I take my dog for walks on the neatly poured sidewalk. The grass plots are cut with perfect straight edges against the path. There are little white flags on some, warning of chemical treatments. Weeds have been banished and foreign grasses conquered, yielding a pure rug of verdant fescue.
Beneath these pristine plots lies a deeper plot, rooted in the common sod of human nature. New homes, Vaulted ceilings and granite counters cannot alter the human project. The false self must still be shed completely. And the foggy illusion of separateness and security unmasked by the clear and real pain of neighbor-suffering and frailty.
This working out of ones salvation in fear and trembling, this project of becoming human, should not be covered up or cluttered over. Nor should it be undertaken alone.
On my summer evening walks, the garages are open and the owners of these pristine plots are working hard to maintain their accumulated stuff. There are red Corvettes and black Harley’s, ATVs with bulbous knobby tires, and all kinds of clean looking power tools. Riding mowers, weed-wackers, and leaf blowers. The same stuff duplicates from man-cave to man-cave, adding more volume for the assembly plants in Mexico, and the American big box stores. Each thing needs cleaning and maintaining, each having it own weight and pull. Why do I fee so heavy? Am I secretly attached or drawn to this shinny mechanical stuff? Or do I morn for the souls who are attached? I don’t own as much as my neighbors, yet I feel the weight of their stuff clinging onto me.
My heart is heavy and I don’t know what to do. I am both participant and alien. Culpable in my own flight into isolation and comfort. The melancholy of late summer hangs heavy in the air. Each breath, like a hard pull on an old mower. The crickets are buzzing in loud screams of boredom, and TV images flicker in the windows, flashing disasters and violence among distant people’s. This illusion of separateness, this flight into false security, and consumerism is tearing me up inside. My back aches and burns, tightening in cords. Is it Jeremiah burning or just the dry rotting of age? Lord, wake me up, and send me somewhere, to someone.
But son, I have sent you here.
