LIFE SLICED AND DICED

Tick-Tock Alarm Clock

For most of us folks that work for a living, life has to have structure for survival.  We need to wake up at a certain time each morning, arrive at work at a certain time, go to lunch at a certain time, go home at a certain time and retire at a certain time so that we have an adequate amount of sleep time to be rested enough to repeat these times the following day.  The work day is sliced and diced according to meetings, deadlines, school bells, etc.  I have to believe that our ancestors probably lived as the creatures they hunted for survival with the rising and setting of the sun every day after day, after day, after day.  There was no need for clocks or calendars when every day simply revolved around survival for that day, after day, after day.

We still struggle for survival, but it’s not on such a short lease in modern culture for most of us.  We generally have free time for weekends, holidays, vacations and even retirement if we make it that far to the finish line.  It sometimes makes one wonder which period of human evolution was the least stressful?  Calendars and Day Planners dictate our day’s activities while the ubiquitous clocks in our lives slice and dice the days into segments of deadlines with stop and go demands on our life hours within the hourglasses of our brief time on the planet.

Peter Pan is a fictional boy who refuses to grow up and travels to Neverland where there are many suns and moons which makes telling time very difficult.  One way to tell time there is to find the iconic crocodile Tick-Tock who accidently swallowed an alarm clock and then wait until it strikes the hour.  Every time Captain Hook hears a clock ticking, he realizes that time is about to devour him!  But there are some who believe time is irrelevant in Neverland and children never grow up there.  Time is actually a human construct, so that we’re never late for anything, but it can also render us slaves to it.

It's admittedly difficult to actually stop the Merry-Go-Round of life and jump off long enough to indulge ourselves with some much-needed downtime to recharge and refuel, but we must for our own sanity and that of those around us.  And we must remain ever vigilant and be aware of the threat of the relentless man-made life structures such as calendars and clocks that slice and dice our lives in the Veg-O-Matic hourglass of life so that we’re never made whole again.

 

LOVE LOST AND CHERISHED

SUNRISE MEMORY, NC

 Many things we love in life are lost along the way, 

but we also acquire others on the journey 

and those we’ve truly cherished remain with us always

—perhaps not in our presence, but in our hearts.

HONORING THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

Honoring the Ultimate Sacrifice, Normandy

Black Friday, Jerusalem

 We’re once again immersed in this season of Lent leading up to Black Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday morning.  I was drawn to the realization of the same raw emotions I experienced regarding the sacrifice of Christ for all mankind on that cruel Roman cross plus the beginning and ending scenes of the movie, Saving Private Ryan, in the midst of thousands of white crosses.  It’s the first time that I’ve made the connection and it happened while I was preparing a study of three of Christ’s parables as told in the gospel of Luke.  The common theme of these parables is “lifting up the lowly”.  These parables involved a Pharisee and tax collector praying, a destitute prodigal son returning, and a rich man and poor man dying.

John 15:12-13 quotes Christ in making the connection that “My command is this: that you love one another as I have loved you.  There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  The movie poignantly opens and closes with an elderly Private James Ryan and his family at the Normandy Military Cemetery.  He is paying his respects to Captain Miller who lost his life saving Ryan’s.  His dying words were “James, earn this, earn it!”  Standing alone at the gravesite, Ryan says “Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge and I’ve tried to live my life the best I could.  I hope that was enough.”  When Ryan’s wife gently approaches, he begged her to “Tell me I’m a good man” and his wife immediately replies “You are.”

Christ’s message for us in the parables is to honor his sacrifice with a life well lived in service to others, especially those huddled masses that cannot help themselves or are shunned by others.  That also was Captain Miller’s final command to a young Private Ryan as he reflected back upon a life well lived, while daily honoring the men who sacrificed their lives for him.

https://youtu.be/IZgoufN99n8

AGING

DON'T LET THE OLD MAN IN

“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.   —Mark Twain

We measure our lives by the number of times we circle the sun, but there are many other metrics and observations that are more defining such as Mark Twain’s quote above.  My young grandson asked me why I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt as I sat next to him in the back seat.  I rarely sit there anymore and I simply forgot to put it on, so I replied “Because I’m an old person."  He paused and considered this and then matter-of-factly said through the unfiltered mind of a child, “You’re right”.  Don’t count on your looks as they won’t last the journey, but your sense of humor will only get better with age.

There’s an old saying that “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.  Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.  You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”  Life is a never-ending adventure.  Clint Eastwood was asked by the singer/songwriter Toby Keith about the secret of his youthful vigor and he simply said “I get up every morning and don’t let the old man in.”  Our trips around the sun should have no bearing on our demeanor, in fact, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are this year?

Our spirits and our souls are eternal.  Our bodies are composed of the stardust of the Big Bang.  We do not walk the Earth, rather we are the Earth.  We see ourselves and most people as they appear in a mirror, but if we could see their soul instead, we would most assuredly see many of them youthfully different!  Inevitably leaving this earthly life need not be a daunting concern—not any more than a river entering the ocean.  We’re not lost in the vastness of the universe as our body returns to stardust, but our soul becomes part of the universe as love transcends death.    

Happiness in life is a transient result of external stimuli, but joy can be nurtured from within and is lasting.  Burning life hours in the pursuit of things of this life is fleeting and ultimately meaningless, but discovering the joy of receiving grace and eternal love is priceless.  And we’ve been given the free will to live life as we see fit.  We will all fall short as mortals, but the best advice is to live life as honorably and trustworthy as possible so that we can look back as we age and smile.