Here Goes Something

 

I’m preaching today.  No big deal, right?  Not.  Always a very big deal.  But it has valences that are different. 

I’m preaching on compassion.  Appropriate, no?

Need

 

It was 100 degrees yesterday afternoon.  The cumulous clouds built mountain ranges creating canyons of white shadowed by the grey potential of thunder storms.  Our creek was down to a trickle.  I was pulling grass from a flower bed, replanting it in bare spots of the lawn.  A black eyed Susan came along with one clump and I separated it out, making a place with the trowel in another bed.  They spread you know.  The trowel slipped in easily, but when I lifted it, dust rose above the mulch.

I’d decided not to water because of predicted thunder storms, to come from the grand canyons sliding by above.  But by the time I saw the puff of dust, it was two or three in the afternoon and the blue between the clouds seemed on the ascendency.  I looked again at the plants and saw a droop to them.  The morning glory leaves were curled down on themselves, the elephant ears were bowing to the ruling sun.  In spite of the experts’ opinion it was time to water. 

It made me wonder how often we don’t really pay attention to the need that surrounds us.  We may even read about some expert’s opinion, riddled with statistics without ever noticing any specific puff of dust rising from the parching need calling to us to do some small thing that might ameliorate a bit of the drought weighing down our world. 

And how often do we ignore our own need, letting our fatigue and loneliness, our frustration and sense of entrapment dry out our lives until there isn’t a bloom to be seen.  We have all sorts of good excuses, ignoring the simple truth that if we don’t do something about our own back yard there is no one who will.

There may come the desired showers, but in the midst of such need, are we not doing damage rather than participating in a blessing, could we not be instruments of grace and reasons for thanksgiving?

It took a good two hours to give everything a good soaking.  But I was happier for it.  I’m sure if plants might express relief, they would have.  When I woke this morning the ground was soaked.  The rain had come.  Did I waste my time?  How is it ever a waste to let compassion have its way?

Backwards

 

I was looking at my blog, reading back into the past.  It’s a bit like archeology, the present is on the surface, the past is buried back there, underneath.  That part of it makes sense.  What doesn’t is that you come to the conclusion of the story before you get to the first chapter.  It’s backwards.

Having been reading books for a number of decades, I’ve gotten used to beginnings being at the beginning, where you start, the first page.  When I open this thing, I’m at the end, which has come to be as a result of that which went before. 

When I get a conversation emailed to me, it’s in this same bassackwards order.  So I have to become a detective, ignoring that which is on the surface, in the now, at least for the moment, going back to where this conversation started, finding the place where it stopped being a conversation and became a misunderstanding, which caused the wreckage dated today.

Considering conversations as symptomatic of the health of relationships, what cruises around on the surface can point to patterns and symptoms of what has been going on in the past.  But rarely do digital conversations reveal much of anything about the user of the machine, and when two or more users begin bouncing around, supposedly communicating about a specific subject, you’re involved in a bar fight. 

If you’ve never had such an experience, good.  But to make the metaphor stick, you get hit by friends and enemies alike, whether you give two hoots about the original cause of the fight or not; there’s no chance of making it to the door without getting assaulted just for being there, and there’s less chance of drinking the beer you paid for.

Which all goes to say, not much, except I can’t seem to get used to the way things work on these machines.  In other words, I’m backwards.  Took me long enough to get to that.  I should have put it at the beginning.  Oh, I did.  Maybe I am getting the hang of it.

Important Stuff

 

This morning at the end of our walk, a neighbor shut down his lawn mower and came to the curb.  We talked about getting the mowing done before it rained.  We talked about his twelve hour shift.  We talked about the long weekend he was getting and the good times he was going to have with his kids.  We talked about which ones had already gotten out of school and which one was finished tomorrow.  He asked about my knee. 

In other words we meandered around discovering nothing important, solving no problem.  It occurred to me that if we didn’t do our own yard work, we’d never have had that conversation.  Yeah, but we’d probably be making more money.  Yeah, but we wouldn’t have neighbors.  We’d have people whose addresses were close to ours numerically, people that we saw driving by on their way to we don’t know where. 

A lot of us are busy.  A lot of us have important things to do with our time.  But we don’t have the time to shoot the bull with the guy down the street.  We rarely see him.  We only communicate with people who are important to us.  People we work with.  People who share our ‘quality’ time at the gym or in our cycling club or at church.  We talk to them about our shared prejudices. 

I don’t know what my neighbor believes.  I don’t know if he goes to church or what party he votes for.  I do know that his father was a contractor and left all his tools to his only son.  And I know that if I need anything, or any help with anything, not important stuff, just things like plumbing or fixing he has the tool and he’ll come over and show me how to use it while he’s telling me a story about his father and his kids and his wife, if it’s a good day.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think that’s what makes a community, a neighborhood.  And I think that’s important stuff.

Blue Skies

 

Carolina Blue…  It’s hard to think of being here without a sky that is almost hard to believe.  Day after day it settles into your soul, offering a setting for the sun with no blemish.  I heard that they built the sound stages here because the weather is fair almost all the time.  I’d disagree.  It’s not fair, it’s excellent.  The flowers bloom even without good soil.  It has to be that sky. 

I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, the weather was so clear all the time that the first time it rained, I danced in it.  I was so used to storms that it was anxiety provoking to live without them. 

Maybe age has offered me a new peace.  I don’t need the pushes and pulls of storms to provide a rhythm in my living.  Each day does that with its rising and setting.  There is enough there to allow me the space that change offers.

Maybe this is a place of peace.  Smiles seem to come easier here.  I know it drives some crazy, all this pleasantness.  I’m sorry for them.  Personally I’ll accept it, this peace beneath the Carolina sky.

Pudgy Fingers

 

On Sunday, during our morning walk, picking up trash ejected from cars, by people whose time and energy is too vital to take their beer cans, cigarette packs, burger wrappers and bags, and in this case, Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes complete with uneaten wings and biscuits (inhale), I noticed that some ants had found the ejected food stuffs and were making a picnic of it. 

I threw the wings and biscuits into the bushes to allow the picnic to continue and crumpled up the box and paper.  It was in the crumpling stage that I noticed the wee beasties were injecting fire into my hands.  Thus the name fire ants. 

If any of you have never had an encounter with this specific brand of the insect kingdom, don’t even think about comparing it to any other experience.  When I was in Ethiopia, I walked through a column of army ants because I was a dumb American who was half asleep at that obscene hour of the morning.  The rest of the work crew considered my dance rather entertaining as I tangoed across the work site, ending up in the concrete mixing trough.  Those dudes take out chunks of flesh.  The ants I mean.

But I will assert that the tune of pain accompanying my sashay into the concrete cannot be compared to the blooming agony that spread across my hands as I crumpled the Colonel’s packaging.  These little red nasties don’t bite, they sting.  Remember, fire?

We went to the ballet that evening, dolled up and happy to see Tchaikovsky’s  fantasy of Sleeping Beauty swooping around the stage.  I sat there feeling my left hand and a few fingers of my right slowly expanding, and watched blisters mark where the fire had been injected.

I guess it’s only fair, I messed up their picnic.  But I think it’s a rather extreme reaction.  If they do this for KFC wings and a biscuit, I think we should consider enlisting them as a weapon of mass destruction.    

Sorting

 

Every time I see a job that needs doing, I develop an enthusiasm for it based on the ideas I have for moving it along, making it happen, and in the process helping to lift the world (to quote my son Benjamin).  The church is my fishing hole.  After spending my life watching real good fishermen and women work here and having decades of my own experience, and having a few gifts to begin with, I know where the big ones lie up on a hot afternoon.  I know what kind of bait works.  I know how long to let them chew on the hook before a twitch sets it (I don’t fish anymore but the metaphor seems appropriate).  So when someone wants to make a job happen in the church, I automatically begin planning the excursion.  I have a good idea how to come home with dinner. 

There’s a problem with this.  Though I can make things work, it takes energy, intelligence, imagination, and love to do so.  And the question rises, is this what I am called to do?  I can do it, but is this where I should be spending my energy?  Then the guilts set in.  Who am I to determine that? 

I’m beginning to think that I am supposed to have something to say in that determination.  I’m beginning to see that the gifts that I’ve been given are in my keeping and I am to be a steward of those gifts, a manager.  If I’m taking on all comers until I run out of time, steam, and resources, am I being a good steward?

I hate to say this but I think I have to sort the possibilities and that includes saying no to some things that I know I can do. 

It’s an interesting place to be in life.  I think I’ll climb the willow next to the pond and consider the options.