Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Fire

Top caveman discovery  , quick . Ok , right, you saw the title so yeah , fire was the first thing to come to my mind too . Well full disclosure here , it was second  but since it's a christian blog I wasn't going to say sex came to mind first but there it is . I'm a Neanderthal . Sue me . If I have been a cave woman the answer would be curtains .

My first experience with flame was on my first birthday . Dad smoked so I'd seen fire before . He pulled the magic paper sticks from his pocket and flicked his wrist and fire would appear . Pretty . But he was 6 feet tall and I was only about a foot , so I never got up close and personal with it until my birthday . Mom set me on the table in front of a cake and grabbed the Kodak . I didn't know what it was (the cake) 'cause it was my first birthday so I touched it . Tasty . There was a stick mashed into the middle of the cake and dad did his wrist flicking thing and the fire touched the stick and it was on fire too ! Oooo. . . pretty . As the pictures tell it this smiling baby reached out to touch the pretty which turned out to be hot and apparently fairly painful . I often get miffed at parents who film little junior rolling his trike off a cliff and just as he's going over they drop the camera and run screaming and all we really end up with is a shot of a patch of dandelions with crying in the background . This is what they send to Americas Funniest Videos ? Kudos to mom and dad for sticking with the camera .

Boys like fire don't they? Something mystical and magical and powerful about it that must be innate in boys (and men too) that draws us. Anytime we do a bonfire or camp fire the boys want to toss in sticks , paper and anything else that might be flammable in the fire and stir it around while the girls are standing at the edges swishing away the smoke . We love the smell of it in our clothes after something like that and if we get soot on out faces all the better . Don't get me wrong, girls like fire too but more along the line of candles at dinner and rose petals and  candles in the bedroom . There's a story I'm not allowed to tell of a couple whose bed caught on fire when a cand. . . . and I'm not allowed to tell . 

I found out this summer that fire makes noise , apparently loud enough to wake a whole island of campers and keep 'em up all night . I'm no rugged outdoors-man but often I long for the good old days of the dust covered and weary cowboy laying on his bed roll next to the fire with the metal coffee pot hanging over it on a stick . The sound of a harmonica softly breaks the silence as he gazes up at a sky so full of stars it's almost too bright , and he wonders to himself how in the world his horse learned to play the harmonica . He lays back , his head on a rock and with the brim of his 10 gallon hat pulled down over his forehead he begins to dream of bacon and eggs cooking over that same fire in a cast iron skillet . Zzzz . . . .

Not that I've ever camped like this . It's just how I imagine real camping . I do like to sleep under the stars tho and I usually bring a hammock to string between 2 trees . Not a bed roll but close enough and I laid there this summer staring up at a star filled Maine sky and gave thanks to God for so much and He spoke to me , I'm almost certain of this . He said something along the line of "Mark, you shoulda brought bug spray". Most people imagine the silence of the woods as being refreshing and a thing of wonder but I can tell you from experience that it only enhances the sounds of the thousand mosquitoes feasting on the succulent skin of the dude dumb enough to sleep in the woods . A fella dumb enough to sleep (ha) in a string hammock so they could get at both sides . So I got up and started a camp fire and sat around it for 6 hours feeling only slightly more miserable that the campers in tents wondering what idiot is up at 2 in the morning making fire . They're just lucky I left my horses harmonica in the bag with the bug spray .

As much as I love fire there's one I can't seem to get going . Or if I do it's like burning wet wood , mostly smoke with a small flame and little heat . A Boy Scout of the heart I'm not . I was getting ready to say I long for there to be a fire for God and a fire for life but the truth is I long for not much . I guess mediocrity will do that to you . I don't know where it started but I'd like it to end and for my life to burst into a red hot flame of passion for the important . There is an old song that says "It only takes a spark to get a fire going . . ." but I'm not sure that's true for me . Didn't Paul say to Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God ? How's that work ? I just don't know . I just don't know .

So I end this bit of so called writing in need of advice .Where would you go or what would you do ? How do you handle the dull gray days of life that seem to go on without the heat and light of the love of God ? Anybody? Anybody? Stumbling indeed . . . .




Sunday, August 18, 2013

Walk

I had a friend once . . . I think it was back in the 70's. Yeaahhh . That was a nice day .

The 70's were great weren't they ? Probably most of you don't remember them because you are too young or you were stoned through most of 'em . I don't remember much of them but I pin most of that on painting with industrial coatings for 20 years without wearing a mask . Warning labels schmorning labels . I do remember corduroy bell bottoms and long hair and rock music , none of which I was allowed to have . Danged  Baptists . I woulda made a great hippie .I did have one of those 'Keep on Truckin' t-shirts , the one with the guy taking the long step forward . It was sorta hippie-ish though I don't know why .

I went swimming in the summer with my friend back then , maybe 1978 , in a pond about the size of the parking lot of your local Dollar General . More of a pool of water . Not so big and sorta green , the kind of place they wont let you swim in now a days because you'll get some flesh eating amoeba . Where were flesh eating amoebas  back in the 70's ? And peanut allergies ? Did you ever meet someone with a peanut allergy in the 70"s ? I think as we've progressed  medically and are living longer God has had to find new ways to kill us off . It's a working theory . . . .

"Cannonball !" Is there any other way to get in a lake off a dock ? I feel as though if Joni Earekson had used this approach we'd a never heard of her . That feeling of flying through the air after a long run down the dock and you lift and you tuck and 'SPAAA . . . LOOSH'! Awesome . And you come up and yell 'yeah' and claim to have had the highest splash but really , how did we know ?  The surprise for me this day was how warm the water was . It was like when you pee in the pool and you feel the water turn warm around you and you'd never admit it to anyone but it kinda feels nice and it gross but you know it's true . Well when the whole pond is like that it's not so neat a feeling and almost a disappointment . In the middle of July escaping the heat was the goal , not being engulfed by it . But it was what we had and , you know, When in Rome . . .

I was in church last week and I was actually trackin' for once (re: paint fume comment above) . It was our 25th anniversary at the Vineyard and we sang some songs from a ways back , one of which was Lord Light The Fire Again and it really touched me . It reminded me of a better time , a time when I cared about God and what He thought and I actually did some of the stuff in the bible . At the end of the pastors speech his wife got up and asked if there were some who might need their fire lit again . Would you like to get some prayer . I said yes , I needed that and so I proceeded to . . . walk out the door and go to lunch .

I've been thinking about this this week . I talked to my wife . She said she wanted to go get prayer too but followed my lead out the door . It made me sad to hear this . We think our decision don't matter . . .  .  My thoughts brought me back to swimming in this pond of lukewarm water . Of how at my take off into the air I was bracing for cool relief on a summers day only to be disappointed by the warmth of stagnant water . I am stagnant water , lukewarm , a product of doing almost nothing . And mostly , not refreshing . In particular to my Dad . Woe is me and to all I meet . Well, that sounds kind of harsh but just think of how I could have refreshed those around me if I'd have been letting the cool water of the living God flow through me like I should have . Such a disappointment .

I should have walked . Walked forward with my leg stuck way out in front of me like the Keep on Truckin' guy . Big steps forward towards a refreshing and meaningful life for me and those I meet and touch. I hope I do . Big steps into the pool of living water . . . .