Musings Part 3

1531-1614

You probably don't know it, but there is an employee's notice board down at the far end of the hall. Each day someone marks on it the running total of the days since a lost-work-time accident. I remember the first time I came to visit you, I saw it as I looked for your room. Why I remembered there being 1531 days since the last accident is a mystery to me. I seem to be good at remembering trivial things that have little usefulness. Did you know there are 123 steps from my parking place in the hospital garage to my office?

I don't usually see the running total of days as I have found a short cut through the new wing to your room. Today I had to go the long way round, as the short cut has been ravaged by a bright yellow backhoe being used for some kind of renovation work. The notice board told me that 1614 days have quietly slipped by since the last accident. It occurred to me that eighty-three days have elapsed since I first came to visit you. More disconcerting, I realized nearly a quarter of a year had slipped by for you and me, putting us both that much closer to Eternity. Four times as long and a year will be gone and only forty-five times that and more time will have slipped by than my Dad lived in his whole life. Somehow that notice board told me that life IS REALLY SHORT after all.

It would be a truly tragic accident, much worse than missing some days from work because of injury, if the numbers on that board were to rise significantly and we could not account for what happened in the intervening days. Nothing is a greater loss than a day spent rather than invested. I think of how you have invested your days so well for eighty-five years now. Only in Eternity will you find out just how great your return on the investment was. In the eighty-three days we have shared the count, I have seen you share divine love with those around you who have grown tired and weary from their long journeys to life's winter. You have shown them that Eternal Spring is just beyond, just for the asking. You have shown me staying the course is worth far more than any detours I might encounter along the way. By your example, maybe I can increase the return on my remaining days.

Your neighbor, Gertrude, doesn't remember who I am anymore. Tonight I went down her hall on the long way out and found her standing outside her room. She thinks her husband is coming tomorrow to get her out. She has thought that for eighty-three days I know of. I've never seen the guy. She's got a fine house in New Jersey, she says. I didn't tell her about the board. She asked me what I was doing there; was I an investigator with the police? Did I own the place? I told her 'No, just visiting people.' Sixty days ago she remembered my comings and goings. No more. Again, she asked why do I come? I wonder what I will remember eighty-three days from now. Will I take her place? I know you pray for both of us.

Tomorrow I will go to your sister Elsie's funeral and burial. On day 1531 we would have never guessed it. Ignorance about some things is true bliss. On day 1607 I fed Elsie a bit of chicken noodle soup, sans noodles, with a small spoon. The noodles were too much for her to handle. I don't know that she ever ate anything else before she left us. I wonder if one day, further up on the count, someone will be feeding me chicken noodle soup in a small spoon, sans the noodles.

I know that someone is going to go out there tomorrow and change the count. I want day 1615 to have counted for both of us. You prayed for me. It expect it will probably be a good day because of that. I seem to have more of them since I got on your prayer list. A couple of other people pray for me a lot. I wish I prayed as much as you and these others do. The possibilities are endless.

I stopped to see Janie at the other end of the hall. She seemed in better spirits today. She remembered me today and wasn't crying. Perhaps she doesn't remember today that her husband died last year. I wonder what I have forgotten already.

It's very late and I need to get some rest if I want to beat the guy who changes the numbers on the notice board. He just might have my number and I want to be ready, just in case.

"Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."

"Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."


Encounter II

You called to me by name.
I could hear your deep pain.

Last year, you looked great.
I wonder what changed your fate.

You submit to a neoplastic blast.
I hope for you, peace will last.

May One who is more than dear,
to your now spent soul stay near.

Your weary face covered in blue;
for you, may His message be true.


There's no cancer in Heaven.


Blotter

Today I went into the nearby branch of a large multi-state bank to close out an IRA account. When I opened this account some time ago the facility was the main office of a family-owned locally-operated institution consisting of one hundred twenty-five happy employees in about ten offices scattered throughout the county. Alas, management finally figured out it could make a fortune if it went public and then got itself picked off in a corporate buy-out. The dreams of management came true as did the nightmares of those one-hundred twenty-five workers. The Savings and Loan went public, its stock doubled, it was bought out, and most of the employees were let go. It didn't matter that most of them had given decades of friendly loyal service to the community. For certain, I did not want to add to the profits of the corporate raider which bought out the local family bank, hence my being there to withdraw all my funds.

While sitting with one of the few surviving employees of the original savings and loan, as she filled out the sheaf of paperwork required to close my account, she lamented how different it now was working for this multi-state predator. I wondered out loud at how the management of the locally-owned family business could have been so heartless and greedy as to even consider an Initial Public Offering, knowing most of the people who made the S & L prosperous in the first place, would lose their jobs in a buy out. Cathy certainly had no answers and was hardly free to speak as the multi-state behemoth is now writing her paychecks. It is hard to tell who deserves the harsher judgement; the original management that sold out its workers or the predator banking giant that picked off our small town bank and then fired the employees.

This uncertain Banking Representative IV expressed dismay at how nothing remains stable any more. I went back to my office wondering what the future holds for both of us. Cathy may yet get re-engineered right into unemployment. My own situation is little better. The politics of my own work place could cast me into the same hand-out line with Cathy. I went back to work and had what is without question the worst day of my tenure at the hospital. I came within seconds of standing up in a meeting and announcing my intent of resigning. A meeting with two vice presidents, the controller, my boss, and a director turned quite uncivil. My nemesis immediately found cause to attack me and essentially tell me my work was worthless and of no effect. On top of that, a number of Internet financial reports revealed many of the world stock markets had their single largest declines ever in today's trading sessions. It would seem that much of the world is about to go over the edge of some kind of financial abyss. It certainly seems to have already slipped passed the realm of civility.

Somewhere in the midst of my ominous thoughts about corporate recklessness I pondered what to do about something mundane: lunch. I was not really in the mood to buy lunch after having seen a cyber-vision of the dark side of the corporate global economy. I was not feeling especially prosperous as a nearly unemployed person. I decided I could simply skip lunch. As I walked into my office I found on my desk blotter a zip-lock bag containing a large piece of banana bread and yet another grocery bag containing several large bags of dried soup mixes. No names. I had lunch after all, from an unnamed benefactor who thought I had some worth. That radiant anonymous blessing reminded me there is goodness in the world even if ever rarer and buried under corporate raids, management abuses, and growing incivility.

In that instant I realized that our security does not come from the corporate world or top management. It is safe to say top management does not really care about my dreams or Cathy's dreams. It certainly did not care about the dreams of Cathy's now-unemployed colleagues. It certainly has not cared about my own professional growth or life journey. I realized that security, and even lunch, comes from the unseen, unnamed benevolence of others, often from the One unseen in the day to day frenzy of material life.

"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows."


Reunion II

Spectral wonders colorize life's long winter,
driving old-age desolation into forgotten drifts.

Bees gather aureate pollen, preparing for darkness.
We harvest warm recollection, facing shared uncertainty.

Vestiges of summer heat igniting dull memories,
renewed remembrances energize exhausted souls.

Inured to growing miracles about us, we huddle,
seeking tenuous safety in our long lost youth.

He has made Himself known through the handiwork
of His Creation.


Declarations

In most, if not all states, car owners can pay an extra annual fee for what is often called a 'vanity plate.' This customized license plate allows drivers to make some kind of statement about their dreams, personalities, motivations in life, even their financial stations in society. In addition to the highly-abbreviated life statements found on the leeward end of cars, slightly longer ones are found on the windward end, where restrictions on the number and color of letters do not apply. I have been amazed at how many volumes can be written into one, two, or three words, given the right context. I suspect much of the message the rest of us get from these words is unintended.

On the forward end of a new Lincoln Town Car that is left in the hospital garage during the day, one finds in gold letters "You Can Have Some 2". What is it I can have? Monstrous $600 lease payments that will leave me empty handed in twenty-four months? Consumer debt that will keep me awake at nights? An asset that is depreciating faster than almost anything else I could possibly buy? Insurance premiums that resemble interest payments on the national debt? Gasoline credit card bills that would sink a super tanker? An opportunity to create envy in other drivers?

For more than a decade, GM's Chevrolet truck division has played on the American obsession with cars and trucks in its advertising slogan "The Heartbeat of America." It is said that where your money is, there your heart is too. This seems especially apt in a country where many citizens often spend more for their wheels than their walls, for a land where low-level employees spend the entirety of their take-home income to maintain obscenely expensive heavily-chromed pick-up trucks, in a land that has the lowest savings rate in the Industrial World. I can't help but wondering if some of these Chevy truck buyers have a heart rusting inside, corroded by the eternally toxic acids of materialism and consumerism.

Last week a woman, with a cell phone implanted in the left side of her head, passed me in a new $68,000 emerald green BMW 750iL. Her parting word to me was "Images1." Does she really want me to pay attention to her because of what she drives instead of for who she is? Does she really want to draw attention to herself in a town where car-jacking specialists have a strong appetite for new Beemers? Does this image broker really want me to think she is about image rather than substance? What happens when she gets old and wrinkled or her Bimmer is totaled and she along with it?

"Mpulsive" on a white Ford Thunderbird probably tells me much more than this driver wanted me to know about her. I say 'she' as more than 80% of the cars in the hospital garage are driven by women and the odds are in my favor 4:1. She has told me she is willing to waste $35 a year to tell me, as a total stranger, of a personality flaw, of a lack of personal discipline in her spending habits. A woman in the hospital admitted to me she went out for a $3 item at the drug store and came home instead with a new car and a fresh payment book. So far this woman has traded cars at least four times during the last six years, and every year she pays extra to put the evidence on the back end of her car.

For about a month now, I have been seeing a new Cadillac Seville left in the hospital parking lot during the evening shift. On this $45,000 car one finds the words "God's Property" stenciled in black and gold on a piece of plate mirror. I can't help but wondering if God is actually making the monthly payments on an outlandishly expensive car that a shift worker could not possibly afford to make herself. I speculate why someone would be so reckless with their finances, merely to impress a stranger at a red light. I wonder if God will trade it in before the loan is paid out or if God himself will ever even bother to drive the thing. I can't figure out why God would buy a Seville when a whole lot of kids in His world starve to death every day.

"Buckle up With Jesus" is quite common on cars here in South Carolina, being as we are the buckle of the Bible belt. There are a number of these competing with my eleven year old Toyota for space in the parking garage. I wonder if Jesus is riding with you when you cut me off at the pass? Is he looking when you flip me your middle finger because you are in a bigger hurry than I am? Is Jesus holding on with white knuckles because you are eating, drinking, telephoning, reading, talking, playing with the CD, and putting on your make-up instead of paying attention to your driving?

The biggest industry in America is devoted to building and maintaining more than a hundred million cars and trucks. For many of the millions of people who buy these vehicles, they are making a declaration about who they are, that their status is enhanced by driving a new car, that they merit greater respect and attention. Curious. From what I recall, the last time Jesus rode into town, it was on the back of a borrowed donkey. I don't remember anything about the back seat of a Town Car. Next time he will have His own horse and He won't be headed for Detroit.

"And I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True ...and the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses ... and on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written "KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS ... and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away ... It is done, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes shall inherit these things and I will be his God and he will be My son."