Double-wide
August 30, 2005
Moseying down the sidewalk, lost in my thoughts, I heard rhythmic steps in the street behind me. I turned to see a wisp of a young lady floating along, water bottle to her lips, perhaps settling down for a leisurely morning jog. She nodded as she pulled away ahead.
After a while, I heard more rubber slapping the pavement. I again turned and found myself staring at two turnip-headed babies, comfortably snoozing away in their double-wide buggy. Pushing the buggy at a brisk jogging pace was a husky guy, bare to the waist and glistening with sweat, one hand pushing the buggy and the other holding his water bottle. I waved and asked, “How’s it going?” He waved back. “Well, OK…I think,” as he lumbered on ahead. He obviously was getting a lot more exercise than the presumed mother up ahead, not a very fair division of labor if you ask me.
I thought of the puny young boy Calamy on board the HMS Surprise, staggering along carrying a calf. His older shipmates had told him that if he carried the calf every day until the calf was grown he would become big and strong. If my buggy-pushing friend continues his jogging routine for a few more years, I may have exchanged waves with the future strongman of the world.
Or maybe they were in training for a future pair of Terrible Twos.
Dave, content to saunter along in the sunshine.
Another old couple
August 26, 2005
On the corner of 22nd and Harrison there is a house with a small west-facing porch. For quite a few years now, when the weather is not too hot nor too cold, a grizzled old man sits there with a cigar in his mouth, a cowboy hat perched on his head, often with his wife alongside. I am as familiar a part of the scenery to them as they are to me, and we never fail to exchange waves and a few words about the weather.
They apparently have family nearby, because sometimes there is a pickup truck in their driveway and a not-so-young-themselves couple is crowded onto the little porch with them.
The mile of south 22nd Street that I regularly walk is my own little microcosm of the character of mid-america. It is a wide, smoothly paved street, lined with large maples and oaks that shade the sidewalks on both sides and provide shelter and sustenance for myriads of brown squirrels. The homes are mostly small, well-kept bungalows with neat lawns, many with old-fashioned front porches. There are flags and flower beds galore. The inhabitants seem to be mostly retired and working people with a sprinkling of youngsters with kids, in short the kind of ordinary folk that are the sinews of our land.
The only downside is that I keep thinking of Norman Rockwell and his mawkish illustrations. I refuse to get sappy about all this, if I haven’t already done so, because I believe there is real strength displayed by the unremarkable people in the small town neighborhoods of our country that deserves real respect rather than mere sentimentalism.
Dave, proud of his walk-neighbors
End game
August 25, 2005
Ahead of me an elderly couple very slowly walks along, hand in hand; he is gray haired, straight and tall, slowing his pace to that of his mate; she is bent over and struggling for each step. I watch them turn into their front walk and make their way up five agonizing steps to their front porch and door. With a big smile, he turns and waves at me, as he always does, and they disappear into their bungalow. I’m guessing that without his patient urging, she might not get any exercise at all.
So I absorb yet another lesson in contentment, patience, and forbearance, from my fellow man.
Dave, admiring them both.
The broom man
August 24, 2005
For a dozen years I have jogged or walked up and down south 22nd Street, communing with rabbits, squirrels, dogs, and our mutual Maker. I usually see a few humans, too, jogging, walking, biking, sitting on porches, or working in their yards. One of these nodding acquaintances is “the broom man.” He lives on the corner of 22nd and Washington, and I often see him puttering about in his yard. He is probably about my age, pleasant, stocky, bandy-legged, sandy-haired, always willing to pause in his exertions and exchange a word or two.
Lately, I have found him vigorously wielding a cane kitchen broom, well out in the street in front of his house, sweeping away at I know not what. Whether wielding a broom in the street or a rake in the yard, I know exactly what comes next. He will hold the broom out toward me and say, “Here. You do this for a while.” I protest that I don’t want to deprive him of his exercise, give him a farewell wave, and continue on.
I really ought to stop long enough to get acquainted, but maybe we are both better off knowing each other only in passing mode. But, then again, . . . .
Dave, never sure about these things
Uncle Gus
August 22, 2005
Aurelius Augustinus died in 430 AD, but he is on my short list of heroes, sort of a spiritual favorite uncle. He was a philosopher and a great Christian bishop, perhaps best known for his The Confessions of Saint Augustine. This little classic tells the life story of a young man both blessed and tormented by a brilliant mind, grasping for spiritual certainty, yielding to the pleasures of a profligate life, until he finally abandoned the profession of Rhetoric and devoted his life to God. All the while, his godly mother Monica never ceased to pray that her son would come to faith in God.
There’s something in Augustine’s pilgrimage for everyone, especially those of us who seek a rational basis for faith in God.
As Augustine’s faith matured, he started taking on skeptics who were asking questions like, “What did God do before He created the heaven and the earth?” Whether his arguments are still persuasive in these days of scientists vs. creationists is really beside the point. I think that every generation must wrestle with the idea of linear history for themselves, since it is ultimately a matter of faith, but we also can benefit greatly from the struggles of those who have gone before us.
Fr. Harold Gardiner nailed it in his introduction to a 1957 edition of The Confessions when he said, “He speaks to the atomic age as mightily and sweetly as he spoke to the age of dying Roman imperialism because ‘heart speaketh to heart,’ and if ever there was a great heart to speak, it was his, and if ever there are small and frightened hearts who need his words, they are ours.”
Dave, in debt to “Uncle Gus.”
Pascal’s wager
August 21, 2005
Most of us have very few completely original thoughts. We “stand on the shoulders of the giants” who went before us and do our best to extrapolate (an excellent example of an unoriginal thought itself).
One of my “giants” is Blaise Pascal. One of these days I’ll talk a little about his remarkable life, but here I want to recall Pascal’s Wager, partly because I have trouble remembering it. Here it is:
If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.
Pascal’s logical conclusion was that …we are compelled to gamble…
A good Sunday thought-starter, eh?
A bit of Pascal trivia: Shortly after Pascal had proven to his own satisfaction that a vacuum existed, Descartes wrote, rather cruelly, …has too much vacuum in his head.
Dave, continually battling the vacuum in his head.
