To My Followers

To my followers:  I've posted two blogs today.  The first one below was written last week, but for some reason was never posted.  The next one below was written just today.  Sorry for the confusion.

Jay Plank

A Message

Every so often, I get a comment on one of the blogs. I enjoy the comments, even the ones (although there are few of them) that do not agree with me. Discussion on issues is a part of who we are. That’s why I do not have comment moderation enabled on this blog; however, I will remove a comment if it is patently offensive or otherwise inappropriate.

One of my recent commenters is a woman named Carrie Looney. I give her entire name because she did the same in one of the comments. I know who this woman is, but haven’t met her. I’m going to use the blog to send you a message, Carrie.

I’d love to correspond with you from time to time, but don’t have your email address. Use my blog email address aminnot-blogger@yahoo.com to send me your address, if you wish to do so. If you do, I’ll send you my private email address. If you’d rather not, that’s OK, too.

I know most of the others who comment. Kathy is a good friend from Western Kansas. WDK is a relative who lives not far away. Scotty is my son. Chris is a friend from Northeast Kansas. And so on.

Carrie is a special person, even though we’ve never met. She is a descendent of the woman who graciously volunteered to pay for my college education and provided just the right amount of love and support for us when things seemed to be at about their worst for us. Also named Carrie, she did things like this not only for me, but for countless others over the years of her life…people who the granddaughter Carrie will probably never meet. However, young Carrie seems to have an interest in knowing more about her grandmother’s efforts and in seeing some of the results of her grandmother’s work.

I’m not a young man any more. I have far more years behind me than I do ahead of me. Who and what I am today, however, is in large measure the doing of the woman who quietly stepped to my side that day almost thirty years ago and gave me hope. I’d like to think that I have been and am doing the same as I can and am able.

You may think that I devote far too much time to this part of my life and Carrie Lou’s role in it. If you think that, you don’t understand the immense importance of what God did for me through her. To say that I am here writing this, having an intact family and a decent job could, I think, only be said because of her effort on my behalf. I shudder to think of what may have happened had she not been there for me.

You too never know what effect you may have on the life of someone else. You don’t have to have a lot of money to have the most profound, life-changing effect on another. Kind words, a deed done well, a friendship, or just an understanding heart can literally give life and hope to someone who has that need. And you'll probably never, ever, ever know the full import what you did.

We Will Be There

One would think that with several days of non-activity, one would be able to post a blog on time.  For those two or three of you who read this, I try to post a blog every week no later than Tuesday on each of my blogs (work and personal).  The work blog was posted yesterday, on time.  The personal blog, well, this is it and it’s late.  And we’ve had several snow days this past week and a weekend in between.  We never lost power at the house and had I had plenty of time to do this, but no.  I just had to procrastinate, and now I’m doing a late one on Wednesday.

Would I be labeled as “old” if I said I actually enjoyed several days of not having much to do and being at home?  Yes, it did start to get a little old.  Yes, I did make a trip or two to a store during that time, and we were at Sunday events at our church.  But it really was kind of nice to be home with not much to do and enjoy the time.

And yesterday afternoon it was good to come back to work after almost a week of not being here.  The desk was just as I had left it.  The office fairies that are supposed to come in and clean up emptied the trash and probably vacuumed the floor, but they didn’t touch the desk.  Probably that’s just as well, though.  I might not have found anything had someone cleaned it during my absence.

Facebook was a wonderful way to maintain contact with the outside world during the storms.  I have great friends, and for the most part they are careful to not inject a lot of politics or bad thoughts into their posts.  I know some are struggling right now with issues of health, family, job, or other.  They struggle sometimes to maintain an upbeat attitude, but I continue to be amazed at the resilience of the human spirit.  I feel a connection, even now sitting here, with those I know are wrestling with some issues brought on by the fallen creation.  And I hurt with them as they pass through yet another trial by fire, and pray God’s grace and love continue.

I trust that they too, knowing that their friends are also hurting and working with the darkness of this present age, are praying for their friends as well.  We all are in the battle of our lives.  Some of us are manifesting the scars of that battle more acutely than others; but we all show the effects of it, and ultimately will be consumed by it, if only temporarily.  For we all are destined to die and return to the dust from which we are created.  We have the sure hope, however, of life unhindered by the forces of this world and forevermore living in a creation that is neither corrupt nor decaying.

And that, I think, is what makes us continue on…to be as upbeat and positive as we are.  We know there is more than this.  We know there is something better.  And we know that we will be there because of the love of the Creator God of the universe.

They're Still "Good"

Cardinals, titmice, chickadees, juncos, sparrows…all of these varieties of birds and probably more that I haven’t seen yet have been enjoying the grains and seeds I’ve put out on the patio and deck today.  I usually feed the birds, but when it’s warmish and no snow on the ground, they don’t come all that much.  But when the snow comes or it gets very cold, they’re all over the feast on the deck.

An interesting creation, birds.  Carrying very small brains, but having within them somehow the knowledge of flight and a small body that manages to stay warm in the coldest weather, birds in general are a lesson in both the simple and the complex.

For example, the chicken incubates her eggs for about 21 days.  During that time, the egg goes from a single cell to a chick complete with the knowledge to scratch the ground for food, drink water, and huddle together for warmth.  Baby ducks, ducklings, incubate for two or three days longer, and come out of the shell with the knowledge of water and swimming.  Other birds incubate their eggs for a longer or shorter time, but all come out of the shell with inherent knowledge of how to survive.

As simple and as stupid as one might think birds are, they in reality retain within them an amazing knowledge of direction and place in the environment, where to look for the food that they need, the dynamics of flight, how to raise their young, how to build a nest, and for many, where to migrate, how to get there, and how to get back…never having been there before.

We used to call someone a “dumb cluck” when we thought that person was less than intelligent somehow.  Of course, we were referring to a chicken.  But my mind about chickens and birds in general was changed when we kept chickens for several years when the boys were little.  There is nothing stupid or dumb about a chicken, or other kind of bird, for that matter.

These creatures of God’s creation do their part in the great scheme of things, and are good, just as they were millennia ago when He first created them and called them “good”.

Unity...No?

I did something this morning that I don’t do very often.  I read the forward of the New Testament in Modern English, translated by J. B. Phillips.  Phillips, an Englishman, lived in the first and middle part of the 20^th century.  He was an author, translator, and clergyman, having written over a dozen books in addition to the translation of the New Testament that bears his name.

I like the Phillips translation for its readability and the knack it has for seeing through what many times is an unintelligible or very stilted Greek translation, making it much more understandable to the modern day reader.  Although he completed his work in the late 1950’s, his translation is as fresh today as it was over 50 years ago.

The final paragraph to the forward talks about his being indebted to all kinds of people, and his having developed a gratitude that is, in large part, “…evoked by the assurance that has grown within me that here in the New Testament, at the very heart and core of our Faith, Christians are far more at one than their outward divisions would imply.  From this unquestionable evidence of fundamental unity I derive not only great comfort, but a great hope for the future.”

I’m not certain what you think about unity, denominationalism, the fellowship of believers, Christendom, and all that goes with these topics, but here is a man who, rather than being upset over differing opinions, division and strife, instead sees in the New Testament a unity among believers that goes far beyond the outward appearances.

Sometimes I wonder if we Christians in this modern day are more pessimists than we are optimistic.  I wonder if we tend to see things on the half-empty side much more than on the half-full side.  And I wonder if it may just be human nature to do so.

Just look at the news.  It is well known that news that is bad or controversial is a much better “sell” than the good news.  Yes, sometimes they’ll put a good news piece in the mixture, but by and large we hear about murders, car wrecks, bad snowstorms, and fighting among politicians much more than we hear stories about people helping people, the beauty of nature or some other good news.

How would it change us if we consciously began to see the good…to look specifically for areas of agreement and fellowship?  How would we begin to act if we tried consciously to fill our minds with those things that are good and right and noble about other people, rather than accent our differences and argue with those who don’t agree with us?  How much more could we accomplish working with God toward the redemption of the fallen creation if we quit spending so much time differentiating ourselves from everyone else and began to work together to mitigate such things as child abuse, sexual trafficking, pornography, dysfunctional families, hunger, and poverty?

I’ll leave you with the words of J. B. Phillips as he translates Philippians 4:8.  “Here is a last piece of advice.  If you believe in goodness and if you value the approval of God, fix your minds on whatever is true and honourable and just and pure and lovely and praiseworthy.  Model your conduct on what you have learned from me, on what I have told you and shown you, and you will find that the God of peace will be with you.”

The Simple and The Complex

I have kind of a “thing” for amaryllis.  As you know, if you read this regularly, I blogged about a couple of plants that bloomed very, very well recently.  What I didn’t tell you is that we have four bulbs all together that we’ve collected over the years.  I did mention one that hasn’t bloomed in a long while, but we also have another one.

That one is a bulb we got a year or two ago.  After it bloomed, we let it leaf out and we cared for it the rest of the summer.  I put it away in a dark, cool place for awhile last fall and got it out, along with one or two other bulbs, sometime in November of last year.

Both bulbs had a hint of green on their top, so I knew both were viable.  We put them in the window and watered.  The one bulb started growing leaves, but didn’t bloom, rather quickly…I’d say within a couple of weeks.  The other bulb just sat there.  The green on the top continued to stay about the same, but nothing else happened.

We were wondering if something was wrong with the bulb.  Then just a few days ago, we saw the hint of the tip of something coming out of the top of the bulb.  The next day it was clear that what was emerging was a flowering shoot.  This will be the first time I have been able to make an amaryllis re-bloom in a year following purchasing one.

Why it waited so long to come out, I don’t know.  The other bulbs started relatively soon after watering and putting in a sunny place.  And why this one will bloom when the other one, which I treated the same as this one, produced only leaves, I don’t know either.

I thought about these two bulbs when I went back to the kitchen at the church to get a cherry turnover someone had graciously left there.  There were two or three in the box, and I got to thinking about the mass production of those and how, if you do the same thing in the same way, you’ll get the same results each time…a perfect cherry turnover.  Except that with flower bulbs, that evidently doesn’t work, because I treated two amaryllis bulbs the same.  One bloomed.  One didn’t.  One started growing right away.  One waited two months to start.

I don’t know that there is any great and glorious eternal lesson I can learn from this.  It’s more a matter of understanding that living things, including people, don’t always conform to the accepted ways that things are done and we just have to know and understand that and work with and within it.  Life is a complex thing, whether in the form of a bulb or a baby, and we continue to marvel at what we see and yet don’t understand.

I think that’s one reason I so enjoy the orb spiders in the fall of the year when they spin giant webs at the corners of houses or in doorways or between limbs of trees and bushes.  These seemingly simple life forms have within their DNA the capacity to create a material that, pound for pound is ten times stronger than steel, yet has great flexibility and “stretchiness”.  They then weave this material into a true work of art that at the same time is critical for the survival of the next generation.  Tell me that isn’t complex and I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

Getting back to the amaryllis, I don’t remember what color the blooms are on this plant just starting, but we will be able to enjoy a late-blooming work of art for the next several weeks as we watch it grow and mature.  And maybe, just maybe this coming fall, somehow all four of our bulbs will come out of the closet downstairs and bloom their hearts out again for us.  It’s worth looking forward to.

Forever

We have a couple of amaryllis that have just seemed to outdo themselves this winter.  Each of them has grown two stems of flowers.  One had a four-flower stem and later a five-flower stem; the other grew both stems at the same time and had eight lovely flowers all at once.

Amaryllis are relatively inexpensive and easy to grow.  They are much harder to get to bloom the next year, however.  I have a bulb I have tried to get to bloom for about three years now, and so far all it does when it comes out of dormancy is set out leaves.  Not a sign of a flowering stem in sight.

Yes, I’ve read about how to get them to bloom again.  But something just isn’t right.  So each year we buy another amaryllis in a pot and enjoy the flowers.  But now I have four bulbs, two of which have bloomed, one which has sent out leaves, and one which has some green on the end of the bulb, but hasn’t done anything yet.  Of course, I hate to throw anything away, and probably will set them out this summer to bask in the warmth and breeze.  Then I’ll fumble around with them and try to get them to bloom this winter.  But in the end, we’ll probably end up buying one or two more that we know will bloom for us.

My aunt Dorothy knew how to make amaryllis bloom from year to year.  When they were living at home, she had several bulbs she would coax into blooming from year to year.  She said it wasn’t hard and told me how she did it.  I thought I did the same thing, but evidently I don’t hold my mouth right or something.  Because it just doesn’t work for me.

Flower bulbs are magical things.  Just think of all that is in an amaryllis bulb.  Beautiful colors, delicate flowers, sturdy stems, a reproduction mechanism, and nourishing leaves all are packed into a bulb that gets its nourishment from dirt, water, and the sun.  There are also sensors of some kind that can tell when water, warmth, and sunlight are present in the right mixtures.  And when that happens, it signals somehow for the bulb to grow.

Flowers, though, are like everything else on this earth.  They eventually decay and die.  Even the most beautiful of flowers eventually turns back to the dust from where it came.

And so it is with everything else in the world.  Trees, houses, automobiles, animals and people; we all eventually turn back into the dust from whence we came.  (I think Twinkies [R.I.P.] may be the only exception to that.)  Even rocks…the great granite mountains…will eventually, they say, turn into soil and dust.

And so it goes.  We do well to remember that even though we have things to do today, and places to go today, and people to see today, one day we too will turn back into the soil and dirt from whence we came.  And the souls and spirits that inhabit us will go somewhere else, there to wait until thry are united with, as the great Apostle Paul said, “the imperishable.”

When we remember that we are here for but a breath of time in the great scheme of things, we tend to look at things differently.  We tend to think differently.  We tend to interact with our world differently.  And that’s a good thing because our time here is so short compared to the forever that is coming.

If we don’t prepare for the forever in the here and now, when will we do it?  Or will we lurch into eternity forever unprepared for what lies ahead?

The Best

I came into work this morning, and as I walked inside the building and went past the north entrance, I saw out in the parking lot a truck with a man-lift on it.  Several men in hard hats were around the truck, and one of them was in the lift working on a security light on a pole in our parking lot.

I watched for a bet, and it became apparent that they were finishing up their project.  My guess is that they hadn’t been there long anyway.  The man in the lift finished what he was doing on the lamp, put the cover back on and fastened it, lowered the lift to the ground, and got out.  As he got out, he unfastened a couple of safety straps.

Another man and he took the tools and materials out of the lift and put them in the truck.  Another man swung the boom around and “parked” it on the truck where it was supposed to be when the truck was moved, and brought in the leveling feet that kept the truck steady.

Then the man who had been in the lift walked around the truck and picked up the orange cones surrounding the truck, walked toward the cab, spit on the ground, got in the truck, and drove off.  Another man stayed behind the truck and made sure the man didn’t run into anything as he backed up to get out.

No big deal.  This happens multiple times each day in a city like Wichita.  Workmen doing something outdoors, many times with some kind of large equipment, is a rather frequent occurrence.

I say all of this, and blog about it, to say that I sometimes wish I had been one of those kinds of men…large, muscular build, rather gruff-looking.  The hard hat wearing, spit on the ground type who climb on to a chunk of iron the size of a house and move the controls in a dance that builds, renews, and accomplishes.  I’m not that way, though, and at this stage of life will never be that.  I do have on my bucket list to operate a backhoe one day…and I did farm back in the 60’s, but that’s about as close as I’ll ever come.

Some of these men may be rough on the outside, but can do some of the most delicate moves with huge machines.  I knew a man in my hometown who operated a backhoe for a living.  His hoe wasn’t one of the gargantuan things you sometimes see.  It was a smaller one fastened to the back of a smaller tractor.  But he could operate that hoe in such a way that most folks who watched him (and many stopped to do just that) were mesmerized by the movements and what he was able to accomplish.

I have to think that Gene could feel what was happening down in the hole at the end of his bucket in his hands as they operated the hydraulic controls.  More than once I saw him gently find a buried pipe of some kind and work around it, exposing it without cutting into it or breaking it.  And he did it all by feel.

His bucket moved as if it was alive.  And you would have sworn if it had eyes painted on it that it WAS alive.  Never a jerky motion (unless that’s what he wanted to do to accomplish some task), never unnecessary movement, Gene was the best backhoe artist I’ve seen (and probably ever will see).

He was also the resident grave-digger.  The sides of the grave hole were straight and on the mark.  They were always clean with no dirt messing up the area.  He knew more about cemeteries in Harper County and the surrounding area (including northern Oklahoma) than anyone else, and has helped bury scores of his friends and relatives.

Gene doesn’t dig anymore.  His hoe sits silent on the lot where he last parked it.  Oh, he’s still around, I think.  But he’s 89, according to the Internet, and just doesn’t do that anymore.  I have to think that most people would probably look at his life and say that he was just a grave-digger and backhoe operator.  But there’s more there than that.  He was the best there was at what he did.  He always dug the best hole he could dig.  He always did the best he could do to help others do what they needed to do.

And I hope that in my vocations, people said the same thing about me.  I’ll never operate a backhoe for a living.  Nor will I ever wear a hard hat, spit on the ground, and haul myself on to a chunk of machinery the size of Texas to go to the next job.  I may have been just a maintenance man, or just a helper at the school, a minister to seniors, or just an engineer at the radio station.  But I would like to think that I did the best I could do and tried to help others do what they needed to do as well.

And the most blessed thing I’d like to hear one day is, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  That, dear friend, will be heavenly.