The T.K.O. Bag

In the corner of the fitness center’s workout room hangs a huge tube-shaped punching bag as large as a human body.  A logo on the side, “T.K.O. - Technical Knockout,” advertises its brand name. Perhaps a hefty punch from Muhammad Ali or Joe Frazier might move this thing, but my knuckles sting just thinking about it.

Each time I circled the track this morning, that punching bag greeted me on the outside of the curve.  On the inside of this bend, sweaty people grimaced while working their rowing machines, pushing and pulling against weights instead of water.  As I repeatedly passed through the neck, I felt quite small in the company of manufactured exercise on my left, and that brutish bag standing watch like a sentinel on my right. The machines questioned our culture’s lifestyle (the need to spend money to gain the benefit of moving our bodies because we’re sedentary otherwise), while the bag begged a question: what similar opponent occupies a corner of my life, and am I breaking fingers on it while trying to make a point?  What persuasions of my own human nature, what illness of character, taunt and overwhelm me like that big bag, refusing to budge?

In boxing, a technical knockout (T.K.O.) is called with a referee, physician, fighter, or fighter’s coach decides a fighter can’t safely continue the match.  And so a punching bag with this name seems to have already won, to have already proclaimed the victory by simply existing.  However, what happens when a competitor prepares with a rigorous training program and the right coach?

This question only spins more in its wake.

Has my punching bag already won the match by virtue of its imposing size?  Am I fighting unnecessary battles with it for the sake of appearance?  What do I value most – inherent strength, or exemption from the need for it because I trust a Greater Source?  Do I live by what I believe, namely that dignity and value come from being loved by God rather than by proving myself?  How do I go about co-laboring with the Lord in confronting my figurative counterpart to the T.K.O. bag?  Do I realize is His mercy is enough?

Connecting the Dots

An image is forming in my mind.    

I envision each day of life representing a numbered black dot in a child’s dot-to-dot book, a very thick one with continuous fold-out pages.  As the dots are connected, a journey emerges and a life story takes shape, dot by dot by dot, and page by page by page.  

It is evening now.  Dinner dishes are washed and returned to their places in the cupboard.  The TV’s muffled voice occasionally rumbles, hushed behind a closed door.  A spice-scented candle glows beside me.  I slouch in a chair at the table, hands lazily flopped on the keyboard, feet resting on two other chair seats beneath the tabletop.

My own breathing space.  Downtime. Finally.

I’m not sure what to think of today.  It seemed disconnected from yesterday and most recent days, a dot standing off to one side in the margin, away from the others. I felt “off” all day.  And yet surely there was purpose in it.

At last, in these evening hours, it is time to complete the line, to close the final distance between dots.  There.  In the blink of an eye it is finished! In this moment of closure, I suspect I can discern the picture that is currently emerging.  But it’s only an educated guess.  I really shouldn’t say.

The candle’s white flame flickers, animating the scene.  I remove my plunger-tipped hearing aids with relish – relief! Portable computer speakers amplify online piano music, and I turn up the volume to suit me (on this side of the closed door).  I train earlier thoughts - ones that tried to derail and dump me into ravines of fear of loss - to a different tune, a song of rest and hope and faith.  I breathe. 

All of these dots, today's included, are well-placed - not random or accidental.

The direction and distance to tomorrow’s dot is still uncertain – but tomorrow is another day. Perhaps the placement of that dot will confirm today’s suspicions about what is emerging, or perhaps it will lead to another unique conclusion.  I don’t know.  But I do know the dots will continue to connect on the fold-out pages until the end of the book.  Then the tale will be complete, and each dot will fit perfectly in the story that is my life.  

Paul's Letter

  

Stoplights send a message: stop, go, stop, go.  Elevator lights do the same thing.  Alarm clocks tell us when to go to bed and when to stop sleeping. We live stop-and-go lives.

The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Christians at Thessolonica, suggests something else. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances.” (I Thess. 5:16-18 NIV)  Another version says, “pray without ceasing.” His instruction encourages sustained joy, prayer, and gratitude.  No stopping of these things, just constant rejoicing, praying, thanksgiving.

This is radical.

Practically speaking, we are busy people.  I used to think this passage presented a conflict of interests, but over time I’ve changed my mind. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s time to revisit the idea that life itself is prayer, although in an active rather than passive sense. Also that disciplines of joy, prayer, and gratitude support one another.

We often define a human being as a body, a soul, and a spirit – three separate entities. Perhaps an individual’s personhood is more integrated than we think, and these elements overlap almost perfectly.  Perhaps we really can pray with our whole lives – our actions, attitudes, and thoughts as well what we intentionally verbalize to God in worship and prayer.  Holistic prayer. 

Perhaps preparing special time-intensive foods for dinner is a form of prayer if the process is bathed in gratitude to God for the doctor who suggested it, the man who will eat it, and the healing it can produce in his miraculous body.  Perhaps bearing pain or inconvenience, or fostering hope in a despairing friend, are forms of prayer if we joyfully recognize God in the situation, depend on Him for strength, and submit to His purposes.

If living like this is praying, then prayer need not be stop-and-go - it can become a lifestyle, as Paul recorded so long ago, inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Blogging

The keyboard.  It opens doors to other lands, faraway tropics where sand oozes between toes, where seagulls cry. Here I become more real than the me who does the typing. 

You see, the letters on the keys are like friends who invite me out of myself.  They want me to come away, to slip past the kitchen sink and the pile of laundry, and go beyond the appointments screaming from the calendar and the snow accumulating in the driveway. To some other place, some cloistered spot. 

And I find it.  At the keyboard.

It’s like a vacation, every time.  I never know for sure what will show up, what words will exhale through my fingers across the screen to tell me something I don’t even know I’m thinking.  Because I’m not.  Thinking.  At all.  Until whatever-it-is jumps out of its hiding place, wherever that is.  Then I get it down. 

The more I write, the more tangled cobwebs clear out.  Its like airlifting overweight cows locked belly-deep in mud.  I am rescued.  I am free.

Sometimes the end result is not much from a literary point of view - “transcendental meanderings,” as one person said.  But other times it’s a worthy scripting of soul.  Perhaps even a flicker of light in another person’s darkness.

And so, I keep blogging.

Kooky Stuff

Sometimes funny things just happen in short comic strip vignettes that pop up without warning. 

* * *

Stringy Teeth

I gnaw on the inner side of a rind of a fresh pineapple after cutting off most of the flesh, and strings of the fruit gets stuck between several upper teeth.  They feel like giant obstructions, although actually are too skinny for my fingernail to dislodge.  I smile and wear them proudly, cascading yellow strings dangling like a mossy, grungy advertisement for dental floss. Lovely.

* * *

Silent Alarm

My hearing aid charger blasts an annoying buzzer as a warning that it is malfunctioning, evidently like a high-pitched, pulsing Gestapo siren.  I can’t hear these particular tones and so am blithely clueless while they drive everyone else crazy. 

“Your hearing thing is buzzing!” my husband announces.

“What?”

“Your charger – it’s going off!”

“WHAT?”

Evidently the engineer who designed this piece of equipment didn’t think about the fact that they typical hearing disabled person would be unable to hear the high pitch he chose as an alert. (Duh)

* * *

Typo

A friend emails and asks about baking a certain muffin containing almond flower as an ingredient.  For a split second I picture delicate blooms on an almond tree, sort of like cherry blossoms (I’ve seen pictures of almond groves), only dried, ground into powder, and in a shaker like what is used for spices.  Then I come to my senses and realize no, that’s ridiculous.  She means flour, not flower.

* * *

That Look

We’re driving down the road several days ago, and my husband says, “So, you haven’t asked how I’m feeling today.”

“So, how are you feeling today?” I ask, obliging him.

He doesn’t say a word.  Sober-faced, he pulls a rubber finger puppet from the front pocket of his sweatshirt and sticks it in my face.  “Like this!”

Awash in my own laughter, I can’t talk, but snap a documentary photo with my iPhone.

Finally I croak, “Is that all?  Is there more? What else have you noticed?”

“Ok, maybe like this, too.”  Click.

Glory

The word glory shows up like clockwork at Christmas-time in holiday refrains that slip off our musical tongues: “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” “Glory in Excelsis Deo,”  “Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King.” We trill these carols with well-practiced voices, echoing harmonious, treasured traditions from year to year.  They also sometimes become rote, and as such can easily be sung without thought.  

Glory is a word more-or-less from the past, but one that fills carols with holiday sparkle.  Otherwise, we don’t use glory very often in common speech these days. Some might agree that it seems antiquated and outdated.  Perhaps we’ve even forgotten its true meaning.  We’re contemporary, after all, with slang words and texting abbreviations that reside in some linguistic aperture apart from words like glory.

And yet the word calls to me.  It entices me to come closer, to let it sink in and teach me to worship God.

When I have a solitary day by myself, like today, with nothing on the schedule and no interruptions, I find great solace in sitting at the piano and plinking out the melody to refrains that accompany the Akathist of Thanksgiving (credited sometimes to Archpriest Gregory Petroff but evidently written by Metropolitan Tryphon - Boris Petrovich Turkestanov, 1861-1934).  I speak the stanzas aloud and sing the refrains solo, without human audience, to the God of Glory!!  Sometimes surprising surges of emotion choke me – squeeze out common preoccupations to make more room for Him. I’ve found this simple exercise sets aside the ordinary and mundane, and transports me to a holier place.

The entire work is powerful in its entirety.  Although lengthy, I am including the "glory" portions here.  I invite you to read and pray them, knowing they could open closet doors that have been long closed - doors that reinstate glory in its rightful place as an attribute of God, doors that lead to a mysterious but broadening path to His Presence.

Glory to You, Who called me to life, 


Glory to You, Who have shown me the beauty of the universe, 


Glory to You, Who have opened before me the sky and the earth as an eternal book of eternal wisdom, 


Glory to the eternity of You, in the midst of the world of time,


Glory to You, for Your hidden and evident goodness,  


Glory to You, for every sigh of my sadness,   


Glory to You, for every step of my life, for every moment of joy,


Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, for the festival of life,

Glory to You, for the fragrant lilies of the valley and the roses,

Glory to You, for the delectable variety of berries and fruits,

Glory to You, for the morning dew, shining like diamonds,

Glory to You, for the smile of awakening enlightenment,

Glory to You, for all that is heavenly, foreshadowing eternal life,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, Who brought out of the earth’s darkness diversity of color, taste, and fragrance,

Glory to You, for the warmth and caress of all nature,

Glory to You, for surrounding us with thousands of Your creatures,

Glory to You, for the depth of Your wisdom reflected in the whole world,

Glory to You, I kiss reverently the footprint of Your invisible tread,

Glory to You, Who kindled before us the bright light of eternal life,

Glory to You, for the hope of immortal, ideal, incorruptible beauty,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, in the stillness of the evening,

Glory to You, Who have bestowed great peace to the world,

Glory to You, for the last rays of sunlight,

Glory to You, for rest and the gift of sleep,

Glory to You, for Your presence in darkness, when the world is so remote,

Glory to You, for prayer from the depth of a heart touched by You,

Glory to You, for the promise of awakening to the joy of the eternal, unending day,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, for Your constant care of me,

Glory to You, for providential encounters with people,

Glory to You, for the love of relatives, the devotion of friends,

Glory to You, for the gentleness of animals who serve me,

Glory to You, for the luminous moments of my life,

Glory to You, for the bright joys of my heart,

Glory to You, for the happiness of living, of moving and contemplating,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, beyond the limit of the highest human dream!

Glory to You, for our tireless thirst for You,

Glory to You, Who have inspired in us dissatisfaction with earthly things,

Glory to You, Who have enveloped us in the delicate rays of Your light,

Glory to You, Who have broken the power of the spirits of darkness, and Who have doomed the annihilation every kind of evil,

Glory to You, for Your revelations, and for the happiness of feeling Your presence and living with You,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, Who have manifested the unfathomable force of the laws of the universe,

Glory to You, all of nature is full of the laws of Your being,

Glory to You, for all that has been revealed to us through Your goodness,

Glory to You, for all You have kept hidden in Your wisdom,

Glory to You, for the genius of the human mind,

Glory to You, for the life-giving strength of work,

Glory to You, for the fiery tongues of inspiration,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, Who grant my wishes when they are good,

Glory to You, Who watch over me day and night,

Glory to You, curing hardships and losses with the healing course of time,

Glory to You, for Whom there is no such thing as a hopeless loss; You give eternal life to all,

Glory to You, Who have made immortal all that is good and lofty, Who have promised our desired reunion with those who have died,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, Who have transfigured our life with the good things that we do,

Glory to You, Who have imprinted an unutterable sweetness on every precept of Yours,

Glory to You, Who clearly abide where there is kindness and generosity of heart,

Glory to You, Who send failures and sorrows to us so that we might be sensitive to the sufferings of others,

Glory to You, Who have placed a great reward on the value of goodness in itself,

Glory to You, Who accept our moments of soaring,

Glory to You, Who have raised love higher than anything on earth or in heaven,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, for providential coincidences,

Glory to You, for the gift of premonitions,

Glory to You, for the guidance of a secret inner voice,

Glory to You, for revelations in dreams and when awake,

Glory to You, Who destroy our useless plans,

Glory to You, Who sober us from the heat of passions with suffering,

Glory to You, Who humble pride of heart o save us,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, for the unfathomable, life-giving power of grace,

Glory to You, Who have raised up Your Church as a refuge of peace for an exhausted world,

Glory to You, Who breathe new life into us with the life-giving water of Baptism,

Glory to You, inexhaustible abyss of forgiveness,

Glory to You, for the cup of life, for the bread of eternal joy,

Glory to You, Who led us to heaven,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Glory to You, Who have shown us light,

Glory to You, Who have loved us with love immeasurable, deep, Divine,

Glory to You, all Holy Son, the Way, the Truth, and the Life,

Glory to You, all Holy Spirit and life-giving sun of the future age,

Glory to You for everything, O Divine Trinity, all bountiful,

Glory to You, O God, unto ages of ages.

Snow Woe

This is a report from this winter’s self-appointed Chief of Snow Removal: me.

We’re currently running out of room to deposit shoveled snow.  The ski boat is buried on every side up to her gunnels, and craggy massifs tower on either side of the sidewalk.  Our silver postal service box sits atop Peak Mailbox, its post immersed in the bowels of a snow mountain.  

And yet I continue to clear snow, to lift shovelfuls overhead like an awkward human backhoe and dump their contents behind existing peaks.  Occasionally I lose my balance with the shovel flailing overhead - teeter and fall, ker-plop, like a flattened Wile E. Coyote clinging to a failed Acme product.  Sometimes I sink to my gunnels in a drift, torso-deep, and have to claw my way out, grunting all the way. Needless to say, grace and poise are not components of snow removal under these conditions. 

A Popular Mechanics article entitled, “Sixteen Cardinal Rules for Snow Shoveling,” brilliantly suggests intentionally placing snow: “Before you even take your first scoop, decide where you're going to dump the snow. Drop the first shovelful farther away from where you are standing, then dump remaining snow closer and closer to where you are. That way, the last scoops that you shovel are moved the shortest distance.”

The author has not been in my shoes - or rather, boots.  He evidently anticipates clearing a certain area once, or at least a limited number of times. His suggestion is practical, logical, and focused.  However, when snow removal becomes an ongoing repeat performance, and snowfall for the season equals over 80 inches, well, it doesn’t work.

You.  Run. Out.

Of.  Room.