Hope – Snail Trek Blog

Who Does That Sort of Thing?

She had been lying in wait for me. Lurching from her seat half a train car away, an elderly woman flailed her arms to get my attention. This was not typical behavior in my adopted German homeland.

“Junger Mann, junger Mann, ich habe ein Geschenk für dich!” My brain’s translation center kicked into high gear—Young man, young man, I have a present for you. She waved an object above her silver hair. What? This woman had a gift for me, an eleven-year-old kid she doesn’t even know?

Trying to ignore her, I stared out the commuter train window. Then I heard her second summons. As I cautiously peered her way, she waved a brown leather satchel over her head. Pointing first to the satchel, then to me, back and forth in pantomime, her arms beckoned with the precision of a German cuckoo clock.

Working her way through the train car, she finally reached me, eager and wide-eyed, like a fish jerked from the water. In her hands was a brand-new old-school style backpack, hard leather with rounded ends.

Apparently, this was not the first time she had spotted me. As an American student living in Germany, my too-short Levis sprouted white socks and tennies. I carried my schoolbooks the American cool-kid way, the stack of books and notebooks braced on my left hip. Looseleaf papers belched from wounded binders. Respectful German children carried their schoolbooks in tidy backpacks worthy of teachers‘ inspections. Not me, a proud über-cool Amerikaner. It was hard to miss me.

She must have thought, Next time I see him, I’ll give him a new backpack…this impoverished junger Mann needs one!

Embarrassed by the kindness, I sputtered a weak “Vielen Dank,“ (“Thank you”) in rudimentary German. I exited the train one stop early, choosing to walk the rest of the way.

I can only guess how many train excursions she must have taken, each time carrying the backpack with her, hoping to spot me again. Selfless and caring toward someone she didn’t even know.

Perhaps she had been there all along. How long had she been waiting for me?

My brain fumbled. “Who does that sort of thing?”

How do you thank someone for a random act of compassion when she leaves no address, no phone number?

Our instincts for reciprocity urge us to repay acts of kindness. Or we may concoct a “pay it forward” plan.

But I learned three things about the spirit of generosity from my Commuter-Train-Riding Backpack-carrying friend. She caught something better, something higher:

1. Listen for the Whisper of Opportunity. After a mighty wind, an earthquake, and fire, God spoke to the prophet Elijah in a whisper. A micro-Voice, the Spirit, reaches into our souls. Like a pilot light, it is ever ready to ignite. A gentle sound or a fleeting image might grip our attention; we spot the need. Ignore lethargy and embarrassment. Respond; the wild and mysterious chase is on.

2. Wait for the Message. What is that gentle voice telling us to do? Follow its bread crumbs through the forest. How should we meet the need? Like the Nike basketball slogan, “Just do it.” Does the solution appear impractical, untimely, or awkward? Just do it. That courageous Backpack Lady on a mission “just did it.”

3. Resist Recognition. Afterwards—be unobtrusive, silent as slipping an overdue bill into a mail slot. Don’t talk about the secret mission. Just listen. The next whisper may already be on its way.

It has now been many decades since I encountered that lady on the train. Yet whenever I hear the clickity-clack of train tracks, I see a compassionate shotgun-riding, backpack-toting, silver-haired angel waving a book bag over her head.

And still I wonder, “Who does that sort of thing?” But then I face the real question: How can I be more like her?

What We Leave Behind

My curled fingers held one drinking glass and grasped the rim of another. The other hand clenched a used Kleenex tissue and half a dozen Lego bricks. As I left the living room, I placed the drinking glasses in the kitchen sink. Down the hall in my room, I tossed the Legos into their bin and flicked the sticky Kleenex into my bedroom trashcan.

In our house, we exited a room with religious fervor. My mother’s directive was clear: Never leave a room empty-handed. Her decree had sound roots. Hands, she believed, were God’s perfect tool. Their five-fingered design could manage a vast array of objects. As we devoted our hands in unity of purpose, our family could keep the house tidy.

If Mother suspected a protocol violation, her raised voice echoed, “Your hands aren’t empty, are they?” Alerted, I would lunge for a mislaid comic book or snatch an out-of-place plastic model airplane, jam them into my fists and announce, “Oh, no! My hands are full!” Disregarding the ordinance would earn a volley to “tidy up!”—not only the offending room, but the entire house.

Mom, the original efficiency expert, is gone. Her voice now directs angelic hosts in orderly discharge of their heavenly duties. Even today, upon leaving a room, those long-ago adolescent etched-in habits send my empty hands a-twitching—why are my hands empty?

Now, the prevailing winds of age have re-directed me. I’ve grown fond of a newer, contrarian urge. Instead of my take-it-with-me instincts, I now ask myself: “What can I leave behind?” Let me explain.

A squat, thickset man, stooped, chin implanted into his chest, shuffled into the jammed outpatient surgery waiting room. Each movement declared his obvious pain. The other patients in the room monitored him, hoping he would pass them by.

Groaning and perspiring, he paused, rotated like shawarma on a rotisserie, and lowered himself into the chair next to me. The cushion blurted a flatulent protest. Overflowing the chair, his left shoulder leaned into me, his arm draped across mine. Face down, his head rested upon his hands, which rested on his cane. He panted from the exertion of walking. Both his knees bore the heavy scars of replacement surgery. I felt trapped.

Too quickly contemplating how to break the uneasy silence, I blurted, “Hi, what are you here for?” Good grief! You don’t ask that of a man, hobbled with pain, in a medical waiting room! Just shut up!

Head still lowered and resting on his hands, he groaned, “I’m John. I have, um, degenerative disk disease. Terrible pain. Runs the whole length of my back.” He regained his breath and muttered, “Every day, I’m in agony. The pain never lets me go.” He seemed as relieved as I did at the broken silence. “What about you?” he asked, forgiving of my incursion.

Me? His response set me on my heels. I explained I was not a patient, but was here with my wife. We began comparing medical notes. Gradually, we shifted into another far smoother conversational gear. His face, now off his hands and cane, carried a smile. We shared a chuckle together, and then another. We teased. We taunted. We cajoled. Ignoring unease, we pushed back against our differences, away from our discomfort. We made room for one another.

Soon enough, a nurse whisked John down the hallway in a wheelchair. His empty chair’s vinyl seat cushion re-inflated. Mother would have been proud of his departure’s tidiness; nothing left behind.

Or was there, indeed, something he left behind?

After John left, a profound stillness followed. But in the stillness, there was no emptiness. Something different and fresh lingered—the gifts that John left behind. The gift of a welcoming spirit. A gift of grace. Unexpected joy.

And he left behind a question for me to consider. Which is more important—what we take away with us, or what we leave behind for others?

Little Slivers

An army of California freeway motorcyclists, the “lane splitters,” legally ride the no-man’s-land between lanes. When motorists encounter a Harley on the lane-that-is-no-lane, they may suffer violently erupting blood pressure and heartbeats outpacing those of a guinea pig.

A Harley can pump out 120 decibels, enough untamed quaking to redirect the veins in an eyeball. And the heart-stopping noise and sheer shock of an unexpected motorcyclist blasting on slivers of highway, mere inches away, can generate PTSD symptoms.

Tiny slivers can draw disproportionate attention. Take my left big toe. The toenail’s edge, a tiny sliver, grows crooked and inward. Only a sculptor could appreciate the nail’s insidious geometric angle. This minuscule anatomical anomaly, doubtless the vestige of an ancestor’s aberrant DNA, creates piercing pain. The throbbing torment rivals the earsplitting Harley gobbling up its sliver of freeway.

Other kinds of slivers carve consequential geopolitical landscapes. The city of Kaliningrad lies 412 miles westward from the rest of Russia, a vestige of World War II politics. It is an isolated political sliver encircled by other countries. The Suez Canal is another geographical sliver. That tiny navigable sliver eliminates long voyages around the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The canal reduces the journey by 5,500 nautical miles, or 220 fewer days at sea. The Panama Canal, another watery sliver, saves 8,000 nautical miles for ships sailing between the east and west coasts of the United States.

Our appreciation of, or annoyance at, slivers can play into our personal aspirations. We are hard-boiled in a pot of anti-sliver diatribe. To carve out a well-lived life, we are coached to create outsized achievements. Slivers be damned! We can become whatever we may dream, pole-vaulting over monstrous obstacles in our way. We measure our worth by powering our ambitions up the steepest inclines.

There must be a better way forward, a counterpunch to the gold-medal worthy mandates of a bigger, better, faster world. Have we overlooked the unnoticed, shadowed backwaters concealing Little Slivers of a different scale?

The July 19, 2024 issue of The New York Times carries an article about a tribe, the Maduro people, living deep in the vast expanse of the Amazon rain forest. This year, their tribal meetings would be held in a village 13 miles distant, beyond thick forest, logs, and streams. Attending the meeting would be a near-impossibility for the tribe’s oldest member. She had lost track of her age, but it’s somewhere between 106 and 120. Despite having never worn shoes, and refusing to do so, she vowed to make the trek.

We are brought low or grow tall depending on our navigation of the challenges in our path. Only the old woman’s son could create the way forward for her. Hoisting his mother up and onto his back, he fashioned a strip of fabric across his forehead for his mother to hang on to. Barefoot and dangling on his back like a baby opossum, the aged mother held on for the entire 13-mile trek. All the while, her son’s machete slashed and stabbed at the dense undergrowth, carving a Little Sliver, a way forward, a path of hope in the wilderness.

Little Slivers come in many wrappings. They may be a highway for audacious Harley motorcyclists. But when laid out upon the globe, Little Slivers can reshape a map. They can also create outsized consternation and suffering—the stabbing pain of a toenail or the anguish of a broken dream.

And there are the undervalued Little Slivers, the hopes like those within an aged woman. They remain unnoticed and little regarded except by another watchful, caring person. By lifting those precious slivers onto our backs and carrying them within our hearts, we may offer a hopeful way forward. When their sacrifice truly becomes ours—a lasting burden embedded within our own hearts—we may attain a new and hopeful Little Sliver for our own future.

Wandering

With the determination of a Muscle Beach body builder, the pale green lizard performed pushups on tiny arms, intending to draw admiration from an adoring female. Instead, with no comely female Reptilia in sight, it drew only my attention, as it pushed hard up and down against a warmed rock. The superheated West Texas summer attracted few visitors. As we hiked along a nearly indecipherable rocky path, the sun baked both the lizard and ourselves. Still, we bet against the midday scorch. The vast desert would provide the wandering adventure we sought.

Beginning our trek at midday just as the thermometer eclipsed one hundred degrees, we realized we were out of our element. Carrying no water with us, we firmly cemented our novice status. Never mind, it would be a quick hike. Upon returning to our car at its completion, freezing air conditioning would await us. So we tripped onward, energized that we were the lone brave souls wandering through this hostile world. Occasionally, a surprised rattlesnake hastily retreated across our trail. Jackrabbit scat baked along the stones marking the trail’s edge, though we noticed the trail markers growing increasingly rare and random. Once reassuring, the pathway eventually disappeared altogether. We searched for clues. Was this a stone arrangement pointing forward, or the burial marker of previous hikers, wanderings that would prove to be their final wilderness hike? Five miles into our hike, we were lost, so what to do next? Should we soldier onward hoping to discover the markers again, or would we attempt an uncertain recovery and retrace our steps? With no water, no trail, and 105 degrees of scorching heat, we were like wandering Jews—minus the water from the rock, the manna, and Moses or Joshua.

By definition, wanderings stretch boundaries and challenge limits. Good wanderings hold adventures and untold stories, yet they can be scary and hold danger. Songs are written in their honor:

“My father was a wanderer,

And it’s also in my blood,

So I happily wander as long as I can

And I wave with my hat

Valeri, valera,

Valeri, valera ha ha ha ha ha,

Valeri, valera,

And I wave with my hat.”

Frankly, it sings much better in the original German lyrics. Nonetheless, the song accurately describes my own father. When he passed away last year, aged 106, my Artist-Father proved to be a wanderer to the end. Left-brain required tasks were not his thing. Without the aid of a check-writing coach, he would stare uncomprehendingly at his checkbook. But even though aged, by changing his mental channel to his impassioned world of art, he would defy gravity, rise and hover over his wheelchair, balance against the walker that held his paint palette, and stab at his wall-hung oil paintings. Brush in hand, he would improve them yet again! Precarious, yes. Inhibited, no. Dad never learned to stay on the beaten track or, for that matter, off his little apartment’s walls.

Can we recall the last time we wandered off the beaten track? Perhaps to our loss, many of us learned early on to stay ruthlessly on track and to avoid coloring, painting, or wandering outside the lines.

I recently installed a 100-watt solar panel on the roof of our 17-foot camping trailer that inhabits the driveway. Thus equipped, she can charge her battery unaided. It was a sort of “put a ring on it” moment, lending our relationship full empowerment. Now she can hum and buzz with glorious self-generating power, our energized equal as we wander roads, whether paved or dirt. I felt I had breathed new wandering life into our little Pinocchio.

Of course, our tiny trailer offers no equivalency to the wanderings of bold explorers. Instead, she provides us with our-scale wanderings, helping us to dial in randomized mixes of people, places and events. Sometimes, we are led on a leisurely stroll through the woods beneath ancient oaks with deeply scarred bark, moss-covered stones cradling a brook’s clear and crisp waters. At other times, our trailer delivers us into a different kind of wandering—an unpredictable Vitamix concoction of unexplored places and previously unknown faces. They are random wanderings, though afterwards we wonder if they were indeed very random. Long after these events occur, the retelling begins with, “Do you remember when…” and the warm joy of familiarity tickles our brains once again. We embrace these wanderings as being somehow sacred, each retelling resurrecting a precious, sweet nectar.

Our hiking path having disappeared in the vast West Texas desert, we rambled blindly on, sunbaked and lost, our wandering adventure grown not so sweet! By now, with sun blazing and deep concern setting in (yes, we might call it “panic”), I happened to recall one steady feature during our hours-long wandering mishap: for miles behind us, a lone utility line had bisected the cloudless sky. I now recalled observing it even from the now-distant plot where we had parked our car. I surmised that we could now follow that power line, straight as a prickly pear thorn, leading us back to our trail’s beginning and the safety of our car. And so it did. Found again! Joy and relief at being alive!

There is a counterpart to wandering: restoration. Restoration, that essential element that salves and strengthens us upon a return from wandering, can be easily underestimated. Yet restoration is the most critical component for wanderers. Returning from wandering in a desert, whether actual, relational or emotional, demands commemoration. Restoration after wandering through an illness, from captivity, and return from grieving, all deserve uncommon celebration, the sort held for soldiers returning from war.

And for those friends who have helped us both to wander and to return from wandering, we also owe uncommon celebration.

Like the utility line, they help to guide us onward toward wandering, and afterward, homeward, toward restoration.

Investment Accounting

Youth imagines time to run on forever. Typical of our young station in life, there is neither enough time nor money to supply our interests. Investable resources are drawn down to support the thing at hand, with less thought of those many decades ahead.

Perhaps, for awhile, that is as it should be. Youth feeds upon the hope of opportunities at hand to grow the vision and passion of our yet-to-be discovered futures. How many times, as young people, have we re-imagined what our lives would become? Somehow, ageless bodies, good fortune and our emerging skillset would provide whatever that future held.

During my early twenties, it first occurred to me that I was falling behind. The automated success ladder I had envisioned for my life became less automatic, and I slowly veered off course, a small degree at first, which widened with my advancing age. How had I been relegated, at my first job, to cleaning toilets in a restaurant? How did I find myself, shirtless, hot, and profusely sweaty, baling hay in Mississippi? And, ignorant of the profoundly itchy characteristics of okra upon the skin, how was I now ignorantly harvesting it bare-handed and bare-chested?

I continued onward with vague goals, and without the means to achieve them. Little did I recognize that I tottered already on the precipice of an ungoverned financial future.

The earnings of $1.25 per hour at my first job were put toward my first car ownership, a 1962 MGA Mark II Roadster with rusted door panels, which I purchased for $300 when I was 17. I considered this purchase a mighty good investment both toward transportation and developing social opportunities with the fairer sex.

I failed to realize that the $300 required for the purchase of the MGA, along with all my other earnings, did not belong to me. Rather, it was all on loan to me, as were all the other accounts of my life, monetary or otherwise. Success in every enterprise, reputation, health, relationships with family and friends were all ceded to me from God. They were on loan to me. My interest should be to prosper them and generate what good I could of them, before the eventual completion of the terms of the loan.

My thinking started to change. I began asking myself — when time itself is folded up and retired, what value of our lives is there remaining?

The Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, reminds us of the investments loaned by a nobleman to three servants. Upon his return, the nobleman would ask for an accounting of the three loans. One servant took wise risks, investing his loan aggressively, which paid off. Over time, his financial investment soared, as did, we might assume, the other similarly managed affairs of his life. Due to his devotion to excellence, his professional advancements arrived with remarkable speed. Before long, he himself purchased the very company that had initially hired him. He may have become a man of great influence, whether obvious or subtle in nature. He stirred vision and passion in others by his virtuous behavior. Once, upon taking a corner too fast, an old Volkswagen overturned; he ran over to help, rolled the car over with the driver still strapped in the seat, then pulled out the crumpled fenders with his bare hands. He was a gregarious sort. When his neighbors complained about the ruckus from the parties he would throw for his friends, he remedied the issue by inviting them to his parties as well. Upon his ultimate return, the master was pleased with him, very well pleased, and the servant was appropriately rewarded.

The second servant was equally virtuous, a prudent lifelong conservative investor. His were ever an equal mix of stock and bond ETF financial investment products. They were safe, and he needn’t fret over economic downturns. His finances were established to weather adversity, as were his other affairs. A man of lesser passion than the first servant, he carefully governed his relationships. His friendships with others, cookie-cutter versions of himself, were reliable and pleasantly in tune with his own persuasions. He was a faithful and good worker, advancing up the predictable ranks to the admiring “Atta boy!”accolades of his coworkers. Upon passing by a person in need, he might consider how he might meet the need, pause for the briefest moment, then press on. “Ah! A little too late, already passed by—never mind.” To prove his compassion, he would be the first to phone in a 911 emergency—from a safe distance across the street. He noted his tarnished world and its misdirected values, and he exerted his passionless, middling efforts, budging toward doing good when convenient, and performing righteous acts without staining his trousers.

A lone koi fish circled the grimy pond within the courtyard of the third servant. Deflated by life, he awaited funds for its restoration. A browbeaten and fearful man, he expected the worst and accomplished little. He supposed his boss to be an abrupt and unpredictable taskmaster, who himself would take credit for the servant’s work. A boss, he mistakenly perceived, with unreal expectations and no room for lax performance. Office parties were a thing of horror for the servant, who with feigned devotion would heap self-ingratiating praise upon his supervisor. He danced, like a marionette, to earn his boss’s approval. In the end, the character flaws within the third servant produced no growth whatsoever, no improvement of character, performance, relationships, grace, or virtue. The servant succumbed to such self-manufactured fear that he squandered the generous nobleman’s loan, securing it safely within his mattress, its real value slowly but surely depreciating over time; he ended with less than what he had been entrusted with.

At the appointed time, the nobleman, now crowned king, would return and require an accounting of his investments long in the making. But before then, we may make two observations. The first is that a reward clearly awaited those who had invested wisely. And perhaps even more prescient—while the nobleman was yet away, there was still time enough for the servants to mend their ways.

Mind the Gap

The street troubadour resurrected familiar songs of bygone days. He lobbed his songs to anyone who would stop long enough to lend an ear and hopefully send a tip his way. As I listened, his melodies floated across the gap of the long-abandoned trolly tracks to his audience, a solitary street person, his music bridging the gap between them.

The British have a delightful cautionary expression, “Mind the Gap!” It reminds passengers to watch out for the space between commuter train doors and the station platform. Pay attention! Put your brain into it! Not doing do so could alter—or end—your life! So, pay attention to the space around you!

Our musician friend Minded this train track Gap. His music created a bridge across the space, the Gap between him and his vagabond neighbor.

There are many “Gaps to be Minded” that appear everywhere in each of our lives. How well do we manage to “Mind the Gap”?

Fishermen Mind the Gap between the stream banks. Investors Mind the Gap between deposits and withdrawals. Students Mind the Gap between their efforts and their grades.

Here’s a bit of a strange Gap: dogs and their owners. Dog lovers must attest, at least occasionally, to cradle their faithful canine friend’s muzzle in hand, stroke her fuzzy head, peer deeply, deeply into her eyes and wonder, “I love her. Does she think about me, love me? Are our brains synchronized in some sort of Gap-Bridging brain-bond? Is she starting to think like I think? To desire what I desire? Can the two of us bridge the gap between human and animal understanding? Yes! She “gets” me! But then, suddenly, she breaks free from my eye-stare and my head-scratching grasp, yielding to baser doggy instincts, licking herself in all of “those” places, and I realize that, well—all my imagined meditations of human-to-animal societal breakthrough were just that—imagined. Minding the Gap between human and animal will wait for a more practiced Gap-Minder.

There are other more significant reasons to “Mind the Gap.” Children try to figure their parents out. Parents try to figure their children out. Cross-generations have a difficult time of it! How to cross over those blasted Gaps!

What about the friends we value so highly—yet with whom we can easily get askew? Gaps can appear even in these closest of friendships. How do we Mind these Gaps?

And now, the risky one—Minding the Gap with a spouse. There appears to be an unmistakeable “Je ne sais quoi” difference between a man and a woman—a distinct difference in perception, evaluation, activity and verbal skills. These distinctive traits are delightful and invigorating at times, confusing and frustrating at other times. Early on, with infatuation in full bloom, this Gap is small, seemingly insignificant, but if “Unminded,” the Gap can grow with the years, until the Gap is challenging to cross over. Eventually, quarreling, disrespect and indifference can find a home in this Gap, leading to who-knows-what outcomes. Counselors of various stripes may be employed to help us Mind these Gaps and Mend these Gaps.

Minding the biggest Gap of all is, in fact, the one that we might try to dance around. It’s not a Gap like the distance to the moon, or to the sun, or to a distant galaxy. Even talking into my dog’s brain is a piece of cake—or a piece of doggie treat—in comparison to this Gap.

I refer to the Mankind/God Gap. This is an oil-and-water thing. Stir them as we might, this Mankind and God Gap never really mix. We’re not God. He’s not us. What to do?

There’s a weird way forward, and it’s a big mystery at that. To bridge this Gap, it turns out that Moses had a sort of chatbox to God, like a computer creates an interface, an accessibility. Moses’ chatbox was a means of entry into God’s thoughts and language. Imagine that. Able to hear directly from the Almighty.

Moses’ chatbox wasn’t virtual; it was real, happening in real time. The Moses chatbox thing worked like this. Moses would go into the Tabernacle, a place where he would tune in to, and listen to God. We are told that in that place, in that particular space, something spectacular happened: “Between the two cherubim—the place of atonement. The Lord spoke to him there.”¹

A pretty amazing event. Truly amazing.

Sometimes when I’m at home alone, I’ll look down the driveway to be sure there’s really no one else around. Then I’ll enter the house and turn up my favorite music really, really loud, until the walls vibrate. I suppose that’s what it must have been like for Moses, Minding the Gap, listening, in that special place. In that space, the Voice between the cherubim must have really flapped the walls of that Tabernacle tent.

I would love to have heard it.

I wonder if that Voice could happen again. Perhaps turn down that volume a bit, and then a bit more, until the music fades away. And then, listen. Just listen and Mind the Gap.

¹ Numbers 7:89

The High Cost of Living

During just the first two months of 2022, the price of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup at Kroger rose by 25 percent. The rising rate of cars and fuel prices have far surpassed Campbell’s soup, a bellwether of staple food economics. Even the price for mattresses, where one might be inclined to recline, hoping to forget about all this, has skyrocketed.

Have you ever tried to run up a downward-descending escalator? That escalator is the current state of economics. We’re all running hard to keep up, but getting nowhere.

The high cost of living is upon us.

The uneven, up-down, zigzag floors, walls and ceilings of a funhouse are just that—fun—for awhile. It’s a relief to come out the other end, having survived the intractable and dizzying balancing act. But when will this economic funhouse finally settle down? The cost of living is skyrocketing.

I prepared myself for my customary morning walk on Friday, Good Friday, to be exact, the Friday before Easter. I doused myself with deodorant in the off-chance that Joe would want to chat. I often meet him mid-stride on my walks, as I quietly lurch down my familiar back streets. Joe likes to hail me from across the street. It took Joe several months to learn my name. For many weeks, he christened me with the name, “Frank.” I get that a lot. Upon introducing myself, I’m often mistakenly called Frank, perhaps because I mispronounce my own name. “Frank” comes out much more distinctly than “Craig,” which I myself sometimes choke upon, getting stuck somewhere around my tonsils, the place in the gullet reserved for salt water gargling. “Frank” seems a much more straightforward, tongue-forward appellation.

After several dozen more exercise walks, I finally trained Joe to learn my real name. Now I get, “Hi, Greg.” Never mind. His intent is good. My next task is training him to discern the difference between a “G” and a “C.”

Anyway, Joe is a retired school teacher who cares for grandchildren on occasion and walks his dog with religious fervor. There used to be two dogs on his leash, but last year the golden retriever perished quite suddenly in its sleep after being diagnosed with cancer. How do I know this? Joe freely invites me into his world to share the trivia in his life. In some way, I am gratified to be trusted with the rigors of life by this one-time stranger. He lays out a welcome mat into his world.

On this day, this Good Friday, while chatting curbside with Joe, I suddenly realized that I had not paused my Apple Watch exercise timer for today’s discourse interlude. So I attempted to gently drift downstream away from Joe, despite his attempts to close the growing gap between us.

I lurched and forged ahead, leaving Joe to ponder the correct pronunciation of my name, and determined to mark my exercise miles and minutes. The late fitness guru, Jack LaLanne would be proud.

Abruptly, mid-stride in my exercise brain haze, I half-stuttered a step, lurching sideways like a crab skittering from a codfish. A full step would have landed me directly upon the remains of a rabbit, car-flattened. This bit of brown fur was once a beautiful creation. I lingered over it in awe and consternation.

It was laid open, a beautiful handiwork of its Creator, dissected by an automobile tire. It was still a thing of beauty, but a Picasso re-arranged structure it was. The parts were there, but not in the originally-intended design.

Why did this rabbit meet his demise on my exercise street? Why on Good Friday, just two days before Easter? Was it some sort of omen? The implication was obvious—could it indeed be the Easter Bunny? A horrific thought.

My Good Friday Bunny soon disappeared from the roadway. The next day, during my walk, he was but a flattened pelt with most of the fur missing. And the following day he was gone, nowhere to be found. Surely, he had not been raised on Easter Day, this Easter Rabbit. No, indeed, surely not. But the irony was not lost on me, his coincidental death on Good Friday and disappearance two days later—contrasted with the incarnate God-made-flesh, the real Easter Hero who perished on Good Friday and was resurrected on Easter, two days later.

These days, as we all know, it costs a lot just to stay alive. We know something of the high cost of living with each visit to the grocery store or fill-up at the gas station.

When our friend, Mr. Rabbit, tragically met the Goodyear tire while crossing the road that day, he experienced the ultimate high cost of living.

But the alternative Easter narrative is the one we will to choose to remember. It’s the one in which, on that triumphant Easter morning, there was offered a permanent, never-ending solution for the high cost of living.

Just Grow a New One

I laid down my gardening tools, sat on my haunches, and watched the torso-less green and tan lizard tail twitch on the still, brown mulch. Slower and slower it convulsed until several minutes later it lay still, convinced finally that reassembly to its body was not forthcoming, and no further electro-nerve impulses would be sent its way.

“Ah, it’ll grow a new one,” I mused, half-pretending that it was not I who had inadvertently severed said lizard body from its tail with a power hedge trimmer. In fact, I know not whether all lizards or only some lizards can re-grow various missing parts.

Too bad humans cannot re-grow body parts; such ability would have found useful service for Grandfather Axel’s right index finger, or at least much of it, down to the middle joint. Grabbing severed finger with his other hand, Axel tried to re-attach it himself, jamming and ramming it onto the remaining finger stub without success. I’ve no doubt that the finger actually gave him no hope—no slow-motion twitching and thrashing about like the aforementioned lizard tail that I had sat to observe. Still, onward he jammed, until reality eventually set in. The severed finger would not revive.

What was left after his unfortunate power saw incident was a stub, a stub that years later, and for many years thereafter, Axel would poke into my abdomen at mealtime with exceeding encouragement, deeply stub-prodding as if he could discern slight voids where food ought to be.

“Ah, there,” he would declare, “There’s just enough room there for another slice of tomato and a meatball or two!” I would eagerly down the tomato and meatballs to fill the gap.

I, also, possess an injured right index finger, though my injury pales next to that which Axel suffered at the cruelty of the power saw. My own injury is due to an errant softball hurtling toward my head. Just in time, my hand, and the tip of my extended index finger in particular, shielded my face. The resulting lifelong souvenir is a fingertip that can no longer point straight. To point in a desired direction, I must purposefully aim it slightly up and to the left. Otherwise, giving directions to a traveler might result in a trip to Chicago instead of Milwaukee.

“Just go that way,” I point, “you can’t miss it.”

“Excuse me, which way?”

Twenty centuries ago, the first Catholic pope, who possessed no medical certifications, amputated an ear. Saint Peter and his companions, in the solitude of an olive garden, were suddenly set upon by a band of religious legalists. Under duress, Peter drew his sword and swung it, amputating the ear of one of the intruders. Malchus, now earless, happened to be the slave of the Jewish high priest, and a member of the party sent to arrest Jesus. Not a good thing to happen.

Jesus, the ultimate Primary Care Physician, would have none of the violence. Picture Jesus picking the bloody ear up off the ground, brushing off any olive residue, and reattaching it. Unlike my Grandpa Axel’s attempted finger reinstatement, Jesus’ reattachment held fast, a very good thing for both Malchus and Peter.

It’s reasonable to seek attachment in a chaotic world. Detachment from meaningful purpose and the people and things we love is not easy, and reattachment is not always possible. Sometimes, what we need most is a loving, stubby finger poke to the stomach and to hear, “Hey, I made it. So will you. You’ve got room for more.”

The Decades

Each new decade of our life signals new ends and new beginnings. Perhaps a new decade reminds us that maybe, just maybe, we are ushering in a smidgen of new wisdom into our lives. If we are fortunate, grateful endings and unspoiled new beginnings can be a part of this decade-aging process.

This year, I rounded that new decade corner by entering a new, “I’m Now-in-My-70s” decade. Make way! I’m already seventy-times-round-the-sun age! How could that happen? Just yesterday, it seems I was making a figure of my first grade reader’s mascot, Penny the Cat, cut out of construction paper and handsomely colored with crayons. Years became decades. Navigating college lunch lines and managing social circles pushed thoughts of Penny far to the side. Falling in love and finding a job and raising a family, all while trying to figure out who I was—and would become—were exhausting and all-consuming. More aging decades of ends and new beginnings emerged and disappeared into fog. And then came the Golden Years and retirement, that vast canvas scroll of uncertain length. So much already behind. Formal education, done. Children, grown up and on their own. Check. Career, or make that plural careers of unequal lengths and varying quality. Got ‘er done. In hindsight, was I actually designed to evolve into whom I have become or what I have done? Never mind. It’s all in the rear view mirror, all bound together, sometimes tidy, sometimes barely held with crude baling wire.

There remains one unlikeliest constant companion in all this sea of decade-swapping change—my primary care physician. He increasingly populates more appointments on my calendar with each passing year. He is now 87 years old, and I thought he was elderly when I first retained his services, 25 years ago. He’s a remarkable man, having reared two sets of twins and a several others as well. On his days off, my doctor is a flight instructor at the local airport, something he’s done for 40 years.

With each weigh-in at his medical office, I vainly empty my pockets of all extraneous possession. I deposit loose change, keys, pencils and pens, even dental floss on the table before stepping upon the weigh-in scale. Still, each succeeding annual checkup records yet another pound or two of additional girth. Then the inspection begins, first the easy stuff—ears, tongue, nose and throat, working up to the pokes and prodding in the belly and groin. The tour then explores those naked tender spots that I myself have never seen with my own naked eyes, those remote regions requiring my physician to navigate with finger probes, accompanied by comments, “Ah, I see!” But I cannot see any of it.

Last week, this primary care physician and I entered into a lively debate about arthritis pain medications and their accompanying side-effects. Prepared in advance for this discussion, I unabashedly displayed the sophomoric research I had gleaned from the Internet. He was not impressed. “So you want to suffer on a daily basis in the remote off-chance that this medication could shorten your life?”

“Well, yes, I don’t want to die unnecessarily,” I responded, rock-solid sure of my YouTube research footing.

“I have a different take on that,” he suggested. “We don’t have yesterday. We are not promised tomorrow. All we have is today. And I believe in living it, today, the best that we can. Make full use of today. Take the damned medicine.”

“Oh, and one other thing,” he continued. “You know, we’re all going to die sometime. Something or another will get all of us, right?”

Once I got home and the embarrassed flush had cleared my cheeks, my brain engaged enough to recall a passage from the book of Hebrews. Yes, that Hebrews. “By His death, He could break the power of him who holds the power of death…and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

Welcome to my 70-year decade. Should be a fun ride.

Aspiration: The Loudest Message

It’s hard to miss the message that is being sent.

From the leather crown on the head to the toe of the boot, that dude is a cowboy.

Did he actually play a guitar while riding the range? That’s hard to imagine. Probably not.

At least until Gene Autry, the singingest, stummingest cowboy, came along. After that, hats, boots and guitars defined our thinking about cowboys.

Hat and boots and guitar = cool, singing cowboy.

So what’s that called? The thing we are (the hat and boots), plus the thing that we want to become (guitar-stumming coolness) ?

It’s aspiration. Aspiration is the thing we want to become–the thing we most want to be known for, our greatest achievement.

Our aspirations can be our loudest message.

As in: She wants to be a millionaire by the time she is 35.

As in: He is fighting his way to the White House.

As in: She is the most generous person I know.

As in: He is the best friend a person could ever have.