Archive for the ‘Who knows?’ Category
Tiny Snowflakes… finally!
Snow falling finally. Not the pretty flakes, but tiny frozen dandruff. Here in deep southern New Hampshire we’ve had March weather since October 31st. I suppose I should suppress it but I keep thinking there should lyrics for this that are sung to the melody of Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles”.
Tiny snowflakes (tiny snowflakes)
In the breeze (in the breeze). . .
Life in Light
Sun shines over my shoulder. Cascades of light and warmth spill across me and to the north I see long shadows of myself on the floor.
I cannot look into the light but I know of Light’s embrace. I cannot see God but I accept that God is near all the same.
A Right to Left World
I wonder how it came to be that right to left was the way to read… for some but not all of ‘us’? In a left to right world how do the ‘right to left’ live? Are there closet right readers (those who read wrong)? In a world where calamity is the expectation and on a slow news night the increased humidity of a mild summer night is presented by the ‘chief meterologist’ with a view toward the apocalypse it seems likely that the end is where we find our meaning.
My beloved is a cheater reader. She doesn’t exactly read right to left but she sneaks a peak at the last chapter to decide whether she will stick with the writer to the end. Is the end, she asks, worth the effort? In a right to left world do we already know where we are bound but wonder from whence we came?
Several Sundays ago our minister wrestled with Paul, or at least Paul’s interpreters. “All things work for good.” Unlike those ‘things’ that work for food or a good salary, I suppose. No, what our minister protested was the tempation to abandon accountability for Andersonvile, Auswitz, Somalia with a blithe “all things work for good.”
When my late wife was diagnosed with her, eventually deadly, cancer two polar opposites set to work explaining our dilmena. It was all good, somehow. Or, it was all bad and we deserved it. To say I loathed the latter and the one(s) who declared it would be self evident to any who know me but to say that I equally loathed the former might come as a surprise. After all they might say, “You are a minister, of course you believe all things work for good.”
Not so fast. I find it far easier to accomodate the reality of disease, decay, and death than to explain birth, vitality, and hope. How can anyone emerge from the torture chamber and have hope or from the oncologist where ‘the facts have been explained’ and belive that there is joy afoot? I can’t speak as an authority of every instance of suffering and the discovery of goodness but I can say that I have no answer but this: goodness is conceived even in the deepest trouble.
“Top This”
This week I contribute an article to our corporate newsletter. The feature is called “Top This” wherein we, the road savvy technology savants, relate our encounters with peril and pleasure of unexpected dimensions. Presumably each posting will be a challenge to our gaggle of consultants to out do the last contributor.
This reminds me of efforts to challenge my neighbor to a game of “HORSE” with a basketball in the side yard. I, the infallibly un-gifted player, would be assigned a letter from the word “horse” for each time I failed match a feat performed by my him with the ball and hoop. Once in a while I could pull off a three point shot from a distance roughly the same as center court to keep from falling farther behind but I consistently failed to achieve even a semblance of a layup. Consequently I became the first, and usually only, player to reach the humiliating rank of ‘hor…’ (a fate worse than simply losing) while my competitors toyed with ‘h….’ or no letter at all.
In this context I consider the challenge; Who can top the tornado filled twilight of Dave’s (the previous contributor) recent Memphis trip? To recount sufferings such as my series of sweltering sojourns on the unbiquitously unpleasnant United Airlines would hardly measure up!
So, rather than trivialize my misery, I offer my best adventure to date; A snowy trip to mid-town Manhattan . I flew in from New Hampshire on the Sunday night before classes were to start. As my cab crossed the Tri-Borough bridge from Queens a snow flake struck the wind shield. Considering my good fortune I commented to the driver that had I booked a later flight I probably would have been canceled.
By the time I reached my hotel a light but steady snow was falling and I enjoyed looking from my hotel room window. The room was, surprisingly, graced with a balcony and I stepped out to watch the snow. Beautiful.
After dinner I pulled the shades, read for a while, and eventually fell asleep. Near dawn I got up and prepared for the day. Only after I dressed and gathered my gear did I open the shades again. The balcony was buried in three feet of snow.
Standing on a chair to get a better view I could see Madison Avenue to my right as empty as if it were an unplowed drive providing access to a remote vacation cabin in the Great North Woods. For some reason I had carried boots with me and changing into them I headed straight out to the streets. I made the hike to Time Square and stood at the center of that triangle looking more alone than a survivor of a post apocalyptic world. Nothing, no one moved. For an hour or so I traveled through various neighborhoods past city landmarks where even as late as 10 o’clock in the morning there were only a handful of pedestrians. The city was shut down.
A bagel vendor near the hotel walked across the Brooklyn bridge to get to his shop and were it not for him I would have been pretty hungry. The hotel lacked a restaurant and their delivery service didn’t deliver. By dinner I was on my third trip to the bagle shop and loving it.
I had no camera with me, a mistake I have not repeated, or I would have some relics of the trip. As it is, I have my memories… not bad fare at that.
On a whim... 