Return to Elliotland

"Dad," Elliot told me the other evening.  "When I'm a little older I want to write a story that's a little like the Lord of the Rings."

I suppose that's not surprising since I've been reading that lengthy story for some time to my children.  "What will it be about?"  I asked.

"Well, it will take place in a magical place called 'Elliotland' and it will have a Dark Lord called Ara-corn and his father's name will be Ara-lorn and there will be a wizard named Ara-zorn."

"All their names rhyme?"  I asked curiously.  It could get to be a difficult to follow the characters if all their names were like this.

"Of course,"  Elliot said.  "In stories like this, all of the people who are related to each other have names that rhyme.  And the road to the Dark Lord's Tower will be guarded by an octopus with a thousand arms called Kay-lob."

"That sounds dangerous," I said.  "But I don't think an octopus can have a thousand arms.  Octo means eight.  What you're talking about would be a mili-pus."

"Yes, and there will be a Jabberwocky there as well and probably slithy toves -- but they aren't important."

"Sounds like you have it all figured out," I told my son.

"I forgot to tell you that there will be ring wraiths.  Only there will be ten of them in my story, not just nine like in the Lord of the Rings!"

"Wow," I said.  "That'll be a big seller. 'Ten percent more ring wraiths.'  Who could resist such an offer?"

Elliot is only seven, but he has figured out that it is a lot easier to borrow from stories that you like than to generate new ideas.  I suppose it isn't too hard to take an existing plot and pump up the volume on it a bit and change a few names and have an exciting story.

If you liked Lord of the Rings, you'll love Return to Elliotland!

Most books have flaws, which I suppose means that they can be improved on.  I happen to like the Lord of the Rings, but I'm sure there are plenty of things that Tolkien could have written differently and perhaps the book would have been better.

The one book that doesn't have this issue is the Bible.  As I read it and apply it to my life, there are blessings that I experience that I couldn't in any other way.  I hear my heavenly Father speaking to me and it encourages me and lifts me and drives me to be more like Him.

It doesn't need ten percent more of anything.  If we can only listen to its words and live them, we too can have life.

The Other Golden Rule

Elliot and Vince were playing chess.  Or rather, they had been playing chess.  Neither one will ever be confused with Bobby Fischer and Vince was getting tired of it, although Elliot still wanted to go another round.

"Vince won't play with me,"  Elliot said accusingly.

"But I did play with you," Vince said.  "I played two games, but I don't want to play chess any more right now."

"Maybe Elliot, it's time to play something else," I suggested.

"But Vince needs to play with me!"  Elliot said emphatically.  "That's what I want him to do."

"Elliot," I asked."  Do you know what the Golden Rule says?"

"Of course," he answered promptly.  "It says others should do to you what they would want you to do to them."

"Sort of,"  I said.  "It says to do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

"That's what I said," Elliot replied.

"Well, you seemed to be applying it to Vince and not to yourself.  Maybe you could play something with Vince now that he wants to do."

My children have a tough time putting the Golden Rule into practice, but truth to tell, I'm not always so good at it myself.  It is just not always easy to think of what will make other people happy and much easier to focus on what I know will please me.

Humans are inherently selfish.  We think about what we want and what we need before the thought even crosses our minds that there others out there who have needs too.

This is a change that Jesus works in our hearts when we become His child.  To see the needs of others and to truly try to meet them is our goal.

To do unto others as we would have them do to us.

Food or Snacks?

"Come on, Victoria," I said encouragingly.  "It's time to eat supper."

I looked over at the table where I could see sweet corn and spaghetti resting in bowls.  Nearby, in its own separate bowl were some green beans.

(I think 50 percent of our garden's output this year was green beans and okra, but I digress)...

"Don't you want to eat some tasty food?"  I asked coaxingly.

"No!"  One thing about three year old children is that they are very black and white.  Victoria's statements are always very definitive and often punctuated by ear rending shrieks.  One appeared at this exact moment.  "I don't like food!  I like snacks!"

Eventually, after some encouragement, Victoria joined the rest of the Waldron clan at the table.  After prayer, we began to eat -- real food.

Victoria is quite honest.  While I suppose there is some argument about whether snacks are really food, there is no doubt that Victoria likes things in the snack category very well.  Unfortunately, when you research the "Healthy Plate" (which has apparently taken the place of the food pyramid) you don't find snacks mentioned.  There are Vegetables, Fruits, Healthy Protein and Whole Grains.  To the side sits a cup of water, but no snacks are to be found anywhere.

Three year olds everywhere are shocked.

The thing about snacks is that they aren't really intended to be main courses of meals.  Even if you bite the edges off of an oatmeal cream pie, it still isn't a square meal, not by any stretch of the imagination.

It feels to me as though many people want to experience spiritual things in terms of snacks.  Reading the Bible is too hard and so people get some books by Christian authors or just books about "spirituality" and read those instead.  They find going to church is too difficult and so they try to meditate a bit and pray for a couple of minutes on their way to work.

Any relationship takes effort and having one with God the Father is no different.  We need to speak with Him frequently and not just when Florence is coming to visit.

When the storm comes we find that we are weak and unable to stand in the hurricane.  This is simply because a life lived based on snacks is a life bound for weakness and vitamin deficiency.

It is only through a real connection with God that we can survive the hard things that await us in the future.

Let us eat real meals, not just snacks.

Called to Serve

"Do you want to be a wedding photographer when you grow up?"  Elliot asked Anna.

Anna has started helping my wife take photos at weddings and seems to enjoy it greatly.  That said, she is only eleven and Elliot is seven, so their view of future endeavors could be a bit hazy.

Anna paused, considering her future.  "No," she said.  "I don't think I want to be a wedding photographer when I grow up."

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"  Vince asked, with his mouthful of tater tot casserole.

"Vince, it is hard for me to understand you when you talk with your mouth full of food,"  Anna said, then answered the question.  "I think that when I grow up I would like to work helping homeless people in Mexico."

The children were all silent at this bit of news.  "Don't you like taking pictures at weddings?"  Elliot asked.

"I do like taking pictures at weddings,"  Anna said.  "But there are lots of people who take pictures at weddings.  There aren't a lot of people who want to help homeless people, who have no money and aren't very clean, in Mexico.  And I'm good at cleaning things up and working hard.  I think I could help more people that way."

I don't know what Anna's future holds.  She has a lot of time to change her mind, but I was blessed by the simple wisdom in the reasons she gave her brothers for wanting to serve.

Most of us want to do something glamorous and work with interesting people.  Unfortunately, there aren't quite enough of those jobs to go around.

I think of the passage in the Bible where Jesus told a story about judgment.  At the end of it, the king says "Truly, I tell you, as you have done it unto the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."

We are called to serve -- not the high and the wealthy, but the poor, the people without.  As we look for the needs around us and attempt to meet them, we are doing something more, we are serving our Master.

The world has a lot of glamorous people doing interesting things, it probably doesn't need more of them.  What it really needs is Christians who are willing to serve people in need.

Changing Computer Systems

"So are you excited about the change?"  The older man asked me.

"Well, not exactly," I said.

"Is it going to be better than what you have now?"  He asked quizzically.

"That's what they keep telling me,"  I replied.  "It's just that I'm used to the computer system that we have now and even if it isn't perfect, I guess I'm just comfortable with its faults."

I've never been a big fan of change.  I usually have toast for breakfast with peach jelly, unless I decide to change things up with blackberry jelly instead.  For seven years during my Medical School and Residency I had Raisin Bran (always Post, never Kellogg's) every morning for breakfast.  Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic may not have stopped it from sinking, but it isn't likely to help my living room either.  I tend to keep the same routine and it doesn't bother me at all.

Those are relatively unimportant things, but there comes a time when we need change in order to achieve something better.

There is always some pain when we make the decision to move from where we are to improve something in our lives.

Change is necessary in many aspects of life, but it is seldom self-initiated.  Our goal must be to pro-actively decide on the areas we need to grow in occupationally or spiritually and then decide what we going to do to begin that growth.

Only then can we transition from stable mediocrity (but relative comfort) to the men and women God created us to be.  We may not like the change, but in the end we will survive and be better for it -- even the process of changing electronic health records.

Crows

The crows were shrieking from our peach tree.  I walked down into our backyard to investigate.  As I approached, a whole flock of the black birds rose from the tree.

I looked over the tree and found that there were still plenty of peaches on the tree.  Then, I noticed that the crows had not been idle.  There were multiple peaches that had gashes in them, just the size of a crow's beak.  Crows apparently don't eat a whole peach.  They just take a peck out of one and the move on to the next one.

It brought me back to earlier in the summer when I had planted a couple of rows of corn only to find the crows pulling them up by the roots and eating the grain of corn off of them.

In both situations I was angry -- angry at these birds.  My mind went to the last chapter of the book of Jonah.  There, Jonah is angry too, because a plant that had shaded him from the heat was destroyed by some insect pest.  God said to Jonah at the very of the book "You have been concerned about this plant, although you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left hand -- and also many animals?"

I was different from Jonah, though.  He had concern for a plant that he didn't plant, merely because it was providing him shade.  I had worked hard in my garden and tending my peach tree and yet, maybe my anger at the animal pests in our garden wasn't so different from this Old Testament prophet's anger. 

My wife had some silver tape that I put up in the tree and that seemed to frighten the crows away.  In the end, we had a nice crop of peaches.  The message from the last chapter of Jonah still comes through to me.  Jonah valued something very trivial and saw the important things (the people of Nineveh) as worthless.  I don't know if he ever learned his lesson, but it is something very important for each of us to learn.

It is easy to be deluded into thinking that the things in our life are important.  Whether it is sweet corn and peaches or i phones and new cars, it is easy to focus on trivial things rather than on the things God cares about most.

God cares about people way more than he cares about the "stuff" of the Universe.  He loves them.

We should too.

The Best Meal...?

"How are you this morning?"  I asked my patient.  It was 8:30 on a Thursday morning.

"Really hungry!"  She told me.  "You know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I missed it to come and see you."

"Oh," I said.  "I'm sorry.  What do you usually eat for breakfast?  A pop tart?"  Attempting a little humor seemed in order...

I should have known better.  The older woman I was speaking with was not amused.  "A pop tart isn't breakfast!"  She told me heatedly.  "That's wrong with young people these days.  They eat stuff like that instead of real food for breakfast!"

"What do you usually eat for breakfast?"

"Well, I usually start with sausage or bacon, then I have an egg, and I usually finish up with some grits."

I happened to have a resident physician working with me.  I looked over at him.  "Do you like grits?"  I asked him.

"No sir," he replied.  "I've tried them, but I can't get past their texture."

This launched another set of comments from my patient on the subject of how good grits were and how these days you could get a variety pack at Food Lion with three different flavors in them.

As my patient gave me an earful, I thought about breakfast.  It is often touted as the most important meal of the day, though to be honest, I don't know who has actually ranked them.  Mine often consists of toast and jelly and seems to be adequate to get me through to lunch time.

Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but more of a priority for me is to spend some time with God before I start my day.  I suppose I pray for a number of things, but most of all, that I could be His servant that day, serving Him as I minister to my patient's needs..

By noon, my toast and jelly are long digested (as would grits be if I ate those), but the strength I get from my time with God is still there.  It is why, even though breakfast is so important, I could skip it in a pinch, but I can't skip my time with my Heavenly Father.

Corn Smut

"Dad," Vince told me, as we were husking corn from our garden.  "Do you wish that our corn had smut on it?"

"No, Vince," I said.  "I'm really glad we don't have corn smut in our garden."

For those who don't know, there is a fungus (Ustilago maydis) that can affect corn and turn the kernels large and black.  It certainly doesn't make sweet corn look appetizing.  I'm guessing it changes the taste considerably too.

"Did you know, Dad," Vince told me.  "Corn smut is actually more nutritious than the ears of corn it is found on?"

"Really?"  I asked.  Sometimes talking to Vince is like talking to a Wikipedia article.

"Yes," Vince said, warming to his subject.  "There are farmers in Mexico who get permission from the Mexican government to infect their corn plants with smut.  They call it 'Mexican Truffles.'  I guess it sounds better than corn smut on a restaurant menu."

"Wow, it sounds tasty,"  I said, a little sarcastically I'm afraid.   "Would you like to eat some Mexican Truffles?  We could try to find some."

"No!"  Vince said.  "I would not like to eat that at all."

The concept of corn smut is interesting, the application is a different story.

Over my years of being a physician, I have met many people who thought that the idea of lifestyle modification was interesting.  I have met few who were committed to the changes needed to really eat healthily and begin a consistent exercise plan.

It is always a challenge to move from the contemplation stage to the action phase.

Even more, we have a challenge of being Christians in more than just name.  I hear people say that this world would be a better place if people just did what Jesus said and that is true.  It is a great concept, but living as a follower of Jesus doesn't happen by accident.

At the same time, we must move from the concept of Christianity to a true relationship with Jesus Christ.  We can know everything about Christianity and without that relationship and the changes that it brings to our lives, it is worthless.  Just like knowing everything about corn smut isn't much good if you never eat it.

DuoLingo

"Dad, we're doing DuoLingo," Elliot told me.  "Anna started on it and she is learning Spanish, but I've started too."

"Really," I said.  "What language are you learning?"

"Chinese!"  Elliot told me proudly.

"Mandarin or Cantonese?"  I asked my seven year old son.

"What?"  He said.

"Never mind," I replied.  "Have you learned any yet?"

"Ni Hao!"  He said.  "That means hello.  And I learned 'Wah' too, but I am not totally sure what it means."

"I guess it will be handy to know Chinese," I said.

"Yes," Elliot said.  "I'll just start talking to Chinese people in Chinese and they will be so surprised that I know it.  Once I finish learning Chinese then I'm going to start on Japanese.  I'll have to decide what other languages to learn after that."

I didn't really know what to say.  My experience is that it takes a while to learn new languages -- even if you have an amazing app that speeds the process.  I've lived long enough to know that many things are harder than they seem.

At the same time, it is awfully easy to shoot down the plans of others as not reality based.

Norman Vincent Peale said "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars."  Of course, this is a crazy quote.  First of all, the magnitude of difference in distance between the moon and the stars is phenomenal.  Beyond that, the stars are actually farther away than the moon.  If you fall short of the moon, you are more likely to end up some where in orbit around the earth rather than close to Alpha Centauri.  It is like saying shoot for London because even if you miss, you  might end up on Neptune.

The point that Mr. Peale was trying to make was that we should set our sights high.  It is generally a bigger problem that we set their sights too low than that we aim too high.  As we get older, we see our limits far more easily than our abilities.

We need to encourage others to attempt great things, even if maybe they seem beyond their abilities.  You may be surprised at the things they can do.  You may be surprised at the things that you can do once you try.

The Loving Thing to Do

I was emptying the dishwasher.  There seemed to be a lot more items in it than usual.

Very carefully I stacked the big plates, followed by some smaller plates.  Then, I put some bowls on top of that and then topped it with some cups.  The stack was huge, but I was determined to carry it to where it went all at once.  I picked them up and shuffled towards the cabinet where they were kept.

Suddenly, I caught my toe on some unseen crack in the floor.  I tried to catch my balance, but it was too late...

Crash!

I opened my eyes.  I was lying in bed with not a plate to be seen around me.

Bang!

My beautiful wife seemed to be doing something very noisy with a fly swatter.  I looked at my alarm clock.  It was 11:15 pm.

"What are you doing?"  I asked Elaine.

"There were some very noisy flies in our room," she said.  "They were keeping me awake."  Bang!  "Got one!"  She said triumphantly.

Now, to be honest, I hadn't noticed the sound of the flies at all, but I sure did notice the noise produced by the fly swatter.

There is a verse in I Corinthians 13 that says "Charity suffers long and is kind..." 

Maybe I was being long suffering as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but probably not.  The loving thing to do would have been to arise and help my wife wage war on the house flies.

I suppose there are times that loving thing is just to do nothing, but far more often the loving thing to do is to try to meet the seen need.  Even such a need as trying to kill house flies on a sleep Saturday evening.

The Water of Life

"I can't drink water," the lady told me dramatically.  "I never could."

"Really?"  I asked, a bit puzzled.  I've heard of many allergies, but never one to water.  Our bodies are about 70 percent water.  It is hard to imagine how anyone could survive without water.  "What do you drink?"  I asked her.

"Mostly diet sodas," she told me.  "And occasionally some sweet tea."

"Hmm," I paused for effect.  "I wonder what the main ingredient of those drinks is?"

"Of course, they have water in them," she said.  "I guess I should say that I like my water flavored."

It reminds me of a meme that I saw recently that said something like "I like eggs...  In cake."

During Jesus' ministry He use a lot of different metaphors to explain the Gospel.  One day, as He was talking to a thirsty Samaritan woman, He told her "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water."

The Samaritan woman didn't understand a lot about Jesus' message, but she did understand water.  The people in Jesus' day didn't drink soft drinks and sweet tea.  They drank water and maybe for special occasions some grape juice or wine, but probably most of them couldn't afford anything other than water.  Once or twice a day they made a journey to the well in their community to fill large pots with water.  If they skipped that trip often enough, they would die.

Water was (and is) necessary for life.  Jesus' message is just as necessary.

I am afraid that these days people want to mix the living water with other things.  They want to "flavor it" to make it acceptable to the modern palate.  But what we need is the living water, the message of Jesus Christ -- nothing more or less.

No one ever died due to lack of carbonation or cola flavorings, but plenty of people have died from lack of water, particularly the water of life.

A Faulty Messenger

"Vince, please do not talk with your mouth full!"  Anna said in a pleading voice.

"Anna," Vince said, with his mouth still pretty packed with tater tot casserole.  "Why do you have to be so bossy?"

"Because it looks so disgusting,"  Anna said.

"That's not an answer,"  Vince said.

I suppose that both of my children have their points.  It is pretty disgusting when someone insists on speaking with their mouth full.  There is a reason that most opportunities for oration do not take place in a Golden Corral.  On the other hand, it I probably discouraging when your older sister frequently tells you what to do.

Matthew 7 tells us to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to assist our brother with washing the speck out of his.  I guess for me, the bigger question is what to do when we are in the position of the brother being criticized (particularly when we can clearly see the log in the one doing the criticism's eye).

It is easy to focus on my brother's faults and choose to ignore the advice he has given, but that feels like exactly the wrong thing to do.  Regardless of the issues my brother has, I must listen to his admonition and hear the truth in it if I wish to grow.

Shooting the messenger only destroys the channel by which the message arrives.  Similar, maybe, to throwing your cell phone in the ocean when you hear bad news on it.

Some day, I hope that both of my children learn to deal with their faults -- talking with food in their mouth and bossiness, among others.  That growth will come faster if they learn to listen to less than perfect messengers (and even, sometimes, their siblings).

Reading to my Children

"Dad, this book is much more interesting than the last book you were reading to us," Anna said.

"I think technically it's the same book," I said.  "It's just that it is so long that they broke it up into three parts."

"Maybe so," Anna said.  "But the first part was kind of boring."

My children and I are in the process of reading the Lord of the Rings -- probably mostly because I enjoy it.  We just finished "The Fellowship of the Ring" and started "The Two Towers."

"Mom says that the Lord of the Rings is an 'Allergy,'" Vince proclaimed sagely.  "Sauron is sort of like the devil and the ring is like sin."

"Hmm," I said.  "I think the word is actually Allegory."

Elliot decided to put his two cents in.  "I think that the Lord of the Rings is telling us that it is bad to wear jewelry!"

With those words of wisdom, the conversation turned to other subjects.

I have read the Lord of the Rings several times.  If there is a unifying theme in the book, it is that small people, without great power, but with courage can change the world.  Regardless, the book can simply be read as a long story about another world.

I'm afraid that many people read the Bible the way that my children are listening to Tolkein's masterpiece.  Page by page they search for hidden meanings, struggling over prophetic passages with their weird symbolism and imagery.

The thing is that the important messages of the Bible are said very clearly.  Sure, there are passages that are difficult to understand, but there are a lot more that are like John 13:35 where Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The problem isn't that we don't understand the whole Bible.  The problem is that we aren't very good at putting into practice the things we do understand.

All we are called to do is to live the things we comprehend.  That's enough, even if there are a few things in Scripture that never become as clear as the "Allergy" the Lord of the Rings.