Category: Miscellany

With four kids, one quickly realizes that there are many different kinds of dirty.

There’s the sandy dirt that falls off kid shoes and collects in the floorboard of the mini-van . Then there’s the caked, earthy dirt that coats hands and faces after a round of making mud holes and mud pies. Then there’s the red clay ubiquitous on sporting fields throughout the Southeast, the stains of which won’t come out of anything, no matter how many gallons of bleach is applied.

Gardeners and farmers have known this for, well, forever. Some soil is good for planting certain crops and plants, some not, and some requires rehab in order to be productive.

My green thumb has long ago proven to be black, and I kill more plants than I tend well. We were sprucing up the greenery around the house, and discovered that the dirt there was the hard clay variety. I had to use an assortment of pickaxes, shovels, and sticks of dynamite to produce a hole big enough for a geranium. I mixed the clay with good soil from other parts of the yard in a big pile in the driveway, and while doing so I noticed something very strange.

When mixed, a very small proportion of good soil would quickly turn a much larger pile of red clay into good, brown dirt that could go directly into the hole with the new plant. The small amount of rich, life-sustaining material rehabilitates a large amount of sterile, life-snuffing material.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened. Matthew 13:31-33.

I’m sort of nerdy, I guess. When you own a book called The Birder’s Life List and Master Reference, it’s not too difficult a conclusion to reach.

A conclusion, by the way, repeatedly confirmed by my family units.

Me: Wow! That’s a Crested Nuthatch!

Family Units: Dad, you’re a nerd.

Me: Look! There’s a Tufted Titmouse!

Family Units: Dad, you sure are nerdy.

So I provided my feathered friends a bird bath. Nothing too fancy; just a concrete bowl with some fresh water. When it’s really hot outside, and it hasn’t rained in a while, the bird bath is a popular bird destination. At times, the congestion at the bath encourages some fairly raucous disputes between the cardinals and the wood thrushes. Once the jays got involved, and I had to call in the law.

Mostly, though, it’s a single bird stopping by for a drink and a dip. Curiously, the birds don’t seem to mind whether the dip or the drink is first. As I sat on the porch watching the dipping and drinking (remember the nerd factor), I thought “That bird has no clue where that water came from. To him, it’s just there. He doesn’t appreciate what I’ve done for him.”

But then, perhaps the bird does know. Perhaps in his dipping and drinking he is instinctively demonstrating for me and all the other nerds that the water and all other good things have been provided, not by me, but by God who created them and us. And perhaps it’s not the bird who has no clue, but instead it’s me who hasn’t a clue where all the things I enjoy come from.

Truly, though, I – and you – do know that God has provided us many wonderful gifts.

Every good thing and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation or shifting shadow (James 1:17)

If you put on a pair of shoes and your feet hurt as a result, the problem could be one of two things.

It might be that that shoes are too small or are poorly made. In that case, get different shoes.

But you may experience podiatric pain because the foot is deformed — with bunions, corns, blisters, extra toes. In that case, getting rid of the shoe does not help; the next one will hurt just the same.

The foot must be reformed before any shoe will fit comfortably. This means scraping corns, resetting crooked toes, lancing boils.

This means pain, but ultimately all shoes fit better and the foot is healthier.

People sometimes speak of “throwing off the shackles” of whatever has previously bound them. When the shackles are alcoholism, drug abuse or government oppressors we know what it means to throw them off. Yet occasionally men talk of escaping the clutches of Christianity or ‘religion’ that has previously been a philosophical or moral oppressor.

Throwing off one set of shackles, however, merely makes us ready to be fit with the next. Those who manage to throw off one set of shackles find themselves bound to another, whether of his own choosing or not. It is not the release from improper bondage that is problematic, but the idea that once ‘freed’ we are autonomous.

The man who ‘escapes’ the shackles of Christianity, for instance, will then be bound by religion. The one freed from religion, bound by ‘spirituality’ of various kinds. From spirituality, moral consciousness. From moral consciousness, cultural expectations, societal rules, conventions, wealth, fame, standing, and so forth.

Man, because we are not God, will be bound by something. The question is merely whether we will be bound to the right Master.

Originally posted June, 2008.