My DA Chief and I have been conversing.  A long story, but an unlikely friendship until it all clicks.  Life’s strange like that.

I told him about the phrases I made the kids memorize.  The ones that guided me and what I tried to live up to.  They show up in my stories and life.  At the risk of being repetitive:

1.  Strong Brave Kind

2.  Quicker Tougher Smarter 

3.  Observe Orient Decide Act

4.  Better to Die on Your Feet than to Live on Your Knees (the boy questions this one a lot)

I told Chief that I probably had to add a fifth about God.  He replied that would complete the set. So…

5.  Trust God

The shortest, simplest, and for me, the hardest.  When I reflect on the journey, I see so many reasons not to do this.  Yet, so many reasons to.

It’s not my favorite movie or book, but the Life of Pi is instructive.  Pi as a boy survives a shipwreck and is interviewed by insurance agents to decipher what really happened.  Long story short, one version is magical and beautiful.  The other is frankly just brutal and cynical.  

At the end, a writer being told the story by an adult Pi is given a choice as to which version is the true one – he chooses the first version – also chosen by the insurance agents.  Pi then concludes “And so it goes with God.”

So we get to choose.  

Was God a monster (not all are bad I must venture)?

Was He absent, uncaring, weak (probably my biggest charge)?

Or was He good, powerful, and loving as claimed and taught?

It depends on the day, sometimes by moment.  But I think overall, I will choose beauty over brutality.

Postscript

There are two other phases added after I initially wrote this.

6. Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

7. Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.