DON’T WORRY – BE HAPPY

 

DON’T WORRY BE HAPPY

 

 Overwrought frenzied sports fans worry to the extreme. Victory is a cause celeb. Pharmacies report that over the counter stress medications skyrocket during the World Series, NFL playoffs, Stanley Cup finals. Of course, pain inhibitors such as Johnny Walker and Jameson are likewise much in demand during these stressful times.Stomach churnings continue unabated throughout the playoffs even though the game’s final results are beyond the control of rabid, diehard fans.  Conversely, in the event of a victory, delirious city wide celebrations are seen as an entitlement and are intended to dispel any and all types of life’s worrisome concerns.

 

 Worrying can be an avoidance tactic.  It can be an attempt to avoid anticipated, potential threats from a wide horizon of concerns.  The dour, pessimistic, drum beating, bomb throwing nay sayers are experts at worrying.  Hunched shoulders, furrowed brows, shuffling sandals telegraph body language signals which saye “ I am a committed worrier”.Some see themselves as responsible to carry the weight of the world for everyone, everywhere, all the time.  No problem, issue, circumstance is too small or immense to be added to their compendium of life’s troubles.  Like beasts of burden, they diligently carry their perceived load with them 24/7.

 

 Dromedaries crisscrossing hot, moonscape like deserts from Saudi Arabia to Iraq do so with a definite purpose. They have a goal, a destination which, when reached,  ultimately relieves them of pain and discomfiture. This parallel is absent with our worrying brothers and sisters.

 

 Feel like the Scrooge of this generation? Overburdened? Underappreciated? Alone and adrift in an ocean of confusion while being fearful of what tragedy waits in the darkness of the storm to crash over our personal seawall?  There is hope.

 

 Six inches of snow cover the frozen surface of northern lakes spreading a Norman Rockwell like palette of glistening white stars. The environs are quiet, slumbering, and reflective of God’s presence. The crunch of our snow boots trekking across the tundra faintly interrupts the silence. Want to commune with the deity? This is as close as it gets.  He stands smiling, waiting directly in our path. Yes, waiting.  The silence of this holy moment turns us into intense listeners. Listening for what? Undefined, mystical, supernatural, this unexplainable symphony of silence envelops us as we hesitantly consider venturing deeper into the unknown of nature’s living room.

 

 Simultaneously a solitary, freezing black crow clutches onto the upper limb of a leafless oak which towers above us and leans forward over the lake’s embankment.  Is the crow’s presence a coincidence? Facing the shrouded winter sun the bird and tree share a life long symbiotic relationship.  They sustain each other throughout nature’s ever revolving seasons. The crow calls, pauses then listens for a reply.  Calls again, listening as his gravely voice ricochets off the frozen lake. Lift off! Acceleration occurs rapidly  over the lake. The image is  a minute black  speck flying on a frozen white canvas. This bird, with a lineage spanning generations delivers a survival message to us of eternal, continuous optimism. Are we listening or do these beckoning sounds fall to the frozen earth unheard, disregarded as we trek onward?

 

Through the crow, nature has encouraging us to reflect deeper into our inner selves.. Transparent clues show us the way to dismiss worrying and how to thrive with an air of optimism. Do we listen, in attentive silence, to the soul of God when it’s just Him and us in the wooded terrain adjoining the lake? A rare opportunity awaits us. Let us take a risk  by unburdening  our worrisome ways and let Him take our troubles. Each is resolved in His time, in His way.

 

 A magic five letter word is suspended in the cold arctic air chaffing at our exposed face – TRUST.  Do we have the courage to listen and, like the crow before us, embrace this powerful problem solving elixir?

 

 

 

 

WORLD CLASS SILENCE

The humanness of animals or is it the

animalism in humans?

Humans have a soul – a deference for right and wrong.

Animals are instinctive, sly, honed for survival.

Evolution has sharpened the differences – or magnified

the similarities?

Silence – does it exist in our two environments?

Groups of “social trekkers” who crash through woodlots on their Sunday

afternoon walks frequently  talk loudly, laugh incessantly, and are

generally noisy intruders. There is an OBVIOUS lack of  appreciation of

being present in the secluded home of feathered and furry out of doors

residents. Noisy, always noisy, these aliens to nature’s realm are devoid of an

appreciation of the benefits to man and beast associated with  silence.

Oh yes, there is cacophony in the  animal world: rutting season, migrational

passages, the horrific life and death battles taking place daily between

hunter and stalked.   These outcries blend into the larger fabric of life on the

plains. 

Just the right note is sounded, the opera of life is exactly on key.

The absence of dissonance is remarkable.

Which returns us  to silence.

Listen intently in the oak stand on a   mountain side venue in which every

 sound, each noise is part of an Integrated symphony… composed, conducted,

 and played by the instruments of nature, may indeed

be an orchestra of silence.  The music of nature is at such a perfect pitch, so

soothing, that  our capacity to hear/interpret/comprehend  is stretched to the

 limit.

 The creator’s way of protecting and celebrating the deity’s own.

A view from a differing side of the oracle’s temple ­ which differs from the

common understanding –nature’s symphony is a complement to our senses. It

 soothes as does the vaporization of sound we call silence.

Silence – with a twist, a variation on the theme: given to us as a gift by the

Great I Am.