The Joy of Community

 Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Euripides

Summer is upon us. Oh, I know it doesn’t officially happen for another week or so, but the weather outside tells me what time of year it is. I don’t need a calendar to tell me we’ve come a long way from the sub-zero days of winter. We may still struggle against an occasional, blustery breeze, and a nightly chill that demands we bundle up, but still, the days are longer and warmer. 

My garage frog continues to call for friends and/or mates. I’ve learned where he lives; there is a gap in the expansion joint that divides (or unites) the garage’s concrete pad and the driveway, and the frog has made him a comfortable home therein (photos below). I thought about removing him, but only for half a moment. It occurred to me that, first of all, he’s not hurting anything by being there, and secondly, his dietary needs are apparently being met, which means he’s keeping ants, beetles, termites, flies, earwigs, and assorted riff-raff out of the garage. I just wish I could claim him as a dependent on my tax returns, but I think he provides enough benefit so that I don’t need to bother Uncle Sam over it.

In addition to the days being longer and warmer, and a frog living quite contentedly in a symbiotic relationship with his landlord, there is much to be thankful for. The long, hard season of pandemic is nearing a tolerable end. I believe Covid-19 will be around for a long time to come simply because not enough people will have taken it seriously enough to eliminate it, but that’s OK. It’s not my job to control the world in which we live, and medical science should be able to keep us about as safe as we can be in a world as uncertain as the one in which we live.

I am blessed. I contracted Covid-19 and survived. I acquired the two vaccine doses when they became available, and will accept the boosters when the time comes, just as I do for the flu. I continue to wear my mask in public, not for fear of contracting the virus or spreading it, but so those around me don’t need to wonder whether I am safe to be around or not. I can go into restaurants to order a meal, and actually take off the mask to eat and converse with others.

This Sunday will mark the first return to in-church worship for my parish since March 2020. We will observe the appropriate precautions, but Good Lord, we’ll be together again! I will continue to work with the A/V and online Live-Feed crew to provide worship to those who are traveling or who cannot attend in person. One of the bright sides of the pandemic has been the need-filling motivation to learn how to use modern technology to share the Gospel more widely than we ever thought possible.

While nothing will replace in-person worship, the ability to bring the good news to the people in their homes has been nothing less than miraculous and, simultaneously, apostolic. As the prophet says, “The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light!” The psalmist also declares: “Light shines in the darkness for the upright; the righteous are merciful and full of compassion” (Ps. 112).

Sometimes folks think a church is all about rules and commandments and, maybe, not just a little bit of hypocrisy. That’s all true, of course, but only to a degree. Churches aren’t perfect, but they do cast light in dark places. A church, as best I can tell, is a community of people called to love others as God has loved them. We fall short, of course. Not everyone is loveable, including us! That’s why we need practice (and a community to hold us accountable for our words and actions).

Left to our own devices, most of us would find reasons not to love. That’s why the world is in the mess it’s in. The church, for me, is a place where that sad reality can be altered, and I’m glad others have found that to be true for them, as well, 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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book).

The Battle of Grease and Sticks: A Tale of True Friction

Kindness makes any road easier to travel. Margaret M. Painter

I was emptying the dryer the other day, finishing my laundry for the week, and noticed a few black spots on my socks and tee shirts. They looked like grease marks and I hadn’t, to my knowledge, done any work in or around grease recently, so I made a mental note to investigate (which “note” lasted about 22.3 seconds).

After folding, hanging, and putting away the laundry, I went to clean the lint-trap out of the dryer, and as I removed that little screen I saw the cause of the aforementioned spotting – a silly little grease marker I’d used earlier on a project and had apparently left and forgotten in a pocket of the shirt I’d worn. It was smaller than a standard pencil or pen, so it lay nicely in the pocket until the agitation of the washer brought it out to do its dirty work.

               The Valley of the Shadow of Death

That would have been fine. I’m usually pretty careful about checking pockets for loose change (normally finding only lint, instead), but accidents happen. Nonetheless, in the nanosecond it took to remove the screen and see the black marker, it immediately rolled into the now-vacant slot the screen usually occupies. I let out a mighty Viking war cry: (Uff Da!), as if that would stop the tiny implement from rolling into the space destined to become its Valhalla. I moved as quick as lightning to intercept (assuming said lightning has mated with a turtle or snail), but all to no avail. Greased lightning is apparently faster than its Swedish counterpart.

                        The Offending Marker

Well, as tempting as it would be to let sleeping markers lie, I knew I couldn’t leave it down the slot to risk it clogging the dryer’s exhaust and possibly resulting in a fire, but my hands were too thick to slip through to retrieve it. That meant I needed to remove the lint screen housing. I did some quick research and discerned the housing was only held fast by three tiny screws. That was the good news. One screw was quite visible. The other two, of course, were only accessible by taking apart the dryer’s door and front panel (converting a fifteen minute rescue operation into a two-hour project).

I’m always up for a challenge, but not if it requires dismantling an appliance that costs the equivalent of a month’s wages working at a local big-box store! So I decided to put my superior intellect to work, instead. I grabbed a folding pruning saw and snagged a handful of lint that had collected over the years, thus taking it out of the equation for the solution my gray matter was whipping up. Then I located a small, skinny dowel that was about a foot or so long and attached some reverse-rolled scotch tape to it (using blue painter’s tape). Holding a flashlight with one hand while keeping a spring-loaded hatch down with a finger, I poked the pole down the hole with my right hand, stuck the grease marker with the tape, pulled it up, and managed to nab it with the swift and deft movement of what became my now-free left hand… Success!

   The first effort used only blue tape (and only captured lint)

The Successful End of the Stick: Invisible Scotch Tape

Is there some great wisdom to be gained from the telling of this tale? Probably not. While I would like to think life hands us teachable moments (and life tends to resemble the multi-limbed Durga or Kali of East Indian lore with which to toss detritus our way), sometimes a tale has a sufficient raison d’etre to stand on its own.

Life happens. It is how we respond to those happenings that tells us who we are. Sometimes I think I would like to be Thor, the Norse god of thunder. But really, I find it more in keeping with my temperament to be Freyr – a god connected to peace and good harvest. As most people are aware, I am (glad to admit) certainly no god.

In any case, I’m pleased to be able to share these stories, and pray they will continue to delight and inform all of you. Until next time: be sure to check your pockets when doing laundry here in this, our 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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

The Heart of the Matter

 

The door to the mind should only open from the heart. An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend. Joy Harjo (U.S. Poet Laureate)

Each morning I go outside and raise the blind so that the sunlight (or cloud-light) may make its way into the living room. I also step over to the birdbath that sits near the corner of the house and fill it with fresh water for the day from a handy, nearby spigot. If the bluebells or shrubs look a bit dry, I’ll give them a drink while I’m there, for I’ve got a nozzle that ensures they’re all within reach. Once I’m finished with the front, I head out back and repeat the process for the birdbath and variety of flowering bushes and plants that are quite pleasant to behold.

I’m very much a minimalist when it comes to yardwork. I clear away the dead stuff, of course, and tidy up the grounds every little bit, but I’m not a fanatic about it. I have no interest in trimming bushes and plants to create some artificial balance or artful topiarial effect. I’m content to let the plants get scraggly, if that’s how nature has made them. 

There are a few varieties that need to be hacked back, of course. The blackberries will absolutely run roughshod all over the place if one doesn’t take a whip and chair to them. You can’t kill them with weed killer, of course. Blackberries just laugh at such puny and paltry efforts. All you can do is dig down deep and remove as much of the roots as you possibly can. They’ll still come back, though, because nature always wins. But one can keep them under some semblance of control, and that’s all I want. 

There’s a healthy strain of blackberry that holds up the fence between us and our neighbor, so we get all the blackberries we ever want from that one group of bushes. Aside from that, though, the rest must be rooted out and disposed of. It doesn’t take too much time, and that’s fine with me. I think nature should be enjoyed and isn’t something to be conquered or beaten into submission. 

One of my great joys is watching birds fly down to the birdbaths to bathe. I never know if they’re trying to tidy up before flying off to work, or if there is some other purpose. I suspect they may simply be playing in the water because it’s something fun to do. I never see that “I’m late for work” look on their faces, While beaks tend to look pretty hard to the untrained eye, I’d swear I can see smiles on those little avian faces. 

Not only do the birds smile, but they often invite their little buddies to come join them, and I’d swear I’ve seen them get into little water fights and splash-fests. It’s no wonder I have to fill those bowls each morning; the water doesn’t evaporate: it gets splish-splashed all the way to tarnation and back!

We could learn a lot if we would take time to observe the natural order more thoughtfully. Oh sure, there are carnivores and herbivores and not a small amount of violence taking place out there – survival of the fittest and all that guff. But I am talking about watching the ways animals and birds and plants go about tending to what they do, and ignoring all the rest. I’ve never seen a squirrel criticize a bear for eating fish, or a tulip critique a rose. Each does what nature has made it to do, and the rest let God be the judge.

I’ve gotten to appreciate nature more and more in my old age. It makes sense. It won’t be too long down the road before I’ll be filling the earth with my remains, and I’d rather have the planet welcome me home than hold resentments against me for things done or left undone.

The earth is a friend, and the least I can do is love and embrace that from which all humans sprang. It’s the berry/bury least I can do. At least that’s my gravest perspective here in this, our 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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

Economics 101

People seem perplexed by the increased prices on homes, steel, lumber, and fuel, so let me help put some perspective on it and, no, it isn't the current President's doing (or Congress).

During the Pandemic (most of 2020 and into the current year) there was a major disruption on life in general. Construction, travel, manufacturing, etc. People didn't go places, so supplies dwindled. Remember the Toilet Paper Shortage?

As we roll out of the Pandemic (with vaccinations making a return to normalcy possible, while resistance to vaccinations by 30+ percent of the population means we'll probably never get past the disease or its variants and mutations like we did for Smallpox or Polio), life is returning to normal, and demand for lumber and steel has outstripped the current supply and desire to travel means demand for fuel has increased. When demand outstrips supply, prices go up. That's not politics; that's Capitalism.

As a side-note, regarding employment: Congress (i.e. Democrats) believe people should make a Living Wage, which is closer to $15/hr than $8/hr. The public has heard that and the majority of Americans are in favor of raising the Minimum Wage to $15/hr (or that neighborhood). I suspect people don't embrace unemployment benefits, as such, as much as they now believe many current "Now Hiring" businesses aren't willing to voluntarily pay a Living Wage. So, if businesses need workers to survive, they ought to consider offering decent wages and see if things don't turn around.

Ironically, when businesses pay increasingly good wages, income tax receipts increase, and the National Debt goes down. The Rich will continue to get rich, and the people, as a whole, will find their lives improved significantly.

Leaping Frogs!

I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.” Psalm 54

Last week I heard a frog croaking, which in itself isn’t all that unusual. We have many cute little green frogs playing around the house out in the backyard. When I’m mowing, I take special care to watch for them as they strive to flee the noisy grass lopper. Just as people fleeing Godzilla or other monsters in the movies, they tend to run or hop the same direction in which I’m going, when they could just as easily hop left or right for a few froggy paces and be out of danger. But, Oh no; they’ve got to do it their way. So I, with eagle eye, keep watch as I walk and mow, and adjust my pace or direction of travel. The grass-lines are more erratic when I do that, of course, but then I remember that the outdoors is their domain. I am but a caretaker and should not fault frogs, snakes, slugs, or lizards for living life on their own terms.

Anyway, I heard a frog singing out in the night, but he or she wasn’t outside. It was calling from inside the house! Before you get the idea I’m going all Stephen King on you, rest assured it wasn’t actually calling from inside the house, nor did it have a homicidal intent (as best I could tell). It was calling from the garage, so I decided to put my frog-hunting skills to the test. I figured it should be pretty easy, for I was a major frog-hunter back in the day. My siblings, cousins, and I would wander ‘round the docks at Lake Cavanaugh where my grandparents had a summer place, and I prided myself on my ability to sneak up on frogs or toads as they sat on pads, logs, or mudflats doing their own hunting (for flies and mosquitos, I presume), and capture them before they even had a chance to elude my wiley clutches.

I always let them go after a minute or so, of course, because frogs and toads aren’t much for conversation. They sit in your hand, blink and, frankly, look pretty bored, so I would relax my grip and when they were good and ready, they’d shift in the palm of my hand, survey the lake, take a lazy hop back into the water and swim away like the creature from the black lagoon.

So, I brought back to the fore my hunting skills as I entered the garage for this battle of wits – this Great Frog Hunt. I wasn’t really hunting the frog to do anything harmful, by the way. Our frogs here are so tiny and inoffensive that a meal of frog’s legs would require about a thousand just to barely serve as an appetizer and, honestly, I haven’t got the time or inclination to provide all those frogs with wheelchairs if I were to do such a thing with them. No, my only interest in the frog in the garage was to find it, rescue it, and return it to the great outdoors from whence it sprang.

Well, that frog apparently has better hearing than I do; it was able to elude not only my clutches, but also my seeing it. Davy Crocket I’m not (apparently). That’s OK. 

That tiny creature with the big mouth has patiently eluded my efforts for weeks, now. It had neither asked for nor expected my intervention, and has been happy to sing me to sleep nightly since it moved in. The beastie simply keeps its trap shut until I tire of the chase, and when I return to my couch, Mr. Toad cheerfully sings its version of the Hallelujah Chorus.

I suspect that if Dear Frog knows the psalms, the one it prays each night is this: “I will praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from every trouble, and my eye has seen the ruin of my foe.”

That’s all this ruined foe has to say on that from here in this, our valley. He sure toad me off!

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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

Atomic Ants and the Science of Love

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul...everything they owned was held in common. Acts 4

I was meeting with our online Men’s Group and mentioned I was scheduled to receive my second Covid-19 vaccine shot. The first shot four weeks earlier had knocked me for a loop with a slight fever, chills, general body aches, fatigue, and all the other things guys tend to complain about whenever it comes to anything medical. It’s true. You can shoot a guy in the face while bird-hunting and they’ll just walk it off, but stick them with that itsy bitsy vaccination syringe and it’s “pour me into bed and plug ‘911’ into my phone’s speed-dial.” Sheesh.

The fact is I am writing this just hours after having received the vaccine precisely so that I’ll be able to send it off from the grave before the deadline comes and goes. Hey, I am ALWAYS thinking of others!

Anyway, I found myself wondering, all kidding aside, just what it is that prevents people from voluntarily wearing masks and getting their vaccines as soon as they can. I want to be vaccinated and reduce the likelihood of contracting or passing the disease along. I will continue wearing my mask in public simply because I don’t want you – my neighbor – to wonder whether or not I am safe to be around. The issue isn’t my rights, but our community.

The problem with Covid, and most microbial viruses and germs is that they are so darned small. We can’t see them to avoid them. We can’t look at one another and know for certain what contagions we each might be carrying. I did offer one alternative to the men’s group that anti-maskers and anti-vaccers might want to consider. It addresses the size issue, and it is based on science.

We need to bring back outdoor nuclear testing like we had in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I remember seeing a movie that I’m sure was based solely on modern science where atomic testing allowed desert ants to mutate and develop into twelve foot monsters. They were big enough to require machine guns and flamethrowers to deal with them. Well, bring back outdoor atomic testing and wait for the viruses to mutate big enough to whack them with baseball bats or fly swatters! I mean, if we can see the little beasties lolling around like beach balls, we can deal with THEM and go back to our maskless ways.

In the meantime, it seems one key to getting the pandemic behind us is to actually do something even harder: we need to get ourselves under control. I don’t wear a mask for me; I wear it for you. Why? Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.” If I bring you a smile, isn’t that loving? If I wear a mask so you don’t get as much salivatory ejecta from me, isn’t that loving? If I obtain a vaccine so the virus has no place to go and no way to get there, isn’t that loving?

The early Church grew quickly in the early days, not because of membership drives or paid advertisements, but because those early followers did something counter-intuitive; they loved their neighbors – including outsiders and persecutors. They didn’t concern themselves with their rights, but when their neighbors were in need, they did all they could to bring relief to their little corner of the dog-eat-dog world in which they lived; their neighbors took notice.

Followers of the Way recognized they were part of a community that didn’t end at their front porch, but included the wider community, including those who did not look, think, or act like them. In a world of “us and them,” they learned to embrace the “we.”

When it comes to masks, consider this. Painters mask off walls or trim they don’t want paint to stain. I, just as reasonably, mask off my face to avoid spraying you with unpleasantries. 

If we follow the science rather than the science fiction, it is quite possible we can slow down or end this pandemic, allowing us all to breathe a little easier here in this, our 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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)

An Empty Tomb -- A Full Heart

 Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with (You) … Collect for Easter Sunday

I don’t talk a lot about sin. It’s all around us, like the air we breathe. There’s no getting away from it. There’s no avoiding it. Even if we deny there is such a thing as sin, the fact is we see the evidence of people behaving badly, and so even if we want to give it a different name (like shortcomings, mistakes, or bad choices), it covers the same territory.

One reason I don’t talk about sin is I worry the minute someone hears the word, they will close their ears and stop listening. No one likes to feel like they’re being judged, or the person talking to them is a narrow minded nincompoop or holier-than-thou prig (all of which may be true anyway).

No, I just think that when we start with what’s wrong, we’ve started from the wrong spot. Yes, we are all sinners. We all fall short of the mark, whether it is the mark we set for ourselves or a mark some one or some One sets for us. Even the Rifleman, Lucas McCain missed every now and again; there’s no shame in that. The only real question we have to answer is what we can do to improve, and then do that.

A friend of mine is a bow hunter, and he went out to a ranch to get in some target practice before hunting season. The first few arrows never came close to where he wanted them to go. Not being an archer, I asked him if his bow had adjustable sights. He just looked at me a moment and said, “No, I just need the target to cooperate and move to where the arrows go.” The rancher said, “No, you just need a larger target (and maybe a bigger barn to shoot at).”

As a photographer, I’ll often move my subject if I don’t like the background or lighting, but I’ve found that mountains, trees, and barns often don’t move. When that happens, I need to find a different time of day or a different place to stand to get the shot I want.

Sin isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Our task is to identify what we’re looking for, what we’re aiming at, and discerning if we need to adjust our sights, move our subject, secure a bigger target, or find a better time and place from which to take our shot.

Sin, for me, you see, isn’t breaking a commandment as much as it is a distortion of who we are meant to be. It’s losing focus on the big picture: Loving God with all we’ve got; loving our neighbor (even when it is nigh on impossible – for with God, all things are possible), and loving ourselves the way God loves us – for God thinks we were worth the ultimate sacrifice.

This week marks the ending of Lent and our final approach to Easter. Once again we will peer into an empty tomb and some stranger in white will say, “The One you are looking for is not here. Go home, for he promised to meet you there.”

All of a sudden, we who tramped around during our Lenten pilgrimage will discover we’re home, and God is there waiting for us. God will have put on an apron and invited us in to feast because, well frankly, God doesn’t look at either sin or sinner. God looks at us. We don’t need to move. God moves. We don’t need to be perfect (or ashamed), for God is perfect and perfectly happy to have us join in the festivities.

The only sin God cares about is God’s SINcere love for each and every one of us. Enjoy your Easter and bask in the warmth of God’s love. Remember, God hung up the bow – God is no longer using us for target practice, and that is good news for everyone here in this, our 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 exclusively through Amazon in Print and e-book)