Light in the darkness

December3, 2012

 

“Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work;” (Isaiah 54:16 KJV)

Smith, my last name, is perhaps the most common name in the English-speaking world. A smith would have been a metal-worker. I can imagine a conversation that went something like this; “Excuse me, sir.” “How can I help you?” “The axle on my cart has broken. Is there someone in town who could repair it?” “Yes, yes there is.” “Proceed to the town square and you’ll find the shop of Jerald the smith.” Eventually, Jerald the smith became Jerald Smith.

A smith takes some raw iron ore and heats in a furnace until it become red-hot and pliable. The metal is placed on an anvil and beaten with a hammer to shape it into a useful form. As the metal cools, it cannot be shaped easily, so it may be repeatedly put back into the furnace, heated and then beaten again before it is done.

Wordsmiths do with words what blacksmiths do with iron. I have great admiration for writers and speakers who can form and shape words with such craft and skill as to evoke emotions and images in the hearer or reader that penetrate to the heart or fire the imagination. Lincoln did that in the Gettysburg Address. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did that on the steps of the Capitol.

Frederick Buechner, the author of the quote at the top of this page, was quite a wordsmith himself. Writing about the Advent season, he plays with the images of light and darkness, the coming of Jesus as the light of the world and the darkness that persists around us and in us.

“We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and to hallow us, to liberate us from the dark. Advent is like the hush in a theater just before the curtain rises. It is like the hazy ring around the winter moon that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver. Soon. But for the time being, our time, darkness is where we are, (Buechner, Listening to Your Life, p. 315).”

I’ve been thinking on his “darkness is where we are” thought for several days now. It neatly, powerfully and concisely describes what I sometimes sense with patients here in the hospital. Being a patient can be a very dark place, sometimes filled with grief over a radical change in their sense of who they are or the narrowing of what had for so long seemed like an open-ended expanse.

It is a holy thing to be invited into that darkness. Tread lightly.

Blessings to you all,

Jerald

I Want My Cat Back!

September 21, 2012

The Lord is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.

For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust. Ps. 103: 13-14 (NLT)

“I Want My Cat Back!” she said.

My friend, Michelle, a frequent member of our noon-time prayer group at work, had endured some very stressful days of balancing working full-time, being a single mother, going to college at night and preparing to move to a new home. Early on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, she took her beloved cat, Dr. Doofenshmirtz-Shmirtz for short, with the first load of stuff so that he would have a chance to acclimate to the new home. Frightened by the strange surroundings, Shmirtz jumped out of her arms and disappeared. She looked everywhere for him, but couldn’t find him. She was heartsick.

Near midnight, after a long day of loading and unloading, packing and unpacking, the stress of it all finally got to her. As the tears started to flow, she prayed one of those heartfelt, honest-to-God prayers. She recalled God’s promises to be faithful, to put no more on us than we are able to bear, that nothing was too hard for Him and concluded with “and I want my cat back!”

I’ll confess to a certain amount of ambivalence about this Glimmers. Praying for my cat to come back is not a prayer that would ever cross my lips. I don’t quite understand this level of attachment to a cat, but to Michelle, Shmirtz is family. He sleeps on the bed near her feet every night. But this isn’t about me anyway. Prayer is about what is important to the pray-er and every now and then, it is really good to see a prayer answered.

The venting over, Michelle felt relieved and finally went to bed after a very long, hard day. As she lay in the bed trying to slow her thinking down and get some sleep, she thought she heard a familiar noise-the tinkling of the bell on her cat’s collar. There it was again. Could it be? She got up to check. Sure enough, there on the back porch was the long-lost cat.

Prayer is spiritual communication. It is about so much more than sending up a list of presents you’d like to receive, as if God was merely a celestial Santa Claus. Most of the time, we’re fine with the spiritual strength we gain from this vital communion with God. We understand that there are bigger things at work. We can be patient, content with the knowledge that God cares for us and is watching over us. But we all have our limits. We all reach the end of our rope on occasion. And sometimes you really need God to give you your cat back.

Blessings to you all,

Jerald

Looking, but not seeing

August 17, 2012

I cannot tell you how many times I have walked past the painting that hangs on the wall across from our hospital gift shop. What I can tell you is that I never saw it until two weeks ago. If you had asked me before then if I’d ever seen it, I would have said “of course,” with the same smug confidence I would have used had you asked me if I knew the sun rises in the East. But I hadn’t seen it at all.

The woman who revealed the painting to me had been a patient in our hospital a few months back. She had come to talk with me about becoming a spiritual support volunteer. She is an artist I found out and after our conversation, I walked with her toward the front entrance of the hospital to see her off. The painting caught her eye. “It’s lovely,” she said as she walked toward it. Eventually, she got so close to it that her face was almost touching it. “It’s silk!” she said, “How beautiful!”

I walked closer to investigate and was amazed. The artist had used hundreds of brightly colored bits of silk cloth to “paint” a school of Japanese koi swimming in a pond. Up close, I could see the individual pieces that I had missed so many times before. Each piece had been meticulously placed to present the whole picture in such a way that you could not tell they were separate pieces if you were more that a few inches away.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about that painting and the detail I didn’t see for the last eight years. What else and who else have I missed seeing because I haven’t looked closely enough? I don’t know the answer to that. But I’m looking.

Blessing to you all,

Jerald

How I learned to eat a real breakfast

Glimmers August 9, 2012 “Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers of at least what the saints are blinded by…” (Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life, p. 169) Old Florida-style homes were mostly wooden structures built about two feet off the ground. Rather than being set on a concrete pad, they were supported on concrete blocks or concrete pillars. The space between the floor of the house and the ground, combined with lots of windows, allowed the air to flow through the house so as to cool it as much as possible in the sticky Florida Summers. You can still find old homes built this way all over the Southeastern United States. My grandparents on my father’s side had just such a house in Belle Glade, FL. When I was 10 years old, I spent a week or so with them. Alone. By that time, Ruben and Lina Smith were really old. He was 69 and she was 68. As I played with my toy brontosaurus and T rex, I was sure they had seen the real things. Every day but Sunday, he dressed the same, bib overalls and a short sleeve white button up shirt. She wore simple cotton dresses and her long hair was always in a neat, tiny bun. It was there during that summer that I learned how to eat a real breakfast. Sitting at the small table in their dining room, I looked at the fried eggs, grits and bacon on my plate and my stomach churned. Both my parents worked and breakfast at my house was typically a fix it yourself affair and was usually toast or cereal. All that yellow, gooey stuff seemed unappetizing. And it was, at first. I watched them spoon the grits on top of the eggs, cut it with a fork and knife and mix it all up. They added some salt and generous amounts of black pepper. I copied them, except using a little less black pepper and a little more salt. It was tolerable. Barely. These survivors of the depression and years of tenant farming in Southwest Georgia took nothing for granted and they expected that I would eat what was placed in front of me. And I did. By the end of the week, I loved eggs, grits and bacon for breakfast. To this day, when I eat the Smokehouse breakfast at Cracker Barrel, I’m often transported back for a few seconds to the table in that tiny, Florida-style house in Belle Glade, Florida in 1966. When I began thinking about my Granny and Granddaddy Smith and putting words on the page, this was not where I had thought it would go. Memories are like that. They creep into our consciousness and then take us on a journey to a land of long-forgotten sights, sounds, textures and scents that touch the deep places of our souls. Perhaps that is the reason we spend more time in our memories as we age and we enjoy taking walks down memory lane so much. Blessings to you all, Jerald

Garbage in, garbage out

I read an article this morning on pop music. The author began with a quote from Plato about the power of music. “Music is the most decisive factor in one’s upbringing. It is above all rhythm and attunment that sink deep into the soul and take strongest hold upon it.” (Plato, Republic 380 BC) Some people will be shocked music existed before Justin Bieber, but indeed, music has been around about as long as people. In fact, if you believe the Bible, music actually predates people. The author reported on his study of music from the 50s to the present and described how lyrics have become much more explicit and exploitive. You can read the whole article here; http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/18/highway-to-hell-the-changing-face-of-pop-music/?page=1

Anybody who has reared teenagers in the last twenty years needs no researcher to tell him or her anything about raunchy music. I remember with horror getting into my daughter’s vehicle, turning on the ignition and being blasted by Nelly singing? “It gittin hot in here, so take off all yo clothes.” I started singing it for my girls on the premise that anything that I sang was decidedly un-cool and therefore less appealing to them. I don’t know if that is true, but it made me feel better.

The author doesn’t do so, but I’ll bet a correlation exists between this debasement of music and the debasement of culture. How much music has shaped our attitudes about relationships, sexuality, society, work, race and religion is anybody’s guess, but I’d guess a lot!

I had a college friend who was studying computer programming way back when computers programs ran on punch cards. After writing a program to punch the cards, he’d run the cards to see if the program worked. If it didn’t, he’d have to re-write it and try again. He’d say, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

That old adage about computer programming can be applied to our minds and our spirits. Our “computers” will respond to what we put in them. Garbage in. Garbage out.

Now that, in a stream of consciousness kind of way, reminded me of this story that, via the internet, has circled the globe about a bazillion times by now. The speaker has been Cherokee, Sioux, non-specific Native American and half a dozen other tribes in these tellings, but the point is valid nonetheless.

The Two Wolves
A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about life.He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me… it is a terrible fight between two wolves.One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, hatefulness, and lies.The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, humbleness, kindness, friendship, generosity, faith, and truth.This same fight is going on inside of you, and inside every other person, too.”The children thought about it for a minute. Then one child asked his grandfather,“Which wolf will win?”The Cherokee elder replied…“The one you feed.”It is ever so. Which wolf are you feeding?

Blessings to you all,

Jerald

Fear Less

Happy Friday the 13th! I’ve said that a few times today and it has generated some laughs and some discussion about superstitions. There are people who are genuinely afraid of the number 13. Triskaidekaphobia is the name for this irrational fear. How the number 13 became so fearful, I’m not entirely sure. But I have noticed that most tall buildings have a 12th floor and a 14th floor, but not a 13th. Hoteliers are afraid guests would refuse to stay on that floor, so rather than waste the space, they call it 14.

It is amazing how easily fear can take over our thoughts. Fear is a powerful emotion and, as newspapers, movies, themeparks, and TV have discovered, it sells!
Max Lucado in his book Fearless, cites a study by reporter Bob Garfield on the increasing focus on fear in broadcast and print media reporting. His findings were enlightening. Major publications over the brief period of his inquiry reporting on health issues said;
· 59 million Americans have heart disease,
· 53 million Americans have migraines,
· 25 million Americans have osteoporosis,
· 3 million have cancer,
· 2 million have severe brain disorders,
“Reportedly, in total, 543 million Americans consider themselves to be seriously sick, a troubling figure since there are 266 million people in the country. As Garfield noted, ‘Either as a society we are doomed, or someone is seriously double-dipping.” Fearless, p. 159.
In healthcare today, the environment has become so anxious that a reorganization of one health system can cause ripple effects of fear throughout an entire region. The anxiety bubbles up and our stomachs start to churn. We are not alone. The feeling is pervasive, it seems. Fear. It is a highly contagious bug. To defeat it, we need a strong immune system. What follows is and extra shot of B12 and a high dose bolus of vitamin C.

“There’s a stampede of fear out there. Let’s not get caught in it. Let’s be among those who stay calm. Let’s recognize danger but not be overwhelmed. Acknowledge threats but refuse to be defined by them. Let others breathe the polluted air of anxiety, not us. Let’s be numbered among those who hear a different voice, God’s. Enough of these shouts of despair, wails of doom. Why pay heed to the doomsdayer on Wall Street or the purveyor of gloom in the newspaper? We will incline our ears elsewhere; upward. We will turn to our Maker, and because we do, we will fear less.” Fearless, p. 159.

I’m taking my dose now. Want to join me?
Blessings to you all!
Jerald

Nothing is Wasted

There was no time to think or to plan. It was all reaction. A non-thinking, muscle memory, instinctive reaction and it probably saved our lives. We were traveling I-295 West on the South side of Jacksonville, headed for I-10. We were, or I should say I was, driving a bit faster than the speed limit as I kept pace with the traffic. We were in the left lane of the three-lane interstate. There was a black car in front of us three to four car-lengths ahead. I noticed the white car about a ¼ mile ahead parked on the shoulder between the concrete retaining wall and our traffic lane and as we got closer, I realized it was a sheriff’s car. Shortly after that, another sheriff’s cruiser sped by in the center lane, cut to the left lane in front of the car ahead of me and hit the brakes hard.

In that instant, the car in front of me slammed on the brakes. I slammed on my brakes. I glanced at the rear-view mirror to see the green Camry behind me had slammed on his brakes and swerved violently to the middle lane. Relieved that I would not have to fear being sandwiched in the collision, I turned my attention again to the car ahead. The sheriff’s officer, still riding the brakes, slid into the median in front of the parked cruiser. The black car let off the brakes and the few feet of distance between us began to widen.
After it was over, I was talking in excited tones to my wife…ok, I was really yelling about how stupid the officer was to pull such a stunt. He came very close to causing at least a three-car pile up at 70 miles per hour on the interstate and I was angry. Angry that someone sworn to protect public safety had so foolishly put our safety at risk. But that was after.

During the event, I could only react. Forty-plus years since driver’s ed. Forty-plus years of driving experience. Forty-plus years of long days on the interstate. Forty-plus years of dirt, gravel, concrete and asphalt. Forty-plus years of sunshine, rain, snow and black ice. Forty-plus years of watching several cars ahead as I drive. Forty plus years of moving the foot from the accelerator to the brake and back again. Forty-plus years of checking the rear-view mirror frequently as I drove. In an instant, all those mundane activities and experiences became vitally important. In that moment, all those years of repetitive motion and routine actions paid off as I instantly reacted to avoid slamming into the car in front of me.

Life is a lot like that. A lot of mundane, routine things happen. A lot of difficult and painful experiences happen. And not only do they sometimes make no sense, oft times they seem so meaningless that we don’t even make an effort to make sense of them. And then, in an instant you become aware that all those things have prepared you for this moment.

Blessings to you all,

Jerald