This Means War

When I was a child, I remember seeing a snake stretched across the sidewalk in our front yard. Me and my brother decided to be heroes. We mounted our trusty blue tricycle and ran the villainous thing over. Then we scooped up its expired carcass with a stick and paraded it into the house. It was almost as good as slaying a dragon. They never warn you that there might be a second one.

This morning I took my dog for a walk. Lovely day. Blue skies, smiling sun, empty country roads. The grass is turning green, and flowers are popping up all over the place. Then we got back home. And saw this:

Serene little house, isn’t it? Only, wait . . . Could we zoom in on that one spot please?


Hm. Maybe you still can’t see it that well.


How’s that?


Oh. There we go.


It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. Sharks may be terrifying, sure. Spiders are actually a tiny bit cute. But snakes are positively loathsome. Never mind that this particular gathering was made up only of darling, helpful, non-poisonous garter snakes. Darling my foot.

So, after running for my camera, I did what any rational, law-abiding adult would do. I declared war. Running screaming to my car, I peeled out of the driveway and bore down on the writhing mass of insufferable grotesqueness. I’m pretty sure for a moment my car entertained dreams of being in the Indianapolis 500. Then there was a bump. Four down. Nine hundred ninety six miserable creatures to go.

The survivors slithered for the grass, and I ran for Weapon of Mass Destruction Number Two. The shovel. It’s kind of an archaic thing with a wooden handle that feels like it’s petrified and a head that’s seen sharper, shinier days. But I wasn’t about to be picky. Shovel in hand, I sprinted Indian-style (I was in flip-flops, which are pretty close to moccasins) onto the road. There, I met an Impasse.

Well, first, I stopped to look nonchalant and wave at the farmer driving by. Then I met an Impasse.

I was on the road. The snakes (those still alive) were worming their cowardly way through the grass. To make use of WoMDNT, I and my Indian-style flip-flops were going to have to brave The Lawn. I considered for a moment. The conclusion I came to gives me full understanding of why the Indians used to do snake dances and rain dances and that sort of thing. I called up all my courage and jumped (quite literally) into action. There I was, bouncing up and down in my flip-flops, shovel poised at the ready, eyes darting about. If a forked tongue so much as flicked in my direction, I was going to bring that shovel down hard. Or run screaming in the other direction. One unlucky piece of misery wriggled into eyesight. The shovel fell. Nine hundred and ninety five to go.

War or no, it was definitely half time. I scampered inside and spent the next five minutes pacing up and down, staring suspiciously under every dresser, double checking every electric cord to make sure it hadn’t turned into something worse, and muttering, “Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew,” every second or so.

So, where am I going now? Well, I just peeked out the window, and the writhing mass of insufferable grotesqueness is back at its station on the sun-warmed gravel road. I’m going to get in my car. But before I do, I would like to propose a toast. To all the heroic tricycles and their riders. May the snakes never forget you.

The Ocean

I was at the Atlantic Ocean last week. Little town called Cape May. During the off-season when the shells are out full-force and the tourists aren't. It was beautiful. This is what I came away with (aside from a couple dozen seashells):

The ocean reminds me of God. It is such a vast thing. I can look as far as I can see and stare as long and as hard as I can, and yet even then I have only seen the minutest skimming of the depths and widths of water that make the ocean. It is unfathomable. Our attempts at comprehension are as a lone bee’s attempts to gather all the pollen in a thriving garden. Even a careful study of all its passions and glories leaves us still trembling before a power that could effortlessly end our world. To put the ocean on a map is like trying to make God stay inside a box. It simply does not fit. The light swirling blueness on paper, precisely outlined and carefully labeled, is nothing like the real ocean of raging fury and weighty enormousness. Its gentlest whisper is to us ferocious strength. The touch of its hand is as the shadow of Jupiter to our moon. Its playfulness is our death. We cannot begin to drain it, tame it, better it, or understand it. Staring, our delight turns to silence and then to awe and then to terror. To advance is to be crushed. To depart is to be lost. Thus is the ocean. Thus is God.

An Announcement

And now I’m supposed to say something like, “An ancient, twice-removed, long-lost great-great aunt just died and left me half a million dollars!” (That’s after taxes.) Or, “Uh, I may have forgotten to mention it, but I eloped last week.”

Well, it’s nothing quite that astonishing. Just a brief update. If any of you have ever read James Thurber, you’re about to be thrilled. He’s an author (or was; I think he may have died) who had his eye shot out with an arrow in a game of William Tell. Which in my mind makes him utterly fascinating (even if he is dead). If you do recognize the name, you probably know that he wrote books with rather clever, interesting twists of humor. One of those books happens to be called The Thirteen Clocks. And it is about to become a play.

I’m back in my role as director. Sort of. We’ve actually got two groups starting up rehearsals for what we hope to be many performances this summer. I’m directing in one and acting in the other. It ought to be great fun. The goal is to get out to different places where people can come who wouldn’t normally get to see a play. Like the kids from social services who come out to Royal Family Kids’ Camp, just fifteen minutes out of Central City. Or the people you might meet at the Salvation Army in Grand Island or Crossroads in Hastings.

Perhaps we’re intending to revive the old, traveling troupe idea. Rather like the gypsies. But the real goal behind this is to tell our audiences, who are often ignored by today’s entertainment-crazed world, that not only did we show them a little bit of love by getting all this stuff together to put on a decent play, but Jesus loves them even more and proved it by coming into our world as a man and dying on the cross and coming back to life again.

So, if you’d like to start hanging out at your local Salvation Army, maybe we’ll see you out in the audience. In the meantime, we’d greatly appreciate your prayers. We’ve got the crew to find, insanely busy schedules to deal with, medieval costumes, different stages, lines to memorize, and a thousand jewels to track down!

Trusting in the God who named the stars, sees a bird when it falls, and knit us together in our mother’s womb.