I Don’t Need to Run
I live just south of Canada, where every fall, the wind knifes the trees making the leaves bleed. They die and drop quickly leaving a million naked branches crossed like a chainlink fence against the milky sky. Then the white overhead starts to break up and fall on empty flower pots and cars that sit outside because they leak oil. I usually...
Organ Donor
I am an organ donor. So someday when I die, they may cut me open. And I hope when they do, they will find the same things on the inside that they saw on the outside. To quote Oswald Chambers, "We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation. What God looks at is what we are in the dark - the imaginations of our...
Commercial Toilets and Sea Monsters
A former boss once asked me to help fix a toilet (which happened to be in the woman’s restroom). Apparently the water wouldn’t stop running. I should mention at the onset I’m not a plumber. My wife and I swapped out a toilet in our first house and I’ve helped my friend Ken (a master plumber) replace a few residential toilets. By helped I mean...
Self-preservation
Self-preservation is not all bad. If you are being chased by a bear or mountain cat, it is helpful. Or securing your own oxygen mask before trying to assist others on a plane that’s going down. Seems logical. But there is another type of self-preservation. It is an inner voice that says, “Every man for himself.” I was sitting in a lifeboat...
A Tool or a Weapon
The knife. It is a simple form that has been around a long time. It has many uses: opening bags of seed, cutting vegetables, extracting splinters, prying staples, cleaning teeth, sharpening pencils, cutting zip ties, removing gum from hair. But it is also true that the blade has been used to kill many a man. So which is it, a tool or a weapon? It...
A Bunch of Bull
We were at a family reunion when I discovered this relic of a carnival game. It is in the same genre as the High Striker (the one where you swing a mallet to ring a bell). You literally grab the bull by the horns and squeeze. It is an awkward movement. I’m not really sure which muscle groups I was using but my rib cage hurt for a few days after....
Jumping for Joy
The world is a heavy place and there are serious people everywhere. There is important work to be done and there are pressing battles that ask for our enlistment. These responsibilities require us to be sober and on point. But what do we do with all the weight? Are we supposed to work without sleeping and keep our guard up indefinitely? Instead,...
Get the tile on the wall
I have unfinished work. There are times I forget about the ant and drift in laziness. But there are other forces at play causing drag in my work. The two main factors are equal but opposite. On one hand there is too much to do. The workload is overwhelming so sometimes I do nothing. Then there are times I work until the point of exhaustion —...
Who are we listening to?
Who are we listening to? Our waking hours are saturated by an unending flow of information. We have open access to all the content we could ever want and the content we don’t. The problem is two-fold. First, there is too much. Our minds and hearts can’t contain the flood. Second, there are very few filters in place to sift out bad information....