Author: crdahlberg

Four Doors

I count four doors.

Door Number One was not my choice. Mom and Dad opened that one, my birth launching me into this world. Door Number One was all shock and some dismay.

Door Number Two was all about me. It was about my independence from those Door Number One parents. I chose my friends, dreamed impossible futures, fell in love, and found a career—actually, several of them. Later, I discovered it was also about others—my kids, my aging parents, and my friends. Lots of responsibilities and lots of decisions.

Door Number Four is the last door—the end of the trail and the beginning of the greater, Eternal Trail. A life well-lived finds its peace in God, beyond Door Number Four.

Wait a minute. Back up. I skipped Door Number Three. Door Number Three is the journey connecting Door Number Two with Door Number Four. It’s the door of today. It’s the door of now. It’s the door that lets in the neighbors. It’s the door that stoops to serve, and stands to acknowledge. It’s the door of endless, life-injecting possibilities.

At each morning’s dawn, Door Number Three awaits my choices, allowing each day to become an expectation-filled, God-pleasing pursuit.

The Yellow Zone

Recently, I’ve noticed that my Yellow Zone has been shrinking. Not overnight, but there’s been a long, slow withdrawal from the Yellow Zone. The Yellow Zone lies between the Green Zone and the Red Zone, as a sort of virtual buffer.

To help explain, let me introduce the Green Zone. It’s all the stuff that is enjoyable to me: the kinds of activities that I like, the people whom I find agreeable with my perspective, the brands I like, and the values I endorse. I’m comfortable here, in the Green Zone.

At the opposite end is the Red Zone. It holds everything that I know is wrong and that I find despicable: murder, thievery, dirty streets, phone solicitations, many politicians, and everything that is evil and vile.

The Yellow Zone is reserved for everything else. Things that are perfectly acceptable. Things that don’t deserve judgment. Perceptions that aren’t important. Words spoken in ignorance. Unintended actions. The Yellow Zone is a place of comfort.

The recent events are troubling, but true. Recently, my Yellow Zone has been shrinking, even as my Red Zone is noticeably bloating. More and more stuff is migrating towards the Red Zone because more and more things are aggravating me. “Why did he say it that way?” “Doesn’t she know better?” “They always act that way!”

I wasn’t always this way: over-correcting, under-appreciating, judging, strangling the tiniest, most unimportant and innocent details. Doggone it, I have the right to be Right, and to be sure that They know it!

But life in the ever-smaller, constricted Yellow Zone is now becoming miserable. The life of quick reactions, self-righteousness and hyper-criticism is pushing everything into the Red Zone. With so much leaving, It’s getting lonely in the Yellow Zone.

But now I’ve had enough of the Red Zone! Now I’m going back to the Yellow Zone. I’m going to renovate it. I’m going to make it more liveable, less conflicting, less judgmental. I’m going to put leaden weights all around the perimeter so the edges don’t roll in.

Then I’m going to set up some easy chairs smack dab in the middle of the Yellow Zone. I’ll send out invitations.

The Yellow Zone should now be big enough for us all.

Bending the Light

Neon signs are made of tubes which can be bent to create graphic images or letters. When electricity runs through them, their light can create bold statements.

They may direct us to explore a used auto dealership’s well-worn wheels where we could hope to stumble across a treasure. Or, imagine the red outline of a cross, beneath it, in gaudy, bold fluorescent turquoise, “Jesus Saves”. Down the alley, we may spy a flashing pink arrow directing toward a dim stairwell; a suggestive woman’s profile beckons downward.

When we were young, our parents tried their best to bend and shape our lives. They hoped to turn our lives, like neon light tubes, into things of beauty. Like all parents with young children, they were amateurs in this light-bending child-rearing project. At some point, they were done. It was up to us to add and shape more beauty into our lives.

Some people are good at doing this. In my old yearbooks, I can show you pictures of those who have done really well for themselves. Their lives are artisan work, really–a neon light panoply of synchronized flashing images in a tasteful palette of colors.

In a small classroom in a dingy part of town, I teach academic skills to folks who have felony records. They haven’t done so well. Their neon light tubes have become twisted, flashing feebly and erratically. A lot of restorative work is required.

In this world of relative luminescence, most of us are somewhere between these extremes. We may lack the peacock-beautiful neon displays of on-off, on-off, with flashing hues of purple and gold that some lives seem to exhibit. But neither are we in total tube-broken neon disrepair. Between these extremes, we have a few lighting flickers here and there, weak spots in need of repair.

Those flashing neon signs–they are intended to provide compelling and directive messages.

I am reminded of a song we sang as children. It goes like this: “This little NEON light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…”

The Parade Moves On

Radio studios used to house vast libraries of vinyl 33-1/3 RPM records, whose shallow, delicate grooves stored arrangements of voices and instruments in precious acoustic tracks. Archived melody and poetry of ambitious musicians lived in these studios, in records all lined up next to each other in vertical symmetry. These musical neighbors all waited patiently for their moment of release to radio’s air waves. These were the fruits—vinyl or even CD’s—of musical dreamweavers.

Not so much any more. Today, Nashville’s Acme Radio’s entire musical library of digital recordings might fill a portable drive not much larger than a ubiquitous cell phone. Technology seems to push both musical storage and musical performers in a quick-change-is-good lifestyle.

In today’s ephemeral digital world, the names and faces of celebrities struggle to briefly stay relevant. Soon the parade moves on to an ever-newer performer, whose fame may be destined to dissolve even faster.

Well-earned achievements may pass quickly in this flash-to-flame life. Deep within, some of us may long for that which lasts longer than a spectacular but fleeting solar eclipse.

The thing that stands out in contrast in this fleeting world is something that stands firm, maintains excellence, and speaks truth. A voice that cries in the wilderness might just set our hearts aright one more time.

The Clock Has No Hands

The alt-right doesn’t suit me. The alt-left is a figment of someone’s imagination.

For we who want to both change the way things are and the way things are going, there’s another option.

It’s alt-reality.

Alt-reality is an alternative reality in which we feed our neighbors and starve the television set.

Alt-reality chooses to sit at the foot of the table instead of at the head of the table.

Alt-reality judges sparingly and deflects hurtful adjectives.

Alt-reality possesses both patience and conviction.

Alt-reality listens before it speaks.

Alt-reality endures; it never stops. That’s why the alt-reality clock has no hands.

Meditation

Meditation: a written or spoken discourse expressing considered thoughts on a subject.

Some folks say mediation is better described as chewing cud. In a spiritual context, we bring up Scriptures and chew over and over again, making sense of them in our life context.

The prolific songwriter Neil Sedaka writes ferociously hard-to-forget melodies. He is also capable of turning out novelette-length inane lyrics— “where is he going with this hot mess?”

Too many words, too many thoughts, too much brain noise are the enemies of meditation. In the car today, a scripture song smothered me, verses tumbling out too many words for meditation. There was no time to slow down and sort them out. No pause, no refrain, no chance to consolidate noteworthy insights.

In short, not a chance for meditation.

Meditation filters out extraneous noise, letting significance rise to the fore and draining off the rest. It takes slowing way down. It takes parsing a phrase or a word and shelving the rest for the moment.

Without sleep, the brain cannot process life’s quick parade of daily happenings. Without meditation, we cannot understand which of these life events are really significant, and why.

Like an unforgettable refrain in a song, meditation consolidates and plays the life-defining stuff back to us, a sound track that keeps our lives on track.

Pick me! Pick me!

There is a sort of competition to be the one that is noticed. There are so many other folks that are similar but better, more readily chosen, more noticeable than ourselves. But it’s not really a competition. Attaining our own fulfillment means that each of us serves the true purpose for which we were uniquely created, to fill a particular niche. It’s a narrow niche. Among the masses, we are unnoticed. But within our own wheelhouse, we are each invaluable.