"I Just Might Be In There."

We had a wedding in our family over the past weekend.  Our older son married his long-time friend and fiancé.  We traveled to the Kansas City area on Thursday, and spent most of Thursday afternoon and Friday helping finish up the arrangements.

We were in the Shawnee area of the Kansas City metro area, and the wedding was just east of the little bedroom community of Basehor.  We had two churches involved in the planning and the event; the 151^st Street Church of Christ, which was our son’s background, and the Risen Savior Lutheran Church at Basehor, which was the bride’s background.

I don’t know how many cities I traveled in or through during my time there.  I lost count at eight.  There was Olathe, Shawnee, Overland Park, Basehor, Kansas City, and several others.  And as you may well know, it’s virtually impossible to know with any certainty, unless you just know, which city you are in at the moment.  They all run together in that area, and unlike Eastborough and Wichita, there is no defining physical thing that tells you where you are.  I’m not even sure which city our motel was in.  All I know is it is in the Kansas City area.

Do you ever feel like that in life?  You know where you are, but on the other hand, you aren’t really sure?  I’m reminded of the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoon of many years ago.  I’ve written about it in a prior blog.

This Looney Tunes cartoon from years ago tells the story of when Foghorn woos Miss Prissy the hen in order to have a nice place to call home and keep warm in the winter. The plot goes something like this. (Credit Wikipedia for the synopsis. I changed it some to reflect my recall of the story.)

Foghorn reads a newspaper story in the Barnyard News predicting a cold winter. To avoid freezing in his shack, he decides to woo Miss Prissy ("I need your love to keep me warm."), who lives in a warm, cozy cottage across the way. Miss Prissy is flattered by Foghorn's brief courtship, but tells him that, in order to prove his worthiness, he needs to show that he can be a good father to her nerdy son.

The little boy - Egghead Jr., is dressed in a stocking cap and oversized glasses – and would rather read about "Splitting the Fourth Dimension" than engage in typical little boy games. Foghorn, intelligent rooster that he is, catches on to this and sets out to win Miss Prissy’s heart by showing Egghead Jr. how to play various sports games.

They try baseball and flying paper airplanes first, to no avail. Then they play hide and seek. Foghorn hides in a feedbox. However, Egghead uses a slide rule (anyone younger than 40 won’t know what that is) and determines mathematically that Foghorn is buried in the ground. He uses a shovel to dig a hole, and pries Foghorn out of the hole with the shovel.

Foghorn is totally befuddled at this turn of events, knowing that he hid in the feedbox, not in a hole in the ground. He looks over at the feedbox, however, and decides to not look in it because, “I just might be in there.”

Sometimes, we catch ourselves coming and going, busy as all get-out, but never sure of where we really are.  I think we do that in part because we’ve been taught that busy-ness equals productivity, and busy-ness means you don’t have to think seriously about things that seem to get in the way of that productivity, like the eternal questions of “Who am I?  Why am I here?  Where am I going?”

Next time you catch yourself in a place where you aren’t really sure where you are, stop for a moment and let life catch up to you.  You have no business being like Foghorn Leghorn…who just might be some place where he doesn’t want to know.

Celestial Show

Did you see the eclipse this morning?  Having woke up at about 4am and not being able to go back to sleep, I decided to get up about 5am and go out to view the celestial show.  My wife had already gotten out of bed and gone to the couch in the living room.  She does that from time to time to be more comfortable, so I wasn’t bothering her by rambling around at that hour.  I got around and did a short version of my morning routine, then turning off the porch light that I keep on all night, I went outside.

The air was crisp and cool, but not cold.  The moon was over the neighbor’s house and was not as I expected.  It was dark on the left side, and gradually got brighter toward the right.  I had expected a more solid color (or non-color).  After looking at it for a minute or so, I began to look around and take in my surroundings.  After all, I don’t often see this time of day.

The noise of the traffic on West Kellogg wafted into the neighborhood, a little louder than I might have expected.  Other porch lights were on up and down the street, but no one was much stirring.  In the sky, besides the moon, I was able to make out several constellations and some stars.  Sirius, the dog star was one of the brighter objects in the sky.  Orion was rather clear, and I could also see his sword, which doesn’t often happen in the light pollution of the city.  The North Star was visible, and I could even see the Seven Sisters, albeit faintly.  Venus was a bright morning star in the east, but the Big and Little Dippers were washed out.

The newspaper was on the drive.  After a bit, one of the neighbor’s garage doors opened, and she left for work.  A jet traveled east to west directly toward the eclipsed moon, with the noise of the engines following some distance behind.

I decided while I was out to stroll through the neighborhood.  Heading out, I noticed that not many homes were lit up yet.  One neighbor was up and had the front door open.  Inside, I could see the TV on and a shot of the eclipsed moon on the screen.  A dog or two started barking in the distance, and as I got closer to Maize Road, I noticed the air getting noticeably warmer.  I’ve noticed that phenomenon before.  We are not far from Cowskin Creek, and the park is directly behind us.  I presume that the combination of a low lying area by the creek, and the flora and fauna make our immediate area a little cooler.

I continued on toward Maize Road, and noticed that there were not many newspapers in the driveways.  People don’t much read the newspaper anymore, it seems.  There are several of us older folks in my immediate area who subscribe, but many of the younger families in the less expensive homes by Maize Road don’t, evidently.

I was out for about 25 minutes, and as I came back in, I picked up our newspaper and came in the house after viewing the moon one last time.  Going to the basement in order to not wake the wife, I got on the computer and am now typing this…as she is getting up and around.

I don’t know about you, but eclipses are one of the greatest solar shows ever, in my opinion.  And it’s kind of nice to see a side of the day that one normally doesn’t see, as well.  I’ll probably turn into a pumpkin about 8:30 tonight.  Oh well.  That’s lfe.

No Do-Overs

This evening, I watched the last few minutes of a re-run of the Lawrence Welk Show.  In case you don’t know, public television has been running old Welk shows for many years now, and it seems that their popularity hasn’t waned over the years.

I don’t often watch them, but when they come around and there’s nothing much else on, I enjoy the shows.  There is never anything on the shows that is off-color or something I don’t want to see, and the music is pretty good, too.

I cannot, however, listen to the closing song and credits without my mind going back to those years when I lived at home and the Welk show was on TV every Saturday evening.  Dad enjoyed the show and mom watched it as well.  Besides Gunsmoke on Saturdays, the Welk show was a staple for many years.

And when I listen to those closing credits and am carried back to that simpler time, I always get a little nostalgic and briefly long for those times again.  Dad in his chair, Mom ironing or folding clothes, and kids are in various stages of baths, bedtime, or homework.  Church is the next day, and then the week to come.  But come every Saturday night, Mr. Welk comes on and provides some diversion and a little class to this lower-middle class family.

That, of course, is a time long ago and far away.  So much water under the bridge in the intervening fifty or more years.  So many departures from what we thought we would be and do.  So many folks now gone from the face of the earth.  And all that remains of those times are the mental and emotional ties in the form of memories that are triggered with a certain smell…a certain theme song…a certain visual cue…a certain word or words spoken.

It’s easy to see how folks can dwell on such memories to the extent that they begin to live in the past.  They go retro.  It becomes a way of life for them.  It is indeed alluring to be taken back to a simpler time when there weren’t all of the pressures…all of the decisions…all of the troubles.  But it’s just like it is when we go back to our hometown for whatever reason for an hour or more.  The thought of moving back there is indeed a lure…until we go over the overpass that runs over the railroad and head out of town.  And that way of life quickly becomes a “whole ‘nuther world” that we really have no part of anymore; nor do we really wish for it.

We’re happy here.  We’re content with where God has put us.  And we’ll (hopefully) continue to make our home and be content wherever He takes us and whatever our circumstance.  There’s no going back.  There’s no do-overs.  There’s no magic time machine.  And that’s the way it should be.

Only Imagine

Thirty years ago, in August of 1984, we moved our family to Harper, Kansas from Oklahoma City.  We had been in OKC for a little over a year while I attended school there.  Before that, we had a disastrous two years at Ardmore, Oklahoma, where I was a youth minister.  Oklahoma City was a time of healing and putting things back together.  We were looking forward to several years there while I pursued a degree.

However, it wasn’t to be.  In earlier 1984, my mother had a series of debilitating strokes that left her in a semi-conscious, almost vegetative state.  She was totally dependent, could not move on her own, could not communicate, and had to be fed via feeding tube.  Dad was not in the best of health, so we decided to move back home to help care for them.

Looking back on all of that, I have to marvel at the things that happened to get us there and while we were there that still have an effect on us to this day.  Either life is full of coincidence, or there is a greater power at work in the lives of people the world over.  There is no other explanation for what happened and why.

I won’t go into detail on any of those things, except to say that friendships we made then are still there today.  Lessons we learned there are with us to this day.  Who we are (and who our kids are) is in large part due to the 16 years we spent there raising our family.  We matured as parents and as participants in the work place.  We developed a better understanding of who God is and what His plan is for us.  We re-connected with the place that I called home for the first 18 years of my life.  And we made memories that only we know, but continue to cherish all these years later.

I was reminded of all of this when I heard via Facebook that a casual friend from there was in the hospital in Wichita about to undergo a serious spine surgery today.  Last evening, I went to visit her.  I hadn’t seen her in over 14 years, and she was not a great friend…but a casual one, and a co-worker in the public safety sector along with me.

We visited for a time and I caught up on her condition and what they would be doing.  We talked just a little about retirement and how she was handling the prospect of major (and somewhat risky) surgery.  And at the end, I prayed with her for the day today.

I may never see her again.  Our paths may never cross again.  But for one hour last evening, we reconnected to something that is quickly becoming all too uncommon nowadays.  We reconnected to the tie that binds people in common purpose and common circumstance.  We reconnected to the recognition of the value and worth of each other in our respective vocations.  And we reconnected in the common value of humanity and the human condition.

I can only imagine (to use lyrics from a popular Christian song) what it will be like in that great re-connection to come where people from all nations, tribes, tongues, and peoples will gather together and re-connect with one-another as we give thanks and praise to the One who made it all possible.