Bird Brain

It started Friday morning about 7:30. I heard a tap, tap, tapping on the window of the front room. My drug addled brain (another story), trying to become cognizant of reality vs. dreamland began to go through the reasonable scenarios: if Larry was locked out, he would know where the key was hidden, if Mike was locked out, he would ring the bell, Erin was somewhere in Pennsylvania. So who was knocking? It continued incessantly so I got up to have a look. A sparrow was tapping repeatedly at the living room window. Occasionally he would attempt the door to the back screened in porch, then back to the window. Annoying. Amusing. For the first day.
He was back at it on Saturday.
Again on Sunday. In fact, while at church, L and I noticed a sparrow hanging around the window behind the pulpit. I had momentary Tippi Hedren de ja vu and made a note to self to not stop for gas on the way home. (Perhaps too obscure-did I mention the drugs?)
He/she started up at 6:05 Monday morning. You’d think the thing would get a clue. I guess this is why the term “bird brain” exists: one not able to figure out the obvious. I realize that sparrows have a brain about the size of a pea so we can’t expect much more brain function beyond ’find worm, eat worm, build nest, hawk! run’. Maybe the really smart ones have one about the size of a peanut M&M and are the leaders of the Kingdom of Sparrowland. That said, our visitor must have one about the size of a gnat’s dimple.
This is day 5 of The Redundant Adventures of Bird Brain. It’s getting a little more than annoying. It’s not just the morning wake-up tapping, a significant dotting of bird crap is now decorating my deck directly below the window and screen door. Larry and I cannot figure out what his/her purpose is. We occasionally see a bit of nesting material in it’s beak. Sometimes it just perches itself on the window ledge and stares into the glass. I cannot figure out if it sees a really hot, potential mate in the reflection of the glass, is pondering another way in, or just wondering why it has such a pounding headache all the time. Perhaps just looking for the proverbial ‘greener grass’ on the other side. What ever the reason, this stubborn little creature is determined to get what it cannot have, and should not want. You are free, silly bird. Find yourself a damn tree! Then again the up side may be that this creature will never get it’s nest built and be able to reproduce, God’s way of cleansing the gene pool, one idiot at a time.
So when I ramble on about such things, there usually a point somewhere around the bend.
Greener grass. Seems to me like the recent theme in too many conversations I’ve had has been greener grass; a better-place to live, job, spouse, body, location, and on and on and on. And when you start down that road, what you have becomes crappier and crappier, in your own head at least-justifying the greener grass search- as you become more and more discontent convincing yourself that the grass you see in the distance is verdant and lush and well, perfect. Of course, when you get ‘there’ (move, change jobs-partners-dress size) you see all the crab grass, thistles and bare spots that you were sure did not exist in the emerald green Nirvana you saw from the great beyond, so you look back across the fence you just crossed or on to the next one and sure enough it’s much greener somewhere else. Thus the  pattern, habit, hobby, endless search, whatever continues. Rinse, lather, repeat.
I am not saying that change is never justified or necessary. But too often, discontentment is the root problem and all the changing in the world will not fix what’s really bugging you. Because when you get ‘it’ or ‘there’ the real problem, your discontent soul, came with you. So nothing has really changed-you are momentarily happy with the new whatever but before long, your true self rises to the surface and you just start another round of head banging and crap dropping looking for the next fix. Plus there is that pesky little side note that when you are concentrating on what you do not have, you have no room to be grateful for what you do have.
If I could paraphrase the old Serenity Prayer, it would be something like this:
God grant me the serenity to be grateful where you’ve placed me,
the courage to go when you move me,
and the contentment to wait for Your timing.
Or Plan B: Beat my head against an immovable object convinced there is something better on the other side.

Giant Jesus

Erin and I went on a road trip to Kentucky last weekend to see Mike pitch for the first time in nearly two years. Easy trip from Michigan-take 23 south to I75 south and keep going for about 4 hours until to see the ‘Florence Y’all’ water tower.  About 40 miles before we got to Cincinnati she said, “We gotta be getting close.”

“Close to what?” I asked.

“The giant Jesus,” she said. “There’s a church with a giant Jesus in a pool.”

Yeah, my reaction was about the same as your’s. “You gotta be kidding,” I said.

“Nope.” So she googled “Giant Jesus I75″ on her Blackberry and the first thing to pop up was Giant Jesus, Interstate 75, exit 29 (just in case you want to go see it for yourself).

Ten miles later there we were, passing a giant (62′ and it’s only from the chest up) Jesus, looking like he was carved out of a giant block of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, either sinking into or rising up out of a big reflecting pool. In fact, if you click on the link, there is an option to save giant Jesus to you desktop or wow and wow again, get him for a screen saver. Then I remembered the Heywood Banks song “Big Butter Jesus” and knew this is what he was singing about. Right next door is Traders World, a big theme park and flea market, and right across the freeway is another giant flea market. I had the eerie sensation that the temple needed cleansing.

Lawrence and Darlene Bishop (looking very televangelistic) began pastoring the Solid Rock Church of Monroe, OH in 1978. You can go to their website and find out what’s for sale in their online store, how to iTithe, sign up for free Christian Dating, read about their son’s (Lawrence II) Christian rock band and rodeo star accolades, get the giant Jesus stats (how big, where it was built, who the artist and designer was) and anything you might want to know except, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??????

Erin and I discussed the rationale for building the 16,000 pound, steel and Styrofoam covered with fiberglass anchored in concrete, 62 foot giant Jesus bust. Some possible reasons could be: People driving on I75 would see it and think, “Gee, look at that. A giant Jesus! I need to go to that church over there and find out how to become a Christian.” Or, there are a lot of people heading to or from Cincinnati praying for a sign, see giant Jesus and think to themselves, “Now I know what to do.” Or, “Wow, a giant Jesus. That church must have all the answers. Let’s stop in and gets some. I mean, we were going to the flea market anyway.”

It’s just my opinion, and Lord knows it’s worth about what you paid to hear it, but I have no idea what they spent on this thing but I can think of a bunch of different ways to spend a mega-messiah sized chunk of change that might, maybe just maybe, have a bigger (at least less embarrassing) impact on showing the nature of God. Missionary work, feeding the poor, visiting the sick or imprisoned, helping widows and orphans, taking care of the homeless is just a short starter list.

 

Our attempts to personify God are pathetic at best. Ah, you say, but we have seen Jesus. He was on earth. Yes, at a time when he could not be digitized, YouTube’d or Twitter’ed. Instead people see Jesus in a tortilla or potato chip . They see the Virgin in a cornflake or on in a shadow on the side of a garage. Or we make pictures or statues of Jesus: friendly Jesus, rugged Jesus, macho Jesus, concerned Jesus, Jesus the Hunk, etc., etc., etc., all pitiful attempts to reduce the Creator of the universe to human terms. I mean if I could communicate with animals I would communicate in terms that they were familiar with. I wouldn’t talk about it’s hand, depending on the animal it would be hoof, or claw or paw. So when God’s hand or heart or head is mentioned, I think those terms are used to bring things down to our meager understanding level, not because God resembles a human. And even though Jesus showed up in human form, it was because of who he came to relate to and what was necessary for that to happen, not because He and God the Father are guys who hang out in heaven.

Just imagine a pottery warehouse. Late at night all the pots come to life. Some of the pots surmise that someone made them. They didn’t just happen. Therefore, there must be a Potter. So they decide to make a Giant Pot to worship. Well, logic dictates that they would make their Giant Pot a version of what they believe to personify their ideas of the Great Potter. Since they’ve never seen any potter, let alone the Great Potter, their Giant Pot god will look a lot like . . . a pot. Maybe with pot hands. Sort of laughable when you think about it.

Our attempts to humanize God, to make (our idea of) his likeness, or define him in visible terms, diminish him, reduce him, make him less than who he is. At best. There are a ton of good reasons that God forbade making graven images. We don’t need to go into the embarrassing, mockery and ridicule temptations or just plain pathetic nature of the things.  The second commandment (the of the famous ten) says, You shall not make for yourself any graven image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Exodus 20:4. It gets repeated in Deuteronomy 5:8. You gotta figure that means God was serious about it. If you look at Commandments 1, 2 ,and 3 God seems pretty serious about who he is and what our response should and not be. There were some pretty nasty consquences when the Isrealites made the Golden Calf. I couldn’t find any fine print under the Ten Commandments that says, COMPLIANCE WITH THE ABOVE COMMANDMENTS IS NEGOTIABLE IF YOU HAVE REALLY SPIRITUAL INTENTIONS WHEN VIOLATING.

No graven images. I guess the Bishops just sort of overlooked that verse.

“Train up a child . . . “

I am out in Washington visiting the fam; Jon, Fawn and the kids. Today Sam (8 years old) and I made a run to Safeway for a few essentials. Again, this is Washington, home of Mt. Ranier, endless rain, and good old Starbucks. I believe there are more coffee shops in this area than any other place on earth. This is where Jon got hooked on the bean and the proper handling and care of all things espresso related. I believe it has something to do with the air. I drink more coffee here, I want more coffee here, than any other place I go.
Anyway, Sam and I finished our shop, got in the car and since it was late afternoon seemed like a good time to grab a mocha pick-me-up so I called the house to see if Fawn wanted me to get one for her. She didn’t pick up the phone so I left the message, “Hey, I was going to stop and get a coffee. Want me to pick one up? Give me a call if you get this in the next few minutes.”
Sam said, “Oh, you don’t need her to call. She’ll want a sugar-free, non-fat vanilla latte.” Then he added, “And there’s a Starbucks across the street.”
Spoken like a pro.
We headed across the street and as I pulled up to the drive through, the phone rang. It was Fawn. “Can I get you a sugar-free, non-fat vanilla latte?” I asked.
“Why yes. How did you know?” she said.
“Sam told me.” We both laughed.
Kids are paying attention all the time. To everything. All the time. Almost scary.
Proverbs says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
One might add, “and when he is 8, he’ll be able to order your coffee.”

Easter and WIRED Magazine

Not your traditional Easter morning ritual – but I was up early and my new WIRED magazine was sitting there, so I picked it up.

I started with a great article on the Grid – you know, that system that brings the electrons and gas to your house so you can cook that egg and make that coffee in the morning. Clearly we need to change the incentives we have in our system so the owners and users of the system work together to get a better system that will work smarter, cost less, and be better for our earth.

But it was the next article that made the title of this post come to mind. The Brain, Revealed - a very interesting article on work that is being done to map the brain. It turns out the key to making this possible is more related to industrial operations than the science. Granted, the science is important, but without the system to robotise the process and the informatics to plumb the depths of the data, it couldn’t happen – at least not in this century.

But, it was one sentence in the article that made me once again know I have a Creator that is beyond imagination. “Such is the faith of scientists: Nature must always make sense.” Wow – I’m not sure I could have said it more clearly – OK, I’m sure the Bible has said it more clearly – but without coming out and quoting Scripture, the author of the article has made an important point that seems to fit well with our Easter celebration. Yes, faith is important, and what he calls Nature and what I’ll call God, must always make sense – and this is why I always come back to my Faith.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Right after I became a Believer, in the early ’70s, I was taking a course at San Jose State University. It was called Existential Phenomenology. It was great, not because of what I learned from the professor (who by the way was also the author of the $50 book we had to use for the class), but because of what they couldn’t explain that I knew was explained by our Cretor. And I learned it one more time when I was at The Ohio State University (yes, a little known fact I don’t share often with my Michigan friends) working on a Doctorate – when I was taking my Philosophy of Science seminar and saw again that science made some very important assumptions that I saw were based on the Creator and they said were based on – well, they didn’t know what they were based on – they were just assumptions.

So, as strange as it may seem, I’m thankful yet again for my friends in the world of science who have pointed me to the Creator and to the Salvation He has provided through the death, burial, and ressurection of His Son – Jesus Christ.

P.S. I love my new Asus Eee PC 1000HE netbook that was sitting next to me when this thought struck me. I’ve often been stymied when a thought comes to mind in the house and I would have to walk all the way back to the office to peck it out on the desktop. Now I can just pick up my tiny friend Asus and hatch these brilliant thoughts for you all to read. Isn’t that cool!

P.P.S. I love WIRED Magazine – highly recommend it. Its irreverant, edgy, and has great info about techy stuff, and, it’s got very well written articles about lots of things.

Apple Love

I have to admit I have secretly lusted over having a Mac for some time now. The lifelong PC in me was beginning to long for the apparent intuitive simplicity of the Mackintosh computer. I took the first peek at the dark side when I helped Erin with a website she was designing for her mother-in-law’s business. Next I blindly trotted down the trail from which there is no return when I helped the girl put together a power point for the same business. The final headlong plunge into the Apple abyss happened on the cruise. Jon, Erin’s co-conspirator in Steven Job’s attempt to take over the world, at least the cool part of the world, created a video including music, video clips, and photos of the cruise in about 20 minutes. Add to that, my complete technological ineptness and Mac’s idiot friendly platform, and well, let’s just say I could hear the wind rushing by as I was sucked into the Mac-lust vacuum. I was seriously thinking about talking to L about getting one, maybe for Mother’s Day or my birthday or something else in the not too distant future.

That was two weeks ago when life was normal, before my friend got cancer, before I started on an I-don’t-know-how-long-it’s-going-to-take-to-get-through-this-but-I-will-be-with-you-both-figuratively-and-in-reality-even-though-we-live-three-time-zones-apart so treks to California and looking for the best air fares moved to the top of my want list and a lap-top, any lap-top, my lap-top, my dream Mac Notebook Pro lap-top moved to the Maybe Someday List. Oh well.

So yesterday, when I was dropped off at the airport, fairly exhausted from an emotionally tough week, (feeling completely wrung out and a gut full of lead simultaneously-to be more accurate) I opened my phone to call a friend. There was a voicemail waiting so I dialed in. Imagine my surprise when the voice said, “Hi, This message is for Becky Cobler. This is Stephanie from the Briarwood Mall Apple Store and your Mac Book Pro is all set up and ready to be picked up. We’ll be open until 9:00 tonight. Have a good day.”

Once I stopped blubbering I called Erin. “Do you know anything about a Mac Book Pro at Briarwood?” I asked.

“Welllllll, ummmm,” silence. My kids suck at lying. She spilled it all; the urgent text message from her dad that made her wonder what kind of bad news he was delivering, her brother’s co-conspiracy, the whole nine yards. Then she couldn’t stop talking about all the things I could do that she would teach me.

Next I called Jon. “How are you at keeping secrets?” I asked.

“Gee, why do you ask?” Awkward silence. Yeah, they really do not know how to lie. They would never hold up under any kind of interrogation. Jon spilled more details. Apparently L decided to do something special to make me happy after a week that really sucked. More tears. I vowed to keep the secret.

So there it was sitting on the seat waiting for me when Larry picked me up last night. He had a sheepish grin. “I heard you found out,” he said. Stinking kids can’t keep a secret worth a damn! (but I guess the real blame falls on Stephanie at the Apple store-possibly they are not all geniuses) He assured me that this was, indeed, my computer not a family computer that was really set up for him that I could use. This was for me.

More blubbering. Larry, bless his heart, knowing me well, included the One on One package that gives my weekly time in the Apple store each week with one of the ‘geniuses” to help me with anything I want to learn.

We did our first iChat with Jon and Erin when we got home. They were both pretty excited and offered their expertise to give helpful advice and tutorials any time. (Erin spent two hours with me today trying to help me through the beginnings.)

It’s awesome. Not the Mac Book Pro, though that too is pretty darn cool. Larry is awesome. Because he gets me. He knew exactly what I wanted without being asked. He got all the stuff it needed so I could use it and it would be mine personally. He didn’t wait for an ‘occasion’, he just did it because he wanted to do something special to make a week that really sucked, not suck quite so much. He wanted all those upcoming trips to be a little better and knew this would help. He was right, of course. 

Because he gets me. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

thanks, babe

Peeling Onions

One more day out here on the left coast then back tomorrow to work and “normal”. Then back again. Then home again. Back. Home. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. And so it goes, because in my family, anyone will do anything for each other as long as they are able to because that’s who we are.

As of now, we sit and wait. The scheduling department still has not called with the date. All the docs, specialists, pathologists, and sundry dominoes must be lined up before the first one can fall. So we wait. Another part of the cancer journey-take a step, wait, take another, wait-your life and the control you thought you had is now in the hands of others. Just one more thing that stinks.

When cancer hits your life, the amount of information is ovewhelming. It is too vast and deep. You simply cannot absorb it all at once. It’s just too much. The fam here is going through the layers as the impact of the disease is changing their concept of ‘normal”. One layer at a time, each one brings it’s assortment of emotions: shock, pain, denial, anger, fear, grief all slowly changing into the dull ache of reality. Occasionally “it” momentarily fades and you feel ’normal’.  More than once one of the fam has said, “I feel like this is just a horrible dream and I will wake up and it will all be gone. And then I realize it isn’t and it won’t.” And the stench of it all returns.

That’s when you are pushed in a little deeper and you step into the next layer and start all over again.

Like peeling and onion. Every layer you go through makes you cry . . .

and they all stink.

A Drop in the Bucket

I had a long conversation with my friend’s daughter the other night. She was having difficulty understanding why she was forgetful, distracted, and close to tears at any given moment. She’s found out five days before that her mom has cancer. She’s still struggling (duh!) with the news. Somehow she thought that this was something that once you got over the shock of it, you were past it and could move on with your life as it had been before.

I don’t think so.

Larry’s first round with cancer was back in 1990. Nearly 20 years ago. Five years later, the first recurrence i.e. metastasis was found. Two years later another. Two years later another. That was 1999. He’s now at the 10 year point without a recurrence but goes in annually for “the scan” to see if there’s anything to look at.  I figure he thinks of the scans as a way to show that nothing is there. The only other time it crosses his mind is when someone comes to him because they are facing ”it” and he is able to touch their life because of what he’s been through. His cup is half full.

I am the opposite. I wait to see if the cup is half empty. The question always sits back in my mind, usually way back out of sight, until something-an appointment, a friend’s illness, an unexplained ache or pain-brings it back out in the open. Every time that appointment is made, I hold my breath a little, waiting for “the news” – the other shoe to drop. As long as he continues to get scans, as long as the appointments continue, as long as he breathes, even if they pronounce him “cured”, the thought will linger, the question remain, because once cancer enters your life, it forever becomes part of it, adding a new ingredient to the stuff you are made of.

So I listened to this wonderful, young, innocent girl’s concerns and worries about why she alternately felt like she was either stumbling through a molasses-thick fog or spinning out of control then did the best I could to explain the reality of what happens when your life is touched by this crappy disease.  The best illustration I could come up with was this: your life is like a big bucket of crystal clear water. Things come into your life. Some of them are like a marbles dropped into the water-you can see them, they are well defined, there is a beginning and an end. Cancer is more like a drop of dye. It changes the water. It permeates every part of it. Sometimes you can see how the water was changed, sometimes not, because the drop is nearly invisible to the naked eye.  But it is still there, touching every molecule. The water has forever changed. Over time, you might get used to the change hardly noticing. You may even come to see that your life, though different and colored, is actually more beautiful. Better. Because every new drop in your bucket fills your life with more ingredients, more experience, more . . . stuff, giving you more depth, more appreciation, more wisdom, and you are more than you ever could have been without, if you were still plain, and featureless, and empty.

But you can’t see that at the beginning . . . when the waters start to rise . . . when you are hit by the storm . . . when cancer is first dropped into your bucket.

Climbing Everest

The term ‘Sherpa’ has become synonymous with those who work as porters or guides for mountaineering expeditions: those who go along side, carrying part of the load to make the journey up the mountain possible, because the whole burden is nearly impossible for one to carry alone. They are virtually unknown individually, with a few exceptions, because the journey is not theirs. Their role is to carry, sometimes to guide or advise, but mostly to silently shoulder part of the burden to make it possible for the climbers to make it to the end. The journey belongs to the mountaineer.

Few people get through life without a mountain to climb. For most it won’t be Everest but illness, unemployment, impending disaster, family turmoil, betrayal to name a few can be every bit as massive. Herculean. Maybe more so. Everest is voluntary. Most mountains are not.

A very good friend who lives on the west coast found out this week that “the lump” was cancer. By God’s grace, I had already planned to come and spend time with her. Two days later I was on a plane headed west. I’ve spent the past few days with her, watched the turmoil, seen the raw emotions as she, her husband, children and family try to get their brains around the fact that the Big C has forever become a part of their history. I’ve watched her tell others and seen the whole gamut: stunned silence, eyes welling with tears, shock, anger, the need to fill the silence with Pollyanna platitudes that everything is going to be fine. Everyone takes getting hit in the gut a little differently.

Her faith has been on the proving grounds for several years. It has been tested for years by an illness that causes unrelenting pain and the diminishing of what one once was physically. She has grown in ways that is not possible when the road is easy and smooth. To me, she is like a soldier has been through great battles, been bloodied and scarred, but stands knowing that she gets it in a way that those who have never fought cannot understand, and though longing for rest and hating war, willing to fight again if that is the call of the Commander.

Cancer is a crappy mountain to climb. Habbakkuk 3:16-19 sums it up.

“I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled.

“Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come . . .

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior.

“The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes by feet like the feet of a deer,

he enables me to go on the heights.”

Like a Sherpa.

Old Man Winter

I don’t who who came up with the phrase “Old Man Winter” but I doubt if they lived in Michigan. Old men are stuck in their ways. They are predictable. They may be grumpy, happy, aloof, or just plain boring, but you always know what you’ve got with an old man.

That does not in any way describe winter here in the Arctic belt called Michigan. From sometime in November until sometime in April. Or May. Or June. Michigan winters are . . . Let’s just put it this way. Last Wednesday February 4, our high was 14, actual temperature, not the windchill. Tuesday this week, less than a week later we set a new record high for the date at 59. Today the Arctic blew in again, bringing a bunch of snow, wind and general nastiness. This week we are supposed to start cold, warm a little, then turn cold with more snow. I think I’ll go to California while it makes up it’s mind.

I remember a few years back when a friend came to stay for a couple months from Argentina. She had never seen snow fall. She’d been to the Andes and seen it on the ground but never actually seen the white stuff come down from the skies.  It was mid April but Old Lady Winter obliged. It snowed the first weekend she was here. We also hit 83 degrees that week. “unseasonably warm”, they called it.  Unseasonable, my ass. Eighty-three degrees is never unseasonable in my book. Not even on Christmas. But I digress. Then we were back to typical April chilly-what-the-hell-am-I-winter-or-am-I-summer Michigan spring identity crisis. Anyway . . .

All of this is typical for Michigan in the winter: cold, warm ups, ice storms, wind chills, thaws, more snow, sub-freezing turns to 50’s back to sub-freezing no-one-has-a-clue-as-to-what’s-going-on season. Therefore I think the season should no longer be referred to, at least in Michigan,  as Old Man Winter. I propose the more accurate nomenclature-Old Lady Winter. To be more specific, Old Menopausal Lady Winter-mostly frigid, temperamental, unpredictable and moody, . . . with an occasional hot flash.

One Minute Mondays

1 Minute Mondays: February 2nd 2009 from Jon Cobler on Vimeo.”>

 

 

(And now a break from our cruise)

Jon and his fam have started a tradition this year of making a short video called “One Mnute Mondays”, a quick look back or ahead. This week’s is especially great. We didn’t do with with our kids so I don’t know how he came up with it. I think it probably has to do with the availability of technologies that didn’t not exist back then, his love of those technologies and anything geek-oid, his new Flip video camera, and his Mac Book Pro, allowing him to tap into his creative jiuces. All motivatetd by his greater love or his family and spending time with those who not only fulfill his life but fring him the greatest joy in the world. Jon and Fawn not only inspire the young couples that they minister to on a daily basis, but this old lady every bit as much.

(Double click on the green One Minute Monday link above, then click on the start arrow at the bottom left, then sit back and enjoy)