Authorized Personnel Only!

You just love that one. Authorize yourself. I am an authority and I say go. Authorized? Authorize this. We don’t need no stinking badges. Hey you! Authorize me. Give you ten bucks to authorize me. And just what is a personnel? I hear a word war coming on. I am a human and not a personnel. I identify as a male and not a personnel. I am a senior and not a personnel. So there.

Don’t get me started on “employees only”. Well I am employed so I get in. Or I have not figured that out. Is employees plural so I have to find another employee of something? OK we kind of get “Private, keep out”. Or is that an army thing where privates are excluded? Makes your head spin. If they are too lame to make it clear then I am welcome everywhere.

I never saw a closed door I didn’t want to open. You meet the best people. They work behind the scenes and are fascinating.

A quick story to get to this point. 9/11, I was wrapping up an overseas job. A good one. Well that changed and I got pulled back to Southeast Asia. Fences needed to be tendered and relationships smoothed over. Some horrible thing like that shakes confidences.

There are 3 jobs that you do not want for longevity of employment with a client. 1. Problem resolution. 2. Trial lawyer. 3. Start-up companies. The problem is that the better you do your job the quicker that jobs door gets slammed on you. You lose your “authorized personnel” card real quick like.

Eventually I enrolled in a Public Safety Academy. Then I needed 2,500 hours of patrol work and then I could get a private patrol operators license and run my own security firm. In private security patrol work that takes around a year. Overtime is the whole deal to make over $3,000 a month with benefits. That is why they all look so tired – they are. After a bit I got a supervisory roll and the overtime went nuts.

You could break all that down in a job description that read, NO Unauthorized Personnel or activity. A lock only stops an honest man. So you need someone to back it up. Airports were fun. I worked two small ones where “private” flights would come in from foreign places and the no admittance was rather strict, if you get that drift.

What about authorized admittance and our lives. Who do we let in? I think Jesus had a handle on this. He told of there being friends and family types and loving them was so easy that it almost did not count. You had to love strangers and even enemies. Do you have a no unauthorized people sign around your neck?

That may be one of the hardest deals with “stay at home” and social distancing with masks. Just like remember to wear a mask it has taken me a bit to get the helping strangers back to a new norm. Hey another great way to meet interesting people is what I call the “carry out for me”. Find any old person. Not old like me but the ones having obvious problems negotiating getting their groceries from inside the store to their trunks. Just a great way to meet people and check off that box for helping strangers. See I said it was a for me deal. A side note here; many, many older folks that could use it do not do the “handicapped Only” places as a testament to pride in self-sufficiency. I think that is cool. Maybe not so cool they are still driving. Not my call there. The have the authorized license in their wallet.

We live in a world of the authorized being the exception to the rule. And thereby becoming the norm. Cops are authorized to break speed limits. Seniors are authorized to get a discount. Parents are authorized to go on grade school grounds. (exceptions). Sometimes we are not authorized to use a restroom but exceptions are frequently granted. Here is a fun one; who is authorized to take communion? As many exceptions there as there are rules and that is a ton.

Do not get me started here. A clerk of any sort involved in customer service. They range from grocery checkouts to a guy 4 thousand miles away on a phone. And can we say that government ones are normally not our friend. “I am not authorized to” – then just check the box from refunds to checking balances solutions on your account. But the absolute best one is when they punch things into a computer and then tell you the computer will not authorize them to correct an error. Grrrr.

So we get to ask, who really gets to authorize things on a day to day basis. Well it is not those guys and gals on the front line. It is someone or things “upstairs”. From God to price checks someone we do not see or influence decides if we are authorized. But we go one with faith that they do what is right.

Employ is a great word. We can employ a wrench to help me with plumbing. We can employ a recipe to fix my favorite dinner myself. We can employ the art of war to defeat an enemy and who these days does not employ online shopping?

To avail oneself of. And a good one is “I am in the employ of….”. And so now we see a different meaning to that sign “employees only”. Depends on who’s employ were are in that allows and entrance. Not my silly view that just being an employee somewhere allows us to avail ourselves with what is on the other side of that door. Believe me, sometimes I cannot avail myself of pleasantries with my wife, like when I totally space out a honeydo chore.

Who am I authorized to love?

That surely seems like an easy question. Do we just answer that it is everyone? That sounds so right and yet with certain types of love with certain types of people the answer is no unauthorized personnel. Just think of marriage. Well that ends the authorization to be amorish with certain others. But it still allows me to love anyone with a pure heart and good intentions. That agape/brotherly love is with extreme rarity always welcome and authorized. But we still need be careful.

But back to that sign around ones neck that says authorized only for love. Well certainly a wedding ring to that extent. Perhaps a blue collar worker on the 19^th floor in the executive dining area. But again that is just for certain types of love. Not the big LOVE that we can share at anytime, anywhere, with anyone. We can for sure avail ourselves of God’s love where ever with whom ever.

You can even employ that big love to love yourself. Not easy but doable to love and receive love from your enemy. Not easy in a negative heat of the moment. But again doable.

This sounds fun; I hereby authorize you to love me as much as you want. Trouble there is that some folks have trouble doing that.

Unlock that door and remove that sign I say to you. I wrote this in love, please avail yourself of my love. And I will do likewise.