Stuck in Traffic
At the Ski Lodge
In the Ski lodge
Fried food lingers
to pores, plaster
and particle board walls
it’s a teenage wasteland
of sorts
acne and cells phones
tightly wrapped
in Northface coats
down knockoffs
mittens and scarves
and blistered feet
are engulfed in boots
too tight
strapped, locked in
and ready for
another downward
plunge.
Idle chatter coats
The tables and chairs
Like syrups of soda
Spilled, layered and sticking
To everything it touches.
Youth lined in coats of safety
Safely glance, withdrawing
And glancing again
Lacking confidence
Coughing nervously
Courageously trying, failing…
Picking themselves up off
Of the powered snow
Brushing off illusions
Of rejection, injecting
Infected bruised pride
With another shot of
Laughter, red faced
Not just frost bite
Teasing the cheeks and nose
This is living
ski lifts, hot cups of cocoa
Steaming , engulfing souls in this
Wasteland,
retrieving mitten hands
Gathering up scarves and hats
Destined for that big jump
That may or may not come
Accompanied with chances
Of bruised pride, ribs and
Collar bones… those that
Are free, full of fried food
Ferry up the slope again
Fighting off such feelings
Of failure,
It’s all downhill
from there.
“Knock, knock…”
change is constant (background music)
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw
Knock, knock…who’s there? Noah. Noah who? Noah a good way to open the door?
Ok bad joke, but change is knockin’ and wants to come in and sometimes we sit behind the door hoping that change will just go away so that we don’t have to open it!
Change is inevitable, yet why is it that most, if not all of us, would rather have a root canal than be forced to change? Perhaps you’re thinking, “but I’m spontaneous, I like change.” Do you really? If change is planned by someone other than yourself do you not feel powerless, forced into something, and maybe a little bit controlled? The obvious answer is yes! In this regard, when change is forced upon us, most if not all would dig in our heels, be dragged kicking and screaming through the threshold of change. Yet is change in and of itself necessarily the villain here? No, it’s not. Change is just the conduit by which realities in our lives are modified, for better or worse. If anything is at fault from time to time in healthy change it’s the attitude in which we receive this change. Our attitudes can make or break decisions and positive directions if we continually have a negative outlook on things around us.
Have you ever been friends with a cynic or a pessimist who were always negative? It’s not exactly a healthy relationship to always be dreary, somber and generally disagreeable. No one wants to be around people like that all the time, because whatever glimmer of hope one might have of life can be sucked out of them by the downer attitude of a naysayers or pessimist.
So why do we dig in our heels when change occurs? Could it be that our own sense of security and comfort is threatened? Substantial positive change has that effect on a majority of us who live and breathe every day…ok maybe that’s too vague. Let me put it another way. Substantial positive change has that effect on all of us in some shape or form. Are you getting the picture now? We are all affected by change. John Maxwell once said, “If we’re growing we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone” Meaning, if we are continuing to modify our outcomes in life for the better, improving our lifestyle, habits, work ethic, then we are going to be uncomfortable, we are going to face challenges…but it is always worth it.
Have you ever kept a journal? A few years ago I opened one of our moving boxes and discovered a couple of old poetry journals that I had filled and written in ages ago. At the time, I thought these poems were fantastic, or at least moderately good. But when I re-read them again, I discovered that as a young adult or teenager, my poems were shallow, simplistic and fairly unoriginal…In it I discovered that I had grown, matured and my outlook on life has changed for the better. It’s funny when we look back at periods of our lives and think about how we were. People change. We, you change! This is a constant. This is a truth we all discover as we age in this life. Have you ever gone back to a school reunion and thought to yourself, wow everyone has changed? You just witnessed this truth of change.
-Back to our heel digging decries of this villain known as change…
Helen Keller once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” Change is like this, and so is our perception of our lives or our interpretation of our lives. I can sure identify with this quote. I’ve stared longingly at closed doors of happiness, wishing they would re-open and yet life is forcing me through other doors of possibility. I have regretted some of those doors and my entry through them, and because in my displeasure and complaints I have failed to capture the blessings of those open and new opportunities. I’ve been ashamed of my almost childish protests. My “not gonna do it and you can’t force me to” proclamations to leaders above me and or even God himself. I’m glad no one took pictures of me in those moments, my shame and my arrogance would have been evident and these improper responses, I know now, have been and still are beneath me as a person…as a follower of Christ. once said, “When one door of happiness closes, another
Change is a part of life. If we don’t walk through the doors of change, we will not grow into the people we were meant to be, and
the world will truly be lacking because of it. So when change forces us through another door, may we all walk through it with an ounce of dignified grace instead of kicking and screaming…and who knows, maybe in the process of such moments we might be able to appreciate the beauty and majesty of it.
“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.”
~Japanese Proverb
“Here I am, I stand at the door and knock, If anyone hears my voice
and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” –Revelations 3:20
- “Knock, knock…”
“On days like this…”
Well it’s really cold here today…although I can’t say its as cold as Alaska or as cold as places in the Arctic circle, but it’s still very cold outside. It’s the kind of day that one just wants to stay in doors for… seeking to pass the time in front of the tube, playing a board game or curled up with a good book in hand, and who knows if a nap comes calling maybe one might answer its gesture into counting forty winks. It’s just that kind of day.
Have you ever had the feeling that there’s too little hours in the day to do what you want to do? Perhaps, you might wonder, what this has to do with this cold day indoors? Well, Indoors on days like this you get to thinking about all of the things you want to do or have to do and from time to time it just feels… overwhelming. We might jot things down in a journal, make ‘todo’ lists, reorganize our shoe rack…I don’t know…maybe this is where cabin fever begins, and the guy in the ‘Shining’ should have found a hobby or made a list instead taking up killing…ok I digress again.
All this to say, its ok to be restless on days like this. Cold, stark wintry days…when the sun sets way too late as does the morning sunrise. It’s ok.
Alright, taking my own advice…deep breaths…shoe rack discombobulated…ready set organize. -Stay warm!
Before the birth of dawn
Late last night
Under covers – down,
joined by the purring
At my feet
Acting out something
I cannot remember now
From fluttering eyelids and
Speech that sounds like snoring…
I swear I don’t snore 😉 .
Perhaps as the blood red
Alarm clock glowed,
And as ticks, sighs,
groans of our
Restless house
Wound itself into
The arms of early
morning. The clouds
In the birthing
Room of another
Brood of sunrise
Yet just before
The final ‘push’,
The last cry of
Nightfall’s curtain
Descends…thousands
Of miles away bursting
Through the Rockies
Days before its
Winter’s lips
Kissed frosted earth
Bending spruce and ferns
Into a deep embrace
Only to pick up again
Skirting the Black hills
And Lincoln’s chin
Rushing on down
towards the mighty
Mississippi, as ice bergs
Smaller than those that
took down the titanic
Weave their way into
The heart’s arteries of
America.
As it touches down once
again, the mighty river
ebbs to the beckoning call…
back in our home
still sorting out visions
with eyes clasp shut
It rushes down onto our
our creaking home…
Its winter’s clutch
testing storm windows
pushing at the screen door
somewhere deep inside
Dorothy Gale tries to click her
heels, as Toto barks on…
it happens quickly,
yet Oz doesn’t come into
view,
the birthing room announces
another fire branded day
is here…both Lincoln’s chin
and the mighty Mississippi
breathes collective sighs of relief
as the cries of a new born day
begins.
Worship Music and Road Rage
Ok, it’s confession time. You know, that moment when you spill the proverbial beans, you spill your guts, the whole truth shall set you free…so here goes…
It happened yesterday. It was just another normal day of getting my two oldest boys off to school, and getting there on time. For me being on time is important, it’s a pet peeve of mine to be late for anything…yet somehow the rest of my family seems to think we can show up whenever we get there, which is not cool for school!
After about five minutes of looking for one of my son’s shoes, which must have been a part of Harry Houdini’s magic act, because I have found his shoes in the oddest places including outside and behind the toilet (I am not kidding). Finally we get into the minivan, I’m a little flustered, we’re a few minutes late now and the van is stone cold because we spent so much time looking for shoes that I neglected to start the van early enough to get it warmed up. I guess you could say it was my time to chill…literally. We get our seat belts buckled, and off we go to school. I take a few deep breaths to exhale the stress from my lungs and turn on the radio. It’s still set to my mp3 player, and so praise music begins to play in the van. I am finally finding my groove with now tepid coffee in hand, and soothing worship music playing in the background. At this point I am starting to feel the music, and I begin to sing along…oh don’t judge me, I bet you sing in the van too.
As I’m singing along to a song called “Love came down” I glance in my rearview mirror and notice a car is aggressively riding my rear bumper. I’m doing the speed limit…I’m not a slow driver. I’m still trying to sing this great worship song but I’m being distracted by the driver in the car behind me. It’s starting to stress me out again. Finally we come to one of those round-abouts that the city recently put in, and I expect him to slow down…instead he speeds up, and swerves into the next lane, then he darts ahead of me and proceeds to cut me off as he turns into my lane ahead of me… “Love came down” is still playing in the background…although I’m not feeling like I want to place any love down on this guy who I feel has just wronged me. In fact, I feel like speeding up, honking my horn, and if possible pass him up just like he did to me.
“Love came down to rescue me, love came down to set me free…”
Then these words hit me in the face, as I’m flustered, angry, and I’ve yelled at the guy as he cut me off…somehow I don’t feel so “set free” at the moment…I’m bound by this anger inside of me at this act that I understand to be injustice and inconsideration by some idiot in a car.
At the same moment that the lyrics of this song that I had just been singing hit me, I look over at my boys. It’s a double slap in the face. What am I teaching my children in this instance? Am I teaching them that you can sing about being set free by the love of God and at the same time curse man because of their ignorance and failure to yield to the rules of the road?
“Love came down to rescue me, love came down and set me free…and I am Yours, I’m forever Yours.” At that moment I didn’t feel like HIS…I felt guilty of being MINE. I felt guilty of being selfish and I was teaching my children how to be angry and selfish too. Was this the kind of legacy I was leaving for my kids? Did I want my boys to be angry at drivers, angry at the world and stressed out over something so temporary and silly? Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” I know this to be absolutely true…because in that moment of road rage, I lost my happiness and I lost a little bit of integrity that I had with my kids in that van.
I was convicted while singing a praise song, and instead of displaying that love that came down for me, I was displaying the wrath of my sinful state…my old self.
Okay, confession time is over. They say it’s good for the soul, but you know what’s better for the soul? Avoiding those trappings that lead us to confession in the first place. It’s much, much harder to do, but in the long run we would all be better off. This is a truth that I’ve learned, road rage and worship music make for very awkward road companions, let alone improper parental examples of godly living.
I guess what I’m trying to say is summed up in Ephesians 4:29; “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” I was singing one tune and letting sin lead me astray back into my old sinful ways…and my kids were in the van. I wasn’t building anyone up in that moment; I was letting my tongue destroy.
We can’t possibly do both at the same time as children of God. We either let love come down and be a part of who we are igniting others with this joy, love and hope; or we let sin in and we treat others through selfish intentions and shameful acts. Perhaps you’ve also been there a time or two…it’s a slap in the face, conviction follows and we need to confess and modify that behavior if we are to truly live as children of God bringing that love and freedom into this world.
Take it from a guy who sang a song of praise while my actions were singing a song of wrath…it’s time to change.
-Just a thought.
“At the Cancer Clinic” by Ted Kooser
She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
Winter Doldrums
The sound of the snow
crunching under my feet
the frozen toes and
this loss of heat
has me shaking in my car
and dreams of traveling afar
far away from here.
I can not contain this
migrant heart
when winds of change
begin to start
and here on
an indistinct day
when storms blow in
and make me say
“I’m far too long
on winter’s day.”
A ray of light
on silver thread
finding some joy
when joy is dead
my hand outstretched
and open wide
Lord help me brave
this wintry tide.
Pastor's Ponderings 