"This Shark don't gots no teeth left," I thought to myself while I was vacuuming. My machine isn't old, and the change happened all of a sudden. It just stopped picking things up. I had already flipped it over, emptied the cylinder, and thought about the ways that it might be clogged. Worse than a paper jammed copier, my vacuum just wouldn't work for me like it used to it. So, I put it away. I didn't want to go through all of the parts and break it if it was something simple. It's the same with life. Sometimes, it just isn't working for us, and we put it away hoping that it isn't really broken for good.
What we put away, especially when it is something that we use, eventually will need to be taken out again. It's how most things work. If I use, then I use it. However, putting things away doesn't heal the object or a situation. Often, our perception can heal it. In the middle of the lock down and Coronavirus pandemic, everyone has time to reflect on what is happening in the world and how they are living. I, like many others, have taken some time to do what helps me. I visit people. However, the people I usually visit are mainly, dead.
First, I visited the death in a wonderful little cemetery. My prayer time at cemeteries has provided solace to me when the world around me has become chaotic. Everyone dies. It is inevitable. I am usually taught something while in the cemetery, which is one of the reasons why I visit them so often. When I miss people, whom have died, I visit the dead. My friend, Charlotte Weidel, passed in 2018. I miss her greatly from time to time. While walking through the cemetery, I turned my head and saw on the back of a tombstone: trust in the Lord with all your heart. Prov 3:5 -- you are where are in the right place. Charlotte's consolation in all of life was this very thing: you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. She learned this from teaching the piano.
When I doubt about living in the part of the country where I do and connecting with the parts of the culture that I do, I miss her. I am brought to this understanding of being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. This kind of discipling is what can bring people together while they are apart. They live with us as points of revival. Some would say that it is the person looking and helping from the beyond. These revival points are meant to console and lift us up, and at times, bring us into the community that we are used to and know. Others call this listening to the wind.
A man named Charlie (who is not dead as far as I know) first told me to listen to the wind while I was a camp counselor in South Dakota about twenty years ago. While my life is much different now and highly psychoanalyzed, his three lessons to me have never gone away: 1) listen to the wind, 2) beware of people who say "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" (meaning the Native Americans in America), and 3) if you need anything, find the Masons. Since having moved, I have met more Masons that I am aware of than before and have been listening to the wind more than at other times, often in cemeteries. What Charlie taught me is true. The wind will tell you, Masons will help you, and enemies appear.
This natural connection to the cycle of life brings the fear that people have to a pause. It stops the race that we live in the world every day. Pausing as we are asked to do in the American lock down is a time that can be used to reunite with our communities, to work with our creativity, and to find the points that inflame life within us. It can light our inner fires to reconnect. It can cause us to be centered again. It can cause us all to be rooted in gratefulness that we are well, that others are being cared for, and others (like me) are bringing the supplies that we all need. I am blessed that am still getting to, at least, drive by the cemeteries that I have learned to traverse through to listen to the wind and see the beautiful architectural buildings that others are not able to enjoy right now.
We are challenged at this point to put away our fears and desires to be in the world to take care of ourselves and our families. We are challenged to be separated from our faith communities, and most minister of every kind are now televangelists, in their own traditions to bring unity and peace, when a large majority of them find it to be substantially sad to be so. Communities are learning to lead themselves and study for themselves, at times through Zoom together. Our daily zooming around has been placed online to Zoom while resting. Perhaps, we need this time.
This revival time to rest -- an introverted revival. This odd responsibility blessing to care for one another as we have been called to do. May this responsibility that we've always had be a focus for us at this time. May it help to revive us as a community. It turns out that reviving one another and the vacuum does have teeth. We just need to push the power button completely in the direction that it needs to be for thriving and reviving.
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