The Pattern Makers

I have it on good sources, that the most skilled woodworkers in the world are ‘pattern makers’. Two of them have been close friends of mine, Abel Sauer and Kurt McGrady. We all met 35 years ago when I was 18 and they were in their early 20s. It didn’t matter that we came from very different backgrounds. I think that when we’re young, it’s easier to look past our differences and defects. Youth does that. It holds in certain qualities of safety, acceptance and optimism that somehow seep out through those lines across our face that appear and get deeper over the years. On this first Sunday after Thanksgiving of 2008, the events of my life have converged in a way that compels me to remember the pattern makers of my life. It has been my privilege to know these two great men. The form of my young heart was shaped by their words and love. 1

Abel’s parents were artists. His dad was the curator of some huge art gallery in Dallas, or Houston; and his mom ran the Fine Arts library at Syracuse University. Kurt’s parents had sent him to military school when he was a boy, which landed him on a tour in the Army that was cut short by some time in a stockade and a discharge. His dad was an engineer for a large international air conditioner manufacturer in Syracuse NY, and his mom had left her first calling as a trained singer to marry and have a brood children. Kurt was the oldest. Between his rugged Army persona, painfully wistful acoustic guitar playing and all around good looks, he occupied the dream-world of most of the young girls in town.2

I was the youngest. My dad had been totally disabled by a stroke about 4 years before we all met, and my mom died of heart failure just a few months after our paths crossed. The day I met Abel was sunny. As usual, I was high as a kite with my buddy from Long Island, Boyd, checking out the upstate NY swimwear at Lakeside Park on Cazenovia Lake until Abel showed up. He just walked over, sat down and asked us what we knew about Jesus. After about an hour of talking about Jesus, I was convinced I didn’t know anything about him. I prayed to Jesus with Abel, and Boyd left town the next day.3

Being about 3 years older than me, Abel took me under his wing and introduced me around to the members of the New Jerusalem Prayer Community (NJPC) of Cazenovia New York, a mostly Catholic Charismatic prayer group, where the ‘Chraismata’ of the Holy Spirit were always at ‘center stage’. Charsim comes from the Greek, Charis, meaning Grace. The plural is Charismata, not to be confused with Chanahata, which is a confluence of the Hebrew for Grace, Chana, with some sort of Eastern ending … probably from India. 4

Abel introduced me to Kurt at that Saturday night’s Bible study. Interesting enough, Kurt didn’t practice any of the Charismata of the Holy Spirit. He didn’t even pray in an ecstatic language, called ‘praying in tongues’. He didn’t put much stock in the most common ‘high’ gift of prophesy either… where followers go into a trance-like state and start speaking in authoritative ‘high-church’ language that usually ends in, “Thus saith the Lord.” Kurt said he didn’t think Charismata were really used since Jesus’ Apostles died, but he wasn’t about to make a big deal about it. The important thing to him was the Bible and its teachings, especially the words of Jesus. He always carried an Old King James version that highlighted every word of Jesus in bold red letters. He made every NJPC prayer meeting and Bible study for three years until the day he stood up and told everyone off … publicly … with a long tearful speech that ended in his own first prophetic proclamation, “you’re all full of shit!”5

He quietly married a few months later … on the rebound from losing the love of his life, Amanda. She was a ballet dancer who could go into ecstatic pirouettes when the Spirit moved. I can still see her skirt spinning in the air, her lovely long legs, black bikini panties and golden locks of hair that fell down her back in innocent ringlets. With regrets, Kurt broke up with her after she deflected his numerous marriage proposals into the black hole of pseudo-spiritual indecision called ‘waiting on the Lord’. In short order, he had a romp with the receptionist at work, Jane, and their first baby was born about 4 months after the wedding. They stayed together for 30 years and got old, fat and bitter with each other. On the day his youngest son graduated college; he waddled his fat 300 lb regret-filled self down to a local legal clinic and paid the required $92.65 for the papers. He gave her everything they’d ever accumulated, except two items: his old acoustic guitar and his fishing pole. After disappearing for 6 months on the Appalachian Trail, he came back to Syracuse 100 lbs lighter and fell in love with a delightful woman who adores him. I think they’re playing golf together as I write this. It took some time, but finally … I think Jesus sent some angels that got everything back on track for Kurt.6

As everyone knows, Jesus was the son of the Jewish carpenter, Joseph, of Bethlehem. Like his dad’s great uncle, King David, Jesus and his whole family were from the tribe of Judah. As the son of a carpenter, he learned the same trade as his dad and worked at it until he was about 30 years old. Finally, his mother encouraged him to turn some water into wine at a wedding in Cana, which is an actual place in the southern part of Lebanon today. That part of Lebanon used to be northern Israel and if the Zionists have their way, it might be again soon. Once he started doing miracles, Jesus followed his calling right to his death three years later. According to our beliefs, G-d brought him back to life a few days after the Romans tortured and killed him by crucifixion on a hill in Jerusalem, Golgotha. Then, he got his little gang of mostly fishermen together for another 40 days to give them their marching orders. On the 40th day, he called the guys together one last time. While his eleven friends stood there, he floated up to heaven right in front of them. Leaving them on the ground with nothing but the Charismata, these simple guys spent the rest of their days traveling around and trying to get everyone to fix the world. Since then, everything has been upside-down and Jesus’ followers are still trying to change the world. Sometimes we forget what we’re supposed to be changing and get off track. Fortunately, he sends angels to help us when the terrain gets too tough for us to make it on our own. 7

I think one of the best things about following Jesus is that he makes sure we never miss a divine appointment. Another is that once we find our way back from a fumble, however serious it is, it seems like we get even stronger. As three young men, Abel, Kurt and I spent a lot of time praying to and singing about Jesus. Not too infrequently, when any of us would slip and wake up with one of the local college girls, we’d confess our sins to each other and pray to Jesus for forgiveness. We were also constantly struggling over what G-d wanted us to do with our lives. Abel was the first one who came up with the idea of becoming a pattern maker. Back in those days, the pattern maker was an important part of industry. Anytime a manufacturer needed a mold for something that had to be cast out of steel, someone had to make the first piece from a drawing. This was the job of the pattern maker. From nothing but a drawing and the skill of his own two hands, with utmost precision he’d carve the first form out of a piece of wood. That form would be used to make the mold for the thousands of pieces that would be cast from it. On the average, it took about 20 years to become a pattern maker. You didn’t learn the trade in school either. You had to apprentice your way through the process.8

Abel embarked on this path and made it to ‘Journeyman’ until Kurt’s famous, “you’re all full of shit” speech. After that, he joined the Catholics to become a monk at a Benedictine Monastery in Elmira NY. A few months later, he came back to town beaten half to death. We never talked about what happened, but his physical recovery took a long time and Abel wasn’t the same after that. A wonderful Jewish girl, Tamara, found him and nursed him back to sanity. They loved each other, created art together and attended Syracuse University’s School of Fine Arts. Abel majored in metals and got his faith back after meeting a beautiful ‘fibers’ major from Colorado, Yvette. She invited him to a reformed Presbyterian church in town. Yvette smelled so good that Abel remembered all about Jesus. Shorty after that, things fell apart with Tamara. I think she took a dimmer view of Abel’s new ‘sister’ … than his renewed interest in Jesus. Abel and Yvette fell in love, got married and had a bunch of kids while he went back to being a pattern maker. Everything got back on track. Jesus’ angel, Tamara, was never heard from again. Angels do that. Sometimes, they just disappear.9

Abel’s pattern maker work started looking pretty good to Kurt. So, he signed up for classes at the Morrisville School of Wood Technology. I remember feeling like the odd man out because I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in being a carpenter like Jesus. My mother had just died. Losing her, hurt deeply. Out of pain, confusion and desperation – I was swept away by forces beyond my control into a ‘super-spiritual’ phase that affected the outcome of all the rest of my life. I suppose if I wasn’t ‘wired’ as I am, I might have weathered these trials with a little more poise. I couldn’t. No matter how hard I prayed, or fasted or practiced any spiritual disciplines, I couldn’t get mating off my mind. I just had to find a mate, have children and start building a legacy. My first family was either dead or diseased. I think that deep inside me was an unconscious primordial angst about the impending demise of my line. I didn’t identify it for many years. But, I’ve come to terms with this and understand that there was no other path for me. This is just who I am.10

While Abel and Kurt focused on becoming pattern makers, I decided to find a mate, have as many children as I could and create a world that I could control … a place where I’d be safe again … where Jesus and his angels would deliver us from the trials and temptations that destroyed my parents. Of course, that didn’t happen as planned. But, part of the vision was to get to the Mount of Olives where Jesus was supposed to show up when he returned someday. I wanted to be the first one there to meet him, and hear him say. “Well done!” I’m happy to report that my wife and I have had ten children in our 30+ years together and we live in the Middle East about 30 miles from the Mount of Olives. I’ve also lost over $60Million dollars of other’s people’s money in the process, been shot down a few times, kidnapped, crowned and African chief, and served as a Church Elder for 20 years, been the slave of an African Juju priestess, been punished harshly for my many defects and felt deeply loved in spite of them. My haphazard way of following Jesus has taken me some unexpected places. But, things always seem to come back together. His angels have come to my rescue in many forms. Because of them, I’ve never missed a divine appointment and I’ve become strong enough to cry and play for the remainder of the days I get in this wonderful creation. 11

Over time, Abel and Kurt excelled in their pattern making too. But, sometime in the late 1980s there was an amazing convergence of laser and computer technologies. It changed everything for them. Suddenly, with a new machine, a pattern could be made by downloading a digital image into a computer that controlled a laser. That computer-guided laser could cut a wooden form of any drawing with more precision, and in a fraction of the time it would take the best pattern maker in the world. In a few months, decades of devotion to learning the craft of pattern making was left behind for a new machine. Ever since, both of them have struggled to make ends meet. There’s not a lot of demand for middle aged guys who used their lives to learn these old crafts. They are the best at something that most people don’t care about anymore. The path of a pattern maker isn’t easy. It is interesting to note that there are still young men embarking on that path because the best wood workers there ever were, that there are now or there ever will be … are pattern makers. This just goes to show that sometimes, the price of excellence is very high.12

All these memories flooded my mind a few days ago. For over five months I’ve been working on a military base in the Middle East, trying to get a wireless network going for about 50,000 people. No matter what we tried, we failed. Finally, at great cost to us, we hired a guy with a lot of experience designing and installing wireless technology on military installations around the world. He’s even worked on the base we’re at for a few years. He’s probably the best there is at his field; and definitely the best guy we could ever get for the base we’re on. He already has relationships with the base command. Plus he’s a retired Major from the US Marine Corp, and he knows how to relate to them.13

There’s a world-wide financial crisis going on and a new President claiming he can close this installation in three years. So, it’s not as though people are throwing money at us to help right now. In fact, we ran out of cash over a month ago and have been ‘running on vapors’ since. As of the day before Thanksgiving, we were no further along than we were when we hired the Major a month ago. All sorts of technical issues were plaguing us. They were more than anyone expected. But, a couple of the young guys on the team found a software tool that promised a solution. They ran the data and came up with a new configuration that was entirely different from what the old Major was doing.14

The young guys showed the Major what they found and he checked their findings with some other engineers. Seeing the merit in the new solution, he let them experiment with it. As soon as they started making the changes, the whole network started to work for the very first time. Literally, I broke down in tears of relief at my desk when I got the news. 15

I thought of the Major and my friends, the Pattern Makers, as I reflected on how technology keeps pushing our human limits and leaving some of us behind. But, I am thankful for it all. I am mostly humbled by those who can step aside with grace and make way for progress. I pray I can do this when it comes my time. Maybe it will be soon, and Jesus will send me another helpful angel.16

I think now, that on a lot of levels, we are all Pattern Makers.17

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