How would you finish this statement: “I hate… ”?

     If your mother was like mine, you learned at a very early age to be careful how you used that word hate. Never, for example, would I entertain the thought of inserting a person’s name in the blank after hate. You don’t hate people. People are created in God’s image, and to hate someone would be a grievous sin. So I learned not to put people’s names in the blank after “I hate… ” (even though I did have an intense dislike for Butchy Sandstrom in second grade—but I didn’t mention it to my mother).

     Most of the time, it wasn’t even permissible for me to hate a particularly distasteful vegetable. I learned as I sat at the table in my growing-up years that food was provided by God, and cooked by my mother, and to intimate that you hated what either of those two sovereigns had set before you was positively unthinkable, to say nothing of unhealthy. I wasn’t forced to eat what I didn’t like, mind you, but critical commentary on dinner was totally unappreciated at our house and brought with it a certain and immediate invitation to leave the table without finishing neither the comment nor the meal.

     No, you didn’t hate people, and at least while you were sitting at the dinner table you didn’t hate vegetables—not out loud, anyway. 

     It did seem to be permissible to hate other annoyances, however. For example, mosquito bites were okay to hate. When I was young, mosquitoes used to eat me up. When I scratched a mosquito bite too much and it became red and sore, I could express my hate as my mother put ointment on the bite. But, I remember my mother’s corrective rejoinder if I said, “I hate mosquitoes.” She had what seemed to me a particular theology about mosquitoes, a sort of circuitous logic that seemed to envelop everything from the tiniest insect to the largest of animals. “Do you know why God made mosquitoes?” she would ask.

     I hated it when she asked me questions I didn’t have a good answer for.

     “Well,” she would say, “God made mosquitoes so the frogs would have something to eat. If there were no mosquitoes, the poor little frogs would have nothing to eat.”

     While I knew better than to argue with my mother, deep inside where she couldn’t look, I also knew that her logic must be flawed. If God created one thing so another thing would have something to eat—if God created mosquitoes so frogs would have something to eat—then it seemed to me that the next logical step in that proposed food chain was that I was created so that the mosquitoes would have something to eat, and that just didn’t seem to be right. Intuitively, I knew I had a deeper reason for being that providing nourishment for mosquitoes. I didn’t argue, though. I just let it go at hating mosquito bites.

     Since I’ve grown up, I’ve come to appreciate that there are many things I can “legally” hate. I hate cars. I know very little about how they operate; I know where to put in the gas and the key. About once every other year, I also put in oil. But I hate cars… and they hate me. I hate plumbing, too. It leaks, but I can rarely figure out why. I’ve replaced all of the pipes and fittings under our kitchen sink twice and the plumbing still drips (Have I mentioned that I hate drips?). There are all sorts of things I hate: ball-point pens that skip, flashlights whose supposed ever-ready batteries never are, anything—anything that is late, standing in any line, the sound of the vacuum cleaner. 

     I typed an invitation for people in our office to write down the things they hate. I won’t share all of the results, but here’s a list of what some of them said they hated:

• Sushi, Liver, (Ugh!), Anchovies, Raw Onions
• Okra (You know… the vegetable) (Obviously, this person never met my mother)
• Cleaning house (Note: this particular “hate” received more than one vote, but in almost every case the person who hated cleaning house loved a clean house. You figure out the significance of that bit of detail)
• Shoes that hurt my feet
• Cold coffee (3 votes)
• Bugs (dead) on my windshield
• Potty training
• People who are perky and bright first thing in the morning (It’s not normal)
• Alarm clocks

And finally, one of my personal favorites—

• Memos I receive reminding me about a meeting… that happened yesterday

     Several of my friends mentioned that they felt better after having written down what they really hated. I guess I did, too. Cathartic best describes the effect this little experiment had on me. “Getting life off my chest” you might say.

     I don’t know for sure if God watched my recent preoccupation with things I hate, but I suspect He did. The reason I think so is that this morning, I found a list on my desk of some things He hated. Leaky faucets didn’t make His list. Neither did cars that didn’t run or pens that don’t write. In fact, as I read His list and compared it to my list of silly annoyances, I was convinced that I have a lot more important things than mosquitoes to worry about that may be eating me up. How about you?

These six things the LORD hates,

Yes, seven are an abomination to him:

A proud look,

A lying tongue,

Hands that shed innocent blood,

A heart that devises wicked plans,

Feet that are swift in running to evil,

A false witness who speaks lies,

And one who sows discord among brethren.

(Proverbs 6:16-19)

The post I Hate It When That Happens appeared first on Ken Jones.

Every mom in the universe has a story about the day she became a mom.
    The time of day.
    The length of stay.
    The specific way they managed the birthing of that child,
        That baby, that gift from God they had waited for, and labored for.

Contraction details, and how far apart?
    And the doctor then says: “It’s okay to start …”
    And the pushing begins, and the courage and heart
    Of a mother delivers a child; sweet progeny,
        Just arrived,
        Just beginning,
        Just … amazing, this miracle.

And if you mention babies, or birthing, or ‘the day you became a mom,’
    To any mom, she’ll tell you.
    You won’t have to ask twice.

But dads are different, I think.

Ask most dads what it was like for them, the day they became a dad,
    And a smile might come.
    And the hands of some
    Will begin to move, as their arms wave in the wind.

Talk to a dad about that day, and the picture they will draw with their hands
    Will tell you they don’t know how to describe the feeling; they only know
    They had a feeling.
    An awareness.
    A certain reality that roiled their previously placid and self-focused life.

The very moment a man becomes a dad, … life changes.
    I remember the day I became a dad.
    Dads are different than moms, to be sure.

The day I became a dad,
    A new definition of ‘tough’ entered my mind.
    No dictionary needed.
    No teacher necessary, to tell me what ‘tough’ really meant.
    She showed me; that woman I married.
    She showed me, and I knew.
Deep down inside of me, I did not wonder. I knew.
    I now knew, why God said it wasn’t good for man to be alone;
    No man I’ve ever met, nor will ever meet has the nerve to birth a baby.

    And the day I became a man,
    I came to understand
    What it means to be ‘tough.’ 

I saw him for the first time,
    That baby,
    That boy,
    That pink and wrinkled form, 

Wrapped tight,
Squinting under white lights,

As I looked through a hospital nursery window.
He, only minutes old.
Me? Totally sold on this tiny life.
Captured, I was.

    I stood in the hall, mesmerized,
    As I studied that face, and memorized
    Every inch of that man child,
This one who would call me … his ‘Dad.’

The day I became a dad,
As I peered into the face of my son,
    I talked to myself; I had me a conversation with … me.

I stood there; I stared.
I rehearsed and prepared,
In whispers, declared:

“As God is my witness, I will be the most influential person in the life of this child, and all those 
        children I may ever sire.”
    There.
    I said it to me.
    I whispered it to him, and to all of his siblings who might follow.

And God overheard my whisper.
    And held me to my word.
        And the day I became a dad, I understood in a new way:

I am being watched by him.
    And, by Him.
And I love it that way.

God knows … I love being a dad.

The post From a Dad … On Being a Dad appeared first on Ken Jones.

            And then, she said, “Yes, I know. Believe me, I know. Please get your hearing checked.” A few weeks after that, I did get my hearing tested, and — go figure — the doc said I needed hearing aids. People who get close to me, and look closely at the side of my head will see the tiny wire thingies coming out of both ears.

            And this is how I came to wear hearing aids.

            On the day of the hearing test, the doctor took his place in a control room, while he had me sit in an adjacent sound proof room about the size of a phone booth,. Tiny, it was. The doctor’s assistant squeezed in behind me as I sat in the chair and she placed a pair of earphones over my ears.  They felt like ear muffs. Tight, and totally covering my ears. (People who are close to me know that if a headset totally covers my ears, the muffs will need to be the size of a pair of pie plates. I got big ears. But I digress.)

     After the assistant left the room, I heard the doctor say, (in the headset, of course,) “Okay.  Are you comfortable?”

     I thought it was very nice of him to ask, and I said, “Yes, I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

     “Good,” he said. “I’m going to play some tones in your ears.  Sometimes, you’ll hear tones in one ear or the other, sometimes, in both ears. But when you hear a tone, push the red button on the table in front of you.” For the next several minutes, I sat listening intently, and pushing that little red button every time I heard a tone. Sometimes, the tones were clear as a bell.  Loud. Easy to identify.  But some of those tones were softer than the tick of a watch. I had to strain to hear them. After two or three dozen pushes on the button, the doctor spoke again.

     “That’s great.  Now, I’m going to give you a series of pairs of words. I’ll say words like, ‘Snooze’ and ‘Lose’ and I want you to repeat them for me.” I said, “Okay,” and then the contest started.  At first, it was so easy.  He’d say, “Beat, heat,” and like the obedient patient I was, I’d say, “Beat, heat.”  It was so easy, I hardly saw it as a test (or maybe heard it as a test.) But, (as tests often do,) things got more interesting as the pairs of words kept coming.

     I mean, when he said, “Rib:fib,” I know I said it back to him perfectly.  But sometimes, he just wouldn’t ‘speak up,’ if you know what I mean. He’d say, “Check,” and then another word. It was either ‘speck’ or ‘heck.’ Heck, man, I couldn’t distinguish which word he was saying. I asked him to repeat himself, and he said, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ And I said, “Well, could you just speak up a little bit,” and he said, “No, I can’t do that, either.”

     And so, I’d guess.

     I mean, when he said, “Bill, shrill” — or, “Bill, thrill” or “Bill, mill,” I couldn’t exactly tell — I’d just take a stab at it. But somehow, I knew.  Deep in my heart.  Deep in the recesses of my inner ear, I knew I was flunking that hearing test.

     After I finished my lonely ordeal, I sat with the doctor in his office, (which was a lot roomier than the hearing test booth) and listened to him tell me about the results. I could understand him perfectly.  He talked in a raised voice, as if he were talking to someone half deaf.  “The results of your test are pretty conclusive. You’ve lost a considerable amount of hearing; you have a fifty-percent loss of hearing in both ears.” Alas, the reason he raised his voice as if I were about half deaf was that, well, I am about half deaf.

     And that’s how I came to wear hearing aids.

     Now, when my wife speaks, I can ‘hear’ every word she says. That still doesn’t mean, of course, that I ‘get’ every word.  Sometimes, my batteries need to be changed in my hearing aids.  And sometimes, sometimes I positively know she’s saying something. It’s just that I still can’t tell for certain whether she’s asking me how I like her new ‘dress,’ or asking me, ‘Who made this ‘mess?’  The other day, I could have sworn I heard her say, ‘Look at that hawk.’ Turns out, upon further clarification, that what she really said was, “We need to talk.”

     I guess I’m glad I have to wear hearing aids.  God knows I need them.  (My wife knows I need them, too; she’s known I’ve needed them for years, but she was too sweet to say anything. At least, I don’t think she was saying anything.) I have come to appreciate the fact that in my married life (and in my spiritual life, too) the fact that I am aware I am being spoken to doesn’t necessarily mean I have a clue what’s actually being said.

     Sometimes, I could swear I hear my wife asking me, “Are you comfortable?” And then, I say, “Yes, thank you. I’m very comfortable.”

     And she says, “What did you think I said?” and when I tell her, she says, “That’s nothing like what I said. It doesn’t even rhyme! What I said was that I could use your help with the dishes.”

     But that’s not the worst of it.  Sometimes, I could swear I hear the voice of God — quiet, still, small — almost in a whisper, saying, “Are you comfortable?” And I say, “Yes. I’m very comfortable, thank you.”

     And then, God says something after that. But I doubt very much if it has anything at all to do with how comfortable I am.

The post How I Came to Wear Hearing Aids appeared first on Ken Jones.

    Just like that.

    Simple, for God.

And His face lit up.

And all of heaven must of noticed.

And God surely must have smiled, as he said “Good.” 

Day after day, God created.

    Stuff like the sky, the birds, the fish. Even a man.

    Carefully, he sculpted and fashioned and touched the days.

And at the end of every day he created, he looked back at his work,

    And he surely must have smiled, as he said, (right out loud so anyone could hear,)

“Good. This is good.”

No, there’s not a thing wrong with calling a day “good.” God’s done it, lots of times.

But Good Friday? I wonder?

    There’s not a lot of good things to be said about Good Friday.

    Not a good walk up Calvary.

    Not a good joke the soldiers were laughing at.

    Not a good crowd.

    The naked shame.

    The smell of blood.

    The dim and dark light.

    The sad, redemptive sight.

And God seemed to be at a total loss for words.

No pronouncement or announcement, ‘Let there be light,” on that day;

    The Light, after all, was dying out.

Who knew?

    All heaven wept. 

    All hell broke loose, cheering.

Even the light, which had been around since “In the beginning …” couldn’t bear to watch.

    Noon, and dark as ink or sin.

    Light must have seen that this scene was not ‘good.’

And then, that Voice splits the air:

    “My God, my God ….”

And Light died out.

And God said nothing at all, as the thunder spoke up.

Good God.

Good Friday.

Good?

No, not good.

Perfect.

The post Good Friday: The Day the Light Stayed Away appeared first on Ken Jones.

    Thirty-three years old, and just getting started in life, and yet?

He found himself on that long walk toward Jerusalem … to carry That Cross

    The one being made, Made Just For Him.

Was He weary?

Was He already tired, on that long walk?

At thirty-three, was he already exhausted from more than three years,

    days and daze, spent trudging around God’s holy land, teaching God’s unholy people?

What must it have been like, for Him, in the days before that first Palm Sunday,

    as He continued that long walk toward Jerusalem?

The crowds would be loud. The palms would wave their splayed leaves,

    And the songs of innocent children would fill the air:

“Hosanna to the Son of David,” they all would sing, on that first Palm Sunday.

But not yet. The music couldn’t start just yet.

    He wasn’t there, yet.

The Guest of Honor hadn’t arrived. 

Still a few more days.

Still a million steps to trudge, up the path to that appointment with that Cross.

No need for Him to hurry toward ‘the fullness of time.’

No need to rush toward The Cross Made Just For Him.

For now, a walk would be sufficient.

Resolute as any sure thing.

A few more miles to travel; a few more days to wait.

The Giver of All Life. 

Possessor of that Infinite Gift.

Still a young man, and yet, beyond the age of eternity.

The sound of His sandals on sand.

The sound of that long walk … toward Jerusalem.

The post A Long Walk Toward “Jerusalem” appeared first on Ken Jones.

That statement contains a lot of ‘stuff.’ Wells make interesting metaphors, I think, for writer-types. Wells are deep, and the waters they contain were meant to be predictable, and refreshing, and ‘available.’ No one would want to come to a well that was dry as sand. And, no one would want to read a book that’s as dry as the paper it’s printed on.  Comparing wells of water to ‘wells of words’ creates pictures in my mind that I can easily identify with. The empty well, the ‘deep part of the well,’ the ‘refill at night’ and ‘the springs that feed’ the well — all of those metaphoric references resonate with my writer-self. Good writing takes good thinking. And distilled thought always needs to come as a result of fresh perspective that’s replenished on a regular basis.

Hemingway’s quote resonates with my ‘living-self,’ too. You don’t have to be a writer to see the importance of being ‘restored’ at regular intervals. I think most people understand the need for recreating, resting, measuring or meting out the moments we have to live each day in a way that will leave something ‘in the well.’ At the risk of mixing metaphors, running along in everyday life without paying heed to what’s left in the bottom of the well-spring of my life is not unlike my paying no attention to the balance in my checkbook, but writing checks to everyone I meet, hoping I’ve got money in the bank to cover them. Simply put: that’s crazy.

The most troubling part of Hemingway’s quote for me, however, is not the ‘well’ part. It’s the ‘sick’ part, the tragic part, the ‘verb’ part, or the ‘doing’ part of the quote. Read it again, and you’ll see. Hemingway, that giant writer and wordsmith and genius and tragic figure said in the first two words of his quote something that wasn’t exactly correct. He said, “I learned ….”  He said, “I learned never to empty the well ….’ Really? Really, did he learn?

I have a great picture of Hemingway on the wall of my office at home. I often look at it and wonder what his life and writing could have been like if he’d have learned to pay attention to the ‘well-ness’ of his life as carefully as he monitored the wellspring of his words. Such a sad and tragic man; such a sad and tragic life. Ended by his own hand; ended by his own neglect. He failed to allow his life to be filled at The Spring.

Today, I’m going out to the river and watch it flow by.

Today, I’m going to listen to birds, sing me a song.

Today, I’m going to do a ‘mark twain,’ a sounding of the bottom,  a measuring of how much water remains in the well called ‘me.’ And as I sit there along that river bank, I hope and pray to God … I hope and pray to The Well of Living Water, that I will have learned something important, again: Every day of my life, I need to practice ‘stopping.’ I need to stop the ‘doing’ of whatever craziness has come my way during each day, while there is still something left in the well, stop, while it is still ‘well’ with my soul.

The post Well With My Soul appeared first on Ken Jones.

A few days ago, people I’ve never met,

    nameless, faceless people who didn’t even know me

Did a rude and insolent thing.

    They stole from me.

They took my car.  Actually, they took my van.

Drove it, as if it was their very own.

Sat behind the wheel.

In broad daylight, and then, throughout the city’s night,

    They — those nameless, faceless ones who didn’t even know me

Took their pleasure; they took their leisure, as they took my van.

    They rode around the darkened streets of Oakland. They sat behind the wheel of my white van, the one with the left front light that is loose, and needs to be fixed; the     van with the drippy leak in the air conditioner, a leak that makes the floor carpet wet in the summertime, so it smells like musty socks.

I wonder?  Did they notice, as they started the engine, that my van — the one

    they drove, now, as if it were their own — I wonder?  Did they notice right away

    that “their” new wheels had balled tires on the front, and had already been driven 205,000 miles?

Or did it take them some time to notice the odometer?

Did they drive feet, or blocks, or miles before they heard the whine in the transmission?  (I need to have that looked at.)

    And as they went so far as to steal my van, did they notice the fuel?  They stole my van with an empty tank.  Did they gas-up before

    they went too far?

Did they listen to the radio?  Did they change the stations?  The music I listen to on

    my van radio?  Did they like it?  (I wonder about things like that; do you?)

Police called last evening.  “We found your car,” said the nice officer.

    “You want to come get it now, or pick it up tomorrow at the impound yard?”

‘Tomorrow,’ said I.  ‘Tomorrow will be fine.’

    And yet?  I’m not sure I want that white van anymore.

I hadn’t thought of it until the Little Woman brought it up.

    “I don’t want to ride in that van anymore,’ said the wife of my youth.

“Violated,’ said she.  “People I don’t even know have been sitting in those seats.  God knows what kind of people have been driving our van.”

And then I thought it, too.  (She often has thoughts about things before I do.)

Someone else has been riding in my car.

Someone else has been steering my wheels.

Someone else has been pushing my buttons; people I don’t even know.

I don’t think I like that very much.

Maybe I’ll just leave well-enough alone.

Maybe I’ll just walk away from that pile of junk.

Maybe.

But then, again, maybe not.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break in and steal …”  (Jesus)

The post Lost and Found appeared first on Ken Jones.