Early

Early (1,189)

June 26th, 2011

I awoke early. It often happens to me on Sunday mornings, my brain becoming the alarm clock to alert me to upcoming activities ahead and concepts I might wish to add into my presentation. It’s kind of fun. It also happens on days when a particular jonathot is burning in a corner of my skull, wanting to get out to say its piece.

I think you will find that the more active you become and the more interestingly your path twists and turns, the less you will desire to sleep—especially as a form of recreation. So I was lying in my bed (or was I laying in my bed? I am really never quite sure which one of those tenses is correct, so out of fear of being attacked by a grammar marm, I will say something like, “I was reclining…”)

I was thinking about the church service and the various words and songs I might wish to share with the good folks of Dayton, when suddenly a clap of thunder followed by a flash of lightning came piercing through my window. I had to laugh. Here I was, planning my day, complete with vivid detail, from my position of power, flat on my back on my Posturpedic, and all at once, it is all brought into perspective by Mother Nature proclaiming her supremacy over my great plans.

It was going to rain.

It often does that, you know—and it doesn’t seem to care whether we want it to or not. It certainly is indifferent to our picnic plans, and feels no need to seek our counsel whatsoever. Some people think prayer is a way of passing over Mother Nature, to go directly to God to lodge a formal complaint with the management. But honestly, my friends, you don’t get very far with the father in heaven by complaining about the mother on earth.

Prone on my bed, cuddling into my pillow, I realized that I only have two functions in this entire system—two points of control, if you will. Since I don’t manipulate the weather, nor other people’s handling of such matters, what I do have a righteous road in pursuing is my reaction and my perception. Yes—the RP factor, if you will. So my reaction to that sudden bolt of lightning was, “It’s going to rain.” And my perception was, “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Some people seek a third alternative, which usually is given many names, but eventually falls into the family called “complaint.” But complaining is not one of the options humans are given in the great cosmos of possibility, because complaining leaves us destitute of both wits and motivation—wits in the sense that we look a little stupid when objecting to the obvious, and motivation because it’s just so doggone exhausting to continue to lament the inevitable.

I was awakened early by my own brain to discover that Mother Nature had plans of her own, which I needed to react to as positively as I could, gaining the perception that some souls will not make it to this morning’s presentation because they’re afraid of melting like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. It’s just reality. And all I have is my reaction and my perception.

Think of it as the number forty. Do you spend most of your time thinking about what happened forty minutes ago? Forty hours ago? Forty days ago? Forty months ago? Or forty years ago? Since all of them are in the past, rumination over any event is basically futile. But the further you go into the past to try to change what already has happened, the crazier you’ll get.

What do we have? Reaction and perception.

So what is my reaction? “Thank you, Mother Nature, for changing my plans.” What is my perception? “Thank you, Father God, that you will make some sense of it.”