Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Wandering and Wondering


Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up. Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

Three of us stood there in a church parking lot, puzzling over a question of what to do. One had found a driver’s license of someone we didn’t know, but whose home address appeared to be just a matter of being five or six blocks away. Perhaps it had been dropped while the owner was out for a walk. Perhaps it had been tossed from a stolen wallet. Whatever the case, it was up to the three of us – three wise men (or at least the wisest men in the parking lot at the time, for we were alone) – to decide what to do.

The first to speak up said, “Verily, we should drop the license into a mail box that some letter carrier might deliver it upon his or her appointed rounds!”

We pondered the idea for a moment, but worried that such a small thing as a driver’s license might easily be lost in the vast expanse of the average drop box.

Another suggested driving it down to the police station so that someone from the local constabulary might deliver it or contact the owner to come down and get it. But no one was heading in that direction, and it seemed to us it would be very inconvenient for the licensee to have to go shagging after it (if the PD should deign to notify him).

So we studied the license carefully and confirmed that the owner only lived a few blocks away, and it would be quickest just to go deliver it directly to him. The only problem was that the street we were on did not go through to the address we needed to find. The three of us scratched our collective heads as we discussed the various routes we might take to find the man’s house, but every option seemed to be blocked by woods, cliffs, or dead-ends.

Two of the gentlemen standing there in the parking lot have lived in town for most of the past sixty years, so I deferred to them for their knowledge of the geography, but when they couldn’t figure exactly how to get to where they wanted to go, I finally suggested we just look it up. I pulled out my cellphone, put the address into the map app and, voila! I had the route with an estimated arrival time of two minutes. Ironic, as we’d been discussing it for about five!

This reminds me of the old joke of why the ancient Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years – because Moses was too stubborn to stop and ask for directions!

So anyway, one of my compatriots knew immediately where the address was and offered to take it over, so that was that.

It is amazing how good it feels to do something nice. It makes me wonder why anyone would ever want to do something bad, naughty, or destructive. While I may not always BE nice, I find it just feels so good I can’t imagine why anyone would want to spend any time in that other space – that negative, dirty, rotten, scoundrel zone.

I suppose that’s one reason I have made being part of a community of faith a central part of my own identity.

I look back on the three old coots trying to figure out how to solve the mystery of the lost-license-now-found, and when we were done, laughing about how simple deciding what to do had been. We hadn’t gotten all caught up in trying to top one another, or angling for rewards, or anything like that.

We had simply talked, putting our thoughts out on the breeze for everyone to hear and consider, played in the metaphorical mud-hole for a few minutes until the eyes became clearer, and then ultimately did that which was most neighborly.

Maybe if people spent more time talking with one another face to face rather than device to device, we’d find more solutions to more of the world’s problems. Seeing a smile light up a face in person has no parallel in the world of gizmos and gadgets, although it is sure nice having an app tell me where to go and how to get there here in this, our valley.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Does Happiness Happen by Happenstance?


The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. Hugh Black


I came home from church the other day and was quite happy. The music was glorious; the message in the sermon was thought-provoking and timely; the fellowship was delightful; the air was brisk, clean, and fresh; the day was sunny. All was right with the world.

Then I pulled into the driveway and noticed something under the tongue of our travel trailer that seemed out of place, so I parked the car and went to check it out. Sitting under the trailer were a couple of cables, plastic lids, and a nylon strap that appeared to have been cut with a knife. I tilted my head for a moment, deep in thought, as I began to puzzle out for myself the meaning of what I was seeing. And then it hit me: someone had stolen the batteries off of the trailer!

Amazingly, I did not blow a gasket. Oh sure, I spent a moment or two thinking about how I might set up a force field around the RV that would vaporize any miscreant who might dare to come within ten feet of our precious little tenement on wheels, but that idea dissipated quickly as the wisdom of my years came rushing to the fore, reminding me that I would most likely be the one vaporized (as I doubt I’d remember to turn off the zapper if I needed to get something out of the trailer at any given moment).

So I muscled my way past my disappointment with humanity in general (and our local thieves in particular) and cleaned up the debris, phoned in a police report to the local constabulary, and began to research places to buy replacement batteries. I also spent some time in prayer and meditation (which I find soothing and comforting) and pondered the possibility (however remote) that the thief was a homeless soul in need of the power my batteries would provide, or an addict in need of some quick cash for a quick fix. While I don’t endorse theft for either of those situations, I find them forgivable.

I’ve learned, you see, that one of the keys to happiness is creating the capacity to forgive.

One of the petitions we offer up in our daily prayers in the faith tradition many of us practice is a request for God to “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” For many, “vengeance is sweet,” but I find it gives me indigestion.

Our faith tradition has also taught us that “’Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord.” I can’t help but wonder if I don’t feel like an irritating pebble in God’s shoe when I try to stand in them, so I really do try to let God be God, stay out of her shoes, and just settle for being me as best I can. That seems to work out best for the both of us.

So I made some calls, shared my tale of woe on social media (because there’s no use being miserable alone), and found replacement batteries at a local shop that only cost me about a quarter of what I thought it would; so that was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (caused by the sunlight refracting off my tears, of course).

I bought the batteries, kept them safely in the garage, and wondered how I would secure them in such a way as to avoid them being stolen again. I went down to the local hardware store, explained my situation, and – voila – the clerk and I found a sensible and affordable solution: adjustable cable locks that allow me to cinch down the cable over the batteries in their boxes. The cables are strong, resistant even to bolt cutters, and easy to install.

I have since also taken the precaution of moving the trailer up off the street (which I never cared for as a place to park it anyway) and into a space alongside our driveway, so it is about as secure as it can be.

That’s all we can do, and that should be enough in which to secure life, liberty, and happy trails in this, our valley.

Cable locks now secure the battery boxes