. “Because Got told me to”. Most people just take these sorts of ministries in stride and as I did, never wondered why anyone would help a stranger like me.

Later now, the car and food ministries are gone for me and my family and other ways to serve have taken their place. Volunteers are always needed in many God centered ministries and those ministries are everywhere.

Examine your own life and you too will find many times and places that the Lord has used people to help and steady your walk (and drive!) As a favorite song goes: “open the eyes of my heart Lord, open the eyes of my heart, I want to see You, I want to hear You”

Guidance as I was guided, to yet another new area of my life. It seems that happens to everyone. It always has. We are led to places and people flow towards us as we live. Myself, I am enjoying the humor and strength that our Lord uses with me as He shows me that narrow highway of Holiness that leads me on to Eternities Eternity and His smile.

After all is said and done, that’s why I write about it! It’s getting pretty good. Jack

I Escaped

/ Norman Eric Peterson / 1 Comment

Mine has been an interesting life. So I have been told by people who read what I write.

It seemed normal life to me, what did I know about life? A weirdo and a geek and I have written a few columns about myself. Inward when outward isn’t working. Reasonable when most people are not.

Brilliant and surprising and not understood why. Asperger syndrome, a variation of Autism, a precursor. Advanced in mathematics asking grade school teachers about soil stratification. Then obtaining my novice class amateur radio license in grade school. General class a year later

Dad knew I was different and catered to my interests. The rest of my family stayed at arms length when I acted normally by my thoughts. Knowing the joke about Santa Claus as I waited obediently in my room for my father to knock on the front door and great the great Satan in his red suit with warmth to fool us. I knew Santa clause was evil for his behavior and indifferent attitudes towards people with anti social tendencies. I was used to it after all. Truth is truth.

I would have welcomed coal as we burned it in our basement stove with all it’s steam punk gauges and clinking doors.

As I age, my brilliance has faded somewhat but the wariness remains. Conversation and acceptance always seem to go hand in hand. I like genuine smiles and try to do so. I engage people in places that are not usual for most and use ruses of my own to do so. I complement a vehicle that I see and engage the owner with a complement on it. Conversations fascinate me and I always learn something. Mechanical or even better. I have learned to ask names and even origin of different ones. I guess at the country of origin of their name and this begins the game I reveal to them. It softens the spirit of strangers and lets them know they are seen.

“you’re so friendly and easy to be with!” That is what I have been developing over decades and the wish to bridge the chasm between me and the world. As the improbability device on the Pot of Gold in the hitchhiker movie says: “now approaching normality 2 to 1 and falling”

I am at a loss for words often to express myself and that is why I write and edit over and over till it makes sense to readers. I put the blame on the world and then exalt the cure for us all by mentioning Jesus who is healing me of many things. Mental and physical, I love to pray on the spot for anyone that needs and wants it. It’s a gift from God who has gifted me to do so.

After all, the first thing of communication is to seek it. The early days of my amateur radio were obvious to me. In Morse code the first call tapped out to speak with someone you do not know are the letters, CQ. Seek You. Makes sense to someone looking to communicate with the world. It’s pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe to K0JMV.

Never betray Love

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It was a child’s romance. A romance brought into full bloom by trauma and the need to escape it somehow. Fresh from the military that literally tortured me, my path beckoned me strongly to dissolve myself in marriage, somehow.

The only job I had when I got home after discharge was performing songs learned from warm and scratchy vinyl recordings. Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Carolyn Hester. The job at the YMCA for youth was better right away than the red line brig in Spain and got me the attention I craved. A brand new Martin D-28 Helped it happen.

At that time the Brazilian rosewood model was an even $400. I bought it right off the exhibition wall at Schmidt music instantly when I came home. I had one shipped overseas a year before and it never showed up and no one knew where it had gone. I had paid the cost and Schmidt’s had the invoice. No charge with hard-shell case ready to play. They even tossed in some strings. I still own it.

I met my fiancé at the YMCA gig and she ditched her date and I drove her home that night. I began to meet her family and she and I became young lovers. I was living in my Mother’s basement and we spent times down there accompanied by the washing machines loud symphonies. An old habit of hers surfaced and she ditched me.

My beloved disappeared. I frantically swam through all the places she should be, and finally, a good friend told me years later that she had run off with an actor from the famous Guthrie. She was a ticket taker at the theater and easy sexual prey to be taken by a Lothario of the stage. After all, better prospects than a recently discharged service man living in his mother’s basement.

Stunned again by sudden betrayal, I went deep into the rabbit hole and gave up the promised good life and got involved with another vet who hooked me up with some heroin smugglers in California.

(check out Motorcycle pilgrimages on gatorsgracenotes.com)

Money, a mansion in the hills of Berkeley and using my Military skill set, I became a member of the air force of drug smugglers. I was an experienced radio operator and built a portable air to ground Ground to ground radio. Flight plans were Mexico to the California desert.

We had a steady customer in The City, Sly stone and the musicians that lived there. My pilot gave me the magic white powder that the whole team was using. I thought, wow what a gift.

Heroin gave me relief from all the pain of life. The poppy blooming in my core became the path to victory. No back pain, no mental anguish, no fears. Just nirvana and total oblivion. Betrayal covered by powder on glass.

Deep into addiction, a voice entered my room in the mansion just as I was getting ready to snort a line of the drug. The voice said Five simple words: “Life or death, choose now” Stupefied and thinking hard about voices from the thin air, I chose life and was instantaneously delivered from my death path. No withdrawal. No craving.

Of course, the swell new job was over and the usual reaction was another betrayal and a narrow escape. I left the flying circus of Berkeley close to the ocean trade, alive and another life came upon me. I lived in my home made camper truck for a while and played that Martin front of Safeway stores. I got rescued again by a friend and finally made it back to Minneapolis.

Back home to a drug free city government gang that drove cabs. I was a Hippie restaurant singer and dishwasher and then got a good job as a steel track worker that finally paid well. The city gang was left for the railroad gang, but Something was awry and had to be done for freedom from the inside pain upon me again. Never trust your heart to another. That was entrenched into my very being, traumas of the past.

Through that old city friend, I found my ex’fiancé’ locked in a mental ward downtown and bluffed my way in posing as a youth pastor to see her. Her father was the senior pastor at Central Lutheran and I knew him from the visits, and meals when I was engaged.

My old lover was heavily drugged and overweight, groggy but she came into focus for a short time and asked me “why are you here?” ‘Because I love you!’ came quicker than thought and the pain of that rejection was over. There is still other trauma within me but I am learning how to quickly recognize it and shut off old learned instincts of survival and to run away from perceived trauma.

The heroin that never lasted and blinded me to the fact that the miracle of deliverance was love. This was Jesus seeing and telling me truth about what I really was. The the light grows slowly but surely. There are plans being revealed to me to take me to places I can’t imagine. Places of trust. Real fulfillment. Reality. Now I am writing columns to others to share that love.

‘Never betray the sword, never betray beauty, and never betray a friend’. It’s a good way to see the life we live as men and warriors of the Word. Freedom from fear and self hatred is a special gift that can only come from our Lord and Savior Jesus.

“I sacrifice the land unto you, all who I love there, and who loved me: I sacrifice this land unto you, and all who I love there, and who loved me; when I have put our seas between them and me, Put Your seas between my sins and thee.

As the trees sap do seek the root below In winter now I go where none but you, the Eternal root of true love I may know.” John Donne ‘Hymn to Christ’

It’s pretty good. Jack Gator

Tolstoy and the Endless Fireworks of Life

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

The flash and flare in the east and it is time. Move away from the comfort and deep sleep, awaken to
dawn. Shut of the alarm clock, rise to the circadian rhythm of my body. Grasp my robe from the hanger on the back of our bedroom door. Close the bathroom door and glance at my tousled hair. A small pleasure in the new toilet seat that lowers itself slowly and doesn’t bang.


There are duties and places to be and now, it’s easier to find things because there is light beginning to arrive from the east. There is a small Brownian movement from the dust and I turn on the coffee maker. Go back in the parlor and open the side draft, rake the coals and put on a few pieces of wood.

I Find the good bread and drop two slices in with the timer set to max. The good bread is heavy. I ponder finding the cash for that upgrade on my cell phone already as I check the wood stove. Can we afford it? After all, everyone in the family has a new phone. Mine is old and I need to be current. It is the state of made things, they are old by the date they are put for sale. New and improved. No ‘good till’ or expired dates on your cell phone, but now I can’t find a screen guard to replace the cracked one. “You have to get a new one, yours is several years old. How much? Only 35 bucks a month forever.

It’s better with the shredded wheat on the shelf, we all know it’s good for a few years on our shelf. Silly thoughts along with dream remnants that linger until they too, pass into the storage area in my mind that is never too full and unavailable now and then.


There is a shuffle and purpose at hand to indeed waken fully and the hot caffeine warms my old ceramic
cup. Carefully, set it down besides the fresh toast and open up a book next to the vitamins and various
pills. The accouterments of morning rituals. The book now at hand is a collection of short stories that take slow reading to understand. Sarte, Sallinger and the rabbit eared current choice is Tolstoy’s ‘The death of Ivan Illych’

Nothing to it. Toast and coffee and a little orange juice to sluice down a hearty meal of existential
writing and with some of the greatest short stories ever written. It’s still early and my son is stirring a
bit. I come to the part of the story when Ivan knows he is dying and no one will be honest with him
about how they feel about it and him. Only a peasant boy tells him the truth.

A quote from la Rochefoucauld is remembered: “One can neither stare long at the sun nor at death” During the war the thought was, it will come quickly It did to that shipmate on the horizon. It was close but I am OK. Next stop, Palma De Mallorca. Great liberty! My acquaintances ship has been sunk over the horizon. Tough luck. Time to celebrate after freedom from with the liberty boat and have a few drinks in his memory.


We go on, inwardly feeling we will live forever and poor old Ivan, it must have been his diet or that he
just wouldn’t go to gymnasium as they advised him so many times. After all, his whist game was more
important to him. There was nothing to be done. and here I am hundreds of years later, dressed for a church funeral service. I am Still in my book and almost awake.

A funeral then to go to. The fact that we are soon to be in that silken and narrow box does not cross our conscience. Even when the preacher tells us we are off the hook by death of Jesus’ sacrifice, we do not comprehend the sacrifice, it’s not totally understood. Tithe well and we might walk as Enoch did and not have to suffer as Ivan illych did. That’s it! The second coming and it will all work out! Don’t worry, be happy.

Death is defeated knowledge lingers and we are all good to go. Mourning seems to have passed us by. Ask not who the bell tolls for, it’s you. Old Ivan, it was his time to go. The rest of our family is up and dressed and we drive a dozen miles to the church for a funeral for a neighbors son.

Is there lunch after this funeral? Should be. It’s good here at the church of endless life. Maybe if I get in line before every one else does! I do not want to miss that apple pie I saw as I walked by the kitchen!

No one knows the hour of our death. People of faith in Jesus know what His resurrection means for us. Still, I like it here and I know my loved ones will have Shiva at the house. I do not like to think about the weeping, just as I wept as the coffin wheeled by me and I reached from my seat and gently prayed as the polished wood slid beneath my extended fingers. A young boy taken from us in tragedy.

Live well, love well and spend a lot of time speaking and listening to our creator that knew us when we were yet to be born. “why me?” “why am I here and what am I to do? I ask of Him. He answers gently. “I knew you would know the joy and sorrows of life and I Like how you write and talk about it and Me. That seems pretty good.

Jack Gator

Who’s Your Friend?

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

“Hey, introduce me” Thinking of all the prefixes quickly to describe the person standing next to you. Uncle, Aunt, child, spouse or parent are the usual choices. We are all faced with that a lot and the easiest one I have found is to say; “We both have the same best friend! That’s how Social situations are the usual place that question is put forth. A gathering. Anywhere really.

If asked we can expound on the situation but it often suffices to settle the polite inquiry. Conversation then can go deeper between the three people. It’s fun to find connections between us. Often it seems serendipitous when mutual discoveries are found.

Some people refer to this as “providential” but to me that sounds like an insurance company.

Many times I have used ‘Miracle’ for so-called chance encounters that are incredible and so complex with place/timing and circumstance, that I like to use the word miracle. Things happen that we can’t explain. I have had plenty of them and have given up on randomness to explain them.

I can tell you about some of the real interesting ones, I have already written of them. They are at my web site publication, ask me and I will give you the location. One of my favorites is the way I met Julie, my precious wife. A miracle, no doubt about it. Undeniable and funny too.

How about you? Do impossibly neat things happen to you that can’t be explained by the Brownian movement of randomness? It happens every day most days for all of us. I look ahead to it. I am willing to venture that is a common occurrence for you too.

Do you have a best friend? Most of us do and of course, as we get older, a lot of them die. Pass away is the polite term for that. My new friend that I share a relationship with as having the same best friend have that in common too. Our best friend died some time ago but is still in our hearts when we talk about Him. He lives on. Eternity is like that. Time can’t stop love nor destroy it.

Talk about miracles! Our mutual best friend didn’t stay dead! He still talks to us. It is very subtle sometimes when we hear from Him. We have to be quiet, real quiet and open in our spirit to Him. No cell phone or text needed. Just listen.

By now, you have figured who our mutual best friend is! The nice part is, He be yours too. He gets around a lot and spends time with many people. Of course, you can ignore Him but the nice part is, He doesn’t get mad when you do. He never forgets anyone and you can talk and listen anytime day or night. No long distance charges. Let me know who your best friend is and chances are, if you have read this to this point, It’s probably the same one as ours. It’s pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe

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A Tap on the Shoulder.

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was always gentle, the touch, almost as though the touch was a memory. At the first time I was surprised, astonished, and did not know who was touching me. I turned and did not know what to say. There was no one there but I knew I was to be never the same. Years upon years passed.

The story of the spoken words, five words with the touch. A healing touch and my life changed. Another five words decades later. A confirming and a beginning of knowledge and my life was now further to destiny. The fire within fanned into flame to show where the small fire had begun to glow.

I was running at the start, always running away from the pain that would not leave. All my life that pain and absence of love was the matrix of my heart. No one would ever get in again, it was too obvious that no one really cared. It was taken for truth that I was beyond all love. Trust was only a word about banking somehow or contracts for an exchange of some kind. I was abused as a child, running away only to find gangs and international smuggling with the usual weapons and anger. Run, they will torture you or kill you. Run and hide once again. Be wary and keep close watch on your heart.

There was a betrayal of an effort of love, love lost and cast away as a raft on the ocean far from land. No compass nor sextant nor even a chart to show what was ahead. Just adrift and always in the middle of the ocean once my land went beyond the horizon. No hope and only death to look ahead to. It was what I put away in a lock box in my heart, thinking out of sight, out of mind. That box was transparent. Most saw in it through my eyes. I knew it was safe in there.

So, adrift in the ocean of pity, I did not know what path I was on but I knew something was happening to me. Getting fed something good and drinking clear good water. No idea where these things were coming from. After all, adrift on an ocean does not include drinkable water. Even tears are salty.

Finally a meeting was available to see the one true love that betrayed me. She was in a bad way, in a hospital of recovery from her own trauma. Drugs used to dull the pain, like a path I also chose before five words began the small fire in my heart and saved me from a bad end. “Life or death, Choose now” Words spoken audibly in an empty room as I was staring at a line of heroin. Obviously life was chosen. The addiction was gone and there was no withdrawal. A miracle that took decades to see who said those five words. Our Lord Jesus. There was something ahead for my life, indeed there is.

Bluffing my way into the hospital as a youth minister working with her father who was the senior pastor at Central Lutheran, I managed to see my lost beloved before me. She was in a haze of recuperative drugs as she sat up on the bed in her room, clothed in hospital scrubs. Dazed, confused and finally focusing on the one she betrayed and had discarded the love we had. She had moved away with a Guthrie actor and hid her engagement ring. Now Right in this moment, I knew this time was different. Only the tenderness for her was in my heart. I again chose life.

She awakened and recognized me and asked; “Why are you here?” Without hesitation, I spoke the words of healing for her too. “Because I love you!” I Said loudly surprising them both and then I left soon thereafter.

I had showed her the wood camper I now lived in and had driven two thousand miles to see her. It was disappointingly impossible for us to see through the recessed windows of the locked area. The small fire in my heart was being fanned into flame. There were my habits still to overcome but the seed of love was beginning to grow within me and the marriage that came decades later to a wonderful woman was right and true. I never knew what happened to the girl I had loved in the hospital. Rumors from old friends then said she was now living in New Orleans.

I found her phone number and asked her to send me the engagement ring I gave her at Theodore Worth park just after discharge from the Navy in 1967. I had met her at the YMCA when I was playing guitar as a paid entertainer.

Sometimes the fear and trauma would return but my wife helped me and with a counselor that said those memories and fears of the past were just that. Eventually I realized there was no danger with betrayal, violence and guns of the past. A word or even a tone of voice was the trigger to be recognized as just a vapor of evil, trying once again to destroy my life with fear. It can happen to you.!

The burning one with fire in His eyes gives us the knowledge that we are, indeed, loved and worthy to tell others of this discovery within our hearts. My heart lock-box was opened and I have never been the same since. The flame of eternal love is burning bright with the Fire in the eyes of Christ. It’s pretty good.

Norman Peterson / Jack Gator scribe