Category: Just sayin’

Our own personal Armageddon

Dejah, the golden retriever closing in on 11 years old this summer, wanted to go outside shortly after 1 a.m. the other day, and a few minutes after I turned the lights off again, I turned the lights back on and scribbled:

“What if armageddon/the apocalypse is something played out in every generation for us to rise to the occasion? What if Jesus calls us to love our neighbors here and now and battle against our sinful nature, not each other? The battle is not with our neighbors, it’s within us.”

I had a similar thought about 20 years ago after Johnny Cash died, a man who battled his demons publicly and, at least from outward appearances, managed to carve out a victory over those demons in his declining years. I wrote a column called “Johnny Cash’s Personal Armageddon” and suggested that he had waged a battle within himself not unlike the ultimate battle against good and evil described in the book of Revelation.

Rather than an epic battle on a grand scale at the end of time, I imagined the antichrist and Christ waging a constant battle for our souls in the here and now, while wars and rumors of war abound. We each face our own private Armageddon, and when our lives end we are either raptured or left behind. What if the whole endtimes imagery is actually a description of the battle we wage in our own personal endtimes? 

I’m pretty sure this theory is not particularly biblical; I’m just tossing the idea up to see if it lands in fair territory.

Twenty years after writing about Cash’s struggle, I think I believe more firmly in this idea of a personal apocalypse, the ultimate battle between the forces of light and dark that Cash wore on his sleeve his whole life. Angels of light and dark fly about my head constantly, pulling me to do good or not-so-good.

I daily ask to be led from temptation, and I daily stray in that direction. What’s in the house that I could eat to excess? Is there any more wine in the pantry? I should do some more writing or practice my guitar; I wonder what’s on TV? 

The angels of light remind me of the creative projects that could be my parting gifts to the world if it will have them, while the dark angels whisper, “Forget it. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

But but but, I sputter. Shouldn’t it be “Do good and be kind, for tomorrow we die?” Maybe so, the dark replies, but eating, drinking and merriment is more fun.

Still, on the days when I succeed in being good and kind, or creative, I seem to sleep better, so maybe “more fun” is not as healthy for me as it feels in the moment.

Blue Guitar turns 4

An author whose daily blogging streak is at least five times as long as mine (1,369 days and counting) spends many days hawking his books and other products, which I find somewhat distracting, but he sells quite a few more books than I, so maybe he’s onto something. 

Four years ago this week, I looked over the draft of an eccentric little book I was writing and decided suddenly that it was finished. Using the magic of modern technology, I had the book on the market by nightfall.

The book was and is How to Play a Blue Guitar. It will teach you nothing about music beyond that contained in the short poem that serves as the title piece:

The way you play a blue guitar is the same as the way you play any guitar.

Essentially, one guitar plays the same as another: It’s built with the same workings, potential melodies and chords, hopes, and dreams as any other color guitar.

Kind of like people.

The book is comprised of 24 short pieces — essays, short stories, and poems for the most part. I’m quite proud of it. Published on impulse, it remains as representative a little book as anything I’ve ever assembled. It shouldn’t hang together but somehow it does, at least in my humble opinion.

The author I mentioned in the first paragraph seems to believe that if you can’t think of anything especially profound to write in your blog, then at least try to sell something. I enjoy his writing and find his advice helpful. That’s why today I’m inviting you to buy How to Play a Blue Guitar, the ebook, the paperback, or the hardcover.

Enjoy! Live! Love! Buy!

The garage door miracle

God has a sense of humor.

The garage door opener has been broken for close to a year. When I hit the button, the light flashes 10 times to tell me it’s not working. Sometimes it starts closing, then stops and goes back up. In either case I have to hold the button to make sure the door closes.

My routine for months has been: Pull the car out of the garage, click the remote and get out of the car while the lights flash, then hold the outside button until the door is closed. The door opens just fine, it just won’t close unless you hold down the button.

Last week I finally took the time to look at the door’s workings. It seems mice had gnawed through the wires on the north side of the door. I reconnected the wires, but still nothing happened. I figured one of these days I would have to call the dealer and get a professional to repair it, which I really can’t afford just now.

Then Friday I pulled the car out of the garage and clicked the remote. As I climbed out of the car, I noticed that the door was closing on its own. I watched, shocked, as the door went all the way down as it’s supposed to do.

“OK,” I said, and went about my business. And when I got home, the door again closed when I pushed the interior button. I didn’t have to hold it down.

Figuring it was a fluke, I pulled out of the garage Saturday, clicked the remote and opened the car door — but the door closed on its own.

Maybe it fixed itself? Maybe God fixed it? 

When I came home I pulled into the garage, climbed out and pressed the button. Sure enough, the door started to descend on its own.

“OK, Lord, I guess you fixed it,” I said out loud. “I don’t believe it —”

At that very moment — at the very moment I said “I don’t believe it” — do you understand? I said “I don’t believe it” and right exactly then — the door stopped most of the way down and started going back up, malfunctioning just the way it had for the previous several months.

I laughed at God’s joke, and said, “OK, OK, I believe it, I guess you fixed the door for me, Lord.”

Sunday I pulled out of the garage, clicked the remote, and it closed just fine.

When I got home, I pulled in, got out of the car, and said out loud, “I believe you, Lord. Thank you.”

The door went all the way down.

You may believe God would not care one way or another if my garage door opener works.

I used to believe that, too.

The next thing

Next — now for my next trick — what comes next? Here we stand at the nexus of next, the watershed moment as it were. The next thing can be this, or perhaps that, or perhaps both, or perhaps neither.

Whose choice is it? Mine, yours, or someone else’s entirely?

I don’t know.

That’s the scary and the exhilarating thing about it all: We don’t know. We may have preferences or predictions, but what comes next is out of our control.

You might say only God knows. But who knows what God knows? If we have free will, He might have a good idea, but if we have free will, wouldn’t we surprise God from time to time by choosing a different path than the one we seem destined to take?

It could be that the only ways to see what comes next are to watch, or to act and see what happens.

Force of habit

From time to time I feel like my well is empty, and I don’t want to write anything, but I write something anyway because The Streak. Today is the 1,363rd day since I committed to posting daily in this space.

And I have a deeper understanding of that phrase “force of habit” as a result. Even on the days when my well is empty and I don’t want to write anything, the habit forces me to the keyboard.

An ingrained habit is powerful that way. And it turns out a good habit is as hard to break as a bad habit, thank the Lord and the stars and everyone and everything there is to thank.

You can’t measure the time between paragraphs, but rest assured that about five minutes past between the end of that last paragraph and the beginning of this one. Yep, my well feels empty tonight, and all I can think to write about is how cool it is to feel compelled to write even when there doesn’t seem to be anything to say. But that in itself is something to say.

And so I keep the streak alive and send you on your way. May you find something more meaningful than this to say as you journey through the next 24 hours, and may the forces that shape your life be only good habits.

Cross purposes

And what about the big questions? Why am I here? What happens before we are born and after we die? What is our responsibility to others and to ourselves? What is the secret of the universe?

And where do we get the answers? We could spend hours and days mulling it all over or just live the best life we can muster. And what will it all mean in the end?

Ah, meaning. That’s what it all boils down to, isn’t it — What does it all mean? as if it had to mean anything at all. “Everything is meaningless,” cries the ecclesiastical poet, and yet we keep asking.

And as the Grim Reaper taps on our shoulder or we see him approaching, we wonder “What did it all mean? Did I accomplish my purpose?”

What if the fellow who called himself the Son of Man, and his followers, had it right — that our purpose is to love one another? Oh man, oh man, oh man, wouldn’t that be sad? Because we hate that purpose. We even have special programs — they’re called “newscasts” — that chronicle with glee all the different ways we don’t love one another, usually multiple ways just in the last 24 hours. It’s the human tragedy.

Some folks are firmly of the opposite opinion. They believe our purpose is to murder as many people who hold different beliefs from theirs as possible. In its purest form this practice is called “war,” and it’s terribly inefficient because you inevitably kill a bunch of people who hold the same beliefs as yours but happen to live in a country ruled by the people you disagree with. It’s an unspeakably stupid purpose to pursue.

Many people are too busy seeking food and shelter and raising the next generation to spend quality time pondering our purpose in life, although one might argue that without food, shelter and a future there’s not much call for meaning anyway.

I stare across the living room and see that two of the four pictures hanging on the wall are a tad off-center. One of my purposes today will be to nudge them back. But I digress. (Who, me?)

If those are the main choices — and I know there are more than two — I think I’d decide that loving my neighbors is a better choice than slaughtering them. It seems better to risk erring on the side of life.