It was a stark picture of what's happening on Indian reservations across this country. It was the funeral of another Native American young person. There are so many of them - way too many of them. Their number one cause of death is accidental death, often attributable to alcohol or drugs, followed by suicide, and then homicide. Seventy-five percent of Native young people die a violent death, and James was one of those. Our On Eagles' Wings team of Native young people had brought the hope that they have found in Jesus Christ to his reservation. Later, James and his brother traveled with our team to other reservations. But one deadly night, James became one of those awful statistics. We were honored to be invited by his family to the wake, the funeral and the burial in a small tribal cemetery. The men there stepped up to the open grave and they threw a handful of dirt on James' casket. Then most of the folks there left, except for his family and a few close friends. There was a large, homemade wooden cross at the head of the grave. I'll never forget the scene of James' brother, visibly shattered by shock and grief, just resting all his weight on that cross, hanging onto it for dear life.
Twenty-three seconds. It takes you longer than that to eat a slice of pizza, or at least it should. It takes me about that long to just say three or four sentences. Now, a short TV commercial is longer than that. But every 23 seconds, something absolutely amazing happens inside you. Your blood pumps through your body, delivers oxygen and nutrients to all your cells, and carries away the impurities from your cells and starts back through again in 23 seconds. Mind-blowing! That's what it takes to keep you going. You've got to have that oxygen delivered regularly. You've got to have your cell garbage taken out regularly, and your blood gets it done.
The more I've learned about eagles, the more amazing I find them to be. They mate for life, they build nests that will last a lifetime, and they ride the storm instead of hiding from the storm. There's really only one enemy that is a serious danger to the eagle - a snake. That snake will attempt to climb wherever the eagle nest is and attack the inhabitants, especially the little eagles. But pity the poor snake that gets caught by Mama or Papa Eagle. They will show the serpent no mercy! They may pick it up with their beak and violently shake it to death. Or, better yet, they will pick it up in their talons, take off high into the air, and drop that snake to its death on the rocks below. They are not about to let that serpent have what he came for.
I was more of a Superman and Batman fan. I never really got into Spider-Man. But when the blockbuster Spider-Man movie came out, a lot of people did get into Spider-Man. And you know what? There has been a couple more of them since then. I'm still not very interested in this web-spinning, skyscraper-climbing, crime-fighting guy in the spider suit, but I am interested in something he said in the first movie about him. Peter Parker is the bookish teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider one day and begins to discover that he has suddenly developed some amazing spiderish abilities. (Okay, I'm reporting the story; I didn't write it.) Now, it dawns on him that he can't just use these abilities for himself. He has to use them to make a difference. Here's what he says. I like this: "For me, living an ordinary life is no longer an option."
One of life's great treats is pumpkin pie with some Cool Whip on it. That's what I was after when I went to my son's refrigerator. I had cut my piece of pie, and all it was missing was that little white topping of Cool Whip. I foraged around in the fridge until I saw that familiar plastic container with a picture of exactly what I wanted my pumpkin pie to look like. Somewhat mindlessly, I opened that container, stuck my spoon in there, and then pulled out the contents. I was just about to decorate my pie with it when I looked at what was on my spoon. It wasn't Cool Whip. It was gravy, which doesn't do much for pumpkin pie.
Our son was so excited when he called us. Our year-old granddaughter had just gotten up and walked about 30 steps across the floor! We had seen her crawl for the first time - we'd seen her stand by herself and even take a step. But this time she had suddenly exploded into big-time walking. Our son seemed to have an immediate revelation about what this development was going to mean for the life of her parents. He simply introduced his announcement of her walking with these four words, "Let the games begin!" No kidding!
I was reminiscing with our son about some of the great experiences we had together as a family when he and his siblings were kids. I was thinking especially of the hikes we took up mountains, through forests, and along the seashore. To which my son added, with a little whimsy in his voice, "And sand dunes?" That's kind of a sore point in our family memories. It's all about the time I led our family on an exhausting hike up a massive Cape Cod sand dune, promising them, based on what I had been told, a beautiful view of the ocean when we reached the top. Well, there was a view of another sand dune, which we climbed, as well. And there it was finally, another sand dune! The next dune was like that, too, and the next one. This was not one of my better ideas.
Our 18-month-old grandson rapidly became a bulldozer on two legs. He didn't actually walk anywhere; he ran everywhere. And no comments about being like his grandfather! Of course, he didn't always get around like that. First, he only went where one of us carried him. Then the crawling started. He didn't do that for long. He graduated to walking real fast. And, like every baby who ever learned to walk, he began by taking a step or two and then falling down. I guess he could have said to himself after a couple of falls, "Oh well, I guess I wasn't cut out to walk. It's just too hard. I keep falling down. I think I'll just lie here from now on." Oh, great! So now he's 18 years old, his mother has to vacuum around him, and his friends come over and he says, "Hey, you want to roll into my room with me?" No, it didn't work that way. After he went "step-boom," he got back up and he went "step-step-boom." And then "step-step-step-step-boom." And now I can't stop him!
One of our team members got pretty sick. Linda first developed a high fever, then muscular pain, and then these excruciating headaches. It actually took several tests to uncover what had caused her debilitating symptoms, but the doctor finally concluded that Linda had contracted Lyme Disease, which of course is carried by little deer ticks. And as Linda thought back, she remembered noticing a big red bite on her body a couple of months ago. It occurred to her that it might have been a tick, but you know, she didn't think much about it...until now.
I have a friend who fixes bodies - auto bodies, that is. And the sign in front of his body shop always has a provocative bit of philosophy to make you think or make you smile. I have to make it a note to tell my friend about a radio commercial I heard recently, actually advertising an auto body shop in another area. It just struck me as being a clever motto for somebody in that business. It just said, "We meet by accident."
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