Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Is your heart focused on the material, or is it focused on the spiritual?
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.
Proverbs 26:11
pardon my astonishment, but it never ceases to amaze me…when a woman I have known well…who, in her flowering youth, speaks boldly about what she will do in the world….seeking to escape the degradation she has endured….begins her post-adolescence running from job to job, and man to man, burning through them like fire through grass and leaves….like a fireball…destroying lives and the hopes and goals of others…until sometime after menopause, crash landing a few blocks away from where she started, a reflective lesson of a life wasted on selfish ambitions, only to collapse into a state of uselessness.
no woman…nor man…should land in middle age like that. if, after 50 years, you have no legacy of love that lasts, that changes lives for the better, that reflects your creator…what in the world is your purpose in life? i am appalled at how many people i meet…who could care less what happens to their children, their wives, or their husbands…who, in their selfishness see only their own flippant desires- which sometimes are the opposite of love, hope, and peace- as their gods, their reasons for existence.
you were not created to wallow in stupidity, nor to throw sense to the wind and live with no focus on what life is all about. Nor were you meant to love half-heartedly, wounding lives in the process, while claiming that you are the one having been injured. To live in such selfishness is to live like a dog who returns to his vomit…it lacks all reasonable sense.
I am not God, so I do not know if there is any more hope for her. I pray there is. But, it does appear that there comes a time when a selfish person is given over to what will destroy them, because their minds have been so warped that they literally rage against God.
So, while there is still daylight in this world, pray for….and confront those…headed down the road to destruction, that somehow they will come to their senses before it is too late.
imagine…if you will…that you have the intelligence of a fish. why? because, my dear friend, that is your brain on public education.
now, imagine, if you will, that you have spent a long futile day attempting to cross the lip of a pond edge to another inlet where the water appears….appears…to be more pleasant, more tasty…with tasty things floating around in it.
you squirm your way to the edge and hit dry land…and find the pebbles irritating your scales as you try to push across the small piece of land and into the most glorious looking bright shiny water you have ever seen…since you last had a conscious thought about geographic locations.
but…you have no hands, you have no feet, you are a fish. and it is a really bad day to be a fish.
so bad, you have decided not to be a fish.
you would rather be a seal. or a porpoise. or a proctologist. you would prefer to be a creature with legs…to go anywhere you want…to do anything you want…even if they had to be hairy.
but as you lie there imagining…some wise guy will come along, pick you up, and throw you in the trash can…
so thank God you are not a fish. worse yet, you could have been created a weasel…and had weasel breath. isn’t it good to know that your chances of amounting to anything here on this blue-brown-green spinning ball are infinitesimally more likely than that of your standard blue whale, your average red snapper, and even you most delicious sea bass?
sure, you may have a bad day…or two.. or several thousand. that never entitles you to become an ugly, loathing, ten-toed sloth, moping your life away because you think No One on planet Earth seems to care if you live, die, or play Ultimate Pokémon. things could be worse…oh yes, they could be worse. you could be married to the Cat From Hell, live alone in a hammock tent all winter and have icy butt syndrome, or be married to someone who has all the warmth of an Angela Merkel. you are infinitely more valuable to the Universe than you can imagine.
you are too complex to be an accident.
who me?
are you breathing? are you alive?
you know there is no one else in this world who looks like you, who sounds like you, who even smells like you. how could you be an accident? you were no surprise to your creator – you were planned by forces higher than hormones and the wrong time of the month.
it is a good day to be a human…even if it is a bad day to be a fish.
….you enter. And, everything changes. The world outside changes. The world inside changes. Time passes without your knowledge. You watch clips of randomly passing lives-
…the old lady who can’t quite keep her teeth in…the old man with sagging pants and a belt flapping down as he walks…the 14 year olds giggling as they pass a boy with the face of Venus, complete with the nearly exploding volcanos…the mother, slouching against the buggy, her eyes tearing, as her two boys run like errant drones into the grocery aisles…the disappointed, hat down, and eyes staring at the floor, glancing up, trying not to make eye contact…and the selfie queen, smiling for her unseen audience, her face painted with too much red, flashing sudden smiles…
and you slow down, because time feels like it has slowed down.
you cross to the right side, passing the corner hospitality cart where a frumpy-but- smiling woman tries to hand you a small plastic container of a mini chicken croissant. she continues, even after you shake your head, and turn away…an onslaught of clothing carousels threatening, as a faster vehicle rips through the dangling arms and into your way…
…survival. you remember more from “the list,” that crumpled paper lost somewhere in the parking lot…or blown across the berm…until you see…the figure. as much as you desire to look away, you cannot, you must not. like blackened pools with nothing floating on them…they do not stare, they pierce….and you must look, but your mind tells you to turn away…turn away. don’t get involved. this is not my concern.
but it is…you feel it in your gut, the ache, the pain. the well. the tender-pained well. you touch more than a surface. I cannot look away, even if…but you do not want to. you see her for where she is…the tattered threads at the end of her left coat arm, the scraped lip, the eyes that open too wide for just a second…then close to protect…you are near her, she makes no move to look up. you can hear her breathing. you can feel her breath. like stale tuna. you want to look away. you want to escape, you want to find time again. where is time? it is nowhere. she is here and you cannot look away, because she is pleading. but there are no words in her eyes. so you walk, and turn to look, and the figure is not there…she is walking away.
….and you drive back into the sunshine, four grocery bags on the back seat.
as night invites himself in, the lights dim, and you find yourself yawning in the mirror. I have bags under my eyes. my eyes. you notice the gray hair on your shoulder, and wipe it off. time slows. you see beyond the mirror. you see her sitting on that bench, the coat, the arm. you see her walk away, never turning back to look. but you look. in your dream now. in the waking night. in your thoughts now.
I cannot forget.
and as you lay down, curled up in blankets, all alone, you pray…because it is all you can do. and somewhere in the distance, separated by space, not by time, another figure awake on her bed…unseen tears on her face…
in a microsecond of time.
there’s nothing like an overwhelming humbling moment to put life into proper perspective. it can happen to any of us, and it can happen more than once, more than twice…more than you can imagine.
stopping at an access point, i walked down this boat ramp, framed with random garbage, to get a better view of the inlet. behind me, traffic honked, zooming by in a rush. but beyond me, the grey-blue waters existed, and moved little.
like bad poetry, i recognized the lack of the boat ramp’s personality, decorated by a lone tire on worm pavement. it was a stark reminder that the mighty Ohio River, less than a mile away, could change the entire basin depending on the river’s current and unpredictable weather.
and so it is with life and those humiliating moments. those moments that abruptly close one door and force one in another direction- without reasonable choice.
and now, like so many others, i must ask…where do i go from here?
if i was to sit on this bench and watch your seasons change…would i see you bloom in spring, thrive in summer, celebrate autumn, and weather winter? or, would i see you wither with the falling leaves, to be trampled underfoot too early in the four seasons of your life?
there are too many faces in the newspaper proclaiming life is senseless and not worth living longer than it takes to burn out from the summer sun. when a frost comes, these faces shrink back in fear, loosening their grips on the tree-limb giving them life.
but…i will walk through the seasons around me, seeking a log, a boulder, a rock, or stone bench, to sit for awhile…pondering the richness of the soil, the stiff vigor of the wind, and the eagerness of the resolutions within me.
the sun rises another day, no matter how sharp the cold seeps into deep wood, and i will keep walking, walking…i keep walking…through fallen leaves…
three people i knew died recently- two younger than me, one a year older. one woman i remember as a teenager, the thin little girl with coal black eyes, a few years behind me in school- vibrant, vivacious, the very picture of youth…yet now dead way before her 50th birthday.
i thought about it, turning one way, then another, wrapping myself like an burrito in the blankets. sleep eventually came, more like an echo of rest than a deep drink of peace…as grey slipped through my kitchen curtains.
…and morning came yet again, and a new day dawned for the living…
but a few days have passed, and in their passing, i am even more steadfast now than ever to live life as deliberately as possible. because it occurs to me that the three people i knew who died did not seem to have that spark about them…and i find myself still slightly amazed that such people could waste so much, so many moments on mundane thinking, mundane loving, and mundane passion.
why think about trivial things that will burn? why concentrate on what does not encourage one who is down, does not save the one who is lost, and does not give life to the heart within you?
why love with a shadow, instead of a whole? why withhold the very essence of what caused God to create us in the first place- a love so beyond understanding in this realm that it still remains a partial mystery?
when i look at living with passion, it is that which comes from selfless love and compassion- viewing life with a mind’s eye that every moment is precious and all are priceless. but – if we do not have this within, what good are we to those around us?
and how could we reflect the glorious love of God, who, going against his own nature, offered a way to have a right relationship forever with His created, living that passionate life here and beyond…the ultimate love?
so it is with a more sober heart i reflect on the recent deaths of three i have known. three, not one. dying like a flower before their time…dying from a lack of nutrients and the water of life….because each of them publicly lived a life that did not reflect the love of God.
Is anyone else tired of chicken? Not just any chicken, the plain chicken you get in the grocery store that you have to take home and put in the refrigerator. That chicken. That kind of food.
I’m tired of tasteless. My taste buds aren’t 95 years old. I’m not gumming my food. And my cultural inclination- when eating meat- is to embellish it, with or without sauce…
Or seven herbs and spices, the kind the colonel makes. The colonel used to make. The colonel used to have his workers make. After all, he’s dead, and so is his chicken…tortured or untortured…thrown against the wall or not thrown against the wall…Kentucky Fried Chicken, the eighth wonder of the world.
Maybe, in my longing for small, controlled plastic sealed mashed potatoes and gravy, I feel a certain affinity with the rest of the USA. That would make sense, as this Irish boy does not feel at home- some of the time- in this polyglot nation of fast food giants,
Which would make you cook at home most of the time. Which I do. Which is why I am eating fresh ingredients from my refrigerator’s vast domain. Which is why I am getting tired of eating yummy things that are healthy for me. Which is why I drool passing by the aroma of freshly frying chicken. Which is another reason for writing in phrases, breaking all the rules of standard English in one paragraph.
Perhaps, though, there is some truth to those fringe elements, those who have made documentaries of horrific tales of chemical additive addiction. And not just those who religiously read The Weekly world News, but a vast contingent of average, law-abiding citizens.
People like this man….
who claim the colonel adds an addictive chemical making you “cleave fortnightly.” (Mike Myers, So I Married An Axe Murderer)
Nevertheless, I am determined…yes, I have pledged…to drive forty-five minutes to partake in the juicy-seared-goodness of the colonel’s chicken- regardless of that poor chicken’s previous treatment in captivity before succombing to the plucker, the freezer, and trip to the restaurant.
I shall be away for awhile, enjoying my plastic tub of mashed potatoes and gravy, but I shall return soon to eat dinner at home, with or without sauce.
I didn’t have it on my “bucket list.” I had no idea he would be there. But when I walked into the art gallery this evening, my favorite living artist stood near my favorite painting in the whole wide world. What are the chances of that?
He wanted to talk baseball, I wanted to talk artistic process.
“Who are the Pirates playing? Are they playing tonight? What happened to them last night?”
And splattered out in all their glory, the most amazing paintings in the world stood before me. I longed to touch the mudding-like texture, the thick glaze of rhododendron and laurel leaf, layered pink petals smashed onto the canvas, the passion of the thin and the thick, the trowel-icing slashes.
Then he told me his story- how he experimented with the trowel and opened a door to a career as an innovative contemporary painter. His journey reminded me of the point when, after four years of not writing any fiction, I discovered my own particular experimental fiction style. But he is a professional making a living from it, while I struggle to pay the bills, with most pay from “my other skills.”
Perhaps one day, this kindred spirit and I shall both look back and see where each discovery took us. For now, I will enjoy his paintings, and pray someday my own experimental works will see publication and an audience will be touched by the passion of that word imagery.
I am blessed to have been in the presence of greatness, and to remember that the spark within my own works of poetic fiction may touch the heart of someone someday. For as the faithful, we are all called. What gift we are given comes from God. I cannot, I will not, withhold the words or images of that gift any more.
Go to http://www.coopergallery.com/LynnBoggess/LynnBoggessPage.asp for more information, including some photos of the paintings at Cooper Gallery.
I struggle with diabetes. Many years ago, I worked in a high stress, high performance, high profile career that contributed to a food and health lifestyle that lead to the development of that diabetes. It didn’t help that I made my own bread, pasta, and pancakes. Or started the morning with a mountain dew and a couple of candy bars.
When I came into the office in the morning, before we went out to work, everybody else was sleepy, waking up. I was zigging one liners, feeling totally off-the-wall. And, sometimes, I felt out of control, like I couldn’t stop being goofy. I had no idea I had high sugar levels. No one in the family had it…
I say all of this to say that this morning I have an A1C test, a particular blood sugar test diabetics would quickly recognize. I had been doing better, but a diet high in vegetables, low fat, and some fruit, with occasional forages with lean meat, is very difficult for a guy who grew up eating hamburgers, pasta, and potatoes nearly everyday for years.
So, I have listened to the doctor, studied on my own, and read the Word. It is the latter that I now know is the place to start in fighting this disease. The Word speaks of living a life that is not fast-paced, not high-stress, and requires vigilance.
It is not just what we eat that brings on diabetes. It is also how we think, how we live, where we live, what we do for work…so many factors effect health. In light of my present circumstances, I have more time to contemplate that Word. In essence, I am fighting diabetes, but also need to be sure of God’s direction- I am job searching.
How then shall we live?
What is required of us is this: to do justice, love kindness (some versions say “mercy”), and walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)
*You cannot work in a high stressed job where people want you to manipulate people and “do justice.”
*Mercy (or kindness) does not include a job where we treat the poor with contempt. Being kind and merciful, walking humbly with God, would quickly bring a conflict there.
*A job that encourages senseless wealth accumulation at the expense of others cannot conform to this Word.
I would appreciate your thoughts, comments, and reflections.
The Lost Kerryman 