Vacating Life

We did not all come over on the same ship, but we were all in the same boat.  – Bernard M. Baruch

It is something of an oxymoron to confess that while I have been retired about a year now, my wife and I haven’t really taken time off to enjoy a vacation.

Unless you are desperate for some sleep, I don’t need to bore you with the details of what we’ve been up to this past year, but suffice it to say it has involved moving to our new house, settling in, and doing everything we could and can to make it into a home. I am pleased to report that while it is still a work in progress, we seem to have moved forward far enough to risk taking some time away to simply enjoy days that, in the short term, won’t involve mowing lawns, weeding gardens, unpacking boxes, or vacuuming floors.

Our plan is to head over to the Olympic Peninsula to visit some beaches and historic sites, do some hiking to see some of the waterfalls for which the Olympics are noted (assuming the rivers and creeks haven’t all dried up; they are reputedly most impressive in early summer), and otherwise relaxing in the shade of old growth forests.

Vacations aren’t something I do well, however.

I suppose some of my reluctance to enjoy summer holidays stems from my youth, where vacations meant piling into the back of the family sedan, four kids smooshed into a space designed for three, driving for several days straight from our home in Seattle to visit relatives out near Chicago, and having little to do upon arriving except to sit in the sweltering heat of summer while the adults sat in the shade shooting the breeze and enjoying their adult beverages.

Not all vacations were hot and boring, though. I remember a trip the family took one time to a nearby lake when I was just a wee lad of seven or eight. We stayed in a small travel trailer, which I presume was a rental as we didn’t own one. My dad bought my brother and me a kid’s fishing rod, which had about five feet of string attached. I presume it had a kid-friendly hook, but don’t recall for sure. It didn’t matter as I knew, even at that tender age, that I would never catch fish a foot or so from shore – and didn’t. On a positive note, it wasn’t hot. On the flip side, it was boring.

Another time our family took a trip to the very same Olympic National Forest we will soon be visiting. We were a family of four at the time, and it was summer (I’m sure it was before I was in school yet – the memories are very faint). My dad, ever the soldier, set up the tent in quick and efficient fashion and even went to the trouble of digging out a small drainage trench around it “just in case.” Well, that night it poured. To be more accurate, a tsunami came down from the darkened sky and nearly washed us away into the River Hoh (or whatever creek we had camped beside). The next morning we poured the campsite back into our rusted ’49 Plymouth and drove home. I’ll be honest; I don’t remember much fun happening on that trip, either.

These incidents, though, do bring to mind the one thing I enjoy doing more than pretty much anything else. I love to complain! I am never so happy as when I’ve got something to criticize. I resonate with Saint Paul who says at one place in one of his early columns, “Oh, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Now there’s a saint after my own heart!

The answer, of course, is one who took the ultimate trip from paradise, set up his tent in our world, and went to the grave that we might live. Keeping that in mind, I find it helpful to pause from my carping and to be simply thankful. When I let go and let God, so to speak, life becomes much more bearable – even vacation-life!

Furthermore, not everyone gets to go on vacation, and with any luck, I’ll have more stories to share with you when I get back here in this, God’s valley. Until then, I’m outa here!

Things to Do Whilst Your Summer Sails Along

I am running away, but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat – Tennessee Williams

I was scanning the internet the other day. Sometimes this activity is known as killing time, although, to be honest, time has been killing me for years. If you don’t believe me, come on over and take a look. So I found myself tumbling through some random spots online and found a gif (a brief moving picture or clip that runs for about 1 or 2 seconds). It was the picture of a sailboat where the sail was adjusted for the wind, and as the canvass swung from one side to the other, it caught and tossed a sailor into the sea.

That’s all there was to the image, and I found myself briefly wondering, hoping (and presuming) the sailor was retrieved by his fellow yachtsmen. Beyond that, though, I found it quite comical and entertaining – not unlike some Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin bit.

As we head into the dog days of summer, it occurs to me that some folks may be struggling with bouts of boredom and looking for ways to stay busy. As a service to my readers, then, I thought I would provide you with my top ten list of things to do when the mosquitos are biting and the fish aren’t – and you’re looking for some sort of reprieve from those flaccid days of summer. In no particular order, here goes:

Coming in at #10, go inside, close the drapes and blinds, select a decade, and binge watch your favorite TV show. Bonanza will probably take you almost to Halloween!

At #9, do a search on Tumblr, select a topic of interest, and follow the Links, Likes, and Followings until you get back to where you started – or Christmas (whichever comes first).

At #8, hop in the car or truck and see how far into the mountains you can get. Then hop out and see how long it takes for anyone to notice you’re missing. Remember, your local Search and Rescue team needs practice, so this would be a genuine community service. And for all those times your better half has asked you to Get Lost, you can show them how much you really DO listen!

At #7, when telemarketers call, ask them to hang on; then go water your lawn, wash your dishes, plan a deck party, or run to the store and do some grocery shopping. Warning: Do this only with your landline. Charges may apply against your cellular plan, so check with your attorney first.

At #6, sit down and address your Christmas cards. Begin your annual Christmas letter, starting each paragraph with a succeeding letter of the alphabet. Your friends and family will LOVE it!

Coming in at #5, close your windows, turn off your lights, climb into bed with flannel sheets and turn on your electric blanket and pretend it is winter. You may not get much rest, but you’ll quickly drop a few pounds and fit into those clothes you’ve been storing since 1977.

At #4, head over to your favorite community service organization and ask them how you can (gasp) be of service. Offer them the gift of your time, talent, or treasure (whichever works best for them). Make a commitment and stick with it.

At #3, take a stroll downtown, block the sidewalk and talk with visitors and friends. Grab a soft drink or water, look at traffic on the main drag through town, take a deep breath, and remember that’s what folks in big cities deal with all year long. Exhale, and offer God a note of thanks.

At #2, call a friend or family member you haven’t seen or talked to in a long time, and catch up. Note: Hang up on the telemarketer first.

And finally, coming in at #1: Go outside and when the first star appears, don’t make a wish. Just be thankful, and enjoy the view, for you’re closer to heaven than you can possibly know.

There you are. Enjoy these waning days of summer, don’t play with fire and, for heaven’s sake, watch out for pranksters in this, God’s valley.

The Trimming Life

We’re all only fragile threads, but what a tapestry we make – Jerry Ellis

Ah, the joys of retirement.

I held my a trusty tape measure against a piece of wood, made a magical mark, measured a second time (as any wood-working professional would), confirmed the measurement was true and accurate, then proceeded to cut the door trim with my miter saw at an angle set for the proper number of degrees. When finished, I carried and tested the finished product against the door frame and – voila! It was too short. It seems I mitered the board in the wrong direction from my mark. Uff-da!

It’s ironic being a man who worked some thirty three years for a Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth (the carpenter – not me) and finding myself with all that experience still being able to make that sort of mistake. What a life! The double irony is that I don’t recall ever cutting a sermon too short!

But life moves on. One can’t stop trying just because things don’t work out as planned the first time and, to be honest, I know my skills with wood and saws well enough to confess I actually figured something like that would happen, so I made sure I had extra wood on hand!

Hah! Take that, o ye Fates!!!

I don’t mind admitting failure. Oh sure, there was a time I would have swept the sawdust under the rug and denied ever making an error like that, but that was so long ago the Allosauruses who might have tattled on me have gone the way of all the rest of the dinosaurs. And besides, it’s possible I’ve grown wiser. What’s the fun in hiding the funny things we mortals do, anyway?

I’m sure it isn’t funny to the tree that gave it’s all so I could trim the doorway in our home, but I managed to put the scrap lumber to use for smaller trim pieces that were also needed, so all was not lost. I have come to realize that life is too short to sweat the petty stuff. As someone once said, “Those who’ve never made a mistake have never done anything.”

The fact is there was nothing wrong with the door trim or baseboards in our house – or the spare bedrooms, to be more precise – but they don’t match the rest of the trim in the house which was updated prior to our buying it. We thought it would be nice to finish the update. Note: I use the term “we” quite loosely, but let’s not quibble over details. The fact is that left to my own devices, I would prefer to lean on my Lazy Gene (but misplaced it during the move).

So anyway, there’s work to do, although it is work of a different sort. I now have the time to practice doing things I’ve not done much of, and that is a nice change of pace, although the pace is quite glacial and needs to be timed with a calendar rather than a stop watch (and I slow down even more if anyone stops to watch me – I’m not fond of having an audience when playing with sharp objects like saws and drills, nails and hammers, and the like).

One of the pleasant things about doing my own honey-do woodwork is I can admire the greater skills of genuine carpenters. The good news is it was professionals who did the public spaces in our home, and the areas upon which I have been toiling away are and will be hidden away from the rest of the world (except maybe horror house movie makers – here’s a shout out to Hollywood).

That’s as it should be. While I know I shall improve over time (gaining experience along the way), I also know I will never be perfect. That job, thankfully, belongs to God.

In the meantime, I continued to measure multiple times and by the time I got to the last bit of trim, I had gotten the angle on doing miters a mite better and faster. And where my splices are sloppy, I have discovered the joy of wood putty (but I’ll save that story for another time).

Until then, enjoy your summer. May you never be board (sic) here in this, God’s valley. I know I won’t be!

When the Bough Breaks

People are what they believe – Anton Chekhov

I was outside watering my tomatoes when I heard what I was sure was a rabid grizzly bear beating the bushes in my neighbor’s yard. It’s hard to describe a sound, but suffice it to say that if you have seen any wild grizzly movies on the silver screen (Night of the Grizzly and The Edge come immediately to mind) you will know the ominous sound of a beast single-mindedly wanting to have you for breakfast – or dinner.

Well, that was the sound I heard over in the corner of the yard as I was tending to my veggies (which are doing very nicely, I should add). I looked up from my hydrating duties to see what was causing such a crunchy commotion just in time to see a mighty bough break off from the neighbor’s fir tree and come crashing down onto the fence separating our two properties.

The good news is that the bough was crib-less, so no “rock-a-bye” babies fell as the incident unfolded. Also, while it had been my intention to water plants and bushes where the tree limb fell, I hadn’t gotten that far, so this baby did not have his noggin cracked by the aforementioned falling bough.

After confirming that I was still in one piece and whole in both life and limb (and heart continued beating within my own trunk – although it wasn’t beating about the bush), I went and got my wife to tell her what had happened (after all, she is the branch manager of our home) and the two of us trundled over to our neighbors to let them know about the damage to the fence we shared.

I thought the tree belonged to him, but as it turns out, it belongs to yet another neighbor who, while friendly enough, declined any responsibility. “The tree is on my side of the fence,” he said, “but it was planted by someone else and is actually on the property line, so it’s not mine.”

Ah, who says good fences (or walls) make for good neighbors? Some knot-head, no doubt.

Anyway, it didn’t matter to me who the tree belonged to and, the fact is, the damage to the fence was minimal. My neighbor and I took a couple of saws and loppers to the offending yard waste and laid waste to the trespassing vegetation. We chopped and lopped everything down to size in about an hour, and then loaded everything into my pickup, hauled it to the landfill and dumped it. A few days later we replaced the broken stringer and reinstalled the fence boards and, voila, all was made whole once again.

I do worry the tree will continue to shed limbs, for it does not appear to be a healthy tree. It has a number of dead branches holding on for no good reason except to keep the world in suspense. There hadn’t been any wind the day that one big bough broke, but I give gravity credit for its fall. It had no choice; it was the Law (of gravity).

I won’t lose any sleep over the matter. No one was injured. The incident gave me a chance to get to know my next-door neighbor a lot better as we worked together. I got to at least meet another neighbor I had not known at all, and I suspect I will get to know him and his wife better as the law of gravity continues to be rigorously enforced in our neighborhood. He may deal with his tree; he may not. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The tree is sick, to be sure, but it is also short enough it is highly unlikely it will convert our home into a tree-house any time soon.

I will admit that fences help delineate property lines, but I wonder if they truly do promote neighborliness. It took a broken fence to discover who my true neighbor is.

A fence may give the illusion of security, but I dare say it’s only an illusion. Not only did a mindless fir crush it, but squirrels cross it all the time as they plunder Nature’s Market for their daily bread!

I’m glad God broke the fence. I’m especially glad it was God and not a grizzly here in this, God’s valley.

Naught, Knot, and Not

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. Will Rogers

In the Bible, we are called to be truthful.  I have always found it interesting that the commandment addressing honesty is couched in the negative: “Thou shalt not bear false witness”.

Why not put a positive spin on it?  Why not say, “Thou shalt bear true witness”?

Perhaps it is this focus on negatives – the THOU SHALT NOTs – that causes some people to see religion in a negative light – seeing religion as a culture of NOTs.

Thou shalt NOT bear false witness; thou shalt NOT have any other gods before me; thou shalt NOT covet thy neighbor’s wife, livestock, or other precious commodities; etc.

It is the NOTs, I suspect, that gets us all knotted up, and yet it seems to me that there is a value in the negatives. Is it the “nots” that make us “naughty?”

Many of us go through life thinking of ourselves as honest men and women.  When the clerk at the store gives us back too much change, most of us will point it out and correct them.  There are those who don’t, of course. Some will rationalize their dishonesty and their misbehavior – blaming the stores for short-changing them in the past, or making too high a profit, or more than able to “eat” the mistake. But a lie is a lie, and theft is theft, and a mistake should be corrected whenever possible.

For the most part, most of us are honest and will do the right thing if we notice an error, whether the mistake is in our favor or not.  We “do unto others as we would have others do unto us.”  That’s the Golden Rule; it is known and expressed in any number of world religions and philosophies; and it is a rule that makes our world a better place to live when practiced.

Ironically, it is our basic honesty that often blinds us to the complete truth about ourselves.  We are basically good (and I really do believe that), but in our very goodness arises a certain complacency about our true condition. We are good, but not perfect. Our motives may be good, but our results are sometimes flawed.

A while back I was driving out along Ennis Lake and saw a woman walking her bicycle on the gravel road. I slowed down and asked if she needed help (thinking she might have a flat tire or some other issue). She assured me she was fine, so I continued on my way.

Now, I would love to say I offered help out of the complete goodness of my heart, but the fact is the parable of the Good Samaritan was the listed reading for the upcoming Sunday, and I did NOT want to be identified as the “priest who passed by on the other side.” I genuinely wanted to help (if needed), but I was also protecting my fragile ego!

Isaiah tells us that all our righteousness is as filthy rags when compared to God.  Is it possible that we are content to think of ourselves as good, rest on our laurels, and not dig deeper out of fear of what we will find?

Is it possible that the commandments are put in the negative form precisely because our temptation is to bear false witness?  Not just about what we have seen or heard, but in what we have done or thought in the secrecy of our own heart?

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

It is often out of fear and shame that we hide the truth from our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves, but there is no hiding the truth from God.  Further, I have learned over the years that being honest with our friends (at least with those who are trustworthy) – removing the masks of hypocrisy we wear – allows us the freedom to be more honest, and greater opportunity to be the kind of people that put a smile on God’s face.

To be human is to be flawed. True. But we are loved by God, just the same – and called to love one another, quirks and all.

That’s the truth – at least as I see it here in this, God’s valley.

The Scale of Life

“I waited patiently upon the LORD; he stooped to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay ... he put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” (Psalm 40)

I sometimes lose things.

In a world where people have lost their lives; in a world where people have lost their jobs or health insurance; in a world where people have lost children to drugs, or marriages to infidelity, or health to bad genes, bad decisions, or bad luck; in a world where people have lost so much that is of true and enduring value, the loss of a trinket or misplaced doodad is pretty low on the scale of things.

If I have lost some “thing” and have time to look for it, I’m blessed, for I’ve lost so much more over the years – and I know it. Thank God! Without loss, how would we appreciate what we have?

I cannot speak for the rest of creation, of course, as the only things of which I have any knowledge are my own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. But what I do know is that when I have a problem of any sort – major, minor, or something in between – I can almost always trace its genesis back to one spot: me.

It’s always possible someone took off with what’s missing, but highly unlikely. Like most inanimate objects, it did not walk off on its own. But the odds are good it got moved around in some mysterious shuffle and will almost certainly be found – because it has been my experience that I’ll find the errant object and cry, “Ah, that’s right; I put it there. Now I remember!”

None of that is important, of course. The reason this grates on me is because it violates an image I have of myself of being a relatively competent, careful, and attentive person. I want to scream to the rafters, “I do not lose things,” and yet if I pause before shouting, I can recall countless times I have misplaced items, or forgotten where I was going, what I was doing, or what I had intended to say in a conversation.

It is called “being human.” I don’t want to be human, of course; I want to have what God has: a perfect memory and complete power (and maybe an adoring fan-base). Sadly, I am not God; no one is.

When I get into a pickle, it is of my own doing. I may have help along the way, but I’m generally able to get stuck in the muck and mire of life without anyone else’s help.

So the first thing I must do is acknowledge and accept my very human limitations. They do not excuse lapses of good judgment or carelessness, but they go a long ways towards explaining what it is that’s happening. As neat and tidy as I want life to be, it is messy and unmanageable, I’m stuck with it, and there is nothing I can do about it.

I am, in a sense, powerless, but I am not alone. There is a God to whom I cry out when I am in despair.

I don’t mean when I’ve misplaced my glasses or bookmarks; that would be a perfectly silly waste of God’s time. God is with us, in us, and around us a hundred percent of the time. The Bible is clear enough that there is no hole deep enough or deed dark enough that God cannot find us, hold us, or hear us; so to beg God’s intervention for a “thing” just seems irreverent to me.

I believe God is with us in the pit, and that God not only knows the way out of the pit; I believe God IS the way out of the pit. Greater is the One who sticks to us than is the schmuck who’s stuck to the muck!

Psalm 40 reminds us that while we may be good at walking “eyes wide open” into desolate pits and slimy sludge, God is good at seeing, hearing, and patiently rescuing us.

That’s why I look to God; he is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen in this, God’s valley; and I think God’s worth singing about – don’t you?

Truth: Stranger Than Friction

There’s no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does. Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

Our yard is full of rocks. Not just any old rocks, though. They’re red lava rocks; leftovers from an era where someone thought they would make a grand landscaping material.

“You never have to weed rocks,” I’m sure the person said to themselves. I doubt they would have said it to anyone else as that is about the dumbest thing one could say in a world as seedy as our own.

They tried to turn their opinion into a reality by laying out landscaping fabric first – to keep the weeds down – and then applying a layer of rocks atop the fabric. The goal was to create an environment that would be fun to look at and require little to no maintenance.

“Oh what fools these mortals be,” said Shakespeare’s Puck.

Weeds have no trouble working their way up through the fabric – far easier than fingers working their way down through the rocks to get to the roots – which are well-protected by both the rocks and fabric (through which fingers cannot penetrate, unless said fingers have a poking device to tear the fabric open to get to the roots which then results in an easier assault of new roots coming up through new chinks in the armor).

Because our house sits on a hill, I find our rocks don’t like to stay in place. One would think lava rocks, which are quite rough and frictional on the outside, would stay put, but they’d be wrong. These stones are constantly shifting (presumably to get a better view of the hills across the valley – maybe looking for the quarry which gave them birth). They have an instinct where, like lemmings, they seek some cliff off of which they may hurl themselves to oblivion.

Our “cliff” is a scalloped wall of bricks that line the flower beds, protecting the lawn from the incursion of a basalt army seeking greener pastures. Most rocks stay put (I’d say those are the gneiss ones), but there are a few hardy souls that make the leap each night. So before I mow the lawn each week, I must explore the verge looking for those runaway rapscallions and putting them back to bed.

It’s strange how we humans are always trying to make life easier and end up complicating it beyond all reason. We plant grass for reasons which elude me – devoting time and energy to watering, fertilizing, and mowing it ad nauseam. We Americans seem to be addicted to work, don’t we?

I recall learning from my college Anthropology classes that ancient peoples often spent up to ten hours per week laboring (hunting, fishing, and gathering), and it was to these kinds of people God said, “You need to take a day off each week – let’s call it the Sabbath.” At that rate, we should be Sabbathing every other day according to my estimations! Where on earth did we get to thinking a forty hour work week was normal (let alone healthy)?

I may wish life were simpler and less demanding. However, as a neighbor once said in response to my wishful thinking: “Spit in one hand, wish in the other, and see which fills up first.”

Life is what it is, so we do what is necessary to make as pleasant an experience of it as we can. We water, fertilize, mow, and move rocks. Is that such a bad thing?

Maybe our love of labor is genetic. Maybe we don’t believe we have value unless we are producing something.

I know that I would rather be up and doing something rather than sitting in front of the television all day long. I find it isn’t the labor, per se, that attracts me, or the productivity, strictly speaking, but being creative. I may complain about yardwork, but in reality, I enjoy creating a pleasant space and doing what I can to beautify our neighborhood.

There’s something soothing in hearing the sound of gasoline engines popping up all over the city after I’ve put my mower away – creative juices flowing freely everywhere, inspired by one man doing what he must: Mowing (after moving rocks) for a clean slate here in this, God’s valley. Truth is stranger than friction. Rock on!