Real People . . .

Last week I talked to a guy who runs a remodeling business. He has not done a real job in months. He has about three months left in savings. He was in a great mood. But he was just trying to figure out what to do about supporting his family when the money ran out.

A grandmother came in a few days ago, crying. She was raising two grandchildren. Her husband was laid off. She needed to talk about whether she should turn the custody of the kids over to the state.

A man I have known many years, always a hard worker, framing and roofing, a good man, came in to talk about a DUI he had been charged with. He hasn't had but a couple of jobs since last year. Just got where he sat home, watched television, and drank beer.

A couple I met both lost their jobs. They were about to be evicted. Out of their frustration they got into a fight. Not only did they lose their jobs and their homes, they lost their children for awhile. Time will tell if they lose each other. At least they didn't turn to meth, like so many others in the same seemingly hopeless situation.

I know it is important what Wall Street is doing. And citizens should be told of the abuses by corporate execs that result from deregulation and then from the wad of money that came their way from the bailout. It is important that we finally realize that the world of big business is a different world, with no conscience and no concern.

But we need to hear the stories of my friends as well. They are all around us. They are us.

Valerie Bertinelli and her bikini body at age 48 is featured on the cover of People magazine this week. I have nothing against Valerie Bertinelli's body (fill in your own off color thought). And there is nothing wrong with the escape that People and similar publications provides. Doctor's offices would be unbearable without them.

But I wish there was a "Real People" magazine that told real stories, stories of millions and millions of people that nobody tells and many of us never hear.

But I wonder who would read them.

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Perhaps I should have said "Saturday Contusion"

Pondering coincidence was interesting last week.

I may have stumbled onto my own painful parable Saturday afternoon after I left the coffee and sofa behind and went out into the sunshine. I had been reviewing a court file for this week, but the sun came out and it just seemed sinful not to get out into it.

My yard is a disaster. Over near the tree line there are beautiful blooming azaleas, redbud and dogwood trees and wisteria. They surround what was formerly a small patio under two sweetgum trees. The weeds and undergrowth have taken it over, and the sweetgums are dead, having shed limbs onto the old patio. It looked like a good project to start on.

First I carried the old limbs and dumped them in the woods. As I got to the limbs at the bottom of the pile it was hard to pick them up because the wisteria vines had wrapped them up. I bent down and begin to pull the wisteria vines. They were stubborn, so I pulled harder, taking the traditonal tug o war stance and pulling and grunting . . .

I don't know what happened right after that. It felt like a truck hit my left temple and cheekbone. Everthing went red for a few seconds, and when my vision returned I looked at the ground, where eight feet of sweetgum log lay broken in pieces at my feet. I couldn't feel anything from the neck up for a moment, which, as scary as that may have been, was preferable to the pain that replaced it.

I lifted my hands to my face to see if it was still there. It was, but it seemed out of place. As feeling returned I realized my teeth were chipped. My jaw was out of alignment, and lumps were rising on my cheek and temple. Then I looked at my hands. They were full of blood.

As I am prone to do in situations like this I thought, "this is an embarassing way to go out. They'll find me dead here, and from now on they'll just shake their heads and lament how I died pulling wisteria vines." I heard voices of friends who would have reminded me to be careful had they been watching.

But I was still standing, and hurting badly, so I wasn't dead yet. I looked up and noticed that the top of the sweetgum tree was a lot shorter than it had been. As it turns out, it was now at my feet in pieces, broken either by my head or the ground or both.

I checked to see if anyone had seen the incident, then stumbled into the house and cleaned up the mess formerly known as my head. Then I returned to the sofa. The bleeding and oozing stopped a few hours later.

I didn't know the wisteria vine with which I battled was connected to the top of that rotten sweet gum tree. As far as I could tell the vine ran along the ground, underneath some of the limbs I had yet removed. But it didn't matter whether I saw the connection or not. It was connected. Believe me.

Sometimes that is the way life is. We tug and pull on something. We wrestle with it, change it, move it, as if it were connected to nothing else. And then we are shocked when a random tree falls on our heads.

I still believe that some coincidences are created by God. But sometimes we are just totally unaware of how connected we, and all of creation, are. So we just tug away, willy-nilly, only to be shocked by the results that we never anticipated.

The bright side is I looked really mean for court today with a deep cut on my left cheekbone.

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Saturday obtusion . . .

Saturday morning. Coffee. Sofa.

I don't know whether it is a coincidence or divine intervention, but I am glad for this Saturday morning convergence of the sofa, coffee and me. (See last two posts)

By the way, all my favorite coffee mugs were in the dishwasher this morning. I forgot to start it last night. So before I sat down to begin posting I had to reach up on the top shelf where I store old mugs that I don't use. Without looking I pulled one down. "One Day at a Time" was written on the side of the mug. Never noticed it before. Yes, that is the name of this blog site. Coincidence? Yeah, I think so. But it made me smile considering the theme of the week.

Then I read the smaller print under the "One Day at a Time" logo.

"Make it a masterpiece . . ."

So now I am sure I vote for coincidence. If there were some sort of divine hand directing my hand toward that "One Day at a Time" mug, the selection of which made me smile, then I might also have to consider the rest of the divine message, "make it a masterpiece . . .".

I don't want to put in the effort to make today a masterpiece. I want to sit on the sofa, drink coffee, listen to NPR, and do a little blogging. If I get really industrious I might start the dishwasher. Actually I know I will if not starting it is going to lead to more of these demanding messages from random mugs on the top shelf. Maybe that's how I choose which mugs are in the rotation. The mugs that demand more of me I have stored on the top shelf, far out of reach.

My favorite mugs bear the logos "Krispy Kreme," "Cafe du Monde,", "O'Henry's", and "Paris." I didn't realize my mug selection would reveal such hedonism.

I am still intrigued by coincidence. I still don't know what I think.

I have a friend Deb who has a gift for observation. She seems to be able to absorb the stories of life that go on around her. And more life seems to go on around her than anyone else. (There is a link to her journal, "My Rambling," at the bottom of this blog site) After she absorbs these stories, she is able to retell them in an incredibly entertaining way. Then she usually draws some lesson of life or faith from the story.

Jesus did the same thing. He told stories based on everyday life and drew profound life and faith lessons from them. He wasn't as funny as Deb, but He did have that miracle thing going for Him, which so far Deb has held back, unless you count that obscenely high score on Pathwords.

It was not necessary for Jesus to create new situations to make His parable points. Weddings, vineyards, workplaces, farms and farmers, sheep, widow's, rebellious sons, oil lamps, lilies of the field, all already existed. No divine intervention was necessary. The message was derived from ordinary occurrences. But it was a divine message nonetheless.

On the other hand, He turned water to wine, multiplied fish and loaves, healed lepers, the lame, the blind, and brought a friend back to life. Not so ordinary.

So maybe the question is not whether an occurrence is coincidence or an intervention by the divine.

Maybe the question is whether there is a message for us, whether it be in the ordinary or the miraculous.

Or maybe there is really no difference. Ordinary is miraculous. Miraculous is ordinary. If we only have eyes to see, ears to hear.

I gotta go turn on the dishwasher.

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Coincidentals

Before or after you read this post I hope you will consider and respond to the Thurvey question, which appears in the post immediately below this one.

A question of faith has been on my mind for awhile now. I believe in God. I pray a lot. But if you don't I still think my question is something you may think about from time to time, just from a different direction.

I have been talking with God about a particular bothersome situation for a few months now. I am not asking that anyone's freedom of choice be affected, or even that the natural laws of physics be suspended. In Star Trek terms, the prime directive would not be violated by what I am asking. I just want to know how God feels about something, and how I should proceed. I have looked for answers written on the steamed bathroom mirror, the alignment of spilled coffee beans on the counter, the arrangement of pasta in a dish (it could be written in cursive if that were the case). But alas, no handwriting on the wall, or anywhere else.

But then when I least expect it some ridiculous convergence of events happens, which in my mind could not happen out of sheer randomness, that has direct relevance to my problem. But I don't know whether what I want to be a sign is in fact some sort of divine intentional message, or just a random occurrence that I seize as an answer out of desperation because I am looking so hard for guidance.

Lots of folks say that these coincidences are just random. They say that I attribute more value to them than they actually represent because I am looking for something that is not there. I think that is right sometimes. But I don't know about all the time.

But bizarre coincidences do happen in our lives. The question "what are the chances of . . . " is fairly common. Perhaps we notice them because they are relevant to something going on in our lives that is important to us.

Some of us think of these coincidences as miraculous because they are a departure from the normal course of events that we attribute to God. But maybe that's not right. Maybe they happen all the time. Maybe they are not the miraculous exception, but the norm. Maybe we think they are rare because we just do not live with our eyes open. We are only aware when we are desperately seeking answers to our own problems that we can't handle by ourselves. I don't know.

Or maybe our minds are more powerful than we think. Perhaps when two or more people are intensely thinking about the same thing there is some kind of collective power that tends to bring them together for resolution. I don't know.

But for today I know I feel better than I did yesterday because a ridiculous convergence occurred. I am thankful for that, whatever it is.

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