Rats

John Calhoun was not the first to wonder about the detriments of population density problems or overcrowding, but he did design a creative experiment which used rats to demonstrate what happens when animals do not have a healthy balance of space and community.

In 1964 (my information is based on a few websites including the thoughts of Dr. Edmund Ramsden from nihrecord.nih.gov) Calhoun created an eleven by fourteen foot cage divided into four rooms linked with ramps and set up to give between 32 and 56 rats freedom to roam between the rooms. The rats were given all the food and water they wanted, but they were denied any extra space.  It didn't take very long for an alpha male and nine females to take control of two rooms leaving the other two rooms for the dozens of rats left over.

What ensued was fascinating and Calhoun observed these things as the colony of rats began to grow:

1. "(There was) violence and aggression with rats in the crowded pen 'going berserk, attacking females, juveniles and less active males.'"

2.  "There was also 'sexual deviance.'  Male rats became hypersexual pursuing females which weren't even in heat."

3.  "There was a breakdown in maternal behavior.  Mothers stopped caring for their young, ceased building a nest and even attacked their young."

4. "Even when populations dropped, and more space became available, the community never recovered."

Calhoun's research has been used many times over in popular culture, including the 1982 animated picture The Secret of NIHM, but we can extrapolate a few issues that occur in a contemporary culture that has moved increasingly urban, but moreso, in my opinion, global.  We see the aggression in our young people, not just the males, but females also.  It's portrayed in every aspect of our 'entertainment.'  Violence, aggression, young males attacking females, juveniles and less active males.  Sexual deviance is rampant: pornography (not a new thing) has infiltrated every part of visual sight; sex used to be a very private, intimate event, now it seems to be the most public of things.  Hypersexual males pursuing females through requests for nude pictures, sexting, etc...  Mothers and fathers, have, in some cases, ceased building nests for their young simply turning to give their children screens as parental substitutes.  It is not a surprise any more to have the news anchor tell us the statistics of child abuse in our 'cultured' society.

Part of the problem of lack of space is not having any rest time, no reflection, no time to recover from work.  This is a universal problem in the 21st century not just because the human population has exploded, but there is no separation between us and our neighbors.  Because of our current technologies, we are, in some ways, rats in a cage.  Constantly in each other's faces (books), continually monitoring the visual activities of others via youtube, or any other social media websites, there is no space for us to withdraw and remember what it is that makes us human anyway.

Calhoun's assertion is that not all of the rats went crazy - some of them were able to carve out their niche, even in the crazy state of 'ratopia', and balance both social and private life.  Similarly, many in our contemporary culture have figured out how to balance life and not just by avoiding social media or spending countless hours in front of screens.  How do they do it?  What is the secret to balance?

I think I saw it during my childhood days in Rake, Iowa.

Once per year, Rake would celebrate its Norwegian heritage by hosting the Mange Tak days.  We used to call it the 'Mangy Dog' days, but Mange Tak means 'Many thanks' in Norwegian.  The community would give thanks by celebrating throughout a weekend by parades of tractors and floats, old cars, horses, bands and other such delights.  But, my favorite part occurred at the small park on the northwest side of  Rake right beneath the sights of the watertower.  The community would gather for a picnic and to the north side of the shelterhouse, a grid, perhaps 8x8 would be marked out with white lines.  Standing in the middle of the grid was a cow and residents of Rake would purchase squares (it wasn't required, but many did) where if the cow felt it was the right time would leave its feces in one of the squares.  Wherever the patty landed, the owner of that square received the money.
Cowchip bingo.

Oddly, people would stand in the sun surrounding the bingo 'court' and wait for the solitary cow (minding its own business, but the residents waiting for it to do its business) to take a dump.  At times, people would try to scare the, um, digested remains out of it, but generally the cow just took its time.  In my own memory, this sometimes lasted for hours.

And a good thing, too, because as the Rakivites stood there in the sun, I think they unconsciously began to remember why they were there in the first place: to share in community.  They talked and laughed at length, not about work, or farming (maybe a little about the weather) but how families were going, who was dating whom, etc...  And when the cow did drop its present, the winner would shout victoriously while everyone else realized that they had won also.

In Acts 2, as the day of Pentecost dawns, Peter, and the other disciples, comes to a realization that the only way humans are going to make it through life is if they begin to understand why they are there and how they will live together.  He quotes David from Psalm 16:

I saw the Lord always before me.  Because he is at my right hand, I will never be shaken.  Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body will rest in hope because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay.  You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.

What I love about David's thought is that there are multiple paths in life - not just one.  In it we are given the gift of choices and in those choices we understand that God goes before us and stands beside us, and, at the end, fills us with joy each time we are in his presence.

How do we escape tearing each other to shreds in this world of overcrowding (not overpopulating - there is a difference)?

Just my opinion but here are a few:

1.  Intentionally turn off phone/computer/social media/TV - anything that puts you somewhere else.  Be present and reflect on how God is with you today.

2.  Turn up ears and listen to those who are in your life - your family and friends.  Ask deep questions about what is important.

3.  Turn to neighbors for help.  When we ask those who live in close proximity to us for help, we not only honor them by making them feel helpful, but we build trust to ensure community.

4.  Turn over stress.  We rest in hope.  This world is a darkened window and we can briefly (sometimes) see beyond.  Remember that the outcome is already won in Christ Jesus.  Your stress only fogs up the spiritual window.

So, my thoughts turn once again to those master artists from the mid-1990's Smashing Pumpkins.  From their song Bullet with Butterfly Wings:

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.

Even if we live in a cage, we don't have to consume each other.

An Attempt to Impress - Episode Five

I think my father-in-law is trying to kill me.

It might not be intentional (maybe), but it feels as if he is a witting accomplice to my demise.  As I told him how I was going to start this missive, he started to laugh, not like one of those evil characters from a Marvel Comics movie, but more like a possessed owl crossed with Roscoe Pecoe Train from the Dukes of Hazzard. 


In order to pass the time before and after the Mets baseball game, I asked Robert what I could do around the yard.  Since they have an acre of land, the first task I was given was to do the whipper snippering (in the U. S. it would be called 'Weed Whacking.')  After accomplishing that task, I put down a mental note of things that needed to be done and then we moved in for the inevitable coming of the Hobbit-like Second Breakfast called 'Morning Tea' which, well documented, consists not only of a steaming brew but also a veritable cornucopia of mixed fruits and biscuits which one consumes with great (pun-intended) relish but without any thought to how many calories are being ingested just two short hours after the first meal of the day when we broke the long fast of the nighttime.

After watching the Mets lose the only game that they probably will lose this year, I frustratedly checked my mental notes of how to deal with my disappointment and I decided that I would take apart Robert and Judith's doghouse and put the dismantled pieces on the firepile.  As I moved about in a workmanlike way, whistling various tunes with Dwarflike working singlemindedness, I noticed that Robert and Judith were playing marbles with their grandchildren.  Robert was still cackling away like Woodsey the Owl and Judith was continuing to find a way to defeat her grandchildren in that passive/aggressive way that only grandmothers can do and you still love them afterwards for it.  "Oh," they will say, "I so much wanted all you grandchildren to win," pinches their cheeks, "But I just can't control the dice.  It must have been a fluke."  She'll grin cheekily at you, oh yes she will, and inwardly she's already thinking about how to rub in the next loss.  Salt in the wounds, my friends, but grandmothers make it feel like sugar.

After gathering the appropriate tools (Robert has every conceivable tool known to man), I packed them into the back yard.  Let's just say I am not really a demolitions expert and the only tool I would have really needed was a sledgehammer, but I had some time that I wanted to pass in semi-quiet destruction.  Underneath the greenery in the backyard was the doghouse, a typical canine shelter with tin roof to keep the rain out.  After taking apart piece after piece, I brought around the wheelbarrow and placed the dismantled pieces in the cart.  Knowing my history with arachnids at the Smyth household, I was very careful about where I put my fingers and certainly where I placed my toes.  Lots of ants, lots of mold.  I was thankful that all the spiders had decided to move out of the shelter a long, long time ago.

Then, I pulled the entire mess to the burning pile and carefully, one at a time, threw broken board after board on the pile.  Once that was finished, I went back and told Robert that I was done.  He looked up at me through his glasses, "Oh, good, finished?  What did you do with the bricks?"

"Bricks?"  I responded.  "You want me to move those, too?"

He nodded (a veritable Hedwig) already back into his marbles games gleefully knocking his grandchildren off their marbled perches with great glee.

Back to the mine, I guess.  I pulled the wheelbarrow back and as I looked down at the bricks, it felt as if I was looking into the Valley of the Shadow of Death again.  From the beginning of this journey, now to its conclusion, I had been fearing evil, but here were these bricks with anywhere from three to eight holes in them.  Each one of these holes could safely carry any number of deadly invertebrates, and as I pondered this thought, I heard Robert in the background of my mind (well, I imagined him in the background cackling and laughing at my indecision and fear) and I decided that this was my moment to stop thinking that there is going to be something deadly in every nook and cranny of life in Australia.  NO MORE FEAR!  I shout to myself.  THERE IS NO NEED TO THINK THAT AUSTRALIAN SPIDERS WANT A PIECE OF ME ANY MORE THAN I WANT A PIECE OF THEM.  I felt like I was giving myself a pep talk before a marathon.  All in all, there were about twenty-five bricks, each just wide enough to grab across my palm. 

You can do this.

My whistle was trembling; I hoped it sounded like a tremolo.  One by one I attempted to look into the dark chasm of hell in each one of those holes not knowing whether to hope that there was a spider in there that I could see or be afraid that there wasn't a spider in there that I could see.  That's what fear does, doesn't it?  It doesn't allow us to think rationally about which would actually be better for us. 

Thankfully, I got all the bricks into the wheelbarrow with no arachnacidic incident, no Elvis impersonations or anything, but as I opened the back fence to place the bricks behind the shed the cart tipped over.  At this point I was sweating and thinking that I'd made it through this difficulty but now I had to pick them up two more times.  The first cart load was fine, but on the second one, I found something that I had overlooked:  On the ground was one more brick which, on closer inspection, had a large, white mass...

And on top of it was Shelob, the beast.  More hair than Elvis - kind of looked like Donald Trump, if you ask me; reddish mane fluttering in the wind maybe - Ivanka Trump is a better way of looking at this young lady.  And then my brain got going (as brains do when encountering their greatest fears) I had just put my entire palm over that spider.  Did I feel her tentacle testing the sweat from my hand?  Had she, indeed, actually played footsie with my fingers?  Did Robert actually plant that spider knowing that he would be inside at THISVERYMOMENT!!! playing marbles with my daughter while I brushed the hair of eight-legged death with my comb of fear?

Coo Coo Coo.  Roscoe Pecoe Train.


Why is it that the thing we fear most is the thing we seem to encounter most often?  If we are afraid of failure, constantly we are aware of the myriad of ways we could fail and our brains taking over telling us that, in fact, it's a foregone conclusion that we will.  If we are afraid of public speaking, we consistently are presented with nightmares of opportunities where we have to share information in front of others.  If we are afraid of death it seems as if we can think of different ways of dying in even the most mundane and trivial aspects of life.

Which is why, the fifth and last way to Actively Impress Your Spouse is:

#5.  Recognize the Present

Luke 12:22-24, 26  Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes... Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?"

Why do we worry about the future?  How does it help?  Can the future hurt us at all?  One of the things that I've actively been trying to do with Christine is to plan for the future, but absolutely enjoy the present.  It does us no good if our barns are overflowing with stored up treasures, things that we have been hoarding our whole life long not just for that rainy day but moreso for that murky twenty-four hours in the future, and we are unable (or unhealthy enough) to actually enjoy the fruits and vegetables of our labor. 

When we recognize the present, which means enjoying all the people who are placed within the boundaries of our consciousness, we actually impress all others we encounter, not because we have it all together (far from the truth) but because we are coming together to enjoy the uncertainty of the future in the actuality of the present.  We raise a toast to the things that we cannot control, bless them for taking their best shot at us, and drink deeply of the vintage wine given to us right now. 

Right now.

I am actively trying to impress my wife by not allowing the little things to get at me and, for crying out loud, to take her out for a bite to eat, a movie with the kids, a Bible study or even a walk into the sunset to watch all of God's creation come together for a moment so that we can savor it. 

Recognizing the present allows us to give glory to God for his timing and his testing because it is in this present moment we recognize that all good things are added to us (not just physical things, the food and the clothing, but the spiritual gifts of peace, patience, kindness, etc...) when we live right here and right now.

I saw that in the way that Robert and Judith were engaging and enjoying their grandchildren and the way that (through some visits to Facebook) some people are actively engaging in the now, that an impressive world revolution can occur.  If we just live in the now.  No brain science.  No new ideas.  Just reality.

That's one of the hardest, but least financially unsettling, things we can do to actively impress the ones we are promised to for eternity.

So, to recap:

1.  Don't forget her birthday
2.  Save your child's life
3.  Start the fire
4.  Pay attention
5.  Recognize the Present

Enjoy.

An Attempt to Impress: Episode IV - the Final Countdown

There are quite a few songs that when the first notes are played, you immediately know what the song is, especially if you have them on shuffle on your iPod.  It wasn't that long ago that we were rewinding cassette tapes with our fingers, or fast forwarding to just the spot, stopping and starting so you can sing the first few notes of the song.

Here are a few that I can think of that you know within the first few seconds (admittedly, I know very little about any music that has been produced in the last fifteen years - my musical snobbery turns up a nose at digital manipulation and gaggingly simplistic lyrics; sorry about this)

1.  Stand By Me.  (I know, you've already got the bass and the triangle in your head)
2.  Ice, Ice Baby - alternatively, and a much better song Pressure.
3.  We Will Rock You
4.  Sweet Dreams
5.  Smells Like Teen Spirit
and 6, of course:

The Final Countdown.   Duh duh duh, duh; da da dat dat duh,...  Need I keep going?

I looked on a webpage called '23 One Hit Wonders You Can't Get Out of your Head.  I need help.

Point number four of Five Ways to Actively Impress Your Spouse are:  (drum roll and final countdown - duh duh duh, duh)

4.  Pay Attention

This sounds so easy, and it probably is for one guy on the planet - to just pay attention to the things that your spouse likes, and even more so, what she doesn't like.  But let's face it, as I ponder the gifts that God has given me and my ability to open them and use them, paying attention to detail ranks right up there with being able to style my daughters' hair.  Oh, I can do it, but it's very, very hard for me and it doesn't always turn out well.

Paying attention is the one thing in life that really doesn't cost anything.  You want a car - pay money; you want your lawn mowed, get your child to do it and pretend that seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour is the going wage in some countries.  But attention, you don't give up anything except a little time and brainspace. 

My excuse is that I have low visual acuity - i.e. I just don't see stuff very well.  Usually, I blame it on the fact that I was in the incubator during my first week of life and it must have 'seared' my eyeballs so I don't see stuff.  I know that's not really true, but it sounds impressive.  Kind of like the fact that my head looks like a shark fin because when I was born, I didn't have a soft spot (in my skull).  The doctors had to take two strips of bone from the crown so that the bones would grow together naturally, but in doing so, I've got a low, jagged mountain range for a scalp.  Sometimes I tell people, when they look at my head for too long, that I was a conjoined twin with my brother.  I even tell them we shared a brain, had to separate us, you know.  I love it when they look concerned and say, "Oh really?  I didn't know they could do that."

So I don't see stuff well, but yesterday I patted myself on the back for something I hadn't noticed before.  I was opening the freezer door to grab some kind of frozen treat, when I looked at the door itself and it has a chart of how long foods can stay in the freezer.  I'm sure that most of you know that it's there, but my eyes were drawn to the chart and I was fascinated to see (for the first time even though I've been opening that door for five years) that there were pictures of corpses of chickens (which can keep for 0-12 months) a very dead looking fish (under three months is best) some nice steaks which can last a little longer...

But then, right smack dab in the middle of the chart is a very happy looking Easter Bunny-ish rabbit, all smiley and happy, big fluffy ears which seems delighted that it's meat can stay frozen for roughly half a year.  Australia, what a country!  Where you can shoot the Easter Bunny and then enjoy his gamey big legs in a yummy hasenpfeffer at Christmas time!

So now I consider myself a pretty observant and attentive person - all because of a freezer chart.

I am able to pay attention to Christine and I've learned to be much better over the years.  I already know the non-verbal cues that seem to speak many more words than the ones that are issuing from her lungs.  For instance, if she asks me a question like, "Do you think we should book the car in for a service next week?" and she has a hand on her hip and calendar in her hand, what question she's really asking is, "Can you give me an approximate day when you'll be booking the car in for a service and when I can put that date in my calendar?"  When it's nine thirty at night and the washing machine has just made its happy little beeping noises telling us its ready to regurgitate the clothes we put in there an hour and fourteen minutes earlier, and both of us are already snug in bed and reading our books, I know that deep sigh, long and slow, and the exasperated moan of tossing back the bed sheet - that means, "It's time for you to get out of bed and hang up the laundry."  See how good at this I am?

I also know that she is incredible at so many different things and her ability to pay attention to multiple different things at once, the finances, the children, the school, the price of gas, how many moons Saturn has, and carry on a conversation about all of them at once in consecutive sentences is mind-boggling.  I don't know how she can juggle all these things in her head and keep them active.  The icons on her brain screen must be lit up all the time and her home screen must be littered with notes and saved items.  Mine has probably four things: food, kids, work, where is my hat?

But what I've noticed lately is that I'm paying attention much more to the kind of time we have together.  I know that she doesn't want 'things' for her birthday, and for me to get her jewelry, or perfume, or (God forbid) clothes, would be akin to the average Joe buying a blender for a Silver Anniversary.

Because I have come to know that Christine loves words and music, I write things to, and songs for, her.  They are permanent.  My attentiveness has led to some great times of talking and her responsiveness, leads me to want to continue.  As we sat under the stars by the fire on that night at Ravensbourne, it continued to be ever more apparent that my spouse is not motivated by stuff but by attention and interaction.  I recognize that she would rather walk hand in hand along side a snake/leech/spider infested road than receive a fancily wrapped box of perfume.  That's just us - not every woman is like that, put I'm always learning to spend my attention on her.

I think all spouses can pay more attention to the little things that make us tick, not just the big ticket items, the cruises, the destinations, the cars and all that goes with financial stability (or instability).  If we could just think for a few minutes about the things that we miss with our eyes and focus on what the other person needs and wants, my how life would change.

An Attempt to Impress: Episode III - The Fire Strikes Back

Certain movies have 'Man Scenes.'

I'm not talking about Jason Bourne bringing down the entire German embassy with a backpack and a Bic lighter, nor am I going the other direction with Austin Power's ability to manipulate Fembots with his hairy chest.

I'm talking about 'Man Scenes' which are so manly it should be made into one word:  Manscenes.  A description:  In a world where the only way a man looks 'manly' is if he is able to annihilate an enemy nation with a gun and one clip of ammo, or if he has superhero powers and glistening, shaved muscles, or if he is able to somehow sleep his way (not really sleeping) through the forest of women who only need to be his object - I choose to be like Tom Hanks.

Castaway - setting the manscene.  Tom has been involved in a plane crash over the Pacific Ocean and somehow he survives the plunge into the ocean, the storm, dehydration and all things stereotypical of Island Survivor stories, he makes his way onto the beach of a deserted island where, after a few days of figuring out how to scrounge together food and water, he eventually decides it's time to make fire.  Dressed in a beautiful wool sweater and long pants, Tom talks to his only friend - a volleyball named Wilson - about the difficulties of actually starting a fire with sticks of wood.

Probably most of us have tried this at one point, starting fire with sticks (not talking to a volleyball).  Friction is a terrific force; it starts heat and begins fires.  There is a trick to it, obviously, which eventually Tom figures out and after the first tendrils of smoke lift from the frictioned wood, and the first fire starts the coconut husk alight, we are left in utter joy with Tom's elation.  Carrying his treasure to the beach like a modern day Prometheus (without Zeus' irritation and subsequent punishment of perpetual liver eating by vultures) Tom enflames the small fire into a raging inferno.  He sheds his shirt (which all men like to do, I think, even if they don't have hairless, glistening muscles) and dances around the fire beating his chest and proclaiming to his own version of Zeus...

I... Have made... FIRE!

3.  Start the Fire.

The third of the Five Ways to Actively Impress Your Spouse is to tap into your pyromaniacal heritage and start the fire.

When Christine and I first met, she was already adept at starting fires.  I, on the other hand, was adept at watching fires.  I liked to poke sticks in them, start the nubs on fire and write my name in the night air.  Now that's impressive.  But real men need to know how to start fires, how to keep them going, how to know how much friction is good and when it is too much and slows things down.  Christine already knew how to start a campfire, and of course I did too, but it was much better for me to have one of those plastic lighter things and a whole bag of newspaper.

I started the fire on our second night at Ravensbourne.  The owners of the cabin dutifully brought a rusted, vase-like brassiere and four pieces of wood.  They encouraged the girls to go hunting for some more wood lying around, but after our trip into the Valley of the Shadow of Death the day before, I wasn't sending my girls into the woods for any reason.  They'd probably be attacked by a python.

Included in the articles brought by were these little white cubes that you put at the bottom of the fire which supposedly help light it.  I definitely wouldn't be needing those.  Then, some matches which looked like they'd been lying in a drawer for a while.  Hopefully they still worked.  After receiving these campfire artifacts, the male half of the owners couple handed me a can of insect killer.  I'd noticed the immense wasps nests near the back porch and above the carport.  Knowing our luck with Australian invertebrates, these would be Tracker Jackers from the Hunger Games.  Hello hallucinatory death stings. 

He smiled.  "Are you a fast runner?"
"What?" I had no idea what he was talking about.
"I don't think the spray is going to reach the nest, but give it a shot if you think you can outrun them."
Great.  The owner of the cabin is asking me to be his exterminator.  "I think I'll just leave them then?" 
"Whatever you think," the older man said with smile as he warily watched the circling wasps above his head.

After bringing the campfire necessities to the back beyond the balcony, I set up shop and the girls when to gather some more wood (safely underneath trees in the gated community within visual of both Christine and I.)  Settling into my chair, I put some twigs on the bottom and took out the matches.  First strike.  I broke the head off of a match.  Taking another one out, I tried again but the same result occurred.  Must be faulty matches, I thought.  Third try I got the thing started but it quickly flamed out.  Prometheus, where are you?  Probably having his liver devoured.

Eventually, the match lit and I placed it on the twigs, but after a few moments, the match burned down to my finger tips.  Blowing on my fingers and shaking them, somehow that's supposed to help, I muttered under my breath and looked at the package of small white cakes.  Nope, I can do this.  Real men can start a fire without it.  If Tom can do it, so can I.  Another broken match.  Soon, I would be rubbing sticks together.  I looked up to see if anyone was watching me from the balcony.  Thankfully, no.  So, I succumbed to the temptation and took two of the stupid, little white cakes and placed them on the bottom.  Resentfully I looked at the matches that were abandoning me in my time of need and what do you know?  First strike, the match held and I put it underneath the stupid, little white cake and it caught immediately.  I waited for the stupid, little white cakes to burn down and then I put more wood on top (almost extinguishing it in the process).  I raised my hands triumphantly. 

I... Have made... FIRE!

"Christine, Hon, come look at the fire I've created!"
Christine stayed inside the apartment obviously more interested in whatever she was doing them being actively impressed by her husband.  "Did you have to use the little white cake things?"
I swallowed.  "Please, do you have to even ask that question?"

We had a great campfire that night.  Our conversation was stoked by recollections of Christine's (or Mum's) great talents and memories.  In the midst, I thought of even some of our moments of tension - or friction - that are good for any marriage.  If there is no friction or if there is no heat built up, the fire tends to die down.  Friction, when used correctly can be a very good thing for the fuels of a relationship, but too much friction only causes pain. 

After our night of remembering, of singing old camp songs and new melodies from the Matthias five, it was time to get to bed.  The girls took up the chairs and the campfire paraphernalia and I was in charge of extinguishing the fire.  I suppose all guys do this, right? so after carefully looking around and up to the balcony, in the dark of the night I urinated on the fire thinking that somehow this would put it out. 

As I played fireman, I hear from behind me, "Mum, Dad's peeing on the fire."

So impressive. 

Tomorrow - last two Ways to Actively Impress Your Spouse. 

An Attempt to Impress - Episode 2

We continued walking along the damp, leaf covered path.  Now that we all were infinitely aware of creepy crawlies, we continued to check our extremities after every couple of steps.  The mind does strange things like that sometimes: you hear on the news that a violent criminal is loose - every sound that night wakes you from a shallow sleep even though you know the odds that a violent criminal stopping by the pastor's house at 2:00 in the morning are relatively low.  These leeches, they weren't very big, quite small really in comparison with some that I have seen before, grew in our subliminal consciousness so that eventually, instead of taking in the beautiful sights and sounds, we were hurrying to the end destination missing many vistas along the way. 

As we neared our final destination - the Sandstone Cliffs - (which turned out to be a few rock overhangs along the path) I noticed a woman sitting inside a relatively large cave along side the path.  Wearing khaki shorts, a pink top and tennis shoes with small booty socks peering over the top, the woman had brought along on her hike a bulky newspaper to read.  My first thought was, Have fun with the rhinoceros ants when they clean all the meat off your ankles because you've been sitting still - what an idiot.  My second thought didn't occur to me until after we passed the 'Walls' and waded through knee high grass on a mini flattened grass pathway in an attempt to find these so-called Sandstone Cliffs (God knows what kind of creepy, crawly things lay in wait in the grass...).  Finding a gravel road on the other side of the grass, I noticed movement to my right and a middle aged man - to me that's a fifty-something - strolling down towards us with binoculars around his neck.

Ornithologist.  That explains the newspaper.

I think ornithologists - birdwatchers - have to be some of the most patient, and strange, people on the planet.  Imagine walking along the path with an ornithologist, or worse yet standing still on a muddy track filled with spiders and leaches and ants, Oh My! with an ornithologist while he points to a tiny little black, blue and red sparrow seventy-five feet away.  The ornithologist has not thought to bring binoculars for you, no sir, so you casually, patiently scan the dense canopy of forest for a speck of color for the tooth-billed bowerbird.  Your ornithologist mate is dancing excitedly but you are much more interested in the ants which are crawling up his socks to shred his calves like piranhas. 

We turned around because we ultimately recognized that the Sandstone Cliffs were indeed the little overhanging caves that the newspaper reading woman was sitting in.  As we passed back through the gauntlet of grass (defying death again if you ask me), I noticed that the middle-aged ornithologist was following us.  It was evident that he and she were together.  Talk about a couple that knows each other.  She knew exactly how long it was going to take for him either to spot the Atherton Scrubwren or the Victoria's Riflebird, probably just long enough to get through the top stories and into the editorials.  On his return, he would have been content by his conquest, and she happy to have conquered the content of her newspaper.  Hand in hand, side by side they would have backtracked along the Australian version of the Yellow Brick Road delighted by their silence and the noise of the birds, oblivious to any dangers that might pop their heads up along the way.

They had figured out how to overcome cracking boredom in their marriage (or so I postulated by my brief fourteen second visual in passing them.)

As we continued back towards the parking lot, a little brisker pace at this point thinking that somehow if we just walked faster the leeches wouldn't be able to attach to our shoes, Josephine made a noise quite similar to the small little yelp that I let escape in what was now known as the Elvis Incident.  "It scared me," she said pointing to the brush just to the side of the road.

"What was it?" Christine asked.
"A snake," Josephine responded with fingers curled up in front of her lips.  I wouldn't have put my fingers anywhere near my lips.  Who knows what kind of deadly bacteria is floating in the Australian air waiting to cling to my fingernails?

Silently I rolled my eyes and looked up to heaven.  What?  Can't we just walk out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death?  Do you really need to prepare a table in front of our enemies?

Christine moved closer to Josephine.  I hung back.  "What color was it?"  Christine's question.  My question:  Was it big enough to swallow you?

"I think it was a green tree snake.  Look," she pointed to a nearby vine, "there it is."
Whew.  Harmless unless you're a mouse.  "Yes, it definitely looks like a green tree snake."

Let's just clear one thing up now.  As creative as Australians are about naming their birds, they are equally uncreative about naming their deadly reptiles.  For instance - the second most deadly snake in the world is the 'Brown Snake.'  Does that sound like an animal whose poison can kill you in an hour?  A brown snake?  Why not call it 'Slithering Death?'  The Red-Bellied Black snake?  You guessed it: it's got a red belly on its black body.  Pretty tame name for a snake that can take you out with one bite.  Dark Assassin would be better.  Inland Taipan?  Deadliest snake in the world?  Sounds like southeast Asian restaurant if you asked me.  The Inland Taipan doesn't bite you once, but like a machine gun it nails you multiple times per second injecting the strongest snake venom in the world.  My name for them?  Venomous Death Stick.  After doing some research on the VDS it was interesting to note that the authors of listverse.com say that one bite from a VDS can kill 12,000 guinea pigs.  How they did that research, I don't know.  Did they line up fifteen thousand guinea pigs and at 11,999 they thought to themselves, "Is this ever going to stop?"  Another interesting, horrifying tidbit about the VDS is that before the antivenom was created, the receiver was assured of death within one hour of the bite.  No survival.  Yippee.  Anyway, the only good and decent name for one of Australia's venomous reptiles is the Death Adder.  Fitting.

Just a green tree snake.  Ha ha.  Everyone's having a good time.  Now we started to walk even faster.  What could possibly be around the corner?  A Koala with a death wish?

As we hurried back up the path, upwards out of the Shadowy Death Valley, Josephine came running back to us.  "Another snake.  It's by Greta."

This time, Josephine looked worried and as Christine and I hurried up the Yellow Brick Road, sure enough standing up about two feet from Greta's leg was a thoroughly unconvincing small snake which looked like it was enjoying a lovely little stroll in the woods.  Elsa, Josephine and I stepped back from it while Greta remained poised one leg almost in the air, one on the ground.  Unsure of whether she should attempt to sprint or just stay still, Greta was caught in herpetical purgatory.  No one really knows what the suggested practice is, but usually one's first instinct is to run.  Somehow, she remained calm in the presence of that little...

Brown Snake.

My first instinct was to take a picture.  Ashamed, I am.  Someday later in life she would have enjoyed seeing that moment of defying death, the happy little snake smiling broadly at her indecision.  My second instinct was to pick up a big stick and whack the Slithering Death to, um, death.  "Don't move," Christine said.  Obviously, being a native Australian she had had multiple opportunities of studying this in school.  I'm sure one of their classes surely was "Herpetology 101 - What to do when (not if) a deadly snake tries to eat you."

If I was Greta, I'd have already moved.  Greta lost her balance briefly and her suspended foot jiggled which caused the snake to flinch.  Now the thing was looking serious.  No more Mr. Nice Snake.  Come on, Christine, I thought to myself.  Just let her get out of there.

"All right, Greta," Christine said calmly, "What you're going to do is, on the count of three, jump and run forward up the road.  You got it?"  Greta's adrenaline filled eyes were already filling with tears.

"One..."  The snake perked up its head.  Maybe its mother used the same technique with him when it was littler and misbehaving.

"Two..."  I was mouthing the words with her.

"THREE!"  I think Greta could have dunked a basketball.  As she scurried up the path, the little brown snake looked around perplexedly as if to say, 'What just happened?'  It didn't move.  Honestly, it seemed like it was questioning why we weren't all just moving passed his sleeping spot.  Now I had my stick ready and prepared.  Multiple different scenarios had already traversed my brain patterns.  In one, the snake had attacked Christine and I had, because of my lightning fast reflexes, swung the stick like a baseball bat and knocked the head off the snake.  In another one, I had placed the end of the stick on the snake's head and after grasping the slithering serpent in my hand, I bit its head off.  Real life was much different, though.  Christine made these 'shooing' motions with her hands and feet which did very little to deter the snake from its perch.  It was my turn to save the day.

With the stick, I flicked dirt into the snake's face from a delightfully safe distance.  But in my own mind, I had not only saved the life of my wife, but also my children and, pretty much anyone else who was wandering on the Yellow Brick Road.  They could all congratulate me later with a tickertape parade. 

Christine rushed past the place where the snake had been and embraced our crying almost teenage daughter.  The only thing I could think of now was that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones has to make his way through the walls of the tomb and there are snakes crawling out of everything.  All he has is a burnt out torch and a whip. 

I had a stick. 

"All right," I announced.  "Let's go everyone."  With that, we started running for the car.  We still had almost half a mile to go yet, uphill at that, but we were sprinting as if the Sauron, the Dark Lord, was chasing us with the Eye.  I led the way and because my mind was working in overdrive, every freaking stick seemed to be one of the world's deadliest snakes waiting to take a bite out of us.  The only good thing was that I had stopped thinking about spiders, leeches and ants Oh My! 

About two hundred meters from the parking lot, just as we were ready to reenter the Promised Land, another tourist came walking down the path.  He was of Asian descent, alone and, get this, wearing thongs, shorts and a tank top.  I was in a hurry but silently I prayed for his family that they would have a good and decent funeral for this young, foolish tourist.  Would they find the remnants of his fang punctured body, sucked dry by leeches, covered by fearsome spiders and stripped of epidermis by skin eating rhinoceros ants?  Christine actually stopped to talk to him - what a thoughtful woman - I just wanted to get out of there with most of my body and soul intact. 

Needless to say, when we reached the top, we dropped to our knees.  Not to thank God, but to take our shoes off and check for leeches.  Oh, we thanked God also, and I apologized to him for thinking of him secondly, but enough was enough.  After the leech search, we looked at each other, thankful to be alive and whole, but I was proud of myself that I had saved the entire family by walking up the path first - with the stick.  2.  Saved child's life.

Check.

An Attempt to Impress - Episode 1

I have to admit something. 

It's not as if I'm going to reveal I'm a drug addict or I have a secret fondness for Pampered Chef products (Oh those names the Pampered Chef come up with.  If you have a chance, take a look at the way they label their gadgets - a simple paring knife might be something like "Specialized Combination Fruit and Vegetable Slicer." You've never seen anything like this before!)  Okay, we have lots of Pampered Chef stuff in the house but at least I'm not a drug addict; I do have to admit, though, that I have an affinity for one thing in particular.

Every time my Facebook opens, someone has shared or posted an article that starts with these words: Four ways to... Seven secrets of... Forty ways to be... Seventeen best representations... Nine things to look for in...

I don't know what it is about people who can delineate a set number of ways to do something.  Just the other day I saw someone post Forty Ways to Achieve True Happiness.  I'm pretty sure I could have stopped at thirteen, but because there were forty(!), I just had to keep reading.  Seven secrets for pastors to not get burnt out?  Had to read that one.  Nine signs that your spouse is thinking about someone else?

I left that one alone.

In every relationship, I would guess that there are times when you start to doubt whether you are bringing the goods or not and even though we stress in marriage counseling that matrimony should not be conditional, sometimes it's good to act like it is, even if it isn't.

That's why I'm writing this missive:  The Five Best Ways to Actively Impress Your Spouse.

I have no doubt that this blog will go viral and be shared with all forty-three of my Facebook friends.  I am in the process of culling them.  I am using the same method as one my colleagues (also named Reid):  1.  If they post anything that has to do with their dogs or how important dogs are in the grand scheme of life - erase.  2.  If they ever take a picture of their food - ever - Gone.  3.  If they ever post anything that starts with these words: Just checking to see if anyone cares...  4.  If they are one issue posters.  That's one of my things:  if the only thing you put on your social media site has to do with the same issue over and over and over again like how much you dislike Donald Trump, how great lanolin is or asking me to try out a stupid quiz: I'll stay friends with you, but as Yoda says Unfollow you, I will.

Back to impressing your spouse. 

Is there no greater activity under the sun than to try to get your spouse to remember why, exactly, she married you in the first place?  As the days turn to weeks and weeks to months, everything seems to turn to routine.  We made vows that we would be together in sickness, health, financial insecurity and wealth, but what seems to gets most couples is a direct result of boredom.  We didn't sign up to be roommates, but carefree terrestrial vagabonds going where the Spirit wills and the will spirits us away.  Often, you can see boredom seep into the cracks of marriage and like water freezing in the crevices of the cement, the ice expands causing an arctic drift.  Couples don't just forget how to date, or even that they should, they just plain forget how to have fun. 

Thus, the five ways to impress.

1.  Don't forget her birthday.

Okay, that sounds stupid, but remembering her birthday doesn't just mean being cognizant that on a certain day of the year certain people will stop posting pictures of their dogs and food and one issue wonders and put a heartfelt, Happy Birthday on her timeline.  It's not one of my favorite things, those timeline birthdays.  I think there is nothing heartfelt about a happy birthday on the timeline.  If you can't add a sentence saying something nice, or remembering something awesome about them, don't even post it.  They're just going to scroll through it.  For Christine's birthdays, I try to impress her with all sorts of things and rarely are they physical gifts.  No Pampered Chef for her.  This year, I decided to surprise Christine with a two day retreat to a 'mountain chalet' which turned out to be a cabin on the side of a hill.  No matter, it was beautiful.  But in trying to impress her, the girls and I made a treasure hunt for her to try and figure out where the mystery gift would take place.  She passed with flying colors, so on Monday, we set out for Ravensbourne, the site of our 'mountain chalet.'

2.  Save your child's life.

I wouldn't necessarily say that you should actively put your children at risk so that you can impress your spouse, but when the opportunity presents itself, step up. 

Before we could get to our chalet, the five of us decided to go for a hike in Ravensbourne National Park.  None of us had been in the park before, although I had driven by it a few times.  We parked our station wagon in the parking lot in the midst of other tourist vehicles.  I heard accents from England and Ireland, a few from Asia and then our own mottled Australican accents.

The girls journeyed ahead while Christine and I walked behind, hand in hand, side by side.  I was holding the camera while taking various pictures of local flora and fauna.  Some of the shrubbery was beautiful and I stopped to take a picture of the lantana, an imported species from England which, in fact, turned out to be quite invasive and has taken over vast amounts of the Australian countryside.  The residents hate it, but the bush has these amazing pink and yellow flowers of which I stopped to take a photo.  Now, I'm not a professional by any means, but I like to pretend I'm some kind of National Geographic-in-waiting-photographer so I maneuvered myself right next to one of the lantana blooms to snap the shot.  Just as I was about to finish, Christine whispers in my ear, "Now I don't want you to freak out, but if you'll just take a small step back..."

Okay.  When my wife says that, it can mean one of many things:  1.  Venomous reptile.  Australia is rife with them.  Eight of the ten deadliest snakes in the world are just underfoot.  2.  Venomous arachnid.  As if snakes aren't bad enough, the spiders are even worse.  3.  Venomous birds.  I'm just making that up, but I'm sure that if an avian decided to grow fangs and inject poison into some unexpecting bald tourist, Australia would be the first place to have them. 

Anyway, it was number 2.  It was a spider.  Not just any spider, but when Christine pointed down not eight inches below the trigger finger of my camera, I saw what I'd like to call the Elvis spider.  This thing had so much hair it looked like it could actually use a blow dryer in the morning.  Jumping back, I made a very (un)impressive noise, something like a blend of a mewling cat and a stuck pig.  Christine doesn't mind spiders and so as I backed as far away from the Thing waiting to sing "Blue Suede Shoes," Christine started taking pictures of It. 

Just as I was about to pull Christine away from Elvis before he jumped onto her face and ingested her nose in one bite (he was that big - kind of like an overly hairy blond tennis ball), a leaf fell from a tree and brushed my leg.  In the state I was in, I believed that somehow Elvis' children were rearing up to protect their father.  I'm man enough to say I screamed a little, not like a startled school girl, but a real manly yell, like when you're angry with your favorite football team losing.  Christine turned around and shook her head. 

Meanwhile, I had dropped the camera lens cap and when I reached down to the ground, I did notice something crawling just above my sock. 

Leech.

You've got to be kidding me. 

And there wasn't just one leech.  After I plucked the creature from my ankle, I heard shouts ahead form the girls who were waiting for us.  It was evident that they, too, had encountered some of the parasites.  "Maybe we should turn around," I implored, "For your sake.  We don't want to ruin your birthday by being exsanguinated by leeches."

"Don't be silly," she replied rolling her eyes, "this is the spice of life."

Ugh.  We moved down to the girls who were attempting successful extrications of leeches from their own legs.  We then made the decision to move a little faster and to not stop in the mud which seemed to be where the leeches and all things sucky come from.  The girls raced on ahead of us shrieking with joy, and, I think, trepidation at the thought of the leeches making the trek any farther north.  Yes, I have seen Stand By Me and don't think for a minute I wasn't thinking about that scene.

Christine and I walked at a brisker pace, but I was fascinated by some kind of orange berry that had split and out of it were white and black seeds.  They kind of looked like some version of mushroom from Mario Brothers Nintendo game.  I decide that I'd just take a moment, one little moment, to take a picture of them.  As I paused, Christine watched her ankles for the invariable invasion of sucking legless organisms.  As I was finishing up the second picture, I felt something on my legs.  Sure that it was just leeches, I looked down and saw to my own horror that I was standing on top of an ants nest and these ants were not cute little picnic destroying ants, but full grown rhinoceros size things.  They had pincers on the front (or the back, I wasn't sure) and as I watched in paralyzing slowness, their pincers grabbed on to my skin and...

WHAM!!!

Holy crap do those things bite.  I swatted at them and as they held on, I tried to destroy them but bite, bite, bite.  It felt like I was being shot in the ankles by the little... (I have to keep this blog rated G, but my mind was in full blown rated R language)...  Christine attempted to help me, but as I pulled one off of my ankle, I inadvertently almost threw it in her face.  Happy birthday, Sweetheart.  I hope I'm impressing you.  After roughly twenty seconds of all out war with the ants, I finally turned them back, but not without the casualty of my protruding anklebones.  It felt as if someone had poured boiling tar on them.  Hoping I wasn't allergic to the things, I tried to move on and then  I noticed another one slip in my other shoe. 

BAM! 

I was jumping around on one burning foot while the other one was starting on fire.  I couldn't reach the little... bugger... because it was in my shoe so I took it off and what do I find?  The ant AND a little leech having their own little indecent soirée inside my sock.  Christine was trying her best not to look amused but the only thing that came to mind as we started to walk down the pseudo yellow brick road was Spider and leeches and ants, Oh My!   What else was going to make this day even worse?

Tune into tomorrow for an impressive display of bravery and the next episode of An Attempt to Impress.  I'll let you know how I accomplished number 2.  Save your child's life.

After, of course, my ankles stopped burning. 

Buried

John Deason was twenty-nine years old on Feb. 5, 1869.  Like most days, I guess, John reckoned it was another day, another dollar.  About fifteen kilometers northwest of Dunolly, near the mining town of Moliagul (which mean as much to me as Blue Earth and Frost, Minnesota mean to most of the world), Deason and his partner, Richard Oates were poking around in the soil - puddling, it was called - when Deason stuck his pick in the ground and hit something solid.  Assuming it was a rock, he moved his tool a bit and hit the same thing resulting in the same sound.  As Deason cleared away that debris from around the stringybark tree, he found quartz and within that quartz was the largest gold nugget ever found in the world to that point.  Deason, in his recollection of the day almost fifty years later, didn't seem that amazed and even after all the quartz had been cleared and the nugget had been split into three pieces because of its immense size, his response was quite unemotional: "When my mate came over I said, 'What do you think, Dick, is it worth 5,000 pounds?'  Oates responded, "Nah, maybe 2,000."  (Finding the Welcome Stranger Nugget - Public Domain)


After Deason and his wife sat by the fire for ten hours freeing the gold from the quartz, over two hundred pounds of gold were lifted from the nugget.  Deason sold his prized treasure for over 9,000 pounds.


He found the gold about one inch under the surface.


Can you imagine stumbling over something like that?  Something that would change your life so immensely?  Something that you weren't even really looking for, but when it showed up you knew that life couldn't possibly remain the same?


King Josiah of Judah encountered that feeling.  Josiah took the throne at the age of eight, the youngest of the monarchs.  For the first seventeen years of his reign, it was probably business as usually even though Josiah's description, biblically speaking, was "He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David (David wasn't really his father, but as patriarchs go, he was similar in faithfulness), not turning aside to the right or to the left."  (2 Kings 22:2)


Then, one morning during the eighteenth year, when Josiah was the ripe old age of twenty-six, he asked Hilkiah, the high priest, to make some reparations in the temple.  Hilkiah, after arranging the schedule for the workers, happened upon a book which seemed to give him little pause; Hilkiah gave it to Shaphan the temple secretary to read it (strangely enough the high priest not only could not read the holy book, but it seemed that he had never seen it before). 


Just under the surface of the temple was the greatest treasure to the ancient Israelites - the Book of the Law.  How to live, how to dream, how to treat each other and how to live in God's presence.  It was the story of God's interaction with them over the years, and after decades and decades of neglect, after centuries of continued ambulation down the path of idolatry (even the scriptures talk about the idols in the temple itself!) the Book is found and it is read in the presence of the king who tears his robes at the thought of this immense treasure being unknowingly located beneath his feet within distance of his own heartbeat.


What religion were the priests carrying out?  Were they mixing the local deities with their own brand of understanding of faithfulness?  Were they more concerned with carrying on the tradition than they were with bringing the people closer to God?  Had they forgotten how to read the holy scriptures and left it buried just out of reach, the greatest treasure of all?  Or, had they buried it intentionally because change can often bring about pain?


Is this not what Jesus fought against?  Did he not unearth the scriptures, point to the layers and layers of sedimentary law, scrape away the stultifying stratification and petrification of the love of God and reorient the people to look up to the heavens and see the God of the universe shivering with anticipation for a life with him?  The same priests and scribes and Pharisees and teachers of the law attempted to quiet the Word of Life, to bury that which had come to be the Treasure of Humankind and when they couldn't shut him up, the crucified him.  They placed him inside the stone tomb; they pushed the rock in front of the opening and buried him.


This time, though, God would not be denied.  It wouldn't be many decades or centuries but three days later when God himself scraped open the grave and announced to the world that the book of the law had been fulfilled and replaced with the book of the Gospel.  The Good News spilled into all the cracks of the entirety of life and the treasure that was brought to humanity could not be replaced.  If only we would dig a little deeper at Easter time, to scrape past the surface dirt of our daily lives to disinter the pearl of great price.  If we could just look past our own selfishness and desires, believe that Christ died to take our sins and place them in the tomb he had just left, I think we'd find a new sense of freedom and a regard for the beauty of life that we have never seen.


Perhaps this is the Easter when we poke about and find once again that the tomb is empty and the power of Christ has been released into the world. 


Happy digging.

O God, Friday

There are lots of things that occurred when I was younger that I took for granted, but I never questioned them.  I just assumed that my parents knew best and I went with the flow. 

For instance:

During the wintertime, my parents' house stood bleakly on top of a hill surrounded by trees that had shed their leaves like extraneous hair for a summertime dog.  At four o'clock in the afternoon, the sun would be almost below the horizon and, as we came home from school on the big yellow bus, the driver would open the door and the arctic blast would hit us.  I'm sure there were many times when the shock of the cold took our breath away, but whether we knew it or not, the cold also took hostage of our immune systems at times.  It wasn't really the cold, I guess, but the exhaustion our bodies faced trying to keep warm that caused germs to multiply inside of our guts.

I can remember a time when, after the yellow bus had dropped us off at home and I'd opened the porch door, stamped my feet to shed the accumulated mud and slush, then upon opening the kitchen door, I thought to myself, You know what, my stomach doesn't actually feel that good.  As kids, we know that feeling; that sickening churning, almost a sugary feel in the stomach of the virus doing high dives from our uvulas into our stomach acid.

I didn't eat much for supper and Mom put me to bed early and then, knowing that my stomach was 'upset', I'd call it down right grouchy, Mom would head to the bathroom.  I knew what she was getting: 

The Towel.

The Towel was  mottled green and it used to be made out of soft terry cloth, but after years of washing, drying and neglect, it felt more like a burlap sack.  The Towel was then brought into my room and as it entered the room, I knew that I must be sick because for some reason, when I didn't feel good at night, Mom would put The Towel on top of my pillow. 

As I look back now, I have no idea why she would do this.  If I was really going to be sick, is The Towel really going to protect my seventeen year old pillow?  It's not as if I'm going to barf and when the vomit reaches the edge of The Towel it is going to make a U-turn and stop.  It's not as if my stomach says to itself, "I've got to shut down the pukelear reactor now because we reached the Boundary of The Towel."  There are times when she put The Towel on my pillow and I really questioned the necessity because in all of my years, I never stayed put in my bed if I was throwing up.  It's a natural instinct to try and run to a receptacle made for vomit.  Usually I'd end up leaving a trail of the evening meal on the yellow carpet and my mother (not my father - because he would add to the collection plate) would be scrubbing up for a couple hours afterwards until I did it again.

Oh, to be a parent.

So, as I'm older, I question the legitimacy and the usefulness of The Towel.  Wouldn't you know, though, it's universal, a worldwide thing.  When I married Christine and we had children, sure enough when one of them felt sick at night for the first time it wasn't I who reached for The Towel, but the Australian.  Surely the Baby Boomers must have learned about The Towel from someone before them, the Great Generation, and so on and so on.  Lots of things are passed on without us consciously thinking about them until we are able.

Recently, I've been thinking about this with regards to faith, especially on Good Friday.  I've never really asked the question of why it was 'good.'  Certainly, it seems like every negative thing that could happen to a person occurs to Jesus on this night.  From his perspective, there is nothing good about it, not even close to decent, not even bordering on passable.  This should be Bad Friday from Jesus' perspective; he's nailed to a cross; his friends ditch him; his cross is on top of the Place of the Skull; and the last people he talks to are common criminals who just happen to be suffering the same fate as an accused seditionist.  Talk about bad luck.

Have you ever wondered why the three crucified people are even having a conversation on the cross?  Have you ever really questioned how three people suffocating to death can even begin to have a conversation, even if it is about salvation?

It was not something one did when one was growing up.  One did not question the tradition and/or the pastor of the service on Good Friday.  One did not ask why it was called 'Good Friday' or, for that fact, what in the world does the word 'Maundy' mean?  Why can't we just call it 'Last Supper and Foot Cleaning Night?'  Then there's the blooming Saturday when nothing happens except some basketball games on TV.  Sunday comes, it's dark out, we go to church and celebrate the resurrection again.

It happens every year and yet this year, I'm stuck on this Good Friday thing.  In my opinion, it should be O God, Friday.  Same letters, just a different meaning.

I have questions for God that will be answered someday, but the first and foremost from this day is, "Where were you, God, when your Son was dying on the cross?  Didn't you care?  How could you stand by and watch while we, insignificant pieces of breathing dust, spit on him, pierce his wrists and ankles, shove a crown of thorns and then hang him up in shame?  How could you?  Where were you God?  Can I trust you in my deepest desperation in life?"

Where were you when the terrorists blew up bombs in Belgium?  In France? In Africa?  In Asia? In North America? 

Where were you, God, when the earthquakes/tornadoes/tsunamis ended life and livelihood? 

Where are you, God, when the children who have suffered unconscionable abuse attempt to live life?

And then God speaks out of the storm to me as he did to Job with the same human questions of thousands of years ago: 

Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you will answer me.  Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?  Tell me if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

God goes on for two more chapters questioning Job's credentials about understanding suffering, but in the end we, as Job was, are left in silence and shame.  Job says, I am unworthy - how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth.  I spoke once, but I have no answer, twice but I will say no more.

We have no answer because we don't understand how all the pieces fit together.  We see a complete debacle on Good Friday and proclaim judgment on God that somehow, if He were all powerful, he would have already set an end to suffering rather than allowing the greatest display of injustice to occur.  Somehow we believe that because God did not act on Good Friday, that he is either unwilling or unable to stop pain and suffering.

And yet those words bellow, echoing in the place of my skull and my own selfishness and arrogant thoughts are crucified by God.

I'll tell you where I was.  I was grieving as only a father knows how, but for life to be brought back to all people, for peace and goodwill to truly come about, I allowed this to happen.  I felt it.  I heard it.  I sensed it just like you do.  And because of that, you can know

That I truly love you.  It is God Friday.  It is all about God's strength, not my own.

God Friday.  It is 'good' because he suffers with us, so that in the end, there will be no suffering, sorrow, pain or death.

Thank you, God, for Good Friday.

Donkey Sunday

It's always been one of my favorite Sundays of the church calendar year.  It's the one where, at the beginning of the service, the ushers in the back hand out instruments of torture to little children then parade them to the front of the church - parade them being the operative word, they are dressed to the eights (I don't know what the 'nines' are so I thought I'd be cheeky) and let them flounce up the center aisle gaily smiling and waving to their parents.  Once at the front of the sanctuary, they are given the 'opportunity' to sit still for seven minutes while an elder of the congregation tries to convince them that instrument of torture in their hand was actually an instrument of praise.

Palm Sunday.  My ass.

I think we should call it Donkey Sunday, or at the very least Sabbath of the Colt.  It seems like the animal that carries Jesus should have much more glory than mere branches cut from trees waved with impunity.  I get it, really: the branches are symbolic of royalty: the fanned waving, cooling the king as he passes by.  Three of the four gospels don't even mention the words 'palm branches' and yet all the glory on Palm Sunday.

So, bring on the donkeys.  Symbols of peace.

It's fitting, if you ask me.  Even our traditional Christmas stories have Jesus' mother riding into Bethlehem on the back of (guess what?) a donkey!  What great bookends for the story.  In the Christmas story, there's no fanfare, glitz and glamour on the journey into Bethlehem - there aren't any people lining the streets shouting, "Welcome, O favored pregnant one!  Welcome you who are pregnant out of wedlock."  There are no waving palm branches, no welcome signs either.  Probably because the manger scene hadn't been set up yet.

But donkeys?  They are the link to the stories.  They play amazing roles throughout the Bible, not just Hollywood stories about ogres.  It's not just Balaam and his donkey either, you know the one who is stubborn enough to not push through the danger of the Angel of the Lord and the one who asks Balaam, "Why do you keep beating me?" but Deborah actually has a song (in Judges 5) about those who ride on their white asses. 

There's even a website called bibledonkeys.com.  At the risk of sounding irreverent, and I quote, 'In the King James Bible there are 444 ass references.'

All right, all right, my dripping tap of sarcasm is turned off.  The Palm Sunday story is not about donkeys or palm branches, spears or otherwise.  It has nothing to do with the kind of road (aisle) that Jesus' donkey was paraded up not led by spears of iron but spears of leaves.  It has very little do with cloaks or even the disciples and their shouts of "Hosanna!  Save Us!"

But it has everything to do with the recently anointed king; anointed not by the prophets of power, but by the hands of a disciple named Mary called to prepare the king for his crown, not of gold but of thorns.  It has everything to do with the king who rides anticlimactically into Jerusalem not on the back of a foaming war horse but on the haunches of a lowly, cud-munching donkey which was probably content to nibble the leaves of the palms thrown on the road. 

The people wanted him to be insubordinate to the Romans; he came to save them from their insubordination to God.  They wanted him to be a mighty figure standing with steel sword and iron fist to smash the foreign army.  He was the Prince of Peace.

A peace that passes all understanding. 

Which is why the donkey was untied from its mooring post, called into service as the carrier of God's son, even just for a little while.  Minding its own business, the donkey probably (if I can anthropomorph the donkey and its emotions for a second) had little inclination to carry any burden that day much less wander down the screaming intersection of manic Israelites intent on having life changed for them.

Jesus rode down the aisle into Jerusalem and in the book of Luke, we find the emotion of the overwhelming moment - the Pharisees are telling the disciples to shut up and Jesus, overcome with remorse for the city whispers into the Middle Eastern air, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace..." 

What will bring you peace on this Palm Sunday?  This Donkey Sunday?  What will it take for you to divorce yourself from the tyranny of the present twenty-first century addiction to stress and look to the hill for the solitary figure that rides on the back of the meekest of animals and hear the whisper on the wind...

that brings peace.   

Pinata Justice

It wasn't too many years ago that the family and I attended a church event.  As typical Lutheran nights in the Midwest go, there was a lot of food stretched out across the front of the gym, there were an adequate number of white plastic round tables rolled out across the floor and plenty of end-of-spectrum people noisily getting louder and louder in the acoustically challenged gym.  What I mean by 'end-of-spectrum' is there were a lot of really young kids (accompanied by parents who wanted an inexpensive way to both entertain and feed their ravenous children) and generally older folks (who wanted to both entertain and feed the ravenous children that would be screaming around the gym for a few hours.) 

So, the parents of the children would sit exhaustedly slumped at the white plastic tables holding a white Styrofoam cup of coffee but too tired to lift it to their lips.  Every once in a while they would put their parental periscope up to make sure that their children were not causing damage to themselves or to other children, but most assuredly they were content to be in a safe place to soak up life with others.

I was one of those at the tables.  My girls ages were still in single digits but they were so excited for the night.  Hurriedly they ingested some form of potluck item, a casserole, pasta dish or Jello salad smothered in whipped cream and then headed off for the sideshow row games lining the sides of the gym.  We're not talking about ski-ball, but certainly there was a ring toss, a basket shoot and ultimately, at the very end of the night...

The piñata.

It was an interesting read to look up its history.  Most would probably know the piñata from children's birthdays parties as common as Pin the Tail on the Donkey (another warped tradition but I won't get into that.)  Traditionally, a piñata is a crepe papered animal, stuffed with candy and sweets and hung from the roof, or a higher place, by a string.  One by one, children are blindfolded and given a stick, or broom handle, spun around a few times and then told to strike the piñata.  For the most sadistic of parents, they don't tell the kids that the piñata can actually be raised or lowered so they end up looking quite foolish while sounds of laughter ring in their ears while they are blindfolded. 

The piñata, just like most other things, has two different opinions on its origins.  From the Hispanic Culture website, they claim that the piñata is from the Aztecs or Mayans and that eventually the newcomers from Europe took the piñata back.  From another site called Spanish Town, they claim that the original piñata traveled back with Marco Polo from China and was brought into celebrations under the name 'Pignatta' which means 'Clay Pot.'  For right now, I think the Chinese history one is more interesting to write about because the piñata then made its way across the Atlantic ocean (why they would take piñatas across is beyond me) and the religious missionaries used the piñata to draw in the local people to hear about the ways of God.  They would decorate the piñata as Satan, seven horns and all, and let the locals beat the hell out of the devil with a stick.  What a great evangelical tool, right?

Once someone got a good lick in and the 'clay pot' would crack open, all the sweets would roll out from the innards of the broken toy and the children would happily collect them.  Imagine in those ancient times though, the children holding up a piece of candy and shouting to their priest, "Hey, Father, I'm eating Satan's gall bladder!" 

This night at the church function, the piñata was already strung from a basketball hoop high enough that no person under the age of thirteen (and under the height of 6'6) could get at the brightly colored donkey stuffed with unknown chocolates and goodies.  Every once in a while you could see a circle of smallish children pointing at the piñata and scheming in their own childlike way to see if there was a way they could lift each other on their shoulders to burgle the piñata before anyone else got their broom handles on it.

The time came for the piñatacide and the first vociferous boy who had barged to the front of the line was given strict instructions about 'one hit and don't keep whacking away so everyone else gets a chance.'  Before the blindfold was put over his eyes, you could see the glint that he had not listened to a word the person had just said to him and he made sure there was just a sliver of vision underneath the blindfold where he could get a good look at the target.

The leader of the piñatacide backed all the children out of the blast radius and then the children began to shout to the boy, "Hit it!"  "Kill it!" "Hurry up!"  If we weren't in a church you'd have to wonder if the police wouldn't be showing up.  The young boy was spun around a few times and then given free reign to eviscerate El Senor Burro.  Pretending to be dizzy, the young boy staggered slightly and looked under his blindfold, squared up and swung.  WHACK!  Dead hit, but the boy drew back again and swung again and again.  The leader was yelling for him to stop, but no one dared get in the way of the deadly instrument being waved back and forth at random.  Finally, a voice came from the back, "STOP IT NOW!"  It was the boy's mother and upon hearing not only those words but the condition of her embarrassment, the young man dropped the stick and ripped off his blindfold.  After being welcomed into his herd, the boy accepted congratulations for stymieing the adults.

The next of the boys wanted to shove his way in but the facilitator of death barred his path and thought a little more deeply about it and lined everyone up in size order, from smallest to biggest.  Theoretically, this would allow even the tiniest hands to be involved in the piñata smiting.  The littlest girl was placed forward; she was probably only eighteen months old, could barely walk, but she was cute and you could hear the crowd oogle and google over the diminutive would be slayer.  I rolled my eyes a little bit because we were wasting time and as I watched as the parents took out their video cameras and record the syrupy sweet event, I knew that the little girl not only had no interest in being blindfolded, but she really didn't want to hit the donkey either.  She wanted to cuddle it.  All those bright colors...  But, they put the whooping stick in her hand anyway and snapped photos for a good twenty seconds until the girl's parents said they'd gotten enough pictures and gave permission for the next child to beat the piñata.

On and on it went.  Impatiently, some of the ten-year-old boys danced back and forth, foot to foot, wanting to be the glorious victor who cracked the belly of the beast.  After forty-five minutes of little children tapping the piñata, the boys finally got their chance.  The piñata, after swinging motionless (or mostly motionless) from a string and absorbing small amounts of punishment, was beginning to look a little worse for wear.  The last boy, put on the blindfold and before even being spun about decided to swing.  It was a slow motion nightmare.  The stick traveled quickly through the air but slowly through my mind and there was another smaller boy standing beneath the piñata staring at its beauty and wondering about its innards.  Broom handle met back of the head with a sickening thud and a gasp.  Can anyone say, "Is there a lawyer in the house?"

The mother ran to her screaming child.  No blood, thankfully, but a nice little bump on the back of his head.  The mother pulled her boy out of the blast radius, raised her hand and said, "He's all right.  He'll be fine!" and motioned with her hand to continue the sanctioned violence against the stuffed toy.  A sigh of relief issued from the crowd and the young man who had just issued the blow was given strict instructions to swing only when give permission and, when the piñata did crack to stop swinging immediately. 

It only took one more swing.  El Senor Burro could not absorb any more abuse and he cracked majestically from the neck.  Tragically, the head stayed connected to the string and the rest of the body fell to the floor disgorging its sugary contents onto the gym floor.  There was a mad scramble; little kids pushed out of the way.  One young man claimed a small heap of candy lying on top of it as if he had just conquered Mt. Everest. 

I could only look at the decapitated head of the piñata hanging morosely from the basketball hoop.  What a world we live in.

Sometimes our present day digital culture treats justice in the same way that we treat piñatas.  Someone makes a mistake, whether on Facebook or Twitter, writes something that can be taken out of context, or was just inappropriate, and people then share the Tweet or Post.  Within minutes or hours (depending upon the inappropriateness of the words) hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people have lined up for their own shot at this 'rude' person.  Some might call it vigilante shaming, I would call it piñata justice.

A person has been hung mostly motionless from a string of their own making.  A person just as full of sweetness and goodness like anyone else.  But they've done something wrong - they don't know it at the time because they've just done what everyone else does: they post every detail of their life on line hoping for a response, a like, a care, anything that signifies 21st century relationship - but they didn't think it through.  Take, for instance, Holly Jones, a woman who just wanted to have a good meal at a restaurant but was annoyed by that which she thought was a 'druggie who had the audacity to have a heart attack during her meal.'

Okay, I get it - this is about the least appropriate thing you could think while someone is clinging to life and although it represented an interruption in her life, it's one thing to think it, but it's a completely different thing to put thoughts to Twitter.  Within hours, Holly Jones had been so thoroughly publically shamed, she would go on to lose her job and most of her social respect. 

Yes, she made a mistake, but in the ensuing days after her Tweet, people lined up for miles in the digital piñata line waiting for their turn to take a blindfolded swipe at this person that they'd never met, but somehow it made them feel better to 'beat the hell out of her.'  The people in the piñata line were blind to Holly - they'd never met her before; they didn't know what she'd been through, but now that she was a static target, it was time to whack away at her for her transgressions.  What point was to be proved, I'm not sure, other than be very careful what you post online.  But also, I think, be very careful which piñata line you join.

Here's the deal.  Some Pharisees and teachers of the law brought a woman (piñata) to Jesus and metaphorically strung her up before the Teacher.  She had been caught in the act of adultery.  The law said that she should be (piñata -ed) stoned for her wanton act of lust, but what did Jesus think?  Jesus, at first, didn't seem to even listen to this; he didn't want to step in the piñata line.  Jesus, in fact, was quite content to take the blindfolds off their eyes and let them see their own transgressions which he posted in the dirt with his finger.  "If any of you haven't done anything - ever - that you were ashamed of, by all means, here is the stick," points at the woman, "there is the piñata." 

The Pharisees wanted to break this woman open.  They wanted to see the sweetness of this person spilled on the ground to make a point, or, in this case, to trap Jesus.  She was just an object to them, and a convenient excuse to pull God's vision away from their own mistakes.

They all left.  They didn't throw stones because they weren't without sin. 

So why do we?  Why do we in this world of public hatred continue to crack people open and leave them hanging in their damaged state spilling whatever goodness that they had on the ground so that other people can roll in the gore of their life and claim it for themselves, or claim that 'they were the one who brought the darkness to light?  Why do we do this?

I'll let you ponder your own role in piñata justice.