You screwed up royally. I\u2019ve screwed up royally, too, and I know how excruciating it can be. \u00a0I imagine you and your family are in agony. There\u2019s no shortage of carnage. Thousands of people are hurt, angry, and\/or bewildered. Thousands have already passed judgment on you. There\u2019s plenty more of that to come. Accept it for what it is. That\u2019s just part of it.<\/span><\/p>\n As far-fetched as it might seem to some, every one of us is just one decision away from disaster. At any time anyone could be caught up in a whirlwind of circumstances that sets them up to choose to walk through the door of destruction. Anybody could branch off from the higher path one step at a time. When they finally come to their senses they\u2019ll realize they\u2019re swimming in a sewer. Maybe they\u2019ll try to get out of it.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re broken. Aren\u2019t we all? The poet Rumi wrote, \u201cThe wound is the place where the light enters you.\u201d Follow this specific link<\/a>. It\u2019s a music video of Leonard Cohen\u2019s Anthem<\/em>, a song that\u2019s based in part on Rumi\u2019s words. I think it will speak to <\/span><\/p>\n So, what\u2019s next? You and those around you are paying dearly for your actions. Now is the time for you to do your internal work, to try to understand the deepest \u201cWhy\u2019s?\u201d that drove this, and to heal them. Do not take short cuts. Do not rush the process. YOU WILL FAIL. Your new roots won\u2019t go deep enough to hold you up in a storm.<\/span><\/p>\n The best gardens use a lot of muck \u2013 manure, compost, and other crap. The right mix can yield magnificent fruits and vegetables. Whether or not that happens in you<\/em> is largely up to you<\/em>. You can sit under the mountain of dung you\u2019re in or you can start digging out.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course you know you\u2019ll always walk with a limp now \u2013 one that everybody can see. But that doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t run again someday. Remember what King David did? He had an affair with Bathsheba and arranged for her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to be killed. Still, the Bible called David \u201ca man after God\u2019s own heart\u201d. You\u2019ve professed to be a man of faith. I choose to believe that\u2019s genuine. You\u2019ll need it now more than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n So don\u2019t give up. Don\u2019t stop walking. These are the times when \u201cone day at a time\u201d is not clich\u00e9. The end of the story has yet to be written. You hold the pen. My hopes and prayers are that you and your family will eventually find healing.<\/span><\/p>\n And if you ever find yourself wandering on The Square, come on up to The Balcony above City Grocery. There\u2019s room at my table for you. No judgment will be served.<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/span><\/p>\n __________________________<\/span><\/p>\n I want to give a shout out to Kell Kellum. If you haven\u2019t gotten his new Jimbo Mathus-produced instrumental CD, Wilco: A Ghost is Born<\/em>, I highly recommend it. He\u2019s a damn fine pedal steel artist and this CD<\/a> has the perfect music to chill out to during these sweltering times. The End of All Music has them and I imagine Kell will have them at the shows he plays. You can thank me later.\u00a0 I hope that by the time this goes to press you\u2019re beginning to be able to think<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[4,10286,3,753,10426],"class_list":["post-41074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-oxford","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"