The Warranty Expired

I have always thought of 1958 being a good year . . . an exceptional year.  That was the year that I was born.  That was the year that my wife was born.  We are pretty good people.  Nice people. The year 1958 was a good year.  Unfortunately, those of us born in this exceptionally great year are beginning to show our wear and tear.  Despite it all, I am wearing out.

Anyone in the family will tell you that I am lousy at buying cars.  In fact, they would say that I suck at it.  I have purchased more “lemons” than “gems” in my lifetime.  Especially when it comes to buying used vehicles.  I’m just not good at it.  It seems I always select that car that always needs something . . . some type of repair.  All vehicles wear out . . . usually six months after the warranty.

 

It seems like something is always needing to be replaced or repaired.  Earlier this week the wife was driving back from her water aerobics class in a nearby town when her dashboard lit up like a pinball machine.  Engine light!  Brake light!  Car going to blow up light!  Okay, not the last one even though it crossed her mind.   A justifiable panic attack set in.  I received several calls from her.  We cried.  We gnashed our teeth.  I cursed a lot.  We survived.  The mechanic told us it needed parts replaced.  Informed us that we might want to consider taking out a second mortgage.  All is well now.  The whole point of all of this is that the car was showing its age despite having been a great year for Subaru.

 

Like anything else . . . the human body can’t escape entropy—the “gradual decline into disorder”.  It wears out.  Even exceptional years like 1958!  And I hate it!

 

The wear and tear on my 1958 model is filled with the usual suspects.  The balding head of hair.  The fading eyesight.  The loss of hearing.  The migration of weight to the mid-section.  The wonderful aches of arthritis.  The achy feet.  Wear and tear, but no need for replacements.  But the body is letting me know that it’s feeling its years . . . that the warranty has expired.

 

For the most part I can handle it.  I can cope with it.  I’ve got hats for the balding.  Glasses for the eyes.  I turn the television up louder for the hearing—I believe in sharing with the neighborhood.  I wear baggy clothes for the weight migration.  I put up with the sudden attacks of arthritis.  I wear my Crocs at the end of the day for my weary feet.  Suffice it to say, I’m hanging in there.  I just turn up the volume of distraction like the radio in the car so I can’t hear all the complaining noise.

 

Most of the time it works.  I don’t worry too much.  I figure it is a part of aging and I am aging.  There is only one part of my anatomy that creates extreme anxiety when it comes to my body—the back.  The back worries me because I have seen too many others deal with back issues and it never turned out well.  Backs are the worst.  Guess who has been knocking on the door of my physical health.

 

My back.

 

About a week ago I woke up, jumped out of bed, and screamed.  Screamed bloody murder.  You would have thought I stepped on a Lego block.  Nope, it was my back.  Now it is true that this is not the first time my back has made its presence known.  Usually once a year it likes to make an unannounced appearance to complain.  Always the same way.  I somehow tweak my back while I am sleeping.  And it hurts.  I look like a 200-year-old trying to get out of the chair.  I must get on my hands and knees to pick stuff up off the floor.  I brace myself to walk up and down the stairs.  I must sit down to put on my socks . . . underwear and pants are not too far behind.  I scream and double over in pain when I sneeze or cough.  I can’t bend over.  That part of my 1958 model is sending me a message and I don’t like it.

 

If I knew how I did this to my back, you know darn good and well that I wouldn’t do it.  Not even my male stupidity and stubbornness would get in the way of avoiding this pain.  I imagine you are thinking that I should go and see a doctor.  Get it checked out.  The wife knows better than to throw that suggestion out.  As much as I appreciate my doctor—and she is a good one—that is where the anxiety sets in.  All the worse scenarios come flooding in when I think of all those people I have known with back issues.  The doctor would be the last resort.  When that time comes I will either crawl into her office or be wheeled in by the wife.

 

Normally the pain goes away in a week or two.  Just disappears and I go on with my life.  Until then the back is a pain in the . . . well, back.  It likes to fool around with my emotions.  For example, this morning . . . I carefully rolled to the side of the bed, sat up, put my feet down and stood up—no pain!  I felt wonderful!  I felt great!  I was cured and no one laid one hand on me or prayed over me.

 

Wrong!

 

Thirty minutes later, the pain was back with a vengeance.  Relishing its glory.  Crippling me.

 

Oh well, that is the price one pays for getting older even if it was a great year for that model.  I broke down and took an Aleve despite my aversion to it.  My wife suggested it.  It doesn’t agree with my stomach, but I took it.  I am not sure that it has been helpful.  Basically, it covers the pain but does nothing to take the pain away.  It is the medical form of turning up the radio.  It made the wife happy.  A happy wife is a happy home.

 

It is just part of getting older, this pain.  I just need to be patient.  Let it run its course.  See what happens.  I’m tough, just ignorant.  If I must, I will consider repairs since I can’t really get a new model.  Probably will cost a bundle since the warranty on the 1958 model expired years ago.  I hear the newer models are great, but expensive.  There isn’t much of trade in for 1958 models.  I guess I am stuck with this classic.  It is great when it is running.  The problem is that it doesn’t run like it used to. 

 

Oh well . . .

 

A Little Birdie Told Me

A little birdie told me . . . it’s spring.

Though Mother Nature is fighting it . . . it is spring.  The “signs” have all been there for a couple of weeks despite the alternating winter/spring weather duking it out.  Yes, it is Montana where the weather can change by the minute, but nature has been trying to tell us . . . it is spring.  We just need to listen better.

 

In his book, Voices in the Stones: Life Lessons from the Native Way, Kent Nerburn shares a story about an encounter he has with an elderly Native American man at a little café on a reservation on a North Dakota reservation.  The two of them talked and the conversation meandered into the topic of the “old ways” of life and how they had been taken from the Native Americans by the predominant “white society”.  The man shared a story about how in the “old ways” it was understood that the spirit of life flowed through everything . . . that all things were of a kindred spirit . . . that there was a relationship between all things.  Now they were gone.

 

The story as he told it:

“Things have really changed,” he went on.  “The old ways—the way I was raised—they’re gone now.  They took them away from us.”

 

He looked away and stared into the distance.  I had touched something deep in him.

 

“My grandma,” he said, “she could talk to the animals.  She liked to hang clothes out on the line, stand out in the sun and the wind.  She used to talk to the meadowlarks.  They would sit on the fence posts, and she would sometimes laugh and say things to them.

 

“I remember one day she got angry and threw a rock at one of them.  I heard her scolding it as it flew away.  A little neighbor girl died the next day.  Grandma must not have liked what the meadowlark had to say.”

 

He took a sip of his coffee and gazed past me almost as if I wasn’t there.  “I guess we forgot their language.  Or maybe they just don’t want to talk to us now.” (Voices in the Stones: Life Lessons from the Native Way, Ken Nerburn, 2016)  

 

All creation stories are different from culture to culture.  At the same time, they all have the same theme.  As I understand it, in the beginning God created the heavens, earth, and all that inhabit it.  Upon completion God declared that it was all good.  That it was God’s creativity and breath that set it all into motion.  That creativity and breath linked it all together.  It is all the essence and presence of God. 

 

Luther Standing Bear, the great Lakota chief, said: “From . . . from the Great Spirit there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, the blowing winds, rocks, trees, bird, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man.  Thus all things were kindred and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.”

 

I think that we have forgotten.  We are a part of creation . . . we are not the creation itself.  The world does not revolve around us, but that we are piece of the puzzle we call creation.  All of it together makes a whole and makes it holy. 

 

As I read Nerburn’s story of the old man’s grandmother, I could not help but to be jarred by his closing statement: “I guess we forgot their language.  Or maybe they just don’t want to talk to us now.”  There is no doubt in my mind that we humans are a forgetful group—history verifies that for us as we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.  What concerns me is that “they just don’t want to talk to us now.”  To me that signals that the relationship has been broken . . . that it has become too strained to sustain . . . that we blew it.

 

I love the outdoors.  Montana was always the ultimate embodiment of the “great outdoors” for me.  It was a big part of the underlying desire to move and live in Montana . . . that and the fact that there are only about six people per square mile.  An introvert’s wildest dream!  When I am outdoors, I feel the most connected to the holy . . . to the Creator . . . to God.  I also believe that I have a relationship with the outdoors and all of nature . . . that I have something to learn, to gain, to allow myself to grow and understand about all of creation.  I believe that we humans are intimately connected to creation—to nature, and that it has something to teach us about life.  Humans are not the “end all”.  Creation was around long before we humans showed up and was going quite well without us.  I believe that this relationship is necessary if we humans are to be fully who we have been created to be.  We are called to be “one” as Creation.

 

Thus, it saddens me to see the great disconnect.  Have we forgotten the language?  Probably.  Has creation decided it no longer wants to communicate—to talk—with us?  Again, probably.

 

I am no Dr. Dolittle.  I cannot talk to the animals . . . well, partially.  I think that my dogs understand me.  We talk.  I am greeted each evening with “aroooooo” from Birdie, our Borgie (Border Collie/Corgi mix).  She understands when I tell her to get certain toys, much to the amazement of my wife.  She communicates to me when she wants to go for a walk.  She sits at my feet and stares me down.  It is a stare that tells me, “Walk me!”  Quinn, the mini-wiener dog, has conversations with me all of the time.  She is not timid in letting me know that she is ready to eat or that she wants to go out.  She barks at me until I move.  I talk to her, and she barks.  It is often an enlightening conversation for me.  There is a relationship.  One I am thankful for because my pups take me for who I am.  There is definite communication there. 

 

I guess it would be nice to be Dr. Dolittle and have the ability to speak to the animals.  But the truth is . . . the critters are always talking to us if we are listening.  As we transition from winter to spring, it is the animals that convey the message that “spring is here!”  For me, the message is delivered by the aves or birds.  When I see the first Mountain Bluebird flitting around.  When the Sandhill Cranes start showing up in the fields.  When the first Osprey is perched on its nest.  They are telling me that spring is here.  The return of the Red-winged Blackbird. There is the first skunk in the yard.  The racoons start hitting the birdfeeders.  The bears wake up and make their presence known.  All convey the message that spring is here.  They are communicating . . . are we listening?

 

The rest of nature is talking too . . . maybe a little prematurely.  But that seems to be the case each year.  The grass in the yard is greening and growing.  Flowers and herbs are sprouting up.  Some trees are even getting buds.  The bugs have started showing up and making their presence as splatters on the windshield.  And the weeds.  I have seen the tell-tale signs of my neighbor’s angst sprouting in the mud . . . dandelions.  Nature is talking . . . are we listening?

 

I’ve heard people here and there comment about the fact that it seems that spring is coming earlier each year.  Screwy weather, they say.  They are right.  It is screwy weather, but it is also a definite message being sent if we are listening.  I blame it on climate change even though such a response typically gets me labeled as a “liberal tree hugger” by everyone else.  Looking at the craziness of the last decade’s weather and its severity    across the globe . . . creation is speaking and speaking with urgency. 

 

Way back in my teen years I remember the big push for ecology and things like “Earth Day”.  I remember commercials with Iron Eyes Cody—the Sicilian actor who made his career playing a Native American—as he paddled his canoe down a polluted river and shedding a tear.  Or the commercial of the grandpa walking his grandson along a trashed beach and having the questioned posed, “Is this what we are leaving our grandchildren?”  Creation . . . nature . . . was knocking on the door attempting to get our attention about the crappy stewardship of the planet we were practicing.  Now Creation is slapping us in the face to get our attention.  But are we listening?

 

Probably not.  Even if we were, I imagine it is with acute selective hearing.   We only hear and see what is advantageous to us. 

 

You see there are two sides to the story . . . at least for those who are going to base the story on the holy writ of their Christian faith.  In the Book of Genesis there are two creation stories.  There is the calendar story of the Creator creating something and declaring it a day and that “it is good”.  In that story the emphasis is on humanity having dominion over creation.  In the second story we get a folksier tale.  It is the Adam and Eve story.  Again, the Creator creates, but this time there is a different charge to the humans . . . be good stewards of creation.  One story emphasizes dominion over creation while the other speaks of stewardship—of relating to creation and taking care of it for the benefit of all.  Ever since people have taken one side or the other with everything in-between.

 

Dominion has won out most often.  That dominion has created the mess we are living in today . . . and it is a mess.  I’m no scientist, but I know that the average temperature has gotten warmer each year.  The weather patterns have shifted.  The storms are more severe.  Humans are gobbling up more and more of the earth.  We are dumping more and more pollutants into the air, water, and soil.  It is screwing things up.  The critters have been trying to tell us.  Nature has been trying to tell us.  The Creator . . . God . . . or whatever spark of the Holy that guides your life, has been attempting to tell us.

But we don’t hear . . . or we don’t listen.

 

As the old man said, “I guess we forgot their language.  Or maybe they just don’t want to talk to us now.”  Though he was lamenting the near genocide of his culture and its ways, there is a movement of recovery of those cultures and ways.  It is coming back slowly and can succeed if the dominant culture doesn’t bring down its iron fist of dominion.  It is up to the dominant culture to decide.  There is still time.  There is still time to learn the language.  Still time to listen.  Still time to change our ways.  Still time to embrace Creation, be good stewards, and live in harmony. 

 

We begin by listening.  I know it is true because a little birdie told me.  The question is . . . are you listening?