Make the call...

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God,

they are the sons of God

- Romans 8:14, Bible

  

Sometimes…maybe more than sometimes, we need a little help.  Often it doesn’t really take much, or at the least it doesn’t appear to take very much.

It had been one of those days…a fair number of things to do, but the ‘…get up…’ seemed to have gotten disconnected from the ‘…and go!’

The call…

“Hi, Ted Dreisinger,” I said.  “Hey Ted, it’s Joanna.”

Joanna! Every time I hear that voice, my heart warms right up.  You know the feeling…the one you can’t quite put into words, because it has gotten buried deep enough that it’s just a part of you.

The context…

“What do people call you?” I had asked.  “They call me ‘Coop,’ ‘Jo,’ ‘Jo C.”

“I think I’ll call you Joanna,” I said at our first meeting, and that is what I have done over the last six years or so we have known each other.  Joanna, a young woman who entered my life, and before long found her way into my heart…there is a difference, you know…there is a difference.

The first call…

“Hello, my name is Joanna.  I’m a friend of Scott’s.  You and I met last year with a group of Scott’s students.” 

Joanna? Joanna? In truth, I couldn’t place her.  “Hi Joanna,” I said, “What can I do for you?” 

“I’ve been working with Scott for the past couple of years, he’s leaving the university and I think I need a little more.  Would you be interested in mentoring me?” she replied.

“Well, hmmm, ah, I don’t know.” I thought to myself.  While I had done a fair amount of this in my life, it was my first ‘cold call.’  I was faced with one of those ‘yes’ and ‘no’ situations, which have become familiar in the landscape of my life.  You know: ‘no’ – nothing happens; ‘yes’ – maybe nothing, BUT possibly something.  That afternoon, I decided on the ‘yes.’  So, I said, “Why don’t we meet for a cup of coffee and see whether we have a fit?” 

“Scott told me you were an early riser,” she replied, “How about Saturday morning around 6 at Einstein’s on the corner of Crooks and West Big Beaver in Troy?” 

“Great,” I said, “I’ll see you then.”

What’s behind the door?

I had no idea what was coming, who this young woman was, or whether anything might develop.  The only thing I knew for sure was Einstein’s made a pretty good cup of coffee.  In the early morning hours…I like a good cup of coffee!

I got in a little before six…it was dark, and as the clock struck the top of the hour, in walked a tall, athletic looking, and as I would find out pretty quickly an extremely bright young woman.  It was an easy identification…we were the only two in the place.

Over the next several months we met biweekly and I came to appreciate how thoughtful and inquisitive this ‘human curiosity’ machine was.  We went through a series of business exercises and like the unrelenting draw of gravity’s pull found ourselves becoming friends…real friends.  The neuro-bio-psych people say, for people to develop relationships, they have to agree to jump into the same ‘Limbic Brain’ boat and let the common, uncharted current take them to a new destination. 

Our conversations drifted to life and humanity, and religion and politics and more.  As many a writer has said, in many ways…we found so much more in common than exception.  Yes indeed, you might say we found a collective ground of love and respect, and it was very good.  It was, by most accounts a strange mix, an old white guy from the Midwest and a young inner city African American woman…but here we were!

That was then…

The years have passed, and since we have been in Southern California, Joanna has visited with us several times.  Circumstances have changed some.

Joanna no longer lives in Detroit, but Germany where she is a buyer for Daimler-Benz.  She took a junior buyer job in Detroit and did so well, Corporate invited her to come to the home offices to work…and there she is.

For some universally cosmic reason, Joanna felt led to give me a call.  Why?  Just because!  For an equally universally cosmic reason, I needed a boost for my day.  However that thing works…she followed the leading, picked up the phone at the end of her day – 9 hour time difference – and called just to see what was ‘up.’  Before her call, it wasn’t me – ‘up’ that is.  After the injection of human spirit?  I was ready to go.

Looking for the point…

Many years ago, when someone drifted through my mind, I wrote or called them. Usually it was uncomfortable, because I really didn’t have anything in particular to say - I would just reach out.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, I still follow the gentle tugging in my mind.  While I don’t really understand how this works, I know that it does and almost always has enriched me in some way.  I have often found the recipient responded that the card or call was just what they needed.

Last week, I was the one in need…Joanna made the call.

We are all part of the fabric of humanity…we are all connected in many ways we simply do not understand.  One never knows when someone in our world of connectivity needs a bit of support...a smile, a word of encouragement, a note, and yes a simple call.  Sometimes those things change everything.

If you have a thought…why don’t you drop a note or make a call…you may never know what it meant…then again, you might be pleasantly surprised!

- ted

Passing the baton...

“Realization may come at the speed of light, 

Clarity? It comes at the speed of dark…”

- anonymous

It was early in the day.  She stood at the window, as she did every morning, in every season, staring at Lake Ontario.  The hot tea in her cup, only slightly sipped, cooling on the windowsill to her side.  She could easily have been a sentry on early morning watch, straining at the horizon for any movement, any clue to impending danger.

She wasn’t, of course, she was simply Martha Jackson, preparing for the day as she did with clocklike precision every morning…No, she was more than that, she was my grandmother – “Nana” – an austere and mysterious woman, built like a Slavic factory worker, as combative as a human being could be…and as gentle as a lioness tenderly watching over her pride.

It was the time of day when she gathered herself, the time of day she considered what she expected was coming, the time of day she would humbly ask God to forgive her for the sins of the days gone by.  No priestly confession…she was, after all, a Protestant.  Her confessor the Almighty, and as she knew in her heart – like the rest of the world – the list was long. 

This, of course, was a mystery to me.  All I saw was the woman staring out the widow, apparently catatonic…an almost palpable bubble surrounding her, loudly proclaiming: DO NOT DISTURB!

I never saw her at the beginning of this morning routine…5AM, in those days, seemed unnatural.  The summer I lived with her and got ready for work, I would catch her toward the 6 O’clock hour as she ‘returned’ to the window from whence she had begun her early morning journey…her face and spirit serene. 

I didn’t understand why she did this, I mean, what was there to see?  There appeared to be nothing!

It’s hard not to think about her, from time to time, sitting in the cool morning air…coffee cup still warm in my hand. If it weren’t such a good time to prepare for the day, the coffee would still be hot as I finished it, but this is the quiet time, the time before the day begins…the time for rebirth…the coffee seems to have instantly chilled as I slipped away for ‘just a moment...just a moment.’  While Martha Jackson was and remained a bigger than life enigma to me, the early morning ritual seems to have been passed on through her genetic code to me.

Faith was important…

What I came to understand later in my life is that my grandmother was simply slipping into her closet to pray.  She was a religious woman, somewhat of a paradox considering her often hard exterior, but she believed the scriptures and did her best to follow them.  She knew she had things to work on, and her discipline of reading the scriptures, helped keep her centered. God only knows what she would have been like, had she not taken those mornings to reflect!

There are so many self-help books in the market place, with lists and lists of things to do intended to make our lives better, yet we often overlook the simplicity of the scripture’s gentle reminder:

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen”

Matthew 6:6, 10-13 – Bible

These words in Matthew are powerful in their quiet simplicity.  Close the door of our minds from the hubbub of the surrounding chaotic world…quietly center ourselves…recognize the magnitude of the intelligent creative universe we call God…be grateful for the sacred human fabric of which we are all a part.  Remind ourselves to be diligent…to ‘eat the bread’ of knowledge and understanding…to help us avoid the pitfalls in life that so easily rob us or our dignity and brotherhood…to recognize we are indeed part of an extraordinary universe, where we have the ability to appreciate both God and its magnitude. “Amen – so be it!”

Who knows, other than blind obedience to her faith, what led my grandmother to practice this morning ritual.  Who knows at what point the practice turned from duty to habit and from habit to the constitution of her being.  BUT part of the absolute tapestry of her life it became.  At some point it was no longer, “I need to do this” or “I want to do this.”  It became “This is who I am.”

Like grandmother, like grandson…

While I don’t really have any idea what my grandmother was thinking in those early morning hours, I know this…the example of her dedication caught my attention, and dropped a pebble into the hydraulic fluid of my mind.  It took some time before for those concentric ripples made their way to the shores of conscious thought for me, but arrive they did, and here I sit.

This is the time of day when I gather myself, the time of day I considered what I expect is coming, the time of day I ask God to forgive me for the sins of the days gone by.  No priestly confession…I am, after all, a Protestant.  My confessor the Almighty, and I know in my heart the list is long. 

- ted

Need a miracle? - 'listen' to this...

“Reason is the slow and tortuous method by

which those who do not know

the truth discover it.”

- B. Pascal: Pensées

The coach yells, “Throw the ball!” – the teacher says, “If you divide the number ten by two, the answer is five.” – The lover whispers, “You mean more to me than life itself…” Each of these messages carries an idea, meaning and most surprising of all, feeling.

Surprising you say?? 

The system – in general terms…

The grunting sounds to the untrained ear are just that – nondescript noises.  Sometimes they come with greater or lesser intensity…. sometimes at faster – sometimes slower rates.  You’ve seen the cartoon of two people chatting in the presence of a cat.  One gal says to the other, “How do you think the elections will go this year?” The cat hears, “Blah, blah, blah, blah….”

The vibrations originate in the throat, are pushed out by the lungs with the expiration of air, and amplified by an echo chamber – the mouth.  Whatever the characteristic of the sounds; whatever the rhythm or musicality, the noises have meaning…when and only when, a receptor has been trained to receive them.

Emerging sounds come through a monophonic megaphone, and are best received when the noisemaker is pointed in the direction of the intended receiver.  The receivers, in this case, are small stereophonic microphones attached to the sides of our heads with cartilaginous sound directors channeling the clatter into the ear canals like whitewater tumbling down the Colorado River.  If the noise is not directed precisely at the receivers, these ‘sound catchers’ work in just enough asynchrony to help discern the direction from which the sound is coming.

How it works – in general terms…

The unseen noises, carried by pulses of vibrating air to be deciphered, work a little like this.  Energetic invisible grunts hit the eardrum like fingers tapping the surface of a bongo drum.  The intensity and specific rhythm of that thump cause three little bones on the other side of the ‘drum head’ to vibrate.  The last of these oscillating bones strikes a little snail shaped organ filled with fluid and little hairs – each tuned to a specific frequency from 20 cycles to 20,000 cycles per second. 

The vibrating fluid creates small waves that stimulate the little hairs, leading to tiny micro-electric currents that travel through organic wiring (neurons) to the decoding portion of the brain and VOILA the sound moving through space – no wires folks – has created an idea in our minds!!

Take a moment – this is very cool…

No one reading this needs to understand the system to use it, although it took centuries of study to comprehend it.  In fact it is such a routine part of life, we give it no thought at all…and yet, not only is it arguably the most important mechanical and physiological system for the communal human experience…it is even more fundamentally amazing than that.

Speaking and hearing communicate ideas, but more remarkably, this system transmits feelings: the passion of joy and sorrow, the expression of enthusiasm or caution, the transmission of love and faith…the intangibles.  

On balance, within very broad parameters, we create these noises, and in the most incredible of ways, others receive and make some sort of sense out of them…at least enough sense for collective communication and survival.

Before the advent of all of the technology by which we live our lives, this system of communication, in its most basic form, was the foundation for the rise and fall of empires…peace or war amongst peoples…the passing along of tradition…the ways in which we have found common ground…one of the most fundamentally profound reasons we survive. If the system were just understandable bursts of noise that transmitted ideas, it would be impressive, BUT this…this…It is miraculous!

It is easy to take for granted the normal day-to-day automatic systems by which we live our lives.  They permit us to look for things out of the ordinary…new ideas…new movies…new books…in general, simply news.

A small point to be made…

The origin of speech, transmission of thought or understanding seemingly indistinct noises, is not the focus here.  The point is that so much of what comes with the life we have been given is awesome and honestly, in moments of reflection, overwhelming! 

Our breath, the beating of our heart, the muscular engines of movement, the internal factories that process the energy we consume, and yes the way we communicate…all of it is stunning in the way it runs quietly in the background while we get on with our lives.  Unless something gets out of place, unless we suffer from some disruption of the system…some dis-ease…we simply ignore it.

The next time you hear the coach yell, a teacher teach or the love of your life whispers something intimate in your ear, remember what an amazing and unsolicited communication system we have been given…

Do you need a miracle in your life today?  Perk up your ears…you are living in one!

- ted