Swinging on a wire

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be,
since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
Thomas à Kempis

Have you ever just sat back and really watched some of the news out there?
And I’m not talking fringe news, I’m talking basic television sort of news.
And it matters not which side of the pond you are on or wether you’re in the US or
even Canada…
madness prevails and is not discriminatory…

Put aside your knee jerks and just take a minute to listen and watch….and you
might just catch yourself actually laughing…

As in the hysteria has really gotten quite comical… pathetic yes,
but comical none the less.

The punctuated adjectives and facial expressions of the
gravely concerned and actually accusatory news anchors has been some of the most
superb acting I’ve noted as of late.

And just to make certain we’ve touched all of our PC bases,
we shall now que the overtly sensitive snowflakes
and progressive liberals who would so wish to accuse me of belittling the
trauma suffered by the recently uncloseted abused or the merely confused.

And my response to you would be to remind you that I began my working career in
the late 70’s—
I know all about lecherous and inappropriate professors, co-workers and bosses—
so much so that my own tales could make your head spin…
So do not attempt to lecture me on being insensitive…
I just prefer to be more real…as in we live in an imperfect and very broken
world.

One again I was listening to and reading two of my most favorite men of the cloth,
Pastor David Robertson and the Rev Gavin Ashenden, and their collective takes
on the latest madness regarding the implosion currently happening
in Hollywood, the Entertainment industry and even our Political circles
regarding the who’s who of the abused.
And I say “our” as a collective sort of Western Civilization ‘ours’…..

The who–or more like the who, who after 20 years or so, has come forward offering
tales of scandalous proportion.
As we only thought Bill Cosby was bad….
For it now seems as if the flood gates have been
opened and the dam has been released—-as everyone is currently racing as far
away as possible in order to now distance themselves one from another…
tripping over one another in the process as most anyone who is someone is now
considered a Typhoid Mary.

Add to this the latest lunacy over all things sexual….
as in what sex do you wish to be today and well…. we’ve created our own bit of
sideshow entertainment for the modern world.

I do not say any of this to lessen the real and actual traumas experienced by those
who have been sadistically abused at the hands of those they’ve loved, trusted and or admired…as there are many genuine individuals who have been hurt and continue to hurt…but the current onslaught showcased each evening on the nightly news has become something of epic pandemonium.

And maybe that’s the thing…

In Christianity we are not surprised, let alone shocked, by the news and tales of
fallen and sinful man and or woman doing just that—being fallen…or broken
and in turn being very sinful because we know that all of mankind,
and yes that includes womankind for those so obsessed with the use of words,
is all fallen and therefore very broken and in great need of healing.

We also know that there is true evil that runs rampant on this planet.
So whereas we of the Faith may be horrified, sickened and very saddened,
we are not shocked nor are we surprised.

The other thing in all of this is that the world, in the words of Bishop Ashenden,
“doesn’t make use of repentance and reconciliation”—
the world rather involves itself with that of power and position rather than grace
and mercy.
According to the good Bishop, “in the world, the room for grace is dreadfully
minimized.”

For this the current exposed misuse of the powerful as well as this
latest war of genderism does not surprise Christians nearly as much as it seems
to surprise news outlets and secular society because the majority of the
Christian faithful are well aware of both sinfulness and human frailty.

Yet the world would prefer that we “accept” such sinfulness and frailty
as the status quo of living—refusing to acknowledge any of it as sinful living
or living counter to the Word of God—
as the world would simply just rewrite said Word of God to suit her own
struggles, brokeness and sinfulness.

And perhaps the most disconcerting business in all of this is that the Church,
the church with the big C as in the collective Church,
has allowed herself to be modeled on the basis of the world–
as in what the world deems acceptable or not… and not rather on what Christ
himself has stated as acceptable and not….

And in her lack of intervention, when she and her leadership should have
intervened in some of the most grievous areas of abuse, she opted rather not
to do nor say anything when it was obvious that brokeness had made its way into the
both the clergy and the fold. She opted to remain silent…
further distancing herself for the very souls who needed her.
And in turn fueling the ire of an already leery and angry world.

And this has been a severe ‘dereliction of duty’ and most grievous offense to
a world that she had been entrusted to rather lift up her light unto….

So whereas those in the news circles and those power brokers of all things
entertainment and political are now seen to be running around like a bunch of chickens
with their heads cut off, the Faithful have been steadfastly praying for Grace,
Mercy and Salvation….

Because we know that in all of this latest brouhaha and sheer pandemonium of the
dominos falling of those large and powerful, along with the not so large and powerful,
that the only Hope and the only healing is to come from Jesus Christ, and Him alone.

And on that note, I leave you with a link to this week’s posting by the Wee Flea–
the Scottish Pastor David Robertson…as well as the offering from Bishop Ashenden

LED 15 – Scottish Government Trans Madness – Jordan Peterson – The Moral Panic – Expensive Piano Lessons – Walter Magaya – Blame it on Brexit – Jesus and the Jedi in Dundee –

Melanie Phillips writes in the Times: ‘ The Church of England is sowing the seeds of its own destruction’; re- Lorna Ashworth, Gavin Ashenden and Joshua Sutcliffe.

Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed;
save me and I will be saved,
for you are the one I praise.
Jeremiah 17:14

punctuating the ordinary

“On the single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity,
grackles and starlings neatly punctuated an invisible sentence.”
―John Updike

(grackles on the line / Julie Cook / 2014)

I imagine it happens to all of us at some point or other…
and it’s always out of the blue…

It catches us totally off guard— when we least expect it.

Suddenly a lump is forming in our throat as we find the words catching, cracking and breaking as we can barely whisper along.

And just when we frustratingly focus on the fact that no sound seems to be
coming from a voice attempting to speak, stinging tears now form in our
eyes, rendering us both mute and almost blind…

Mute and blind with raw emotion.

We blink hard and swallow hard…as we hear our brain pleading “not here, not now….”

Maybe we’re just sitting on the couch…
Maybe we’re walking down the aisle at the grocery store pushing a cart full of
paper towels and cat food…
Maybe we’re sitting in the middle of traffic, stuck…
Maybe we’re sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting….

It doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing…it happens…
and it happens when it wants to…never mind what we want.
And there is always some sort of trigger…
as the ordinariness of life is punctured like an over inflated tire…
our breath begins to release as we are helpless to hold it in….

It comes suddenly out of the blue..
Out of nowhere…and there it is…
A familiar sound, a familiar tune, a familiar voice…more oldie then goldie…

For me this time, it was Wichita Lineman and it wasn’t even Glen Campbell
singing the song but rather someone else…

Yet it mattered not—it was still that same melodious memory drifting in on
the passage of time… swirling down on the currents until settling sweetly, yet
painfully, in the recall of memory.

My mother loved Glen Campbell.

What woman in those heady days of the late 60’s didn’t?

Dashing boyish good looks…dimples, perfect hair, sculpted nose,
laced with a velvety voice.
He wasn’t Country, he wasn’t Gospel, he wasn’t Pop…
he was simply the complete package.

I can remember sitting with mother in 1969 on that old tweed couch
watching the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour—
This was a time when children could actually watch television without fear of hearing
or seeing things that children shouldn’t really see or hear emanating
from a television….

The line is iconic…
“and I need you more than want you….
and I want you for all time….
for the Wichita lineman is still on the line…”
…as heart tugging violins finish out the notes….

About two years ago, give or take,
Glen Campbell and his current wife (I say current because he had had four marriages
with one in particular making for tabloid drama) gave what was to be Glen’s
last public interview.

Glen Campbell was suffering from Alzheimers.
A disease that actually claimed his life earlier this year.

The selfish disease was robbing his family of the husband and father they loved
while robbing a man of the one person he’d known best his entire life…
that being himself.

He was asked about singing and his songs— what song had he loved the most….

A question I would think somewhat difficult for any musician / singer,
who had had such long careers, to answer—
As songs and melodies ebb and flow with the times—
Because it’s hard to compare what was a career starter with what came about
during one’s peak moment throughout such a lengthy career…

But he answered quickly and at first very effortlessly…
“it’s really the best line of all time in a song you know…. isn’t it???”
as he then turned to his wife with that lost look of one battling with a
memory-robbing illness, when he sadly and poignantly realized he didn’t
remember now what line he was talking about.

His wife offered a small airy couple of notes with the first word, which allowed
Glen’s mind to grab hold as he finished the stanza himself in beautiful A cappella
fashion.

And it is an iconic line.
A beautiful line.
A line that has for me, over time, changed it’s meaning.

Songs, lyrics and melodies all have that effect on us.

So much so that I think I’ve written about this before—and about this very same
song for most likely the very same reason—

It simply caught me off guard.

It reached out through the abyss of time grabbing hold of my arm while pulling
me to a bittersweet place I don’t often like to go.

The hot tears formed as I attempted to utter those familiar words….but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t even speak the words because they had stuck in my throat…
as they achingly cracked coming from my mouth without sound…

And then slowly…the recesses of a memory came into focus,
I was seeing the one who had first loved that song long before I had.
She had her own personal reasons, her own personal recollections…

Things that, at the time, were unbeknownst to me.
Something that caused an overwhelming sense of melancholy…
Something that had left her with words which had no sound,
something that had left her eyes wet with warm tears…

I had no way of knowing then…no way of understanding…
for I had not lived yet what she had lived…

Yet sweetly and even oddly in that bittersweet moment of hearing that single song
with that most iconic simple lyric, I actually understood what she had known
all those many years ago…as warm tears filled my eyes and the words coming
from my mouth had no sound…I was transported one day closer to understanding
the woman I had lost so long ago…

Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the Lord:
“The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven he viewed the earth,
to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death.”
So the name of the Lord will be declared in Zion
and his praise in Jerusalem
when the peoples and the kingdoms
assemble to worship the Lord.
Psalm 102:18-22

Truth

We shall advance when we have learned humility;
when we have learned to seek truth, to reveal it and publish it;
when we care more for that than for the privilege of arguing about ideas in a fog of uncertainty.
Walter Lippmann, c.1917

We do not err because truth is difficult to see.
It is visible at a glance.
We err because this is more comfortable.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

(Rock of Cashel, the Rock of St Patrick / Co Tipperary, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)

What is truth?

It is man’s most eternal quest…

We have often wondered if it was buried somewhere in the mix of stone and mortar,
those tangible breadcrumbs to man’s exhausting pursuit at leaving his mark.

Yet stone and mortar, as now wire and cable, each with time, are eventually left to erode and rust.

Truth is not found in the rusting or rotting of decay.

We have wondered if it is found in the intellect of thought and speech.
The defiance and defense of man’s existence…

Yet there is no truth to be found in fighting and fretting.

However for a certain percentage of humankind, those oft looked upon as foolhardy souls,
those who have openly accepted a fateful day as the hallmark of Truth,
Truth is found beyond the building blocks of civilizations,
beyond the liables and legalities…
and far from the might and power of man.

Truth, rather, is found in a most odd place…
A place no one had thought to look…

For Truth is found not in the vibrancy of life and in the yearnings of mere mortals….
but rather in the loss and darkness of the seemingly emptiness of death.

Albeit so sad and empty as this quest may all but seem,
This is not just any death in which Truth plays hide and seek…

For this Truth, this elusive wisp of shadows, is not found in our death…not yours and mine…
but rather in just one single death…

A single death experienced only once…not at all repeatedly…
Only singularly experienced for all of mankind.

“Our old man was crucified with him,
that the body of sin right be done away,
that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin”
(Romans 6:6)
That is not an exhortation to struggle.
That is history: our history, written in Christ before we were born.
Do you believe this?
It is true!

For the secret of deliverance from sin is not to do something but to rest on what God has done.
When you cease doing, then God will begin

Watchman Nee

So truth, it seems, is found in a single deed on a single day…
long ago and seemingly far away.

Yet is it really that far away….

“God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before He can deliver you.
Once you have ceased to struggle so hard, he will do everything.
God is waiting for you to despair.
He has done it all.”
Watchman Nee

what’s Preparation H got to do with it?

“There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.”
― Tennessee Williams

(an expensive collection of spectacles from over the years)

Two things you may or may not know about me. . .
First, I got my first pair of glasses when I was a junior in college and secondly, I’ve got terrible sinuses.

And if you’ll just hold your horses, I’ll tie in the Preparation H in due time—trust me.
And no, we’re not going to delve into the whole hemorrhoid issue because I was raised that a proper lady does not discuss such in public. And for the record, this is not a tale about that.

My eyesight started out as a tad near sighted coupled by a astigmatism. Meaning my poor eyes did double duty just trying to focus– period. Which in turn meant, at the time, I was not a candidate for contacts—and that was certainly fine by me as I wasn’t too keen on the thought of constantly poking and dabbing in my eyeballs 24/7–or God forbid, I’d lose a contact in my eyeball as it would slip to the back of my eye and eventually into my brain. Ok, I admit I wasn’t up on the physiology of eyes.

It wasn’t until about 5 years ago when I started wearing my glasses religiously. As in now it’s troubling seeing both near and far.

You should also know that as I type this post, I am actually wearing two pairs of glasses. One on top of the other. As in I had to get new glasses last week and they had to mail in my frames to be fitted with the new lens—leaving me up the proverbial seeing creek.
I have had to get by wearing a very old pair which may be doing more harm than good. These old glasses are so weak that in order to see up close and read, I’ve had to put some dollar store readers over the old prescription pair—talk about a new fashion trend. . . as well as a headache–literally!

These substitute glasses are so bad that as I was recently reading an article about the latest, frighting and devastating stories about the Ebola virus spread in Africa it was my understanding that the article stated that the school of thought and latest theory about the spread of this deadly virus is a result of fruit bars.

Fruit bars??
“Oh dear God,”
I practically scream as I immediately think I must rid the kitchen cabinets of any and all fruit bars, when it dawns on me that fruit bars seem to be an odd item for the inception of something as sinister and deadly as Ebola.
I double up the glasses, rereading the sentence—ahhh, fruit bats!!!

Which now brings me around to my sinuses.
I never seemed bothered by sinus issues until I moved to this current town of mine almost 35 years ago. Of which was also the time I started teaching high school art. And you should know that our town is also home to a very large company which I will refrain from mentioning by name but just know that they do things with wire—-lots and lots of wire–all over the world, as in this is a big time global company. They have some smelting plants, retaining lakes, giant smoke stacks, and buildings for this and that important business scattered all over town.
I’m talking big time.

Urban legend has it that the fish living in the ponds near the plants have more than the required God given two eyes on their heads. There are also the stories of the mysterious green glow emitted in the wee hours of the middle of the night from the smokestacks of the plants. And then there are the dead pines and vegetation on the back side of the plant.

Correlation? hummmmm

For the record, I have had two sinus surgeries over the years. The first one on the right side worked like a charm—I could actually breathe and no longer battled an onslaught of infections. I awoke from surgery immediately aware of how freely I could finally, actually, joyfully breathe—it was short of miraculous!
The second surgery, which followed the first surgery by a couple of years, not so much.

There I was laying in recovery, just waking up, when the doctor, who, mind you was wearing pearls with her scrubs during surgery–of which made me feel terribly underdressed, triumphantly announced that all was now clear.
I however had to immediately counter her proclamation.
I knew without a doubt that nothing about my breathing through my nose was clear.
I was still just as “clogged” as I was prior to surgery.

A terrible waste of my money, my time plus my having to undergo a near death procedure as they made me sign all those papers about brain damage, going blind and of course– death. Not to mention a terrible waste of her having to have donned her pearls.

She never did understand that I couldn’t breathe and I never did understand the significance of donning pearls for a surgery.
Perhaps I missed the dress code–something about no make up, no jewelry, no nail polish–but nothing about pearls per se.

I have graciously volunteered for a sinusectomy, which sadly does not exist.
I’ve often wondered why we have sinuses in our heads in the first place. Air pockets inside our skulls which seem to act as ballast, keeping our heads above the proverbial deep waters of life as it were.
Wasted space if you ask me.
Pack um with cement and I’m good to go.

Which brings me back around to glasses, sinuses and Preparation H.

So between my feeling constantly clogged up, suffering from congestion, heavy watery eyes—not to mention the swollen bags under my eyes and pressure in my head, on top of the now strained vision sans my regular glasses as in I’m having to wear two pairs of glasses, I suddenly recalled a little beauty secret that surely could help elevate my latest sinus issues and swollen eyes, not to mention maybe bringing a little clarity to my vision—
enter Preparation H. . .

There’s a little beauty secret in the world of runway models and photo shoots–Preparation H!
That thick white ointment used for years for the treatment of, how shall I put this delicately., hemorrhoids, or as George Washington would have known about such from his excessive time spent in the saddle.
As in hydrocortisone, as in anti-swelling.

Since the ointment is known for its “shrinking” abilities–once upon a time, some uber chic model out there, had the brilliant epiphany that she could use a little shrinking ointment to eliviate the puffiness under her eyes. Just before hitting the hay, for her much needed beauty rest, this uber model figured she could rub a little Preparation H underneath each eye in order to eliminate all traces of puffiness.

Voila, the secret to smooth, non puffy, eyes.

So last night, feeling way too congested, with lovely swollen puffy eyes and blurred vision too boot, I reasoned that if dabbing a little ointment under my eyes could relieve puffiness then obviously smearing it all over my face would surely help with congested sinuses and blurred vision.
Perfect sense.

After my evening shower, I proceeded to slather the Preparation H under my eyes, over my eyes, on my cheeks, on my forehead, over my nose–opting to leave it layered thick and heavy verses rubbing it in—heavier the better is my motto.
I now appeared a bit aboriginal dressed in complete war paint.

I top off my new beauty ritual with a nice thick layer of Vicks vapor rub smeared underneath my nose.
Nothing like the scent of camphor, menthol and eucalyptus trying to waft its way up through sealed nostrils.

Happily finished with my application of medicinal / beauty treatment, I head to bed.
Just as I crawl quietly under the covers, as not to disturb my sleeping husband— suddenly, with a jolt, my husband pops up, wide awake from a deep sleep as if he’s seen some sort of spirit or apparition.

“What in the world is that awful smell and what in the hell is that all over your face?!”

Maybe I need to work on a plan B.