Time Toilets

I know, I know. I haven’t been posting all that often. I realize it and I’ve been thinking about it. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not on purpose, these lapses in proclivity. It’s simply because I have been much involved in other things.

I’ve been taking the time to figure out how to be a good dad to three beautiful daughters who aren’t so little anymore. I’ve been teaching Bible teachers about teaching the Bible. I’ve been doing little things (sometimes very little) to try and be a better friend and brother. I’ve been exercising (go figure). I’ve been driving a campaign to raise funds to help my church get into a building. I’ve been helping out at my kid’s school. I’ve been doing some technical reading for work. All of this besides the normal, everyday doings.

I like to be productive. I have a kind of farmer mentality when it comes to that. So I’ve been shifting my priorities a bit to try and be more productive while, at the same time, trying to reduce the insanity in my life. This is very hard to do. You think?

It’s odd what becomes important to us so quickly. Things that didn’t even exist a few decades ago, and yet we think we can’t live without them. Time toilets.

The newest thing is “apps.” Everyone is talking about “apps.” To me, “apps” are this abstract thing that, in general, exist to steal your life away. Why do I think that? Because I see it happening to people all around me. Time is burned, very fast, very hot. Facebook has already done this. Computers have certainly done this for a long time now. All of these “time saving” devices are killing our time. And once it’s dead, it’s gone. Long gone. Shwoooosh.

Have you been pulled too far into the big empty of Angry Birds or Words with Friends or Youtube or Facebook? Not to mention video games and, of course, blogging? You've gotta watch out for that blogging.

The word “addicted” is being used more and more commonly to describe our use of this stuff. Do you remember when the idea of an addiction was always considered a negative thing? Now people say it and laugh. “I’m so addicted to World of Warcraft! Ha ha hardy har har. That’s, like, funny, right?” But the laugh has a nervous twitter in it that says: “Out of control here,” and the eyes suggest that there is doubt about something.

My kids doctor told me about how he’d just seen his first case of carpal tunnel syndrome in a pre teen. 11 years old, I think it was. All from texting and such. She will probably need surgery.

11.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Days with Disney pt04

On almost every ride we went on at Walt Disney World, the moment we’d get off the ride, my youngest daughter would say, “Can we go again?” She had, and I think still has, no concept of the size of the parks and how many things there are to do and see. This is true of all of my kids. They had no idea of the potential, and it created a kind of tension that I didn’t handle very well. I wanted them to see as much as possible, to whiz around and laugh and try to take it all in, like the kids you see in the commercials, which makes sense when you consider the cost of the venture and the quality of the attractions. But they just wanted to do whatever struck their fancy, which doesn’t work out well. You end up crisscrossing the parks, using up their limited energy and time. And when you add in all the bathroom breaks, food breaks, and all the rest, including simply getting them up and into the parks in the morning, you wonder how you manage to see much of anything while you’re there.

The sheer size of the Walt Disney World complex is staggering. It’s about 50 square miles of stuff. Just for comparison, the suburb I live south of Detroit is only about 7 square miles, and it's considered a fair sized city around here. The city of Detroit, which is the 11th largest city in the U.S., and just north of our city, is around 140 square miles. So the Walt Disney World properties in Florida are about 1/3 the size of Detroit.

Yow.

And there was me, with my wife and my sister, trying to rush three young girls through it all in a few days.

I must be crazy.



© LW Publishing 2011

Time?

What is time?

If you think you know for certain, go ahead and put your definition in the comments section. It would be interesting to see what you think. But I’m not certain about what time is, and I haven’t found any science books or scientists that have given a particularly satisfactory answer to the question. It’s much like the concept of gravity, in that no one can really explain it.

Is time just an idea, or does it have some tangible reality to it?

It seems to me that “time” may only matter to us, as a concept or otherwise, because it “passes,” and as it passes we experience loss and decay. So it’s not so much time that matters to us, it’s the loss and decay that matters. As Chinua Achebe wrote, “Things Fall Apart.”

What if entropy is the real issue? What if time only matters because entropy occurs? What if time is only the distance between one state of being and the next state of being, and the “difference” between those two states of being is decay? And, on the other hand, what if decay didn’t happen? Where would time be then? Would it even make sense to talk about time? I’m fascinated by the idea of an existence that functions without entropy.

But, for now, it makes sense that we would devise some way to keep track of this commodity of “time” as it decays away from us, or whatever it’s doing. And our measuring tool, for the most part, seems to be the clock. Clocks help us to keep track of the loss. They are the measure of what’s gone and what’s potentially ahead. Because of this, sometimes just having a clock nearby can be a bit oppressive. But not having a clock can be worse, because the treasure of life can slip away, wasted, if we don’t pay attention.

It all just makes me want to fly like an eagle. To the sea.

How about you?



Romans 8:20-21
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Too Many Tyrants

There are days when I get up and I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no way to get everything finished that I need to that day.

This happens too often.

It wouldn’t matter if I was the greatest time management person in the world. Sometimes you just run out of time. So you find yourself trying to decide what to let go. You have to decide what matters the least. Or the most. And these are exceedingly hard decisions to make. It’s what an author named Charles Hummel dealt with years ago in a little book called “Tyranny of the Urgent.”

What a perfect description that is.

But sometimes “choosing” is almost impossible. Everything is important, right? At least it seems that way a lot of the time. So instead of picking one thing, getting it done and moving on to the next; I feel forced, by all these little tyrants of urgency, to jump from one thing to another. I basically try to chip away what I can as I run in circles, hoping to keep track of what I’m doing.

But I’m not very good at that keeping track thing. So you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got something else I’ve got to do.


Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011

Attention

Have you ever been in one of those situations where people are all looking at something, and you find yourself wanting to see what has gotten their attention?

I was at some fireworks once, and everyone started looking up into the sky, so I looked up into the sky, to see an advertisement for some politician on a banner, floating behind a little airplane. Yawn.

One time I was walking down a sidewalk in a little town that had shops and coffee houses, and people were all standing at this one place, looking in the window. So I waited for it to clear out a little and went to see what they were looking at. It ended up being my first exposure to one of those pictures that you have to stare at with your eyes painfully crossed for at least five minutes until you finally “see” a kind of 3D image of something like a bird or a car or whatever.

One time I was at a friends house, and a bunch of people were watching TV in his living room. I went to see what they were all looking at, and it turned out there was this new cable station called MTV, where they were going to show “music videos.” It seemed a little boring to me, but what do I know.

Years ago, someone told me there was this new thing called MySpace that everyone was using to kind of “promote” themselves. And then, there was this thing called “Facebook.” College students were using it to keep in touch with each other. Sounded like an interesting idea. And one day I heard some people talking about a video they saw on something called “Youtube.” They thought it was funny and they said millions of people had watched it.

If this were a sci-fi movie, it would all be a plot put together by aliens to take over our minds and control us so they could have us for lunch. And I mean, HAVE us for lunch.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you’ve seen it too. It’s not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with any of these things that command our attention. But still, it’s kind of creepy when you think about it: Something grabs the attention of someone, then someone else, then before you know it, without really thinking about it at all, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people all have their attention on the same thing.

Without thinking.


Hebrews 12:2-3
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

A good friend of mine has been grieving because his best friend committed suicide. My friend has been handling this in what I consider a heroic manner. But grieving can be hard because it’s so unpredictable. Grief does not always behave like you expect it to. It can do weird things to us.

Years ago, when I was 19 and still living at home, my parents were in the kitchen, making dinner or something, when the phone rang. My mom picked up the phone. I didn’t pay much attention until I heard her say...

“No.”

She said it quietly. It was disturbing. I dropped what I was doing in the next room and walked toward the kitchen. I saw her hand the phone to my dad. While he listened, his face started to change right in front of my eyes. In a moment it went from the face of a grown man to the face of a broken and hurt child. He said, “Alright.” But it wasn’t. He hung up the phone and collapsed into my mom’s arms, weeping. I have never before and never since seen my dad weep like this. Sobbing. Uncontrollable. It scared me.

Two of my dad’s sisters, living in Tennessee, had been driving to work. At some spot on the road, near a school, there had been some ice on the road. They collided with a semi truck and were killed instantly.

A good friend decided to drive me down to Tennessee for the funeral. We drove until we were passing out, then we stopped on the side of the road somewhere and slept in the car. We drove some more. We talked. We observed. We philosophized about life and death. Jack Kerouac would have been proud.

I was nervous about getting there.

When we arrived in Tennessee, I didn’t know how to feel. I think seeing my dad like that had messed me up. Knowing how my aunts had died, so violently, left me not knowing how to respond. Everything about how I felt seemed inappropriate and out of place. I laughed at things I shouldn’t have. I was unintentionally rude. I said things that were outright goofy, which I’m pretty good at regardless. But, more than usual, I was nervous and unsure about what to say to people. I didn’t know how to act. I just felt numb. And I didn’t shed a single tear. It was weird.

We got through it, then the friend took me and we detoured over to the Smoky Mountains for a day. Had a nice time. Headed on home.

Life went on. Time happened. Over a year went by.

I’m sitting in the car with my newish girlfriend. She would later become the wife. We’re talking about different things. Somehow the subject of my aunts and how they died comes up. I start to talk about the trip. I try to explain what I experienced. And, suddenly, I realize that I am broken and I fall apart. Sobbing. Uncontrollable. I wept for my dad and the family. I wept for my aunts. I wept from the center of my strange, inscrutable heart.

For some reason, finally, after all that time, I mourned.

I’ve learned over the years that the process of mourning can heal if we don't let it take possession of us. It can be like a demon, or it can be like a guide. You can let it control you or you can let it take you through the loss to a place of peace. Without mourning we would be emotionally destroyed by our broken world. But we can't belong to the sorrow because we belong to the Creator.

Like love, mourning works to heal us. So we need to grieve over whatever we've given away or whatever has been taken from us, we need to mourn, to confess our loss and, through that expression, begin to move on. It’s okay to weep, to grieve, to mourn. For a time. But it’s also okay to move on. It really is.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Do you see it?




John 11:35; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010