Me-Time...

It was the morning commute down the Road-Less-Traveled.  Phlegm the Taurus deftly dodged and braked for suicidal turkeys and deer as I looked out the window and polished off a travel cup of the Elixir of Knowledge.

The yellows, browns, and rusts of late fall held the fog at tree top level as we all - Phlegm, me, the deer, and the turkeys - scooted along underneath.

The praise song on the radio ended.  I was just taking another pull of the Elixir when the announcer filled the break with this interesting and somewhat disturbing item.

It seems there are a couple of funeral homes that now have drive-through windows.

Yeah.

From the comfort of our cars it is now possible to partake of coffee-to-go, dead-animal-in-a-bun, and dead-guy-in-a-box.

'Merica.  Gotta love it.

That was yesterday and now the weekend is starting to dawn, sharing just enough light to see the first snow flurry of the year.

And that whole drive-through viewing thing is still buggin' me.

Convenience is one thing, but...

"Hey, wanna get a pizza then catch a movie?  On the way we can buzz by the funeral home and see Uncle Jake.  We'll roll through while you text Aunt Bertha our condolences."

The third cup of the Elixir of Knowledge morphs a thought into shape.

Yeah.  Makes sense.

Convenience is based on saving time, right?  But what kinda time?

Huh.

I wander out to the kitchen, gumming this idea with the energy of a toothless 1 yr old attacking a slice of Melba toast.

After pouring the last dregs of the Elixir into my cup, I wander back to the Chair.

Well.

There seems to be three types of time.  Sorta.

Me Time, We Time, and He Time.

Me Time.  That's the one I hear a lot about.  My own space.  Controlling my world, if only for a brief moment.  It's where I call the shots.  That Burger King/Sinatra moment where I have it my way.

Yeah.  That's where convenience would get the biggest bang for the buck.  During Me Time.

Then there's We Time.  Stuff like family, work, soccer games, parties, weddings, funerals.  Those things that involve inconveniences.

Huh..

An inconvenience for me is probably a convenience for somebody else.  But there better be some reciprocity on the deal or the whole We Time thing can take a hike.  Or at least a hiatus.  One hand needs to wash the other, right?  Fair is fair.

Huh.

And then there's He Time.  That's where I spend time doing what I think God wants - as long as it's not too inconvenient.  Like the two hours on Sunday.  The daily devotions.  The prayer before going to bed.  And, if I'm really goin' fanatical, maybe a teaching tape or two.

A deep draught of the Elixir pops open another thought.

Wha.....?  No way.  Really?

Jesus never had any Me Time.

None.  Zippo.  Nada.

He only had He Time.  100%, 24/7, 365 a year.  He Time.  Doing what the Father wanted Him to do.  All the time.  Never a Me moment.  And this allowed We Time to happen, but never at the expense of He Time.

Okay.  I think I got it.

Me Time should be replaced by He Time which brings about We Time without dwelling on the inconveniences.  And since He loves Me totally and completely, any He Time is actually Me Time, even if it's We Time, because it's the best thing that could ever happen to me.

Right...

This probably oughta be my last cup of Elixir for awhile.

Some Garage boxes are still @ Weebly...

If you're new to the Garage, you might want to go browse through the boxes stacked in the corner.

They're at uncledennysgarage.weebly.com.  Check the archives on the blog page.

Yeah.  Over two years of early mornings, gallons of the Elixir of Knowledge, and enough mental wanderings to make one of the Egyptian-freed Hebrews reminiscent.

I think I'm gonna go back occasionally and pull out a box, rummage through it, and bring it over here.

It's literary left-overs, but think of it as "recycling" or "redistributing".  Since I grew up in the golden age of TV, (...gold?!...everything was black & white...in more ways than one...), I kinda lean toward the idea of "reruns".

Kinda like MeTV written by, well, me.  Without the pictures.  You gotta provide those yourself.

Anyway, if you're reading this you've made the effort to visit the new Garage.

And for that I want to say "thanks".

All three of you guys are great and I appreciate you.

Help yourself to a cup.  The Elixir's on the workbench.

When the other two get here we'll break out the donut holes.

Words and Hearts...

Sometimes writing is...slow.

My 2nd cup of the Elixir of Knowledge sits next to me along with a side of rye toast.  All three of us look at the screen.

I'm willing my fingers to do something.  Anything.

Okay.

I've eaten the rye toast.

That's not what I had in mind but it's a start.

Words.  I need words.  Just some...

Oh.

Now that's a flashback.  Yeah.

Sniglets.

Sniglets were invented words used to describe certain things or events.  I think they started on "Saturday Night Live" 30+ years ago.

There is an inherent problem with sniglets.  If you didn't know the culture or the time, they don't make any sense.  Here's two of my favorites that need context or they're just...well...stupid.

"Wondercide - what you do to white bread with hard, cold butter."

If you hadn't seen Wonder Bread in it's polka-dotted wrapper, (fortified with 12 essential vitamins 'cause there's no nutrition in there whatsoever), you'd react like TechnoBoy just did when I told him.

"(forced laugh) Funny."

And here's my other favorite.

"Retrocarbonic - you put your dime in the vending machine, the soda streams out, THEN the paper cup falls."

Yeah.

The dime gave that one away, didn't it?

And I just got the same response from TechnoBoy.  0 for 2. 

The Elixir floats a thought up from the depths.  Context and the translation of that strange language,  "Christian-ese".

I grew up with my hip pockets firmly planted on a wooden pew every Sunday.  I learned the language and could follow along.  Not divinity-level fluency, mind you, but I could catch the drift.

Today, people see movies like "Noah" and figure it's in the Bible.  Stone angels and all.  They've never read the Book or been to Sunday School.

Or church.

They have no context for Christian-ese.  To them, it's like sniglets from a bygone era.

Maybe that's why He taught in parables.  All those stories that made crowds occasionally murmur "Ohhh.  I get it.".  Stories told so people would understand.

That's why He lived, laughed, cried....and died...among us.

So we would have context to understand God's love.

I was talking to my neighbor, Brad, who pastors a church in town.  We're having a cup of the Elixir of Knowledge, (that's the fundamentalist version of sharin' some brewskis).  and the conversation wandered into the realm of church worship.

Hymns vs. choruses.

Hymnals vs. overheads.

(Not quite the Packers and the Bears, but still a pretty good rivalry in some congregations.)

He started to laugh, remembering one Saturday night.

(Here's some context - his congregation is built of people new to the faith, who met the Lord after walking through the doors of the church.)

He was leading worship.  The words of the chorus were up on the screen.  A big man, recently born forever, stood tall in the front row.  His thick arms were raised to Heaven with ham-sized hands open to receive.

His craggy face looked awestruck, his eyes closed tight.

Just worshiping.  Just loving Him.

Of course, with eyes shut it makes it difficult to see the screen.  Or the words.  And his rough voice growled out a slightly different version of the song.

"Wooly is the Lamb.  Wooly is the Lamb that was..."

Yeah.

The Christian-ese, the proper words, that'll all come later.

The context is there.  His heart's in the right spot.

And I hafta think that God was smiling.  And lovin' it. 

"Wooly is the Lamb."

There's gotta be a sniglet to cover that.

Changing...

Last weekend, the town went nuts.

And it's all because of cranberries and fish.

Every year, on the 1st weekend in October, there is CranberryFest.
And a pretty good-sized Musky Tournament.

About the Musky aka Muskellunge - it is an elusive torpedo-like fish sometimes referred to as the "Northern barracuda".  It's a vacuum cleaner with teeth, taking in fish, ducklings, baby loons, and, on rare occasion, hand-sized lures full of treble hooks.

The cranberry doesn't need much of an introduction.

It's small, red, and tastes like lemon rind. Kinda.

The little town goes from being 1,800 hardy souls with mostly polite manners to a seething, anxious metropolis of 30,000 with the patience and thinly-veiled rudeness of the cosmopolitan.

Hey, the visitors are not all bad. Not by a long shot.  But there's just enough of the really-jerksome to make one weigh the benefits of this last great influx of tourism dollars right before the onslaught of six months of winter.

Okay. The scales pretty much always tip in favor of the 'Fest.

It's Economics 101 - a weekend of frustration beats a Winter of credit-card living followed by a Spring of repossession and foreclosure.

So.  Welcome to our little town. We shall embrace the change even though it isn't what we're used to. 

Now this brings forth the question, egged on by the third cup of the Elixir of Knowledge this morning.

Have other people ever felt this way?  Caught in change and wanting to maintain the status quo.  Longing for the "good ol' days"?

Yeah.  Uh-huh.

David.  Had to. Yeah.

(Amazing how Sunday School & caffeinated flashbacks coincide, eh?)

Here's a kid growing up, shootin' at stumps with a sling, putzin' with the harp, writing songs, watchin' sheep, and watchin' clouds.

Okay, there was the occasional adrenaline burst brought on by a bear or lion, but, for the most part, it's pretty bucolic and idyllic.

Kinda like a Jewish Norman Rockwell painting. Sort of.

Then Samuel tells him this "thing about being a king".  A dead giant and a few thousand dead enemies later, the sitting king decides he doesn't like this "thing about being a king" and tries to make it go away via homicide.

But God keeps promises, so David becomes the king.

Oh, boy.  The job's got perks.  Great perks.  But it's those other things that give him headaches.

Power-brokers. Palace intrigue. Decisions. Responsibilities.

Yeah.

I wonder if there were evenings when David climbed the stairs to the palace roof and watched a shepherd bringing the flock home at sunset.

And he would've gladly swapped places with the guy.  In a heartbeat.

The Elixir of Knowledge floats in another thought I read a few months back.  It's from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

"Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something that you have never been."        (June 8th reading)

I'm pretty sure David wrote a psalm about this but obviously it went unpublished.  Would've liked to hear it.

So.

Enjoy the change - that wonderful, terrifying, firmly-planted-in-mid-air, white-knuckled-trusting change.

You'll find yourself doing things and going places you never dreamed of.

You might go from phys ed and recreation to banking to chainsaw sales to writing screenplays and a blog about drinking coffee and living in the trees.

Changing.  It's a hoot.