Saturday, September 14, 2013

Sick Images, Bible Colors, Loss of Control.

I. 
Driving home from work today the tune on the radio made me think of a song by Jars of Clay on an old album, If I Left the Zoo.  All I thought of was the tones of the beginning riff, and I thought I might look it up later.  Scratching my ear thoughtfully, a memory arbitrarily popped into my head from a movie I watched years ago, a passing comment in the script that my mind had quickly turned into a visual.  It was horrifically crass, and the fact that my mind contains this "memory" makes me thoughtful about the idea that we have one life, one mind, and the effects our choices can have.

Earlier in life, we learn about renewal and clean slates.  We learn that the morning starts a new day; that after a long winter, spring starts everything over: where leaves died and fell last year, new ones grow--fresh, perfect, unaware of last autumn's decay.  We learned that no matter how awful life felt at 9pm,  so tired from a day at the park we were crying our childish little eyes out, we would wake up in the morning full of energy and ready to start a new day of discovering.

For some, innocence drains away early in life.  Innate hope is battered by cruel experiences, and at far too young an age, they lose expectation.  For others, the knocks are not as hard and farther between.  But for everyone, there comes a time where the body, if not the mind, realizes the inevitable-- the cycle of renewal does not go on forever--not under the sun, or materially speaking, anyway.  Like rechargeable batteries that eventually wear out, skin doesn't renew itself as flawlessly as it once did; joints and muscles don't recover as readily from strain.  Mornings don't feel anywhere near as promising as they did to a five-year-old.

The mind continues collecting memories that don't go away.  It's not just the good ones that stick.  A terrible image is hard to erase.  You know how, on your computer, you have a trash bin?  Well, that's a good place for the bad memories--dealt with, laid to rest, not to be dwelt on any more.  But sometimes these thoughts are hiding in the attic like dusty spiders, and one day when you're chilling in your living room, suddenly this intruder is dangling in front of your face!  What then, in the realm of the mind?  A spider in front of your face. Maybe it's a wispy one, or a wolf spider.  What if it's a camel spider?  Anyhow, I digress.  In some way you're confronted by a horror.  Sometimes you're happy just to chase it back into hiding rather than squash it.  But I've known myself to just sit and stare in fascinated horror to see what webs it will spin before our eyes, proverbially speaking.

What application do these mental ramblings have to life?  Well, for me it's about consciously choosing to let ideas "stop here."  I have two or three bad images I can recall to mind in a moment.  One horrible video of a real life tragedy, one verbal description of the horrors of behavior caused by bath salts, and a really crass comment from a movie (sadly, I don't mean for a moment that's all I have on file).  The thing is, I've been in many conversations where someone shares a shocking tale, and I naturally respond with my own shockers.  ...I love shock effect...  But when someone recently shared with me a horrific reality about bath salts-induced behavior, I finally realized I am not obligated to pass it on next time someone starts an exchange of shocking news.  If I play in my mind any of those thoughts, I am sickened with the distortion of humanity.  First because it's so far from good, and second, because my fallible humanity has the very same capabilities of horrific behavior.  Thus I feel personally filthy by the very concept, and painfully compassionate to those who are full of guilt of committing such horrors.  I hope being nonspecific hasn't itself brought pointlessly negative thoughts into your head; I hope you will move on quickly while understanding what I'm saying.

There might be a social burst of joy in sharing a shocker that successfully jolts everyone in the room. My new resolution is, if it creates a visual memory that can turn my stomach any time I look at it, and there is no real life reason to inform someone of the thought, then I no longer want to 'duplicate' the corrupt 'file' by sharing it with others.  I may not be able to erase it from my 'hard drive', but by the grace of God I can relegate it into a guarded trash bin and, daily, refuse to dwell on it, and not let it replicate via my mouth.  From several sources recently I'm taking the wisdom, "The way to stop thinking about something is to move onto the next thing," whether that next thing is a better memory, a task, a prayer.  Abraham Lincoln addressed the very same idea to moments of feeling embarrassed, lol.  Move on quickly to other things.

II.

Without using any search engines besides my own recall, I was trying to think about colors in the Bible.  There's not a verse that says, "And Noah looked upon the rainbow, and behold, he saw that the band of color was a blend sequence of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple."  So I started asking myself, just what can I recall is mentioned of color in the Bible?  Not because I imagine a colorless ancient Near East, but because I am intrigued by the everyday things the contents of the Bible do include.  When I find these things, it's like a glimpse of ancient times.  It still amazes me sometimes to think that the people mentioned by name in the Bible could look up at night and see the very same constellations I look at now; somewhere on this same globe, their eyes were directed at the same arranged pinpoints of light, and they too wondered how small and insignificant they must be beneath such a vast mystery as the depths of a night sky.

Colors.  I thought about blue.  Surely a Psalm about the heavens says blue. But, off the cuff, I cannot remember such a mention (I could be wrong).

Sometimes color references in the Bible are named by precious jewels.  Sapphire is blue, and I'm pretty sure that is mentioned among many others in the book of Revelation.

Lydia, the seller of purple who was glad to learn that the God she worshipped had sent His Son with good news of salvation.  I once learned about the incredibly time costly process of making purple cloth.

Red: scarlet, the cord Rahab the harlot hung out her window which marked her house as the one that wouldn't fall with Jericho.  Blood and snow are also both used as descriptive color terms.

Gold.  Gold things, or things that appeared like gold.  Brass.

Green.  Green pastures in which the Good Shepherd "makes me lie down" from Psalm 23.  Green, verdancy; lush.  Shades of green surrounding your desk can refresh the spirits in a most pepto-bismol pink of rooms.  I learned this at my last job! :)

Though I talked earlier about not wanting to shock people with horrifying stories, I am still someone who likes the jolt created by contrasts, and bits of reality that put a splash of color back in a grayscale picture.  For the world I see on a day to day basis loses vividness of color, like retinal fatigue.  As I stare at something green, the retinal burn of purple dulls the green.  But look at another color after staring at green, and the purple retinal burn will mingle with those colors in a new way.  I apply this to mingling of ideas, too.  Stare at one very hard, and then change angles.  

III.

Driving home from work today, my shoulders both ached from work yesterday. I wondered at the entitlement I've felt to a healthy body.  While everything works well, I somehow imagine it's because I'm doing things right.  Hardly!  True, much disease can be blamed on poor choices, but only in hindsight are those choices proven to be poor ones.  Other folks make those same choices with no consequences, and thus--in a sense--those choices were neither poor nor good, but just choices.  But escaping consequences does not necessarily neutralize the poorness of a decision.  Lifting heavy weights wrong can work fine, ....until you injure something.  Smoking is fine, ....until you have lung cancer.  Do many people get away with smoking and never get lung cancer?  Sure thing.  But not smoking is probably a most excellent way to avoid ever getting it.  How many smokers, however, feel entitled to be one of those who never gets cancer, and if diagnosed, respond with as much innocent injury as a nonsmoker rightfully would if diagnosed?

My life thus far was teaching me that I intuitively know my limits--that if I can lift something, then my body can handle that strain.  I try not to lift with my back, but I've never studied body mechanics enough to realize how vulnerable my shoulders might be to wrong lifting.  Well, twice this year now I've been reminded, that I can misuse my muscles in a way that hurts other parts of my musculoskeletal system.  Oh, sure I knew it happened to other people, but injury never confronted me.  Oh, how unrewarding prevention feels as long as we suspect it's much ado about nothing!...But how we wish we could rewind time, when consequences arise which we could have prevented.

Someone who is put on blood thinners, learning her normal behavior is now unhealthy because she bruises so easily, can continue doing what "she knew she could do." Or she can admit that her body has changed, and adapt her behavior to take care of her body.

It's so easy to take a healthy body for granted, to feel entitled to its right functioning, and to believe it's functioning rightly 'because I want it to'.  With that mindset, an onset of a chronic disease can only be utterly demoralizing, for the body that obeyed certain commands before now refuses.  Did it ever obey because of my authority?  I suspect not, but rather because it has been commissioned to obedience.  I don't think the life coursing through my veins can be credited to the life of my sense of self; rather, it's a vehicle made and held together by a gerunding miracle.  This vehicle allows me to experience physical humanness.  I can treat my body like an old jalopy or like a rolls royce; I hope it will continue getting me from point A to point B, but where a first beater car is often 'driven til it drops,' we only get one car.  Sure, we'll drive it til it stops, but that doesn't justify abusing it.  Sure, things can go wrong that aren't our fault.  But appropriate fuel and routine maintenance are a little more important when you realize insurance can only repair so much.

So what if you find your maturing body takes a turn for the worse?  As you're forced to accept that the cd player has started skipping, the radiator is leaking, do you start wondering about existence Aftercar?


So what was that Jars of Clay song, anyway?
"Goodbye, Goodnight."
A flower for your vanity, a penny for your thoughts
about the world's insanity and how we've gotten lost
Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye
Goodbye, oh goodbye

Say a prayer for recognition, kiss the ones you love
Gather up the ammunition, sigh for all the lost
Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye

Raise a glass for ignorance, drink a toast to fear
The beginning of the end has come that's why we all are here
Strike up the band to play a song and try hard not to cry
And fake a smile as we all say goodbye
Goodbye