When Things are Closer than They Appear

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. Madeleine L’Engle

Do you realize I have never seen the small of my back? I have seen photographs of it, of course, and in those angled groups of mirrors found in dressing rooms one is using to try on clothes to see how they fit. But I’ve never actually seen, with my own eyes, my own backside.

I was pondering that totally uninteresting tidbit of information as I set down a book I’d just finished reading dealing with a bit of American history. As my mind wandered the deserted streets between my ears, I found myself thinking about history as those times or events that lie behind us. Many of us look at history as if we’re passengers on a train pulling out of a station that falls further and further behind. 

Another history buff and I were talking about our common interests and he made an interesting observation. He said, “You know, we westerners look at history as something that lies behind us. We're constantly moving forward, away from it. Other cultures look at the past differently. They see the past in front of them. It’s receding, of course, but it’s the future that’s out of sight – behind them, so to speak. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Interestingly, people in addiction recovery take that second view of history. The Promises of twelve-step recovery programs states, “We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.” Rather than running from the awful or shameful things they may have done to themselves or others while in the throes of their addiction, they use those experiences to help them grow into a future filled with hope rather than shame; with courage rather than fear.

There is an old saying that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I suppose that is true, to a degree, but I prefer a more positive approach: Those who study history are bound to find solutions to current conundrums. I know it hasn’t got the same panache as the original, but perhaps it is more helpful. I don’t like doom and gloom. I can’t recall a time when doom and gloom saved me from anything. If anything, it paralyzes me, whereas a clear-eyed view of lessons learned has helped keep me out of the deep doo doo I might otherwise step in.

Now, I know that walking backwards around the house or driving in reverse down the street would not be very healthy for most of us (I wish I would beep when walking backwards), but keeping an eye on the past can be very helpful. For instance, I could be worried about receiving one of the Covid-19 vaccines. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t look into the future and see whether it is safe, effective, or whether or not I will get the disease and die without the vaccine. The future is a mystery.

However, I can look into the past and see the polio and smallpox vaccines I have received and, voila, I have not gotten those diseases. My kids received their MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) shots at the prescribed times and, voila, never came down with those particular diseases. My father received tons of shots when he entered basic training in the army back in the 1940s and, voila, lived to be ninety years old. Consequently, when I made an appointment to receive my Covid-19 vaccine, I did so with full confidence in the scientists who developed the vaccines, the labs that produced the product, and the medical personnel who put those doses into my arm.

Some folks may remember the thalidomide debacle in the 1950s (a drug which caused major issues, like birth defects). Of course that is precisely the sort of rear-facing history that helped to prevent a lot of mistakes after that. Science practices, tests, refines, improves. Scientists aren’t perfect, but they’re willing to acknowledge their mistakes and learn from them.

I may never see the small of my back, but I’m glad it is there to lead me forward (masked and vaccinated) 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 through Amazon in Print and e-book)

Time Marches On – I’d Prefer It to Dance!

 

Perhaps the misfortune that you do not like, leads you to a beautiful destiny that you never dreamed of. Anonymous

Life is a pilgrimage, or so it is said. We travel a road full of twists and turns, beginning in a womb and ending in a tomb. We find ourselves eventually holding court beneath a stone with name and dates engraved, but it is really the tomb of an unknown. Immediate family may pop by for a visit, but it won’t last long, and when that generation passes on, the stone with its engravings will sit and, over time, begin to wear away with exposure to the constant bombardment of sun and rain, snow and ice, and the vegetative mastication of not-so-innocent mosses and lichens that latch onto the engravings, seeking to devour the very stone itself – over time.

“Time marches on; it waits for no man,” said my grandmother. She knew a thing or two about time. Although she was in her nineties when she died, I am sure I thought she was in her nineties back when I was just a child, and she was likely in her forties or fifties, instead. The concept of time is wasted on youth. What the heck do we know? 

Time. Nothing lasts forever. Heck, some things come broken straight out of the box. I bought a new laptop that I spent months troubleshooting online, as well as shipping it back and forth with their technical support staff. It is still a five pound paperweight. The manufacturer insists it works fine. Their computers tell them it meets all their specifications and returns no errors. My experience tells me something different. Life’s too short to keep up the fight, so I’ll just have the bleeding thing cremated with me when the time comes to topple from the frying pan into the fire.

Time. It seems there is a magazine with that moniker, although odds are pretty good my mug will never grace the cover of that periodical. That’s OK. I’m not out for fame or fortune, although a little more fortune would be nice. Fame, on the other hand, isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I’m not famous and (by Somebody’s good grace) I’m not infamous. It has been ages since I have even looked at a magazine rack in a store, so I don’t know what periodicals are left standing. Perhaps their time has passed, too.

Time. It comes and goes. I have a desk clock I inherited from my great uncle, Gus. It hasn’t worked in years. Clock experts have looked at it, but none have been able to restore it to a functioning condition, but that’s OK. It has the correct time twice a day and dresses up the curio cabinet in the living room very nicely. I may try to find a specialist to look at it, but only time will tell if I will ever get around to it.

Time. I am obsessed with the topic, it’s true, and I think my interest was inherited. The first thing I ever coveted from a very early age was a wristwatch. My mother told me I could have one when I learned to tell time. I studied the hands on the kitchen clock daily until I knew far more than the basics. Hour hands and minute hands were easy. I made sure I knew the “quarters past and the quarters to” and the “half pasts and the thirty minutes tils.” 

I saved money from odd jobs, allowances, and birthdays until one day I was finally ready to buy a decent wristwatch. I went to the jewelry counter at Ballard’s JC Penny store and picked out a wonderful looking timepiece for which I had exact change. Sadly, I didn’t have enough extra to cover the sales AND luxury taxes imposed at the time, so I left empty handed.

That’s OK, though. Empty handed is exactly how we enter this life, and that’s how we’re going to leave it. It’s what we do between those two points that gives time its value, and that’s all the time or space I have for now 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 through Amazon in Print and e-book)

A Calm in the Storm

 I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. Louisa May Alcott

Friends put out word a few weeks ago that they were scheduled to go away for a wedding and needed someone to take care of their house and dogs. Their usual caretaker had also scheduled time away, so they were desperate; they feared they would have to cancel their trip.

Being retired, I had the time necessary to read their email. Having pulse and respiration, I had a sudden urge to “be of service” (as we say in a number of organizations to which I belong). I found my fingers flying across the keyboard and offered to help if Obiwan Kenobi was otherwise unavailable. I am of an age where my fingers used to do the walking through the yellow pages, so it is not surprising that they decided to do the talking through the internet. I just wish they had spoken to me first. Why?

What do I know about dogs? I know how to take care of houses, of course. I’ve lived in many over the years. “I can open and close windows and doors with the best of ‘em,” says I. But dogs? While I am mildly acquainted with dogmatics from my years in the cloth, the four-legged critters of the canine persuasion are not all that high on my list of competencies (which could fit, in its unabridged entirety, on the inside cover of a match-book). 

Anyway, my friends had a need, and I had time, so I applied for the gig. I dropped by to get acquainted with Katie and Georgia (whom I’d not met previously due to Covid restrictions) and hit it off right off the bat, by which I mean they didn’t tear me from limb to limb. That was a pleasant surprise because, well, I’ll admit I’ve not always had good experiences with dogs, but I’ll spare you the tales of those tails and their scary details for another time.

Meanwhile, I am on day six watching the house and taking care of the dogs and everything is going well. I had hoped to have had some major adventures to report, but the critters are well-behaved and, aside from needing to take some medications for various ailments, they are very low-maintenance. If you put up one of those wildlife cameras so you could keep an eye on us 24/7, you wouldn’t know if you were watching video or looking at stills; it is that calm.

And that’s the point. I have discovered that my imagination is a far more potent opponent than life has ever been. Where I look for and anticipate a catastrophe around every corner and the apocalypse around every bend, very little has ever occurred that has lived up to my mind’s billing. I am my own worst false advertiser! I need to learn how to block the spam that comes into my cranial inbox, but if I did, with what would I fill the void? I must admit that while I don’t care for spam of the inbox and phone-call varieties, I do like the processed meat that goes by my name, but I digress.

No, I have found that whether dealing with work, family, church, politics, or any one of the myriad facets of life we face, things are seldom as bad as we make them out to be. There are those who say, “Plan for the worst and hope for the best,” but it seems they are whistling their way through the graveyard. 

Look ahead; sure. But don’t look so far ahead you trip over the dog beneath your feet. Do what needs to be done today, and have a sense of what needs to be done tomorrow, but don’t fret. After all, one may be high strung, but that doesn’t make them a guitar.

Working with Georgia and Katie, my new canine amigas, I’ve seen how dogs live “in” the moment. They know their needs, and their needs are few. My job was simply to pay attention. When I did that, the storms of anxiety faded and the ship sailed on toward a beautiful sunset, as it always does 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 through Amazon in Print and e-book)

The Ayes of Faith

To you I lift up my eyes, to you enthroned in the heavens. Psalm 123

I was driving home the other day from a Book Club that meets along the Swinomish Channel on the western edge of the Skagit Valley. As I was driving, I glanced to the south and spotted Mount Rainier, which lies about 164 miles away. I didn’t realize it could be spotted from that distance, what with hills, low cloud cover, fog, agricultural haze, smog, smoke from seasonal fires, and other stuff that clogs the view. I’d simply never been able to see through it all to spot that beautiful cone off in the distance. I suppose the fact that my eye is normally on the road in front of me has also prevented me from enjoying all there is to see in the world around me.

It was a clear and gorgeous day, however, so I was able to take in that spectacular vista for a moment before turning my attention back to the road I was traversing. There is something mystical about mountains that impels us to look skyward. “I lift up my eyes to the hills,” says the psalmist in Psalm 121. “I lift up my eyes to you,” he says again here, “enthroned in the heavens …”

The psalmist is a realist. There is a God, and neither he nor any of the rest of us mere mortals is Him or Her. One’s temptation, of course, isn’t to confuse who or what is God, but to think of God living “up there” on a high mountain, like Zeus on Olympus, or far away in heaven – out of sight and out of mind. I worry that my life, like my driving, is so focused on what I’m doing and where I’m going I don’t even bother to turn my head and look to see if God is “there” or not. People and situations are often obstacles to being able to see God clearly, let alone draw near. 

“It’s a jungle out there,” says the Monk theme song, and I agree. I often can’t see the Divine through da vines! I suppose that’s one reason the Almighty decided to climb down off the throne and join us here – up close and personal. 

While there are certainly passages that describe God-the-Warrior, the stories that really capture my imagination are those where God is not the complete Other, but One who steps into the Garden in the cool of the evening to chat with us. “Adam; how was your day? Eve; I love what you’ve done with the place; those orchids are really flourishing, aren’t they?” Or the story of Moses finding God playing hide-and-seek in a fiery bush on one mountain, and a game of peek-a-boo in the cleft of another mountain. Or the story of God whispering softly to Elijah when the prophet was feeling so alone and forsaken. Or the most dramatic story of all – God lying in a feeding trough (manger), totally dependent on the willingness of a young, unwed girl (and her fiance), to take him in and raise him up right.

When Jesus prayed, he spent hours talking to Poppi more than to the Almighty God of Heaven and Earth. He didn’t navigate the halls of heaven and make his way past a host of angelic bureaucrats. He spent his time conversing with God the way you and I might chat with friends and family about matters both profound and mundane.

When I lift up my eyes to the hills, I am profoundly aware there is a universe of which I am not the center. But I know, too, that when I lift up my head, it allows God to look me in the eye and say, “Aye, that’s better.” God’s desire is not to be remote, out of sight, or out of mind, but right here, right now, looking us full-on in the face and nodding, “Aye, I understand.” 

God doesn’t look down, as I see it, but across. I lift up my eyes unto the hills, and suddenly I realize our eyes have become God’s Ayes, for God is now (and always will be) our Poppi 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)

Who Makes Us Who or What We Are?

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name … (Collect for Proper 7, Book of Common Prayer)

One day, out on the playground of the elementary school I attended, one of my classmates got into a tussle with some bullies. The mate wasn’t a friend; it’s even possible he had said or done something that instigated the childish taunts and abuses that were directed at him, but I never liked bullies or cruelty, and so I butted in. I told his tormentors to leave him alone. They laughed, of course, because I had no standing on the playground. I was just another nameless, faceless kid who worked hard to blend seamlessly into the scenery.

Not this time. For some reason I have yet to grasp, I felt I needed to address the situation, which I did. The biggest of the toughs turned, snarled, and asked, “Who’s gonna make me?”

I ignored his question, but he didn’t. He let go of his hapless victim and turned his attention on me, and while I would love to say I cleaned his clock in a battle amongst Titans, we simply wrestled a minute or so until he got tired of holding me in a headlock, or the bell rang, whichever came first. The other lad had run off, leaving me to face the three toughs solo, but I guess I had won in that they let the first kid go. That was good enough, and I returned to my life as a chameleon.

The prayer quoted above begins with a strange request: Lord, MAKE us … Make us have perpetual love … Make us have reverence … Make us. We’re asking God to do something unnatural. We’re asking God to force us to do something we may not want to do. Who’s going to “make us” love? “Make us” revere? If there’s force involved, can it be voluntary or genuine? It is an awkward thing to pray for.

On the other hand, “make” can also refer to a manufacturing process. When I make a sandwich, I am doing something. I’m taking bread, butter, mayonnaise, meats, cheeses, and lettuce and creating something that would please Dagwood no end. Asking God to “make us,” in that sense, is asking God to take the raw ingredients of our humanity and mix it with a wide variety of other ingredients so that the end result is something or someone who is pleasingly reverent and loving.

I suppose the starting point of such a prayer assumes that you and I (who, together, form the “us” in the prayer) aren’t yet who or what we should be – right? Prayer can be quite dangerous that way – almost subversive. I mean, the intent of prayer isn’t to change God’s mind or God’s plan; it’s to change us! At first blush, prayer looks like a wish list aimed at God to “get up and do something,” but in reality, God most often effects change through people like you and me.

If we are serious about wanting God to develop perpetual love in us (presumably love for God, neighbor, and self), God may well answer by sending unlovable people and intolerable situations in our direction. If one wants to become stronger, one needs to exercise, right? If I want abs of steel, I need to do more crunches and situps and whatever else fitness gurus insist will get the job done. Asking God to improve our love-life, in effect, may require numerous unpleasant encounters!

The fact is that we are always under construction. The world makes us cold, selfish, arrogant, bitter, quarrelsome, and more (Galatians 5). We have a God who is willing and able to make us lights with which to chase away the darkness, brightening up our neighbor’s day. St. Paul reminds us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and so much more.

Jesus is the Bread of Life; we pray for God to make something delightful, loving, and reverent of us. That’s actually a great prayer, isn’t it?

Between the world and God, it’s God who makes the better sandwich with the bologna we have to offer. God always will 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 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)