In Nomine Penguin...

Fifteen years.  Can you freaking believe it?  I mean, I guess I have no choice to believe it; all the telltale signs are there.  The hair is a slight greyer, the eyes are a tad weaker, and the soul is a bit more weathered.  Oh, and there’s the obnoxious fact that the calendar stares at me with its pretentious “2012” in large, friendly letters on the cover.  It doesn’t even have the common decency to tell me not to panic.  Jerk.

I look back on that time and wonder what the hell happened to me.  It’s not completely bad, mind you.  It’s simply that if you’d asked me in 1997 about the possibility of me sitting in my robe in a military hotel room in Okinawa while drinking scotch and lamenting to an unknown audience about my trepidations concerning my situation, I’d have told you it’s about as likely as glittering vampires becoming “mainstream”.  Seriously…what the fuck is up with that?

Life didn’t make me the theatre/theology major I was supposed to be back then.  It didn’t put me on the path of performances, plays, preaching and prayer.  Instead it sent me into the Air Force, trained me to speak a foreign language, gave me random trips around the world, and threw in two broken marriages (but one beautiful son).  It went against all expectations into the man writing the words that you see before you. 

I say “Life” didn’t make me into the man I was supposed to become, but that’s not entirely true is it?  For one, I still have a flair for the dramatic.  For two, I look damn good in character.  For three, I am a preacher in a way, right?  And this is my cathedral.  You are my congregation.

And even so, it was none but I who walked my path here.  Many of you have guided.  Some of you drove for a while.  But in the end it was I who traveled to this destination.  Personal responsibility is one of the core tenets of the Ranting Penguin. 

So here I am making the personal decision to write again after almost 15 years of not writing anything meaningful.  It will be part philosophy, part rant, part therapy, but all me.  You might argue it won’t be meaningful to you.  In fact, there’s a good chance that it won’t mean anything to you.  So be it.  But the wise can always find meaning in even the ranting of a madman, and the daft will find nothing where the secrets of the world are revealed.

Leave your expectations here, and find within what you will.