Shining Spirit

There was a day when you could go into a store for a pair of socks, pick out the ones you wanted, note the posted price, go to the cashier and pay for them…even if there was a discrepancy in the advertised price.

“Pardon me, sir.  The posted price for these socks was $2.00 but you’re charging me $4.00.”

“Oh”, the clerk would respond, “that is certainly our mistake.  Glad to let you have the socks for $2.00.  Sorry about that.”   It was called “good customer relations” or “commercial hospitality”.

Now, however, computers rule.  I made a sock run this afternoon at a local store, found the ones I wanted under a sign that read: “Buy one package, get a second for $1”.  Sounded fine to me.  Off to the cashier I go, present my new socks and reach for my faithful credit card.  I figure the total will be $15…$14 for the first package and $1 for the second.  “That will be $21”,  she said.  “I beg your pardon?  I think it’s $15, given the sign in the socks section.”  I explained in detail.  Then she explained in detail.

“Sir, I’m very sorry.  Even though the sign is as you report, the computer says I have to charge $21 for this purchase.”  “But you advertise them for $15”, I countered.  “I understand what you’re saying, sir, but I can’t argue with the computer.  It controls our prices.  I can’t change what the computer says.  It’s in charge of all pricing.”  Somebody pinch me and tell me I’m dreaming.

What have we come to?  I’m dealing relatively well with the insanity of politics right now.  My anxiety level is under control concerning global climate change, at least for the moment.  I’m even rather serene remembering that my dog peed on the living room carpet the other day, requiring a visit from  professional rug cleaners.  Now, though, this is it!  This may be the moment that sends me mumbling into the Sonoran Desert.  The computer rules!?  Really?

At home again, while removing my blood pressure cuff, I calmed myself by concluding that I have the last laugh on that computer.   I didn’t really need the stupid socks, anyway.

So there.

This is not an easy time to be a human being on planet earth.

Some of us have canceled newspaper subscriptions and sworn off electronic news reporting.  It used to be said that “no news is good news” but that’s not true anymore.  Many would say that “all news is bad news”.  The earth and its inhabitants are suffering in alarming ways.  Under these circumstances we hold on tightly to philosophical or political ideas, defending them to the death…literally in some cases.  Religion for many has become an important anchor in the storm, but then we fight savagely about who is right and who is wrong…more often than not it’s the other person who is following the wrong dogmas and doctrines.  The average person on the street seems to feel disconnected, powerless to make much of a difference, and resigned to take one day at a time, hoping for the best.  In our worst moments discontent produces despair, despair leads to fear, fear to anger, and anger to violence.  One wonders how long humanity and the earth can stand the endless assault of fear and her children.

I don’t know anyone who has practical answers to the perilous problems that wake us in the morning and send us into the darkness at night.  I certainly don’t.  But perhaps instead of fretting over the problems, each of us might consider focusing on the possible, which is finding a meaningful balance in my own life and choosing to live each day in that balance.  To that end I offer three words that are engraved on the little pendant on my neck chain.  In these three words I find a measure of hope, not for solving world problems but for helping me hold onto my humanity while at the same time honoring yours.  The words are Serenity, Wisdom, and Courage.

Serenity is not easy to come by, but it’s possible when we are intentional.  Decisions made from a state of anxiety, choices born of fear, actions taken in knee-jerk reactions to hatred or prejudice only deepen the abyss.  On the other hand, decisions and choices and actions that are the products of thoughtful reflections of a calm mind, an intentionally quiet spirit, are much more likely to find common ground with my neighbor who seeks the same balance.  Serenity does not mean withdrawing.  It means finding the better way, a way that unravels the tangles of our turmoil.  So, seek Serenity…find a way to tap into that which is already available…use any method you can find to calm your mind and hear creative possibilities.   Serenity.

Wisdom is not knowledge.  One can know a great deal but have little wisdom.  Wisdom is most often the product of engagement and experience, the give and take of living, a synthesis of information and experience that produces insight.  It is accumulated, acquired through interaction, and it is much broader than one’s opinion or personal preference.  Wisdom takes the other person or culture into account, considers broadly, and then seeks congenial conversation toward a common solution.  Wisdom is not weak.  It is sorely missing in current cultural, political, and religious arenas.  Knowledge is useful only when it is tempered by wisdom, and wisdom is acquired when people are more concerned about drawing circles rather than lines in the sand.   Wisdom.

Courage is not bravado and bluster.  It does not hide behind weapons or words.  Courage is the ability to overcome fear or despair, an ability that is too often misrepresented by threat or intimidation.  There is no courage pill to swallow; rather it is developed over time when one risks, takes a chance, tries the unusual, dares.  It is fraught with uncertainty and few guarantees, and in some cases it requires great sacrifice.  But without courage based on wisdom that comes from the balance and stability of serenity, we will continue to isolate ourselves from each other while doing great harm to our home, the fragile planet that gives us all life.  Courage.

Serenity. Wisdom. Courage.  In my life and in your life, those essential ingredients just might make a lasting difference.

Several days ago I posted this photo on the internet with the caption: “Wonder where I can find a huge rubber band?”  I thought it was rather clever.

When one of my children saw the posting, he transformed the image into something quite different.  “It’s a furcula,” he declared, “the fusion of two clavicles found between the neck and breast of a bird.”  Well, what he actually said was “Hey, Dad, that looks like a wishbone.”  And that sent me off into childhood memories, one of which was the ritual act done at the dinner table every Sunday, the pulling of the chicken wishbone.   Chicken every Sunday?  Yes, in my home you knew what you were getting each Sunday.  Sit down and enjoy it.

In case you were deprived of important rituals in your home, like the chicken wishbone pull, let me educate you.  First, whoever got the piece of meat that contained the wishbone was considered lucky.  All the kids asked for it.  Most of the adults secretly hoped for it.  Then, when the meat was devoured and the bone exposed, the lucky holder could pick one other person who would grasp one side of the “U” shaped bone and on a signal from my grandmother, the pull was on.  The bone would flex and finally snap into two pieces, and whoever held the longest (or was it shortest) piece was declared the winner and would get a round of family applause.  Of course the winner would make a secret wish which was guaranteed to come true…sometime…somewhere.   The chicken wishbone ritual!  A little furcula fun!

All of that sets me to thinking about wishes and hopes, and reflecting on what I might wish for today if I were picked for the pull.  How about you?

It’s too late to wish for more hair or fewer wrinkles.  That train has left the station.  But I do wish people would be a little kinder, maybe gentler, with each other, especially in this depressing season called “political campaign” time.  I’d like to consider voting for something or someone, not against everything and everyone smeared with mud.  Have we lost track of what this process is all about?

Another wish I would send across the dining room table is that my great-grand children might have enough earth left to prosper in their time.  We’re not doing a very good job of stewarding the earth for them.  I worry about how little we regard the only home we have.  I haven’t heard of any substitute earth…this is it.  I know we are smart enough; I just wish we had the moral courage to look beyond ourselves and consider the essential value of the nest we are fouling.

I also wish someone would invent chocolate doughnuts without calories, smoke alarms that are guaranteed not to go off at 2 a.m. when the battery decides to die.  I wish for TV journalists who don’t begin each sentence with “So” or “Now”, larger print on medicine bottle prescription labels (ah, the “small print” conspiracy!), physicians who don’t begin each sentence with “Well, Roger, at your age…”  Shall I go on?

Pass me that furcula, please.

Morning comes gently and holds out her welcoming hand.

I will wrap my arms around her as she lifts me into the light and takes me out to play in the long shadowed dawning.

We will watch hummingbirds dart among the yellow flowers, rub the black dog behind her floppy ears, smell pink blossoms bending long green arms, return the quail’s call into the cool air, share the sound of a train’s faint whistle that comes and goes on the wind.

I will lay my head on her neck and she will sing a song into my heart.  It’s a different song than yesterday’s, words are not the same, but the melody is so familiar.

Then when the shadows have reversed their path, when all is spent in the living, she will gently lay me on soft blue sheets and cover me with a cloud she has borrowed from the sky.  We will be apart but not apart.  She will sit with me as night spreads his arms over the mountains, filling the canyons with darkness.

In time, with a gentle hand, when the moment is right, she will lift my cloud blanket and whisper:  “Come, let us play again.”

The sound of water falling from the green ceramic fountain reminds me of the life force flowing through all living things.

The fresh fragrance of the crisp morning reminds me of the new growth in all that springs from the earth.

Touching the cool, brown stone by the gate and feeling its gradual sun warming reminds me of the power love brings to an embrace.

The gray finch resting among the brilliant yellow blossoms reminds me of beauty upon beauty in this new day.

What does it mean to be re-minded?  Re-minded?

Is it being momentarily called back to a primordial perspective?  A mind that once looked out upon creation and said: this is good?

Yes.

“It was you, O God, who made my inmost self, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Psalm 139:13-14

These two verses appeared today in a devotional resource I use to begin and end each day.  I’ve read them many times, but this morning two words forced me to pause and reflect:  fearfully and wonderfully.  What?  What do those words mean to a person living in the 21st century?

My guess is that if I asked five people to share their understanding or interpretation of the words, I would get five varied responses…maybe more.  What did the Psalmist have in mind when “fearfully and wonderfully” went onto the page?

Fearfully is the harder of the two.  How about these possibilities:  God was “fearful” when humankind was constructed because God knew the possibility, or even the probability, that we would wander off on our own, become self-focused, cross the line of obedience.  Or, maybe fear was built into the final product so that you and I could experience the full range of human emotions.  Or, it was designed into us so that we would recognize danger or trouble and take two steps back.  There must be other possibilities for the strange word…I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Wonderfully, on the other hand, is commonly thought to mean that we humans are constructed with amazing, complex, intricate magnificence.  We are the top of the totem pole, the crown of creation.  The human body is a marvel that no human can replicate.  Wonderfully made, indeed.

So, with this in mind, let me offer two observations.  First, language changes over time; words from one century might not fit exactly into another century.  Second, sometimes it’s interesting to take words at face value.  For instance, “fearfully” might mean “full of fear”, which would lead you back to paragraph three above.  But remember that the word fear in the bible, particularly in reference to God, really means “awe”.  To fear God is to hold God in awe.  Quite a difference.  Fear’s companion, Wonder, is astonishment and a deep desire to comprehend, quest, search, know.

Here, then, is my own conclusion.  To be “fearfully and wonderfully made” is to possess the inherent ingredients of awe and wonder, built-in traits that come with the whole package.  I disagree with my dictionary when it says that awe is “profound and reverent dread of the supernatural”.  Dread?  Really?  I think the human capacity to stand in awe and to live in wonder has little to do with how one approaches the supernatural, God, but how you and I can experience life itself.  Within this complex construction called “me” there is the potential to receive each day in awe, reverent respect; and in wonder, which for me is amazement and sacred surprise.

Awe stops me in my tracks and makes me gasp.  Wonder moves me to ask questions of and seek relationship with this mystery.  Together, they sit me down on a big rock along the mountain trail and remind me to be “awe-fully” grateful and “wonder-fully” connected to creation.

Works for me.

May I walk through this day hand in hand with all that is gentle and beautiful, warm morning sun waking all living things, yellow blossoms falling like mist from soft green palo verdes.

May I walk through this day heart to heart with the pure joy of hearing bird song, holding a sacred hope that all will be well with the world, discovering kindness, returning goodness, standing in awe, remembering all that is important while releasing all that isn’t.

May I walk through this day convinced of mystery, concerned for brokenness, and at peace with myself.  May I hold Love’s hand until the evening comes.

I awoke this morning at 1:36, having negotiated with Sleep for a restless hour, concluding that she was not persuasive, and fully aware that my will to resist was paper thin.

As I sat on the edge of my bed in the still dark room,  I calculated the number of hushed steps from the bedroom door to a glorious chocolate drenched donut in the refrigerator, the delight that was to be my breakfast in the honesty of daylight.

Sleep surrendered and grudgingly retreated to the corner near the window where I had tossed my brown hiking boots.

The tile was cool on my bare feet as I rose into the blue light from the bedside clock, hoping that I would not step on my invisible black dog or one of her irritating squeaky toys as I took the first steps.

The mysterious magic of a donut in the dark is a temptation beyond my ability to resist.

Oh, the taste. Unspeakable.

Sleep was not impressed with my apology, but, happily, we became friends again about 2:06.

Someone told me recently that the wonderful poet Mary Oliver advises that each day you and I “Pay attention!”, “Be astounded!”  and “Tell about it!”  I can’t verify the attribution, but if she did advise it, then “Thank you, Mary Oliver!”

About a week ago I walked into my backyard in the early hours of morning light, gazed around to make sure everything had stayed in its proper place during the cool Arizona night, then, turning to the raised flowerbed along the north wall, heard myself gasp at the gift offered by a very ugly cactus plant.  I was astounded.  It was one of those blink-twice moments to make sure it’s real.  Let me tell you about it.

This delicate creation that overnight had popped out of a squatty, very average, run-of-the-mill cactus plant, was breathtaking.  Radiant in the morning sun.  Gleaming white tinged with soft pink around the edges.  The symmetry in the center.  One long golden arm reaching out to invite and welcome pollen gatherers.  The circular inner pool lined in peaceful green.  Petals that seemed spun of cloud and mist.  And then astonishment slowly turned into awe.  For here before me was a glorious example of the interrelatedness of life, the coming together in one moment of elements and substances that produced the tangible reality of beauty.  For a moment I was no longer admiring a lovely flower, but looking instead at the conjunction of air, and wind, and rain, and sunshine, and rich soil, and living nutrients, and molecules, and atoms, and mystery.  For about two days these quiet elements have come together to be transformed into the visible manifestation of sheer beauty.  After two days, the cactus flower will be gone.  It will dry up and droop, eventually fall off its host onto the ground, then disappear into the dirt.

But in the months to come I will be watching…paying attention, because I know that one day the flower will reappear, and I will be astounded all over again.  It is inevitable.  The same constant friends will again embrace each other.  It is their nature and their delight.  And their mysterious dance will create an astonishment and a reminder about how life works.

All things are related.  Pay attention.  Be astounded.  Tell about it.

In the long corridor of my memory, I revisit a white frame house on Miller Avenue, the exact floor plan of the modest structure,  two windows next to my bed in the little room added on to the back of the house, and the decals that I had stuck to the glass at the bottom of the windows.  Each decal was the logo and name of a Southwest Conference football team: Rice Owls, Baylor Bears, SMU Mustangs…there used to be a Southwest Conference.  The walk down the corridor took me to about 1950.  A long walk, but a good one because lots of wonderful memories were made in that house.

For instance, when the sun set behind the china berry tree and darkness quietly swallowed up the white stone barbecue pit near the purple irises, I anticipated the the sound of my mother’s voice: “Roger, about time for bed.”   Those words set into motion a certain routine that had developed in my childhood.  Did I mention that I lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents?   Hearing the first call to bedtime, I knew there was no purpose protesting.  It never worked.  So I took step one of the familiar routine.  Slip into my pajamas decorated with the Texas A&M logo and lots of footballs, find my blue toothbrush and the tube of Ipana toothpaste, take care of any other physical necessities, kiss my mother and my grandmother, try to kiss my grandfather who would usually bear hug me and tousle my hair, then disappear into the warm and welcoming little room at the back of the house.

I walked down that memory path recently, and intentionally, when I was getting ready for bed right here in the 21st century.    Is it necessary to say that “times have changed” and “they aren’t like they used to be.”  Of course not.  But bedtime preparation the other evening shocked me, like dropping a rock on my big toe.  I was jarred when I realized that while some elements of the routine have remained the same as in the innocence of childhood…toothbrush…necessities…hugs and kisses, etc., there is an element that would have seemed like Flash Gordon come true to that nine year old in the little house on Miller Avenue.

It is now absolutely necessary to gather all the charging wires and all the electronic devices, sort out all the fittings and find enough wall sockets to put them all to bed.  I mean, who wants to wake up to a 14% charge in the morning…it would ruin the day.  There is a rule somewhere that says:  “Thou must charge thy electronic devices nightly without fail.”  In my case that means wires and sockets for two phones, an ipad, two e-readers, and my little Shuffle music gadget…oh, and the Fitbit.   I certainly have to charge that one so I can tell if my heart is still beating in the morning and how many steps it takes me to go from the bedroom to the coffee pot.  Life’s essential information.  I am wired up every night, and it’s not from too much caffeine.

Don’t get me started on all the LED lights glowing in the nighttime darkness.  It’s like we live in a blue haze.  It’s like…never mind, I just noticed that my iphone is down to 23%.