“It’s a good bike, Paul, but I just found another one I wanted.  You can have it for fifty dollars if you’re interested.”  My friend, the instrument tech was standing in his shop apron, pointing toward the back of his repair area.  The bicycle was, indeed, a good looking piece of machinery, with its alloy wheels and gleaming twenty-one speed shifter.  I was used to the department store models, which needed to be hammered on and tweaked every time they were dragged out to be ridden, so this beauty was definitely going home with me!

As we talked, I learned that he was purchasing a road bike which was going to cost him over a thousand dollars.  One Thousand Dollars!  For a bicycle!  Anyone knows that ninety-nine bucks will buy you a bike at Walmart!  I shook my head, but I dug in my pocket for the fifty dollars and rolled my new bicycle out the door.  It is still the one I ride today, eight or nine years later.  My friend, the instrument tech is on his third since then.  I had given up trying to understand him.  Until a week ago.

Photo by IrishFireside (www.irishfireside.com)

Last week, my friend, the computer geek…I mean, the web designer, rolled up to my door (actually through it) to spend some time dreaming up new ideas for the website that the Lovely Lady and I maintain for our business.  After an hour or so, he got up to leave and I commented on the beautiful machine he had left standing just inside the door as he arrived.  He explained some of the desirable features of the bike and I commented that it must have been rather costly.  He, reluctantly, and not bragging at all, told me about the cost and benefits of some of the components.  Wheels…four hundred dollars apiece.  Seat…three hundred dollars.  Frame…almost two thousand dollars.  Seriously!

I was mentally adding up the costs in my head as he spoke.  And, wondering if I’m paying him too much for his expertise.  No.  I know better than that.  He definitely earns his pay for the work he performs for my business.  But, I was puzzled.  I still am.

As the Lovely Lady and I rode in the car toward a nearby city tonight, I asked her the question that has been bugging me since that conversation and maybe, since my friend, the instrument tech told me what his bicycle was costing him.  I assume that these men ride for the same reason I do–to exercise and keep the body in condition.  The purpose for every part of the bike that my friend, the web designer, described to me is to lighten the overall weight of the equipment, making it easier to climb hills and go long distances.  I can’t, for the life of me, understand why you would take part in an activity with the goal of getting exercise and then spend incredible amounts of cash to make it less effective exercise!  The Lovely Lady laughed at my analysis, but I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the issue.

I see it every day.  Amateur guitarists, players with minimal skill in the art of arpeggios, or fingerpicking, or even basic chording, feel the need to spend thousands of dollars on professional instruments; instruments with potential that far exceeds any their new owners could hope to live up to.  For many of these folks, a three hundred dollar entry-level instrument would be all they ever have need of.  That, and many hours of practice time. 

Men (and sometimes women) who have taken up the game of golf (if it can be called a game), spend thousands on clubs that will never, ever take away their propensity to slice a drive from the tee.  Amazing quantities of cash are wasted on equipment which will sit in closets, as their owners recognize the sad fact that no amount of overpriced gadgetry will ever enable them to play like Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, or Brittany Lincicome.  Those champions got where they are by discipline and hour upon hour of practice.  Of course, they use the pricy equipment, but it was the hard work that got them to the point that the fancy clubs are of any benefit to them.

Are you getting the picture?  I realize that much of what has been written here is an oversimplification of reality; cyclists do ride for pure enjoyment and, the better the machine, the less there is to annoy.  An expensive guitar plays with less finger discomfort than a cheap one and will at the least, be easier to learn on.  I’m not a golfer (I even lose at mini-golf to the Lovely Lady with regularity), but I can see that better clubs lessen the chance of errant drives and chip shots.

What I’m arguing for tonight is perspective.  Understanding that our goals cannot be bought will bring us to the goal that much quicker.  The wisdom that comes with discipline leads to excellence.  Mr Tolkien reminds us in his quirky way that “Short cuts make long delays”.  Indeed, I have never seen a professional musician who rose to prominence by using the “Think Method” advocated by Professor Hill in the musical “The Music Man”.  Fame and recognition come, not to the rich hobbyist, but to the serious student of his chosen craft, and then only after years of dedication and hard work (and more than a few disappointments), with a good bit of tenacity thrown in for good measure.

Keep your eyes on the goal.  Don’t make excuses.  Bad equipment is the least of the problems you will encounter on the journey.  Keep moving!

Oh!  A two thousand dollar guitar which sits in the case, without being practiced on, will never ever play the Grand Ole Opry.  That three thousand dollar bicycle sitting in the garage won’t ever get you to the Tour De France if you don’t get on it and ride every day.

The concert pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, the story goes, was asked in the streets of New York how one could get to Carnegie Hall.  Fictitious as the story may be, His reputed answer hits the nail on the head for us tonight.   

“Practice, practice, practice.”

“All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”
(Proverbs 14:23~NIV)

“Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.  Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
(Martha Graham~American choreographer and dance teacher~1894-1991)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Art carried the fifty-year old guitar case in and set it down on the counter yesterday.  I am an enthusiast of many instruments, but my heart always beats a little faster when I see the old Fender guitar cases.  If what is inside is a match to the case, this is an instrument which was built in the heyday of some of the finest and most well received guitars of any era.  They also happen to be some of the most valuable on the market today, but that is secondary to the enjoyment of holding and playing one of these historical artifacts.

We discussed the instrument’s features at length and verbally dissected its condition, fair for its age, but still intact, with all the original parts present, give or take a screw or two.  I even had the honor of being the first person to ever remove the neck from the body to confirm the age indicated by the serial number.  The guitar is exactly fifty years old this month!  Its value is not extraordinary, because it is a less desirable model than some, but it still has significant worth.  I felt privileged to spend some time with the fine old instrument.  Art, Chris (another lover of fine instruments who was present), and I stood for more than a few moments in conversation.

Art spoke to us of where the instrument had spent most of its life.  He talked of Kenya, in Africa, and the desperate need there in the seventies and eighties for musical instruments of any kind.  We learned of the program which provided many guitars to the native churches and also heard of a few instruments which were destined to be used in recordings he participated in making while in Africa.  This guitar made the trip with him over thirty years ago and had been left there when he and his wife returned to the United States a number of years after that.  The guitar itself has just returned in the last few days from its sojourn in Africa.  Ah!  If the old instrument could only speak instead of simply playing notes!  What a story it could tell…

Intrigued by the thought of instruments from the States being exported to a country like Kenya, so rich in its own musical heritage and indigenous instruments, we inquired about the circumstances that instigated the journey.  We were regaled by the story-teller for a few moments as the unexpected truth came out.  I was (and am) stunned.

It seems that, as the early missionaries to the “dark continent” won their first converts, they insisted that the natives forsake their native melodies and rhythms.  In the place of these, the missionaries substituted the traditional hymns of the western churches, translating the words into the native languages to be sure, but still forcing a completely alien style of music on the new believers.  Instead of songs laid out in the “call and response” style familiar to them, the odd sounding four-part harmonies of the western choral style were substituted.  No other type of music was acceptable in the church, nor even in the private worship of the natives.  Worse was still to come.  The teachers banned the native instruments, including the stringed melody-producing ones.  Drums were out completely.  The rationale was that the items had been used in the demon-inspired ceremonies before conversion occurred, so the people must never touch them again.  In many cases, the converts were forced to burn the instruments in a symbolic act of leaving behind their old lives.

How sad.  I will not malign these well-meaning missionaries, with lofty goals for the flock that had been given to them.  They believed they were doing the right thing.  It was never their intention to deprive the people of something that was good, but to protect from evil. That’s just not the way it worked out.

Art and his fellow workers understood that the people needed something which spoke to them in a more personal and familiar way than the recycled Western hymnal, so guitars were made available to the natives and they were encouraged to write songs in the native style, but with words which drew their hearts into worship.  The first few men took a few days to get familiar with the instruments and then the race was on!  Everyone wanted guitars.  The demand far outstripped the supply and it was all Art and crew could do the keep a supply coming.  When guitar strings broke, anything that would sound a tone was fair game.  The musicians would appropriate brake cables from old cars and motorbikes and, peeling off the outer wrappings, would employ the core wire for a string.  When the mechanical tuning machines broke, a wooden peg was inserted up through the hole, violin style, to bring the instruments up to pitch.  It was a wonder to behold!  The music was theirs again!

The final chapter told of the conference he attended, when several thousand men, women, and children were gathered to share worship.  Several different people had played and sung, with the crowd remaining engaged and somewhat noisy.  Then the old man stepped on the platform, with a simple, single-stringed instrument.  A hush came over the crowd as they sat and listened with rapt attention.  Not a sound was heard except for the playing of the instrument and the voice of the singer.  When it was over, the crowd let out a collective sigh, almost as if they had been holding their breath for the whole song.  “What happened?” queried Art to some of his Kenyan friends.  The only explanation they would give was to reveal that this instrument, above all others, had been labeled as “demonic” for most of a century and it was only now that they could hear songs of the Savior they loved, played on an instrument which they had longed to be able to hear for most of their life spans.  What an emotionally moving experience for them to sit and take in the joyful sounds once more.

The parallels to our current day experiences almost make my head spin.  But, I have filled enough of the white space on this page for tonight, so I will not waste your time in pointing out the obvious.  You may be able to fill in the blanks yourselves, if you will.  Just a little shove in the right direction and you’re on your own…Intolerance of generational and cultural differences in styles has plagued and sidetracked us for eons, when the better focus might be on the substance itself.  

Perhaps, it is time to take the view of each other that our Creator takes of us.  The outer trappings are nonessential; the heart though–that bears just a little more consideration.

“The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
(I Samuel 16:7 NIV)

“Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”
(Aesop~Ancient Greek author of fables~620 BC-560 BC)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

“Your integrity is in question and will be monitored!”  Now, wait a minute!  We’re not going through that again, are we?  The last time we talked, this was my opening statement.  Surely we don’t need to rehash that for another post.  The answer is a resounding no.  You already know that my mind wanders.  Tonight, although the starting point is the same, it would seem that a different path is opening before us.

I have read and re-read that post, as I am apt to do when the message has been especially impactful to me.  Each time, the opening line has hit me again.  I want to believe that the statement is not true.  My integrity speaks for itself.  Look at who I am.  Look at how I do business.  Look at what I say.  There is no question left about my integrity.  Right?  I guess you would have to say that it’s all in what you understand integrity to be.  I’ve discussed this before, but it has been awhile, so I’ll cover a little familiar territory as the mind continues to wander afield.  Don’t worry, we’ll arrive at our destination soon.

The very word “integrity” comes from the Latin “integritatem”, meaning oneness or whole.  The essence is that of a piece of  fabric, woven together with threads which fit into the pattern, each adding to the strength and beauty of the whole, until you have the completed product, the cloth.  Each choice we make is a thread which adds to the complete fabric, good choice upon good choice, decisions made with our intellect and heart, daily adding to the integrity of a life well lived.  But we can see that the problem with weaving or stitching anything is that, at any given point the pattern can be broken, regardless of what has come before.

I watch the Lovely Lady, sitting in her chair and placing stitches in her latest craft project.  The blank piece of neutral colored cloth is her canvas, awaiting each painstaking stitch.  For weeks–sometimes months–the blank cloth seems not much improved as she labors away.  Hours at a time, she counts the correct number of times the needle pushes through the “canvas”, her masterpiece looking nothing like the vision she has in her head of what it will become.  I cannot enumerate the times she has exclaimed unhappily, “Oh no!  I messed up a long way back!”  The result, although I can never pick out the error with my untrained eyes, is that she will remove every thread which has been placed in the cloth since the point of the offending stitch.  She makes certain to place that stitch correctly and follows from there again, retracing each painstaking in and out motion of the needle pulling the colored thread behind it, until the picture is finished, perfect in every detail.  There is a reason I don’t do needlework…

Why did she retrace her steps?  A lack of integrity.  No…I don’t mean a lack of integrity on her part.  I mean that the handwork demonstrated a lack of integrity.  There was a misstep, a momentary lapse on her part, possibly when she lifted her eyes from the masterpiece to look over the magnifying glasses at her husband making a silly joke.  Perhaps, just that little bit of inattention, coupled with the annoyance of hearing a bad pun, was enough to disturb her concentration.  Whatever the reason, correction needed to be achieved; thus the extra labor.  The result?  Integrity.  Beauty.  Perfection.

Maybe you men need a different illustration.  Not long ago, a young man brought in an electric guitar to be repaired.  It was a beautiful instrument.  The finish was gorgeous, with not a scratch to be seen anywhere.  The strings were clean and bright, with a nice, close action.  Here was a guitar that was the image of perfection, from the fit and finish, right down to the custom pickups and tuning machines.  “What could possibly be wrong with such a nice instrument?”  I inquired of the young man.  He answered that he didn’t know.  “I tune it with my electronic tuner.  Every string is exactly in tune.  Then, when I play the chords, they aren’t in tune.”  He was perplexed, but I was not.  As he spoke, I had been looking at the bridge saddles, the place where the strings make contact after coming through the body.  The sounding length of the strings begins here, stretching up to the top nut, next to the tuners.  On this particular guitar, the individual saddles were all in a perfectly straight line, seemingly in good order, but something was amiss.  “Were these saddles like this when you bought the guitar?”  I asked.  “No.  They were all messed up; one all the way out, the next one almost all the way back.  I straightened them out,”  came the answer from the bright young man.

“Well…there’s your problem,”  I replied.  I spent a few moments with a tuner and a screwdriver and brought the guitar back to the amplifier, where we played a chord or two on it again.  This time, the beautiful instrument played the chords in tune, all the way up and down the neck.  “But, the saddles are all out of place again,” complained the young man.  I explained the need for each string to play true to itself, the issue being that every string was not alike, the height from the neck was minutely different, even the material in the core of the strings was not completely consistent with the others.  All the variables forced us to compensate with the saddles, but the result was a guitar which played in tune with itself, and when tuned to standard pitch, with other instruments.  The formerly useless, albeit beautiful, guitar had become an eminently useable, and still beautiful, instrument.

All of this is to say, the integrity of the needlework project is in constant question.  The integrity of the guitar never stops needing to be monitored.  Every time the player picks it up, the tuning has to be touched up.  Every time the needlework is started anew, the Lovely Lady has to carefully calculate where she stopped and begin again, stitch by painstaking stitch, making a masterpiece out of a scrap of cloth and a myriad of different threads, the final product far exceeding the sum of the various materials.

Indeed, my integrity should always be in question.  Every day that I draw breath, stitches are being put into the fabric of my life, music is being played on the instrument of my heart.  A moment of distraction, I give in to the desire to align my heart with the wrong influences, and the fabric is flawed, the music out of tune.  Sometimes, when I look back, I see places that must be repaired, must be set right.  The process is not as simple as the Lovely Lady’s labor, the finished product never as perfect as it should have been, but the fabric is squared away, patches are placed, and we move forward once more.

How about it?  Any monitoring going on for you?  We walk this road of life with other people for more reasons than just to pat each other on the backs.  Sometimes, that companion will hurt us with a criticism, but it seems to me that the pain is more than compensated for with the reward.  There is little question; the integrity of the finished product is better off for it.

I’m fairly sure that the music will be a lot sweeter too.  Maybe you should keep that tuner handy, though.

“Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.”
(Proverbs 27:6 NLT)

“All music jars, when the soul is out of tune.”
(Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra~Spanish Author~1547-1617)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

The teenage delinquents sat and stood right at the edge of the canyon.  It was the first trip to the Grand Canyon for their family and they were determined to make the most of it.  Without money to spend in the gift shop, the next best thing seemed to be a contest of who was the bravest.  Closer and closer edged first one, then another, until they were all right on the brink.  Below them…a sheer fall to certain death.  The parents of the boys were nearby, but they seemed to understand that over-protection wouldn’t be helpful.  A couple of times, the tired mom suggested, “Be careful boys,” but took no other action.  A few tourists who shuffled past warned the parents.  “They’re getting too close!  You don’t want one of them to fall!”  The travel weary couple just nodded and smiled.  And, sure enough, within a moment or two, the boys returned to the safety of the marked path, each satisfied that their claim to manly superiority had been adequately staked.

Photo by Pfl

 The Grand Canyon is a spectacle beyond all belief.  The vistas are endless and some people will stand for hours, simply gazing at the beauty before them.  The colors, the patterns of the rocks, the sheer magnitude of the huge hole in the ground is enough to hold them spellbound.  As you look down the canyon, you see dots moving on the side of the bluffs below and realize that those are people climbing down or up the canyon wall.  On further down, the river, from here just a stream really, rolls along gently.  It is an illusion.  The mighty Colorado River is a powerful flood of roiling water, pushing its way impatiently along the floor of the Canyon, at times nearly a mile below the rim.  The realization of its significance, while viewing it from the edge, is a little unnerving.  In reality, so large and powerful, yet from this vantage point, so tiny and unimpressive.  Again and again, the eye is drawn to other points of interest, before it is time to move on.  One visit is enough to burn the impression of it’s grandeur into the mind for a lifetime.

With all this amazing vista unfolding in front of us, why do the daredevils have to spend their time here crowding the edge of the precipice?  It’s a question I’ve asked myself for many years.

Yesterday, as dinner approached the time to be served, one last dish of delectably grilled food was brought inside.  The children had scant interest in all the other dishes which had come through the door.  Squash?  Zucchini?  Yawn!  Sweet Potatoes?  Ditto!  Wait!  What’s this?  This looks like pineapple!  That might be worth tasting!  But, the little ones were warned off with the customary, “Hot!” and most of them were content to wait.  One, though…within moments, she was poking, not at the contents of the container, but at the container itself.  I guess she just needed to know if it really was hot.  I wonder what goes through their little minds at moments like that.  “Mom says it’s hot, but she might be fibbing.  Maybe she just wants to keep it for herself.”  You’ll be happy to know that no fingers were burned in the preparation of this blog tonight, since her actions were noticed and she was headed off.

With all of the toys in Grandma’s house, why do the children want to crowd the edges of disaster?  I’m still wondering.

Hmmm…from the first recorded actions of humans in Genesis…“And the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desireable…”  It would seem that this is human nature in a nutshell.  We find out where the boundaries are and then we push.  You can’t keep us in your box!  Never mind that the box is designed to protect us; we want freedom!  And, again and again, we burn ourselves or we fall, realizing too late that there are boundaries because we are loved, not to keep us confined.  How amazingly short-sighted we are.  And how predictable.

The statistics tell us that actually only about sixty people have fallen from the top of the Grand Canyon since records have been kept.  Many more have died by other means there, but the boys (old and young) crowding the edge seldom actually pay the price for their foolishness.  It’s a good thing.

I think I’m going with Johnny Cash on this issue.  He says,”because you’re mine, I walk the line.”  Seems to be good advice to me.

I’m not planning any trips to the Grand Canyon any time soon, either.

“In a love that cannot cease, I am His and He is mine.”
(George Robinson~Irish poet~1838-1877)

 “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you’re mine,
I walk the line.”
(“I Walk The Line”~Johnny Cash~American singer-songwriter~1932-2003)

“They stole a quarter of a million dollars from the kids!”  The television camera was focused on an angry father, standing in the midst of a mob of other parents, all of them just as angry as he.  The reporter illuminated.  “It appears that the travel agent who was entrusted with the job of arranging the Hawaii trip for these local band kids has disappeared with all the money.”  As the story unfolded, we learned that it was likely that the man had invested the money unwisely and was unable to produce either the cash or the tickets and lodging for the scheduled trip.  Three hundred children, disappointed and disillusioned, will not make the anticipated journey to the island paradise because of one man’s greed.

I’m angry, along with the parents.  But, as I listened to the newscaster, I was reminded that it happens all the time.  In the mid nineteen-nineties, the local Christian university was swindled out of two million dollars by a “philanthropic” firm who had claimed that the school’s investments of cash would result in significant increases due to donations from charitable organizations.  It turned out to be a “ponzi” scheme, netting the swindler huge sums of cash and leaving the university and many other organizations in serious financial straits.

As I continued to consider the situation, I realized that my frustration with scams goes back a lot further than even that relatively recent event.  I remember a day in the early nineteen-sixties.  The phone in the living room rang, to be answered by my oldest brother.  The voice on the other end of the line informed him that the call was from a local radio station and that our household had been selected as winners of the first prize in their current giveaway.  The prize?  A brand new color television!  Delivery details would be attended to by a popular appliance store immediately.  “Enjoy your new television!”  The caller hung up.  When my brother replaced the receiver, he turned to us in shock and repeated the conversation.  We were ecstatic!  A color TV?  We didn’t even have a black and white set!  A color TV!

Our elation lasted for days.  The next day, by chance, a station wagon, with the logo of a local appliance store plastered on the door, turned into the next door neighbor’s circle drive.  We were at the car in a flash.  “You want the house over there!  We’re getting the free television!”  The confused driver looked down at his paperwork and then back up at us, saying with a smile on his face,  “No, this is where I’m supposed to be.  I think someone is pulling your leg.”  We went home disappointed, but not discouraged.  For the next few days, we expectantly kept an eye on the road in front of the house, but the possibility that the man’s words might be true started to take root in our minds. Finally, after a week had elapsed, the skepticism was full grown and we admitted that we had been tricked.  Some teenager was just having fun at our expense.  It was nothing more than a prank call.  I think I was scarred for life.

Prank calls are supposed to be short and amusing.  “Is your refrigerator running?  Then, you better go catch it!”  “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?  You really should let him out!”  That’s the way prank calls are intended to work.  Ask the leading question and then spring the trap.  The victim is annoyed and the payoff is immediate.  There is no long term damage, no waiting for the conclusion.  This…this was diabolical!  The prankster could only have imagined that there was any mental anguish, could only hope that his words had the desired effect.  This one succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with the gullible children at my address, but he would never know it.  It has to be the cruelest of all phone pranks, with no payoff at all for the culprit, just a desire to cause emotional trauma and the imagination that it would succeed.

I exaggerate the mental anguish, but I still remember the feeling like it was yesterday.  I could not believe that there were such cruel people in the world.  Up to that point, the meanest humans I knew were my older brothers – and I didn’t want to know anyone meaner.  This though…this took cruelty to a new level.  I didn’t like the feelings of wealth, the joy of ownership, followed so quickly and conclusively by the assurance of abject loss and humiliation.

Although the reality is considerably different, I imagine that the feelings are the same for the kids in the band.  They were promised a trip to a tropical paradise and reveled in the plans they were making, the excitement of anticipation.  Today, they are derailed and inconsolable.  The conviction of good things to come has been replaced with certainty of disaster.  Not only money was stolen from them; their hopes have been pilfered from under their noses.  It is possible that some will be scarred for life.

The reality is that life is replete with con artists.  The truth is that we will all be scarred by these individuals.  Can I go one step further and tell you that you probably look at one of them every morning?  No, not the person you wake up next to, although they may be one also.  I’m referring to the person at whom you gaze in the mirror.  We all “play the angles”, making promises that we cannot (or don’t intend to) keep in order to gain something.  I’m reminded that I presented my best side to win the Lovely Lady’s heart prior to our marriage, but the dissimulation was dropped upon achieving the goal, as is often the case.  My guess is that there were a few moments (or possibly hours) of lost hope on her part, the knowledge of the entire flawed package bringing recognition of the flim-flam game which had been played on her.  To her credit, she has had the patience to work through those first disappointments and I’ve grown a bit more mature in making improvements on the original product.  There are still moments, though…

We could go into the causes and cures for the scams that continue throughout our lives, but volume upon volume has been written to explain both.  For those held in the snare and tight grip of hopelessness and despair, there are counselors who are much better prepared to help than I.  I will say this, though.  Sometimes, we need look no further than the con-man (or woman) in the mirror to determine much of the problem.  Unreasonable expectations are placed on many relationships by both parties, with greed entering the picture from both angles.  When I was a child, my greed for a prize of epic proportions outweighed my suspicions that I had been tricked.  Most scams cannot operate without the victims’ greed being a large part of the equation.  It has become anathema in recent years to “blame the victim”, but I can’t help but remember my Mama’s wisdom, when I would run to her for sympathy after being jostled or hit by a sibling.  She would say unsympathetically, “If you hadn’t been standing where you shouldn’t have been, you couldn’t have been hurt.”  While it is not always true (the band kids stand out as a prime example), most scams immediately fall on their faces without willing and greedy victims.

Check your heart.  Are you in this venture for yourself?  Are you in it to benefit others?  There is no guarantee of success either way, but if the latter is true, the damage to yourself will be minimized.  If I expect no personal gain, the failure of the venture simply encourages me to be more disciplined in the next attempt.  The crooks and liars can’t hurt you if you have nothing in the game to lose.  The best example of this I can point to?  None better than the Savior.  The wicked men who sat in judgment of Him didn’t kill Him.  He freely gave what they thought they were taking.  Long before that, without taking thought to His personal rights, He laid down  his position in Heaven to become like us and walk this soil as we do. 

Too simplistic?  It’s all I’ve got.  I’m convinced that it’s all there is.  When we give up our demands of what we desire, we give.  Period.  No more scarring.  No more disillusionment.   No more lost color televisions!

 I’m not there yet.  There’s still a good bit of that road in front of me.  But, the feet are moving.  I’m still alive, and there’s still hope. 

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”
(Matthew 6:21 NLT)

“If you’re not greedy, you will go far, you will live in happiness too, 
Like the oompa – loompa – doompity do.”
(from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl~British children’s author~1916-1990)

“Where’s Goldbug?”  The two year-old was sitting on the edge of the step with the cardboard book open in her hands.  I smiled at the little blonde cutie with the intense look of concentration on her face.  For a moment, my mind went backwards about twenty-five years when the little blonde cutie holding that same book and uttering those very same words was her mother, or just as often, her uncle.  The book is by Richard Scarry, who has written many children’s books, each of them a joy to the eye for the child in each of us.  The particular book I refer to, though, has what I call a hook, meaning that there is one certain thing which captures the children and keeps them coming back again and again.

The artist has depicted all sorts of automobiles and trucks, both fanciful and real, and drawn them into a fun story wherein one reckless driver, Dingo Dog, is chased through the pages by the police officer, Officer Flossie.  I’m not sure if any of the children in my family (even the grown-up ones) could tell you what the plot is.  Each and every time they open up the book, the search is on.  You see, in every scene in the book there is a little character hidden, always in a different vehicle.  He is introduced simply as Goldbug and he is just that…a tiny gold bug.  On one page, he might be hiding in a car being towed away, eyes and whiskers barely visible in the side window.  Flip over the page and he is in his own tiny car, dwarfed by the big fire engines and buses, racing along so close to the ground that he is hardly to be found at all.  Goldbug is by far the tiniest character in the book, actually not playing a part in the plot at all.  He is mentioned a time or two, to remind the kids to keep looking for him.  They don’t need the reminder.

As I said, I’m not sure the kids in my life could tell you much of the plot.  I can’t either.  Whenever the book is in my hands, I’m surrounded by children, all of them vying to be the first to find the insignificant and imaginary little bug.  As soon as he is located and his whereabouts shouted out with excessive pointing and laughter, it is time to be on our way to the next page immediately.  We don’t read the text, don’t take time to examine the interesting-looking vehicles, like the Pickle Truck (a huge pickle-shaped thing) or the Alligator Car (yep, looks just like one); we must instantly flip forward to the following page, once more scanning the windows, the truck beds, or the convertibles for the by-now familiar shape and color.  “There’s Goldbug!”  I’m as anxious as they are to find him and claim the glory of yelling out the phrase.

I consider the experience I’ve had historically with this book and I can’t help but think that Goldbug is actually a “red herring”.  What’s a red herring, you ask?  The red herring myth was begun way back in the early eighteen-hundreds by a political journalist who related, in print, the story of using a red herring, which was actually just a smoked kipper, to draw hunting dogs off the scent they were following.  He used the term derisively about some fellow reporters who had mistakenly reported the defeat of Napoleon in a battle.  The problem is that the story of using the smoked kipper, the red herring, to train hunting dogs is itself false.  No such training method has ever been practiced.  It would seem then, that the red herring is itself a red herring.  Go figure.

The search for Goldbug seems to me to be exactly like the proverbial red herring which draws the juvenile reader (and occasionally, a more mature one) away from the plot of the story, keeping all of us from learning the lesson the author intended and frequently preventing us from even admiring the artist’s craft.  I wonder if that’s not just a little more like real life than we care to admit.  We are so easily drawn away from the pursuit of our goals and dreams, to follow shadows and imaginary prizes.  We have a destination, a purpose, and a plan to get there, but along the way the billboards point to exciting side shows and distractions.  “Stop and see the caves!”  “Visit the prehistoric ruins!”  “Eat our huge steak dinner in an hour, and it’s FREE!”  Enough distractions and stops, and we have forgotten why we started the journey in the first place.  We begin to believe that the side shows are the actual destination, the ultimate goal.  I’m confident that the Author has loftier plans and goals for us, if we’ll just read the rest of the book and keep moving.

The Goldbug search will continue in the years to come for the kids in our house.  I will encourage it.  In real life however, it is to be hoped that Officer Flossie will catch that reckless driver, Dingo Dog, and bring him to justice.  There are places we need to go!

I’ve got my Pickle truck polished up and ready to get me there.  Let’s see if we can keep on the right track together, moving on up the road. 

“Then Hopeful groaned in himself, saying, “Oh, that I had kept on my way!”
Christian:  “Who could have thought that this path should have led us out of the way?”
(In the castle of the Giant Despair from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan~1628-1688)

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
(Will Rogers ~American humorist~1879-1935)