Haunted, Some
To look at them, words seem little more than odd shapes, lines and curves strung together on paper. Sometimes, if I look at them too long, they don’t even look like words any more.
But those squiggles and scratches, lined up in good sequence, have the power to create and move.
Take this one.
Throw together an m, a few i’s, some crooked letters and a couple of humpbacks, and out pours a river that rages through ten states.
Words wield razor edges that cut through soft flesh as well as dry bones. They drop anchor and hold us fast when fears threaten to overturn our boats.
Words sow seeds of doubt in the soil of restless souls. They wrap comfort around wounded and aching hearts as a down quilt.
Words light fires and inspire action even from ones prone to sit still.
And sometimes, for me, words haunt.
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Must the Skies Open for Me?
My head dropped into my hands as I hung up the phone.
We are few, yes. But was no one else available? No one?
Really?
I dragged my feet down the steps to change, not just a little surly about the Sunday nap I would not take. But more than that, my chest pulled up tight, making my heart rap hard on the backside of my ribs.
As I turned the car down the alley behind the sheriff’s office, the sign slipped past my window: Detention Street.
Perfect.
Translating for a worship service or a Bible study? No problem. In the ER? I’m on my way. I even stayed around for a couple of hours after my kids faced the needle to help out at the immunization clinic the other day when they were short of bilingual hands.
But at the jail? My insides preferred to stay in the car.
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Clicking the Green Arrow
As a university student, I made a practice of closing my eyes and imagining the enormous contribution I would one day make to saving the world. Once, when I still knew how to handle a paintbrush, watercolors and I even made the dream take shape on paper.
The image is a little faded now, the thick textured paper gone and the memory of it no better than fuzzy.
But I do remember this: that picture did not leave room for thing I do now.
It did not consider that one day I might be clicking the green arrow.
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Laish, Paris Reidhead, Riding in the Trunk, and What if Hell Awaits?
Poor Laish.
Not only did it burn to the ground in a merciless attack by the tribe of malcontents Dan, I keep pushing it around from one place to another.
I schedule writing on my calendar, marking days I intend to post here (don’t start with me). When I know, I’ll note what I intend to write on.
Laish has now appeared on at least 10 separate days, including today.
It will move again, because this post is not about Laish.
Mostly not, anyway.
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Signs of Growth
Saturday afternoon when the men paraded out the door, a beautiful sound rose up from the hush they left behind: January thaw.
I heard snow settle, water trickle . . . and the clomp clomp clomp of three pairs of feet on my roof.
This is what kids in South Dakota do for fun.
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Haiti (or, Why I Eat Burned PopTarts)
A funny thing happened on the way to my rant this morning.
Well, several things.
One: I watched the news. A correspondent asked a 12-year old Haitian girl, “It’s a hard time to be 12 here, isn’t it?”
She replied, “It’s a hard time to be any age.“
Two: I had my usual anti-capitalist mental hissy fit (it became more of an out-loud hissy fit once the house emptied) while I brewed coffee, loaded a dishwasher, checked email and glanced at Facebook in my warm house with a roof, four walls and sealed windows.
I wondered aloud why it’s easier to give when given something in return — why do I need a t-shirt or a CD? Why don’t I ask Tom to give away both pairs of shoes? Where’s my tax deductible receipt?
Why do I look at my excess to determine my capacity to give?
Three: I took care of business with Samaritan’s Purse. (Always good to have that done before starting a rant about giving.)
Four: I burned my PopTarts. Burning food is a regular thing when I’m in the kitchen. It is no joke that the smoke detector goes off when I make Jell-O.
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Loosening Orion’s Belt
“Hey, I can see Orion’s Belt!”
Laying across piled blankets and coats, JP watched a star-splattered sky from the back seat. Constellations pop on these brutal South Dakota nights. It seems that the colder the air, the blacker the night and the brighter the light.
He turned his gaze to the windshield and saw whisps of white powder scamper and swirl across the highway and asked, “Is this a white-out?”
“No,” I said. “Just a ground blizzard. Good thing it’s not warm enough to stick or we’d be in a real mess.”
A while later, after he spotted “one of the Dippers,” he looked through the front window again.
He may have noticed conversation in the front seat had dropped to a hush, and words were chopped off as crisp as the bitter January air.
“So . . . is this a white-out?”
“Yes,” someone replied. “This is a white-out.” I don’t know if it was me or his dad. About that time, everything sucked into a world of white.
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Smile! You’re on Psyche Camera!
My dad has a knack for finding spiritual application to sometimes odd news reports. This new development still has me scratching my head — though not, perhaps, as much as the image of Ananias and Sapphira on Facebook.
– by Paul Willingham
Back in the 80s when I was in business in South Dakota, I attended a 2 day marketing seminar for CPAs. One of the things that the instructor stressed was that you needed to be able to identify, as much as possible, the personality of your client or potential client. He pointed out that each person has these visible personality traits that, when identified, would help tailor the sales pitch to “sell” or close the deal. Some might call it manipulation but that’s a discussion for another time.
After explaining that each one of us fit more or less into one of four groups, he explained how to identify and pigeon hole a person by being sensitive to these visible traits. Before we broke for lunch that first day, he had assessed each of the participants. What was worse, he shared those assessments with the class and we all were surprised, chagrined and perhaps embarrassed at how accurate he was. One of our assignments was to go out to the Mall after supper, people watch, and then try to identify which one of the four groups passersby belonged to. It was surprising to me how much you could tell about a person by paying attention and looking for the telltale traits. (more…)
Stealing God?
The new year might be a good time to remind myself that I’m on a reading plan. One of those that goes through the whole Bible, cover to cover, get the whole picture in one wide swathe.
It’s a 90-day plan.
I started it sometime in July.
Of 2008.
Who am I kidding? I can’t do it.
I’m still in Judges. (more…)
Reset
I’m running a bit behind, likely the result of two months of life sans structure.
Seems most folks have done their year-end reflection and year-start resolving, and I suppose I have too. I thought this would be the morning that I brought the pondering out into the light of day.
I would reflect on God’s faithfulness during an uncertain year past. I would detail how He has both led into a new business venture and provided unexpected work to fill the gap until that business can pay both the bills and some salaries. I would remind you of how He continues to work that certain uncertainty to draw me to love Him more, trust Him more and obey Him more.
And then I would spell out some expectations for the year to come: lofty goals, a grand vision, and some stuff I really just need to get done.
While I wrestled how to empty my head of all that onto paper this morning, I meditated over a few passages that speak to God’s renewal, His refreshing and restoring. I wanted to connect this desire to reset with the surety of how He desires to do that very thing in me.
Reset, I thought. A good word for the new year.
And as I listened to Him in Ezekiel 36, He did just that. Reset.
As in flipped my chair and reset me on my ear.
I don’t know so much about the newness of the year right now. I’m not sure it even matters to me that we’re four days into it anymore. What I know is that I need to rethink a few things.
I need to reset.
Let me tell you how it went down.
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The Conversation