REARRANGING THE SAME OLD FURNITURE

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

If we are to “catch” the real peace we are pursuing, we must get off the world’s treadmill of “striving after wind,” and we must seek the abundant life of Christ. After all, He willed to us His peace (John 16:33). How do we cash in on this legacy? How do we trade off fretfulness and stress for this peace He means for us to have?

Granted, to some extent this involves shedding some of the world’s trappings that we have tried to substitute for the real thing. Most of us know, even if we aren’t telling anybody else, what some of that junk is. We are right to desire to be purged of bad habits and low thinking. However, even in this noble desire to clean up our lives, if we are not careful to pay attention to scripture, we will end up just rearranging the same old furniture. The room might look a little different, but we will settle into it no more peacefully.

I have heard women in drug rehab centers say that they are there to get their lives “cleaned up.” They want the bad things out of their lives so that they can live lives of peace. However, Jesus tells us a parable in Luke 11:24-26 that helps us to see that a good housecleaning is at best a temporary measure and at worst an invitation for even more trouble to enter in. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding not any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds it swept and in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” The first time I read this, I was shocked at the ending. I thought the man would be rewarded for cleaning up his act. But there is a hint in what He said just before the parable: “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (v.23).

Peace is about being with Jesus. He seems to be saying that what is most important is that we are attached to Him. Otherwise, whatever we are doing, whether it looks moral or not, actually scatters, rather than bringing our lives together into a peaceful state.

Such is the problem with many whom we might dub with the modern, trendy label of "OCD." It seems like most of us by now have decided this thing, rather than being a real affliction, is at worst a lightweight and laughable burden and at best a secret badge of superiority: (" Because I am so OCD, I just cannot let myself get away with living like this!" they say, as they make a huge sweep of the hand around your less-than-perfectly-tidy, less-than-squeaky-clean house.) And if we are going to have to admit that all of us have impediments, I can certainly see how it would be a lot more savory to lay claim to being OCD than to being a kleptomaniac or a pedophile. But do you see what I'm saying here?

Super-tidiness/"togetherness"and even hyper-morality, for its own sake, has no power to bring peace; rather it usually brings only a shockingly disappointing emptiness. We thought such diligence would be the key- would finally be enough- but it failed miserably to satisfy somehow.

The Bible is one long love story of God’s pursuit of us for the purpose of our being united with Him with some unswept corners and a little clutter rather than scattered from Him with all our ducks in a row. Swept clean is not enough. It just leaves us empty and vulnerable again. Staying attached to the True Vine—being filled with His Spirit—is our only hope for true peace.

From Still on the Wheel, a visionary sequel to Broken Jar:365 Days on the Potter's Wheel.

STRIVING AFTER THE WIND

Thank you all for reading my little novella, Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights. Perhaps someday it will be published between physical covers made of paper to be held in physical hands made of skin.

Now we will return to more spiritually stimulating words. The next blogs will be my work toward my second devotional book-- a sequel to Broken Jar:365 Days on the Potter's Wheel--entitled, perhaps, Still on the Wheel.

1.

“I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.” John 10:10

So many people, sadly even Christians, go through one shipwreck after another searching for an elusive thing called peace. We think we have found it in a certain new possession, hobby, philosophy, or relationship, only to find that with each new second wind there lurks— and usually not far behind— another wall. We smack into these walls time and time again, but often, even before the bruises can heal from one disaster, we have taken up yet another trivial pursuit with reckless abandon, believing this time will be different.

Ecclesiastes testifies against this kind of false thinking. This “Preacher” (v. 1), whom most believe to be the luxuriously wealthy King Solomon, expounds for most of the book’s twelve chapters about the intense frustration of looking for peace in all the wrong places. His words are meant to save us the time, trouble, and heartache of continuing to put our eggs into flimsy baskets. He warns us that although work is better than idleness, knowledge is better than ignorance, sufficiency is better than destitution, even such exalted qualities as these— a good job, a sharp mind, and financial independence—must ultimately conclude as a meaningless “striving after wind” (1:17; 2:17) without the proper attitude about God: “The conclusion when all this has been heard is fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person” (12:13). My guess is that the reason He says “to every person” is that he wants us not to have the mistaken idea that beauty, riches, or intelligence will make any of us the kind of a person whose life has enough meaning to foster an abiding peace.

Solomon had learned that a life without meaning was a life without peace. Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that this God Solomon warns us to fear and obey sent Him “that we might have life and might have it abundantly.”

Surely what Jesus meant by abundant life was a life characterized not by vain strivings but by peace. Unless we first take the time and trouble to pursue real answers –the Truth— about the meaningful kind of life Jesus came to give us, our pursuit of peace will lead us down one dead end road after another.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ‘I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and will bring you back from captivity.’” Jeremiah 29:13-14

ARRIVING AT ELEVEN

(I am so sorry it has taken me so long to publish this final chapter of ...Azalea Heights! We have been moving, and I have been scattered, to put it mildly. Thanks so much to all of you who have persevered in checking and waiting. I love and appreciate you all. Jan)

The firecrackers Coy and Babette had used on me were leftovers from our latest holiday, Independence Day, July 4, 1961. But the day before our country celebrated its birthday every year, I celebrated mine. On non-leap years, my birthday falls on day 183 of our 365-day year, which means that my birthday is one day more than exactly midyear. But even more significant than being midyear is that my birthday is pretty close to midway through summer vacation. It seems like every summer somewhere around daddy’s birthday, the 14^th, which is two weeks before Julie’s which is the 28^th, we all start talking about school starting back up again. The past year is officially over, and the present is quickly becoming the future.

Until my birthday came marking that gearing-back-up time, the next school year seemed a far away and unimaginable thing to grab onto. Until that time, my identity was bound up in being a ten-year-old fifth-grader in Mrs. Gravitt’s room since I was a first-year band student. Now that I was eleven, I was looking back on that fifth-grade year; it was no longer my present reality. Somehow, I had made it out of Mrs. Gravitts’ room, and what was most shocking about this was that I had not shot my way out of there like an outlaw at a bank robbery or thrown off the cowboy and stomped him in the dirt like a bucking bronco fresh out of the chute. Somewhere along the way, I had been tamed enough to be able to think about some things.

I realized that Mrs. Gravitts, one of my main riders, although a little grouchy and persistent in her rules of fifth-grade behavior, really sorta wanted to like us. I got to noticing that on those days when she managed to make it all the way to 3:30 without whipping any of us, she looked sorta happy, like she had just won something, not mad, like she hadn’t gotten to have what she came for that day. I had always thought she lived to beat us, but that wasn’t true. She was just as relieved as we were when she could leave her board right there in the closet beside her purse.

I realized that when I was with Betsy and Babette, I might have acted like a good sport and entered into some of their shady activities, but secretly I was a little bit glad and relieved when I could just crawl between the covers and lie there in the peaceful darkness and say my prayers without having to wonder if God was sticking His fingers in His ears due to the way I had pretended He didn’t exist that day. I kinda liked the idea that He was up there inclining His big ear in my direction, being the Great Listener and the Great Advisor, not just the Great Whisperer. I kinda liked the idea that the Great Whisperer wasn’t just whispering to hear Himself talk, like I usually was, but because He knew that by myself, I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. Shoot, I didn’t even know how to stop and think. Everything I did was from the seat of my pants. Somehow, though, He had gotten my attention, and there were a few things He thought I needed to know.

All my life I had seen my parents as perfectly composed, mature authority figures in their public, daytime lives who ripped off their masquerades at night. But somewhere, miraculously, in the throes of all my fifth-grade hoodlumism at the end of this first decade of life, I began to see my parents in a different light. I began to think of them as people just like me only a little bigger and further down the road — people tempted by selfishness and jealousy; by weakness when they should have been strong, and by boldness when they should have been humble; by impulsive words when they should have been silent a little longer, and by weary, silent tongues when they should have taken more time and energy to communicate and explain. Selfish kids go out and steal pens, and shoot ink on somebody’s new coat; impulsive kids call a fight in the woods, and when the fighting escalates beyond their expertise, scared kids look around for a pipe to go tightrope instead.

But I began to see that grown-ups couldn’t do stuff like playing hooky and hiding out in a ravine when they got fed up with their real world, and they wouldn’t’ find the mercy of the judge if they went crazy and shot out all the lights at the courthouse. When their duties were difficult and complicated, like math was for me, they couldn’t just tell all their clients and employees to go jump in the lake and then take off and explore the cotton gin at ten-thirty in the morning. And when boredom breathed down their necks or they felt their lives getting into a rut, they couldn’t just throw off their high heels and white shirt in the middle of the stream and go build a trolley in a pine tree…or at least they didn’t think they could.

Really and truly, they might have been better off if they had just hauled off and smoked a cigarette in a ravine or climbed up a pine tree and slid recklessly down a rope, but they really didn’t think they could; they needed to act like adults, not kids. I guess Daddy sometimes resorted to this sort of thing with his out-of-the-blue motor scooter and freakish fighting rooster, but not even he,with his high level of innovative thinking and unpredictable shenanigans, could manage in the end to scale the high walls of complicated adulthood. And never having a trial run at being adults, just as I had never had one at being a ten-year-old, they were handling life in the way that seemed right to them at the time.

They, probably much like Mrs. Gravitts, got up every morning and went into their day knowing it was brand new and offered all kinds of new possibilities. They didn’t set out to be jealous or angry or selfish or weak or any of those other ways that caused them to unravel with each other at night. They washed their faces every morning, looked in the mirror, and told themselves today would be better than yesterday, and that they would do something different today from yesterday to cause that to be the case. They probably heard the Great Whisperer telling them, “Yes, this is the right path,” or “No, don’t head off in that direction; you may become lost.” And just like me, sometimes they’d listen, and sometimes they wouldn’t.

I wondered what eleven would bring. Would I keep on trying to look beneath the surface of people, or would I become distracted from all this deep thinking by some new, irresistible adventure somewhere around the next bend? Would I learn to stop and listen closely every time God, my Great Whisperer, spoke to me on a boring Saturday with nothing to do or in the pages of the Bible that Julie and Mr. Pete read to me, or would I outrun Him in an effort to learn to play stupid human games like “hard to get”?

I’ll bet if I had been paying more attention when Julie read about the heroic rescues of Daniel and his buddies in Babylon and Isaac and Abraham in Israel, it might have dawned on me a lot earlier that their Great Rescuer was one and the same as my Great Whisperer, and was probably still around, even right here in Azalea Heights, showing up in ways sometimes more audible than visible—maybe whispering messages on the wind at the playground at the elementary school or through an old aunt’s voice late at night at Flat Fork.

And so even without a map, I showed up somewhere. Anyone would have sworn at the beginning of fifth grade that it would have been the Shelby County jailhouse or six feet under in a Crocker plot at the Tenaha Cemetery, but instead where I showed up was at eleven years old still alive and outside in the free world. Sixth grade and Band 2 awaited me just around the corner.

Maybe this year I would read “The Courtship of Miles Standish” by Mr. Longfellow, about both our relatives, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, who came over on the Mayflower. Maybe this year I would learn how to subtract a little better so that I could take a whole dollar to the Rio. Maybe I would ask Julie to explain some of what Rudyard Kipling was trying to say in that poem “If” that Daddy was always trying to make me memorize to show off to his friends. Maybe I would even let him make me a memory magician using his Balls and Bats system that he had used to learn all the presidents and vice presidents in order. I might start praying at odd times of the day like Janie, and maybe in those prayers I might mention poor Mr. Gravitts and his wife who had to get up every morning and go corral a bunch of rowdy hooligans who shot spit wads at her every time she turned around to write on the blackboard. Maybe I’d go confess to Tina Farnsworth that every girl in the whole sixth grade wished their eyes were just like hers because she was a lot prettier than Jacqueline Kennedy whose eyes were so far apart it’s a wonder she could make both of them focus on the same thing at the same time.

And maybe if I started trying tomorrow, in about twelve years I might be able to smile at Travis Wayne. And maybe, just maybe, if I started listening to Mr. Pete instead of daydreaming about my b-b gun and back flips off the diving board, Janie Simon’s mother would change her mind about letting me be friends with her daughter.

It looked like I would more than likely stay out of the Shelby County jail and probably make it to high school. I could even imagine marching across the stage at graduation and possibly making it intact all the way to adulthood.

And there was an outside chance that one day — way out there in the 1970’s — I might even bolster myself up, brave the deadly minefields of matrimony, and have a couple of kids that I could teach how to pole vault and tell stories to about when I was “a little boy” in Azalea Heights.

From Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights, chapter 20 (final chapter)

SHOW BUSINESS

I don’t know how long I’d have stayed in Cayuga and what all would have happened to me at the hands of Babette if it hadn’t been for Tops for Toys the next Saturday on channel six.

Julie and I were performers. For as long as I could remember, we had been featured at least a couple of times a year at the Azalea Heights Music Study Club and had been a regular act at all the talent shows all over the Shelby County area. We’d go to Tenaha and Joaquin and Shelbyville and San Augustine and perform at the high school where there was always some money awarded at the end to the best act according to a panel of local judges. Julie played her pearl blue accordion while I sang and danced and snapped my fingers in my bobby socks and saddle oxfords. Sometimes we would harmonize, with Julie singing alto and me singing soprano. Mother always had the numbers all lined up and about a week before the performance, she’d make us start practicing. We never really had any say about the numbers; it was always something cutting edge that nobody had ever heard anybody do yet except the singing stars on the radio or Ed Sullivan’s t.v. show. We’d learn a few and then just use those four or five everywhere we went the rest of the year. We finally got to where we could do “Boom Boom Ain’t It Great to be Crazy,” “Sweet Old Fashioned Girl,” “Sad Movies,” and “Tan Shoes and Pink Shoe Laces,” without even thinking about it. I’ll bet we could have successfully walked the dog with a yoyo while singing those songs and never missed a beat at either task (except that Julie would have had a little trouble balancing the yoyo-dog on the string and playing her accordion at the same time.) After a few years of this we didn’t even know what stage fright was. Most of the time we would win, but Daddy would always make us turn around when the man would give us the money and hand it right back to him. Julie would have to say, “My little sister and I would like to donate our winnings to be used by your school as you see fit.” (This was a stupid thing to do as far as I was concerned, but Mother would tell me that we could get something special the next time we went to the Green Stamp Store.)

Sometimes they would call for an encore, and we always had a few religious numbers ready for those who needed something a little heavier. “Out of the Ivory Palaces,” “Mansion Over the Hilltop,” and “I Saw A Man” were our standbys. Because of these religious numbers, somebody got the idea that we needed to be invited to their Sunday afternoon singings out in the woods under a big roof with no walls. One Christmas for the Music Study Club, Mother came up with the idea for Julie to play “Silent Night” on the piano while I recited this poem called “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” This was a big hit, and blue-haired ladies would cry and delicately dab their eyes with their lacy handkerchiefs and hug us as though we had been inspired and made the whole thing up ourselves.

Somebody heard about us over in Shreveport and invited us to come be on their t.v. show called “Tops for Toys,” so now I was leaving Cayuga to go back home to get ready for our first and only t.v. appearance the following Saturday morning at 10 o’clock. I figured that this was probably the Great Whisperer’s way of rescuing me from Babette, especially now that she was all fired up from successfully handcuffing her first niece to the schoolhouse.

From Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights- Chapter 19