F2020-1 Because We Came In The Spring

Sometimes you meet rather strange people at church conferences. And I don’t mean people who are weird in some grotesque way. Rather, I mean people who say and do the kind of things that surprise you because you do not expect the particular response that they give.

I stood outside the church with another man as we waited for a Sunday School Teacher’s Conference to start. It was about 8:50 a.m. The man kept looking at his watch.

“We still have about ten minutes before the conference starts,” I told him.

“Oh, I’m not worried about that.”

“Then why do you keep looking at your watch?”

“Well, there’s something I don’t understand. I left Cleveland this morning behind a van with some of our Sunday school teachers in it. Now, mind you, I was behind that van and I got here before they did.”

“Maybe they went a different way”

“No, I told them how to get here - that is, if they followed my directions.”

“That’s probably what they did: they took an alternate route.”

“I even pulled into a McDonalds and went through the drive-thru for a cup of coffee. That added about five minutes to my trip. I can’t understand how I got here before they did.”

“Maybe they stopped somewhere for breakfast.”

“No, we all had breakfast together in Cleveland before we left,” he said, as he turned to look at the driveway. “I wonder where the heck they are.”

“Well, perhaps they went up to Canada first.”

“I’m beginning to think so.”

He puffed at his cigarette and looked at his watch again. It was a couple of minutes until nine. He had an etched look on his face - not so much an expression of worry as one of disgust. “We should have rented a bus.” He tossed his cigarette and quicky lit another one. “We might not get a break until noon,” he said, as if to explain the back-to-back cigarettes.

Just then a large white van pulled into the parking lot. There were three women and one man in the van. The driver made a large, sweeping turn, and then drove up to the sidewalk where we were standing. The three women got out and the man went to park the van.

“Boy, I don’t remember it taking this long to get here the last time we came,” one woman said to the man with the cigarette.

“Well, that’s because last time we came in the Spring.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” she said.

The three women walked into the church and left me and the man with the cigarette standing on the sidewalk. The driver of the van was walking slowly toward us.

“Wait a minute,” I said to the cigarette smoker, “what does coming in the Spring have to do with arriving late?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” he said. “They’re women. You can tell them anything because they don’t listen to you anyhow. Did you notice how she didn’t even blink an eye when I told about coming in the Spring?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Well, that’s because they don’t listen. Hey, I rest my case.”

He took another drag off his cigarette and the driver of the van joined us. He flipped his cigarette into the shrubs and the three of us entered the church. It was exactly 9:00 a.m. “See, we’re right on time,” he said, showing me his watch. “Even if it isn’t Spring.”

C3001-18 Thankfulness: Strawberry Blonde

I am thankful for the opportunity I had to see her porcelain-white face, the arctic-blue sea of her eyes, and the rimed-apricot hue of her long and flowing hair. That young girl in the restaurant: a confluence of God’s endless marvels met perfectly in one person.

B2032-2 Fruitfulness

There are always those who would lounge on the shore and stare into the ruddy sunset and fervently wish for those times when the whole earth would lull itself into one smooth and cursive form. They imagine a world tightly curled in a geometric form without obtuse and jagged norms. They stare into the setting sun in search of an idyllic past that never was and scant shall ever be. And for all of that they insist that things shall come to them in an orderly array, undelayed by the press of time and circumstance, like some eager manservant sent running by the brief wave of the master's hand.

Of course, it doesn't happen that way at all. But we fondly wish it were so.

Oh, to have lived in a time when all the flowers along the garden path were uncontested by surly weeds and the stately order of the day was unmolested by unfurled needs! What a time it would have been to have remained seated on a throne as the serried ranks of nobles brought one Gordian knot after another and all of them could have been untied with a nod of the head or a flourish of the hand. And what a time it would been, when the most extended mishap that could possibly affect, would consist of having to rise slowly from the throne, wander through the bric-a-brac, and saunter off to bed to take a midday nap.

Yes, we dream such dreams.

We search for the easy route and we spend the better part of our days looking for the path without the rude stubble and rugged stones that tangle our feet as we walk along the way. The surface of the earth, if we had our way, would be filled with macadam from end to end so that we were forever free never to have to stoop to tread through the mud and debris in order to get to the spired castle of our desire. We look for a world in which we are never pressed for time and are forced to play a role we rather wouldn't, or take a chance we really shouldn't, or lift a weight we almost couldn't.

How nice it would be if we could live like unfettered friends and rollick through life unrestrained by rule and reign and live a life authentic and unfeigned, unmet with ill-ease and without regret. How nice it would be if all who met were so filled with love as to have no desire to cuff another with the crude bracelet of his restraint.

We wish it were so. But it ain't.

Though we spend most of our time trying to perfect that which is abject, the truth of the matter is that we drift along a current not of our own making. In vain we try to affect a change that will round the jagged edge and smooth the clattered form. And again and again, the pull of the tide takes us where we would not hedge and makes us accept a role that we find savage and forlorn.

In our haste we forget that Adam was placed in the garden of Eden to till the earth and to keep everything in its place (Gen 2:15). He was less an unkempt vagabond walking upon the beach than he was a vinedresser nipping each and every vagrant bud that would venture forth from the trellised and stately vines in the garden of the Lord.

It would be nice if the whole world were filled with Benevolent Anarchists and everyone traipsed through life like hounds sniffing at the earth and following their noses to find the buried bones of their own desires.

Surely that would be nice.

Yet, what we quickly forget is the fact that God had placed Adam in the Garden as a steward of that place and not the hedonist stroller that we fondly wish to make of him. We always think of Eden as a place lavish and lush, unfilled with the rush that consumes our days. But in fact, it was a place of order and constraint. It was a place where Adam had a job to do and orders to obey, so that when God came walking in the cool of the day he would find his servant at his task and he would not have to ask if Adam had been faithful to his commands. Yes it was lavish and lush. But Adam was not free to pick the berries and wander off in a rush, and while away the hours of the day until a pesky God came back to ask if he had done this or that.

No, though we hate to admit it, Eden wasn't at all like that.

B2032-1 Discernment

What is discernment that I should stare into the mouth of its cave and wonder at its pitch darkness? Who am I to rave that I have seen the bright and amber hues that glisten from the frozen stones that drip from the percolated waters of the karsted peneplain? Do I see and understand that the spires and lace that adorn that place are more than just a jumble of stones that happen to enthrone the carved channel of its marls and dolomites? Is it possible for me to see in this the hand of God sculpting and turning the mass of stones into the faint image of His glory? Or am I just content to taste the weak carbonic acid withering the gullet of the cavern and to watch the deposition of the stones in the sullen dripping of the waters?

Why is it that I never seem to see discernment as anything more than just a pretty bump on a smooth and barren plain: a monadnock of applied wisdom rising above the dreary expanse of insensibility? Why is it that I fully expect to see such discernment in full bloom in others while I am content to dwell in the gloom of stubborn ignorance myself? Even though I am aware that I often fail to perceive the bold outlines of the kingdom of God and, instead, choose what is most certainly less than good, I have not the practical sense to pray that God will give me the wisdom to find my way. Somehow, discernment in my eyes appears as glitter and sheen that is to be found in the learned and keen who have been gifted by God to know exactly where to strike the blow that shatters the hard sediments of indifference.

F2087-1 Ommatidia

He looked at his watch, and then he ran his fingers through his hair. “Are you done yet?” he asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“Jeeze! What the heck are you doing?” He stared at the windows on the opposite wall. They were near the ceiling, like windows in a prison. They were large enough to allow light to enter the room. But they were mounted too high to see out of the room. From time to time he could see clouds passing by.

Everyone else had left. He and I were the only two people still in the room. He sat slumping in his chair, with his feet on the desk, his body turned sideways, facing the windows. I sat drumming on my desk with a pencil. I turned the word over and over in my mind. I looked at my watch. I said nothing.

“You know this stuff,” he said, looking irritated. “Why are you still here?” He didn’t even bother to look at me. It was almost as if he were talking to the wall.
“I get three hours and I’m taking the three hours.” I said.
He put his hand on his forehead, exhaled a long, noisy breath, and rolled his head backwards. “Damn!”

His tests were long and complicated. Fifteen pages of multiple-choice questions, with true and false questions, or matching questions, or short-definition questions, or essay questions thrown in for good measure. It was impossible to guess with his tests: you either had to know the answers or you got them wrong. It was as simple as that. I had finished the exam, except for one short-definition question. I remembered reading the word in the text book. But I couldn’t remember what the word meant. I drummed on the desk and said the word, over and over, almost out loud, “Ommatidia. Ommatidia. Ommatidia.”

I had tried for almost two hours to remember what ommatidia meant. The worst students in the class had left after an hour and a quarter. And the best students were out of there in a mere forty-five minutes. I sat there with several minutes to go before the three-hour mark. I drummed on the desk with the pencil. To me, ommatidia had a rhythmic - almost musical - quality about it. The professor stared at the ceiling, softly whispering an endless litany of obscenities to himself. I had decided that no matter what I wrote for an answer, it would be wrong. So when the time had nearly expired, I wrote in the blank space, “Ommatidia is a Renaissance consort band, composed of glockenspiels, flugelhorns, and sackbuts.” I stood up and took my Invertebrate Zoology final examination to the professor’s desk. He looked at me, shook his head, and muttered, “Damn!”

It was some time during the Christmas break that I opened the textbook again to find out what ommatidia meant. An ommatidia was “the compound eye of a crustacean.” “Man!” I thought to myself. “How could I have forgotten that?”

When classes resumed in January, the professor entered the Vertebrate Zoology classroom walking on crutches. I asked him what happened to him.
“Ha! You son of a gun, you!” he said.
“What did I do?”
“It’s all your fault.”
“What do you mean, ‘It’s all your fault’? How could it be my fault. I haven’t even seen you in the last two weeks.”
“Well, I was at home upstairs in the loft correcting those final tests. My wife was downstairs in the kitchen. I had gone over all those tests, checking each answer. After a couple of hours I got pretty punchy. Then I came to your examination. I said, ‘He’s got that one right. And, yeah, he’s got that one right, too,’ as I checked your answers. Then I came to that definition question on ommatidia. I read your answer. It didn’t make any sense to me. I read it again, and it still didn’t make any sense. Finally, it dawned on me that you didn’t know the answer and just wrote down some nonsense instead. Well, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. My wife asked me what I was doing. And I said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to read this guy’s answer. This is great.’ She’s a high school biology teacher, so she would understand what the word ommatidia meant. I started down the stairs, still laughing. I was laughing so hard that I tripped and fell down the steps and broke my leg, thanks to you.”
“Hey, I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said, “it was a great answer. I gave you credit for it anyhow.”

F2090-1 Smoking

There were times when she looked in my direction and really wondered what had happened to me. Still, it was her idea, after all. She had proffered, in an almost beige-like, chameleon, sort of way, the outrageous idea of the two of us quitting. I agreed at once, however. And so it seemed incongruent to me that she would be sitting there the next day, puffing away on her cigarette.

“I thought we had a deal,” I said.
“Well...”
“You said, ‘If you quit, I’ll quit, too.’ Didn’t you say that to me?”
“Well...”
“We had a deal here. What are you doing smoking a cigarette now?”
“You aren’t kidding me,” she said, suddenly looking very angry. “You’re still smoking.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you going to stand there and tell me you haven’t had a cigarette since yesterday afternoon?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, right. Who do you think you’re kidding?”

She had seriously miscalculated my obstinacy - yet again. I have always considered myself to be a firm person. At times I have imagined myself as steely and resolute, you might even say, principled. She, however, saw me only as a pigheaded dolt, a rough plank propped up in the corner of a parlor full of fine furniture. But we had agreed, after all. When she suggested that we quit smoking, I reached for my pack of cigarettes immediately and threw it into the wastepaper basket. “You got it,” I said.

She smiled and took a long drag on her cigarette, blowing a ring of smoke in my direction. “Real cute,” she said.

The days and weeks went by. And she used to lie on the sofa, light a cigarette and listen to her “Stop Smoking” audio tape. “I don’t think any of this is sinking into you, is it?” I said to her, pointing at the tape player.

“But the tape is so relaxing.”

There was some truth in what she said. The tape had quiet and soothing music, and it featured a narrator who spoke softly like a mother lulling her child to sleep. “Am I missing something here?” I said. “Isn’t that tape supposed to help you quit smoking?”

“Well...”

“What’s the name of that tape, Non Sequiturs in Smoke? You play the tape and light up a cigarette. Good heavens! What’s up with that?”

The weeks and months went by, slowly tarnishing into years. She continued to play her tape and to smoke. And I kept reminding her of our “deal.” She could not believe that anyone could just throw a pack of cigarettes into the trash and never smoke again. That wasn’t normal. “It’s hard to quit smoking,” she said, pleading for sympathy, as if I would understand. But, it wasn’t hard for me. Nothing is hard for a pigheaded man.

Then, too, throughout those years, Elmer kept puffing cigar smoke into my face at work. He offered me cigar after cigar. Of course, I always turned him down. And then one day Izzy came around handing out cigars when his baby was born. I shook his hand, but I declined his cigar. “My old lady had the kid,” he said. “You’re gonna take the cigar.” I shrugged my shoulders, took his cigar and threw it up on my tool box. I forgot about it.

Elmer asked me almost every day when I was going to smoke Izzy’s cigar. “I don’t smoke,” I told him. But after about six months, he unwrapped the tinder-dry cigar, dipped it in a cup of water, and laid it on the workbench. He waited about ten minutes and then lit the cigar with his Zippo lighter. He handed it to me. “It’s lit,” he said. “Smoke the damned thing.”

Well, I figured I’d never shut him up. So I smoked Izzy’s cigar. And let me tell you now, there was never anything as glorious as that cheap cigar! I couldn’t believe how marvelous it tasted. I stopped on my way home from work and bought a 5-pack of cigars. The next day I smoked all five of those cigars at work. Elmer nodded with approval. That afternoon I bought two 5-packs, and smoked all ten cigars the next day at work. Elmer looked at me with wonder. And then that same day, I bought a whole box of cigars and started down that box-a-week cigar road for the next five years. Elmer glared at me with astonishment. He had never met a pigheaded man before.

Then one day she said to me, “If you quit, I’ll quit too.” I reached for the cluster of cigars in my pocket and threw it into the trash. “You got it,” I said. She lit a cigarette and smiled. “Real cute,” she said, as the wisp of smoke curled into her squinting eye.

Ah, but then she had forgotten once again that I was a pigheaded man.

C3001-1 Thanksgiving: Sunset

I am thankful for the orange and blue sky that tries so hard to hide in the bare branches of the trees at sunset. Almost never does it get away with its outrageous deceit. In the end, there is always that mauve and purple embarrassment at being caught, tangled and snared in the branches, like a thief handcuffed and led away at the end of the day.