The Only New Thing

Last week one of my readers made this request: “I’d like you to go one step further and explain why He ‘allows’ bad things (AKA, evil) to happen although He is indeed all powerful, all knowing, all loving.”    I thought I’d answer here:

One of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry, closed his poem “The Creation” with this line, “The only new thing could be pain.” * Everything God had made was perfect  -- a word we toss off too easily.  

The two human souls He made were good, and they only had one option for being bad – eating the fruit of the tree.  They felt no need to fight, to hurt, to steal.  Their motivation and behavior was perfect.

The two human bodies He built functioned exactly as He designed them – Adam and Eve didn’t suffer from indigestion or the common cold.  Their knees didn’t bother them; they never had to deal with a bad back or an arthritis flair-up.  And for all we know they could have been lounging about Eden for a thousand years.  Even that kind of age was no problem; they were strong and smart and beautiful.  Perfect.

In fact Eve was so perfectly beautiful that Adam chose death with her over life without her – Robert Frost wrote of this most tragic love story in his sonnet Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same. http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/robertfrost/719

The result of the choice they each made – Berry’s “new thing” – was pain --- pain in childbirth, pain in work, pain whose ultimate conclusion is death.  In fact, the whole earth was affected by the choice made by Adam and Eve because it had been their domain and when they abdicated, they turned it over to Satan to run (Heb. 2:5).  

So, you ask, why did God allow that?  He’s sovereign, after all, and omnipotent, and loving.  What was He thinking?

God chose in His sovereignty (His free will) to create a new set of creatures who would also have free will.   This divine decision is related to His previous determination to create the angels (Psalm 148, Job 38).  They too have free will.  We know that a third of them revolted (Rev. 12), that they pay attention to us (Luke 15), that we are in some way a resolution to their problem. 

So, the question of evil has its source in the angels – the fallen angels – who think that a creature can exist without its creator, that a creature can even overshadow its creator (Isaiah 14).  All evil comes from that idea.  Satan, once the best angel God ever created, and now the ruler of this world, is operating on that assumption – “Look ma, no hands!” In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not doing very well. 

When Eve bought that lie, “…you will be like God,” (Genesis 3) when Adam, who knew that it was a lie, chose it anyway, evil took over. Whether this took place at the instant of their decision, supernaturally, or happened somehow physically with the ingestion of the fruit, we don’t know, but we do know that they became so tainted that their offspring would inherit their misery.  

Now the question is, “If God, being omniscient, knew A and E would screw it up, why create them in the first place?”  He did so to meet a commitment to the angels before us and to His own perfection.  And He, being just and good and loving, had prepared a solution to the evil that human free will selected.  The Trinity had already agreed that the Second Person, Jesus Christ, who is called “The Last Adam,” (1^st Cor. 15) would solve the problem.  The first perfect man, Adam, made a bad choice; the second perfect man, Jesus, made the right choice – over and over and over again, eventually going to the cross to undo the mess Adam made.  We have the choice now of realigning ourselves with God through Christ.

What a wonderful world this would be if all of us availed ourselves of Christ and the Word – truly, not just on Sunday mornings. 

And this world has no idea how much of Satanic evil is being restrained by God.  We always ask why God allows evil, but that’s the wrong question. The right question is “What would things be like if God weren’t holding the ultimate reins?”  Humans will know exactly how bad evil really is when the Seven Seals are opened during the aptly named Tribulation. 

I won’t be here for that, and if you have any sense, you won’t be either.

John 14:6  “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father except by me.”

http://bible.org/article/angelology-doctrine-angels
 

*from Sabbaths 1979  by Wendell Berry

To sit and look at light-filled leaves

May let us see, or seem to see,

Far backward as through clearer eyes

To what unsighted hope believes:

The blessed conviviality

That sang Creation’s seventh sunrise,

Time when the Maker’s radiant sight

Made radiant every thing He saw,

And every thing He saw was filled

With perfect joy and life and light.

His perfect pleasure was sole law;

No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures

And their whole pleasure was to be

What He made them; they sought no gain

Or growth beyond their proper measures,

Nor longed for change or novelty.

The only new thing could be pain.

The Limitations of God -- God Logic III

 I occasionally get into discussions with people who question why God allows bad things to happen, but it’s not a difficult question if you consider the limitations of God.

Blasphemy, anyone?  Dare we limit God?  We couldn’t, of course.  We humans have struggled for 5,000 years to mold our measly minds around the absoluteness of God, let alone pin Him down enough to shove Him into a box of our making.

He limits Himself. And no, the use of the masculine pronoun does not indicate the presence of a divine penis.  “She” carries even more gender baggage than “he,” and “it” denies the personhood of God and we’re right back to graven images.  So let's get over it.

God limits Himself with His perfections.  I know of ten, and these attributes are limited only by His other attributes. Let’s look at these absolutes:

• God is power, sovereignty;  He is the King of Kings (Psalm 83:18)*.  OK then, why can ‘t He do anything He wants? Let’s look –
• God is also perfect goodness, and if He is to maintain that, then He’s limited to doing only good things (Psalm 145:17).  But can’t He change and be bad for a while?
• God is unchangeable (Hebrews 1:12).  Hmm, so he’s stuck with goodness.
• God is perfect justice  (Hebrews 10:31).  So He’s limited to being fair and not just now and then. Always.  And He can’t change that, either.
• God is love (John 3:16). But what about His justice?  God cannot say, “There, there, now.  It’s all right.  I’ll let you get away with it this time.” Not if His justice is perfect.  Oh dear.  
• God is omniscient (Proverbs 3:19). This is useful if you have to be perfectly fair.  It helps to know the facts.   This attribute isn’t limiting; it allows the other attributes to function.
• God is omnipresent (Job 34:21,22); He is not limited by space.  Man has spent most of his existence trying to circumvent space.  God doesn’t have to.
• God is eternal (Exodus 3:14). He is not confined by time.  He always was and always will be. For God the future has no surprises or uncertainties, which aides His omniscience.
• God is truth (Deuteronomy 32:4). He is limited by His inability to lie.  Because He’s omniscient He knows the future and the past in perfect detail; He can’t even claim ignorance or error.
• God is omnipotent (Genesis 17:1).  We’re back to power again, only this isn’t a matter of authority. It’s power in the physical sense of the word.  There’s nothing God doesn’t have the power to do.  However, there’s justice and righteousness and love and truth and immutability to consider. 

The interconnections between the perfections of God, and the relationship of the three members of the trinity, one with another, have produced the envelope of grace that is available to us all.

* Check out this web site for more Biblical references and explanation of what is called the Essence of God. <http://www.realtime.net/~wdoud/topics/essence.html>

There be Angels

 I want to tell you about angels. I want to talk about the real thing, though, not the heavily draped Renaissance types with the big, feathered wings -- a lovely image and maybe Raphael had a vision, but I’m not convinced.  Both the Greek and the Hebrew words translated “angel” are words that mean “messenger,” and we know from Biblical accounts that they brought messages to Mary and Elizabeth, that they announced the “good tidings” of Christ’s birth.  They did the latter while suspended in the air, frightening and amazing the shepherds in the fields by Bethlehem.    We know they appear in dreams, that they are observing us, and that they occasionally show up as humans, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares, “ (Heb 13:2). 

I may have done so.

Almost two years ago Tom had to undergo surgery for highly aggressive prostate cancer. We chose to have the surgery done in Seattle at the University of Washington Medical Center – one of the five best hospitals in the country.  When the worst happens, I want the best to help me.  So we headed north. 

The day before the surgery we checked into the Collegiana Inn, a 1920’s hotel on a shady, sleepy side street in the University District.  The entrance, framed by a stone arch, red carriage lanterns, and a matching awning, led to a small foyer with warm green walls and black-framed landscapes.  I loved the place at first sight. 

The building had been used for years as a dorm and the rooms themselves still had that feel, but they were clean and quiet and spacious – a perfect place for the days of recuperation Tom would need after surgery.  There were long skylit hallways for walking, cozy little sitting rooms for a change of scene, and a kitchen on each floor, which made eating decently possible.  With a coffee shop at the top of the hill and a Trader Joe’s just a couple picturesque blocks away, we were set. The streets were lined with hole-in-the-wall restaurants and bookstores.  The sidewalks were filled with college students and their backpacks.  (In a year our grandson would be one of those students.) What could have been a nightmarish experience in a parking lot motel out by SeaTac, became a safe, comfortable, friendly experience. 

The day of the surgery we reported to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning.  It was still dark, but the surgery pavilion buzzed with organized activity.   By 7:30 Tom was wheeled into surgery.  I had no idea that I wouldn’t see him for seven hours.  Waiting room time is slow, and that day it had very heavy feet.  I filled it with coffee, a book I couldn’t concentrate on, people I kept thinking I recognized, the art on the walls.  Halfway through the morning our daughter arrived and time stepped back a ways, quit breathing down my neck; she and I are good at conversation.  Lunch came and went.  The surgery had been scheduled to last between one and four hours.  By 2:00 I was getting nervous – ok, ok – more nervous.  Finally, on the downside of the afternoon the OR nurse called to let me know it was over, an hour later an encouraging chat with the surgeon, by eight Deanie and I were on our way back to the inn. 

We were hungry.  I was exhausted.  We picked up some frozen spanakopita at Trader Joe’s and popped it in the microwave in the kitchen on our floor of the hotel.   We were sipping the last of our wine when three women arrived.  They spoke softly to each other and rather than disturb us at the table, they gathered around a credenza covered with magazines where they tried to pour out bowls of cereal without setting anything down. 

I wasn’t in a very social frame of mind, but we couldn’t leave them standing around munching cereal in silence.  So we invited them to join us  -- and I’ll never forget the experience.

One woman was about my age, her hair a salt-and-pepper bob.  She smiled and I realized that there was something odd about her mouth – not unattractive, but crooked or slanted – something asymmetrical.  With her was another woman of the same age – a handsome woman with a spikey crew cut – I figured her for a sister-in-law.  With them was a much younger woman, tall and heavy in a soft, pillowy way.  Her dark brown hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck. 

In a hospital hotel you can count on one opening conversational gambit and being tired – post-terror tired – too tired to even introduce myself, I asked it.  “What are you in for?” I don’t suppose I phrased it so badly, or if I did, they were gracious and answered.  Here’s their story:

Gray-lady, who was recovering from her battle with breast cancer, and whose husband had recently died, was the mother of a thirty-year-old man (husband of the young woman) who had contracted a virus a year or so earlier.  The virus had attacked his heart and in the year following he and his wife had produced a baby son, who was just a month old. This man had been recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a cancerous tumor on his pancreas.  He was scheduled for surgery the following morning and had only about a 50% chance of living through the procedure, which may or may not take care of the tumor and would do nothing to help his heart. 

This sounds like a sob story, but it wasn’t.  The women laughed and joked as they told it.  Their smiles were soft and lovely.  There was no whine in their voices.  I’ll never forget their eyes.  Those ladies should have looked gaunt and haunted, their eyes hollow and vacant.  There should have been deep worry lines between their brows.  Tears would have been normal.  Pacing, hand-wringing, voices shaky and taut.

After all, the young father of a new baby was likely to die, if not the next day, sometime soon.  The grandmother of this baby, a recent widow, was losing her son,  and was still not on solid footing with her own health.  The aunt was apparently the only support system for these two ladies.   Some sobbing and railing was in order.  But no, they were happily eating Fruit Loops with two strangers in an obscure little hotel at bedtime.  They weren’t just relaxed and apparently happy; they glowed. 

They did eventually ask us about our plight.  I felt embarrassed to explain.  Tom’s brush with cancer seemed a mere hangnail in comparison.  In fact that’s how I answered – a hang nail, just a hang nail. 

Deanie and I went back to our room soon after.  I asked the mother if she would mind if we prayed for her and her son.  She patted me on the arm, nodded and said, “Please.”

The next night, with Tom tucked safely away in our room,  I popped into the kitchen now and then hoping I’d see them.  I never did.  Several months later when we returned for Tom’s check up I asked Sherrie Pollard, who ran the hotel, if she remembered them. Sherrie always took the time to get to know her guests and I was sure their story would ring a bell, but she couldn’t remember them. 

I owe those three nameless women.  That night I had felt as if I’d just staggered away from the wrong end of a street brawl.  It had been three terrifying months of research and dread since Tom’s diagnosis.  It had been a long trip and a long scary day, but the grace and loveliness of those ladies in the face of a nightmare I can barely wrap my brain around relaxed me to the bone.  God had led us to a great surgeon (at almost two years still no sign of cancer), a great hospital,  a lovely little inn, and I wonder if He didn’t also send three angels to pull all my pieces back together. 

If it so happens that one of you lovely women finds this and reads it – let me know how you are.  But then, maybe you are looking over my shoulder as I write this.  Who knows?

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares, “ (Heb 13:2).

I Dare You

 Today I’m posting a sonnet from my first chapbook Counterpane. 

For my poetry-phobic followers, a sonnet is a 14-line poem, invented during the Renaissance by an Italian poet named Petrarch, who evidently enjoyed playing with people’s heads – even his own.  Not only does a sonnet have to be 14 lines, but it has a required rhyme scheme – either abbaabbacdcdcd (Petrarchian) or ababcdcdefefgg (Shakesperian). 

To top it all off each line can only have 10 syllables and those syllables have to be emphasized alternately – it’s called iambic pentameter.  IP is actually rather scary because once you get the hang of writing in that rhythm you discover that you are thinking in that rhythm as well – and it’s hard to turn off. 

I’ll have some questions for you at the end of the poem, but for now figure out if this in a Petrarchian (also called Italian) or a Shakespearian (also called Elizabethan) sonnet.  Enjoy.

Summer Sonnet                  D Chadwell Each summer I am given perfect plums Which grow without my love or watered care Yet fill with cool moist sweetness, bees’ soft hums That haze through August’s heated golden air. I can no longer number all that flows Full though my world in wild prolific flight. My providential cup now overflows With good work, love, and loveliness, and light. But plums are watered down through dismal days That fall like rain but feel more like regret, Like sorrow, sadness. hurt and hollow praise That drown my days and worry at me …yet When heat and sun are high and summer comes, I know I will be granted perfect plums.

 __________________________________________

 Response Questions    :-)  (I can't help it -- sorry.)

What – or who -- is gracing your summer? 

What  dismal days brought you  -- or are bringing you to your plums? 

Why do we love summer so much? 

a)     Are we trained to do so by eons of public schooling?

b)    Is it just a sun thing and purely physical?

c)     Or is it spiritual – a realization of life?

d)    Who cares?

Yes – it’s a Shakespearian sonnet.  Good job.   If you’re interested in trying to write one check the right hand column for sonnet tips.  Try it; it’s fun.  Much like those black and white plastic number puzzles we used to play with.  Your have to play with word order a lot.

Tirade II

We’ve  Been  Caught  in a Compromising  Position

I’ve come to hate the word “compromise” even though being willing to “compromise” is touted as one of the world’s great virtues.  Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines the word as the act of  “com[ing] to agreement by mutual concession.” That sounds harmless, generally benevolent, and in most interpersonal situations it’s a necessity in maintaining relationships:

You want to paint the living room blue, your spouse wants it yellow, so you paint it green.  That’s benign compromise  -- win/win.  The room gets painted, you each get a little of what you wanted, and you can get on to the next disagreement.

Your kids want pepperoni, you want chicken and artichoke, so you order a half- and-half pizza.  No problem. 

Heck, I’m schizoid enough I’ve even negotiated with myself. Yes you can have the chocolate chips, but you will have to walk 2 miles.

Lately, however, I’ve been sickened by the malignant compromise going on in Washington.  You see, compromise is only productive in non-moral situations. Compromise is pragmatic; it is not virtuous.  It won’t work to say to the jihadists –You want to kill all the Jews?  Let’s compromise and say you’ll only kill the ones on the West Bank.

That’s not compromise; that’s moral outrage -- to say nothing of naïve stupidity. 

Congress is currently busy batting such compromises back and forth like dead birds. None can work because

a)    paying one’s debts and obligations is a moral mandate; as is spending no more than you earn, as is not selling one’s soul, personally or nationally -- and

b)    b) this is not just a two-sided issue (in spite of the deceptive simplicity of the two-party system): it is a tangle of Gordian proportions.  A little give and take isn’t going to straighten anything out.

Compromise requires a clear, uncluttered middle ground, and one which is only reachable if neither side is morally  -- may I say it? – compromised.  On the left we have the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul mentality, the something-for-nothing mythology.  On the right is the speak-softly-and-carry-no-stick attitude that is every bit as responsible for our current plight. Our soaring debt isn’t about helping people, or stimulating the economy: it’s about buying power.  As a free people we shouldn’t be willing to compromise on that.

Here we have both parties neither of whom (with the exception of the freshman Republicans) can conceive of winning an election without purchasing votes -- not  even the much-maligned rich can provide the money for that to continue. The Chinese are losing their loan enthusiasm.  Our ponzi schemes are going weak in the knees.  Businesses are gagging on regulations and taxes, which they can’t or won’t pay. Most of these problems are the result of that same compromising I’ll-scratch-your-back-if-you’ll-scratch-mine mentality that Washington is currently using in an attempt to solve the problem it created. 

  

I didn’t mean to rant, but here’s the problem:  if a compromise is reached that ignores the moral (and Constitutional) issues at the heart of the problem, no good will come of it.  You see, things are immoral, not because God is a fuss-budget, but because immoral activities have negative results.  This debt problem is no exception.  Eric Sevareid once said, “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”

We’ve been caught in a compromising position.  Buckle your seat belts.  


__________________________________________________
Check this out -- I just ran across it:   http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,777705,00.html

Tirade I

Warning – Sometimes I get mad.  If a post is labeled as this one is either suck it up and read bravely what I have to say, or duck and cover.  I’ll get over it and write something more cheerful next week.     Unless I get mad again. 

Where is Truth?

During the civil trials of Jesus Christ, Pontius Pilate asked him –while he stood there battered and bloody, “What is truth?” (John 18:38).   Jesus didn’t answer Pilate – perhaps his tone made it clear that he didn’t really want an answer.  Regardless, the question is The Question, but day after day I am reminded that whatever Truth is, our modern society values no more than it values virginity.

Case in point – the Atlanta public schools.  Earlier this month the Atlanta Constitution reported that for the last decade 178 educators, working in 44 schools and in the central administration, falsified the results for the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.  They actually donned rubber gloves, erased the little penciled  “bubbles,” and replaced erroneous answers.  They got startlingly improved scores using this method.  (Vogell)

At the other end of the school continuum, students, the vast majority of them, are turning cheating into a fine, electronic art.  According to a study done by the Center for Youth Ethics at the Josephson Institute in Los Angeles 64% admitted to cheating on tests within the last year.  In the same study 82% said they copied homework.  (USNews – Education) 

In a small study done in a Midwestern town the stats were even worse – between 74 and 87% percent admitted to some form of cheating on tests (Ramirez).  These industrious young people have at their disposal dozens of new techniques – phone-photos  of the test sent to your buddy in the next class,  a quick, surreptitious blackberry Google search,  a little thumb-dancing under the desk.  The truly innovative will even hack into the computerized grade book and just assign himself a grade, adjust his attendance records – the possibilities are endless.

I did my own checking with a Google search for “essays for sale.” (As an English teacher I was always on the lookout for plagiarized papers.) The search garnered over 28,000.000 results.  Twenty-eight million!  That means that millions of people are making money by helping students cheat, and that they evidently have plenty of customers. 

I have been aware that over the expanse of my career Truth as an absolute value has been going out of style.  The student who most didactically pounded on her desk and declared, “There’s no such thing as absolute truth!” wasn’t my first clue, but it’s one that’s stuck with me.  She may have been a very bright girl, but she didn’t come up with that one on her own. 

In an effort to find that non-existent middle ground, where no one is offended and no thinking has to take place, school curricula have grabbed the relativist philosophy with a white-knuckled grip.  My darling student had learned her lessons well. 

And you can’t help realizing how close the relativist mantra is to plagiarizing a paper.  Why look up facts if none of them is true?  Why bother writing a paper if you can just buy one? Who cares whether or not you implicitly lie by sneaking a peek at the test questions beforehand?  Why memorize stuff if nothing’s true? 

Of course the next question is -- Why bother cheating on a test if your teacher will do that for you? 

We spend upwards of $10,000 per student per year on public education, and for that we get a whole generation of con artists?  Oops – 2 generations, counting the Atlanta teachers,  and I doubt they’re the only ones pressured to use deception to “prove” they’ve left no student behind. 

I’m beginning to see this tirade as more of a book than a post, so I’ll close, but let me say this:

I have spent most of my life in a classroom, either sitting in a desk or standing before rows of them.  I have heartily believed in what I was doing there, whether learning or teaching, and I had the naïve idea that it was all connected to this concept of Truth.  Just stop and think; if we’re not teaching Truth, we have to be teaching lies.   The middle ground just doesn’t exist.

What is truth?  I doubt if many of our nation’s students have a clue.

Works Cited

“Most High School Students Cheat.”  Live Science.  May 2010.      http://www.livescience.com/8254-high-school-students-cheat.html

Ramirez, Eddy. “Cheating on the Rise Among High School Students.” USNews – Education.  December 2. 2008. http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/on-education/2008/12/02/cheating-on-the-rise-among-high-school-students

Vogell,, Heather. “Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level.” The Atlanda Constitution. July 6, 2011. http://sweetness-light.com/archive/atlanta-teachers-cheated-for-better-scores.

The Elegance of Needles in Haystacks

Tom and I have evidently lost some essential piece of common sense; we no longer hear those sniveling little voices that warn of pending doom, which makes it quite a jolt when it shows up – suddenly, as it always does.

We occasionally care for the small dogs for vacationing dog-lovers.  This has been thoroughly amusing and Dink, our dachshund, seems to enjoy the intermittent chaos.  Last Wednesday morning, however, doom arrived in the form of a tiny white Chihuahua with greyhound instincts.

Her name is Mia.  Her pack-mates, a Bichon  and a Maltese, settled in like they’d arrived at a posh resort.  Mia, however, thought the place had “prison” written all over it, so when a gusty breeze swung the garage man-door open, she didn’t waste the opportunity.  Zoom --  and she was gone.

OK – ask – how far can a four-pound dog travel in two minutes?  Answer: a lot farther than we can.  We ran out the back gate, but she was nowhere in sight. Not in the churchyard next door, not across our busy street, not at the neighbors’ house.  We walked in different directions calling her name – uselessly; our voices couldn’t have sounded familiar yet. 

As I rushed through the gate at the back of the church property, I glanced behind me, and there she stood, about fifty yards away in the scrub oaks by our driveway.  I ran off across the field toward her, but in the minute it took me to return, she’d done another vanishing act.  Poof. 

So, there we were, with somebody else’s tiny dog (the needle) lost at the edge of a town ( the haystack).  The owner was on her way to Hawaii, which she wasn’t going to enjoy much.  Sipping Mai Tais on the beach is hard to take pleasure in if you’re picturing your dog being torn asunder by coyotes.

Tom rode his bike all over.  I drove my car.  We both handed out fliers.  We talked to at least a hundred people.  Our neighbors made signs, drove around in their cars. We called Animal Control, the Humane Society, we talked to the police, the mailman. It seemed that all of Central Point was on the lookout for Mia, though I couldn’t see how that would help – she was so skittish, she was going to be hard to get a hold of.

It didn’t help to imagine where she might go – duh – home, but home was thirty miles away and one could get there by road heading either north or south.  And wouldn’t a Chihuahua just head overland? And there be beasties.  

The day wore on and we no longer heard reports of her.  We caught no more glimpses.  She had vaporized.  We went to bed that night knowing only that God knew where she was and the time hadn’t yet arrived to give us that info.  We prayed that she’d be cared for and that we’d find her.  How people lose children and go on living is beyond me; here I was, just sick about a pocket dog that wasn’t even mine.

We left the gate open and her bed on the back porch in case she came back, but Thursday morning dawned and no Mia. I mimicked our neighbor’s idea and made a big sign for the front curb.  Then we went out driving around – the other three dogs on my lap.  We passed out more fliers, accosted folks in the stores and banks and the park.  Nothing, and it was nearly noon.  She’d been out there in the world alone for 24 hours.

We headed home.  We had just pulled into the driveway when a young man riding a motorized skate board (!) zoomed in behind us.   He grinned and said,  “I just wanted to tell you your dog will be home soon.”   He said he’d found her and handed her off to a lady in a truck who would be bringing her home. He said that he had Chihuahuas and couldn’t imagine losing one. He left before we thought to ask his name.

So we waited.  I cleaned up the kitchen, fixed lunch,  took the other dogs out, puttered around.  Almost an hour later the dogs jumped off the couch, running around the room in one of their ballistic barking fits.  Someone knocked on the door.  There stood a lovely blonde woman with Mia cradled in her arms. 

But here’s the rest of the story – She had seen our sign while out running errands.  She said she couldn’t explain why, but she thought she’d go look out on Upton Road, north and east of us about a mile.  She drove to the ball park out there and on the field she spied two young men with a small white dog. She drove in, approached them and asked if the dog was theirs.  They hesitated and she asked if her name was Mia; they had to check her tags to answer that one.  She explained about the sign and her search – you see, she had Chihuahuas too, and couldn’t imagine losing one.  They handed Mia over and one of them set off the give us the good news.

What are the odds that a random woman would see a lost dog sign and know right where in the haystack to look?  What are the odds that the boys who found her, and the woman who brought her home, would know how to handle such an anxious, fearful little dog?

When we asked Mia’s chauffeur if we could offer her a reward, she said, “No.  Just pay it forward.”  So I’m writing this.  You see, the whole escapade was a burning bush moment for me.  I’ve had many of them, but I’m no less astounded.  It’s so easy to slip into that awful it-all-depends-on-me mode and forget that God has everything under control, even when it doesn’t look like it.  He knew where she was,  He got her through the cold dark night and brought her home, and He did that in a way that would let us know He was in it.

Here’s the kicker.  We immediately called Mia’s “mom.”  Her plane had just landed in Hawaii.  She lost no vacation time and is right now sitting on a beach, sipping her Mai Tai without a care in the world.  And Mia has changed her mind about the Chadwell Resort.  She’s asleep on my lap as I write this. 

Art and the Automobile

 We just returned from a pilgrimage.  We’re a little sunburned.  We’re road-weary – we drove over 600 miles.  We’re a few hundred dollars poorer and we’ve spent three days eating bad food.  But we’re satisfied – we’ve done what we needed to do – we paid homage to the automobile. 

The first shrine we visited was the Portland Art Museum, an odd spot for car worship, but I’ve always enjoyed cars as sculpture, not as machines, so maybe not so odd.  The exhibit, “The Allure of the Automobile,” overworked both my camera and my brain.  We saw a Tucker, a ‘37 Hispano-Suiza, a ’57 Jaguar (once owned by Steve McQueen), a Bugatti, … but the names mean very little.

We saw voluptuous curves and long, strong lines, elegance and breathtaking beauty, rich color and polished chrome. Each car reflected light in a thousand gleaming shimmers.  Each perched on its own simple pedestal, each with its own engraved plaque.  I suspect we were admiring over twenty million dollars worth of cars, but there were only seventeen vehicles.  And they were silent.

Later we sat in the sun and watched Listers and Lotuses and Corvettes careen around the last turn at the Portland International Raceway.  These cars, like the ones at the museum, were historic cars, but these were not silent. 

Only the sound of the ocean moves me the way the sound of highly-tuned engines screaming, thundering, back-firing into the down-shift just before the turn and then roaring out of it, sometimes with a frightening little squeal of the tires.  There is such power in that sound – sound that envelops and reverberates down into your bones, sound that comes in layer upon layer, each car at its own pitch, but harmonizing with every other car and after the first lap, blending like a round, thinning into separate strands that keep repeating, lap after lap.

I sat there in the perfect sun, head back and eyes closed, and thought about that sound as it infiltrated my soul.  It is an important sound, one that embodies the all of the vibrations of our culture – our freedom, our ingenuity, our devotion to being the best.  What we think can always, for better or for worse, be traced back to God.  What we do, goes back to the wheel, to four wheels powered by pistons and fossil fuels, to the car.

It is the car, and Henry Ford’s method of making them cheaply enough that anyone could have one, that has made modern versatility possible. Neither we, nor the goods we produce are stuck in any one locale.  The car has empowered us all to be where we want to be, to be what we want to be.

Yes, in a perfect world the miles of available road would be in perfect proportion to the number of cars traveling on those roads. (We were stuck in Portland traffic for two hours Friday,)  In a perfect world the fuel to power these cars would be cheap and politically neutral, creating neither international tension nor ecological miasmas.  And I’ll admit that the testosterone-laden sound I’m so fond of loses some of it allure when its ripping past my house at two in the morning.  But no matter how stylishly disdainful of the internal combustion engine we try to be, we are we because of it.

It has allowed us to conquer, in part, both time and space.  It has allowed us to rejoin those we have left – and to have left in the first place.  It has allowed us to avail ourselves of a myriad of goods and services.  It has allowed us to be independent, to push ourselves.  It has given us speed. 

The automobile has helped us understand our world – to understand power -- acceleration, aerodynamics, centrifugal force.  Those aren’t theoretical ideas, those are things we’ve experienced – the surge when we push the gas pedal, the buffeting of a hand held out the window, the sickening feeling when we take a corner too fast.

And that learning has produced great beauty.  The search to control those forces has allowed scientific law to show itself as beauty.  Those cars at the racetrack didn’t just sound good, they were stunning, each one designed to make the most of the air it travels through.  The Mustangs were ruggedly good-looking, angular and masculine, the Corvettes beautifully blending curves and points, the Lolas delicate and exotic.

As exotic as a pilgrimage, and just as in the Middle Ages, going on a pilgrimage is a vacation, a fun, as well as a pious, undertaking.  I love vacations when we go to see what God has made, but I also love admiring what man, in God’s grace, has made.  The automobile, in its beauty and power, in its gift of possibilities is worthy of that admiration. 

Freedom Floats

This may be Independence Day, but I’m far from independent; I depend on the stability of this most nurturing of all nations. I’m dependent on God. I’m dependent on all of you.  That must be acknowledged.

But I am free --  I can choose what I want to do with my days --- I’m sitting here in an old chair that was my mothers; my laptop is toasting my leg while I finish this post.  Later Tom and I will walk down to the park for the 4^th of July celebration, then I might go out and climb into the blue and white striped hammock under the catalpa tree and read a while.  Sometime this afternoon I’ll bake that peach pie for the party tonight.  Tomorrow I’ll choose something else.  My life is like that. 

Even when I’m teaching I have lots of choice about what I’ll teach when, about when I’ll actually read those papers I assigned, about what I’ll do when I’m done.  I’m not rich by American standards, not at all, but I am rich if you look at the big picture.

Most lives lived by most people who have existed on this earth have not been even close to the abundance we enjoy.  Most have had to work non-stop from sun-up to sundown just to gather enough to eat for the day.  That statement is not overly dramatic – it’s the truth.

Imagine being the wife of an Anglo-Saxon warrior huddled around a smoky fire pounding grain into flour or roasting a rabbit over the open flame.  Or picture eking out a living in the rice paddies of the Ming dynasty never knowing when the next uprising would bring the savage vengeance of the warlords to your village.  Almost any scenario you dream up involves misery, danger, hunger, and servitude.

Being American is new and amazing.  Two things make the lives of Americans vastly different than the rest of the world, past and present, and both are derived from God.  We were created free to choose Him and we were created free (because of the inherent abilities God gave us) to become prosperous enough to enjoy our lives.  “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10:10

In America I have been free to know God.  His Word has been readily available; I haven’t had to risk my life to study it. I live in a country founded on the idea of Truth (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”) and though scoffing at that concept is trendy right now, much of our prosperity comes from the trust that a belief in Truth provides.

I live in a society that has been aimed at God’s perfect Justice; we haven’t achieved it, but as long as that is our value we will edge ever closer to it, and in that environment we are free to pursue the ideas, inventions, and creations God gives us.

I live in a country where righteousness has been the norm – that is fading and it scares me, but we are still capable of horror at some of the behaviors of the powerful, the famous, and the misguided, and perhaps we will one day return to holding ourselves, our friends, our families and our elected officials to His holy standard of goodness.

These concepts have given us freedoms  that have produced a prosperity greater than any the world has ever known.  I have more in the way of comfort, health, pleasure, and happiness than kings ever used to have. I am free to putter away this glorious day because I can afford it.  I’m confident about my next meal, about the temperature of my environs, the cleanliness of my clothes, the adequacy and safety of the water I’ll consume.  I have enough – of everything. 

In a sense I earned it; my husband and I have worked hard all our lives.  But so did the folks in the rice paddies and all it got them was an early grave.

I have had the blessing of working hard in a system that rewards me for doing so and encourages me to work inventively and efficiently.  Everyone else in this country has had that advantage, which has produced all the things  that currently make my life pleasant instead of the historical norm of steady suffering.

On this 4^th of July let us celebrate the dual freedoms of this amazing country – the freedom to truly know God and the freedom that freedom itself brings – the freedom from the drudgery of life lived just to stay alive. Let us make this holiday another Thanksgiving.

I could live in Egypt – but not safely or prosperously since I’m a Christian.  I could live in a crowded dormitory in China and work at what they tell me to do.  I could live in the malaria-infested jungles of Africa, the barren steppes of northern Russia, the tumultuous streets of a crumbling Greece.  But I don’t.  I live in America, the most blessed nation of the world.  If the forces of evil, both within and without, have their way, it won’t be for long. 

We are free today, so free that it feels like it floats, but wherever freedom has struggled to the surface, it has lasted a very short time.   Let us take a moment and be profoundly grateful for the choices we still have today.

Henry Jay and the Tail

I have no idea why I try to garden: I can’t say I enjoy the process, the results impress no one, and Tom doesn’t like vegetables.  Go figure. 

For over twenty years we’ve owned a house that sits stolidly on almost a half acre of land and I’ve often wondered what God wanted us to do with all this yard; it seems that something useful should be produced here.

The land is fenced into a front yard, a back yard, and what we call “the outback,” an area of neglected fruit trees and star thistle.  Several years ago, the guilt of unused land weighing on my prairie soul, we built two large raised garden beds, necessary since the dirt here would more easily produce bricks than beets (I’ve lived in Oregon for half my life and the idea of buying dirt still amazes me.). Each year we’ve planted and watered and weeded and not produced enough to have paid for the seed, let alone the soil. 

This year, having more hope in our souls than sense, we planted again and, in spite of the long soggy spring, things are growing; I haven’t bought canning jars yet, but I am encouraged. 

In the spirit of that hope Dink and I were out weeding in the south plot last week.  Dink is our longhaired miniature Dachshund and he’s more of a gardener than I’ll ever be.  He looks like something out of a Harry Potter novel – one blue eye, one brown one and long, black-streaked chestnut hair.  I suspect he has magical powers and could, if he wanted to, helicopter up to ceiling height and zigzag around the room, but I’ve never actually seen him do that. 

Instead he digs.  Whenever I pick up a garden tool, he watches me closely for a few minutes, then starts pawing into the ground right next to me. He diligently yanks up any roots I’m chasing and has even learned the difference between weeding and planting; I noticed him a couple of weeks ago using his long nose to carefully cover up the ground I had just disturbed.

But I didn’t intend to tell about Dink, or, really, even about Henry Jay.  Henry is the scrub jay who has lived in our yard for the last half dozen years. He’s fond of us because we feed him walnuts from our outback trees, a habit he finds endearing, so he follows us around the yard, ever optimistic.

On the day in question he had been sans walnuts for a while and had, evidently, decided to fend for himself.

As I said, Dink and I were working the south plot, pulling up woodbine starts and searching the soil for some sign of intended vegetation.  I paused for a second and, leaning on the hoe farmer-style, I stared out across the outback to the north plot. 

There something caught my eye; in the dirt next to an emerging squash plant writhed an eight-inch length of some unidentifiable substance, something that appeared to be alive and in agony. 

It was about as big around as my little finger, too big for a worm, and no worm in my lengthy experience ever behaved in such an unseemly fashion.  The thing was swinging into an arc and then with equal violence, reversing the arc, thrashing around enough to kick up dirt.  It was too tapered to be a snake and snakes aren’t given to fit-throwing either.  I just stood there too horrified to look away.

It was Henry who came to my rescue.  He had been perched on the edge of one of the wooden planks that make up the bed.  I had been vaguely aware of his presence, but it had seemed normal for him to be there close to me. 

He covered the space between him and the thing in a nanosecond and was flying off toward the old plum tree before I could catch my breath.  He seemed both resigned and triumphant about the thrashing string of flesh that hung from his beak. 

At that moment a flash of something light-colored caught my eye.  I focused and saw what was left of a yellow-beige lizard zipping off to my left.  It was about half a foot long, and it was missing its tail. 

I suspect Henry was up to more than just yard maintenance.  He’d been greedy enough to go for that whole lizard – how else would the tail have been dislodged in the first place?  It must have surprised him that Liz had just walked away from half of herself.  Walnuts don’t do that. 

But he had quickly regained his composure and adjusted to the new reality.  I have no idea what he would have done with the whole lizard anyway; it was as big as he was. 

Meanwhile, Liz had gone underground to grow a new tail, Dink was still digging, and I was just standing there horrified at the violence I’d just witnessed.  True, Henry had enough lunch for his whole family,  and Liz would grow a new appendage,  but it was a nice tail and she was, like Eyeore, “pretty attached to it. “