Some of us are frustrated Utopians at heart, itching for a benevolent world where everything turns out right and people treat each other according to the Golden Rule. Alas, this may be only the stuff of science fiction. We only have to read the newspaper or hear the evening news to know there is much room for improvement.
Occasionally, we have brief encounters with a Higher Realm where we can actually experience Utopia, if but for a fleeting moment. A stranger holds the door open when we have our hands filled with a precarious pile of fragile parcels. Someone offers us the choice prize of a brilliant smile on a gray rainy Monday morning. Near the end of the month, when money is short, we pull up to the toll booth and find a driver in front of us has paid our way through. Another driver actually yields to allow us onto the crowded expressway.
Ever had a beautiful unexpected postcard show up in the mail from a treasured friend who thought of you while ten thousand miles away on a long journey? Ever come home and find an aromatic bag on the porch containing a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies?
At one time I must have lived in Utopia. For nearly a year after moving into a new house I came home to find anonymous gifts at my door. During the first week before I had water in the house and a blistering midwestern summer was broiling my soul, I came home to find a single can of ice-cold Coke on the threshold. Many other times I came home to find various sun-drenched offerings from unnamed vegetable gardens. Just last year, someone left a very large pumpkin on my porch which eventually found its way into warm breads and sweet holiday pies.
The only real difference between the Utopian worlds of science fiction and our world is how often people reach out to others in acts of kindness or civility, how often they refrain from personal gain at the expense of others. Sometimes a bit of magic will happen that confirm the Creator's great desire for us to live in a kinder better world.
"A Better Investment" describes my really difficult struggle to walk away from certain profits at a tax auction in order to not make a gain at the expense of others. I struggle with greed as much as the next consumer. It so happens a few months later I was called and given a chance to make a large gain on property sold freely by its owners rather than by the tax authorities.
"Link" is a memorial to a dear friend who makes the world an infinitely more civilized and gracious place, almost Utopian at times. Jan encourages the souls of those around her, sees their inner gold despite coarse rocky exteriors. She helps empower people to believe they can make a difference, one at a time.
In "Wake Up, America!" my cat taught me that there is a better way to start the day. It does not have to be a frantic last second dash to the 63rd floor of a far distant office tower. It can be a leisurely embrace of a new day and perhaps we don't have to spend two or three hours a day commuting. I really don't have to sacrifice myself to a high-pressure high-paying job that might just cost me my soul.
In "Nap" Jan showed me that the best medicine has no adverse side effects and that the best things in life don't have to be confined to our dreams.
We all recall the Olympian magic that descended on Atlanta and the rest of the world. Too well, we recall the reality of Centennial Park. Utopia has yet to arrive on earth. Even so, for a short season, a southern city made infamous by its racial strife and church bombings ascended Mount Olympus. "Olympian Magic" describes what that city found on top.
"Safety as Myth" describes many of our desperate bids for safety and security. We install electronic detection systems in our houses, over insure ourselves, obsess about making more money, try to win the lottery. Yet we may fall in the bathtub and be rendered total dependent. The ancient time‑tested wisdom of Solomon tells us that there is for everything a season. A time to live, a time to die, a time to laugh, a time to cry. If we can truly rest in this then we may find out what real living is about.
Sometimes it's difficult to determine whether something is still owned by someone or if it has been abandoned. "Teddy Bear" captures my hesitation about removing a pink four inch stuffed teddy bear from a lamp post on the town square. There was only the one and it gave a sense of having been lost by an unknown little girl and later picked up by a passer-by and given refuge in the holiday decorations of a nearby lamp post. I left it but checked on it two weeks later and found it in the mud and ice. I took it home and shampooed it and hung it above the wood stove to dry.
Volunteerism is probably the shortest way to Utopia in this world and might even help get us to the Kingdom of God. In "Second Mile" my uncle demonstrated the volunteer spirit to be what moves America, not trucks. It's no accident Jesus never drove a Chevy.
Its easy to think one knows it all after taking seventeen years of university training and traveling to thirty-one countries. In "#409" it's obvious that I didn't learn it all in university and still haven't quite got it. Sometimes the greatest teachers never got past the third grade.
"Reeducation" only confirms that my learning still has a long way to go before being completed. We often see things at face value and conclude the worst. I do. This time I found out that what I thought to be a great tragedy was really a great blessing for the ones that went through it. Ms. Rice found out that tragedy was an open door way to great blessing. Sometimes we have to walk in another's moccasins to really know what's going on.
"Offering" confirms that there is always room for Hope, even when we are in the midst of the darkest of circumstances. There isn't a disease in the world someone has not beaten. The greatest mind in the world has beaten Lou Gherigs disease back for decades while he explores the universe. Miracles are just that; the impossible made possible.
Much of our value system we learn from our parents, for better or worse. If you're luck, you got a daddy like the one Ms. Rice had. She has grand memories of him and relishes telling stories of his life. In "The Second Temptation of Mankind" Ms. Rice relates her learning about the folly of telling lies. In Utopia there is no need for lies. If we quite telling them here we might just get closer to experiencing it.
"Productivity Enhancement and Institutional Survival" makes the humorous suggestion that putting cats in hospitals might make them better places to get well. In actuality, hospitals would be much better places to get well in if those of us working in them were to be much less self-important and let go of our pretenses. Cats don't know anything about the caste systems that exist in most hospitals.
Einstein figured out a long time ago that time moves more slowly or more quickly depending how fast we are moving. In "Crescent" I suggest that if we move more slowly we will have more time to live life more fully, especially during our travels. Rather than spend a mere forty minutes sitting in a jet to get launched to a destination, it might just make sense to stretch it out into a seven-hour railroad odyssey instead.
A Better Investment
Several weeks ago a friend called me to tell me of a large sale of properties by her county to satisfy delinquent real estate tax payments. I had visions of acquiring grand properties for pennies on the dollar. It occurred to me after some days of pondering that it would be rather uncivil for me to make a large gain at the expense of someone else’s misfortune. Even with this acquired wisdom, there was an ongoing inner struggle between the small nascent part of my being that attempts to live above greed and the much larger part that would be perfectly happy to win $100 million in the Super Ball lotto and live happily ever after on a tropical atoll. Too bad for all the millions who bought lotto tickets and lost.
During the course of my struggle I decided I would drive the thirty five miles to the court house and look at the tax map books to see if there really was something I shouldn't be missing. Don’t ask me to explain the theology of such an approach to decision making. It is not something to be emulated. I am a master at rationalization. If the deals proved irresistible, then I should go after them, right? I got in my car and headed to the court house two counties away. My routing was to take me past the entrance to the South Carolina Botanical Gardens. I found myself turning into the gardens, eliminating my last opportunity to view the map books before the tax auction scheduled for next Monday.
Alone in those gardens on a cloudy afternoon I experienced the late fall brilliance of myriad wild flowers and swarms of butterflies. I knew I was in the right place. I just knew it. While wandering in dark shade of the forest I caught the intense distinctive fragrance of newly bloomed gardenia, my favorite flavor. I was quite surprised by this as the season is months past the time for blooming of gardenias. What made this more confounding was the complete lack of gardenia bushes or blooms. I wandered about 45 minutes in the area and never found a bush, stray blossom or anything else to account for the truly over powering aroma I left the gardens quite bewildered by this, even mentioning it to several friends in the evening.
Late in the evening my dearest friend, Jan called. During the course of our discussion I mentioned enjoying aromatic gardenia where there was no gardenia. She excitedly told me that the gardenia bush in her garden had a single bloom open on it today, in the afternoon. I gave her this bush last year and in the years I had the bush and the year she has had it, it has never made a single flower. Last year it never even made a bud. We both were taken aback when we realized that in some magical way I had experienced the miracle of her perfectly-timed bloom. You see, the bloom was 288 miles west of where I was standing when I was delighted with the unique signature of that symbol of gentleness.
We are convinced that this was a magical sign to both of us that God the Father provides for His children and that I don't need to depend on tax auctions, lotteries, or the misfortunes of others to experience true security. If He can enable me to partake of a gardenia bloom at 288 miles, He can empower me to partake of the desires of my heart, His way.
Store up your treasures in Heaven where thieves do not steal and where moths do not destroy.
Link
Two strangers meeting at table;
both part, satiated in Spirit.
Another faltering in her step; clings.
With You, she walks in confidence.
An elder failing in health, fears.
With gentle words, Hope flowers.
Would-be musicians, uncertain,
bask in Your creative urgings.
Lacerated by life's malignity;
many muse Your missives of Mercy.
Young, uncertain of the future;
dreamy-eyed youth trust Your Way.
Your sentient radiance warming me;
inner ice melts, releasing my soul.
Just One makes a grand difference.
They say butterfly wings cause hurricanes.
Want to share a taxi?
Wake Up, America!
Have you ever wondered why Americans are so aggressive and confrontational with each other? Sociologists have explored this issue for decades and come up with little that is truly definitive. Their landmark studies often describe a culture nearly run amok. Rather unsettling reading actually, which the popular press loves to sensationalize.
I think I have found the solution with only minimal experimental research. Like with some other great discoverers, it was not due to a great scientific mind being at work, rather just plain old good luck. Remember the guy that discovered “post-it note” adhesive for 3M and made hundreds of millions of dollars? It was a serendipitous accident. He left a pot full of improperly-made adhesive on a lab counter and the next morning found it didn't stick very well, but well enough to attach 2 x 2 inch squares of yellow paper to most surfaces on the third planet. No, I don’t expect to make hundreds of millions of dollars with my discovery, but perhaps we can save billions of dollars as a nation in reduced casualty and medical insurance losses as a result of lower aggression.
This morning, in the quiet serenity of my own bed, the solution to our perplexing social problems presented itself to me. It being Sunday morning, I had not yet been victimized by a certain strident technology, which allowed me time for relaxed creativity. Americans are well known to be severely sleep deprived. Much as been made of this in the media in the past year. Everything from homicide to excess highway mortality has been attributed to our being in states of partial consciousness. I am among their ranks, at times. This is one of those hapless times.
The past several nights did not find me in quiet repose until 1:30 AM. And the emergence of another morning can be especially harsh at such times. But today in my hazy fog I found brilliant clarity.
Think back to those times when you have been mid way through some fabulous dream and in the merest instant found yourself blasted into the consciousness of a new day with a pulsating thousand-cycle shrill insult from that tiny plastic monster located strategically near your head. All night long, with those two tiny dots pulsating at one-second intervals, it waited for the most inopportune time to destroy your fantasy. Ever slammed your fist down on the thing in less than a nanosecond in a desperate bid to get back to Shangri-La? To no avail. The transporter coordinates had been lost.
How did you feel when you realized you weren't really in Shangri-La but in your bed on a rainy nasty Monday morning? And it was 8:45 AM and your project presentation scheduled for 9 AM is twenty-two miles away and sixty-three floors up and the express elevators are out for maintenance. Did your demeanor get worse when you remembered that you had planned to get up early to get your grand exposition finished up, because you played golf yesterday instead? How was it when those believable rumors of a corporate down-sizing percolated up into your grogginess?
I would suspect that when this not-so pleasant reality was foisted onto you by that digital-display monster, you were off and in the running for a really bad day, I also suspect the sociologists could have collected much field information about your aggressive uncivil behavior on the Dan Ryan expressway. Especially, when you cut off that ambulance from County that had the audacity to merge into your lane from the on-ramp as you were attempting to get off. You missed your exit. I think the picture is pretty clear now.
Would you like to rewind and start the day over?
The sun is just making itself known, with an ebony sky giving way to platinum possibilities. A slow gentle rumbling resonates in the depths of your being and barely rises above the horizon of consciousness. What is it? Pondering, curious, you turn over with relaxed grunt. Time slips. It grows louder. Two neurons fire. With minimally functional sentience, you realize the cat is directly under the bed purr claiming the arrival of aureate dawn. You admit to a tiny smile as you lapse back into pleasant slumber
The day blooms vermilion. A gentle prodding politely suggests its time to embrace the grand opportunity of a new-born day. You turn the other way with serene musings. It persists. You relapse again, searching for Shangri-La.. Perhaps its out there for the finding. A gentle “meow?” breaks your reverie. Nine precious minutes drift by. More firmly now. “Meow.” It’s eighteen minutes now. With a bit more crescendo, “Meow!” Twenty-seven priceless minutes, more than enough. With total commitment. “MEOW!” My feline guardian walking on my head whispers “You can let me outside now or I can do it right here, right now.” I get up, instantly.
With great expectations of the new day, I smile. I really don't have to make that frantic dash to that high-pressure high paying job that enables me to buy all that 'stuff' I will only sell in next year's garage sale. My furry teacher again reminds me of the basics we need for happy contented living. Health, a few good friends, a warm bed, a cat, being let out, and Purina Special Diet. Puderd goes out to chase squirrels. I go out to chase dreams. Before leaving the house I unplug the alarm clock. I don't think I'll need it any more. I gave my notice today.
I drove nice all day.
Nap
Modern American life is so stressful that a multi-million-dollar industry has grown up to show people how to cope with living their lives at the speed of light. Thousands of books, tapes, videos, seminars, and conferences are offered at princely prices to the chronologically beleaguered. When it gets really difficult to contend, one can pay $125 an hour for a therapist who can talk with you and wire you up to a bio-feedback machine, if you can find the time and money.
I will have to confess to living my life at warp nine a lot of the time. It's hard not to when the whole culture seems to push ever faster. I know I am in really big trouble when my 'to-do' list is an ever-growing relational data base on a pentium computer. Yes, I really do keep up with my life this way. Pathetic isn't it?
A couple of days ago I had a profoundly de-stressing and ultimately relaxing experience with a very close friend. I was walking with Jan in a very fine botanical garden on an unusually cool July day. It was one of those singularly brilliant low-humidity days that occurs in summer right after a rare cold front pushes a cleansing rain just ahead of it; one of those days that has you wondering "why can't summer always be like this?" We were in the coolest region of the garden, a serene wild flower garden under a emerald canopy of oak and sweetgum trees when Jan spotted some brilliant lacy Cahaba lilies growing in a small fern bog. While sharing mutual exclamation over the aesthetic merits of these rare lilies, we spotted a newly installed memorial bench of limestone.
Jan sat down at one end. Impulsively, I laid down on this cool slab and put my head in her lap. In seconds, I was soundly asleep, enjoying myriad dreams. I often dream a lot when I take naps during the day. I was amazed to awaken and find I had been soundly sleeping in such a bucolic setting with a fine friend. I have no idea how long I slept.
If you live your life too fast, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to the nearest botanical garden with a dear friend who likes human touch. Find a sturdy bench in the shade. Lie down with your overfull head in your friend's lap and make petition for a head massage. Fall swiftly asleep.
Dream.
Olympian Magic
So often life is filled with the daily grind of paying bills, staying ahead of creditors, taking the car in for an estimate and having the wind knocked out of us when we are told how much it’s going to be. When not contending with financial turbulence, we often worry if our children are using drugs, if racial tensions will destroy our cities, if fear of crime will rob us of our freedom. We struggle to get to the day care on time, leave work to carry our children to the doctor, get dinner on the table. Life can be exceptionally complex and stressful with little light at the end of the tunnel for many. As I write this, teams of divers were probing the dark cold waters of the North Atlantic for the remains of TWA Flight 800; presumed to have been blasted from the skies by callous terrorists.
Yet, moments of magic enable us to transcend valleys of hopelessness and stand on summits of great joy. Birmingham, Alabama is known as the Magic City, the only place in the world where all the ingredients for making steel occurred naturally. Little steel is made there anymore, but today that city made another kind of magic; the kind that builds bridges, not of steel, but of unity and celebration.
More than eighty-five thousand residents of that city, once known for the Sixteenth Street bombing, came together to celebrate the 26th Olympiad and to build bridges between white and black, rich and poor. Legion Field is in a dying part of the city, silent but a few days a year. Today, an all-time attendance record was set for that stadium, the silence forgotten as the hopeful came to noisily commemorate the Centennial games. It is the first time in decades that no nation has boycotted the games. It seems no one in Birmingham boycotted the games either. For a magical day, fears set aside, strangers held hands, proclaiming love and unity as the setting sun transfigured the collective blues of soul to golden possibilities of shared celebration. Thousands of voices united in a grand choir, transcending denomination, color ,and class, sang of hope for a higher way. Olympians played out their fantasies on a field of dreams. Spectators saw fear transformed to hope.
And when it was all done, people drove friendly. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.
Safety as Myth
The security industry in America is booming. We spend a veritable fortune to wire our homes to protect ourselves from fire, thieves, and pathological killers. Many of my friends and acquaintances have their houses and businesses wired directly to police and fire stations. Wealthy executives build bullet‑proof limousines, hire heavily‑armed body guards, and install state‑of‑the‑art electronic surveillance systems. We use security systems to make sure people don't put bombs on planes or in public places. Sixty percent of the households in my state keep firearms. Our state legislature just passed a bill allowing all private citizens to carry concealed weapons for protection. We seek to fortify a place of safety.
The insurance industry is unbounded in the modern era. We have short‑term disability insurance, long‑term disability insurance, major medical insurance, hospitalization insurance, cancer insurance, liability insurance, workman's compensation insurance, dental insurance, replacement‑value homeowner's insurance, burial insurance, uninsured motorist insurance, collision insurance, malpractice insurance, comprehensive insurance, term life insurance, Medigap insurance, accidental death insurance. W seek to insure our way to safety.
An acquaintance works for a printing company which is dependent on a $750,000 high speed press for its production. A 29 cent piece of wire in the press arced three years ago and caused a fire which resulted in a total loss of the press. Thirty people have lost their jobs, the company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will soon be in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The owner is facing personal bankruptcy as he has legal liability for his company debts. This despite loss‑of‑business insurance, fire insurance, capital equipment insurance, and a jury trial that found in favor of his printing company. Surety is not a sure thing in this world.
If we're smart, we wear seat belts when driving, helmets when riding our bikes, and life vests when canoeing or kayaking on white water. When doing technical climbing on a cliff face we use retaining pins and ropes. We carry a compass if hiking off trail in the wilderness. We seek safety from calamity.
The culture has become quite preoccupied with what are called extreme sports; those activities with a high level of risk and a demand for high physical endurance and skill. I am more frequently encountering people who wear plaster casts as a medal of honor. One can certainly question the virtues of many of these activities. It is difficult to see the merits of riding a bike down a 75 degree ski slope during the summer. Preparation and planning are appropriate when doing things that have inherent danger to them, even more so when doing things with very high levels of danger.
The tragedy in the modern era is that we have become bound by an obsession with financial and physical safety. I remember nights in my childhood when we sat in the front room of the house with rifles because of a barrage of death threats by phone. My mom kept a semi‑automatic pistol in the 'gun drawer' of her dresser for years. An acquaintance routinely is called at night to meet the police at his place of business when his alarm goes off. It is necessary to drive through two gates to get to his house.
I find myself preoccupied with safety as well. I fly a lot. How could I not be concerned. Korean Air, Air India, Pan Am, and now TWA know too well about the flimsy illusion of safety that comes from bomb detection security systems. In three days I will be getting on a plane once again, in Atlanta. I was in Atlanta the morning the Olympic spirit was blasted from Centennial Park to the front pages of the world's newspapers.
I think that I can create a place of safety for myself if I stay off planes, stay out of big cities, stay away from people with guns, buy lots of insurance, wear my seat belt and drive less. I have to confess to many years given to seeking safety and security rather than life. What is really absurd about my situation is that I have been spared death at least eight times that I know of and in no case was my safe passage in any way dependent on my own advance preparation, hyper vigilance, trained anticipation, or trained reaction to the events that threatened me.
Three times I have walked away from the metallic carnage of having my cars totaled by drunks. There was not enough time for me to react or to do anything . Another time I survived being in a level four thunderstorm in a plane and having it struck by lightning and losing all power. Me doing anything? Hardly. I sat in the back and lost it, but I lived to tell about it. It wasn't my time. The Guinness Book of Records for the early 80s editions showed the highest fatality hotel fire to have occurred in Seoul, Korea on December 18, 1971. One hundred eighty nine people died in that fire. I had a paid reservation in that hotel that fateful night. I didn't burn. In September of 1992, thirty‑four people died around me in a two‑thousand‑year rated flood in the French Alps. The event filled fifty pages of the European news magazines. I didn't even get wet. It was not my appointed time.
A close friend was on TWA Flight 800 on Monday, July 15th coming from Athens to New York. She had a premonition that something dreadful would happen to the plane. She came home without incident to tell me of her premonition. Two days later the very plane was blasted from the sky. It wasn't her time yet.
I think that if I stay in my house I will be safe. It is well known that many fatal accidents occur in home bathrooms, in fact, far, far more than have ever occurred in airplanes, hotel fires, or from lightning strikes combined. I got an impressive personal lesson in this last week. As I write this I sit on a very sore back side. I live in a two‑story house and have gone up and down the stairs dozens of times a day for years, without incident. Last week, half way down, I slipped and went the remainder of the distance in a single high impact blur with a very jarring finish at the bottom. I was really quite astounded. I ended up with only a very sore tailbone. I could have just as easily ended up a quadriplegic from a cervical fracture of the spine and still be lying at the bottom of the stairs waiting for someone to find me. I got up. It wasn't time for me to pass through those waters Nothing could have predicted the fall and nothing I could have done would have altered the outcome. I could buy a house on one level and then fall in the bathtub and shatter my skull. Life's risk.
Two women I am getting to know well went back packing some weeks ago in the nearby mountains. I have the good fortune to live within sight of the Blue Ridge mountains. Mary had the misfortune of slipping on a rocky face four miles from the trail head and causing herself serious injury. She was unable to carry her own weight and certainly unable to carry her own heavy back pack. Rosellen, who is much smaller than Mary carried both packs four miles and half carried Mary. Mary did not die on that rocky place and she did not have to walk alone. In the ancient writings of Ecclesiastes we are told if one falls, then another pulls him up, but if a man falls when alone, then he is in trouble. Rosellen had the wisdom to not walk alone.
I work in a hospital all day every day except at special times. One of the things I find haunting working in a hospital are the announcements over the public address system for a Code 99. In our hospital a Code 99 is a semi‑secret way to tell everyone working in the hospital someone has just gone into full cardiac arrest without unduly upsetting the large numbers of visitors, patients, and public that are in the hospital at any given time. This week I got a code 99 at 4:34 AM at home. I was informed it was time for my mother. She left nineteen days after her 81st birthday. Gently, the nurse told me Heaven was ready for my mother. I thanked her for her gentle care of Mom.
The same ancient time‑tested wisdom of Solomon tells us that there is for everything a season. A time to live, a time to die, a time to laugh, a time to cry. If we can truly rest in this, we can then board airplanes, back pack the Blue Ridge, climb the stairs, let dear ones go; not wondering what more we could do to insure our own safety or the safety of others. Safety comes from the One who was before the foundations of time.
"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; and his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."
Teddy Bear
Autumn frost expanding into winter;
Cinnamon cider and chestnuts warm hearts.
Holiday festivities giving life pause,
holly and lights festoon street lamps.
There in prickly leaves, illuminated,
your nascent pink smile greets us.
Four velveteen paws embrace life,
offering Hope to those passing by.
Trusting you to fate, I leave empty-handed;
wanting others to learn Your Secret.
Not daring to take you from your leafy shrine,
I pray for warm dry days at Christmas.
Should I bring you in from the chill,
lest you catch cold or be kidnapped?
***
It is January, patina of Christmas fading,
decorations stored, village shrouded in darkness.
Wondering if you are dry and warm,
I drive by your post, looking, hoping.
You are there, cast aside, shivering.
Ice and snow imprison your radiance.
Another was left out in the cold at Christmas.
But, then, You know this don't you?
Let me put another log on the fire.
The Second Mile
In the heyday of the Roman Empire, military forces occupied many far-flung provinces. It was required of citizens and foreign subjects that they submit to carrying a soldier's field pack for one mile, if so requested. Soldiers were not permitted to demand citizens to carry their gear any further than this. The first mile was expected. Volunteering to carry a pack a second mile was seen as a remarkable act of generosity.
My Uncle Bart recently released his dear wife, Nancy, to Eternity after more than fifty years of happy marriage. They lived in era when people stayed together for the long haul and shared the challenges of life. An inspiring tenacity of spirit in my uncle shows clearly in his commitment to volunteer community service. In spite of his own incalculable loss, he has continued to drive a truck two days a week for a community food pantry and also kept up the race as a volunteer runner in the local hospital another two full days a week. He goes more than the second mile every day.
For some years, my uncle drove about town in his own car collecting surplus food for the community kitchen which then made it available to the needy. As the generosity of food donors grew and as more people became dependent on these services, my uncle's car no longer could pass mustard. He saw the need for a bigger mousetrap. At his own expense, he bought a new pick-up truck and donated it to the community kitchen. As harvests of donated groceries continued to increase and client appetites gobbled them up, the point was reached where a large step van was purchased by the Board of Directors and my uncle's well-loved pick-up truck used as the trade in.
My uncle was not consulted about this and he could have been miffed about it and quit the race. Most would have. I probably would have. Instead, he kept driving, sitting up high in that new step-van. Alas, his is not a step-van kind of persona. If you knew my uncle, you'd know what I mean. He tried but never could reconcile himself to that big step-van. He stepped down and went for the third mile. He raced to the nearest Chevy dealer and bought another new pick-up truck and is out there yet, today making his rounds, carrying more than his share of the load.
The heartbeat of America? It ain't trucks. It's the generous hearts of a few good men.
#409
I don't think of myself as a numerologist or one that places significance on superstitious numbers. For example, you could find me living perfectly happy on the thirteenth floor of a building, excepting that some people might be hesitant to come visit me. I usually find Friday the Thirteenth to be a splendid day; kind of a reverse expectation of the day that so many dread. Yet, recently I noticed an obscure numerical co-incidence that merits notation here, if for no other reason than it gives me a good excuse to write about something I find quite important.
For several weeks I have been visiting an eighty-five year old saint, Elva Rice, in a nearby nursing home where she happens to live in Room 409. Several nights ago as I came out of the nursing home, entranced with the mysteries of the Hale-Bopp comet setting in the west, it occurred to my idle mind that there is a super-duper household disinfectant cleaner called simply "409." I don't know what brought this less-than-profound decidedly non-cosmic observation of the universe to mind but it inspired me to get my brain out of idle and into a meditative state.
What emerged was an opportunity to consider a significant spiritual principle: we become like those we associate with, for good or bad. It has been an unfortunate reality that I have had a struggle with faith for many years while others simply know who they are in a spiritual sense and have a total certainty regarding the reality of God and Heaven. Most of the people around me have also struggled with doubt a lot and it is a rare person in my world that KNOWS for certain about God and Heaven or even wants to acknowledge the possibility of their reality. Birds of a feather flock together as they say.
In the past three weeks that I have been going to the nursing home I have made an important personal discovery. Faith is infectious! Elva has as strong and consistent and inspiring a Christian faith as I have yet encountered in my extended travels and she has infected me with it. I have found that my own tortured struggle with faith has been greatly diminished during the past weeks. I have even begun to experience a quiet wondrous knowing that is new to me in all the decades of doubting I have wrestled with. I find myself captivated with the idea that the Christian message is REALLY true and not subject to my doubts. Talk about a cure for fears and anxieties!
Last night I went back to that nursing home feeling like a student taking the most important course of study in the world: reality. In nursing homes there's no pretense. There's congestive heart failure, night terrors, constant screaming, vast isolation, loneliness, fear, dementia, PAIN. Big pain. But what I have learned there is that the Christian faith is for real and is bigger than any of these things.
Late in the evening my personal saint asked me to wheel her around those halls so that she could have prayer with her fellow patients. We went to several rooms and each time I was introduced as her adopted son. I stood behind her wheelchair and waited for her to pray. After some awkward silence she asked me to pray out loud. I did. You know what? I believed those prayers for those dear suffering women were heard in the highest parts of Heaven. I knew that I knew. I knew there was no more important thing in the world I could be doing than praying, laying my hands on those platinum heads. In that instant, I knew that I have been infected with the magic of faith. And, its safe from the strongest disinfecting cleanser, even 409.
In the Old Testament book of Isaiah we are told that the way to cool down a fire is to spread out the coals. Separate them and they will grow cold and dark. In the New Testament book of Hebrews we are told to not forsake the fellowship of the saints. We are like coals. If a number of coals are kept in proximity to each other, they will maintain their heat and light. In a few short weeks I have found that getting next to a red hot coal of faith has yielded much heat and light in my dark world of doubt. Last night, I found that I could take my own meager heat and light into those dark warrens of fear and bring possibility to those shattered and frightened souls.
Your own answer may be found in the back halls of a nursing home. It might even be found in a nearby church. And watch out, you might get infected for life and there's no disinfectant for a Faith infection except Heaven.
Reeducation
Things are not always as they seem and this can be especially true in matters of the spirit. From our perspective on the ground, the only thing in sight may be a swirling green-black cloud with ominous intent. From another's perspective above, one may see instead cerulean heavens with billowing white cotton tufts below. Anyone who has experienced a jet take-off into dark foreboding cloud, only to break through into cobalt brilliance moments later, will know exactly how compelling this change in perspective can be. Yet, both perspectives are correct. In matters of the spirit, merely changing our attitude is often enough to lift us above a swirling harbinger of doom to witness a heavenly wonder. Today I had an opportunity to experience a cloud from both sides. I realized that reality can often be what we want it to be, simply by making an attitude adjustment, by walking in faith.
I think most of us have an unspoken fear of experiencing some sort of incapacitating accident or medical calamity and being rendered helpless to cope with it. Our deeper fear is that no one will find us or come to our aid. Years ago I faced a neurologic monster and had an intense encounter with this same fear. I have several male acquaintances who have gone through as many as seven marriages in desperate bids to find a woman willing to protect them from the unplanned consequences of life. One of these men even states that he is looking for someone to take care off him when his health begins to fail. And yes, his health has begun to fail and his forth wife has just left him. Alas, no person can protect us from the strong currents of life.
I just returned from a visit to the seventh floor of the hospital where I had a truly sobering experience. An earlier phone call from an acquaintance, Ron, revealed him to be in the hospital fighting a dangerous kidney infection. For most of us this would not be a major issue but for Ron, who has been a quadriplegic for thirty-one years, it's more than a big deal, it can be life-threatening. He's been living on the edge of survival for decades with his eighty-five year old mother, who has been caring for him in a once-grand now-disintegrating Victorian house in that part of town most people with a choice stay out of.
While visiting Ron, I casually asked about his mother. Ron told me that his mother had fallen and broken her hip two weeks ago and was now confined to a nursing home following corrective surgery. Ron now finds himself in the hospital with his primary caregiver confined to a nursing home. Ron has no place to go when he is discharged from the hospital. He is quite unable to live alone as he is unable to even wipe away his own tears.
Ron related to me the facts of a horrific scenario. About 8:30 PM one evening, Ron's mother went out to the porch to lock the screen door and on her way back into the house stumbled. She heard her own hip shatter on the way down. She ended up lying on the floor until the middle of the next day writhing in intense pain, wondering if she would freeze to death in the middle of a long winter night. She was never able to reach a phone. Ron lay helpless on his bed just inside the door that same long night, quite unable to call for help, also wondering if anyone would find them.
The next day a Meal's On Wheels volunteer showed up and left without coming to their aid when unable to open the door or get a response. Later he returned and this time Ron and his mother were able to make a rehearsed yell for help that gained his attention. The volunteer left again, promising to go for assistance. Later yet, police showed up, broke in the door and were able to bring the first chapter of this story to a close.
I am not sure how it happened, but Ron ended up staying in that house more than a week by himself while his mother had hip surgery. Without his mother keeping after him, he got a major infection and ended up in the hospital where he has been a week now, wondering about his infection, about his future, if his mother will mend, and if she will ever get out of the nursing home. It's safe to say that all people would pass on such an experience, given a choice and most would be hard pressed to see anything but swirling ominous clouds in the future.
One of the most confounding and difficult passages in the New Testament is one in James that admonishes us to count it all joy for the various trials that afflict us so that we can become people of better character. In other words, a major attitude adjustment. This, without a doubt, is the hardest thing we are called to do on the journey of Faith. Don't let anyone proclaim that Christianity is an easy opiate for the masses of people who aren't up to the hard stuff of life.
For a number of days I have visited Ron and his mother in their respective institutions. It's been rather convenient, actually. I work in the hospital and the nursing home is on the same block as my house. It has not been a sacrifice on my part to visit them. The reality is driving a great distance to see them would not be a sacrifice because I have gotten something truly profound and of great value from both of them: an attitude check, an infusion of faith, a re-education. When I first heard this story of Ron lying helpless in his bed as his mother writhed in agony on the floor, I was nearly breathless from the horror of it all. When I heard the other side of the story I was breathless with wonder and amazement.
If you go to visit Elva Rice in the nursing home you will be in for a real joyous surprise. You won't find someone with head hung down, lamenting her lot in life, pandering for pity and compassion, playing on your emotions. What you will find instead is a radiant Faith unequalled in all Israel and these here parts as well. We're talking about an eighty-five year old woman with a busted hip, a beloved husband in the ground for years, a paralyzed son that has used up more than three decades of her life, a house falling apart around her, yet one who expounds openly about how good God has been to her and what a blessed life she has lived.
When all I saw were the horrors of that winter night, the forbidding possibilities, all she saw were the Eternal promises. Elva Rice will look you in the face with clear eyes and without hesitation tell you that winter night was the best night of her eight and a half decades on this Earth. She describes a wondrous transcendent experience with the Creator God of the Universe that took her from a broken body on a cold splintered floor into the very Presence of God where she felt Him enfold her for the duration of that cold night and the next day. In her experience, there is nothing more real than the Presence of God she encountered in that cold darkness.
Does Ron's mother regret going to a nursing home? No way! She sees it as an opportunity to be an assistant to the Teacher of all time. She carries His radiant message of Hope throughout those halls of despair and loneliness. She sees herself as in a privileged position to reach out to these lonely souls and to weary nurses and aides. For years Elva has lived in semi-isolation in that old house caring for Ron. She now has dozens of people to interact with on a daily basis. During the day Elva is out in a wheel chair cruising up and down the halls loving on the lonely souls slouched over on the tray tables of their wheel chairs. Her grandson tells me he has not seen his grandmother look so animated and rested in years. She has brought much brightness to a dark place.
It doesn't get any better than this. This woman, by any measure of the world, has gotten a lousy deal but she doesn't know that. She uses a different yardstick. A heavenly One. She KNOWS where her husband is. She KNOWS where she is going. She KNOWS where her son is going. And she KNOWS there are no wheelchairs in Heaven.
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
Offering
Have you ever been at a point in your life where you feel like you are caught in the jaws of a giant monster and about to move down on the food chain? I recall times when I was absolutely certain there was no way out and I was doomed to some horrible fate. One time I thought it was multiple sclerosis, another time cancer, yet another blindness. A couple of times I have been let go (outsourced) from my job. Many of us have faced a severe challenge when we were given a grim pronouncement by a physician, plunged into economic free fall when we were told our services were no longer needed, or found a note on the kitchen table telling us our spouse had packed up and left without a forwarding address. Economic and relational uncertainty seem to have become epidemic. Yet, today I don't have multiple sclerosis, cancer, or blindness and am gainfully employed. I would not have thought that possible at different times, no possibility of it whatever.
Last night about 11 PM I went to the front door to look for the cat and heard a horrible cry from a creature in distress. It certainly didn't sound like any cat I had ever heard. Seconds later my docile gentle feline ran up on the porch, past me into the house, carrying in her mouth the very obvious source of the plaintive tormented call I had just heard. I quickly turned on the light to find a bird in the jaws of a rather unpleasant scenario. I very quickly removed the cat with bird to the porch and liberated the feathered victim from certain oblivion. Happily, the bird fluttered away, without delay, no doubt with adrenalin maxed out. I never went to vet school. I assume birds have adrenalin for emergency get aways. I quickly tossed the cat into the interior of the house to sulk at her loss. The cat stayed in all night and is under house arrest today. That little sparrow needs a break today.
At one point that bird would have seen no possibility for liberation from her captor. I 'happened' to open the door at exactly the right moment just before going to bed and was able to intervene. We humans often face things from which we think there is no possibility of liberation. Yet, prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton experienced the magic of release after eight years. Jews experienced the enchantment of emancipation by the Allies. I experienced the magic of not having multiple sclerosis. I get a pay check every other Thursday. There were times when I didn't.
The good part is there is no limit to the possibilities for you. You may be facing cancer or some other horrific circumstance in life. I can't tell you liberation is for certain today. But I can tell you for certain, it is possible for today. If as the Christian scriptures say, "He who counts the sparrows and the hairs on your head will not let you falter" is true and he can move me to liberate a sparrow from the clutches of my house pet, then you can be hopeful that He will liberate you. If not today, then tomorrow, for certain.
Tomorrow you may be flying again.
The Second Temptation of Mankind
One of the best known stories of the early origins of man arises from the serpent's temptation of Eve in the garden of Eden. In this case, as you know, the serpent offered Eve a luscious apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She took this fine fruit and offered Adam a succulent juicy bite. And as you also know, both got caught in the misdeed and Adam passed off responsibility to the woman who gave it to him. What do you want to bet that Adam had something to say to her after they were alone once again? Of course you know, mankind hasn't been quite the same since.
Actually, we never are told that it was an apple. But apples do work nicely in classical paintings. About eighty-one years ago there was another incident involving fruit. This time we are certain the tempting culprit was, indeed, an apple, as I have direct testimony from the one tempted. And yes, like the first time, the temptation was too much to bear.
It has been my great fortune to have nearly daily visits with an eight-five year old saint in the nursing home behind my house. It seems nursing homes are among the great educational institutions of America. I learn more there than most anywhere else. It was here that I learned of the second great temptation of mankind. I will let Ms. Rice tell you in her own words.
Perhaps what we had done was overlooked because they were after that lie. My daddy always said "A man is no better than his word." He said if a man's word was no good and he couldn't believe him, he was a no account man. Just watch him. Mark it down.
One time I remember, when I was a little one, between three and a half and four years old. My daddy was just a young father and he started him up an orchard, just cleared up the land, terraced it down, and started his orchard. He would order his trees from Starks Brothers. Some from Sears Roebuck, way back then. He would dig holes where he was going to put them and then he would call me as his big helper. I would stand there and hold the trees up straight and erect while he tamped down the soil around them. I thought I was really something because I was helping Daddy start an apple orchard. He would tell me how good the apples would be and we would make pies and we would make jellies, and apple cider. I just loved those apple trees.
About the second year after we got them out, a few of the trees began to put little bunches of blossoms out on the tips of every branch. Daddy would take me by the hand, lead me around, and show me these and say "This will make a red apple and this will make a yellow apple and we will have some fine apples." When they got up large enough for one to tell they were going to be apples of nice size, he told me one day "There's not going to be but a few of these because this is a young orchard, but don't pull any of 'em, because if you do, it will cause the trees to drop their fruit before its mature and they won't bear as well. Well, I let that all sink down. I promised him I wouldn't. He would take me every week by the hand and show me the apples.
One morning I got restless. It had been raining all night on Friday and it was now Saturday morning and they slept in late. I jumped up and slipped out in the yard, down to the spring, out to the terraces to see the apples. Those apples were about as big as your fist at that time; yellow golden apples. There was a drop of rain hanging on the bottom of each one of 'em. I thought those were just the prettiest apples I ever saw. I stood there a while and looked at them, out on the tips of the branches. I reached up and he told me not to. "That one way out there on the end, he will never miss that and I'm going to see how it tastes." It was beginning to show color; beautiful.
The little forked tree was standing there and I just stepped up in it to reach for the apple. The tree split all the way to ground. One side went down all the way to the ground!
Oh! I was frightened. Oh! I knew I was caught and I knew I didn't know how to get out of it. And I knew I mustn't lie and I was in a quandary. So, I ran to the house as fast as I could. There was a pan of water there on the steps, where it had rained during the night. I washed off my feet, ran in, and jumped in the bed. I curled up, lay there awhile, but couldn't go back to sleep. I got as deep under those covers as I could get.
After a while my daddy got up and he got breakfast started. He was out walking around, looking at his apples. I knew what he was doing and why, but I didn't go to see. I was sleeping. Daddy came into my room a bit later where I was pretending to be asleep and asked me if I had been out of bed already. "No, Sir." "Are you sure?" "Yes, Sir." "Positive?" "Yes, Sir." "OK." He left and went back down to the kitchen.
After a while he said "Let's have breakfast." Mother finished our breakfast and we enjoyed it. Well really, they enjoyed it but I couldn't enjoy it much because I knew I had lied. And I was going to get in trouble if they caught up with me. But I was hoping they wouldn't quite come up with what I had done. After a while Daddy said "Hanna, guess what one of these children's done?" Oh! I just drew up in a knot. I knew I was caught. "Guess what one of these children's done. They's climbed up in one of the trees and split it all the way to the ground; that big one down there that had them pretty ones on it. Daddy asked mother if she had any idea of who did it and she had no idea at all. She said none of the children had been up. She had no idea that I had slipped out early. She was telling what was right. "All of them's been in bed, there haven't been any children here." He said "I have a way of finding out. It was one of these children here." I thought "He can't tell who it was because he was in bed asleep. I did that. I washed my feet and crawled back into bed."
Daddy turned to me and asked me "Do you have any idea who stepped up into that tree down there and split it all the way to the ground and ruined my pretty apple tree?" "No, Sir." I stood there a few minutes. Again he asked "Do you have any idea?" "No, Sir" He continued "Now you look me straight in the eye. Are you telling me the truth?" I said "Yes, Sir" because I knew I was in trouble and didn't know how to get out of it. I knew I shouldn't lie but I didn't know how to get out of it. I was in a quandary. He said "I'll give you another chance. Are you sure you didn't do it?" "Yes, Sir." He said "You know I have a way of finding out exactly who did it." Oh, oh. Where was he when I didn't see? He must have been watching me someplace. Then I got to thinking. Maybe daddies were like God and could see everything I did. Then I really was scared. I had been taught all my life that God saw every thing I did.
He said "come here." He told Mother "I have a way of finding out." He reached back into his hip pocket and took out a little stick that he had trimmed off just right with his knife. He held up the stick and said "This stick is the same length as the foot that stepped up in the apple tree because I measured it down in the footprints in the mud at the base of the tree." Oh, oh. I'm a goner. I just stood there. I was frightened to death. He asked me "Do you want to change your story?" "No, Sir." I was in deep enough and I didn't know which way to turn cause if I told a lie, I was telling another one. Then I didn't know what I was gonna do. Daddy said, "Well I got a way."
He asked Mamma to bring the baby to him and to turn his foot around. He took his stick out and measured it next to that tiny little baby's foot and that stick was much longer than that little foot. He said "It couldn't have been this one." I was hurtin' all over. He called my little sister, just two years old. "Come here, Elsa." He told her "Hold your left foot up here." So she did. Her foot came just a little over halfway on that stick. "Well, it wasn't this one. There's not but one more here that it could have been." To me again he said "I'm going to give you another chance to straighten things out if you want to." I was in such a mess then I didn't see any way out and I just went ahead and lied again. "No, Sir."
Daddy said "I want to measure your foot by this stick. Reach your foot up here." I was standing there. I went to lift my foot up there and that was the heaviest foot I EVER picked up. It would just hardly get up on his knee where he could measure it. When I got it up there and he measured it, it came out exactly right to the top of that little stick. He looked at me and asked "You want to change your story?" I was already crying and I didn't want to change any story. But I knew that he knew all about it.
He said "Now let me tell you something. My apple tree's ruined. Split open and I don't know whether it will ever amount to anything. I'm not worried about the apple tree. What I'm worried about is about my child lying to me like you lied this morning." I didn't have a thing to say. I was standing there, facing the facts. I had lied. He said "You know there's a penalty for lying. I'm going to give you a good lickin'." He went out in the yard and broke off five or six little twigs from a peach tree and pinched them together at the back and came back in. He pulled up my little gown which was already muddy and wet from being out on the grass and mud in the yard and orchard. He checkered my little legs real good in the back with that little switch. It just burnt and hurt and everything.
Daddy said "Remember, I'm not whipping you for the apple tree. I'm whipping you for lying to me. You gotta pay for a lie when I catch you in one." He wasn't fussing. He was just talking. I a whole lot rather he fussed. He didn't. He was just talking. "When you lie, you've always got to face it. You've learned early. You faced yours this morning. Now you watch that."
Oh, I went back in there and crawled in that bed. My little legs were just stinging and burning. But you know what? Next time that I was asked something I thought two or three times before I answered and I didn't lie again about that. I tried again a few times but I never could get by with it. My daddy or mamma could look me straight in the eye and tell when I was lying.
I lied that time but I raised a little boy a few years later and he tried the same thing on me. I remembered what my daddy had taught me and what my mamma had taught me and I was trying to teach him. So I spanked him one day for lying and I told him "Mother can always tell when you're lying." He said "How can you tell when I'm lying?" He was a little feller, only about two and a half. I said "Mother can look in your eyes and tell when you're lying." So a few days later he came into tell me something and all at once he turned the backs of his little hands over his eyes and stood there while he was talking. I asked him "Ronny, why have you got your eyes covered up?" He said "I don't want you to see in there and know I am telling you a lie." He had tried the same thing I did.
It is nearly a century later that Elva Rice told me of the lessons that her daddy had taught her. It has been more than fifty years since Ronny covered his eyes with his little hands. Yet, the lessons are as fresh as today's coffee and undiminished by the dusts of time. I have seen four generations of Elva's family and the truth clearly remains:
Raise up a child in the ways of the Lord and when he is old he will not depart from them.
Productivity Enhancement And Institutional Survival
I work in a large hospital, and like many other hospitals, the one I work in is making many attempts to find ways to improve the quality of care while at the same time spending less money on it. Sounds almost like an oxymoron doesn't it? One of the things we as a hospital are doing to achieve this is to implement a facility-wide quality-improvement initiative using a variety of statistical measurement techniques that have been used for years in industrial settings. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to train more than two thousand employees to various levels of proficiency in the use of Statistical Process Control. All of this to insure institutional survival. You probably know that hundreds of hospitals have been closed over the past ten years because of marginal performance.
A long time ago it was discovered that when measurement strategies are put into place in an organization, what is described as the Hawthorne Effect often occurs. Essentially what happens is that people will improve their job performance when they think they are being watched by experts; with their clipboards, taking measurements. In one of my former lifetimes, I worked four years as a management industrial engineer in a large hospital and I often saw this occur, especially if I had on my white coat, radiation badge, and acted like I knew what I was doing.
Personnel costs are nearly half the operating budget of most any hospital, probably any business, for that matter. If we ‘experts’ can find ways to enhance labor productivity then one has a chance of significantly improving financial performance. Yet, one must also realize these ‘experts’ are not free and tend to run up big laundry bills with their white coats and even bigger dry cleaning bills with their dark business suits. They also tend to want big desks and well decorated offices. It would be an ideal set of circumstances if we could find a way to produce the Hawthorne Effect without the high overhead expenses associated with hiring ‘us.’
As often is the case, inspiration came late at night under duress. I was actually doing some homework, at home, for my job as one of those experts. I was slated to begin a training class in the morning to learn a structured approach to interviewing job applicants. As all business gurus know, employee turnover is exceptionally costly and demoralizing. The management experts at the hospital decided to take a stab at reducing this. While being overly responsible about my job, I discovered a way to induce the Hawthorne Effect without experts!
I was lying on the floor, on my stomach, reading through a three-ring binder, struggling greatly to not get up and play a game of Free Cell on my computer or go to bed. While on the edge of consciousness, my eight pound gray with some patches of orange semi-tabby cat hopped up on my back and settled in for the duration. How could I now even think of getting up and playing Free Cell or shirking my responsibility even further by going to bed? I would have heard no end of it and probably been required to sleep alone. No, I must push on with my reading, I thought. After all, I was being watched.
In that instant, vivid revelation came to me. Vision was given. Hope for the financial dilemmas of American healthcare was spawned. In that moment it occurred to me that many American hospitals are struggling for survival after only a brief three or four decades of existence at the very same time second hand book shops have existed in Europe for centuries, often passing down through many generations. How could a multi-million dollar hospital filled with experts be compelled to close while a small home-spun book shop could last what seemed like forever? What was the difference that produced this vast extension of institutional survival. I pondered and there it was, the answer in a single small four letter word: cats. Cats? Of course. How could all of the experts have missed it?
Have you ever been in a second-hand book shop in Europe that didn't have a regal striped cat sitting atop the highest book case, watching? The truly productive shops have a second cat, often a white and brown one placed strategically in the window to watch customers, to manipulate them and give them that look that says “If you don’t buy a book, my owner will not be able to afford to go down to the butcher at closing time and buy me scraps for my dinner. Do you want to be responsible for that?” Of course not. No one gets out without buying books. Consequently, bookstores with cats do not have to suffer with non-paying browsers.
I realized in my instant of brilliant insight that every single one of those hospitals that closed had failed to install cats in strategic places to induce the Hawthorne Effect in its labor pool. I mean, if my cat can keep me from Free Cell AND my bed, certainly, a tabby and a brown-and-white, working together, could have saved a hospital from institutional extinction. Can you imagine the political coup that would have been for them, saving all those hospitals and reducing the ranks of the unemployed. Even more importantly, think of what we could do with the problem of burgeoning cat populations in the animal shelters of America. We would be certain to win political votes from the animal lovers of America, if instead of gassing cats at
the pound, we gave them an important role in reducing the cost of healthcare and saving our hospitals.
I believe the quality of care would also rise markedly. Patients do so much better when in friendly environments that remind them of home. Can you imagine how much better a patient would feel at the sight of a large tabby roaming around under the rungs of chairs in the waiting rooms or sitting up in the window of a patient room, next to the Gloxinia from Aunt Harriet? There is actually an emerging sub-discipline in medicine called pet therapy. It has been proven that by taking pets into nursing homes, the patients tend to maintain far better mood and actually show enhanced mobility and physical well-being. One study demonstrated that allowing these patients to care for pets increased their life expectancy! Imagine if Fluff was waiting for us when we came out of surgery. Imagine if we replaced the experts with cats.
Besides, Purina Cat Chow is a whole lot cheaper that experts.
Crescent
It has been my contention for many years that trains constitute the most civilized way to get places. Trains offer the luxury of freedom of movement, affording opportunities to walk into elegance past and dine on crisp linen as a vermillion sunset unfurls; a vase of cut flowers giving a pleasing aroma to the experience. Most European trains and an ever smaller number of American ones provide lounge cars in addition to diners. It is possible to leave the solitude of a good book, walk a few paces, and join animated conversation in one of these small havens of civility. Most importantly, people riding the rails are not in a hurry. If they were, they would have blasted themselves over the horizon with a jet turbine. With an abundance of time and unhurried fellow travellers, and a bit of good fortune, it's possible to find a good listener, a mentor, perhaps even a soulmate. Unfortunately, most people just want to get there, and trains have suffered a precipitous drop in popularity and most train service in America has disappeared.
Airplanes get people there too fast, often stalling out opportunities to meet a best friend or a soul mate. It has been my experience to fly many hundreds of times throughout the world. With the ever greater pace of life, air travel over the years has lost much of its magic. Once planes were filled with people inspired and awed by seeing cumulus clouds from above and chasing sunsets that last four hours at forty thousand feet. It seems planes are now filled with business travellers pounding away on lap top computers to beat out a competitor, spinning deals on GTE Airfones in the seat back, or checking commodities trades over satellite links to the Internet. I never have seen a phone installed in railroad coach cars and haven't yet heard the tell-tale clicking of computer keyboards
Automobiles require much attention to driving and often isolate each of us in our own steel and glass containment. I have driven between Greenville, South Carolina and Birmingham, Alabama some sixty times and only on three of these journeys did I have the luxury of companionship. Surrounded by tens of thousands of travellers at rush hour in Atlanta, I had no one to share my musings with, and I certainly wasn't ordering dessert from the steward in the dining car. Most likely I was fuming at the brake lights in front of me while avoiding becoming road kill under an eighteen wheeler.
I have gotten smarter in recent years and have been stretching a forty-minute plane ride or a four-hour drive out into a six or seven hour train experience while leaving the car at the station or a friend's house. The car gets a rest and I get a break.
This past week I took a short holiday by train. I arrived at the small station twenty minutes from my house just as the sun was peaking over the horizon, casting bronze daggers of brilliance into the new day. Many states have no train service whatever so I consider myself eminently fortunate to have a station so very near. As the sun continued its ascent into the brightening morning, I indulged in a leisurely breakfast served on freshly starched linen. A good book and musings with a fellow passenger about the turbulent journey of her life filled the time-space continuum between the rails and I arrived unhurried at my destination in early afternoon where I was soon whisked away to a pleasant picnic in a splendid botanical garden with a dear friend.
My return journey was equally pleasing, if not more so. An early afternoon departure eastward found me able to read through two charming novels by the time the first copper hints of sunset appeared. In the dining car, I actually recognized the steward as the same fellow that reigned over this miniature culinary oasis on my previous three journeys. They say familiarity breeds contempt. Not this time. A pleasant sense of continuity and connection was forthcoming as was a fine three-course meal with wine; costing less than a single movie ticket and large popcorn. Stretching out the last morsels I was able to take in the last lavender musings of a day well spent.
This was easily done with the splendid company of Dorothy and Ernest who were on a month-long journey to visit some of their eight kids scattered throughout the southeast. He had just been released from the hospital after being told he needed cardiac by-pass surgery. He declined to have it. He figures he's had a long good life and he knows where the last Station is for him. Who knows, maybe because he rides trains and slows down to thank the One who makes sunsets, he will get to see his grand kids grow up.
We disappeared to our respective seats, I to relish a fine nap. There's much more leg room in a train coach than any first class airplane cabin and no seat belt signs. The congenial conductor awakened me just in time to leap from the carriage which barely stopped at my destination. Being the only one to get off at a destination and having no others leaving it provided a marked contrast to the Atlanta airport where up to ninety thousand travellers well up out of the terminal subways in a single day to be launched into the not always friendly skies. Out of the dark shadows emerged a dear friend, letting me know I was home once again.
One day the Conductor will take me on a final journey to His Home and show me how he paints sunsets.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment