Tag Archives: Serendipity

The Consolation of Being Lost in the Right Place

23 Thursday Apr 2015

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Out of the Streator hospital with the newest calcium channel blocker, I was on my way to see a cardiologist in Pekin. No cardiologist was serving at Streator at the time, and my GP, Dr. John, referred me to Dr. Riaz Akhtar at Pekin, 45 minutes in the opposite direction. I hadn’t been to Pekin in many years and never knew my way around the city, so I got lost. (This was many years before Garmin and GPS, but I did have a little Pekin map.) Jan was not with me on this first visit, she was in school, and, after having survived three events in which I expected to die, another stress treadmill and echocardiogram sounded easy enough to do by myself.

Finding my way around Pekin was not easy, though, and I pulled into the cemetery along the main highway, to look again at the map. There was no parking along the busy highway, and the cemetery provided no traffic and easy parking. I scanned the cemetery, and was surprised to see a familiar name, Glen Sims.

The Sims family was my prior connection to Pekin, and I had visited them there twenty years previously. Before going to Pekin, Glen Sims had been my pastor, and he continued to be my mentor through my years of college and first year of seminary, until a malignant brain tumor suddenly ended his life fifteen years before. That was when I had last been there, in that spot, though I had no memory of where it was. I had just came upon the place when I was lost. Beyond my parents and wife, no one had influenced my life more. I missed no one more. Since events had brought me unexpectedly to this place, and I still had enough time to make my appointment, it seemed a propitious time for him and me to have a conversation, tearful and refreshing. He always had that effect on me, a mixture of tenderness and joy.

Afterward I drove straight to Dr. Akhtar’s office. After the tests, and at a later appointment, Dr. Akhtar gave his advice. He was a no-nonsense cardiologist. My moderate exercise and diet and propensity to let events control my schedule, instead of my doing so, must change. I must gradually build up my heart like any muscle, since it was woefully inefficient as it was.  I must live on a low fat, low carbohydrate diet, no caffeine, no alcohol, and I must run or swim, not walk, six days out of seven, for at least forty-five minutes, or else. Or else, what? They could put in a new heart valve, but he wouldn’t recommend it, since they would have to do it again within a few years, and life would not improve without these other changes anyway. Fortunately he didn’t expect me to jump into running immediately. He advised that I enter into that exercise slowly and steadily, under Dr. John’s care, since he happened to be a runner also. And the other “or else?” A rule of thumb, he said—seven years of experiences like yours and you can expect to be dead, if you’re lucky.

I was very glad to have had that conversation with Glen Sims.

Hospital #2 and the Nurse Who Knew

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.comDischarged from the hospital, with a clean bill of health as far as bloodwork and the upper and lower GI tests could show, and scheduled in a week  for a cardio-stress test at the hospital across town, I went home with my doctor’s instruction to check back in if the symptoms returned. Five days later in the evening I asked my wife to drive me to the other hospital, where my tests were scheduled, after a few hours of increasing chest pain and arrhythmias, breathing difficulty, dizziness, sweating and nausea. I wasn’t ready to ask my fellow rescue squad volunteers to take me. A fellow has his pride, after all.

The ER doctor checked me in, encouraging me with his words that my heart sounded like a train speeding clickety-clack down the track. It felt that way too. He sent me to a regular room where I proceeded to get worse. In the middle of the night the nurse came in with the news that my doctor had given some orders at last.

No heparin this time, nor intravenous nitroglycerin.  He wanted to know how I handled a regular dose of nitro, in the little tabs under the tongue, up to three if I did not get relief right away. I took three in a few minutes succession, and felt much better. Miraculously better, I thought. There was also something to settle my stomach, which I took, although it already was feeling better.

The nurse sat down at my bedside and told me about her experience with nitro. She told me that she had angina that was stable and benign most of the time, unstable when she became overly tired or stressed, and she used nitro tabs when she needed them. Her situation might not be like mine at all, only tests would tell, but she wanted me to know that people lived with that condition, and it was a good sign that I had responded so well.

When I went home that time, with nitro tabs and beta-blockers, and still non-committal comments from my doctors, until that postponed stress test and more time had passed, the most helpful conversation was that one in the middle of the night with a nurse who had her own experience and the audacity to share it. Her casual suggestions about work pacing, stress relief, rest, limiting caffeine intake, and trusting that answers would be found proved to be the timely help that was needed.

The spirits of the trees

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Forest, Nature

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Standing in the forest, in winter, the bare branches of the oaks and maples, and the undergrowth dogwood, redbud and sassafras, intertwine in contortions and still barely touch each other. The breeze moves the branches in a thousand directions at once, and still the trees do not scrape or bother each other. They dance and swing, bow and bend.

These are living beings, not inanimate things. Aristotle believed all living things had souls, along with the animists of primitive faiths. So our ancestors worshipped the spirits of the trees. They had a glimpse of something true. The life in such wonderful plants outnumbers us by far, and our health and well-being depends on them.

The trunks stretch and crack. With an ear to the wood I hear the sound of stress and relief throughout the organic system. Doing this, Martin Buber claimed that we can have an “I-Thou” experience with a tree, that opens us to the possibility of Thou within and beyond the self and the universe, divine and exquisite. All I know is that the tree is part of me, and I am in the tree.

The power and weakness of the trees become obvious as they move, from top to bottom. I had thought that the trunk stood still, but look at it stretch and bend! The oldest tree stands most rigid, and that becomes its problem, as its core decays and allows water and air, squirrels and birds to take up residence. Yet even it spreads out tender, youthful extremities, to reach the light and make the air that we breathe, to claim its unique place among the living.

Should it be “I cannot see the forest for the trees,” or “I cannot see the trees for the forest?”

Playing in a Junkpile

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up

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One of my favorite pastimes as a child was playing in the junkpile. Junkpiles were common. Mine was along a river, and it had been used for many years to dispose of the cast-offs of the previous farm tenants. An ancient truck cab was there with most of its equipment intact. I “drove” it thousands of miles. Old toys—a biplane, carousel, wagon—had been pitched into the pile, and though broken and supposed to be unusable they were much more interesting than the ones I kept in my room. I was always amazed at the good things people had thrown away, and spent hours digging out treasures. There were hiding places and room for trails and my small scale “developments,” building towns, farms, factories. There were shy and friendly natives, from mice to muskrats. 

Junkpiles were not safe places to play. That just added to their fascination. Broken glass, nails, twisted and sharp metal attacked the unwary. But I was careful and never had an injury there. Injuries came from less obvious sources. What chemicals or heavy metals (lead? mercury?) lay in wait, I do not know, or what brain damage I may have sustained, I do not remember! 

When the bulldozer covered the junkpile in a project to improve the riverbank, though I was beyond the age of playing there, it was a melancholy sight. No other child would have the opportunity to discover or enjoy so many wonderful experiences. It was safer, neater, prettier, presumably better for the river itself, but it was just covered up, after all. It is still there. 

My memories of the junkpile return in many contexts. The massive landfill operations today consolidate such efforts and insulate them from the surrounding land, but they are barren places compared to my junkpile. I wonder at the many items people try to dispose of or bury, when they have a use. I suppose that children still have places to let their curiosity and imagination have free reign, but how could they be as rich as my laboratory on the farm? 

Often we are digging out old things, examining and thinking about them, imagining and dreaming about things that may or may not exist somewhere or sometime. We find treasures that others have abandoned, riches that are more valuable than what many people keep. Our best efforts resemble nothing better than children at play.

Silent unseen companion

28 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Forest, Nature, Seasons

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My desk sits next to and facing a window, and the only problem with that comes from my tendency to gaze into the woods instead of attending to the project that sits on my desk. On this day I’m glad I looked up when I did. About fifty feet directly in front of me, still in my yard, though my “yard” is all undeveloped forest, I catch a slight movement. It appears to be the twitch of an ear, a rabbit, I think. Then I look closer and see the body lying in the fallen leaves, blending perfectly into the snow covered forest floor in a depression next to an old stump. That is the biggest rabbit I have ever seen! Instead, as I take some minutes to observe, it proves to be a deer. 

She sits silently, motionlessly, except for an occasional reaction to a gust of wind or a wary reflex to a sound nearby. Likewise I am absorbed in meditating on her, as she has chosen to rest mid-morning in such close proximity to my home. She is well-concealed, nearly invisible, camouflaged in color and stillness, and secure in her choice of resting place. 

Not thirty minutes before this I walked around the house, passing just a few feet from her. She must have been there then, but still she stayed. She lies there, and even when I stand to get a better look, she makes no move. Now I know where deer go during the daytime. In the evening we often see them along the road. They leave their tracks all around the house. On a wintry night I have walked outside and interrupted a herd of ten or more nearby, but during this particular day, she is by herself and secure in her secret. If she had not moved so slightly when I happened to look up in her direction, I never would have noticed.  

I have moved enough, and made enough noise, that I know she is aware of me. Once she even stands and looks in my direction, then turns around and moves a few feet, still in view, and lies down again. For three hours, as I work at the desk, she is my silent partner. 

How many times have I missed such a visitor? What am I not seeing now, even as surprised as I am by this one, and as intent on seeing someone or something else? Does the barred owl still rest on this day in the stump nearby? Does the armadillo dig in the loose leaves and make a nest for sleep during this day?  

How hard it is to learn to be observant and sensitive to the world around us! Only by accident do most of us note what is there for us to understand all along. Accelerate the hustle-bustle of our pace, and we miss even more. Slow it to a steady, thoughtful pace, and we at least have a chance to notice. Now I too must move along and do some other work, but her soft, gracious presence has beautified my day. When I return she too has moved on to something else. But, I think, she is still nearby, observing me.

The day I wrecked the tractor and died

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Death, Events, Farm, Growing up, Learning from mistakes

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I was about 13 years old, and had driven the tractor, specifically the Farmall “H” tractor, for about five years. On that spring afternoon I was returning from the field at the south end of the farm where I had finished harrowing in preparation for planting. (We did that sort of thing in those days.) The smooth lane lay ahead of me along the fence line at the edge of the farm, and I was in fourth gear. I had never driven in High gear, and this was my opportunity. I slipped the gear shift into High and released the clutch and took off. The speed was exhilarating as the fence posts whizzed by. I must have been going twenty miles per hour! I pulled the throttle open a little more. Soon I was approaching the bank where the lane broadened and sloped gradually toward the river bridge, where I knew I would have to slow down.

I was already at the ridges when I realized that I should have slowed earlier. The ridges intersected the lane and were the last visible remnants of the lodges of an Indian village. I had often combed those ridges for abandoned grinding stones, celts, knives, and drills, and I should have remembered that they were there, forming a bumpy area even at slower speeds. Before I knew it I was bounced off the seat, holding onto the steering wheel with all my strength, trying to pull my legs back onto the platform to apply the brakes. Meanwhile the tractor headed toward the creek with the old spring at its head.

Somehow the tractor stopped just at the lip of the bank where the creek had eroded the field. I peered down into the creek bed twenty feet below, and I saw my body there in the creek bed underneath where the tractor had come to rest… in an alternative universe where miracles do not happen. I died that day, or I knew I would have died. My parents would have grieved long and hard and blamed themselves for letting me drive that tractor. There would have been no end to sadness, as we used to say.

I backed the tractor away from the bank and drove it slowly, very slowly, back to the farmyard. I do not know whether I was happier for having been reborn from the dead or more ashamed for having nearly wrecked my parents. I do not know whether they noticed my strange thoughtfulness as the next weeks passed. Perhaps I appeared no different than usual.

Certainly I have thought about that second chance at life many times since. One spring just before Easter fifteen years later I could not shake the memory as I headed toward a farmhouse where a couple had just lost their only son in a farm accident. He was thirteen years old, and he had fallen off the tractor under the disk. What could I say to them?

Oh yes, I still have the “H.” It is my favorite tractor of all time. Like me it has been baptized in murky water and raised from a muddy grave

The Joy of the arrival of seed catalogues

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Nature, Seasons, Yard

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It’s January, and the plant and seed catalogues have begun to arrive. Their pages are filled with spectacular specimens that provide a winter diversion until signs of spring actually arrive. I am tempted to order everything so that my yard will be as full of color as the pages of the catalogues. I imagine a large windbreak of Messer Forest spruce and pine on the north side of the house alongside the shade garden, an orchard of Stark Brothers dwarf apple, pear and peach trees on the east side, every kind of Wayside Gardens viburnum, agapanthus, aconitum, heuchera, aquilegia, campanula, coreopsis, echinacea… in the south and east yards, except for the space reserved for the Gurney’s vegetable garden and the strawberry patch and the Perkins rose garden. Our yard isn’t big enough, of course, for any of that. But this late winter break is for dreaming, not working.

Not that there isn’t work to do. The dried stalks of last year’s garden have served their purpose and need to be cut before the first buds of the new season poke their heads through the soil. The stalks have allowed the roots to breathe through the winter’s frozen crust, and they have formed the “architecture” of the winter garden, according to the sages of Victory Garden and HGTV. In reality I just never get around to cutting them until late winter, so I use any excuse for delay.

All it takes is a few warm days in February to encourage the tulips, daffodils and lilies to show up. Their first appearances always get frost bite, but they spur our hopes for an early spring. The winter accumulation of leaves from the oak trees across the street and any other vagabond neighborhood trees must be cleared, along with the candy wrappers and overflow waste from the neighboring yards that get caught in the existing landscape plants. There is plenty to do before the first crocus blooms, but it will surprise us before it all gets done.

Then we will begin again with the trips to the greenhouses and the selection of a few annuals to fill the empty spaces and provide the splashes of color that the perennials don’t provide in the season’s gaps.  We will take a census of the survivors of the wintry tests, and discover what new arrivals the birds have brought and deposited in the soft earth and mulch. Sometimes they have brought visitors that we have not imagined would take up residence here. Then we will resume the weekly hour of prayer and meditation in the yard following the lawn mower in its noisy labyrinth.

I rarely order anything from the catalogues, but that does not make me appreciate them any less. They provide a welcome tour of anticipation through the seasons ahead and relief from the heaviness of winter’s last effects. In similar ways the combination of secular and religious events on the calendar provide a way of marking time until better days arrive. Between Valentines and St. Patrick’s Day, M L King’s and President’s Day, Lent and Easter and Pentecost, there is a mixture of nature and history to keep us moving along in our hopes and imaginations. We count the days with an expectation that something new will break through the old patterns and refresh our spirits and make it possible for us to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and feel with new hearts that God is indeed good…all the time.

Cooper’s Hawk and the snake

23 Friday Jan 2015

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The large Cooper’s Hawk glided to a tree branch at the edge of the little clearing in front of our Ozark home. His red eyes searched, his gold chest puffed out, his navy blue banded tail feathers twitched. He looked at the long white snake that stretched across our driveway, ready to pounce and carry it away. For half an hour he studied quietly, then out of exasperation he started to cry out, trying anything to get that snake to move.

We had been taking note of cardinals, tanagers, chickadees and other unidentified birds. They of course disappeared when the hawk arrived, leaving him to consider the snake as easier prey. But he looked like he wanted some help; maybe a flock of Cooper Hawks might be needed for that intractable white snake.

We had some problems getting telephone service into the new little house. The contractor dutifully followed the wiring plan and installed several telephone jacks and bundled them into one line at the Northeast corner of the house. The phone company, as promised, provided telephone service down the 400 foot lane and installed the service box… at the Southwest corner of the house. We suppose they thought that the intervening link might be provided by satellite or something. Tiring quickly of going outside to plug a phone directly into the service box, I stretched a hundred foot line between the box and the bundle… a long white telephone line, across our front drive.

The hawk finally gave up and flew away, but a few hours later he was back for a while, and next day, too. Wondering what’s up here? Concluding that some things are not meant to be. Like a lot of things in life that may work out in accord with our plans, or not, we just have to wait, and see.

He left his mark….

12 Monday Jan 2015

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People used to “sign” their important documents with a mark, sometimes a simple “X,” sometimes some other personal symbol, or even a ring impression in wax. My grandfather sent love letters to his wife-to-be on a nearly daily basis for four years, and signed them RCW, not because he couldn’t spell his own name, though he invented the spelling of a lot of the words he used. Grandpa did not really write anything. He printed, and he did not print well.  As he reminisced about his elementary school education, he acknowledged that he preferred to hunt and farm when he was a youngster. He did not spend many days in school. He wanted his children to do better, and they did.

One afternoon in the 1950’s we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa, who lived an hour away from us. We did not find them at home, so we went on to visit someone else in the vicinity, but when we returned to our home, we found notes all around the outside of our house and yard with the sentence, “Kilroy was here.” That was as close to Grandpa’s signing his name “Roy” as I ever saw, but most people knew him as “Carl” anyway.

When I was in school the Palmer Method cursive letters surrounded the classroom. We expended much effort practicing those flowing shapes, holding the pen correctly, not flexing the wrist, but using the whole arm in writing cursive. Even our signatures followed the method. Later my banker brother said that I must individualize my signature, or anyone would be able to copy it who knew how to write.  His was truly unique.

Times have changed. Signatures mostly look like people have been coached in signing by their physicians. Illegible marks. Keyboarding has replaced anachronistic cursive in many schools. We return to the mark as sign. When many of our documents require a virtual signature over the Internet, and we never see one another in the process of signing, the X may be more than what is really necessary.

I think about this in connection with my wife’s great-great grandfather whose life I have been researching and trying to reconstruct over several years. He bought and sold many properties during the last half (twenty years) of his life, and the deeds were recorded in the county record book with the notation of “his mark.” Did he know how to read or write or print? We won’t find an answer in those records in which many people “made their mark” who knew how to read. Many knew languages that are no longer spoken or written there, including him, so it may not have been a matter of education that marks were made, but merely a matter of trust. He was there. He made his mark.

Some of the most revered people in history left no inscribed marks of any kind. Perhaps the one most dear to many of us is known still most completely by his cross-shaped X. He left his mark.

Filling time and space

18 Thursday Dec 2014

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I was a young pastor with a wife and two small children, full of myself as much as the gospel, and eager to do everything I could to fill time and space. Especially in a season like Advent, my schedule filled to overflowing. Preparations for services, extra services, hospital and home and nursing home visits, church meetings, decorating, gift-purchasing and wrapping, bible studies, prayer groups, youth and senior groups, caroling, community board meetings, police chaplaincy emergencies, preparing food baskets, volunteer hospital chaplaincy hours, volunteer fire and rescue department emergency calls—who could make this up and find such a schedule believable?

And so we came to the second Christmas Eve service, running from 11 PM to Midnight, with communion and candlelight. At the end of the service, the car being loaded, I would drive the family one hundred fifty miles, three hours, to my in-laws’ house for a gathering on Christmas Day. Exhausted. Every tiny bit of available energy spent. How could I drive? I had worn out my wife and kids with my busy-ness, too. No one should drive in that condition, as dangerous as being drunk. The one saving grace was that the highways were nearly empty.

About the time that I realized I was falling asleep at the wheel, another saving grace appeared. The northern sky filled with the aurora borealis. I stopped the car, stood outside in the brisk air, and witnessed another way to fill time and space. Magnificent colors and curtains danced in the heavens. My exhaustion turned to tears and joy. Glory in the Highest, quite apart from anything I had done or could do. I woke my wife and children, though I’m not sure that they could see and appreciate everything I saw and felt at that hour. Then we finished that trip in the refreshing company of the heavenly host.