Music at any level can be a true joy. It reminds me of one of the beauties of the beautiful game, soccer. You can be totally ignorant of the laws of the game and still enjoy it. Kids with little understanding of the strategies or techniques of the game can have a truly enjoyable experience on a weekend playing the game, not to mention the entertainment value for the on-lookers. Yet I rewind over and over certain plays from the English league games I watch in complete awe of the level of skill required to do what they do. It requires skill but also determination. A player who is on the field for the whole 90 minutes will often run over 6 miles during the course of the game. Much of that time is spent testing the defence and looking for the best way to attack the goal. A great build-up of several passes and lots of hard work will often come to naught. But if you have the stamina to keep attacking you will eventually be rewarded with a goal. Not that different, I suppose, from all the plays and strategies that go into getting into the end-zone at an American football game. Music, even in its simplest form, can be immensely enjoyable. My granddaughter needed to practice her clarinet tonight. She indicated that she just needed to play some. No particular assignment or anything. Well, while she was getting out her instrument I figured out what notes she could play to accompany a song I like to play on the guitar. She had to learn a couple of new notes but we were soon on our way through the song. Then I decided to see about scaring up the ol' trumpet that had been purchased some years ago. Sure enough, as mis-fortune would have it, I found it. As my granddaughter and I played a couple of simple duets and her enthusiasm became more and more evident, I realized what a great blessing music can be. Will she write or perform great masterpieces? As wonderful as that would be, it does not affect the great time we had this evening in our living room. We are planning for an encore performance in the near future. I remember stories about my Uncles wanting to stay home from the movies to play music with their mom and dad. They eventually made a living with their instruments in New York playing for Broadway plays. But would those times have been any less enjoyable if they had pursued other careers? Nope. And so music has found a way, once again, to enrich my life. Thank you, Lord, for music. You are the author and finisher of my faith and the writer of the most marvellous symphonies.
The title of this blog may change, though you'll never know. While this blog deals with an occasion that is not at all rare in scripture it identifies an occurrence that jumped out at me this morning. Brevity, (sorry for yet another interruption, but it turns out brevity has fewer letters in it than I tried to give it), so, brevity, simplicity and eternal truth all combine to bring us Romans 8:6. "For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace." We must handle such verses with care as we are wont, as occupants on this earth and finite beings in this physical world, to bury and resurrect this, and other, eternal truths, to more comfortably fit our lives. There are times when the absolute truth of this verse warms and fills us with a sense of wonder. Yes, we say to ourselves, this is so true. Then, there are those times when this verse is completely ignored so as not to get in the way of our selfish ambitions. Physiology wins out over our spirit. Our minds are taken captive by our bodies or our desire for a certain thing. It is the point where temptation becomes sin and that is where we most need to hold on to the truth that we know. So hold on tight and don't be shy about pointing out a friend's grip that looks to be slipping. In his heart he knows the same simple, eternal truth you do.
Well, I need to start off with a bit of a disclaimer. The purpose of this entry is not to cast disparagement on my ability to comprehend what someone is trying to communicate to me. However, it will explore the speed, or lack thereof, at which I am able to grasp things. I'm pretty quick on certain aspects of the realities of this world. For instance, if I touch a hot stove the thought of it being hot has not even registered as my hand is quickly repositioned to a cooler location. There is virtually no time at all that expires between the touch and the grasping of the reality that the object of my touching is very, very hot. On the other hand, some things, which are just as real, and just as hot, though not physically, are slow to be comprehended by the same system that brought us the cat-like response of the earlier situation. A while back I began memorizing scripture. The second chapter I undertook to file away in the ol' steel trap was Isaiah 53. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed ....... Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried........but He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. There are a lot of wonderful thoughts and pictures that come to mind reading through the chapter and while trying to memorize I must have gone over each verse a hundred times or more. So the other night as I read back over the chapter trying to reinforce my memory a bit, it was a surprise to have a portion of one of the verses really hit me. For cryin' out loud, I'd only been over these words a few hundred times. You can't consider every word with any real depth when your goal is to memorize. Repetition is important, not contemplation. Well, when I read, "by His scourging we are healed" I immediately had to stop reading and I placed my hands over my face as my mind and spirit seemed to be operating on a deeper level than before. By His scourging, that would be the scourging that my sin has brought to bear on Him. By His scourging, we are healed. God turned around the darkness of sin and used it as a tool to heal us. The pain He endured took away sin's final victory in my life and healed my spirit. Somehow, this perfect, sinless man used Satan's own tool against him. God's shield of salvation dulled and rendered useless the devil's most powerful weapon. Our sin, directed at the Lamb of God, becomes useless and cannot have its usual effect because it was defeated by God's light. Our sin, when laid at the foot of the cross, cannot take our lives, it can only cause us pain here on earth and that pain is nothing compared to what we will experience in glory. There is a deep peace waiting in those words and I am still unwrapping yet another wonderful Christmas present from my heavenly Father. Hope you get what you've always wanted, too.
In reading over my last post I've decided that a mental evaluation might be in order. My struggle with continuity is an ongoing fight that I usually end up on the short end of. Seems like I had a couple of good points in there but they weren't necessarily points that followed logically with the previous statements. Of course the title was "non sequitur". My adherence to the spirit of the title was, however, largely unintentional. Rather than deleting the post I decided to leave it as a reminder to try to give these postings a little more forethought.When in college I delivered a speech in speech class about eye care. To establish myself as someone who has a unique perspective on the subject I was going to mention, early in my speech, about an accident that occurred when I was 7 leaving me blind in my right eye. That point was going to validate me as someone whose comments on the subject of eye care should be heeded. After a nervous few minutes in front of the class my ordeal was over and I was listening to the next poor sucker deliver his or her speech. Several minutes after taking refuge at my seat it hit me. I didn't mention the fact that I had been left blind in one eye as a child. Wow, how could I forget that. It was the very point that would have given people a good reason to listen to me. Similar scenarios have played out over the years as I have attempted to teach or discuss pros and cons of ideas with others. So last week's post was a pretty good indication of how things unfold in my head. Maybe I will try to go back and develop each of those disjointed ideas more fully sometime. I believe each of them, I simply didn't support my position on them. They just sort of came out like bumper stickers.OK, now here are a couple of new entries in my pocket calendar. (sorry if I've mentioned any of these before)1) The EPROM programmer we have at work will check the chip to make sure it has been erased because it won't take a new program if it hasn't. This process is call a "blank check". I'm planning on explaining this to my brother before shining a flash light in his ear and saying, "yep, she's blank alright".2) Someone who stands out in a crowd could be called, "distinctified".3) there's a 24 hr. "Family Dining" restaurant that also advertises as smoker friendly. I noticed they changed their sign recently. I think the only way to work the idea of family into the crowd I saw in there on one 2 am visit, is if you were thinking of starting one.4) In Michigan, day-care facilities have union dues taken out of the government subsidies they receive. They have no choice in the matter.5) Friday Feb. 12, 2010, there was snow on the ground in all 50 states.6) This is a nice story. The organization in England that tells old people they are not "eligible" for certain procedures because it wouldn't be good use of resources is the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. N.I.C.E.7) When no one responds to a passionate email you sent around you might say, "my email fell on deaf eyes".8) I made up a couple of governmental bureaucracies so I could sound important when I talk to total strangers. They are: the Society for the Preservation of Non-Stick Cooking Surfaces, and the Federal Name Spelling Administration. I'm thinking of making some laminated badges to lend some weight to my ruse.9) Resistance is futile, voltage is everything.I'm so glad we had this little chat. Now go find something worthwhile to do.
I'm not sure I spelled sequitur correctly, nope, oh, well, you'll never know since I've corrected it now. Guess I pulled one over on you, huh? Ever notice how common it is to have people comment on how important their good health is. Yea, we've had a pretty bad run of luck lately but at least we still have our health. You're only as old as you feel and I feel like I'm in my 20's. We never had all the things we wanted in life but we had our health. Why is it that something that is so important it seems to transcend every other aspect of our lives is something we don't want to have to pay for? We'll drive to a doctor appointment in our new 20,000 dollar car then complain that our co-pay went up from 10 to 15 dollars. Isn't something a little out of whack here? We are going to bankrupt the country so people who own nice cars, HD flat screen tv's and nice houses, and who pay no income tax, can push their health care on to the tax payers. We need to look at the many ways we can make our health care system much more responsive to peoples needs and more affordable without destroying our economy. Here's what I think is actually going on. It's, I believe, a little like the man-made global warming situation. Intellectuals, (this is sorta funny so I have to tell you, I misspelled intellectuals) who are smart enough to think for those of us who aren't, figure they need to perpetrate these scare tactics in order to scare us into doing what they know is best for us. They are either lacking confidence in their persuasive abilities, or in the general public's IQ. You see, it doesn't matter that there is little evidence pointing to man's involvement in global climate change, what matters is that the smart people help guide this country to the right moral choice as pertaining to our consumption habits. We use entirely too much of the worlds resources, so we hand the world a tool to beat us over the head with. Man-made global warming to be exact. Health care, on the other hand, is a tool to move this country toward a more socialist disposition. We need to be brought in line with the rest of the world. No one country should be more successful or prosperous than any other country. It just isn't fair. If employees were taking home the money their employers are spending on their health care they could purchase insurance on their own that would be much more appropriate for their needs and would often cost less than the employer is paying and would go with the employee if they found a better job or were terminated. Additionally, in the case of HSA's a nice nest egg could be accumulated over the life of a younger worker putting money into his account. In conclusion, if good health really is such a wonderful thing then I say to the American people, put "your" money where your mouth is, not mine.
A friend came over Saturday morning and we comenced work on a project of mine that was started about 15 years ago best I can remember. The downstairs bathroom has had a toilet and sink for some time now but not a shower, ceiling, or the most necessary item of all, an exhaust fan. As my friend's more informed eye surveyed the situation things began looking a little more doable to me. Our main accomplishments for the day resided in two dissimilar categories. Under the strategic heading, I now have a plan of attack to win the bathroom war. Under the more practical heading we resolved a major problem with the mis-alignment of the shower base drain and the location of the drain pipe in the basement floor. As good fortune would have it the resolution of said problem was to rent a jack hammer and share some good solid manly bonding time together. So solid was the manly bonding that I was virtually left handed all day today. Not sure what my precise injury is but does not appear to be a broken bone. Maybe a bad bruise or some kind of ligament damage or something. Anyway, following my daughter's advice has seen a measured improvement in my condition. Oops, I forgot that I had told my son I would start incorporating a literary device called a paragraph every now and then. It seems like a lot of my stories just ramble and so a paragraph would be somewhat mis-leading as far as indicating how the story unfolds in my head. However, I'm sure with a little effort I can figure out appropriate places for paragraphical insertions. There, That wasn't so hard. If you were at the Lowe's in Derby Friday evening you might have caught some of the Tim and Bert show. I asked my son to accompany me on my mission as I knew I would need his muscle to get the materials we were to buy into "his" car. So off we went. It's always fun to wander about aimlessly at a lumber yard but the wandering was somewhat subdued because of the big cart we were leading around with us. Nevertheless an enjoyable father son excursion right up to the point where I reached in my pocket for my bill fold. "Gosh, I guess I left it at home". Tim eventually produced his debit card to save us from any further embarrassment, or so we thought. I had smartly measured the opening in the back of his Subaru Forrester to verify we could fit two 4 x 8 slices of sheet-rock in it. Well, while they did indeed fit in the very back, where I had measured, they did not want to go on up into the vehicle past the protrusions that housed the seat belt assemblies. The argument lasted several minutes and the shedding of some gypsum was unavoidable. However, in the end, we were victorious and we proceeded home on this cold night with the back of the Forrester open as well as my window. I needed to provide some positive air flow to avoid sucking all the exhaust into the car. Wow, what a great time we had and as is not always the case, there was someone there to share the time with. I can only imagine God was chuckling just a bit as we drove our cold selves home on this eventful eve.
It's all just a blur now. Two loud, boisterous, very full, days of music interrupted only occasionally by a hamburger or a hot dog. It's interesting how I find some bitter-sweetness in experiencing the "morning after". Same is true after the festival in Winfield. There's something attractive about the contrast from one day to the next. The lobby of the hotel was brimming with life and music for hours on end for 2 days straight. Then Sunday morning comes with the quiet lobby echoing only the faint hushed tones of a few people moving their baggage and instruments to their cars. A single conversation is heard, though not distinctly, from across the lobby whereas the day before you could scarcely hear the jam that was happening just a couple of feet away. Like a hundred yard dash. No pacing, just pushing yourself as hard as you can for those few seconds then coming to a stop just a few feet past the finish line. I dared to don my 12 string on this morning. It seemed to be the most appropriate instrument for the occasion. I sat in a corner of the lobby for the first few songs. Finger picking and singing softly through Boy From The Country, How Great Is Our God, and a couple of other songs. Then a group of folks gathered in my vicinity, though not to listen, but rather to talk of their time there. I quietly exited to a vacant hallway where I could resume my tired, melancholy music. After some time there with just a person or two moving down the hallway a young man and woman emerged from around the corner. The lady pulled a chair over near mine and helped the young blind man sit down in it. She said she would be right back and disappeared around the same corner from which they had come. Tyler was this kid's name, and we visited a bit before I began playing some more music. Eventually, I helped them get out to the front of the hotel so a friend could pick up Tyler and take him where he needed to go. I remembered Tyler from the night before. He was jamming with some folks by the pillar just ahead of the confluence of one of the several hallways and the lobby. He was playing his guitar and singing with great enthusiasm. He is in a band back in Johnson City, TN and the young lady performs with him as well. As we sat in the hall we talked about music and bands etc. He commented on how he really has trouble warming up to a singer who is not engaged in the lyrics of the song. He said it was important to feel like you have something to say. I mentioned how hard it is to make a living at music and he agreed. However, he said that if you are doing something you enjoy then the money isn't that important. I mentioned what a friend had told me once about our hopes as relating to our children. We tend to want them to be "successful" without really examining what that means. We tend to default to our cultural definition of success requiring a substantial salary etc. When what we should hope for our children is that they are happy. You have to pay some bills but beyond that if you're happy at what you spend your life doing then that seems to be the important thing. I bid Tyler goodbye and encouraged him to keep playing and singing. This day was turning into an enjoyable event although it started out a little iffy. My head was pounding all morning. Ibuprofen didn't help and I was looking at the prospect of becoming sick to my stomach if things went as they often do with these headaches. I suspect the long drive and two long, though enjoyable days, were catching up with my old and aging body. I laid down across the chairs at the back of the room while the Gospel groups were performing. This did not help either. I decided to head for Kansas so around noon I took off and bid Nashville adieu. When I was well on my way up I-24 heading toward St. Louis I stopped at a convenience store. Parked around to the side of the store I set my seat back and took a nap. A long nap. It was at least an hour though I didn't note the time when I started. When I awoke I felt measurably better and my headache was all but vanquished. My new-found strength eventually took me all the way home through some rain and snow both. I was amazed at how well I felt on the trip after having such a sickly start to the day. Some light snow met me just west of Columbia, MO and accompanied me the rest of the way home. The snow's intensity increased as I approached Emporia where I would enter the Kansas Turnpike for the final leg of my journey. By the time I hit Cassoday, about 30 miles So. of Emporia and 50 from Wichita, the snow was collecting on the roadway. About 20 miles later I was moving around 40 mph and that would be the speed that would take me on into Wichita. Boy was I glad to be home. Two quick trips from the car to the house to deposit my gym bag and instruments on the couch and I was headed to bed. The heater probably ran 11 or 12 minutes out of the 14 hour trip so a warm bed was just what the doctor ordered.Home sweet home!
