The Cocoon

Published in Decision Magazine © 1988

       I've trapped myself into this one, I complained to myself. if only I had planned ahead...called earlier in the week. 

        NO ONE HOME! seemed to echo back after six or seven rings at the other end of the line.  Each additional attempt at telephone calls began to build my frustration.   

        Only one of several calls had been fruitful, but the people were so busy they could not make the ten-mile trip to pick me up.  The rest of the one-sided attempt reminded me that friends were either at family celebrations or out of town for the holiday.

        I was stranded.  His orders had been strict -- NO DRIVING!  The doctor had sternly advised that the surgery on my shoulder would be useless if I damaged it before it healed.   

        Even the singles' dinner after the morning Thanksgiving service was out of reach.

        Letting out a big sigh, I watched the afternoon breeze wave the palm trees outside my front windows.  The rays of bright sunshine failed to penetrate my loneliness.  

         There, in the middle of a window pane, was a single cocoon, spun while I was away in the hospital. As I watched the wind nudge him back and forth, it seemed as if its own lonely existence mocked my own and that served to only deepen my depression.

         "Thanksgiving," I heard a radio announcer say in the background, "A time of family togetherness...a time of good food, eating, and cheer."            

         I knew he was reading from a script, but I was growing tired of hearing what Thanksgiving was supposed to be like. And I hated him for that.

        I stood there for a long time watching the red second hand of my kitchen clock creep relentlessly around a face that now showed dinner time.  Almost as a matter of habit I pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and shoved it into the toaster oven.

          On my way to the easy chair, I finally silenced the announcer before he could start another cheery speal.   There wasn't much on TV and the last thing I wanted to watch was holiday parades and hear about the fun everyone else was having.   

        I plugged in a cassette of Christmas carols.  Perhaps the change of music would take the edge off the holiday blues that threatened to drag me deeper into its clutches.

          Feeling sorry for myself, I dropped with a thud into the chair and allowed the lush music to fill the room.  But the sounds of a choir singing "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" 

clashed with my present circumstances.  Now I had no where to run. 

        My eyes strayed across the small apartment I loosely called "home."  A madcap array of magazines, books and unopened mail mirrored futile attempts at one-armed housekeeping.                 Plastic hospital equipment and medicine bottles lay strewn across the dinette table.  Dishes overflowed the sink and grew into a mountain on the counter.  A checkbook and calculator made an odd-couple, married to battle the mounting stack of unpaid bills and meager Christmas list.             Even the fish tank gurgled uselessly atop the TV set.  Though filled with water, the last aquatic inhabitant had expired while I was away in the hospital the previous week.

        Then my heart received a jolt which gave birth to deep despair.  Smiling back from a gold-framed picture atop the stereo was a trio of smiling children.  To these kids I would never be more than a part-time parent.  Divorce had ripped apart a family that should be gathered around my table.   

        All of the unanswered "whys" of the past two years clawed at the corners of my mind.  Independence and spiritual confidence fluttered away as that old familiar feeling of being shuffled around on a divine chessboard covered me like a fog.

        Oh, God,...I thought I was past all this!  I thought we had buried these old hurts.  Must this holiday be another time for them to come out and breathe once more?

         As my shirt dampened with tears, a calm voice spoke from within a secret chamber of my heart.  Here in times past, I had often invited the Psalmist to sit and share the anguish of his stormy days.  It seemed as if he were the only one who could understand my bouts with despair as I listened to the agony of his soul.  He was familiar with those paths of hurt I now trod

in the valley of loneliness.   

        And yet the lessons he learned in those hours of personal pain seemed to give me a spark of hope that someday I too would walk in the light; that laughter would again flow from a bubbling heart that had been clogged by rejection and self pity.  Bounding off those tender heart walls, his words now admonished, "Be still...trust...wait."  

        Quietly, and with a gentle overwhelming power, came new words, "Look around you again."   

        Through my tears I focused first on the blue Cookie Monster cookie jar, with bulging black eyes, which commanded the top of the kitchen counter.  One distant Christmas morning it had been a gift from some dear friends.  That same couple had recently expressed their continued concern by visiting me in the hospital. 

        Then there were the curios of a recent trip to Haiti.  Millions around the globe this day would continue to starve without the benefit of even a single crust of bread.  While my TV dinner was no feast, its feisty aroma reminded me I was blessed indeed.

         Even the hospital equipment brought back memories of a room-mate who, following a near fatal car crash, had for seven weeks been strapped in a prison of sheets and traction equipment.  While my injured shoulder was temporarily an inconvenient handicap, this man stood a good chance of never walking again.

        But my tears turned to drops of crystalline thankfulness as I gazed at the bouquet of red, pink and white carnations by the children's picture.  Tiny hands had eagerly delivered them in crumpled green paper to my hospital room.  Almost at the end of their life expectancy, they still seemed to shout, "Daddy, we love you!"   

        My children had never been kept from me.  While my ex-spouse had remarried, dashing all hopes of reconciliation, she had always allowed me to be with my children as often as I could manage.  They still knew their father loved them and I cherished every moment I spent with them.

        As a repentant spirit rose up within me my depression began to flow away with the tears.  "Forgive me, Lord, for complaining.  How easy it is to let my mind feed on the things I do not have.  Forgive me once again for demanding answers to my questions and changes in my circumstances.  I'm sorry for forgetting the promise of Your presence in the midst of difficult times."

        I had discovered, in those few moments, that the very objects which fueled my loneliness were transformed into trophies of God's care and faithfulness.  They had not altered physically, but MY inner focus had changed.  Each one could now be regarded as a stepping stone of growth in Christ since the days I had despaired of life itself.  With voices of another melody, my mementos now sang volumes about God's grace.

         Even that lonely cocoon was not silent as it now hung motionless on the dirty window pane.  The drab twig and silk sarcophagus faced a winter of chilling wind, but life was not dead inside that tiny chamber.  Alone and dormant, it was going through change.  God, in His infinite wisdom, was using the isolation of time to change that ugly caterpillar into a creature of beauty that would one day soar in the glory of spring.

      

       My lips moved as the thoughts of my heart tumbled out.  "God, thank you for my present 'cocoon.'  Help me to keep my eyes fixed on You and Your springtime which lies ahead."

- 30 -

 

The Rest Of The Story . . . 

 During World War I, a youngster came forward in a church service. 

However, it was a religious group that were strong on rules, regulations, and legalistic sermons about a harsh God. They treated the young man with snobbery and brushoffs. 

 He proved to be a master mechanic with a brilliant mind. Turned off by his brutal religious experience, the boy rebelled. As a teenager, he was frequently in trouble with the law for fighting and petty theft.

 His criminal career began after his dishonorable discharge from the Navy in 1923 for desertion. He and a friend determined to rob a local grocery store netting only $50.

 Incarcerated in the Indiana State Prison from 1924 to 1933 submerse him in a criminal lifestyle that would leave its mark on the American consciousness. He was surrounded by seasoned bank robbers who took him under their wing, planning bank robbers they would later carry out after they escaped or were released form prison.

 Now he and his gang made a name for themselves. Their exploits were splash across front page of newspapers across America. By July, 1934, radio broadcasts constantly heralded the deeds of Public Enemy #1. Wanted posters offered $15,000 reward, equal to almost $200,000 today.

 He made three spectacular jail beaks, once from Crown Point, the Indiana maximum security prison. He fashioned a gun out of a wooded washboard, blackened with shoe polish.Grabbing two Tommy guns and the Sheriff's car, he fled across state line, triggering the involvement of the FBI.

 Robbing banks in a half-dozen states and killing 17 people, he was now as notorious as the likes of Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Baker and sons, and the notorious Bonnie and Clyde. Arrogantly, he would call the FBI pursuers and mock them on the phone.

Eventually, his Chicago landlady turned him in for the reward. Coming out of a movie theater, 17 FBI agents and 5 Chicago were waiting in ambush. He reached for his Colt 45 revolver and tried to escape down an alley way. 

A hail of bullets ended his life and notorious career. He died in a dirty Chicago alley with seven dollars and seven cents in his pocket. 

His name was John Dillinger. His father was the minister of that legalistic church, big on "hell-fire-and-damnation," and short on the grace of God. 

And that is the Rest of the Story . . .

“WATCH YOUR MOUTH!”

Growing up the oldest of six kids, I was always a bit precocious. Ours was a vocal family. I quickly learned, after being an only child for the first three years of my life, I was going to have to be quicker, even louder, than my sibling competition.

I was never what most would call rebellious. I was busy, easily bored, without the electronic stimulation and addiction of today’s children. I was always eager to make my opinion known . . . loudly and passionately.

“Watch your mouth,” was a frequent warning given by my overworked, stay-at-home mother, herself a smart, vocal woman.

And when her frustration with her brood of five boys and one girl reached a boiling point, rather than physical correction, she loudly warned, “Just wait till your father gets home.”

It must have been confusing for my hard-working father when his children scattered like spooked chickens at the sound of his truck pulling into the drive way. I can, even now, hear his big sigh knowing he was going to have to make attitude adjustments to one or more of his wayward kids.

As I See It, our words are more than just sounds we use to communicate in infancy. As emerging young adults, it’s the words we blurted out that revealed our true intentions, motivations, and attitude.

My generation’s verbal expressions of frustration and anger were expected to done with respect for other people. We were taught to try to understand the thinking and motives of the targets of our criticism.

As I See It, much of the public discourse on ALL TOPICS is designed to offend in attempts to recruit the masses to one viewpoint or the other. Bullying is no longer reserved for the school playground. Social Media, as well as film and television entertainment, have been hijacked as bully pulpits to wound and silence the opposition.

That flexible muscle sitting behind your teeth has the power of any comic book super-hero to make a lasting impact of the lives of others. Some unappreciated sage once warned me, “Be sure to get your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion.”

One New Testament writer put it this way: “…take ships for instance. Although they are so large…they are steered by a very small rudder. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but makes great boasts. Consider this, a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” James 3:4-5

Like it or not . . . deny the consequences of your words spoken deliberately or off-the-cuff . . . your tongue has “the power of life and death.” (Proverbs 18:21)

I frequently joke, “I speak sarcasm fluently.” It is the innumerable ironies of life from which I draw for humor and laughs.

However, I must be just as eager to bridle my tongue when it comes to the humiliation of others. Like one psalmist of old, I need to say “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.” (King David, Psalm 141:3)

Our Angry Generation

Gun control advocate David Hogg appears to have become the poster boy for an angry generation. According to Wikipedia, “while a senior at Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, Hogg was on campus when the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student at the high school, started shooting with a semi-automatic rifle after pulling the fire alarm.”

Born a California native in 2000, Hogg is the son of a former agent of the FBI and a teacher for the Broward County Public Schools in Florida. He graduated in June after the shooting and turned his anger, not at the people who pull the triggers which kill school children, but at the gun rights of people who are legal, nonviolent owners of fire arms.

As I See It, there are few people exposed to such personal trauma who would NOT react when given a voice by the ever-present media. Hogg has become another pop-culture activist of whom artist and culture philosopher Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” (1968)

There are a number of adjectives used to describe this millennial generation. Watching all the political rage in the media coverage and commentary about protests and marches, ANGRY is certainly a fitting label. 

Generation Xers and Yers are angry about political winners and losers. They are distraught about the environment, non-vegans, abuse of women, human trafficking, the government, illegal alien rights, conservation of animals and trees.

What they don’t seem to be angry about are the rights of others who disagree. Civil disobedience, no matter it’s destructiveness of the innocent, is preferable to civil discourse. Many would fit right in with of the French Revolution mob rule which sent not only royalty but a host of personal enemies to the guillotine.

Whatever your values and convictions, there is someone on social media who believes you are wrong and unnatural. As I See It parenting today is a mine field. Fear of not being accepted by your peers is a powerful manipulator when trying to teach the future generation how to function in a society which harbors people from all walks of life.

Honesty is the casualty to social media bullying. Pushed to a frustration level, anger is the response, its lava burning all in its path. The children pick up this conflict response much faster than all the lessons on peaceful resolution.

Fear filled, angry parents are raising children in their own image.

When there is true injustice, anger is an appropriate response. Even the Bible endorses anger in a letter to the Christians at the church in Ephesus, “Be ye angry,.. “

However, the writer warns of its destructive potential; “…BUT sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” (Ephesians 4:26) Anger should be short term and never allowed to simmer.

Anger is the seed . . . and if allowed to take root, it bears a bitter, destructive fruit.  That is why an ancient sage warned against spending ANY time with volatile peers. “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person,” he said, “do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared.” (From the book of Proverbs 22:24-25)

The same sage apparently had personal experience with such hot-blooded people. “An angry person stirs up conflict, and a hot-tempered person abounds in many wrong doings. (Book of Proverbs 29:22)”

I certainly don’t have the secret to cooling the rage of this generation or the next we’re breeding in the caldron of hate. It’s a common emotional expression where the angered will not be satisfied until their will is forced upon the target of their vitriol.

It’s not political action or violent activism which will cool the fires of angry victims or protesters. Would it be a clique’ to say it will require the individual change of heart?  “Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil,” said the Sage (Proverbs 12:20), but “a good man shall be satisfied from himself. (Proverbs 14:14)” Then he was bold enough to proclaim, “Better a patient person than a warrior! (Proverbs 16:32)”
Cecil O’Dell Eads, who passed in 1993, has inscribed on his tombstone, “My brother was good at pissing people off.”

How do you want to be remembered?

How do you want your children remembered?

As I See It, ANGRY is a bad epitaph on any tombstone.

“FEED ME, SEYMOUR”

It started as a reluctant orchid. When Hercules Keating comes upon this obscure flower, he discovers it’s as carnivorous as an oversized Venus Flytrap.  It almost kills him.

Hercules is thus inspired to use the blood-thirsty posy to kill his overbearing aunt, whom he hates.

A story of revenge and hatred -- a 1956 short sci-fi story by Arthur C. Clarke -- made it to the big screen in The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman. This 1960 American black comedy focuses on a bumbling florist's assistant who cultivates a plant that feeds on human flesh. When Seymour accidently pricks his finger, he discovers his adopted sickly, odd-looking, potted plant has an appetite for blood.

He nicknames his flora-friendly Audrey Jr. after his human love interest. The plant quickly towers over its human keeper, dining on unfortunate victims who wander near it. Audry Jr. learns to speak, exerting a hypnotic effect on Seymour.

Then Audrey Jr. begins to bud. “Feed me, Seymour!” becomes its command over the anemic, reluctant florist.

How many of us have an Audrey Jr. we regularly cultivate and feed? Its manifests itself in our garden of opinion by hatred of something or some human advisory?

It starts as the cute plant of anger, but the more we feed and water it, the more carnivorous and demanding it becomes. Never sated, it drives us to hatred that endangers anyone it targets at the sacrifice of our common sense.

Hatred is that sweet, seductive belief that our rights have been violated. As we nurture and coddle this emotional pet, it screams our world view is endangered. Panic pushes us to knee-jerk reaction.

Gone are any good intentions. Action is demanded over any opposition; a crosshair replaces civil discourse. The personal rights of hatred’s target are immaterial. We recklessly justify our actions, as long as hatred is allowed to bloom and snap and consume.

We believe in OUR right of expression but not the rights of someone to contradict or disagree. As long the red fury of hatred colors our world, it seduces us, reducing us into justifying unspeakable acts against others:

·      A New York man tried to run over a campaign volunteer at a congressman’s re-election headquarters after threatening to kill supporters of the lawmaker and the sitting President of the United States.

·      A man stabs nine people including six children, at a three-year-old’s birthday party. Already having an extensive criminal record, all nine victims of this man were refugees from overseas violence.

·      An 11-year-old student in a Massachusetts middle school takes a screwdriver to his teacher’s throat during class.

·      Politicians and White House staffers are assaulted in their private lives by rabid opponents who would be highly offended if the tables were turned. These protesters are the manipulated off-spring of another’s hedge of hatred.

·      A Texas man bits off the tail of a rattlesnake (to silence the snake’s rattles) and released it into his neighbor’s RV after the two got into heated argument.

Your own Audrey Jr. will steal your attention, demanding your complete focus. It may reward you with a temporary sense of justification and well-being.

However, stay under its control, you WILL EXPERIENCE its bite much like the South Texas man who was bitten by the severed head of a snake he had killed. He survived only after 26 doses of antivenom, where a normal victim gets up to four.

So, keep your hatred. Nurture it. Let it blow lava all over the people of your world. Some may even be ignited to share your passion.

Ignore the warning signs. When its vitriol distorts the normal reflection in your mirror, know you have become a toady Seymour from The Little Shop of Horrors.

You are no longer in control of your own creation.

Where Are the Cans? - Joni

I grew up in a small North Florida town, population under 100. Most of our socializing took place at church, in public school, or at the infrequent fires which broke out in the woods or someone’s wood frame house during the winter.

“Hi, Jim. How’s the kids and that new cow you traded for Henry’s sow and her eight piglets? How long’s it been since we last talked? Oh, yeah, the last fire down at the gas station.” (And they were next door neighbors.)

It’s hard to have secrets in a town where you can find out everyone business from the post-mistress who’d been on the job for the last 60 odd years?

Although most outsiders would have profiled my family as poor, in that small town I was the partaker of rich experiences living among a number of people with physical limitations. It was a common sight to see people with MS and other disabilities being lifted from automobiles to wheel chairs before and after church services.

But what captured my attention in those days was an I-Can person my own age. And her story continues today, defying the odds of longevity, productivity and happiness.

Born Joni Eareckson, October, 1949 in Baltimore, Maryland, she was the youngest of four daughters in an athletic, active family. Named after her father, John Eareckson had participated in the 1932 Olympic as an alternate for the U-S wrestling team and would be honored in 1996 as a Distinguished Member at the National Wrestling Hall of fame.

Joni loved outdoor activities; riding horses, hiking, tennis and most of all swimming. Misjudging the depth of the water, she dove into the Chesapeake Bay one hot July day in 1967. Tragedy struck. She instantly became a tetraplegic following a fracture between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae.    

Paralyzed from the shoulders down, Joni experienced all anger, depression, and religious doubts one would imagine. For such an active teenager, it must have seemed like hell on earth. Trapped in a body that no longer responded to the commands of her brain, she begged friends and family to help her out of misery.

During her two years of rehabilitation, Joni learned she could paint holding a brush between her teeth and began selling her artwork. With a little more effort, she began mastering writing, although now days she relies on voice recognition software.
Defying the odds, this I-Can person married a high school history teacher and coach. Ken Tada was a second generation born in the United States after his family relocated from Japan.
Joni Eareckson Tada reclaimed her faith during those first struggling years of rehabilitation. Her confidence in God has shown through her accomplishments as an author, radio host, and founder of Joni and Friends, an organization "accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community." To date, she has written over forty books, recorded several musical albums, starred in an autobiographical movie of her life, and is an international advocate for people with disabilities.

In addition to her already challenged life, Joni learned from medical professionals she had been diagnosed Stage III breast cancer in 2010. Her five-year treatment regimen would prove successful as she was declared cancer free in 2015. 

"Joni and Friends Radio," a five-minute radio program begun in 1982, can be heard each weekday on over 1,000 broadcast outlets in America and abroad. Most of her 48 books focus on the subjects of disability and Christianity. Several of them have been children's books, including Tell Me The Promises, which received the Evangelical Publishers’ Association’s Gold Medallion and Silver Medal in the 1997 C.S. Lewis Awards, and Tell Me The Truth, which received the EPCA Gold Medallion in 1998.

I’m confident the I-Can’ts battered Joni over the years. Having to rely on others for practically everything from personal hygiene to food preparation and transportation is a challenge to even the most agreeable person. 

When the I-Won’t pummels me, Joni is a contemporary I can compare my inconvenient troubles to.

Stay tuned for I-Can #2 - Carver and Racial Bigotry

Where Are the Cans?

It started again this morning about 5:00 AM. This canine soloist lives just two doors down, across the street in our small West Texas town.

Just about EVERYBODY in Sundown America owns at least one critter or two. Many have more than three. Somehow, largely due to the tender heart of my spouse, our own home has been animal orphanage and permanent foster home to six cats and dogs, down from a population of l0 which included birds.

We love animals. They frequently are sources for home entertainment, as well as anecdotal humor now that our three boys have flown the nest, . . . sort of.

I’ve never met this canine opera singer: can’t tell you the breed, it’s sex, or height and weight. I just know it’s not a howler when it begins the morning and evening song of its ancestors.

OwwwwOhhhOwwwOOOOOwwwww!

Such a tale of misery and woe. I can picture Edmond Dante’s, from The Count of Monte Cristo moaning his fate from his dungeon cell on the Isle of Elba. (A reference to classical literature to impress you. 😃)

There are days I feel as if I am surrounded by people who feel they are likewise trapped in their own prisons of despair. Some are cocooned in the consequences of their own making. Others have been wounded by the arrows from friends and family, many easy targets of the ever-present social media we can’t seem to resist.

If you spend much time listening to them, . . . and some have horrific personal scars they carry, . . . there seems a common thread running through their stories. First, it’s the painful, wounding moments that have frozen their emotions in time. Secondly, they are looking for sympathetic co-sufferers. Thirdly, “I can’t” peppers their conversation.

Even the most empathetic people I know arrive at a moment when the I Can’ts start to drag on their spirits. And if you start digging for possible solutions to their predicaments, it doesn’t take long for the "but, but, buts" to slap you in the face. Press any deeper and  it's easy to figure out “I Don't Want To” is the underlying truth. Wave after wave of I Can’ts will swamp even the most positive attitude.

Where are the I Cans? Where are the warriors who have overcome . . .

• Pain, physical and emotional
• Bad and failing relationship
• Physical disabilities
• Death of friends and/or family 
•  Racial discrimination 
• Religious prejudice 
•  Professional failure 
•  Limitations of aging

Pondering this, I took a tour of the mental portraits of I Can people I’ve collected over the years. Most I've never met, but their lives, the obstacles stacked against them, and their influence over total strangers have impacted my own story.

I started to list them of here, but realized each one deserves their own attention, carefully given.

Some lived and struggled and thrived over 100 years ago. Others are more my contemporaries.

Stay tuned for the six-pack of my I Can Collection.