• If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September through May, you may live in Indiana.
• You see people wearing camouflage at social events, including weddings.
• If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t even work there, you may live in Indiana.
• If you’ve worn shorts and a jacket at the same time, you may live in Indiana.
• If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you may live in Indiana.
• If “vacation” means going anywhere south of Fort Wayne for the weekend, you may live in Indiana.
• If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Indiana.
• If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in Indiana.
• If you have switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ in the same day and back again, you may live in Indiana.
• If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you may live in Indiana.
• If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both doors unlocked, you may live in Indiana.
• If you carry jumpers in your car and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in Indiana.
• If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you may live in Indiana.
• If the speed limit on the highway is 55 mph -you’re going 80 and everybody is passing you, you may live in Indiana.
• If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in Indiana.
• If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction, you may live in Indiana.
• If you have more miles on your snow blower than your car, you may live in Indiana.
• If you find 10 degrees “a little chilly”, you may live in Indiana.
• Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to your blue spruce.
• Down south means Kentucky to you.

This picture was, and still is, the most meaningful image I came across on the afternoon of 9.11.01

I was shaving.  Dallas, Texas.  Tuesday.  the 11th of September.  2001.

Running a bit late for work I turned on the news as I was getting ready.  Both towers were in flames.  There was speculation about other targets, buildings, fires, and planes.

They kept replaying the footage of the ‘explosions’ at the Towers.  At moments not even sure they had been planes that hit the building.  Everything was happening too fast.  Live.

I picked up the pace.  Then, as I watched, the South Tower fell.

At that moment the entire country experienced a collective moment of dissonance. disbelief. separation from self, reality.

for a moment, an entire nation failed to breathe.  hearts skipped a beat.  shock.  adrenaline.

the world seemed to slow on it’s axis.  coming to a halt.

for a moment.

then slowly speeding up again, we all tried to digest a lifetime’s worth of emotions in the space of single moment.

warp speed.

from that moment forward my memories of September 11th are less like a fluid sequence of actions and thoughts more like a staccato recollection of emotions.  a machine gun like barrage of pictures loosely strung together with sounds and feelings.

the phone call to mom on the way to work to say i was ok.  she was worried because i worked at a huge church in a large city.  she wasn’t sure we wouldn’t be targeted.

a hastily formed meeting with pastors and media staff to plan for the crowds.  we didn’t invite anyone but we instinctively knew they’d come.  they did.

standing outside the building, earbud in place, watching all that entered.  half security, half abandonment.

opening the sanctuary for prayer.  choosing music. selections from michael w. smith’s freedom project.  the title only now seems appropriate and sarcastic.

a mighty fortress is our god.  a hymn.  it seemed to fit the need of our soul.

a hastily edited video of stills from the war zone once known as new york city.

a stirring message from the only person, other than the president and the anchor, we wanted to hear from that day.  our pastor.

crowds.  crowds in church like no time before or since.

an openness.  an openness to light.  to darkness.  to god.  to hate.

an comfortable awareness that our souls were showing.  an awareness that would only later become uncomfortable

patriotism.  of the sort that had not been, and soon would not be, acceptable.

unity.

In 2003, I wrote this about that day:

“Two years ago today, everything changed. Early that morning the entire media department huddled in my boss’s office for prayer. At that time we didn’t know why the planes had hit the buildings… we weren’t even sure that more buildings weren’t soon to follow. Could Dallas be next? There were SO many unanswered questions, yet there was one thing we knew for certain: God was in control. The ensuing hours and days were long and arduous. We experienced great highs as thousands of unchurched seekers came through our doors. There were also tremendous lows as we cried alongside the hundreds of hurting people who stopped by the church hoping to find healing for emotional wounds.In crisis we cry out for a connection with our Creator. This September 11th, I hope that you will take a moment to remember that dark day. Many of those who filled our pews two years ago are still unchurched and destined for an eternity in hell. For Christians, 9/11 should not be an occasion for political maneuvering or “God and Country rallies”, it should instead push us toward inner spiritual revival and action.”

Where were you?

but more importantly… where are you now.

Since that first run two years ago, I’ve logged:

1590 total miles
272,376 calories burnt

or, about 15 miles per week… for two years.

• Longest run:  20.6 miles, last long run before the marathon I never raced
• Most miles in a week:  42 miles
• Most miles in a month:  107.4

Someday, I’ll run a marathon.  Until then, you can catch up with me down the road.  Thank you Lord for the ability and opportunity to pound the pavement.

Christmas Eve 2009 changed our lives forever.  Bill’s massive stroke made clear to us why doors had previously closed.  We instinctively knew that our best efforts were to be spent being ‘all in’ for our immediate family and church family.  We did not know how long our tour of duty would be but we knew that for the moment our place was at Mountaintop.  We jumped into the trenches with joy and a hearts that were listening for God’s guidance.

Hours turned in to days, days to weeks, and weeks to months.   Time marched on.

Behind the scenes, our family life was a mixture of pleasure and pain.  We fervently prayed for Bill’s life and fought for his recovery as we walked moment-by-moment up an imposing mountain.  Sometimes pushing him, sometimes pulling him, always giving our best.

Even at the low points we saw miracles from the hand of God in the midst of great unknown.

And then, again at the most seemingly unlikely of times, God’s gentle voice was reminding us that we had other work to do on his behalf.  There were other mountains to climb and valleys to endure.  “But God, surely our work here cannot be done… there is much left to do!” Some plant, others water, but it is God who must give the increase.

Have thine own way, Lord.

Through a series of twists and turns God led us to a ministry that, simply put, clicked.  Our gifts fit their needs and their passion fit our hopes.  But more importantly, we felt God smiling as if to say, “This is it.  This is what I have prepared you for, and prepared for you.”

Yes, Lord.

Sunday evening, Willoughby Hills Friends Church of Cleveland, Ohio voted to call me as their Senior Pastor.  It is with great honor and joy that Sally and I accept the call.  The journey to this moment took us down roads that we would perhaps otherwise not have immediately taken.  But God gently guided us to this point in our ministry and we have seen his blessings every step of the way.

Sally and I are excited about the new adventure and the opportunity to take new ground for the kingdom.  We will greatly miss our family, friends, and church community in Birmingham, but we know that He who began a good work at Mountaintop will carry it through!

“And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” – 1 TIMOTHY 1:12

Because it was 1986–and few schools had closed-circuit television systems in those days–we were listening to the prep and countdown to the launch of the Challenger shuttle by way of FM radio over the school’s intercom system.  I can remember the excitement as though it were yesterday… the dreamer in me wondering what it must be like to ride a rocket into space.  Would we get to see them walk on the moon?  Might we one day venture into space ourselves?

I can still hear the voice of Steve Nesbitt (the NASA public affairs officer who was the public voice detailing the flight of the Challenger) in my head.  The launch was proceeding smoothly when, at 72-seconds in, Mission Control said “Challenger, go with throttle up,” and Challenger answers back, “Roger, go with throttle up.”

*BOOM*

Breaking back in in a calm voice, Nesbitt read off his screen: “One minute 15 seconds. Velocity 2,900 feet per second. Altitude nine nautical miles. Downrange distance seven nautical miles.”  There’s a 15-second pause between his last words, “seven nautical miles,” and the next ones.  His shock and silence reverberated from sea to shining sea.  The next words he uttered were the now famous quote: “Flight control is here looking very carefully at the situation… obviously a major malfunction.”

*SILENCE*

Thirty-nine more seconds–an eternity of dead air–then,”We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded.”

———————–

An untold number of children’s lives were irreversibly changed in that moment.

Dreams of becoming an astronaut died.

Many who would have been explores would now choose safer paths.

Perhaps, even the hopes of a nation died that day.  The Space Program was never the same.

The explosion of the Challenger was the first high-tech catastrophe to unfold on live TV.

Adding to the anguish was the young audience: Schoolchildren everywhere had tuned in to watch McAuliffe become the first schoolteacher and ordinary citizen bound for space.

I was in shock.

That afternoon at home I was glued to the endlessly repeating footage of the explosion, footage that I was seeing for the first time.  I know my mom didn’t want me watching the coverage, but honestly, who could resist?

And yet, in a way, the Challenger was upstaged.

President Ronald Reagan was to give his State of the Union address that night. Instead, he postponed the speech for a week and appeared on national television to pay tribute to the crew, a tribute that lasted 4-minutes and 5 seconds but, like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, used brevity to lend power.

Reagan, stating his strong belief in the future and necessity of the space program, called them “pioneers” and ended with two lines from the John Magee poem, “High Flight”: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.”

And it was true.  The Challenger was my generation’s JFK moment.  You remember where you were when it happened.  And even today, it still haunts me.

I will never forget them, nor the last time I saw them….

…25 years ago today…

as they slipped the surly bonds of this earth.

Godspeed.

My Grandfather, Delbert Harris, passed away on Sunday, November 7, 2010 during Daylight Saving Time.  I had the honor of performing his funeral.  Here is his eulogy.  Though I tried hard, it is so woefully inadequate in truly describing him…

There are two types of moments in life.  Some moments, you know are life-changing the moment they happen: a first kiss, an ‘I do’, the birth of a baby, a funeral.  But there are other moments that you recognize as life-changing only after many years and miles have separated you from them.  It is these later moments—these unlikely events that never seem important at the time—that often are our favorite memories….

• A good porch swing on a breezy summer evening.
• Fingernails long enough to scratch you.
• The Phipps Gospel program on a Sunday night after Services.
• A bear hug on Christmas morning (especially if there was a skift of snow on the ground).
• Biscuits and gravy on a cold Saturday morning.
• A kiss, on the mouth instead of the cheek.
• Hunting squirrels, or mushrooms, or hearing aids.
• The sound of a tractor. The sound of a tractor stalling.  The sound of a tractor.  The sound of a tractor stalling.  The sound of a…. you get the idea.

These memories seem to replay in our memories in slow-motion… as if, to let them play at full-speed would not give them their due…

The leaves were changing to hues of golden amber and burnt crimson.  The summer breeze that was once warm now seemed unreasonably cool.  The sky was a silky smooth baby blue with wisps of clouds stretching as far as the eye could see.  And yet in this grand beauty, to me there was no reason to care where the clouds stopped or begun, I had everything I needed within arms reach.  My small hands held tightly to the rim of an old tractor that was lumbering down a well-worn path.  The loud drone of the engine wasn’t heard as much as it was felt.  For a moment I allow my eyes to leave the enormous tires that spin mere inches from my body.  Looking up, I catch my grandfather’s gaze.  He was watching me, and the path ahead, but mostly me.

The tractor lumbers ahead, headed toward one of his favorite destinations, a tree that (in his mind) surely needed cutting down.  To be honest, in his mind, I believe that every tree needed cut down.  The only thing he loved more than his peppermint sticks, bonbons, or orange slices was his chainsaw.  I think Grandma ranked a close third.

Anyway.  On this day, a tree needed to die and he was taking ME with him.  It’s the simple events in life that have the most power.

We soon arrived at the tree that may (or may not) have needed felling.  To a 7 year old boy it was a grand example of a tree.  Enormous.  Grandpa set about readying the saw and tree.  I couldn’t help but stand in awe at his skill.  For a man with so little formal education, he was wise.  Wise, but not always smart.  He made sure I was a safe distance from the tree about 10 feet or so, fired up the chainsaw, and went to it.  My mind wondered away to the sweet thought of chocolate chip cookies that I knew Grandma was making at that very moment.  Perhaps for a moment, so did his, because my next memory was the eerily harrowing sound of splintering wood, a sound that only a tree about to crash the ground can make.  It was too soon.  Something was wrong.  The tree wasn’t supposed to fall yet.  I looked at Grandpa, then to the tree, then to Grandpa, and back to the tree.  He looked at me, then to the tree, then to me, and back to the tree.  Now we were both convinced the tree really was falling… and that we were in trouble.  I looked back at him in fear.  He looked back at me, also in fear  (that look, btw, was not comforting grandpa).  He yelled, RUN! And so we ran.  Like a real-life episode of the Three Stooges (which he loved), we ran.  He ran one way.  I ran another.  Fortunately, the tree chose a third.

I’ve never been so scared in my life.  But Grandpa was there, so I knew that no matter what happened, everything would be ok.

You are probably wondering what this story has to do with anything.  Frankly, not much.  But Grandpa liked to tell stories.  So I figured I could too.

I used to spend hours listening to his stories.  In fact, when we were alone I’d encourage him to tell me a few.  It never took much encouragement, and even when he’d tell one I’d heard many times before, I’d still listen as though I was hearing it for the first time.  I loved hearing them, and he surely loved telling them.

Stories about tobacco fields, mules, corn sleds, and hard times.  Oddly enough, every story also centered around one of two things:  Food, or practical jokes.  He had a great affinity for both.

He taught me the value of a good tenderloin, a well-timed firecracker, and hard work.  Fortunately though, his lessons were also much deeper than that.  He taught me the value of always being in church, giving to the Lord’s work, and sharing your faith with others.  For most of my life I sat 5 rows behind him in church, looking at his silver hair.  Occasionally, I got to ride the bus that he often drove for Sunday School.  He and Grandma often went visiting folks on Sunday afternoons.

When I reflect on his life, I remember a life that was dedicated and steady down a path that was at once both narrow and straight, unwavering.

Whatever it was that he did, he did it passionately.  He threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

The Apostle Paul once told the young lad Timothy, who hoped to follow in the great example’s footsteps, “My son, throw yourself into this work for Christ. Pass on what you heard from me to reliable leaders who are competent to teach others. When the going gets rough, take it on the chin with the rest of us, the way Jesus did. It’s the diligent farmer who gets the produce. Think it over.”

It’s the diligent farmer who sees a harvest… get’s the produce.  It’s the one who labors and endures.  Storms, weeds, pests, and the like.

Grandpa saw many harvests; many sowings and reapings.  He never met a bean he couldn’t shuck (better than you, he thought), a tomato he didn’t love (with salt, lots of salt),  or an ear of corn he couldn’t silk (badly).  He loved his garden, and more than that, he loved giving the fruit of it away.

He loved his Lord… and he loved giving it away.

He was always giving.  His food, his faith… and especially his love.

• Violet, he loved you.
• Charlotte, he loved you.
• Jerry, he loved you.
• Sheila, he loved you.
• Debbie, he loved you.
• Larry, he loved you.
• Terry, he loved you.
• Nadine, he loved you.

I saw it early and often.  I saw it in the way he looked at each of you, the way he spoke of you, and the way he defended you.  He loved you in spite of your faults (of which I am sure there are none) and always celebrated your differences.  His only real care was that you were well-loved, well-fed, and frankly, well-churched.

Well-loved, Well-fed, Well-churched.

It may not seem as such, but that is a darn tough standard to live up to… especially when you don’t feel deserving of such love.  Especially if you’ve made mistakes, been a disappointment, or had a rough go of it.

You probably aren’t so deserving of such love,,, but he loved you anyway.  Personally, I never felt like I deserved the love that he unashamedly showered on me.  I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.  Others looked at it and thought he was crazy.  But that was of no matter to him.  He simply loved me.  And he loved you just the same.  I have seen it.  Famiy and friend alike.  God and bad.  Thick and thin.

If you hear nothing else, hear this:  In the same way, you were probably not dersving of his love, you are not deserving of the love of God.  But he loved you anyway.  He loved you anyway.

At funerals, I NEVER use the departed as an example of God.  But I knew this man and I need to break my own rule.  I know of no other example that is a greater image of God’s love.

Yesterday I heard someone say that they were angry with God for taking Delbert.  They said it in a hushed tone as though God might overhear them and smite them on the spot for such a weak faith.

I gently reassured them that anger is a common, and, dare I say, appropriate emotion when faced with death.  God understands.  He lost his own son as the result of a horrific murder.  I’ve often heard 1 Corinthians 15:55 quoted at funerals: “Oh Death, where is your sting? Oh Grave, where is your victory?”  And from the back of the room I always want to shout: IT’S RIGHT THERE.  It’s right there!  There’s death’s sting!  There is it’s victory!!

Just like that little boy with his grandpa on a cold Fall day, about to be crushed under the unimaginable weight of a falling tree, I’m scared.

I’m scared of moving forward.  Scared to death of finding my way in a world without my rudder; without my grandpa.

And yet, even at the age of 7, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that even in the midst of such uncertainty and chaos, everything was going to be OK because my granddaddy was there looking out for me.  And I know, that even in the midst of this uncertainty and chaos, everything is going to be ok because because my heavenly daddy is looking out for me… looking out for us.

Delbert, Daddy, Papa Harris, would have wanted you to know that… to believe that… to rest in that.

He knew how to work hard. You ALL have learned and lived out his example of hard work.  Now, it’s time to learn from his example of ‘rest’.  He worked harder than anyone I knew.  And he rested harder than anyone I knew.

Rest in his love.  Rest in God’s love.  You have been shown the way to comfort.  But it is a path that you must choose to walk.  He could not walk it for you.  It is a path that is straight.  A path that is narrow.  And sadly, there are few that ever find it.  EMPHASIS:

• Don’t let that be your story.
• Don’t let that be our story.

———

Before he died I asked him what he wanted me to say here, he said:

For my children, grandchildren, and beyond… I guess the best advice that I can give them is that the main thing in this life, number one, is getting saved and serving the Lord. That would be the only thing that I could tell them… to help other people.

I won’t ever ride a tractor beside him again.  I’ll never stare at the back of his silver head in church, I’ll never have the  !@#$ scared out of me by one of his firecrackers again.  But one day, on the other side, I’ll look him in the eye and give an account as to how I lived up to that mission.  I don’t plan to let him down, or HIM down.

———-

If you’ll allow me one last story.  I want to tell it in his exact words:

I was saved in the Grassy Branch Schoolhouse… Church… well, it was a school house; we called it a church. I’ll tell you the little story on it. Bob Sasher was having a revival that week. To begin with, I was enjoying it a lot. But on the third night he pulled his coat back and I saw that he had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Well that immediately turned me off, but for some reason I didn’t stop going I went right on like I had never seen his pocket. Eventually Friday night rolled around and, again, his sermon didn’t touch me. But at the end of the service, they sang “Amazing Grace” and THAT got ahold of me. You couldn’t have tied me back with a ten foot rope. I had to go forward! So I went up to the front of that small schoolhouse and got saved … kneeling at the altar I asked the Lord to come into my heart as a lost sinner. I prayed that he would have mercy on me! It was just like if you’d have taken a ton of bricks off of my shoulders when I got saved. After that, man, I just walked on hot air for about three months. I was walking in the air, witnessing to everybody I saw.

At 9:19am on a warm Saturday morning in June 2010, I said goodbye to MySpace.

“Omit needless words.” – William Strunk

… but why limit it to words? Why not all of life? Less is more.

I was an early adopter of MySpace.  I joined before there was a Facebook and held on longer than I should have.  Here’s a few reasons why I finally ended the relationship:

• The random SPAM messages from people I don’t know (or care to know) is annoying.
• The risque advertising was both inappropriate and unavoidable.  I was embarrassed to even log in at times and began avoiding the site.
• People (often even my friends0 would behave in ways and post pictures of themselves that they would not otherwise do in real life.  The ‘technological barrier’ of the ‘relationship’ often allowed there to be too much duplicity.
• The lack of features or ability to grow and change with it’s users.
• The pages are HIGHLY user customizable, which means they nearly always look terrible.  As a design professional, that annoys me!
• Tom really isn’t my friend.
• Most of my friends had long since jumped ship, those who still had an account hadn’t logged in for years.
• I hadn’t logged in for over a year.
• I’ve grown up

The last, and perhaps most important reason, MySpace gave me access to my friend’s lives without giving the time needed to maintain the relationships.

“It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.” – Boyz II Men

Part of growing up is realizing that the ability to let go is more important (and often tougher) than trying to hang on to something you’ve long since lost.

To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

I could never have known at the time all that God had in store for me. What I thought was going to be a sidestep, if not a step backward personally and professionally, has turned out to be quite the opposite. One year turned to two, and two to three, and eventually they began passing faster and faster. Slowly the Lord rested me, renewed me, and healed me. He even gave me the desires of my heart. I quickly fell madly in love with a tremendously beautiful Alabama girl. And thankfully, she fell in love with me (and/or my Jeep) as well. We were married and soon welcomed our first precious little girl, Libbie. Life was amazing. Not too long later thereafter little girl number two came along and Lucy changed our lives again.

As I look back at what God has brought me through I see his handiwork. At the time, though, it was not always so apparent. I lost a dear friend and mentor along the way. He walks streets of gold these days but I miss more than I care to admit. My extended family has experienced much turmoil and trial. I trust God is at work there as well. The church that I grew up in has also endured great transition and tribulation. For those who were lost and hurt in the process, I pray God will care for you and bring swift justice.

But time marches on.

Prestonwood no longer remembers me. Baptist Temple doesn’t care what I think. And I am looking forward, not back! That’s the way it should be. The scars I wear are a simply a reminder of the battles fought…. the pain is gone.

I don’t know how much longer I have on this spinning globe. It could be decades, it could be days. We are promised nothing. I feel in my spirit that God is bringing changes. Perhaps he always is and I am only now sensitive to it. I do not know what the horizon line holds, and frankly I don’t wish to know. God knows I work better by only knowing the next step or two rather than the next five or ten. I don’t want to leave this life and have not used and abused the talents God has given me to their full extent. I strongly feel that he requires us to make use of what he’s given us. The parable of the ‘talents’ is not just a parable. To whom much is given, much is required…

Here’s to another five years of great living with my family.

I’m just along for the ride…

Fast forward a couple decades to last week.

After a particularly crazy day of thunderstorms my wife and I were cruising the town getting together last minute details for our firstborn’s ‘monkey birthday party.’  I looked up into the sky for no reason at all and,

“Holy Crap!  What’s that!?”  I had never seen anything like it before.  “Honey, look at that!”  Above us, stretching as far as the eye could see, was the strangest thing I had ever seen.  Clouds that stretched for miles and were as smooth as silk.  Waves and waves stretched lazily across the sky like billows of fabric or, as my mind immediately thought, cotton candy.

“That’s just plain weird,” was all I could say.  I was so dumbfounded at what I was seeing that I never considered the importance of getting a picture of it.

I didn’t think much more about it until two days later when USA Today and the Birmingham News ran this article:

IOWA WOMAN’S PHOTO SPARKS PUSH FOR NEW CLOUD TYPE

DES MOINES, Iowa – Looking out the 11th floor window of her law office, Jane Wiggins did a double take and grabbed her camera. The dark, undulating clouds hovering outside were unlike anything she’d seen before. “It looked like Armageddon,” said Wiggins, a paralegal and amateur photographer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “The shadows of the clouds, the lights and the darks, and the greenish-yellow backdrop. They seemed to change.”

They dissipated within 15 minutes, but the photo Wiggins captured in June 2006 intrigued – and stumped – a group of dedicated weather watchers who now are pushing weather authorities to create a new cloud category, something that hasn’t been done since 1951.

Breaking into the cloud family would require surviving layers of skeptical international review. Still, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and his England-based Cloud Appreciation Society are determined to establish a new variety. They’ve given Wiggins’ photo and similar pictures taken in different parts of the world to experts in England, and are discussing the subject fervently online. 

“They (the clouds) were the first ones that I noted of this type and I was unsure which category to put them under,” said Pretor-Pinney, author of “The Cloudspotter’s Guide.”"When we put pictures up online we list the category, and I wasn’t sure how to categorize it.”

Some scientists are skeptical. They argue that researchers who have long watched the sky haven’t seen anything distinctly new for decades.

There are three main groups of clouds: cumulous, cirrus and stratus. Each has various sub-classifications built on other details of the formation.

Brant Foote, a longtime scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the clouds photographed by Wiggins already fit into the existing cumulous classification.

But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification. He proposes they be called altocumulus undulatus asperatus. The last word – Latin for roughen or agitate – is a reference to the clouds’ undulating surface.

“Not necessarily gentle or steady, but quite violent-looking, turbulent, almost twisted in its appearance,” he said.

The group has compiled several photographs documenting the formations from the billowy, rolling clouds shot by Wiggins in Iowa to ones from New Zealand that were much more menacing, hanging lava-like in the sky.

Foote said it would be “very unusual” for such a formation to be recognized as a new variety of cloud.

“People have been looking at clouds for hundreds of years and the general cloud classification is well defined,” Foote said. “It’s not as if someone discovered a new plant in the Amazon. It’s what you’ve seen every day. There was no atmospheric condition that caused a new kind of cloud to form.”

Pretor-Pinney is working with the Royal Meteorological Society in Reading, England, to prepare his case. If that group signs off, the proposal will go to the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization in Geneva.

Society executive director Paul Hardaker said a small panel within the society is gathering evidence to review. Their efforts include talking with those who took the submitted photos to determinine when, where and amid what weather they were taken. Hardaker said meteorologists tend to be skeptical of such proposals.

“We like to believe that just about everything that can be seen has been, but you do get caught once in a while with the odd, new, interesting thing,” Hardaker said. “By this stage we think it’s sufficiently interesting to explore it further and we’re optimistic about the information we’ve got.”

Written By MICHAEL J. CRUMB

Am I the only one in Birmingham who noticed the occurance on June 12 and realized its significance?

I headed home, hoping I could make it. The discomfort continuing to grow and the pain intensifying in waves that brought initial false comfort and then intense pain. Nearly passing out twice on the short five-minute drive, I arrived home in what probably looked to be a drunken stupor. I sat in the car for awhile after throwing it into park, exited the vehicle without closing the door, crawled up the steps, and fell into my wife’s arms. Pain. Severe discomfort. Nausea.

It was difficult to discern who was in worse shape, my wife or I. Looking back it is difficult to believe that at this point we were still trying to decide between a doctor or an emergency room and while I was beginning to wonder if it was a kidney stone I had yet to fully embrace the thought. We packed up the girls, ourselves, and headed to the car. I stopped short, emptying my breakfast on the ground in front of my 20-month old. Not my finest moment. It is interesting to note that in this moment of personal misery and humilty my foremost thought is to sheild my child from her father’s agony. It was soon apparent I had failed at that venture.

“Daddy feel better?”

Yes Baby, Daddy feel better.

… it was short-lived comfort. From that moment I knew I was headed to the ER and I knew the road ahead was not going to be easy. Things were getting progressively more intense on all fronts.

What followed is partially blurred in my mind. I was lucid and rational, but primal instinct took over and my only priority was a selfish one: manage the pain. Short breaths. Squirming. Sweat. Please hurry, Honey. Relax. Puke. Squirm. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I’m OK, I know it doesn’t seem that way Honey, it just hurts really bad. Radiating pain. Cramp. Release. Searing hurt. Release. Shock. Release. Family history. No kidney stones before.

Kidney stones. Finally someone agrees with my fear. In the moments I am lucid I wonder if I will endure this. I never thought I would die, but I never imagined living through it.

“On a scale from one to ten where ten is the worst pain imaginable, what is your level of pain?”

10.

I was soon to realize I did not know what a “10″ really was.

Wheelchair. Ouch. Breakfast again. Stretcher. IV. That didn’t hurt. 11. 12. Where is your pain now? 13 or 14. Dilauded. No effect. Dilauded again. Better. Better. OUCH. Worse. Fetal position. Crying. Moaning. Tears. Screaming. I’m OK Honey, I really am, it just hurts really bad. OUCH! Clutch wife’s hand. Breathe. Pain. Breathe. Moan. Breathe. Breathe. Yell…

Demorol. Ouch. Pain. 7 or 8. More breakfast. Off to CT Scan. Nausea. Wait. Pain. Ouch. Moan. Moan. “Can I help you?” Please let my nurse know I am in pain again. Pain. Breathe. Pain. No one around. Pain. Scream. My phone’s in my pocket. Try to focus. Call wife. No answer. Aaaaargh. It hurts. Breathe. Call wife again. No answer. Call father-in-law. No answer. Breathe. Time for X-Ray. Moan. Scream. “You need to be quiet right now Sir.” I would if I could. Please call my nurse and tell her I am in pain. Hold breath. Scan. Scream. Hold breath. Scan. Scream. Hold breath. Scan. Scream. Wait. Candy striper. Boy, am I glad to see you. Transport. Nausea. Demorol. Mild relief. Rest. Discomfort. Breathe. Rest. Rest. Relief. Rest. Relief. Relief.

Discharge.