“Open up, this is a raid….”

In between my first and second years of college, I had a job driving a beer cart on a country club golf course in Marietta, GA.

Marietta is a suburb of Atlanta. It gets hot in the summer.

My job was to drive a cart loaded with beer and soft drinks, sandwiches…snacks…around on the course and sell the stuff to the people playing golf.

I have a feeling that it was one of the best jobs that I’ll ever have.

It was certainly easy.

I remember this one period…deep into the Georgia summer….when we were having a massive heatwave.

I think it might have been over 105° for a couple of days straight.

There weren’t any golfers out on the course. It was too hot for anyone in their right mind to be out in that heat.

It was my job to be out there in that heat.

So I loaded up, went out in the morning, and parked under a shade tree to wait for nobody.

And nobody came.

For three days, I think I only might have seen a couple of old rich men, too obsessed with the game of golf to notice that the heat was trying its best to kill them, too.

During that down time, I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

I love that book…I should read it again soon.

Anyway, one of the main thoughts in the book is the idea of timshel ( I linked to the passage in the book that talks about the concept)…”thou mayest”.

I wrote about this already a while back…a post called, with great imagination, “timshel”…so I guess I’ve covered all this “Steinbeck/beer cart/Atlanta heat” ground already…and this post isn’t really only about timshel…so I better get to the point.

I heard an interview with Mavis Staples yesterday…and she was talking about this album that she made with Jeff Tweedy, the frontman for a band called Wilco.

She talked about what a fun, family oriented experience it was…band member’s kids in the studio, lots of love and laughter.

Jeff Tweedy wrote this song for the album…I guess he kind of wrote this song for Mavis.

“Open up, this is a raid…”

We are frequently given the opportunity to be confronted with the “message”.

Sometimes it’s beautiful and subtle…a sunrise or a kind word at the right time, a caring effort when that effort makes all the difference in our lives.

Sometimes it’s boneheaded and awful…a stumbling anvil to the side of the head, a screaming face spewing out reminders of just why some make the decision to never take the “message” to heart. There’s a saying, “don’t kill the messenger…” but sometimes you just want to knock them out to put yourself out of your misery.

The “medium” makes a difference. The message is always beautiful.

Through it all, it’s our choice to accept or reject…or even consider.  It’s our choice.  That’s a beautiful thing.

Like a parent watching a little child…watching the child in their wildness…saying, while they’re waiting for the “prodigal come-around”, “no…just wait a minute…they’ll be alright….just give them a minute.”

“open up, this is a raid”…but when the door is busted down, the choice is still there.

What kind of deal is that?

I have no earthly idea what the word “constancy” really means…so I guess I haven’t figured “the deal” out yet.