someone else’s mixtape

Posted on by February 4, 2014

mixtape

I buy a lot of things in thrift stores.

Probably 80 percent of the “nonessential” things that I buy are purchased in thrift stores.

Thrift stores are where I got the bulk of my music collection.

That’s probably why my music collection is so diverse and strange sometimes.

So wonderfully diverse and strange.

One of my favorite things to do was to buy other people’s mixtapes.

There was something about the process of making a mixtape that forced the “maker” to consider what he or she was doing….dropping the needle into the groove slightly behind where the music started, then pushing record on the cassette recorder at just the right time after setting the recording levels correctly, then listening to the whole song until the fadeout at the end when you hit the stop button, picking up the record off the turntable, replacing it with another album or maybe changing a couple of settings and recording off of a cd….it was a pretty coördinated effort to fill up the standard 90 minute cassette.

It wasn’t just moving a mouse and clicking away.

(Although that’s pretty darn cool to be able to compile things that way…just not as physically interactive as making a mixtape.)

So, when I went into a thrift store and found a mixtape with a cool cover and an interesting list of songs that someone had compiled, I often bought it.

We didn’t have Pandora or Spotify or Sirius then.  Finding out about new music was a “word of mouth” experience….or serendipity and a good DJ….or maybe just buying someone else’s mixtape.

I first heard this BB King song on a mixtape that I bought a while back.

I remember that the tape had a good cover…children on a swingset…black and white photo…artistic…and the tape had this song and a lot of jazz standards, obscure folk songs, some blues.

It was a great tape.

Talk about messages in bottles.

Who compiled this tape?  Who sat in front of the stereo, looking at album covers front and back, wondering if the perfect song was in the next sleeve somewhere?

And how…and why…did it end up in a thrift store where I bought it and heard a nice BB King ballad for the first time?

All this digital stuff is pretty darn cool.  I’m listening to a free preview of Sirius radio right now as I write this….a channel called “Classic Vinyl”….Led Zeppelin….then Creedence.  How could I have done that before the internet?

It wouldn’t have happened.

I would have had to have found the right radio station….or a good thrift store with a bunch of “other people’s mixtapes”.

There’s more magic in the happenstance, though. It just isn’t the same to click on a new website by accident as it is to paw through a thrift store box and find a strange tape that someone else put together.

What’s good stays good….even if most of the music is somewhere up in the cloud now.

I guess that the music was always in the clouds, anyway.

It just landed on cassettes every once in a while.

I like those old analog landing zones.

I like a little hiss or a click and a pop now and then.

“Human style”, you know?

another game

Posted on by February 3, 2014

I watched the one football game last night that I’ll watch this year.

We’re a Spongebob house…we’re not a football house.

I watch the Superbowl every year to see the commercials….and the halftime show.

I don’t really remember much of it.  I don’t remember much of any of it.

Not because one beer and a bunch of chips and salsa make me black out. I’m not that tired, really…or that much of a lightweight.

It’s just that it wasn’t very memorable.

Except for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it wasn’t very memorable.

How is that? How does that happen? Can you get your money back on a 2000 dollar ticket if the game really stinks? Or do they give you a t-shirt on the way out of the stadium that says, “IMASUCKER”?

I was glad that I don’t watch much football.

One night of wasting my time (with football…I waste time other ways, usually) is enough.

I did like the “cancer support” car (truck?) commercial, though. That was nice…understated…effective. I was proud of those guys who made that one.  It was good.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers had a cameo appearance with Bruno Mars during the halftime show.

They trotted them out about 2 or 3 songs in.

I wonder whose idea that was? Why put a real rock band in with a little pop guy?

That was probably the best performance by a rock act (other than Kid Rock…do you remember that one?) that I’ve seen at the Super Bowl.

But I think that the folks who like Bruno Mars didn’t like a bunch of shirtless freaks jumping around and funking up the little faux James Brown’s stage.

Bruno was excellent. He’s a great performer. I liked the drum opening…that was pretty cool.

But the Chili Peppers are a force.  It was a mistake to put them on stage with Bruno and invite comparisons.

As far as the football went…blehhhhh.

That Seattle QB is pretty darn good.  That was fun to see.

I was born in Seattle…so why not claim superiority?

That’s right.  That’s my team.  Seattle all the way, baby.

Them’s my peeps.

My one game of the year.

Other news….Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Good grief.

Found dead in his apartment of an apparent overdose.

All that talent and acclaim, and they find him with a syringe in his arm.

What a total waste.

So the whole world watches a football game…a game that’s usually pretty entertaining…and this talented man dies with a syringe in his arm.

What the….heck.

No great life lessons here or attempts to turn it into something deeper. It’s not a metaphor for the world at large, or some weird indicator of society’s continuing downward spiral, if that’s really happening now…just a sad coincidence that he would die on Super Bowl Sunday.

It’s pouring rain here and I’m driving a strange vehicle on the mail route because the Jeep’s in the shop.

It’s pouring and I can’t see out of the camper cover when I’m driving the old Toyota in the rain.

I can’t see out of the rear view mirror very well when it rains.

The windows in the camper cover fog up.

That’s my reality today.

That was a boring game. Boring, boring, boring, boring. Really boring.

I liked Philip Seymour Hoffman.  I thought he was pretty great and funny.

What a waste.

PSH 7/23/1967-2/2/2014 RIP

rotation…and balance

Posted on by February 2, 2014

rotate and balance

The guy at the tire store lost my business the other day.

I came in to ask him if he could rotate and balance the tires on the minivan. It was pulling to the right….wobbling a little.

Wobbling a lot.

I figured that if I asked an expert what was going on, he could rotate the tires and the problem might go away.

When I got to the part about purchasing the tires at Sams Club, and how I wondered if the balance hadn’t been done right after the guy patched a nail hole, and that the wobbling had started after the technician had fixed the leaking tire….well….our conversation seemed to be over.

“Sounds like something you need to have them fix…better take it back to where you got the tires.”

Now, unless there’s something that I’m missing, a rotation and balance is 20 dollars and they do it for you no matter where you bought the tires.

Usually.

Maybe they need a sign out front….”rotate and balance, twenty dollars…if you bought the tires from us.”

Anyway, this part of the story is longer than it needs to be.

I went home, dragged the heavy floor jack across the gravel driveway, jacked up the car and rotated the tires myself.

I couldn’t balance them at home…but I could rotate them, and when I finished the job and drove the car around, the problem was gone.

The front end didn’t wobble anymore….or pull to the right.

Maybe I should have been more forceful with the guy…came in and told him, “Rotate and balance these tires…now!!….please.”

Maybe I gave him too much information.

But he was kind of a jerk about it….and the town’s big enough that I have plenty of other options, so I’ll take the car in a different direction next time I need tires.

But I was thinking about this rotation thing a little this morning, and I came to a conclusion, if only a possible temporary conclusion, that maybe all this self-help stuff is missing the point sometimes.

A lot of what I read seems to be centered on “getting rid of problems”.

We want to fix things. We want to get better at things.

We want to correct. We are told to ERADICATE.

Now, in the case of the tires on the minivan, whatever was wrong with the tire that was causing the original problem is probably still wrong.

It’s out of balance….or has a ply that got a little wonky. The problem is still there.

It’s just that now the problem is in the back where it can’t affect the way the car drives.

Maybe the problem is corrected? Not really, maybe…the tire is still wonky…but it’s not noticeable because nothing’s shaky anymore.

I have things that I notice to the point of paralysis. I don’t know how to fix them, so I don’t act on the problem at all.

I can’t balance by myself.

But maybe I can move something better to the front of my life….and relegate the problem to the background where it’s not as noticeable?

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

I guess that the really powerful and constructive way to approach problems is to make a list, check things off as you complete the task, and move on to the next issue.

The way to do it right might be to become a home and lifestyle improvement juggernaut and just plow through all the life issues that bring you discomfort.

“SEEK AND REPAIR! SEEK AND REPAIR! SEEK AND REPAIR!”

But maybe moving the “tire/problem” to the back of my life, where the problem doesn’t affect things in the same way, buys me enough time to figure out how to really fix things later without screwing up the big picture right now?

Maybe there’s no more philosophical importance to the story than figuring out where it might be more pleasant to buy my tires?

I just thought it was interesting that moving things could make that much difference.

As far as I need to be concerned, the problem is fixed.

 

falling out of heaven

Posted on by February 1, 2014

FallingApple

I woke up early this morning for some reason.

My car broke down yesterday out on the mail route…a pulley on the AC compressor failed and what was a low hum turned into a dull roar, then a mighty grind…and eventually, right before I gave up on driving it anymore and parked it until it could be towed and repaired, kind of a roaring, ticking, squeaking and squawking sound.

It sounded like the thing that happens right before an ending.

So Jenny helped me get the little Toyota truck, and I finished the route in it.

Then last night, we dragged the camper cover out of the weeds behind the woodshed and put it back onto the truck so the mail would be under cover while I used the Toyota to run the route for the next couple of days.

So I guess I’m still in “FIGHT” mode….gotta outrun the Wooly Mammoth, gotta get the car fixed.  Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep.

I really don’t know.

Jenny came out of the bedroom for a moment to check on me…momentarily…it’s about 4 AM so none of us really needs to be up.

I don’t need to be up either, but I am.

Sparrow was awake, too, and when Jenny walked by me to go back to bed, she said, “Did you ever notice her arm movements when she’s laying on her back?  It looks like she’s falling off a building…”

Windmilling and moving, clutching at the air around her like it was a blanket to grab before sliding off the bed…going somewhere new and strange in her dreams.

Where is she going to? And maybe more important…where the heck did she come from?

Now, the literal-minded folks without the need for whimsy might say, “Well, of course you understand where babies come from…don’t you? My gosh, it’s a scientific fact…the complex union of sperm and  egg. YES!!! YESSSSSS!!!!   I’m talking about a ZYGOTE!! Yeah, well…sure…a zygote becomes a baby later…but right now, I’m talking about a ZYGOTE. That’s where it all begins….a fertilized egg…a beautiful creation known as a ZYGOTE.”

It all sounds so romantic….”zygote”.  There’s something lyrical about that word.

I think there’s more to the story than just mechanics.

We don’t need to go into that side of the story.

But “falling off a building”?  Where did that image come from?

Remember Michael Jackson holding his baby over the balcony? That wasn’t universally recognized as being an expression of good parenting skills.

People didn’t like that.

We don’t do stuff like that with any of our children…or anybody else’s children, either, for that matter.

So I don’t know where Sparrow would have picked up any memory of falling.

We’ve “got her back”…we don’t let her fall.

Maybe she’s remembering falling out of heaven for a while? Maybe she’s in that interim period where she still remembers something that I’ve forgotten long ago?

Maybe her “stork sling” slipped a little on the trip over to our house? Maybe there was a little bit of turbulence on the ride over?

(I’m kidding about the stork thing. Four children in, I should have a more coherent idea of where babies come from than thinking about the stork or a cabbage patch.)

Maybe we’re all just flailing a little…slightly remembering something but never seeing it clearly enough to really understand?

Maybe we don’t really want to remember?

We’d have to be a whole lot nicer to each other if we never lost the memory of our connection to God.

That’s a big responsibility.

Who needs another responsibility?

Not me, that’s who.

I never fell off nothing, as far as I remember.

little bird

Posted on by January 31, 2014

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The problem, if there is one, with naming your new baby “Sparrow”, is that every time I make a reference to a little bird, people are just going to make the assumption that I’m talking about our littlest girl.

I’m not talking about the baby this time….although if your name is “Sparrow”, “little bird” wouldn’t be a bad nickname.

It certainly wouldn’t take a lot of imagination.

This is about a different little bird.  This is about a real little bird.

Lillie, our cat, caught a young bird on the porch the other morning.

She’s an old cat…but still pretty agile…and when the bird started bumping up against the lower part of the window, trying to get out, she jumped up and caught it in her mouth.

She’s a sweet cat…when I grabbed it from her, she didn’t even growl.

I brought the bird inside to show to everybody….and after a couple of seconds of sitting in my hands, it flew off when Nate started petting it.

“Flew off”?

How far can a bird “fly off” inside your house?

It flew around and behind for a while…landing on bookshelves and other high places, and eventually landed where I could catch it….and then I put it back outside, away from the cat.

Nate still wanted to pet it before I let it go, though.

Two little birds inside our house…but one was a lot harder to catch.

Our propane is down this morning.

I think the regulator must be frozen again…so no propane until the sun hits the tank and unfreezes whatever is locked up with ice.

I miss my coffee.

I’m heating water on the woodstove.

It’s a much slower process than putting some water in the kettle, setting it on the kitchen stove, and then turning a knob.

You have to be mindful while you’re building a fire to heat some water.  It takes a while.

Of course, while I was doing that I was thinking about how there’s not many things that we do these days that don’t allow a little “mind wandering”.

We don’t have many activities that really demand our full attention…like building a fire.

Of course, if I can think about how mindfulness isn’t a part of our daily lives while I’m doing the activity that I suppose demands my full attention, I guess that kind of shoots down my theory.

Not too “mindful” to veer off into parts unknown while I’m being forced to “simplify my life” by heating water for coffee the “old school” woodstove way.

But we really can do a lot of things at a time….and not do a lot of things well at the same time while we’re getting so much done.

That’s the path we’ve chosen…or that’s been chosen for us.  We hurry as much as environment and technology will let us. We speed up because we can.

I’ve got a to-do list about a mile long…and a couple of years old.

I better hurry up and do something…that list is getting bigger as I write.

I’m not a complete Luddite.  I’d be at the center of the interactive holographic entertainment extravaganza if I could…I’d be out in space fighting some weird alien if I could do it from the comfort of my living room.

This monkey does like his tools.

But sometimes, when I’m forced by circumstances beyond my control, like a propane tank regulator icing up, to slow down a little and let the fire in the stove do its job at its own pace, I wonder if my multitasking isn’t doing myself some sort of disservice.

What’s the hurry for, anyway?

Where am I going that can’t wait a minute?

Where would I fly off to if I could get out of the house?

 

 

 

clap for tink

Posted on by January 30, 2014

In the stage play of Peter Pan…probably in the book also, although I haven’t read the book…..there’s a scene where Peter’s friend, Tinkerbell, is dying.

She’s been poisoned by Captain Hook and is dying.

Tinkerbell’s a fairy, and she’s losing her light…and soon she’ll be gone forever unless Peter does something.

Of course, Peter is freaking out.  He doesn’t want his friend to die.  He doesn’t want to live without her.

So he asks the audience to just “clap if you believe”…and the audience claps and Tinkerbell regains her strength and all is right again in Peter’s world.

“Clap if you believe…”

I don’t know that it works that way with God.

I don’t think that we’re the ones keeping God alive.

The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I don’t remember any part that said, “Clap if you want to save God…or clap to keep God alive…”

( It’s really early, I’m about to drink my first cup of coffee, and I’m trying to figure out some of these deep things…even though I’m better at drinking coffee than I am at figuring anything out. Bear with…or ignore…me.)

God is.

“Is” whether we bring a “successful” effort at worshiping Him to the table or not.

Which doesn’t mean that we should lay back and let God become like the uncle who we mean to write to sometime…but somehow never find the right moment to get out the pen and paper to do it with.

We worship because we recognize somehow that God is something that inspires worship.

Somewhere along the line…in something we see in the natural world…in something that someone around us does…or something that we feel in our “spirit”…we are reminded that we need to celebrate God.

God doesn’t “come to life” because we do the right thing, or celebrate in the correct sequence, or “clap loudly”.

We want to do the right thing because we love Him.

Now, somehow, there is a measure in the world for everything.

We strive for success in what we do, for the most part, even if it’s success in something that only makes sense on a very shallow and personal level.

We measure what other Christians are doing…make our marks on the wall to see how we’ve grown…and sometimes come to the conclusion that “We’re alright! That was a good thing that I did for God!”

“I clapped…and look how brightly His light shines now!”

Even if we keep it to ourselves, and our spiritual walk is only an internalized source of pride, it’s hard not to measure our progress against someone else who may not be walking the same path….at the same time.

(Ahhhhh, coffee! First sip from the french press…and now you are probably thinking, “Why does the last part make sense? I don’t get it…what happened with the first part of this thing? What’s going on?)

God is and will be.

We are all just temporary bundles of possibility…loose on the world and on each other.

We love because we love Him.  We love because He loves us.

We love because He shows us how to love.

And sometimes we love each other because we just don’t know any better. We love “just because”.

That is something to clap about.

 

 

rising fowl.

Posted on by January 29, 2014

Rooster-Eye_photo-by-Cecil-Williams

We must be out of propane.

Dangit.

We just refilled the tank a couple of months ago….has it been that cold?

Is a line frozen or something? What is wrong with the propane?

Oh, well…that’s what a woodstove is for.

I wrote about a rooster that we have who I was sure was dead.

I was sure that he’d been eaten by a fat raccoon that I’d noticed was stalking him.

When I didn’t see him or hear him crowing, I was sure that he’d “bought the farm”.

(I wish we had a rooster who could “buy the farm”…I’d move in with him if that were possible.)

I write my blog early in the morning…and when I got home that evening, Jenny said, “That rooster is alive.”

I’d missed the resurrection. I was too busy driving the mail around to see it.

Apparently, Jenny was sitting with the little kids when she saw something flash by in her peripheral vision.

Then she saw something bigger flash by a couple of steps behind the first flash.

When she looked more closely, she realized that the first flash was the rooster…and the second flash was our neighbor’s young hunting dog following in extremely close pursuit.

It was so close that the rooster was in the dog’s mouth.

It was that close.

“In the mouth” is pretty closely pursued.

It was early in the morning, it was 10° outside with a pretty extreme windchill,  and Jenny was still in her nightgown, but she knew that she had to do something quick if that rooster was going to continue to live.

The rumors of his demise were already greatly exaggerated once that morning.

So she did the only thing she could think of to do.

She went out and grabbed the neighbors dog and brought him inside with the little kids.

The dog was very excited to see our small children.

Nate was not excited to have this strange big puppy jumping up on him.

Sparrow was keying off Nate.

Jenny was in her nightgown.

It was exciting.

When my older son, Isaac, went to check on the rooster, the rooster was bleeding pretty badly.

He was missing most of his elaborate tail feathers.

He was pretty alive, though.

Our neighbor came over from her house across the field (she knew what was possibly happening when Rhett, the dog, broke loose and ran across the road to do what bird dogs do) and said, “I AM SO SORRY!!! WE’LL PAY FOR HIM!! I AM SO SORRY!!!”

Jenny said, “Oh, no…we tried to give those roosters away (when we had three roosters…before the other two died) on Craigslist and no one wanted them. The only reason this one is still here is because he’s the last survivor so he stays around.”

Dangit.

That “prizewinning purebred rooster” could have been our ticket to the good life…or at least a hamburger if it was on sale.

Nahhhhh….I’m only keeeeeding.  I wouldn’t do that to Tammy…those guys are nice neighbors.

And, you know, I really like that hyper spaniel, too.  He’s pretty cool…pretty wild…pretty funny.

But Nate didn’t like him.

He pushed Nate farther into the “I want a little dog” territory when he jumped up and knocked him over.

I don’t want a little lap-dog.  I want a “man dog”. I want a big dog.

Darn that rooster…HE SPOILS EVERYTHING!!!!

And to top it off, I just heard him crow…and it’s not even light outside yet.

Stupid rooster….stay in the mouth next time

Rooster eye, photo by Cecil Williams cecilw.com

 

taste the wine

Posted on by January 28, 2014

In the movies, there’s often a recurring joke where an unsophisticated character is invited to have a glass of the finest wine with the host of the party who is knowledgeable… and proud of its value.

This wine may be a priceless vintage…very expensive…but the guest doesn’t understand its value…and when he’s given a glass, he downs it in one gulp like it was grape juice.

“Welllll, now…that was shore good…could I have another one of those, please?” he might say.

Of course, the host is horrified.  The host knows the value.

I’m the guy who drinks it fast.

And I’m the guy, too, who knows what he’s missed after it’s gone.

That’s my topic for today….appreciating things in the moment…recognizing value before it’s too late.

That’s what I am going to write about for this Tuesday, January 28….2014.

When I got up, the computer told me that Pete Seeger had died.

Pete Seeger was an “old guy with a banjo”.

He was a “relic”.

“His time had passed.”

He was a part of my youth….we sang his songs in the 60’s.

Maybe that’s what I thought in the back of my mind.  I hope not….but it might have been. Maybe I stopped paying attention. Maybe I “drank the wine” too fast. Maybe I didn’t appreciate what was good and real and honest like I should?

Look what his grandson said about him:

“He thought everyone could be heroic,” Seeger’s grandson said.  “He got the world to sing. I think he was a role model to his family, to the whole world.”

“He thought everyone could be heroic.”

I hope that someone confirms my optimism like that when I pass. I hope I’m consistently optimistic enough for anyone to notice.

I think sometimes we make fun of earnestness.

We make fun of earnestness because of the light it casts on our own lack of conviction.

We don’t pick a fight because we think that we can’t win it…that we can’t make a difference.

We stop trying.

We say, “That’s just the way the world is…you’re never going to change it.”

This guy, Pete Seeger….well, he was consistent and vigilant and a whole lot of good things…and he’s not around anymore.

He never stopped believing that a good man could make a difference….and never stopped acting on those beliefs.

It’s hard to lose the good ones.

It’s hard to realize that I should have “tasted the wine” when it was still around.

I should have paid closer attention.

But I have a life of my own. I have my own family.

I better figure out how to pay attention to them. “Bloom where I’m planted”…”do right” at home.

We watched some of the Grammy awards the other night…but went to bed before they did the big finale.

Last night, Jenny asked me “What was up with the big wedding at the end?”

Apparently they had a big same-sex wedding at the end of the night…an overblown spectacle of a performance.

I didn’t know….I was asleep when it happened.

But, you know…all the glitz and noise…all the glamour and flash…won’t have the lasting impact that an older fellow with a banjo could bring to this world.

When something good is lost, I sometimes wake up enough to say, “Did you see that? DID YOU SEE THAT?!! It must have been something good…it must have been a great thing that just passed by.”

Wasn’t that a time?

My eyes are wide open now.

Tuesday…..1/28/2014….5:50 AM.

i love my sister

Posted on by January 27, 2014

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Our four year old told my wife the other day, “I want a little brother.”

Getting a little sister into the world was an unexpected and physically hard 9 months.

I don’t think that Nate is going to have a little brother anytime soon…or ever.

Unless we adopt.

Hmmmmmmm.

Nahhhhh….I say, “Enough kids around here.”

Enough of that.

When Jenny heard him say that, she decided to kid around with him.

She told him that when his Aunt’s baby was born (they might be expecting a boy), that we could take Sparrow up with us and swap the babies out.

Problem fixed….Nate would have an instant baby brother.

He was quiet for a millisecond and then he burst into frantic tears….

“I DON’T WANT TO GIVE SPARROW AWAY!!!!!!! I LOVE MY SISTER!!!!! I LOVE HER ALREADY!!!!  WE CAN’T GIVE HER AWAY!!!!”

Jenny got him calmed back down fairly quickly, but I think it really bothered him that we could be so cavalier about swapping the babies out.

I think that there must be a fine line between “reality” and “ridiculous” for a child.

He really thought that trading babies might be some weird “adult possibility”.

Thinking about it now, that was like some kind of sick Solomon escapade…like the one where he suggested that the women cut the baby in half so that both could be the “mother” when that was in dispute.

We don’t test our children’s love with sick mind games.

But it’s interesting and gratifying to see how distraught Nate got when he thought we might be willing at the drop of a hat to make a weird trade like that.

“I LOVE MY SISTER!!!!….I LOVE HER ALREADY!!!!”

That’s some pretty heavy and cool information for an early morning revelation.

Nate and his little sister went to Costco yesterday with us.

His big brother went, too.

Sparrow was crying, so Jenny sat out in the car with Nate and Sparrow while my son Isaac and I went in to do a little shopping.

When we came out, the car wouldn’t start.

When you have a four-year-old tell you, “I want to go” while you’re frantically going through the list of possible problems and fixes, it doesn’t help the situation.

“I want to go home, too…” I thought.

I called AAA finally and had a tow truck coming in two hours…and then Jenny said, “Maybe it’s the battery? That’s what it did the last time the battery went bad…”.

I was pretty sure that it couldn’t be the battery.  Why would it work and then not work so quickly? The horn still blew pretty strong…why would it be the battery?

But I listened to her….went back into Costco….stood in line…bought a battery, forgot my PIN for the debit card, started to run back outside to get Jenny’s PIN number, remembered it, went back and finished the transaction, took the new battery out to the car, installed it….and the car started right up.

It was the battery.

So I called AAA and canceled the tow.

Nate loves his sister…and the car won’t run with a bad battery.

I learn something new again every day.

 

the preacher with the wandering eye

Posted on by January 26, 2014

financial-coaching-conversation

We were talking about church…and spirituality…and how the two coincide frequently…and I thought that I’d finally write this post this morning.

Did you ever notice how ministers sometimes pick a favorite topic and tend to stick with it?

There’s “7 deadly’s”….but it seems like the topic of the week can be a central underlying theme for a lot of sermons.

I wondered if people don’t pick a topic that they’re having a hard time working through themselves…and try and reconcile the things they’re wrestling with from the pulpit.

I don’t want to come off like I’m picking on ministers…I suppose that anybody who gets on a “soapbox” is probably coming at things from the same angle.

And who isn’t on some kind of soapbox these days?  It might not be a box that’s really high off the ground…you might not attract a lot of attention when you climb up on it…but I guess we’ve all “got opinions…and opinions are like a..”.

But when you hear a minister preach about the dangers of LUST, it may be that the issue is something that he (or she…equal opportunity) is having a hard time with.

They may have a wandering eye that they aren’t really willing to pluck out….so it might be less invasive to distract for a while and draw the attention elsewhere.

Maybe they’re pondering their next sermon on GREED while they’re at the dealership picking out their next new car.

Maybe they’re sitting at a computer, typing a blog about something they’ve thought about but haven’t figured out completely.  What sin would that be? The sin of “knowitallness”?  Pride? Who knows….

Every house is made of glass.

The thing that I ponder sometimes is how people get to the point where they set themselves up as any kind of authority.

Steward…Shepherd….Minister….those are all gentle terms.  These people take a soft hand and guide. They steer for the good of those around them….to the best of their abilities and understanding, they direct to what is good and right for the people they love.

They “steer”….they don’t push or put on a collar and snap on the leash.

Maybe what we’re looking for is to be pushed, though?  Maybe that’s what we want…for the responsibility to be taken away from us and replaced with forceful direction. Maybe if the responsibility is gone, it’s all easier somehow?

I’ve listened to a lot of “preaching”.  Some of it sounds like a bunch of screaming.  Some of it is so gentle and subtle that I don’t completely get the message until I’ve had a chance to think about it for a while.

I take some of it with a grain of salt these days.

Maybe not the message…but certainly sometimes the messenger. Just because someone is talking about things pertaining to the “spiritual side” of life, it doesn’t exempt them from being a major weirdo. I don’t have any qualms about arriving at that conclusion.

I’m not afraid to do that.

I think that God loves me enough to allow me to have some questions without instantly casting me into the lake of fire.

When you get a human being up on a pedestal, and give them a forum, there’s always a chance that some weirdness might come out.

It’s a human being that we’re talking about, after all.

Ordained or not…human beings can be weirdos.

“Anointed”….I think that’s what it all comes down to….the Holy Spirit and the anointment of this bunch of weirdos.

Nobody is smart enough to do it on their own.

God deserves a place in the Church.

At least in the Church.

At least.