Trails of Tears

Real men don't eat quiche and Real men don't cry.  Despite the fact that both can be healthy and nourishing, real men are encouraged to avoid such inappropriate and pathetic shows of emotion. And, by extension, those who aspire to be as strong as real men regardless of gender should also not cry.  Never.  Ever.  

This belief, squarely off in left field or beyond, persists despite scientific evidence that builds to the contrary.   Crying heals.  Crying releases sadness, grief, anxiety, and frustration.  Crying intensifies feelings of joy and relief.   Crying cleanses pent up negative emotions, preventing them from manifesting as physical illness, discomfort, pain, and disease.   Tears from crying carry stress hormones, eliminating them from the body.  Crying causes breathing and heart rate to drop, enabling the body to enter into a calmer state.  With all these benefits, crying should be a free, accessible, and widely used miracle drug.   

Yet, so many of you hold back the tears anyway.  I am not one of you, in part because when my tears come, they don't seem to respond to my instructions and mandates to do otherwise.  They just come strolling out my eyes, with purpose in hand, bound and determined to release me from whatever grip my emotions have over me. The aftermath, of course, is quite messy. In spite of feeling relieved, calm, destressed, and ready to tackle whatever problem led me to my tears in the first place, I still have to live with puffy, half-closed eyes, breathing through a nose that is one big stuffed up struggle, and whatever make-up issues require immediate renovation.  And, if I dare to look in the mirror and look at what has happened to my face, I may start to cry all over again.  

Despite the buildup and the unfortunate cosmetic aftermath, tears themselves take so many types of trails from where they begin deep inside my heart, through my troubled eyes, and down the sides of my countenance.   Trails of tears are complicated, but each fit of tears seems to have its own journey from start to finish.     

There are tears that issue so spontaneously in a fit of frustration over traffic, a difficult colleague, or an overloaded schedule that there is barely a moment to take cover and hide them from a society that is at best uncomfortable with them and at worst, disparaging.  These trails are easy and ready strolls, like one takes out the front door of a cabin into the nearby woods during a morning of rest and relaxation.   The tears come freely, flow for a brief while, and then stop, leaving a fresh perspective toward whatever frustration inspired them.   

There are tears that lay stuck, refusing to stream forward, building into a stinging pain behind the eyelids before finally eking forward, slowly and painstakingly, each leaving a single trail down the face as a testimony of its character and concern.  These are the tears that emerge from a deeply troubled soul, over tragedy or loss that has no rhyme or reason whether in the inner circle or life or far away in global events.  These trails are won only with difficulty and patience, and their release allows for waking up in the morning with hope and glimpse into a brighter future.  These trails are the last muddy, rocky, impossible stretches above the tree line and upward to the summit of the mountain, where a little bit of rest and a 360 degree view make the arduous ascent more than worthwhile.   

There are tears that come when anger finally breaks into whatever underlies it.  These tears bring more than just physical relief by bursting the dam which held the tension back in a seemingly calm and measured facade.   They bring relief in awareness of what was creating the anger, regret at what damage the anger may have wrought, and determination to do it all better the next time.  These trails are the ones taken when any trail will do, any trail that gets one moving, walking, and working through the aches, pains, and tensions that periodically hamper ordinary everyday movement.   

And the list of trails continues. As life goes on, there seems to be no corner of my often rocky heart, no space inside the forest of my soul that remains unexplored by the simple act of shedding tears.

The Turtle and the Rabbit

One day, a rabbit was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, admiring himself and boasting (to himself) how fast he could run.  The rabbit did this every morning of every day.  Some might call this behavior narcissistic, but since rabbits generally don't speak using words of more than two syllables, such a label was never applied to this rabbit. 

One day, a turtle happened to be playing splish, splash and taking a bath in the tub that lay within earshot of the boasting rabbit.   While the turtle was still traumatized by being suddenly plucked from his homeland by the ten year old boy living in the house, he still managed to find the rabbit quite annoying.  After listening to the boasting rabbit for awhile, he challenged the rabbit to a race.   At first, the rabbit did not respond, so preoccupied was he with his image in the mirror. The patient turtle (as turtles are prone to be) repeated himself once, then twice, then thrice.

Finally, the rabbit stopped his boasting, considered the turtle's words, then turned around and stared at his rather unwelcome bathroom companion.   At this very moment, the rabbit broke out into great peals of laughter.   The prospect of racing the turtle was sheer lunacy to the rabbit.  Never had the rabbit heard of such a race, much less a mere turtle winning it, because the rabbit, having spent most of his childhood playing video games, had never read any books and didn't know a tortoise from a hare, much less a fable from a short story.  All he knew was that racing this turtle (or any turtle for that matter) would be no competition at all.   The odds were clearly heavily stacked against the turtle in the tub before him, the one still waiting ever so patiently for an answer. 

Though the rabbit was convinced that a race between him and the turtle would be no race at all, he accepted the invitation from the turtle: 

"Yes, yes. We will race."

And so, the urban animals, domestic and feral, came together and mapped out a course through the city for the race.  They hacked into the traffic light cameras to monitor the race, so that the start would be fair to both and the winner at the end would be indisputable.  Bets were laid down, and the usual booking sites were activated.  After grand preparations, race day finally arrived and the race began.

At top speed, the rabbit took off and was soon many city blocks ahead of the turtle.  The rabbit slowed, turned, and could not even see the poor turtle in the distance.   Seeing no harm in doing so, the rabbit took out his cell phone and turned it back on, seeing it as at most a minor distraction that had no chance of changing the outcome of this lopsided race. 

He heard his text notification, clicked, and found a note of encouragement from his friend Energizer.  The rabbit smiled and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when...

He heard his snapchat alert, showing him seven new photos from his friend Peter on the bunny trail during the early April morning. The rabbit smiled and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when...

He heard his Facebook feed ping, showing another of the latest pictures of the latest bunnies with which his friend Thumper seemed quite twitterpated.   The rabbit smiled again and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when....

The next notification came in, causing another squirt of intoxicating dopamine to be released into the rabbit's poor, defenseless brain.  Soon, the dopamine squirting through the rabbit's brain needed no tweet, trill, or bell to keep the rabbit's attention fixated on the phone.  The mere possibility that the phone would emit another sound was enough for the rabbit to remain rooted in place. 

In the meantime, the turtle plodded from city block to city block.  He was wary of dopamine squirts impeding his progress so had left his phone safely stashed in his spare shell at home.   After all, it was hard enough getting somewhere of consequence when one was a turtle; the last thing he needed was trills, tweets, and bells to distract him along the way.   The turtle plodded, slow and steady, as his ancestor the tortoise had, without stopping, making steady progress to the finish line.   Somewhere along the way, he passed the rabbit, but so fixated was the rabbit on his phone, that the turtle passed right on by, entirely unnoticed. 

The sun had set on the parade of onlookers when the turtle finally crossed the finish line.  He turned and waited patiently for the rabbit.  But, the rabbit never came.

Instead, the rabbit just sat at the curb, a mere block from the finish line, waiting, hoping, and waiting for the next notification, the next dopamine squirt to come from his beloved technology.

The End  

One Hundred Pound (or 45 kg) Blankets

One of my favorite parts of Autumn is feeling the nighttime temperatures drop enough to spontaneously drive the blankets out of the closets, chests, and other nooks and crannies where they cleverly hide in the summertime.   As the nights get longer and cooler, the central heating in the house needs help at night, and the blankets pile up on the bed, covering bodies that not so long ago, needed only a sheet to stay comfortable in the night. The layers grow deeper and more complex as the temperatures grow ever colder and Autumn threatens to turn into Winter.  Sweet, warm comfort surrounds me when I crawl under the myriad of covers after the end of a wet, chilly day.  There is no doubt -- the blankets of Autumn offer a cozy sense of security that the twisted sheets that go along with the hot nights of summer simply can't match. 

But, after day after day of chill, month after month of rain, storm after storm, the blankets begin to grow heavier, and not always because there are more of them to keep away the chill in the night.  While they continue to warm, they seem to grow heavier and heavier, until in the last days of the cold months, I feel that I am sleeping under a hundred pounds of blankets.  Such is the weight of nasty weather gone on for too long.  As spring finally pops up out of the ground, I am rarely distressed or delayed in returning the many blankets to their chests, closets, and cubbies until their comfort is needed once again at summer's end.

As I stuff and cram blankets in whatever haphazard storage I have available for them during the summer months, I often reflect on other things in life that can feel like hundred pound blankets --

Church events -- where conversation is a struggle because I seem to have so little in common with others in my congregation. But, comforting nevertheless -- to be around others who strive to serve in this world and honor God in their lives. 

Exercise.  Ugh.  What a weight it is to get up and get moving, adding perspiration and moments out of breath to an already busy and hectic day.  But, the endorphins and good health that follow make for wonderful blankets!

Friendships -- when they become strained by change or other circumstances of life. While it can become complicated to stay in touch, awkward to remain connected, challenging to keep ruffled feathers at bay, they are very much worth crossing rocky waters to reach the calmer ones on the other side of difficult transitions. 

Even relationship with God.  While I am comforted to feel His presence, blessed to feel His love, and desiring to honor His will, I am on occasion (OK... often) weighed down by His (apparent) silence along so many of the steps of life. 

And let's not forget pets -- warm, fuzzy, loving, and always there.   One hundred pounds (per pet, that is) of litter boxes, special foods, vet visits, petsitting dilemmas, bee stings, burrs in the fur, circuses that started out as baths, endless filling of water bowls, and on and on.   But, living without them -- waking up to a house not graced by paws? I don't think so. 

As I get up in the morning and feel the weight of my blankets, I am tempted to throw them off for a lighter day.   But the chill that quickly takes its place reminds me to be grateful.  Given the choice between no blankets and a hundred pound blankets in an often isolated, chaotic, and troubled world,  I choose the blankets!

KJU Prayers & Meditations

I've been a prayer wimp most of my life.   Occasionally, I aspire to be a prayer warrior, waxing eloquent on the needs around me in such a way that my requests and appeals become coherent enough to reach God out there in something infinitely more vast, complex, and jammed in bandwidth than our mere modern cyberspace.

Most unfortunately, my aspirations last for a dismally short period of time and I return to short spurts, car contemplations, or rambling reflections in the middle of the night that make up the bulk of my prayer life.   Part of the problem is that I am genetically related to the Martha of the New Testament, far more focused on doing than being, which makes meditation nothing less than a form of medieval torture in my world.

More seriously, I resist prayer because mine do not often have the flowing eloquence of many of those who stand beside me in church and because I lack true hope in their power.  Like many an American, I secretly believe that God is too busy to listen to me; He surely must have His hands full with all the crazy ugliness going on in our modern world.  Can you imagine counting the hairs on the heads of the seven billion human souls across the globe (Luke 12:7), valuing every single sparrow that flies on the planet along with the billions of other animals in need every day (Luke 12:6), and then still having time in the evening to check an Inbox crammed with the stumbling, scattered ramblings of all of us prayer wimps?   Makes my head spin just thinking about it. 

Like many a Christian, I am also perpetually confused and often discouraged by the prayers that are answered and those that are not, by the suffering that is allowed and that which is subverted, healed, or erased.  If the data (prayers answered, those unanswered, those denied) look random, is not the process random?   Does God just delegate His Inbox to a random number generator, a clever algorithm that provides sometimes but not others?

I do realize that, right now, while I can't see the face of God (Exodus 33:20), if I could, I can imagine Him shaking his head at me -- something I am sure He does quite often. 

I often go down this (prayer wimp) road for quite a long time where I diminish the power of my own individual prayer and (very) effectively paralyze myself and my prayer life. Invariably, though, something will come up, either in my local sphere or in the world news that makes me wonder if God would really listen to a wimp like me:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Assisted (mightily) by the Holy Spirit, I'll bite off the hope framed by this verse from Matthew (7:7), and will pray almost mightily for some time.  Prayers for those close by, those whom I know and love, and who happen to love me back, are the easiest of prayers to write, to repeat, and to set on the fabric of my heart.

But, the hardest of all prayers are for those in the world who appear to be evil, uncaring, cold, or otherwise distant from both (true) Christian and my own values.   Dwelling in who they are, learning more about their lives, trying to place myself in their shoes and heart, is hard at a level that extends well beyond my tendency to be lazy in meditation and prayer. 

This seems to be the season in my life though, where I feel even more compelled to learn how to better dwell spiritually with, pray for, and cry for greater joy in the hearts of these people.  It's more often on my heart now to look past what appears evil and try to understand the road to a brighter, lighter life for them and those whose lives they touch.  In moments or on days when I can sincerely pray for those who hurt others, where I can put aside my judgements and truly understand that everyone has equal value before God, I embrace the hope that lives will be transformed and light rather than darkness will begin to ripple outward from the lives of some in the world who seem so well versed in hurting and anger and so less experienced in joy and love. 

These are what I've nicknamed my Kim Jong Un Moments.  I can't say a single word in prayer for some unless I have immense hope that God will hear me, that He has both reason and power to affect change in their lives.  Without hope of that size and expanse, my own heart would start to submerge in the darkness. And for a prayer wimp such as myself, that would be a disaster!

Heavenly Father
Today, my heart travels to North Korea, where tension, anger, power, and unthinkable military action seem to sit at the center of the table.  Although I can't see where change is possible or tenable, I know you see the opening to Kim Jong Un's heart, an opening that can open his eyes to an alternative reality that uses love, care, kindness, and belief in you to create a far greater legacy than what is currently in the plans.  God, please hear my cry.  Only you can draw the eyes of this supreme leader to you, the Supreme Leader, and light the path ahead of him to replace what is in his heart with pure joy, to secure his circle with trust and loyalty, and to fill the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with hope.   

Now, back to my to-do list and my tremendous talent for being a prayer wimp!

Compulsive Comma Disorder

I have a few problems when I write.  First, comes the problem of a blank screen or a blank sheet of paper.  No matter what form it takes, this intimidating expanse of nothingness invariably stimulates my urge to head toward the kitchen and graze the refrigerator.  While I am not aware of how pervasive the grazing effect is among writers around the globe, I do know that there is yet to be seen a diet, a drug, or other remedy to divert one's attention from the refrigerator when the only other alternative is to stare at that mocking, maddening, blankness.  What can take the place of the refrigerator when the words, much less the sentences, won't or don't come?   Dr. Oz has not yet produced a solution to this very serious problem afflicting the American writing population. 

Then, there is the issue of writing very long sentences, that reflect the joy of finally staying away from the refrigerator, typing more than a few characters without indulging in the delete key, then leading to fingers flying across the keyboard, attempting to get a thought or idea out onto paper before it willfully flies out of my short term memory, leaving me once again to turn to the refrigerator in my writing despondence, hoping that some piece of chocolate, fruit, or other snack will stimulate the neurons in my brain to behave, and cough up something that looks a wee bit like, at least a good representation of, WRITING in english, with a purpose that can be understood by more than me, by others that may also find my writing useful, which, by the way, is the reason I am writing in the first place.

For some reason, typing a period has this odd effect of stifling, even asphyxiating any further words. There is something far too final to a period, a deafening, deadening punch to a stream of thought that the comma simply cannot (thankfully) deliver with the the same stalling force.  Thus, the very act of continuing to extend the sentence, one annoying comma at a time, keeps the stream going.  When given the choice between a run-on sentence that would send my high school english teacher to the nearest psych word or a more properly punctuated first draft, I will choose the comma frenzy, every single time.

I have immense sympathy for those who are kind enough to review my first (or often, second or third) drafts.  Those who tolerate my compulsive comma disorder (CCD) and can actually extract meaning or intent from my comma storms are to be commended.  These people are among the saints of the writing world and I could go nowhere without them, because if left to my own motivation and ability, I could never delete enough commas and shorten enough sentences to produce something that is ultimately coherent and readable to any audience.

As the commas get yanked, plucked, and waxed out of sentences, and periods are inserted to make for tolerable prose, I am often stricken by the polar opposite offense.  As I notice the abhorrent grammar produced by one, two, three, four, or simply way too many commas, I may stray to the other extreme.  There.  I succumb to what other writers may first face when they write.  I find a place where no commas exist at all. I write. I use periods. I avoid commas.  I cannot write a long sentence.   I curtail my sentences into choppy bits. Transitions disappear.   Coherence and connection fall by the wayside. 

Comma Collapse Disorder befalls me. Same acronym.  Entirely different dilemma. 

Heart Opened Wide

I've had two major miracles come into my life.  As of last week, the count increased to three.  Unlike the previous two, however, this one affected a much larger number of people outside my very mere self.

Her name was Hurricane Irma.  In September of 2017, she was forecast to be, as late in the game as a few minutes before landfall, a direct hit on Tampa Bay along the west coast of Florida.   As she marched north, she first made landfall in the Florida Keys and then just south of Naples, Florida.  Still south of Tampa Bay but not by much, she wobbled a wee bit.  In response to this wobble, the local meteorologists tempered all hope of reprieve from Irma's wrath as they said, in the gravest of tones, that all hurricanes wobble and this wobble didn't at all mean that Irma was changing her mind about targeting Tampa Bay.

While the gravest of tones continued on the continuous weather coverage on all of the major networks, Irma wobbled and refrained from wobbling back.  She marched up Interstate 75, just east of  Tampa Bay, as if she were evacuating the state along the same path that so many Floridians had taken to escape her over the previous three days.  As a result of her shift in attitude and action, Tampa Bay suffered only 80-90 mph winds (and limited storm surge)  rather than the 110+ mph winds that were expected from a Category 2 or Category 3 version of Irma.

Good Riddance Irma!   Coincidentally, when Irma made her second landfall in Florida, after devastating the Florida Keys, her radar image looked like this:

It's beyond disconcerting for a Hurricane to "smile" while barreling into your home, community, and life.  But here, Irma seemed to be giving Tampa Bay a little bit of a hint about her subsequent behavior.  

In the following day's headlines, the local paper called Irma's sudden shift "Lucky". After watching Irma, as one of the strongest and biggest storms in Atlantic history, wreak havoc across the Caribbean and over the Florida Keys for over a week, I would call it more than lucky. The scientific explanation of how three highly unlikely but plausible events contributed to the diversion of Irma from her broadly forecasted direct hit on Tampa Bay was a little implausible.   I prefer to call what I saw for what it is -- A Miracle, in spite of the scientist inside of me that would like to dream up a proper explanation for it all like so many others would and have done.    

Tampa Bay had prepared to wake up on a Monday morning in a post-Irma reality, and walk outside to a new normal, a landscape that was "unfamiliar", a euphemism used by the news media and others for an area largely flattened and re-arranged by a nasty Atlantic hurricane.   Instead, Tampa Bay awoke to widespread power outages and a big mess, which were both immense blessings given the range of options posed by the ominous forecast of the preceding few days.

Preparations for the oncoming winds and the anticipated floods to be delivered by Irma had been intense:  Installing storm shutters, filling and placing sandbags, and tying down or moving indoors anything that could be moved by 100+ mph winds took a lot of physical labor.  But, the hardest part of the preparation for me was packing up the car with the "Near and Dear" things.   In the middle of deciding what to put in the limited available space, I sat down with tears in my eyes and typed "Psalm of the Day" into my laptop, to which ever reliable Google responded with the following:

"And call for help when you’re in trouble—
    I’ll help you, and you’ll honor me."  (Psalm 50:15)

Here was yet another reason to trade the word "Lucky" in for "Miraculous".   After the storm, as I watched our neighbors and friends clean up yards, fences, and debris at blazingly fast speeds, as the power company restored power with comparable quickness, I found life returning to normal so quickly that it was easy to forget the immense gift that had just been granted.  Because I had no answers to why Tampa Bay was spared over the Florida Keys or Barbuda or the Virgin Islands or any number of other communities that are now forced into the painful process of post-hurricane rebuilding, I've kept largely quiet about the "Luck" God gave to Tampa Bay.  But, I have also resisted the temptation to return to life as normal as if Irma and her wobble had never happened.

That leaves me in a little bit of a predicament. How do I honor Him after this journey I've just completed with such an unwelcome companion as Irma?  As is typical for me, I don't have an enormously insightful answer to this spiritual question. But, as seems to coincide with the miracles and major events in my life, my heart has once again opened wide to the pain and the suffering that weighs down our modern world.  When I am in a more normal space, I have some sort of complicated psychological border wall erected in my psyche so that I can read the news and be aware of what's going on in the world without falling into despondence and depression.

For now, though, that wall has disappeared and many of the events of the world are finding a place both in my mind and in my heart.  Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Harvey and their massive swatches of destruction.  The raging wildfires in the West. The insane crisis with North Korea.   The persecuted Rohingya in Myanmar.   The drug-resistant malaria outbreak in Asia.   The rudeness and coldness in my daily life.  The list goes on and on and on.

Much of what was bouncing off of me and staying in my head rather than infiltrating my heart and spirit is now flooding into my heart like its own hurricane-induced storm surge. My heart has opened wide and for better or for worse, I am carrying sadness for far more crises and suffering than my usual, very limited capacity.  

My heart is opened wide to whatever and wherever God may lead me next.  And, my opened heart cries for all the pain in the world.  Sighs with suffering. Prays for change. Begs for mercy.  Hopes for more.  

Miracles.

Greetings from the Yard Waste Monster

Imagine having a house guest that litters the floor every single day with little pieces of this and that which are difficult to sweep, annoying to the feet, and worse, allergenic to most.  Imagine allowing the guest to stay and inviting more like it to come on in and join the party.  Most of us can't get away with being that kind of houseguest, but I know someone who gets away with it en masse in the American Southeast.

That someone would be the Live Oak, trademark tree of the South, a specimen that is as stunning in its breadth as the coastal redwood is in its height.  Its canopy, though nowhere near as tall as the firs, cedars, and redwoods of the west, can stretch as far as half a football field, providing condominiums, apartments, and various other housing arrangements to diverse species of birds, squirrels, and other small animals that roam the South.   As the live oak matures, Spanish Moss will drape itself across the tree's massive branches, creating a look that many describe as romantic and most will capture in a photograph or two or three or seven or more.

The Live Oak is more than just a pretty addition to home landscaping.  Its wood is so dense that it is rumored to have earned the USS Constitution the Nickname "Old Ironsides" during the War of 1812. Apparently, cannonballs will just bounce off the side of a live oak. For the more ordinary person who doesn't regularly shoot cannonballs at trees in the yard, the Live Oak serves as a windbreak, protecting homes in the South from all too frequent tropical storm and hurricane winds.   They are cold resistant, deer resistant, wind resistant, and growth resistant.  A live oak can grow up to 60 feet tall, but don't hold your breath.   While slow growing, it will host many a guest during its lifetime, from bird to squirrel to Spanish moss to fern and to other air plants.  The South would simply not be the same without this majestic tree.  

But like most things that bless our yards with beauty and presence, the live oak has a downside, which Southerners graciously put up with in exchange for its shade, protection, and beauty.   Though few live oaks lose all of their leaves every year, they are still technically deciduous and the leaf shedding cycle can extend for months through relatively warm winters.   While holding on to some of its leaves throughout the year, the live oak nevertheless specializes in shedding something during every month of the year.  Whether leaves or moss or limbs or twigs, there is always something on the ground under a live oak that irritates the feet and invites the rake.

This is especially true after hurricane winds have blown by parts of the South. During this special time, the Live Oak takes on another persona -- that of Yard Waste Monster.  A single Live Oak tree has been shown to produce more yard waste per cubic inch than any other tree or combination of landscaping plants in the history of the world.

And since hurricane season comes during the hottest and muggiest months of the year, cleaning up what the Yard Waste Monster dishes out can be quite the adventure in sweat, perspiration, dirt, grit, and the like. But, as many who have cleaned up after a hurricane will tell you, having the opportunity to clean up after one or more Yard Waste Monsters implies that a home remains standing under the canopy of the live oak.  And, when considering the darker consequences of a hurricane, that blessing is worth its weight in well... Yard Waste.

This blog was written a week after Hurricane Irma when I returned to my home in Florida and found that the greatest burden I needed to bear was cleaning up 1.2 million leaves and twigs from my postage stamp yard.   My gratitude for Tampa Bay being spared from the eye of the full force of Irma is immeasurable.