Twenty-nine years!  Mr. Onoda could have been living with his family and friends for almost thirty years!  He might have married and had children, living to enjoy their company in his old age.  Instead, he hid in the jungle, believing that he was following orders and would one day help to win the war for his beloved motherland.  Tonight, I think I may have a clue, just a little one, into what he felt like.

You see, World War II ended formally in the Pacific theater on September 2,1945.  But, it wasn’t until March 9, 1974 that Hiroo Onoda finally was officially relieved of duty by his former commanding officer (himself, a bookseller by that time), since it was obvious that the holdout Japanese soldier would never believe that his beloved country could do the unthinkable and surrender.  He was determined to fight until he was commanded to stop.  Holed up in the mountains of the Philippines, he lived in poverty and needless hardship for twenty-nine years after all of his compatriots had given up their arms and taken back up the tools of their civilian trades.  They lived in relative ease, while he sat in the jungle wondering when the war would be won for the Empire of the Sun.  Peace was his all along, he just never possessed it.

I too, have sat in the wilderness for almost thirty years when I could have been living in the lap of luxury.  You think I’m kidding, but I speak in relative seriousness. The comparison with Mr. Onoda is a bit far-fetched, but it doesn’t feel it to me.  You see, I have owned my own business, with the Lovely Lady, since the mid-1980s.  In that time, I have suffered beyond what a business-owner ought to be expected to bear.  There has never been a single day that I had a place where I could retreat to have privacy; never a room where I could invite an associate, or a contractor, of even a friend, to sit and visit.  I have sat night after night, pecking away at the keys on my computer as I write these posts, in full view of the passing public, a number of whom have felt it their privilege to come and tap at the front window simply because they could see me there…sitting at my desk.  Numerous times, I have been confronted by the local police force who, I know, are only doing their jobs, but it has been a burden nonetheless.  You may have read my version of the events on that summer night a few years ago, when they even scaled the fence into my backyard, greeting me with a blinding beam of light in the eyes and a pistol trained on me when I ran out to investigate the racket.  I have suffered!  I feel a kinship with old Hiroo, because I too, have lived life in a jungle of my own making.

I speak in hyperbole (and more than a little tongue-in-cheek) to make a valid point.  You see, over last weekend, I cleaned out a room (a room I have owned for many years) and made space for a private office for myself.  I am writing this from the solitude of that retreat, out of the view of prying eyes, safe from knocks on the window and, it is to be hoped, intrusion from an overeager police crew.  The office is not plush; the furniture, not new.  There is an old oak roll-top desk and a comfortable leather love-seat (should I need a moment to nap).  I’ve even hung a couple of paintings on the bare wall, but more decorating should, and will, be done.  That said, I feel as if I’m in the promised land.  No longer do I need to heed every creak of the roof or every set of lights that creeps down the road outside in the early morning darkness.  Even in the busy-ness of the workday, there is a place to which I may retreat to rest for a moment and an out-of-the-way space to invite a visiting sales rep to sit and show me his latest wares. I have finally arrived!

But, last night, as I sat and reveled in the privacy and the affluence of having my own private office, the truth hit me.  I have owned this business for nearly thirty years!  I could have had an office at any point in that time.  This private space was within my grasp for all of the long years; each of the stretched out months; every single one of the interminable days. It was mine all along!  I own this place!  All I ever needed to do was to clean out the riffraff and take possession of my office.

Do you see my point?  Do you understand my regret and my feelings of camaraderie with the Japanese soldier, sitting in that tropical jungle for all of those years?  I shouldn’t be proud of cleaning out a room and moving in some furniture.  I should be disgusted that I didn’t do it many years ago.  It was mine; I just never possessed it.

I also can’t help but think about the lessons I learned in Sunday School, so many years ago.  I always loved hearing and reading about Moses and the exodus of Abraham’s descendents from their life of slavery in the land of Egypt.  It was only a short journey of a few months, at the most, to their destination.  They had a place to call home. The Children of Israel owned the Promised Land.  It had been promised to their ancestor and to them.  All they needed to do was to cross the river into the land and possess it.  Yet, they wandered for forty years, because they couldn’t bring themselves to take what was theirs.  They stood by the Jordan river and gazed over at it.  Theirs.  But they couldn’t bring themselves to go and clean out the riffraff.  Their home, they just didn’t possess it.

Have I bumbled around long enough on this subject?  Is my point obvious enough for you?  There are things in this life to which we already have the right, but of which we refuse to take possession.  Promises have been made and contracts drawn up.  I will abstain from defining them clearly to you tonight, because many of you already have taken possession of much that is yours.  An enumeration of the properties would, no doubt, include many you have moved into, but it would also miss a number which are still to be occupied.  I will leave it to you to consider carefully what is rightfully yours and what steps you will take to enjoy the benefits.  You may need to consult the Contract to reacquaint yourself with some of the more obscure or forgotten assets.  There is almost certainly a copy on your bookshelf, although the dust may be a bit thick on its cover.

I will reiterate though, that it is good to have my own place; to be out of the jungle finally. While I have without question, taken leave of my senses long ago, I have only now taken possession of this space in which to practice my madness and will defend it tirelessly.

As the explorers of old, here I set my flag and make my claim.  Possession is nine-tenths of the law, you know. 

“For once I can say: “This is mine, you can’t take it.”
(Frank Sinatra~”For Once In My Life~written by Ron Miller & Orlando Murden~1967)

“Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day.”
( Caleb, upon entering the Promised Land~Joshua 14:12a~NIV)



Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

I talk to myself sometimes. Okay.  Not just sometimes.  I talk to myself a lot.  Oh, it’s not always aloud.  You might not know it to look at me, but even when I work silently, the conversation continues unabated.  Frequently, there are outbursts; periods of unruly audible admonition.  The words are intended for me alone, but those around are privy to my thoughts, whether they intended to be or not.  I am talking to myself tonight.  If you think you can stand it, you may feel free to spy for a few moments.  You may regret taking the chance.

This particular conversation began yesterday and continued into this afternoon, as I packaged up the contents of my “hoarder’s room” in preparation for making it into a private office.  She calls it that…”hoarder’s room”.  Sometimes, she has insights into the nature of things which bring clarity to my confusion, sanity to my lunacy.  I have known husbands who resent such events, but it is a good thing and I wouldn’t want it any other way.  So, the hoarder’s room is going away, string collection thrown into the trash, random pieces of cardboard following close behind.  I will no longer have to sit and write late into the night in full view of passersby and the local gendarmes, who feel the need to shine their spotlights on me as I peck away at the keyboard into the early hours of the morning.  I have mixed feelings about my ability to write in total seclusion, but I’m willing to give it a shot.

Now…where was I?  Oh yes, the conversation with myself.  I was cleaning up the various heirlooms from days gone by and found myself sorting through boxes and boxes of old music and other paper goods.  I hate old paper products, simply because of the effect they have on my breathing process.  Paper is the perfect material to collect dust, and decomposing parts of bugs, and even mold, if it has been where it is damp.  I had only sorted a short time when the sneezing began, followed closely by the coughing.  Then came the tears.  I will deny that the tears were due to having to dispose of my old treasures.  They came exclusively because of my reaction to the invisible allergens contained in the old boxes of music.  That’s my story and I won’t be moved from it.  Such tiny particles, not possible to see at all, but they had a deleterious effect upon me, without question.

Then again this afternoon, as I labored, I finally reached my old photography backdrops against the back wall.  No, I have never been a photographer, save in the most rudimentary of senses.  Sales of musical instruments on the internet some years back required that the potential customers have the ability to view the products being offered, so I presented the merchandise as attractively as I was able.  This entailed using backdrops of different colors to set off the various finishes of the guitars, or trumpets, or piccolos; a process in which I employed colored pieces of cloth material to achieve my goal.  I have not used them for a couple of years, but still they hang draped over the lattice frame.  Today, as I pulled one of them down to put it away, the Lovely Lady gasped.  “There’s a brown recluse spider!”  Almost before I could drop the cloth to the floor, she had her shoe in her hand and was ready to smash the vile thing. I’m not easily frightened, but I was shaken.  He (or she) had been right beside my hand as I handled the cloth, potentially able to strike my hand without me being any the wiser until after the fact.  We saw several more of these frightening spiders before the job was completed, all invisible to the eye until items were turned over or around.  It gives me pause to think…How many were there that we didn’t see?

Funny, isn’t it?  Beautiful, expensive instruments with a backdrop of color…all hiding a nasty secret.  I wonder if the folks would have spent their great sums of money for those guitars, had they known that just inches away there was an ugly, dangerous thing like that.  Do you suppose that they might have placed a different value on the item they were viewing?  I’m not positive, but I think it likely.

This afternoon, as I readied myself for the job, I had entered the room worried that I would spend the whole time sneezing and with teary eyes, as was the case yesterday.  The minor inconvenience of the allergy attack quickly faded into insignificance as I realized the danger I had faced without knowing it.  A recluse bite is horribly painful and potentially crippling.  Their venom doesn’t enter the bloodstream and paralyze, as the black widow spider’s does, but it slowly and inexorably rots the tissue around the bite, causing the area of dead flesh to spread unless the process is halted with medication or sometimes, surgery.

“But, what of your conversation with yourself?” you may ask. And, it’s a fair question, since I brought up the subject to start with.  This afternoon, I was reminded anew of what is hiding behind the personal facade I have left up for many years.  Oh, I want you to believe that they are just small problems, issues which are nuisances at worst.  A sneeze here, a cough there.  Why anyone can wipe the tears from their eyes and keep going.  And, speaking honestly, I do have a number of those minor issues with which I am concerned and on which I am actively working.  I will not try to hide them from you.  But the other, more serious faults; the dangerous ones which lurk behind the pretty picture I want you to see?  Those, I wish to hide.  Those, I will even deny if you mention them.  The result of these issues can be much more serious.

Don’t let the carefully tended image fool you.  I have sins with which I struggle, faults which can and will cause great harm to those in my vicinity (and further) if they continue unchecked.  My inner conversation goes on. But, I hope it’s a conversation which you have with yourself also.  We need to constantly be vigilant to keep the ugly recluses from hiding behind the fabric of our lives, but just as much as that, I believe that we need to be ready to expose the ugly things for what they are.

I’m reminded again of the Great and Wonderful Oz, who really wasn’t either.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” is bad advice, both when we are the ones hiding there and when we are the ones seeing what others are hiding behind their pretty fabric.

Time to pull down the backdrop.  My inner voice tells me that it will hurt, that you might not like what you see in me.  It doesn’t matter.  The facade must come down.  And, little by little, I’m starting to listen to what my heart is telling me.

I only hope that’s not a shoe in your hand…

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
(I Peter 5:8~NKJV)

“…I was talking aloud to myself.  A habit of the old; they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.”
(Gandalf~from “The Lord Of The Rings”~J.R.R. Tolkien)

“Oh, my aching back!”  The red-headed lady was at it again. The young scamp reading a book on the couch across the room looked up, concerned for a moment that his mother was in pain.  As he gazed at her, reading her magazine, it was immediately evident that this was not the case, so he quickly went back to his novel.  But, as he perused the paragraphs, his mind was at work on the phrase he had just heard instead of the words on the page before him.  After a few moments, he ventured the question.  “Mama, does your back really hurt?”  “What?”  the lady looked up from her reading material. For just a moment, she appeared to be at sea.  “What are you talking…..Oh!  No, my back doesn’t hurt.  It’s just an expression; a phrase I use when I’m disgusted about something.”  It would not be the last time the young urchin heard that phrase, along with many others.

The household in which he grew up was actually one which eschewed empty language.  There were no acceptable by-words for the common curse words, as most families used.  Never was the word “heck” substituted for “hell”, nor was “darn” acceptable in conversation, unless one was mending socks.  You get the idea without a recitation of the myriad of words in common use today.  The husband of the red-headed lady called such words “minced oaths” and enforced the rule which prohibited their use stringently.  In this home, words meant things and were to be used accordingly.  Well…with the possible exception of the sayings which the red-headed lady used.  They’ve been discussed before in similar posts, so we’ll not give you a recitation of those either.

The brat who was reading the book, now mature, still remembers the hard lessons of learning to use words correctly.  An encounter, at five years old, between his mouth and a bar of soap is still a vivid picture in his now middle-aged mind, said encounter resulting from the repetition of one of those “minced oaths” after he had been asked to desist.  To this day, he stops and thinks about the meaning of those words, if one happens to slip out in his conversation.  Words have meaning.

But, “Oh, my aching back!” and its kinfolk need a bit of attention.  In part, my mind drifted to this as I began to write tonight because my back actually does ache.  A moving adventure this evening (for which I wish there were photographic proof) with a roll-top desk making the journey from the upper floor of the Lovely Lady’s brother’s house to the ground level below, has left me with a definite pain in the lower back.  You wouldn’t believe the tale of tipping the heavy oak desk over the side of the upper balcony and down to the deck around the pool below, before clambering down via the rail to lower it, so I’ll just save you the incredulity.  I will simply repeat that my back is indeed, aching.   It will recover, no doubt, but the trip back along memory lane had already begun and the road had to be traveled once more.  I hope you don’t mind.

We use similar phrases to describe people or things which annoy us, don’t we?  “He’s a pain in the neck,” is a commonly used description.  We also talk about a pain in the back.  Other parts of the anatomy may or may not occur to you to be used in that sentence, but in the interest of good taste, I’m going to stop with the neck or back.  We simply mean that we are burdened with that persons actions and attitudes.  We don’t really have any physical pain, but we’d rather not be bothered.  Why don’t we just say what we mean?  Why do we have to speak in euphemisms?  I wonder if, like Dr. Seuss’s lovable elephant Horton, it might not be better if we said what we mean and we mean what we say?  Of course, Dr. Seuss may not be the best example here, since he loved to write in analogies. But, you do understand what I’m driving at, don’t you?

Words have meaning.  We often talk just to hear the sound of our voices.  At least, that’s the way it appears, as we babble on and on.  The phrase “talking through his hat” comes to mind.  Although there are a number of ideas for where that phrase comes from, I tend to think it’s just a variant of “talking off the top of his head”; meaning that one speaks in an ill-prepared manner, just saying whatever comes to mind.  In spite of my upbringing, I still make this error frequently and it gets me into trouble, almost as frequently.  Our words should be chosen with care rather than tossed out haphazardly; thought through with deliberation instead of being spoken in haste.  Often, the words we say in a rash and glib manner are remembered by our listeners as serious and literal.  It’s all the more reason to make every one count, to speak each of them in complete sincerity.

You know, I begin to find myself running out of appropriate words as I write this.  To continue would only mean that I would borrow from the habits against which I am warning.  It must be time to find a conclusion to this activity for today.   I’m sure that most of you will concur.

I am speaking plainly when I say that communication is one of the most important tools we possess as human beings.  With our words we build…relationships, families, organizations.  With our words we can (and often do) destroy…the very same things.  It can only be helpful for us to be circumspect in our choices of words and phrases as we communicate with each other. 

I promise that I am not talking through any hat when I tell you that I am headed for home and bed now.  Perhaps this old body will feel better after a few hours of sleep.

Oh, my aching back!

“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
(Matthew 12-36,37~NIV)

“I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.”
(Katherine Dunn~American novelist/journalist)

Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“…now look at yourself. You’re not even a has-been. You’re a never-was.”  The quote, from a comedy in the nineties called “The Mighty Ducks”, gives me pause.  It even inspires a sigh of resignation from time to time.  You see, if you’re going to hit the skids, you have to start from an elevated position in the first place.  You can’t be a has-been if you never were anybody to start with.

I posted a joke the other day (what day don’t I post a joke?) for my friends and acquaintances to enjoy.  It was actually a loose quote of something the comic Lily Tomlin once said.  The joke suggested that I had always wanted to be somebody.  It went on to say that I guess I should have been a little more specific.

You see, most of us want to make it.  We hope for (secretly, mostly) the fame that comes with making it.  Like Thurber’s Walter Mitty, we imagine that we, more than anyone else, deserve to be the hero, the dashing leading man or lady.  The only problem is that real life and real people keep getting in the way.  So, like Thurber’s protagonist, we must content ourselves with at least imagining a hero’s romantic death if we can’t live the hero’s exciting life.  Sure, we’ll face the firing squad.  It’s better than dealing with the unrelenting stress of everyday relationships and life as we know it.

Why is it that we crave notoriety; that we covet the spotlight?  We certainly do some odd contortions to gain that goal, including name-dropping.  Why, I want you to know that I once touched the hand of Major Nikki Rowe, a decorated Vietnam War hero!  It was something I bragged of when I was eleven years old, the year the parade was held in his honor when he had escaped after five years of being held captive and tortured by the Viet Cong.  His convertible moved slowly out of the gates of the stadium and he touched the outstretched hands of those along the way, mine included.  Does that not impress you?  Well then, how about a closer and longer brush with greatness?  I played in my high school band with a young man named Mike Fossum who, only last year, spent six months on the International Space Station, after many years as a NASA astronaut!  He’s a real American hero!  Never mind that we weren’t close friends in school.  He did sit in the row behind me!  I’m sure that I said “Hi” a time or two to him.  Even if it is a weak claim to fame, I will do my best to borrow his honor by dropping his name whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Perhaps, some will rub off.  I just don’t want to be a never-was.

Sad, isn’t it, that we feel our lives so lacking that we must envy those who live the so-called good life and those who have gained fame by their exploits?  The thing is, I have finally, after years of living among them, realized that I’m already surrounded by heroes in my life.  Contrary to popular belief, they’re not exclusively the ones who save lives and property; not only those who bravely put their own well-being at risk for people in distress; not even just those who give up their private goals to work for others as public servants.  Sure, those folks could be described as heroes, but the folks I’m talking about walk past me every day on the street.  They take my order at the restaurant, repair the mechanical problems with my car, and even run the rooter machine down my sewer when it’s clogged.

The heroes whom I refer to are the ones who do what they’re called to do.  Period.  They don’t stand in the spotlight; they don’t take home the big paycheck.  They simply do what they have to do.  They teach.  They clean.  They build.  They pick up trash.  They are faithful, day in and day out, to the task for which they are gifted.  I have known such people.  I can name them, one by one, if need be.  How would that be for name-dropping?  My claim to fame is actually friendship and kinship with such heroes.  I hope that someday, my claim to fame will be to be counted among them, as one of their peers.

Many of the famous ones–the wealthy, arrogant ones–call these folk the little people.  But, when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to choose who we spend our lives with, most of us would (and do) choose to live with these “little people”.  The rich and famous are all about image…and they do look good.  But, as my father would say, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  I have seen dishes on the table which appear to be delicious, but when the spoon is employed and the concoction is brought to the mouth, a grimace appears and the sputtering begins.  Good taste never comes from appearance, but always from the ingredients and the process.  If it looks good, as well, all the better.  Again and again, we find that many of the famous look wonderful, but leave a horribly foul taste in the mouth.

So, how about it?  Are you a has-been?  A never-was?  I’m wondering if there should be a third category.  Perhaps, we could call it an always will-be.  That’s the kind of person I could spend my life with.

I’d like for it to be the kind of person I’m becoming.  Time will tell.

“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
(Bob Dylan~American folksinger/songwriter)

“Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”
(I Corinthians 4:2~NIV)

Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“Honey, this is a beautiful painting, isn’t it?  That bridge over the water is spectacular, and the buildings are so detailed!”  She is standing about six feet away from me as she speaks.  Funny thing…I’m looking at an oil painting with a bridge over a river which has buildings in the scene as well, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she must be looking at a different painting.  The one I’m viewing is all disconnected lines and fuzzy images.  The colors are vivid, but I just don’t see any sharp detail at all.  Not from where I’m standing.

I glance back and, sure enough, she is looking straight at the painting I am examining.  I’ve told her a time or two that she needs glasses, but perhaps now is not the time to reiterate that thought.  I back up to where she is standing.  As I focus on the artist’s work once again, I am astounded to find that I now agree with her assessment.  When I see the whole picture, I don’t notice the fuzziness, nor the disconnected lines.  The structure holding up the bridge is easy to see; the bridge itself a masterpiece of design.  The buildings in the distance look as if they could house families just like ours.  I begin to wonder if I am seeing things, so I move right back up next to the work of art once more.  Nope.  Fuzzy lines and color, nothing more.  This one is definitely a poser.  Exactly what is happening here?

It is not my intent to give a lesson in art history, but the explanation for what I am seeing is tied up in that subject.  The painting we are viewing is one of a genre described as “impressionist”, originally dubbed this by artists who were critical of its unfinished, sketchy style.  To them, it wasn’t a real picture of the object, it was merely an impression of it.  The name stuck and a new art form was established, changing the art world beyond recall.  I will confess that I am not quite a fan.  While I grudgingly admit to the genius of the style, I prefer more clarity, more detail, upon which to focus my attention.  Still, the ability to make a picture appear clear and finished from a distance, only to dissolve into lines and colors when in close proximity, takes a talent which I admire greatly and still do not understand.

I wonder if this is the reason that art museums often have velvet ropes up in front of their art work.  The ropes force us to keep our distance from the precious oils and water colors.  Is it possible that they’re not just trying to keep us from touching and soiling the work, but that they want to be sure we see the paintings from the correct perspective?  I don’t insist on it.  It’s just my theory.

You know, I’m not so sure that we don’t see the world in an impressionistic way as well.  It might be a good thing when we’re viewing art, but I have my doubts as to its usefulness in real life.  Again and again, I am shocked as I learn of acquaintances who are going through crises in their personal lives.  I looked at them from across the room just last week; saw their post on one of the social media outlets only a month ago.  From a distance, everything looked just fine to me.  How is it possible that the lines have become disconnected, the picture so fuzzy?

Perhaps, the message of the fuzzy lines is that we need to be sure and stay close to those we love.  Possibly, we should hold them tight and not lose touch.  It’s not a bad proposal.  From the perspective of a friend and family member, it’s actually quite a good one.  We should do that.  As people who want to serve, we are actually required to be in the place where we can do the most good.  It is an excellent and noble goal, which deserves our attention.

But, I have a sense that there is a more personal message, one of warning, which the idea of disconnected lines and fuzzy focus teaches.  You see, other people are not the only ones who have issues which need to be addressed.  The temptations and anxieties of our world are very real in our own lives, too.  We find ourselves working hard to keep up appearances, making sure that the picture from the outside looking in is one of control and focus, all the while knowing that the lines are stretching and becoming disconnected.  Instead of seeking help and admitting our problems, we work all the harder to repair the image–the facade of well-being, hoping against hope that no one will look closely at our situation; knowing all the while that it will never stand up to close inspection.  If only we can keep them at arm’s length, we are confident that we can make them believe all is right in our world.  All we need achieve is the impression of wholeness, not wholeness itself.  It is a juggling act which will invariably wear us down, a plate-spinning spectacle which is destined to end in disaster.

The impression of peace is not the reality of the same.  The impression of goodness is not the same as actually doing good. We need realism, not impressionism.  I am, of course, speaking about real life, not art.  You may enjoy what you will in the art world, but in our lives, in reality, truth trumps imitation every time.  We owe it to each other; we owe it to ourselves; we owe it to our God, to be honest and to drop our deceptions.

I still have more than my share of fuzzy areas and quite a few disconnected lines.  I’m working at connecting the dots, but I’m thinking that I need to let people get a little closer, too.

Perhaps you believe that it’s time to take down the velvet ropes as well.

Time will tell if the critics agree.

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”
(Ephesians 4:25~ESV)

“From a distance, we all have enough 
And no one is in need. 
There are no guns, no bombs, and no disease 
No hungry mouths to feed.”
(“From A Distance” by Julie Gold~American songwriter)




Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

She sent me a text today.  I remember when she used to call me and we’d speak with each other.  But, life got busy and since I was working with customers in the music store, she never knew if it was convenient for me to talk, so the phone calls became problematic.  Now she has a smart phone, one that actually has a “qwerty” keyboard on it.  She learned to type many years ago, so she has taken to the texting just fine.  I have decided that I don’t detest it as I once did, so I grudgingly crossed the threshold of the twenty-first century with her.  Or, so I thought.

Photo: Vasile23

She sent me a text today, and I answered it.  You see, I know how to type, too.  It’s just that I hit the wrong spot on the screen more often than not.  I don’t like auto-correct programs.  They take my errors and make them into embarrassingly wrong (but valid) words.  However, when I entered into the twenty-first century, I also acquired a phone that talks to me, and listens too.  You know the ones.  You ask the little rectangular black box how many miles it is to home and the computer-generated female voice replies, “I’m sorry, Paul.  I don’t know where you live.”   Hopefully, she will learn.  I have found though, that if I click the little microphone icon when I am ready to answer a text message, I can just say the words, along with the names of the punctuation marks to be included (“period”, “comma”, etc.), and the little stenographer in the black box responds quite nicely.

So, She sent me a text today, and I answered it, with a little help.  But, as I punched “send” on my phone (the little lady in the box hasn’t learned to do that for me yet), I realized something that took me by surprise.  I am still talking on the phone, just like I used to. Well…almost.  I don’t text; I send delayed phone messages.  So, why am I not actually talking to the Lovely Lady, instead of pretending to be a part of the culture of hip communicators that surround me?

On a closely related topic, I was first amused, then frustrated this afternoon as I witnessed this “communication” in action again.  The lady came in asking for guitar strings for her son.  She knew the brand of strings and the type of guitar…well, sort of.  Her son had given her the brand name and a descriptive word for the guitar–“standard”.  I pointed her to the exact strings, but the descriptive word on the package was “acoustic”.  She wasn’t sure the two meant the same thing, so she texted her son.  “It’s the only way he’ll talk to me,” she said plaintively.  I nodded and told her that I’d wait.  Her phone wasn’t a smart one.  She had to click on the numbers to select the letters of the words.  It took nearly fifteen minutes for her to ask her son what he wanted and to get a straight answer from him. One quarter of an hour.  A phone call would have taken less than one minute.  “Hi, son.  Is acoustic the same as standard?  Oh, they have those in phosphor bronze, too.  Do you prefer that, or the 80/20 bronze?  Okay; see you in a few minutes.” There might even have been time for an extra, “I love you,” left over.

Do I sound bitter?  I’m really not.  I understand that sometimes you just can’t talk on the telephone.  But, he was sitting at home with nothing to do but push buttons on his phone. I have no problem with using a tool…and make no mistake, the phone is merely a tool…to achieve the purpose for which you acquired it, but it must be in a manner that accomplishes the job efficiently.  I’m not a fan of letting the tool dictate how–and when–I use it.

Do I sound old?  I will freely admit that the accusation is accurate.  Why just today, I forgot why I walked across the room at the store and had to go back to my desk, where I started from, to get a clue.  And this very afternoon, I unplugged my coffee maker to use the outlet for another device and then decided that the coffee maker had died when my coffee was cold the next time I went for a cup.  I even asked a friend to find me a good replacement for the defunct appliance.  I am, indubitably, old.  But, not so old that I have forgotten that when the things I purchased to help me do a job actually keep me from doing it well, it is time to re-examine my use of those things. 

So…how about it?  Do you have anything that has taken over your life?  Besides the smart phone. Television?  A car?  The computer?  Perhaps, it’s not a thing, but an activity.  Online gaming, shopping, even volunteering for a good cause, or exercising…all of these can rob from you in ways that you never anticipated.  Could it be that it is time for us to take back control of our lives from the stuff?  Maybe, we need to take back the reins from the urgent things we once gave in to and make the important things in our life a priority again.

I wouldn’t deign to propose what your priorities should be, but I could suggest a start.  People are important.  They’re worth laying down your phone for, or turning off the television for, or even closing your Facebook page for.  But before that, a little time for God might help to set the other priorities in order.  You see, if we start with the really important things, the others will fall into place more easily.  I remember the hokey little song we used to sing in Sunday School, it seems eons ago: “Jesus, and Others, and You; What a wonderful way to spell JOY.”  The song seems a bit silly now, but the formula still works.  Important things first…and the stuff we acquire along the way is only there to help us to do the important things better.

I’ll keep talking to my little automated assistant when I need to.  But I’m always looking for ways to use time more efficiently.  My guess is that, if I’m doing it right, shortly I should have more time for doing really valuable things, like spending time with friends and helping strangers in need. 

Maybe the little voice in the box could help with those too.  Then again, probably not.  She doesn’t seem to be much of a quick study.

I’m probably on my own there…

“One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters.”
(J.R.R.Tolkien~British author/educator~1892-1973)

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
(Matthew 6:19-21~NIV)

Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on FaceBook!
 

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

“Hey!  Instead of just opening these fire extinguishers and emptying them out, let’s actually set them off!”  The eighteen year-old kid thought that his idea would be a lot more fun than simply doing the job they had been sent to do at the old lumberyard.  His work with the fire and safety company was certainly not boring, but at eighteen, anything he could do that livened up the day a little more was even better.

His supervisor thought for a minute and then nodded his head.  “No one’s around and it gets the job done anyway.  Let’s do it!”  They had five or six of the old chrome tanks sitting beside their service van, so the young man simply grabbed one of them and flipped it upside down.  Waiting for a second or two and seeing nothing coming from the nozzle, he exclaimed, “It’s a dud!” and started to reach for another. His superior quickly called out, “Wait.  It will come.”  Sure enough, within another second or two there was a hissing sound from the plastic nozzle and then the liquid began spewing from the tip.  He grabbed the hose and pointed the nozzle into the grass nearby, spraying it around as the fluid continued, nonstop, for a couple of minutes.  When all two and a half gallons had been expended, there was a residual noise of air escaping for a moment and then all was quiet.  It wasn’t nearly as much fun as he had expected, but it was far better than just unscrewing the steel top and manually removing the little acid canister before dumping the soda-infused water out onto the ground.  They repeated the process until all of the extinguishers were emptied and, loading them into the back of the van, headed back for the shop.

The ingenuity of the old canister fire extinguishers was pretty astounding.  And, their simplicity of design was almost mind-boggling.  The tank was filled with a couple gallons of water into which had been mixed bicarbonate of soda, essentially simple baking soda.  In the neck of the tank, there sat a little reservoir of sulfuric acid.  If the tank was left upright, it would never do anything at all.  But, if there was need, all one had to do was to upend the tank, standing it upside down.  The acid would dump out into the soda-water, resulting in an immediate production of carbon dioxide.  Not only was the CO2 a great flame-retardant, robbing the fire of it’s one absolute prerequisite–oxygen, but it also provided the aerosol effect necessary to spray the water out from the canister.  As the pressure built up inside, the water was pushed at a high rate, right out the rubber hose and, hopefully, onto the fire where it did precisely what it had been designed to do, extinguish the fire.  But, there was a reason that the men had been sent to pick up all those old extinguishers.  They were to find out why when they told their boss what they had done, moments after they arrived back at the shop.  His reaction was immediate and unexpected.

“You did what?”  His face had turned red and his eyes were glaring as the two men described the process.  “Don’t you know how dangerous those things are?”  He had returned, not long before, from a meeting with the Fire Marshalls in the state capitol.  While there, the gathering had viewed a video recording of a controlled experiment which had been performed with the old soda-acid tanks.  The lab technicians had purposely placed a plug in the hose of one and flipped it upside down inside of a test cage.  The resulting explosion had bent the bars of the cage.  When there was no avenue for release, the gases from the reaction between the acid and soda continued to build up inside until the tank itself failed.  It was even reported to the men at the safety meeting that one person had been decapitated while attempting to discharge an extinguisher which he hadn’t realized was plugged with an insect’s nest.  The potential for disaster was the main reason the old things were being removed from service.  They were all being replaced with newer, safer ones which didn’t depend on a chemical reaction that couldn’t be stopped once it was started. 

Now, the young man and his supervisor were the ones visibly shaken.  Any one of those old tanks could have had an obstruction in the hose and they might have been injured badly or even killed.  There was no possible way that they could have known if a tank had been defective.  They would only have found out as it failed.  It was the last time they ever set off any extinguisher which had been marked for taking out of service.  Sometimes, boredom is preferable to the alternative.

And, speaking of boredom, I hope this lesson in safety hasn’t brought you to that state.  There is, as usual, a method to my madness, as the red-headed lady who raised me would have said.  I’m struck by two things specifically.  The first is the incongruity of it all.  The sole purpose for a fire extinguisher is to protect the person who uses it.  Instead, there was actually the potential to maim or kill that person.  How sad it would have been, had you been the person who patented the process, to find out years later that what you intended for great good had actually done great harm.  I realize that this is often the case when people put their minds to creative use.  I think the poet had that in mind when he penned these words, centuries ago:  “The best laid schemes of mice and men, go often awry.”*  Sometimes tools intended to protect simply don’t do what they are designed to do.  When that happens, we go back to the drawing board and start anew.

I am also struck with the personal application of the sad lesson about pressure and its necessity for relief.  It is commonly understood that if we close off the release for the day-to-day stresses which build up inside of us, effectively bottling up the anger and emotion, there will come a time of reckoning when that internal stress will find its way out anyway.  We are not designed to withstand this pressure, any more than the metal tanks of those old fire extinguishers were.  The eventual release of pressure, if not done in a controlled and systematic way, will cause great damage, not only to us, but to any bystanders.  I have seen this from a much closer perspective than I care to admit on any number of occasions.  The result was not pretty, as I have unloaded on folks who had nothing whatsoever to do with the original issue.  Perhaps, you too have done this, maybe not in the too distant past.  The anger, guilt, and frustration of a lifetime can wreak havoc in families, in churches, in communities, when the explosion occurs as it inevitably does.

What is the answer?  I would suggest regular and systematic checks of the communication system.  It has long been my suspicion that if we will clear up issues when they happen, we won’t have to take care of damage control when the explosion takes place later on.  I’ve said it before, just like the mother of the blubbering toddler: “Use your words, please.”  Talking now beats apologizing later for the mess.  Many a fire has been put out with a simple stream of water, judiciously aimed at the place where the flame originates.

As always, I suspect that my solution is a bit simplistic.  You will have complicated issues to deal with which I cannot begin to fathom.  I don’t expect that talking will be the panacea for all the world’s problems.  But, it’s a start.  For the others, which are already past the easy fix, you may need to take apart the canister and separate the chemicals before more damage is done.  Sadly, not every issue can be cleaned up neatly.

For now, this windbag has released enough pressure for one night.  We’ll see what tomorrow brings. More fires to put out, one shouldn’t wonder. 

I hope the ancient equipment will be up to the task…

“In your anger, do not sin.  Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry.”
(Ephesians 4:26~NIV)

“Anger is only one letter short of danger.”
(Anonymous)

*”To a Mouse…” by Robert Burns~1785~English translation from the original Scots language

Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Rachel Tayse

A last minute trip to visit my instrument technician this evening meant a few moments of extra time with the Lovely Lady, since she agreed to ride along with me.  The sixty mile round trip flew by…well, except for the few miles when those slowpokes ahead of us were going twenty miles per hour under the speed limit, but you take my meaning.  Good company and easy conversation, or even a comfortable silence with the same good company, make time speed past.  On our way back, we stopped at a little Italian restaurant to grab a bite of supper.  A container of grape jelly on the table attracted our attention and, before you know it, we were both putting a dollop of the jelly on the homemade rolls which had been served with our delicious spaghetti. As I took the first bite of mine, the flavor made me stop short.  As it frequently happens, the slightly familiar flavor took me back to a different time, more than forty years ago.

Oh, it was grape jelly all right, just not the flavor I had expected. Everyone knows that grape jelly is that gooey purple concoction that we buy in the grocery store which tastes nothing like real grapes.  The grape jelly we usually eat is the product of some obscure factory where they do unspeakable things to the grapes about which we really don’t wish to know.  Sugars, flavor additives, and even (say it isn’t so!) high fructose corn syrup, have all been injected into the overcooked mess to bring us what we know as grape jelly.  And, we eat it by the gallons with peanut butter.  Well, this jelly was nothing like that.  The only flavor you could taste was fresh grapes, seemingly just plucked from the vine.  What a surprise!  What a delicious treat!

But, I told you that the flavor took me back in time.  What I remember about that past experience was the disappointment I felt years ago when my family was visiting at a relative’s home in Kansas.  She served jelly which she had made from her own vineyard of Concord grapes.  I took one bite of the piece of bread upon which the jelly was spread and refused to eat another bite.  “There’s something wrong with this jelly,” I whispered to a brother, standing nearby.  He sniffed at his suspiciously, but ate it anyway.  I never did finish that bread, but snuck it into the trash when no one was looking.  Why, anybody knew that wasn’t what grape jelly tasted like!

Tonight, I laughed as I relived that experience from the dusty corner of my memory.  I’m so much more sophisticated now.  I’d never do that today.  I know what’s good food and what isn’t.  But then I remember it–my comfort food.  The one meal of which I never tire, and which I will still be eating into my dotage, as long as I can so much as gum my food.  Macaroni and cheese…from the blue box with yellow writing on it.  Sure, I’ll wait while you go check your cupboard to see if it’s the one you like too.  Oh.  Already back?  Well, let’s move on then, shall we?

Years ago, we went out to eat at a very nice restaurant.  Everyone said to us before we went,  “You have to try their homemade mac and cheese.  It’s the best that anyone makes anywhere.”  We asked our server about it.  Yes, it was world famous.  Five different cheeses used in the making.  Garlic, and a few other spices which I can’t remember…and really don’t care about.  We would be overwhelmed.  Certainly then, we’ll have two servings of that.  The dish arrived.  Crunchy on the top, large creamy macaroni pasta, with delicious cheese.  I’m not speaking for her, but I was completely underwhelmed.  I have tried the mac and cheese at a number of different places, every time a friend has recommended it.  I don’t care for any of it, except–you guessed it–the stuff from the blue box.

You see, I grew up with the blue box.  In my experience, all good mac and cheese should taste just like that shrunken pasta, boiled and mixed with powdered cheese food, along with some milk and a little butter.  Mmmmm!  Heaven couldn’t be much better than this!  But, we’ll get to that discussion later.  The point I am making is that when we have been taught (and then had the teaching reinforced by years of experience) that something is the way it should be, we have a hard time believing that even the real article is any good at all.  Given the option, we’ll choose the plastic, fake product every time.  Once in awhile, our eyes are opened and we grasp the difference, embracing the genuine item for what it is.  When that happens, we almost never want to go back.

Maybe now would be a good time to talk about heaven, as I said we would.  In C.S. Lewis’ final book of “The Chronicles Of Narnia”, entitled “The Last Battle”, he describes Aslan’s Country, obviously his analogy for heaven.  Funny thing, though.  It’s just like Narnia, except more vivid and more beautiful.  The further in they go, the better it gets, but it is still a more beautiful picture of the world they have left behind.  I’m not sure that heaven will really be like that, but the Apostle does talk to us about seeing dimly now, as in a mirror. (You have to remember that their mirrors weren’t nearly as good as ours back then, distorting images and reflecting badly).  Then, he says, we shall see clearly as if face to face.  It appears that what we have now is merely a poor reflection of what we shall have then, just as with the store-purchased grape jelly and the fresh made jelly.

It seems that perhaps we shouldn’t be developing quite as much of a taste for the substitute items we have come to accept, and sometimes love, here.  We may find that we have been fooled cruelly.  One of my favorite lines from that esoteric movie, “The Matrix”, is the one uttered by the character named Morpheus, as he tries to convince the protagonist, Neo, that the world he sees around him isn’t real.  “You think that’s air you’re breathing now?” I am struck that we grow too attached to the trappings of this life and don’t realize that the most important things, the real ones, are those which the Apostle mentions in the same paragraph as his mirror anology.  “And now, there abide faith, hope, and love.  But, the greatest of these is love.”

Now there’s something real to sink your teeth into.  How about it?  What’s important to you?  What tastes good?  Feels good?  Looks good?  Do you still think it has any real value in the bigger context?

I’ll leave you to work out the details.  Your fake things won’t be the same as mine.  I’ll only mess it up if I try to list the specifics. You will know them much better than I. 

Besides that, I’m headed home pretty soon.  I’m not sure, but I think there might be some leftover mac and cheese in the refrigerator that’s calling my name.

 “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
(I Corinthians 13:11-13~NASB)

“Error is always more busy than truth.”
(Hosea Ballou~American theologian~1771-1852)

Did you like this post?  Let your friends know about it by “liking” our He’s Taken Leave page on Facebook!

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

The Lovely Lady took care of our grandchildren this evening.  Oh, I was there, but they know that Grandma is the fun one, the one who has plans for their entertainment.  The old man is good for a snuggle and a quick read through a book, but he couldn’t pull off an evening’s amusement if his life were in the balance.  I snoozed in my easy chair while they painted water pictures in the next room.

Later, I came to and realized that the voices were farther away, in the front living room.  I pried myself out of the recliner and headed up to see what their entertainment coordinator had cooked up for them now.  I was amused to see (and hear) the excitement of the kids as they played a game of “Cootie”, as many of you know, a game which has been around for over sixty years.  They were shouting out the numbers which were rolled with the die; the number determining which body part they received for the little bug they were assembling.  Legs, tongue, antennae, and eyes…all were pieces they anxiously desired as they awaited the proper number to be rolled when their turn came.

It was bedlam.  The younger ones gained and lost interest in a matter of seconds, depending on how near it was to their time to roll.  One of the girls tried to just set the die down on the number she wanted instead of rolling it.  Then the boys began to use their half-finished bugs to do battle.  Parts were dropping off, and heads were becoming disconnected from bodies.  It was obvious that the rules didn’t much matter in this arena.  They were making it up as they went and enjoying the results just fine, thank you.  The only problem was that the game would never be finished at this rate, so the activities director called a halt to the shenanigans and brought some semblance of order to the affair once more.  Putting the game pieces back to rights and settling down to the task of rolling the die, the game was soon finished, with one of the boys completing his bug first. You see, the Lovely Lady understands that you gotta know the rules.

I was amused at their lack of knowledge of the rules (and the dismal absence of concern at the same), but then I remembered one of life’s most embarrassing moments way back when.  I thought that I understood the game of baseball, being the veteran (at eight years old) of a good number of games in the neighborhood’s vacant lots.  I was convinced that I could play with the best of the boys at my summer camp, too.  On that hot June afternoon, I had waited in the blistering sun through several batters ahead of me, and now it was my turn to step up to the plate.  Swinging the bat to warm up, I stood, almost in the batter’s box (what was this rectangle drawn here for?) and after the first ball whizzed past as I swung the bat as hard as I could, turned to listen as the camp director suggested that I had to keep my feet in the box or I would be called out.  I was just digesting that little piece of information when the ball zoomed toward me once more.  I swung the bat–a little half-swing, since I was worried about stepping out over the line near the plate.  “Strike Two!” called the balding director behind the plate.  He was not only the coach for every boy out there, he was the umpire as well.  I was ready for the next one and swung with all my might…a foot ahead of the ball.  My motion was enough to rattle the catcher though, and he dropped the ball.  The coach/umpire/director, taking advantage of a teaching moment, called out two orders, “Run!” and, “Throw the ball to first base!”  Well, the ball was right beside my foot, so I picked it up and threw it directly to the boy covering first base, putting myself out when I should have been running.  The director couldn’t help but laugh, not in a mean way, but a number of the other boys also laughed; their merriment definitely not intended to be kind.  It was a hard lesson, but it taught me again that you gotta know the rules.

Knowing the rules doesn’t just apply in sports and board games, though.  I remember a day many years ago, when a little neighbor boy was visiting in our home.  We evidently had a few more things for our children to remember or, at least different things than he was used to, and he was fed up.  After I reminded him that, “We don’t do that at our house,” one time too many, he responded with his observation.  “You have a lot of rules here, don’t you?”  I chuckled and then enlightened him (I thought).  “Johnny, you’ll have rules to obey all your life.  Even after you’re a grown-up, there will be rules that you’ll have to follow.”  The little fellow looked at me, disbelieving, for about thirty seconds.  I could almost see the wheels going around inside his head as all the possible arguments for that statement were turned over and examined to see if they would fly.  The disappointment of learning this awful truth was plainly written on his face as he finally just turned on his heels and stalked out the front door without saying another word.  I could only conclude that the horror of a world with perpetual rules was too much for his young brain to take in.  I was a little sorry to have shocked him so, but more than a little amused at his reaction.

We hear so much today about free spirits, thinking outside the box, and changing paradigms, and we seem to have forgotten that the rules still apply.  Our society pays the price as we descend, seemingly, into a sort of anarchy.  There’s no reason to be discouraged though, because our Creator has instilled His rules into creation itself and the rules will be obeyed or the consequences paid. The rules, spoken or otherwise, enforce themselves upon us as we walk through this world.  I guess that line of thought may be a bit esoteric for this venue, and since I have no intention of getting into arguments about philosophy, I’ll aim a little bit closer to home for a moment or two.

Recognizing that most of my readers are followers of Christ, I want to suggest that we each have rules which we must follow in our faith.  One might argue that we are not under Law, but that doesn’t change the truth of who we are and Whom we follow.  At a minimum, we live under the law of love, meaning that we must love our God with everything we have in us, and we must love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  It seems too simple, doesn’t it?  The thing is that the rules that come from those simple two statements will take a lifetime, and more, to fulfill.  Even under Grace, the rules are laid out for us to “play by”.  Winning depends on it.

With the children earlier today, when no rules are followed, confusion and bedlam was the result.  When I didn’t understand the rules of baseball many years ago, I was disqualified by my own actions.  Truly, we have rules to follow all of our lives.  It is up to us to study and understand which rules apply to the course which has been laid out for us.  Do you have the Rulebook close at hand?  It would be a good idea if we put it into use.

Otherwise, we might find ourselves picking up the very baseball we should have been outrunning to the base.

You gotta know the rules!

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
(Galatians 6:2~NIV)

“Friends are helpful, not only because they will listen to us, but because they will laugh at us; through them we learn a little objectivity, a little modesty, a little courtesy; We learn the rules of life and become better players of the game.”
(Will Durant~American writer/historian/philosopher~1885-1981)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.