I was buttoning my shirt in our darkened bedroom when I heard the first tornado siren. Rain poured down and a fierce wind pushed around the branches outside. There were flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder. And then there was that siren and its foreboding wail. 

All of this felt substantive, maybe even a little ominous, on Ash Wednesday. It was like creation was sounding some sort of warning alarm at the dawn of Lent. Remember that the storm could come for you at any moment, o mortal. You can rage at a tornado all you want, but it will consume you. You are dust and to dust you will return. This is me and my overactive imagination, but that's all I could think about as the siren blared through the middle Tennessee morning.

There is something sacred to me about good art. A film can be a homily. A stroll through a bookstore can be a prayer labyrinth. Walking the halls of an art gallery can be like flipping through a hymnal.

This last weekend, EA and I went down to Savannah so that she could attend QuiltCon (No, you do not cosplay as your favorite at QuiltCon. I thought about that too. Although my favorite quilter is my wife, so…let’s not venture any further down that train of thought’s track). I do not know exactly when I got the sense of sacred walking through the many quilts that were on display, but at some point I got the feeling that there was something good and beautiful.

Have you ever read something that hit so close to home that it was unnerving? That's how I felt a week ago while reading about Enneagram personality types in a book called The Road Back to You. I got to the chapter type nine and I felt like someone had been reading my mail. It bordered on freaky because it was illuminating a lot that goes on inside my head and how I have interacted with people my entire life. After the initial weirdness, I became excited. This would help me grow as a person. Learning this information was awesome.

It has not been awesome. Not yet. After that initial burst of self-discovery, it has put me in a existential funk. I see the shadow side of this personality wherever I go. I see mistakes I have made in the past that became patterns. Type 9 puts a lot of effort in maintaining equilibrium between internal struggles and external circumstances; they don't want their internal calm to be disturbed. That perfectly describes me and, as the book says, that practice is exhausting. I am more aware of everything, but it's overwhelming. I think this knowledge is going to help, but it's obvious there is going to be this precarious adjustment period to the truth.

Every year (but more accurately every other year), I celebrate President's Day by posting Pseudo Facts about the individuals who have served in our nation's highest elected office. They are Pseudo Facts in that all these individuals did serve as President and some stuff around the edges of the facts may be true, but the heart of it is silly nonsense which I made up. Unfortunately in today's political climate alternative facts are a thing. So I have to add a disclaimer that I have never had to add before. Lying and peddling intentionally misleading information is wrong. It's immoral. These are fictional flights of fancy for fun (alliteration!). Below are all of my President's Day Pseudo Facts from today. Enjoy!

Our boys have been looking forward to The Lego Batman Movie for months. They watched every trailer that came out over and over. Our oldest memorized the release date and each day asked how many more days until February 10. This is the most excited they have been about anything since Christmas. Finally on Monday, we picked them up from school, gave them matching Lego Batman shirts that EA had found, and went to see the movie.

They loved it. Our oldest asked as we left the theater when the DVD is coming out.

Yet for me the most memorable moment came towards the end of the movie. I'll try my best to avoid spoilers because the third act of the movie is an express shuttle to Crazytown that you wouldn't anticipate from the commercials. But the basic breakdown is this: Batman finds himself in a prison while scores of bad guys are wreaking havoc on Gotham. In order to be able to go save the day, Batman promises to return to prison after he has captured all the villains.

Someone I follow on Twitter mentioned that they were reading All-Star Superman to their children and shared a few of their favorite pages. All-Star Superman is probably the best 21st Century story featuring the Man of Steel. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely perfectly capture what makes the character so wonderful in a way that feels both timeless and fresh. It's the first Superman story that I recommend to others.

One of the favorite pages tweeted this guy tweeted is one of the most famous in the series. Seeing it again struck a deep chord within me. In the context of the story, Superman finds out that he has only one year to live and spends the series trying to do as much good as possible. There is one issue that covers him saving people around Metropolis on one of his last days. Superman stops disasters, he comes up with a Kryptonian treatment for cancer and takes it to a children's hospital, he saves lives.

In the midst of all this superheroing, there's a panel showing a young girl standing on top of a skyscraper.

It seems like we're going around and around in circles here, doesn't it? We wake up. The President does or says something. A lot of us get concerned. Others tells us we are freaking out over nothing or being fooled by the media. People use exclamation marks and ALL CAPS in their social media statuses. We retreat to our safe corners in which people agree with us. Then we call it a day in hopes that tomorrow will be different, but wake up hearing Sonny and Cher sing "I Got You Babe" the next morning. Good Lord, it's exhausting.

There are a lot of theories on how Phil Connors escaped his Punxsutawneayan purgatory in the movie Groundhog Day. The simple read is he simply learned to become a better man and embraced the time loop for what it is. You can decide when you watch the movie, which you should if you haven't. All I know is I want out of this cycle. The difficulty is I can only control myself and I'm a fan of living, so let me try to simply be as honest and kind as I can.

Here are some things that I am trying to remember and do that I figured I would share:

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Loving God means loving what God has created. As such...

Love your neighbor as yourself. Your neighbor is anyone that you come in contact with. Your neighbor can look like you. Your neighbor is another race, another nationality, another religion, another orientation. Your neighbor can agree with you or disagree with you. There is no hierarchy to your neighbors. You are called to love them all.

Listen to other people's stories. People in middle America say they feel like they have been forgotten by the "elites" on the coasts (which itself forgets that there are many non-elites on the coasts). That may well be true, but forgetting is a two way street. There is no part of America that is "Real America." Each person here is just as real an American as anyone else.