As a kid I would try and play but for some reason I would always find a way to drain the ball right down the middle of the flippers. Much later in life I realized that you could actually bump the machine while playing giving me the ability to change physics thereby making the predictable unpredictable again.

The only problem with this behavior is that pinball manufacturers figured out that players would be doing this so they included tilt detectors into their design.

These pendulums hang inside the bracket and when the table and player get a little too rambunctious contact each other  and “tilt” the game.

The trick was knowing how far one could push the game before the game pushed back.

I think life has a built in tilt meeter but most people never try to change the rules of the game to see how far they can go before a tilt. Tilting on a pinball machine results in a lost game but I don’t thing tilting in life results in any real loss. I am not talking about a deliberate tilt like breaking the law, or abandoning your vows, or walking away from life. I am talking about the fine line most tilts occur on. The line when the ball is going to drain away anyway and you are simply trying to not lose the game.

Those times when you have done everything right and pushed the flippers at the right time and created the best scenario you can to win and physics deals you a shot right down the middle. Those moments when no matter how you play by the rules the outcome results in loss. Those times when you realize the rules and the game itself is designed not for you to win only to lose.

Those are the moments when lifting a corner or nudging a side or bumping a table are worth the chance in that successfully pushing up to the tilt means you can play the game a little longer.

After all it’s our quater, our moment, our life and our turn at the game.

Speaking of game, why are we so certain the game we are playing is fair anyway?

Looking over the last couple months of my life I have come to realize one thing.

Nobody knows how to play the game.

Not Ministers, not Politicians, not friends, not anybody. Nobody knows the way the game will play out and yet we all play by preconceived rules that seem destined to result in failure.

We think the game is real so we strive for a dream no one can guarantee by working at jobs no one can secure and worry ourselves to sleep and wake. We run after shiny things and collide against bumpers that propel us at speeds we can’t control and just when we think we have caught our breath, we are flipped back up into the game. The clatter of the game deafens us. The blaze of the lights blinds us. The momentum and design of the game launches us and we colide and fly and zip and crash and fear the drain and do whatever we can to never know the darkness of slipping past the flippers.

We consider the tilt during times of despair but rely on determination to play the next round even more perfectly. This time we will avoid that bumper and this time we will not flip up into that rail and this time we will definitely not fall into that hole because all it does is add more balls to the game which makes it that much harder to win.

We convince ourselves that we must win by playing by rules that are unwilling to bend and in the middle of it a nagging question tends to rise.

If this is just a game – why am I not having any fun?

The question is impossible to ignore when traveling at blurring speeds and colliding against events that push back. The question becomes an accusation when our last quarter is spent and we face the reality that all we have worked for this round is about to go down the drain.

Is this really just a game?

I say it is.

Doesn’t life start out consummated in the throws of passion and desire birthed out of intimate love? Isn’t our arrival on scene anticipated and celebrated and filled with hope and wonder and celebration? Don’t we spend the beginning of  life full of wonder and discovery of new sensations and experiences of love and anticipation and beauty? I know there are exceptions to this, but the majority of us knew this beginning. Those that didn’t know such a start still have a creator that spins wildly over them and sings a song of love in the night.

What am I trying to say in my meandering? What is this artist trying to convey through words gleefully interrupted by almost three year old hugs around my neck as I sit at home and type about pinball?

Play the game but remember it’s just a game and like most games the rules can be broken and the game changed mid course.

When all you can see is lose lose no matter what you do, stop and go for the tilt.

You can always play another ball and you can always start another game because the game is yours and we are always moving from less to more.

We are loved more than we can ever hope to grasp and even if we fail the game, we will never fail the life.

And finally, life is so much more than just trying not to tilt.

It’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of the event and lose the perspective of what it means to approach world events with a Kingdom world view. At the risk of sounding crazy to some I need to make a declaration about this event,

God had nothing to do with it.

I have many friends that are on the fence about the notion of a higher power and the actions and subsequent revelry from Christians about the killing of a man only serves to solidify their position that we have all lost our minds.

We paint this picture of God as good for us and bad for you unless you believe us. Singing God Bless America at the news of one of His lost kids murder is particularly troubling and only serves to show that the Church has lost her way in America. We have dumbed down our faith to a jingle, a catch phrase, a bumper sticker or a gruesome movie about the murder of Jesus.

The thing is, we need to get back to the murder of Jesus at times like this for it is the murder of a just man that sets us free from the guilt and shame of the murder of an unjust man like Osama. There is no argument from me that Osama was responsible for horrible acts of evil but his actions according to his belief system were as just as our actions to stop him.

Not to condone any of it, but his judgement of our actions started long before 9-11 and his response to those actions were only the beginning of our judgement of his. He was retaliating by force in the same way we retaliated by force and likewise someone else will retaliate by force down the road for him unless we go to the cross.

Short of the cross, justice is never enough. Justice is never satisfied because there is always someone crying out for mercy on the other side of justice and since God is just and merciful, justice and mercy must be satisfied.

Justice is my demand for someone to pay the price – mercy is my demand for someone else to pay my price.

The cross is the place to pour out our need for justice. Our hate, sorrow, venom, anger, hopelessness, revenge, questions, fear, everything we feel toward the person that wronged us. We need to hate Jesus. We need to hate Him because that is the only way the power and cycle of retaliation can ever be broken.

If you must hate – hate Jesus. If you must kill – kill Jesus. If you must have revenge – take it out on Jesus.

It’s on the cross of Calvary, the place of the judgement and murder of Jesus, where mercy and justice can coexist. The beauty of the cross is that justice and mercy are fully met so the judgement of God toward us, all of us, can only be love.

God is not angry. God is not on our side exclusively. God does not hate Islam. God does not hate anyone.

God so loved the world He gave His Son as a way to set us free from the cycle of retaliation.

Take it to the cross.

God can handle it there.

Seems like this time of year the “Rohr Side” starts getting fidgety and anxious. I guess it is spring fever and even though I have been outside the snow belt for nearly a decade and a half, I can’t help but feel the need to change.

The older I get the less undulations I experience and the predictability of these feelings and their resolutions have become a welcome addition to the cycle that is my life. It used to be sweeping changes were in order but I quickly learned that major changes take a toll on the body mind and spirit and those types of declarations are better left said than done. None the less, I am making changes but they are more mere course corrections than destination changes.

As I sit in my newly appointed office in our home listening to Emily sooth herself to sleep with her version of Itsy Bitsy Spider I am reminded that the worst of my days are really the best of what could have been. What a privilege it is to be able to ponder, to ask what, to dream, to consider options. I sit comfortably with my back to the world with no trepidation or angst that something could slip up behind me and end it all. I live in the best of times and even though the worst of times are just beyond my awareness, I purpose to make the most of the gift of peace that has been given me. Perspective is everything and as I consider the fate of thousands in Japan and Libya suddenly my “problems” are in search for another noun. They really aren’t problems as much as they are choices and I would do well to remember that better.

My choices seem to filter down to but a few and have done that for as long as I can recall feeling one needed to be made. The issue with these choices has always been one of economics which really is a poor thing to be making decisions by. Economics are important but their weight always appears larger on the scale when it comes to my thinking. I trade financial security for happiness all to readily primarily because my understanding of financial hardship growing up was always from a place of lack. That is not an indictment on my past, it is a realization that I could not see the hand of provision that sustained us for what it was.

That is a difficult world view to overcome especially as my daughter sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the room down the hall. Providing is such an important value that I often get confused on just who is providing. I take for granted that my expertise in Information Technology or Music or Graphic Design is really not my source and even though I have moments of recognizing God provides, I quickly fall back to depending on me. I don’t like to use the word, but it feels like I can’t or won’t launch blindly into the thing that brings me life at the perceived or real chance that it will take a quality of life away from those I love.

Like that little one singing I’ve got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down in my Heart from two rooms down, there is simply nothing I would hold back for her, her sister, her brother, her mother if it means they have it better. I can put up with quite a bit if my discomfort increases their comfort and especially when the discomfort I feel is primarily emotional. However, my overall happiness is also tied directly to their comfort level because if I am angry and agitated and out of rest no amount of financial gain can make up for that. They have to live with me and when I see the cup as half empty, I tend to insist everyone else agree with my assessment. Again, my worst days would gladly be traded by a large percentage of the world so I cringe a little giving myself the liberty to express it this way but I must express it because this is the life my forefathers struggled for.

Just as I would do anything for the little one who should be napping right now but is barking like a dog and blowing kisses to herself, the hopes and dreams of all that have come before me is depending on me becoming fully me. They dreamed and moved from generation to generation to make a better life for their family. The drive is always for better and ultimately that leads to dreaming which leads to things that can only be attained in times of peace and plenty.

So I dream and fight to see these dreams become real in me.

For all those that have come before me, I struggle to realize my dreams.

They are depending on me.

There are many good things about technology but it seems there are equally as many bad things aout technology. I think the good things outweigh the bad things in results but the older I get the more the scale seems to be tipping.

With the advent of facebook and decline of actual work in America, there seems to be a never-ending list of new ways to connect, communicate, sell, annoy, stalk, and frustrate. I don’t claim to know everything that is out there but suffice it to say, the newest “must have” technologies are those designed to consolidate.

One to rule them all.

My problem with this is my livelihood depends in part with may ability to navigate the tide of social media on the web. For the most part I enjoy this as it is interesting to see how far a single post or tweet can move beyond the point of origin. The easier the better and connectivity has developed to such a high level, I dare say most people can do everything they need to by way of communication with a twitter account. That single tweet can hit an endless list of websites and feed as long as the paths to each site have been correctly created. In fact, this post can be sent to Twitter and in turn Twitter will update the rest of the world in seconds. Literally.

Most days my tweets are little more than status updates which are actually easier to send from Foursquare or Facebook. It seems everybody wants to know a few key things about me, where I am, where I went, and eventually, what I bought. Apart from that, I am really not that interesting and trying to figure out how best to present my uninteresting life has become more of my life than my actual life.

Wait, I think we just created digital schizophrenia.

The problem with digital schizophrenia is I wonder if the only way out of it is to eventually fragment the connection? Fragmentation is directly opposed to the current push of greater connectivity. What a strange world we are creating for ourselves.

No wonder I feel so out of sorts when I work on this stuff. I am creating a virtual prison where the idea of who I am is more important than the reality of what I am. Our most important online interactions today are with those who judge us by what we do not who we are.

Icky.

I just realized the price of social acceptance might be a little too high.