Let's Make a Deal?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. It was like a collective sigh went up; a great disturbance in the force on Tuesday. As Obi-wan said, “I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” We only received snow showers but the wind was cold and biting. Our friends in the Northeast had to face a full on winter storm that bordered on a blizzard. Even now, on Saturday morning, the white fluffy stuff is falling from the sky as I type in front of a space heater wrapped in a quilt, trying to get these ice cubes that I call my feet thawed out. When will it ever end is our collective petition. Many of us have entered the bargaining phase with our higher power. For some that higher power is God; others mother nature, still others Jim Cantore. I have a theory that our higher power is pushing back. “So you say you’ll stop cussing and go to church if winter just ends. Well after another snow storm, I’m guessing that you will promise to become a missionary. I think that I’ll wait.”

Who are we kidding? We all enter into those negotiations with our fingers crossed. Our intentions are good or at least benign. We really want winter to end. We need to let the sun shine on pale arms while wearing a T-shirt. We yearn to let the wind caress our toes through sandals. I am the biggest offender. How many times in the pages of this very blog have I said that winter was nearly over? Six weeks from Ground Hog’s day was a whisker’s width from warmer times and peas sown in the garden. I was in there offering platitudes and b.s. to the downtrodden. I could defend myself by saying that I was only trying to bolster the spirits of the masses; folks desperate for warm weather.

It’s a lie. I am desperate for warm weather. I have unfriended everyone heading to Florida for spring break. I know that they will post pictures of sunsets on the beach. I don’t need that. It will only increase my grief. It is like Job’s friends showing up in their fine robes “encouraging” him with “bummer about the sack cloth, ashes, and boils dude. What you need is a travel agent and a good dermatologist.” Grasping for straws; I even went out and bought $30 worth of garden seed is some delusional frenzied belief that all spring needed was a little jump start. That’s right. Its battery was a little low. If I hooked up the jumper cables, suddenly, the sun would shine and I could start my annual quest for an Amish child garden. (Several of last summer’s blogs speaks of the Amish child garden phenomena.)

Why do we bargain and grovel with God or any deity of your choice (depending on your preference) when let’s face it most of modernity is pretty fuzzy on what they believe? Why do we throw up these incantations when in certain circles a pretty fair percentage of mankind believes that the weather is man made? Here we go again, attempting to have our cake and eat it too. If the weather is man made, someone better come back from vacation, sit down at their control panel, and flip the switch. No need to bargain with the man; he just needs to do his job or get fired! We make fun of the ancients; making sacrifices to the sun or winter gods, dancing naked on the vernal equinox, or paying attention to the predictive capabilities of large burrowing vermin. “They are so unsophisticated. It is a wonder mankind survived to be as evolved as we are today.” Let me tell you, right now, I’d offer up my neighbor’s goat in a heartbeat if there were antidotal internet proof that it had worked once in the past 50 years.

The most curious bargaining chip that I continue to encounter is the “I won’t complain about the heat no matter how hot it gets this summer.” Why not? We are suffering now. When it gets above 85 degrees and 60% humidity, we will be suffering then too. In fact if the evening temp isn’t at 65 degrees or below by 9:00 in the evening, I am going to complain about being uncomfortable as I try to get to sleep. Why give up the right to complain to whatever about future suffering just because the current suffering has been so pronounced and continued for so long. The two events are unrelated. It would be like promising not to complain about cutting your finger off in the wood shop because you had complained so grievously after hitting your thumb with a hammer twice. One should not forfeit the right of the secondary complaint just because the reason for the primary complaint left a bruise.

Besides, isn’t all of this promising just a little bit of sophistry? Can’t we believe in a God that has figured out that the churches are still pretty empty after 2000 years of bargains and still the sun shines? Or it will someday . . . God willing.

Take care,

Roger