Dear Blog Reader:
I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand
doing better than I have done in a few months. It also finds me at the start of
our 200th blog together. I am perseverant. You are easily amused. I
appreciate both.
On average, it takes two to three hours to put down what is
on my mind. People ask me (I’m delusional. Actually, I ask myself) “how could
you have better spent that four to six hundred hours over the past 4 plus years?”
Sure I could have spent it finding the cure for cancer or even more
significantly, discovered the mysteries of teleportation (or teletransportation
depending if you are a tomato or tomato person. (It never works in print.)) It
is true that I have long wanted to discover the secrets of teleportation. I
have seen this dark art’s usefulness since the early days of Star Trek. (Yes, I
was there for the original.) I want teleportation all for myself. I would never
fly or drive again. I would move all of the gold out of fort knox to my back
bedroom. If I ever developed cancer, I would find a way to teleport myself from
here to there and leave the cancer here; effectively curing cancer and
discovering the secret of teleportation; a two-fer so to speak. I would do all
of these things and find ways to spend the remaining 50 hours keeping it out of
the hands of the N oncompliant S entinals of A merica.
Actually, both of those noble pursuits would take too much
effort. I may start for a day or two. Then, I would figure out that I would
have to relearn calculus which I did not learn very well the first time and
give up. Without the blog, I would have ended up looking at pictures of cats in
ridiculous outfits on Facebook. They would be looking back into the camera with
eyes that seem to be saying “Shoot me now. Please.” I know that this is true.
It is what I do now. Come on, I surely have had more than 600 hours of useful free
time in the past four years, and I wasted every one of those precious hours
looking at those stupid forlorn cats.
The first paragraph of this post testifies to doing better
than I have done in several months. I would write about it but I have a hard
and fast rule that there are parts of my life that I do not write about. I know
that you think I am simply teasing. However, I am not. I am amazed at stories
of people who post things on their wall or Facebook status and are
flabbergasted that there are ramifications. They write the school food sucks
and are surprised when they find a loogie in the mystery meat the next day.
Come on dude; use your brain. You are not the first person who couldn’t go
around saying whatever was on their mind.
I suppose that honor would go to Jesus. Yes, that Hispanic man
who lived in the Middle East 2000 years ago. Isn’t it obvious that God said no posting
anything about the “Kingdom of God” on Facebible? Seems pretty obvious to me.
So what did we get? We got parables. “He who has ears let him hear.” The next
thing you know you have mustard seeds, lost coins, lost sheep and seeds on the
hard ground, but no dishing on the Kingdom of Heaven.
So in the manner of all great story tellers, here is a
parable. There once was a dedicated Christmas pageant director named Marge down
at the local church. Every year, she got the children to stand in straight rows,
make cherubic hand gestures, sing their songs, and dress in homemade angel
wings, and sheep costumes, all the while looking adoringly at the manger with
the stars of the show, Mary and Joseph (who am I kidding only Mary, Jo is an
extra) singing a couple of verses solo. Marge worked very hard. She had call
outs right after Halloween. She knew that the kids would still be on their
sugar high from the Halloween candy that first Sunday but there were only so
many Sundays and Christmas Eve was only 54 days away.
This year she chose Cindy McDermit to be Mary. Cindy was a precocious
fifth grader. Her ascendancy to the role of Mary was, like a good Calvinist,
pre-destined. She had steadily moved up through the ranks the previous 4 years.
She had been the lead sheep her first year; bleating “let us go see the King.”
Her second year she was Harold the Hark Angel singing Gloooooooooooo oria. Her
third year she nearly stole the show giving baby Jesus his present of Gold.
Last year, Cindy would have been Mary but the preacher’s daughter had never
been Mary and it was her last chance; politics. Cindy readily agreed to be the
little drummer boy and people commented that the rumpapumpums had never been
crisper.
It was Cindy’s year and this was going to be the greatest
Christmas pageant ever. In fact, the director used this year to order new music
and arrangements for the pageant. In an effort to modernize things, there would
even be angel tweeting; #haroldtheharkangelsays “get down to Bethlehem you
smelly shepherds.” It was time. It was big, and with Cindy in the lead it wasn’t
that big of a risk.
However, even at this young age, Cindy was a very busy
person. She was in the school play. She started basketball right after soccer. She
was running all the time. As a result, there wasn’t time to completely learn
the lines by the Sunday before Thanksgiving. That’s okay there was Thanksgiving
vacation. The kids could come in Friday, and Saturday for a little extra
practice. However, Cindy’s family was out of town. There would be no extra
practice. The calendar turned. The Christmas Eve deadline neared. The lines
weren’t perfect yet and the pageant director started to lose sleep. She spoke
words of encouragement to the kids. Things were going to be fine. She told the
kids and herself. She lost more sleep. She just needed Cindy to have one good
practice and lock those lines down.
That practice was scheduled from 1 to 4 on the Sunday before
Christmas. The first two hours would be with Cindy and the other leads. The
last 2 hours a dress rehearsal for the big night in three days on Christmas
Eve. Then it happened. Cindy’s mom called at 9:00 on Sunday morning to say that
Cindy wouldn’t be able to make it to practice she was very sick. Hopefully, she
would be well enough on Monday or Tuesday to come to another practice but there
was no way today.
At that moment, a wave of peace came over the pageant
director. The pageant was going to fail. There was nothing that could be done
to help Cindy learn her lines. Suddenly, there were no plans to shift, no
shortcuts to find, no false encouragement to give. The new and improved pageant
was too much to bite off. However, the die had been cast and with no ability to
change the outcome, Marge was able to accept it and let the peace of that
acceptance come over her. She slept like a baby once again.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the theme of these 200 posts.
I jokingly said Assassin Deer and flannel sheets. The lovely Miss Beverly is
also a common theme. Actually there have been two Rogers saying what this past
four years. One Roger likes to pull the pin on verbal hand grenades and offer
his opinions about how ridiculous he finds situations and people. These rants
have grown fewer and farther between. While fun and cathartic, expressing
strident opinions doesn’t do much. They are like street lamps on a very dark
and lonely road. They attract like opinioned people search for company, but they change no minds
and bring about some frustration because the individuals in the group can’t
understand why the world isn’t different when everyone they know are just like
them.
The other Roger has found overtime that he has a knack at
letting people explore three needs in their lives; who are they, who they are
becoming, and the tribe to which they belong? The posts,that have struck the
greatest chord with you, have described situations of who I am at that moment, provided
a small glimpse of who I am becoming, and a fuzzy picture of the tribe. Don’t
think that it is an open book or a very clear picture. As I said, there is a
policy about not writing about some things and some people, and I often don’t
see the pictures of what I can write about clearly enough to describe it. They
are just glimpses, stitched together in a chain 200 links long; some strong,
some very weak. In the end, I find myself sleeping better.
Take care.
Roger
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