The hottest summer I can recall.  Yes.  I think this may be the worst in my adult life.  I’m sure there were hotter, when I was a child in the far southern tip of Texas, but those have faded in my memory.  And, since my guess is that you’ve heard quite enough complaining about the weather, I’m going to change the subject and spend a little time talking about Christmas.  Why not?  Christmas in July!  It seems as good a way to get through the heat as any I know of.

Photo: Calsidyrose

I go back in my memory about ten or twelve years, to a frigid early December evening.  As we approach the winter solstice, the days have been compressed and darkness encases the little town I live in for all too many hours.  I am in a suit, much too light for the twenty-five degree temperature outside, but having no overcoat, it is all the protection from the blasting North wind I have available.  Why am I in the suit?  It is the first night of the annual candlelight service at the local university and I have, once again, allowed myself to be manipulated into playing my French Horn with the brass group which will perform a twenty minute instrumental prelude to the choral program for the next three nights.

Arriving nearly forty-five minutes early, I find the parking lot by the building closed off, reserved for VIPs.  I head on to the next lot, only to view an expanse of tightly parked cars.  No room.  I glance over to the front entrance and see the mass of people already swelling, huddling close to keep warm and I keep going.  Finally, a parking place is found, nearly two blocks from the venue and I am running, late for the call time, through the frigid landscape.  When I finally push my way through the packed crowd, I am cold and annoyed, not the two best conditions for an auspicious start to a performance.  It will get worse.

As I warm up, I realize that I have picked up the wrong mouthpiece for my horn.  A minor annoyance, one might think, but for me, it is a major catastrophe.  After a warm up, we play a piece or two to allow our tuning to settle and to induce us into the ensemble mode.  I am playing badly, but, having been assured all my life that a bad warmup is a sure sign of a good performance to come, am willing to let it go.  The problem is that the whole thing goes downhill from there.

On stage, our performance begins with (wouldn’t you know it?) a horn solo.  A bad attack of the first note, turns into a struggle to hit and hold every subsequent note thereafter.  In the middle of the second piece, I forget a key change and play an A two or three times, where the composer was hoping I would find an Ab.  The entire program is cut from the same cloth, with bobbles and wrong fingerings, along with some serious tuning issues.  It is, to put it bluntly, my worst performance in memory.  I am mortified.  It is as if the cold from outside has made its way into my head.  I am stone cold!  As I head outside into the icy, windy weather afterward, I have no intention of returning for the following two nights.  They can find someone to fill in for me.   There is no way I am going to be embarrassed like that again!

After a night to rest and a day to mull it over, I actually did show up for the next night’s program.  With the correct mouthpiece.  On time.  It was quite possibly the best performance I had ever played.  My solo parts were impeccable, the tone almost heavenly (I have witnesses), and I missed not a single note the entire evening, a more-than-minor miracle even on my best day!  I’m convinced that anyone who had been there the night before would actually have thought that the group did recruit a new horn player.  I was red hot!  No one was more surprised than I, especially after the previous evening’s fiasco. 

What made the difference?  Well, besides the mouthpiece, I couldn’t tell you.  What I do know is that sometimes, you just show up, no matter how much you want to quit; no matter how much you want to never attempt a thing again.  Here’s another wrinkle…I have experienced situations like this any number of times in my life, but it is just as likely to turn out the other way around.  A quarterback who completes every pass in one game, throws four interceptions and fumbles the ball three times the next.  The pitcher who throws a perfect game one night, comes out for his next appearance and gets pulled in the third inning because he walks the bases loaded and then, hitting the next batter, walks in a run.  We simply remain faithful to what we are called to do.  Even when we don’t feel like it; even when it takes every fiber of our being to walk out onto that stage.

Now, it’s your turn.  The stage of life awaits.  Did you fall down the last time you tried your balancing act?  Give it another shot and head out on that tight-rope one more time.  Did you flub your lines as you articulated them during your last speaking part?  The only way you’ll get them right is to walk out again…and again…and yet again.  I’m not sure that it ever gets any easier.  We just realize that we have a task to do.  And, we do it. 

The air conditioner has just come on in here, reminding me that it’s not really winter outside, and that it’s supposed to reach over one hundred degrees again tomorrow.  Ah well, hot or cold, we keep doing what we do, putting one foot in front of the other, just one more step closer to the prize.

How would you like to play through a piece or two with me along the way?  You might want to bring the right mouthpiece…

“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”
(Elbert Hubbard~American publisher~1856-1915)

“We fall down.  We get up.
We fall down.  We get up.
And the saints are just the sinners,
Who fall down and get up.”
(Bob Carlisle~American singer/songwriter)

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

Photo: Bayasaa

I hope you’ll forgive a non-original post today.  On holidays, sometimes I tend to turn off the creative connection in the brain and then it seems to take a little while to boot up again.  I think it might be a good time to trot out one of my favorite posts from the past anyway.  The event described below occurred on Independence Day just a year ago.  

Who Wrote The Book Of Love?

Have you ever seen love up close?  No, I’m not talking about the mushy, touchy-feely, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of love.  That, you see on television, depicted in graphic detail again and again every day.  The popular notion of love is in our faces relentlessly, but gives no clue of what love really is.  Still, I think I saw it the other day.  No, I’m sure I saw it the other day.  It happened while I was getting my fuel tank filled up.  And, I’m not talking about the tank on my car, either.

The Lovely Lady and I had spent a couple of days in a lazy unhurried non-schedule, soaking in the experience of people-watching and unwinding at a popular breakfast restaurant, wandering into and out of countless “antique stores” (read: “collections of old junk”) and hock shops in pursuit of everything and nothing, and pretty well finding just that.  We stayed in a posh downtown hotel, thanks to a discount travel service, getting up whenever we wanted and going wherever we wished.  I have to admit, the banjo museum was an original treat, but I was thankful that all the banjos were behind glass where no one could play them.  The walk along the river was relaxing, in spite of the 103 degree temperature, and the movie was tolerable.  We did have one event that was scheduled and we made sure to keep the appointment.

The symphony was giving a holiday concert with a guest vocalist whom we have always enjoyed, so 7:00 in the evening found us striding along the city streets, folding canvas chairs slung over our shoulders, toward the events center parking lot for the free entertainment which wouldn’t start until 8:30.  The streets were crowded with folks headed the same direction and there were more than a few policemen and “ambassadors” posted about to make us feel safer.  As we passed one such post, I casually commented to the cheerful older gentleman that it was a bit warm.  He replied, “Well one good thing…you don’t have to worry about goose-bumps out here!”  Boy, was he wrong!

I won’t bore you with the long wait on the hot pavement, the searing sun on our necks, the futile waving of the advertising paper fans in an attempt to keep cool.  But, as the sun plunged below the horizon and the temperature moderated a little, the musical sounds wafted through the air, first the individual warm-ups, a horn here, a viola there, then the corporate tuning session, and finally, the blending of a hundred or so individual instruments’ voices fused into one beautiful conglomeration of sound and purpose.  We were content and sat in rapt attention, unmindful of the cacophony of crowd noise around us and the non-musical folks who moved to and fro through the crowd, themselves unaware of the beauty which flowed from the stage.  It was an apt ending to a great relaxing weekend.

What?  Did I leave something out?  Oh, yes!  The goose-bumps.  Two things during the evening inspired those little raised spots on my neck and my arms.  The vocalist (and audience) was responsible for them at a couple of junctures; once when she sang a beautiful rendition of that old hymn “How Great Thou Art” (you should have heard that huge crowd singing along) and later when she invited us to join her on “God Bless America”.  Music has such a capacity for moving the human spirit and it certainly achieved that for many on that night.

This capacity was partly responsible for the other case of the chicken-flesh on that hot summer evening too, but only partly.  The orchestra was playing an upbeat, rhythmic piece, one which just invited the body to move.  We patted our feet, perhaps even tapped on our legs with our hands a little, but public decorum demanded that we go no further and we acquiesced.  Not so with one fellow a few feet away from us.  My eyes were drawn away from the lighted stage in front of us to glance at the man.  The glance was enough to notice that he was an adult, but that he was mentally handicapped.  I hope that term is acceptable.  The landscape keeps changing so I’m not sure if “gifted” is more correct, or possibly “special needs”, but I use the term simply as descriptive, not as a pejorative.  This young man, probably 25 or 30 years of age, clearly was moved by the music and he was not to be denied.  Joyously, he was on his feet and dancing, waving his American flag, wonderfully unaware of the rules of decorum and concert etiquette.  Those of us around watched him, and most smiled, but a few laughed.

Love makes you do strange things, things you wouldn’t normally do.  As I worried about those unkind people laughing, I noticed that another, older, man got up from his chair and began dancing along with the young fellow.  Within moments, the young man’s mother and his sister were also up with his father and were dancing, every bit as energetically as he, spinning around him, taking his hand and urging him on in his joyous abandon.  There was no embarrassment, no reticence in their celebration of their son and brother, no concern for reputation, simply a declaration of their unwavering love.  The goose bumps were back, along with a little stray moisture in the corner of my eyes.  I’m not sure, but I think I saw others wipe away a tear or two.  Maybe it was just perspiration.

We have been conditioned to think of love as an emotion, a physical reaction to the wiles of the opposite sex.  Our whole lives are tied up in the thought of fulfilling our desires and needs with love.  When the reality doesn’t fit our expectation, we move on to the next relationship and start our impossible quest all over again.  I would submit to you that love has nothing whatsoever to do with selfish desire and perceived need, and everything to do with living for someone else.  In the unselfish actions of that young man’s family last Sunday night, I saw love.  And it appeared to me that they enjoyed the dancing every bit as much as he did.  What a great event!  It wasn’t the best music I have ever heard, but there were some amazing moments, both on and off the stage. 

I’m not sure if the tank is full, but there’s certainly enough fuel now to keep going for a few more miles.  We don’t always find the filling station where we expect it to be…and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Love always protects, always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres.”
(I Corinthians 13:7)

“We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.”
(Mother Theresa)

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

We were having a pity party.  My friend, the bicycle technician, and I were talking shop.  I am excited that he has a new job doing what he has always loved to do.  He’s good at it, too!  After my cycling accident last year, he took my damaged steed and made it good as new with almost no effort.  I only wish he could have done the same for my head, but that’s a different story, isn’t it?  He loves to take in an ailing bike and return the same machine to his customers in top condition.  If you’ve ever worked with your hands at a job in which you take pride, you’ll understand.  While there is something to be said for the remuneration in cold, hard cash (or direct deposit, if you prefer), the real benefit to having a skill such as his is in the joy of achievement, the pride in craftsmanship.

photo by hradcanska

The bicycle man asked me if I had ever worked on a project, knowing that I was doing everything exactly right, only to have the result not fit my expectations.  “I sometimes wonder if I’m even supposed to be doing this at all!” he exclaimed, exasperated over an uncooperative bike he had worked on this weekend.  I could empathize, having just dealt with a similar situation recently.  The customer brought in a very expensive electric guitar which was hard to play.  The vintage Les Paul was a thing of beauty.  I have said many times that I love working on the nice instruments, because they seem to “want” to be repaired, slipping easily into adjustment, almost with a sigh of relief.  The opposite effect is often seen with cheap instruments; those poorly built examples of inferior design and construction preferring instead, to fight you every step of the way.  The guitar lying on my repair cradle on this day was in the former group, almost always a joy to work with.  But, it was not to be with this stubborn beast.

No matter which way I determined to go, there was nothing to be done to make the necessary adjustments.  The treble side of the neck had a back bow, which caused the strings to rattle on frets if they were lowered to a comfortable playing position; the bass side, actually had a bow (we call it “relief”) in the opposite direction, causing the strings to be much higher than normal.  I was baffled, since the normal adjustment of a truss rod in the neck which would fix one problem was sure to make the other worse.  Whichever way I turned it, either the back bow would be worse, or the relief would be more pronounced.  It was a no-win situation.

I can count, on one hand, the number of times I have had to call a customer and tell him or her that I could not repair an instrument which I have agreed to tackle for them.  This was one I would have to add to that count.  He arrived to pick up his guitar last week and we talked about the problem and any potential for abatement.  As we talked, I learned what had happened to the poor instrument.  It was not the fault of the guitar that it had such a problem; it had simply fallen prey to a modern practice for which it was never designed.  Many modern guitarists are experimenting with what is known as “alternate tunings”, dropping the pitch of the lower strings to achieve new tone qualities and chord structures.  The common practice is to use bigger strings for such changes, but this guitar’s owner had decided to mix sets of extra light treble strings and extra heavy bass strings to achieve the tone he was seeking.  The result of the skewed scale was the uneven twist we were seeing.  I felt like a chiropractor for a moment as I told him, “It took some time to get into this situation, so it will take a while to repair it.”  He took the guitar home to work for awhile with the opposite string arrangement, heavy on the treble, light on the bass, and see how it works.  I am hopeful that the problem will take care of itself over time.

I know that your eyes are glazed over right about now with the technical explanation, but I wanted you to understand that sometimes, the issue is not a matter of a simple adjustment.  Frequently, the solution to the problem is to make amends, so to speak.  Basic physics tells us, “For every action, there is an equal, and opposite, reaction.”  If we do things which were never intended to be done, there will be a price to be paid.  My Mama was fond of quoting the verse that says, “Be sure your sins will find you out,” usually right after one of my brothers, or even my sister had tattled on me.  She wasn’t wrong in the application to human beings, just as I am confident that guitars and bicycles are much the same.  We cannot abuse anything over time without it showing in very real ways.

For us, the habits of a lifetime shape who we are.  I have reached the age at which I am reexamining some of those habits.  I don’t always like what I see.  Oh, some habits are good, leading to growth and maturity.  The ones I don’t like so much are the destructive ones, perhaps even the sinful ones.  Those have left their mark, and not only on me.  People around me have been influenced, lives have been altered.  Like the Les Paul guitar, the remedy won’t come overnight, and sadly, perhaps not at all.  I will endeavor to make the changes in my lifestyle, but the effects will likely still be felt for years to come.

It would seem that, once more, we have moved from speaking only of inanimate objects, to application regarding the human condition.  It is often thus, that a thought concerning the mundane will turn into a revelation of the significant. The question is, what will we do with the revelation?  The apostle James speaks of a person who looks in a mirror and goes away, forgetting what his image looked like.  What a waste!

Are you feeling the effects of the years of improper usage?  There is time yet to make amends, time to develop new habits.  I’ve said it before (and will again, no doubt)…Where there’s life, there’s hope!

I’m going to try hard to remember what I’ve seen in the mirror.  How about you?

” For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.   For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.”
(James 1:23,24~ESV)

“We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
(Aristotle~Ancient Greek Philosopher~384 BC-322 BC)

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

“They are engaged…”  I’m never sure, when I hear those words, if I need to wait to hear more.  You see, the word “engage” is far ranging, meaning anything from promising to marry someone, all the way to hiring a lawyer to dissolve the marriage.  We use the word for so many things.  It has impact in the world of mechanics as we speak of engaging the clutch, as well as any other pairing of gears together.  If we make an appointment, we have an upcoming engagement.  When the speaker at an event is especially gifted in holding the attention of his audience, he is an engaging speaker.  The list goes on and on.

I remember several years ago, a young man came to me and asked if he and I could meet at a local restaurant for a meal.  We made the engagement and met there on the appointed day and time.  As we ordered and waited for our food, we engaged in small talk, having no particular subject in mind to discuss at that time.  He proved to be an engaging communicator, regaling me with a description of his responsibilities as the mascot at the university basketball games.  He had been engaged to do that the year prior, and enjoyed his time in the costume, but realized that with his coming graduation, he would need to be engaged in finding a full-time job soon.  As the meal wound down, I could tell that he was a little nervous, but I waited for him to speak.  When he did get to the subject he wanted to discuss, it was almost as if he were afraid that he was about to engage an enemy.  I know that it can be a frightening thing to broach a subject with someone about whose response you are unsure.  As you may have guessed, he wanted to engage with me (at our lunch engagement) about an engagement of a completely different sort.  He wanted to marry my daughter!

I relate the event to you, primarily to illustrate the many meanings of the word “engage”.  It is quite a versatile word, and plays a very active role in our language.  You may have even noticed the most interesting thing about the word already.  There is something which is required for the word to work at all, from its use in meeting the enemy in combat, to hiring someone to do a job, all the way to promising to marry the love of your life.  The requirement for the word “engage” to function is that there be more than one person or thing which is involved.  A gear will never engage if there is no other gear with which it can mesh.  No pinion for the rack, or no flywheel for the clutch?  There is no engagement and no propulsion!  I cannot hire anyone  at all if there is no one who wishes to perform the task I have in mind.  No one who wants to sweep my floors?  I have engaged no one and the house remains dirty!  Even if I were an unrivaled silver-tongued elocutionist (which I am not), if there is no audience to stand before, I am not engaging in the slightest. 

I have to admit that I really like the word!  This one word reminds me that I need people, but also that I am needed.  As peanut butter needs jelly (okay, so some of you actually eat it alone, by the spoonful), and even as the Roadrunner needs Wile E. Coyote, there is no engagement without at least two people who are willing to participate.  The nice thing about some engagements is that they last for a lifetime.  The Lovely Lady and I began our engagement six months before a wedding almost thirty-four years ago and are still entangled today.  In contrast, the nice thing about some other engagements is that they are very short lived.  My interaction, many years ago, with a little dog that took a bite out of my leg springs to mind.  It was a never to be repeated engagement!

Well, I’ve engaged in this foolishness for long enough tonight.  I’m so glad that you also engaged in the process with me and have made it this far.   We’ll have to do this again soon.  How about next Monday?

We’ll call it an engagement then!

“Get involved.  You don’t want to look back on your life and realize that you successfully managed to stay out of it.”
(Robert Brault~American writer and columnist)

“…not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…” 
(Hebrews 10:25~ISV)

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

The price for the old trumpet in the pawnshop was three hundred dollars.  This old coot has been around the block a time or two and, realizing that the shop had probably only paid their customer something less than half of that, wasn’t going to pay anything close to the marked price.  Or, so I thought.

A while before, the phone had rung in the music store and a customer gave me a tip.  “Paul, there’s a pretty interesting horn in the hock shop.  You might want to look at it.”  Acquiring a description and even the model number for the horn, I determined that if the price was right, I would indeed like to have the vintage instrument.  When I finally arrived at the shop, I wandered around and jawed with the clerk for a few moments.  I don’t ever try to deceive people, but it seems that we usually are able to discuss sensitive matters, such as the cost of items, a little more productively if we have developed something of a connection beforehand.  Alas, that was not to be, this time.

I finally picked up the trumpet and examined it, finding it to be much as my informant had described it.  The bell section was a bright silver color, whereas the rest of the instrument was lacquered brass.  The bell had a few scratches in the silver, allowing a little brass color to show through, but that didn’t deter me in my ambition to own the old thing.  “I’ll give you two hundred dollars for this one,” I offered casually.  “Oh, no! I couldn’t sell it for that!” replied the clerk.  “My boss says he has to get the marked price on it.  The bell is solid silver, you know.”  He was sure that he had me.  The value of the silver alone would be greater than the asking price.  Surely, he was going to make this sale!  Calmly, I showed the young man the scratches on the bell of the horn, explaining, “If it were solid silver, this would be silver showing under here.  If brass is showing, it can only be plated, not solid, silver.”  Again, I suggested that my offer was a fair one, but the man would not be swayed.  “No, it’s solid silver.  I can’t drop the price.”  I shook my head and left the store.

I was reminded of the circumstance as I watched a television program about the pawn business this evening.  A gentleman had brought in a gold coin to sell, expecting at least to receive the going price for scrap gold.  In this case, the pawn broker was the one in the know, realizing that the coin was a fake.  The beautiful, “solid” gold coin was cleverly clad in a micro-thin layer of gold, but was practically worthless.  In appearance, it was very much like the genuine 22-karat gold coin you see pictured on this page, but the gold is actually only about a micron thick (a micron is one-millionth of a meter).  It was indeed a beautiful coin and the pawn broker mentioned that the genuine coin might be worth tens of thousands of dollars before breaking the news to the man that his coin was only worth a couple of dollars.  It was a copy, intended only to look good enough to convince people with more money than sense that they needed to own this beautiful item.  Unfortunately, its beauty is only in its appearance and nothing more.

I can’t begin to count the times that someone has informed me in the music store that the flute they own is solid silver.  I just point to the tenon, the part of the head of the flute which slides into the body.  Asking what they see, they will note that the metal is a different color where the instrument has been worn by use, being put together and pulled apart, over the years.  If the horn were solid silver, all that you would find under the surface of the polished silver is more silver, right down through the metal.  Silver after silver after…well, you get the picture.  You can’t scratch through it, can’t polish through it, can’t wear through it.  

I wonder if it is clear to the reader yet that I’m not really talking about coins and musical instruments here.  In my lifetime, I have been disappointed again and again to find that people I admire and believed to be genuine are only clad in beautiful material, but are not actually made of that material clear to the heart.  The saying “beauty is only skin deep” seems to apply here, but I want to make something clear.  What seems to be beautiful at first glance, and later turns out to be a facade, a deceit, turns ugly very quickly.  The coin in the pawn broker’s hand lost all of its appeal the instant he exposed it for the fake that it was.  The appearance had changed not one whit, but the realization that under the surface was an alloy of brass and copper changed my perception completely.  The same holds true of the people I have trusted, only to find that they were just fooling me.  But, come to think of it, I’m not really even thinking about other people tonight.

I know who I am.  No, not the surface me–the real me; all the way down to the core.  If you scratch my surface, you will get a real surprise.  You see, I have spent a lifetime constructing the outer appearance, the shiny outer material which people see everyday.  It might even fool the occasional casual onlooker.  But, the day is coming when that facade will be breached and all will understand that things have not always been as they seem.  The prospect doesn’t make me happy.

There is encouragement, though.  Our old friend, the Apostle (my namesake), reminds us that we are in the construction process right now.  Materials are being chosen, and the structure is going up.  It appears that the work continues until the day we pass from this temporal existence into the eternal one.  We choose the building material.  If we use shoddy material and accept second-rate workmanship, we’ll probably be in the majority, but that is of little comfort.  Good work takes time (and effort) and only then with the proper materials!

Well, I should think that you’ve had enough lecturing from me for one session.  While I’ve had a finger pointed squarely at myself, it is clear that the invitation to make sure of the quality of the building material is directed at every one of us.  I hope you’ll work at it along with me.

In the mean time, don’t take any wooden nickels–or gold-clad five-dollar coins, for that matter.

 “Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.”
(I Corinthians 3:12,13~NASB)

“(Keep me searching
 for a heart of gold.)
You keep me searching
And I’m growing old.
(Keep me searching
for a heart of gold.)
I’ve been a miner
for a heart of gold.”