Oh the Life of a Branch Manager

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season. You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature. Psalm 145

I am not a gnome, nor am I a yard elf. During the winter season I meander around the property to ensure the wind hasn’t blown away the roof, nor the rains flooded the crawl space beneath the house. I inspect the grounds to see if the trees have remained upright, maintaining their structural integrity. The house stands on a pretty decent slope, but there is no evidence of mudslides in the past, so I am confident I won’t soon be singing Carole King’s “I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumblin’ down …” 

However, winter has ended here in the Pacific Northwest (at least in the lowlands). The daffodils are in full bloom out in the Skagit Valley and the tulips won’t be far behind them. The daytime highs are finally reaching the fifties. Migrating flocks of geese and swans are passing overhead each day (which is one reason I always wear a hat when I am on the move), and I no longer need to bundle up as if I am trudging forth on an arctic expedition when I go to retrieve the mail.

I’m not being serenaded each morning by our local nest-builders, but that could be due as much to the decline of my hearing as to birds not singing. The bird baths still have water in them from recent rains, but time has come for me to remove the anti-frost caps which have been covering the outdoor spigots, and hooking up the hoses so I can give those concrete ponds a spring cleaning and provide my avian friends fresh, clean water to drink and/or bathe in.

While I am not, historically speaking, a gardener, I do find myself breaking loose from the shackles of indoor living to at least venture out into the jungle that is laughingly referred to as my garden, to survey the scene and discern what toll winter has taken. While this area does not usually experience extremes of heat in summer or cold in winter, we did manage to dip into the single digits for an extended period of time a few months ago; some of our bushes and plants did not survive the experience. They will need to be dug up, removed, and newer, heartier varieties will need to take their place.

Such is the way of life. Sometimes we may be tempted to think our intelligence, ingenuity, cleverness, and attention will protect us from disaster, but the truth is we can only do so much. People and plants have their own, particular life cycles. There are things we can do to promote the health and well-being of creation (things like vitamins and good diet for us, fertilizer, water, and pruning for plants), but ultimately, all creation emanates from the grace of God, and all creation returns to the embrace of God.

I tend to take a mostly hands-off approach to the natural order. While I understand and appreciate the beauty of well-trimmed gardens and admire the skills of topiary specialists, I’m happy to let plants do their thing and just clean up when they shed limbs and branches. Some people may think I am lazy (and that’s not necessarily untrue), but I’m simply not obsessed with neatness, balance, or symmetry. Nature, to me, is to be enjoyed, not controlled or compelled to conform to some artificial human concept of beauty.

Sure, the yard may look scraggly, but so what? I’ve looked in the mirror and even with all the work I have done to keep this carcass fit as a fiddle (and in a shape that is not dissimilar), I find that I, too, am a bit scruffy. That’s OK. God does not look upon the outward appearance but the inner reality, right?

Each day brings me closer to meeting God face to face; I just want to be a little more like the Divine so that we’ll always recognize one another, both in heaven above AND here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)

Blessings Often Hide Behind a Red Light

O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord. Psalm 27

Traffic is light on Sunday mornings here in our neck of the woods. Even when going to the “late” service at 9:30, there are hardly any signs of life on Division once I get past the grocery store between where I live and the church. We have traffic signals, which are helpful during the week, but on Sundays they primarily serve a decorative function. Two of the three always greet me with a green,  smiling glow, but the third doesn’t like me. As I approach, it swaps over from green to red at light speed. I’m sure it skips right past amber!

What is worse, the signal remains red for an intolerably long time. I have a good view of the intersection in all directions, and confess I am tempted to just make my turn. “No one’s coming,” I say to myself. “No one’s looking,” I continue. I scan the cables and poles, confirming there are no traffic cameras recording miscreants. I survey the scene in all directions, probing for any signs of a law enforcement presence.

There are none! But I wait. I do not yield to the temptation to disobey the law, overruling common sense with what is often referred to as the “spirit of the law” (by “letter of the law” breakers). It’s a fitful sort of waiting I do, sitting at a red light against which I “know” I could safely turn. But why? Why should I make that turn against the red?

Even if I were not caught by traffic cameras or law enforcement, the fact is I would be caught by me. The only advantage I find in breaking a law is that I would finally have something to confess in church once I got there. I mean, I hate going to church empty handed, no sins to confess: “Sorry God, you died for nothing again this week.” 

I josh, of course! Sin is sin, and even if I obey traffic laws meticulously, I can’t say the same for the Big Seven (Sloth, Lust, Anger, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, or Greed). Try as I might to be a decent human being and a reflection of the Divine, I know I’m “anything but.” That’s where God comes in. I’m “anything but” in life, but I’m a “work in progress” as far as God’s concerned, and it is that for which I am eternally grateful. Church is “Our Carpenter, who art in heaven’s” workshop.

Traffic lights, slow shoppers, insufficient registers open at the store: those are all irritants and produce a restless sort of waiting. But the psalmist places a different sort of waiting on the table in front of us. It isn’t the tapping of your toes and drumming of your fingers in the doctor’s waiting room kind of idleness. Too often I think we approach life and one another with a “Come on! Let’s get on with it” kind of impatience.

The psalmist’s “tarry” kind of waiting is like what we experience when Christmas finally arrives and we can open our gifts, or when it is our birthday and Mom walks out of the kitchen carrying a big old birthday cake thick with frosting, loaded with blazing candles, and the family exploding into the (now copyright-free) Happy Birthday song.

That’s the kind of waiting to which the psalmist is referring. There is that happy kind of waiting we can see at a traffic signal if we just let God sprinkle our eyes with a bit o’ faith.

Red lights serve a particular function: Yes, they command us to stop, but they also allow us time to look for “cross” traffic. Cross traffic has the green light. God always gives cross traffic a green light to engage in faith, hope, and love. Our joy comes in knowing that soon we, ourselves, will be someone else’s cross traffic. It will be OUR turn to face green and engage in faith, hope, and love.

That’s why we tarry. The Lord is at work, and we get to pause, to catch our breath, and to live “in” the moment. That’s why we wait patiently for the Lord. We tarry here in this, our valley, delighting in the blessings hiding behind the red light. 

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)

We Auto Know Better

As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our sins from us. Psalm 103

Why are people so cranky? I’m not going to comment on national or international affairs; that’s not my role. But I do find myself increasingly agitated with a world that seems, itself, to be increasingly agitated. It’s like everyone has buttons, and their buttons are either being pushed, or they’re running around pushing their neighbors’ buttons every chance they get.

What on earth is going on?

I have studied the matter and do believe the fault lies with Detroit. Not the city, but the automotive industry. Now, please hear me out.

When I was a child, I enjoyed watching Saturday morning cartoons with my brother and sisters. We would delight in Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and the like. We had our favorite characters and knew which studios produced the creme de la creme of animated mayhem (Looney Toons, by a mile). 

While we were occupied slurping down corn flakes (or a wheat, oat, or rice alternative), Dad would finish his coffee and head outside. He’d make his way to the car, pop the hood on the Studebaker, grab a few small hand tools out of the trunk, and start moving things around the engine compartment. After a few minutes, Howard from across the street and Ron from next door would join him and ask, “Hey Fred, what’re you up to?”

Dad would tell them, “Oh, time to adjust the carburetor (or clean the spark plugs, or change the timing, or …).” He’d grown up tinkering with cars all his life, and if it was Saturday, he was going to find something under the hood that he felt needed fixing. The three of them would bury their heads under the bonnet and discuss cars, motors, kids, wives, sports, politics, or anything else that was bugging them that day. My Dad’s Studebaker was a Study-baker!

Today, of course, cars are so well designed and put together, there is nothing a commoner can do under the hood. There’s nothing to adjust or fix, so neighbors no longer gather ‘round to discuss or debate the Topic du Jour. The interesting thing, though, is conversations seldom devolved into binary sets of black and white, right or wrong, liberal or conservative. 

They shared common values, and they embraced those values. They stood united against fascists, Nazis, and Commies. They were perplexed about more complex issues, such as civil rights, school bussing, or integration. They didn’t question that every American was entitled to enjoy the same rights, privileges and responsibilities of every other American. Like everyone else, they didn’t know “how” to level the playing field, but they knew the playing field “should” be level. 

“There’s such a thing as basic fairness” was a chorus that often rose from beneath the hood, like the kyrie sung in church. Although their thoughts regarding Martin Luther King, Jr. and the NAACP were sometimes colored by those who slandered him and the movement in and out of government (or what we called “The News”), they agreed that people should be judged by the “content of their character and not the color of their skin.”

I appreciate that the automotive industry is doing everything it can to build cars that last longer, go farther, run smoother and more cleanly than ever before for the sake of a better environment, but it does so at a cost of a reduced unity that backyard mechanics (or seamstresses) sewed into the social fabric of our too-brief post-war nation on Saturday mornings. 

I don’t like to point out problems for which I’m not also willing to suggest solutions, of course. It is true that the auto industry will never reverse-engineer our world into anything like those halcyon days of the 1960s, but they don’t need to. They simply need to add a feature that will require drivers (whom I’d label auto-crats) to get under the hood weekly to maintain optimal functionality. If they included an espresso machine and pop-up flavor squirter, that would be even better.

Maybe we’d learn how to talk to one another in a civilized manner once again so that even a grizzled old introverted geezer like me would be willing to go out to see what’s up here in this, our auto-corrected valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of newly released: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)