A friend of ours is an avid hunter; so much that he's been known to skip church occasionally during duck hunting season. He's well known in the church, so the pastor notices when he's not there. With a twinkle in his eye, our friend explained recently how he's prepared to handle pastoral questions like, "Where were you on Sunday?" He said he's named the duck blinds where he hides to hunt those birds. One is named "The Word." The other is named "Prayer." So when he's asked where he was on Sunday, he can simply answer, "I was in 'The Word,'" or, "I was in 'Prayer.'"
I was learning to ride a bicycle, and my dad was my teacher. Across the street from our apartment was a schoolyard as big as a city block. Like most city schoolyards, it was all concrete, no grass. In the middle of that big expanse was the only obstacle for a bike-riding rookie - a big old metal flagpole. But how could anyone run into that when he had the entire rest of the schoolyard to learn in? It can be done. There I was, wobbling along, trying to learn to keep my balance on two wheels with my dad just behind me. Suddenly I heard him saying, "Turn, boy." My hands were frozen to the handlebars and I was sure turning either way meant crashing on that hard concrete. Again, "Turn, son!" I was closing in on the flagpole. Now it was a desperate cry from the lips of a disbelieving father, "Turn or you're going to hit the pole!" Bonngggg! I hit the pole. I still have the chipped tooth to prove it.
Our friend had a medical procedure to repair what the doctor called "a hole in her heart." Then he told her that everyone is born with a hole in their heart. That got my attention. I called a longtime friend of mine who is a highly experienced and respected heart surgeon. He told me that before we are born, there's a hole that is the passageway for blood to enter our pre-natal heart. In most people, and I'm glad I'm most people, the hole heals up within a few days after birth. For a few, it doesn't go away. And it really needs to be repaired.
I got every baseball card but the one with my hero on it. When I was a kid, I'd go to the vacant lot near our apartment on the south side of Chicago and I'd collect old pop bottles. Then I'd go to the little store on the corner, trade the bottles for money and the money for as many baseball cards as I could afford. My team was the Chicago White Sox. My hero was an All-Star, Hall of Fame-bound second baseman named Nellie Fox. I got every White Sox player except one. I could never find a Nellie Fox card. Fast forward about 25 years. My nine-year-old son is now a determined baseball card collector. He has saved all his allowances for a while to go with me to a special baseball card show. At one of the first tables we visited, my son said, "Dad, look!" And there he was, under glass - Nellie. My Nellie! The card did exist after all. But being all grown up now and needing every dollar, I looked but I didn't buy. My son and I agreed to meet a few minutes later up front. He came with his hand behind his back. I said, "What did you get?" He looked up at me with those huge blue eyes, held out his hand, and handed me that Nellie Fox baseball card. Needless to say, I was a mess.
Our friend Joy has become a bit of an expert on moving. Her husband is a career Air Force officer, and that means seeing a lot of different places, having a lot of different addresses, and seeing a lot of moving vans in your life. We were talking the other day about their last move and what she considered one of the greatest gifts she's ever been given. It didn't have beautiful wrapping paper or bows on it. In fact, it was a dumpster! That might not sound all that exciting to you, but it was to her! She and her family had so much stuff to move, and everything they could get rid of, they didn't have to move. Someone said to her, "I've got this dumpster I'd like to loan to you for your move." Joy said she was overjoyed! She said there was something so exciting about the first thud of the first thing they threw into that dumpster. Then it was all about lots of thuds as they threw away mountains of stuff. They couldn't wait to go get more.
Some years ago I heard about an unusual experiment that some scientists conducted. The scientists wired a cage with low level voltage in the bottom of the cage, they put dogs in it and then they closed the door. They sent a current through. It wasn't enough to harm the dogs but it was enough to inflict some mild pain. You can guess the dog's reaction. They jumped, they barked, they howled. Well, they kept this up several times a day, but the reaction eventually changed. After a while the dogs barely twitched when the current went through the floor of that cage. They had gotten conditioned to it. In fact, the scientists then opened the cage door, sent the current through the floor and not one dog even tried to leave. It's as if they'd given up ever getting away from the pain. One last step in the experiment: they put a dog in the cage who had not been conditioned to the current and they left the door open. Well, they turned on the juice and the new dog knew exactly what to do. He ran right out of the cage followed by all the other dogs!
Three feet of snow! That was a weather record I didn't really want to participate in. But, sure enough, we woke up that cold New Jersey morning to three feet of snow that had literally buried the metropolitan New York area. Even New York, the city that never sleeps, had been effectively shut down by the storm. There were cross country skiers in Times Square! Our little guy really wanted to go out in the snow that blanketed our backyard. So we bundled him up and we watched as he ventured into that white stuff. And he promptly disappeared! I went out after him - and, as short as I am, I just about disappeared myself. I almost became the Abdominal - I mean, what's that? Abominable Snowman. It took quite a while for that snow to become manageable and for life to return to normal. And it wasn't the last snow dump of the winter. But for those of us who have lived through some pretty long and tough winters, there is this one word that sustains us through it all. You know the word - spring.
When I was a kid, "Nautilus" was Captain Nemo's submarine in a Jules Verne novel. I knew that because Walt Disney put it on TV. Then "Nautilus" became the name of an early nuclear submarine launched by the United States. But I just recently saw a nautilus when we were at Ocean City, New Jersey. No, it wasn't a submarine. It was the original nautilus - the little sea creature with the fascinating shell. We actually saw a lot of nautilus shells in little shops. We bought one for our living room. It's real smooth on the outside with stripes on it, and it's bigger than my hand. To me, the nautilus shell is shaped sort of like a big, shiny human ear, or maybe like an unborn child in the womb, if you can picture that. The original inhabitant is gone, but his fascinating shell-house remains. When you cut a nautilus shell in half, it reveals the life story of the one-time inhabitant. At the center is this circular chamber with a wall around it. That was the original home of a little bitty nautilus. There are circular chambers all the way to the outer edge of the shell, and each chamber is a little larger than the previous one. That little sea creature kept outgrowing his shell, so he left it behind and moved on to the next chamber - and chapter - of his life.
It's a very impressive new bridge. We saw it recently as we traveled near the Ohio River. As you look at it from the city where we were staying, it appears to be complete. But when you go a few blocks and you look at it from downriver, some additional information becomes apparent - important information. It's only partly completed. It will get you part way there - but then it will drop you in the river.
When I'm on the road - which is a lot of the time - I really need my cell phone. For all the dropped calls and dead spots and interruptions, a cell phone really can be a tool to keep vital communication going. So every night I go into a motel, I faithfully take my cell phone and the power cord to recharge it from an AC outlet. Most days that little guy gets a workout and, just like the guy who uses him, he's pretty exhausted by the end of the day. Wouldn't be interesting if people had bars registering how much power they have left like a cell phone does? Not long ago, I got up and I turned on my phone, anticipating another day of needing it a lot. And it was virtually dead. OK, what's the deal? A power outage in the night? Nope. An owner who's a "dufus." Oh, I had the cord plugged into my phone, but I forgot to plug it into the wall!
