The Power and Promise of Hope
Some twenty years ago as I was transitioning from my vocation in independent school administration to the ministry, I was required to complete a battery of psychological tests. These tests were to ascertain my fitness for ministry before I could be ordained as a United Methodist Pastor. The results of the testing, among other uses, would provide information to denominational officials as to my psychological readiness to answer my call to ministry.
A Story in Three Parts – A Memorable Day
At some point, as we were nearing what looked like a huge hangar, one of the guys on the shuttle bus asked me what oil rig I was going to work on. In my pocket I had the information he was asking about. I should have memorized it. He then gave me some unsolicited, helpful hints concerning what I should do when the bus stopped. “Get off the bus, go inside and find the group of chairs under the sign with your rig’s name and number on it. Just wait and someone from that rig will let you know what you have to do next.” He shot off the bus and disappeared into the building in front of me. I tried to follow him, but he had already disappeared into a sea of men, all blending together in a huge mass of activity, frantic motion, and confusion.
The intense level of the noise in the building was overwhelming. This was no normal airport waiting room complete with snack bars and comfortable padded seats, CNN on the television screens. It was quite stark in all respects and unwelcoming to the travelers it housed.
Everyone but me seemed to know you brought your own food and drink, or you did without. Some guys had cassette players and headphones. Most everyone looked instantly bored. I had no food or drink or cassette player. I was far from bored.
No one talked to me. They had to have noticed me, didn’t they? A voice came over the PA system, “Loading for Shell Platform #35, Gate 7.” With that a group of about twenty men gathered up their backpacks and small carry-on bags and proceeded to the gate whose number had just been called. I watched carefully to observe what was happening. When my time came, and my rig was called, I wanted to look calm and casual, so no one would suspect I was the new guy.
As they approached the gate, every worker was patted down. Everything in the workers’ pockets, jackets, and carry-on bags was emptied in front of an agent from some governmental agency. It was a very thorough inspection. One by one, each man moved on, entering another room.
I could see each guy being given some weird red suit to climb into. The strange garment looked like a cross between a space suit and a very expensive wetsuit you might use for scuba diving in very cold water. As I watched guys maneuver, after putting on the red mystery garment, it was easy to see the suit was very heavy and made moving about a laborious task. Then, one by one, each worker was patted down again and disappeared out the back of the building. What lay beyond that door was, for the moment, unknown to me.
Another rig’s number and gate were called; another twenty guys got up. They shuffled off towards their gate. They followed the exact procedure the crews who went before them had done. A new group of workers was called about every ten minutes. An hour passed. Groups of men would disappear out the back door only to be replaced by new groups of guys coming in from an endless stream of shuttle busses.
He passed out some paperwork which he said he would explain in a minute. He asked us to be certain we were all going to the rig number on the sign above his head. Once he was satisfied that we were his guys, he started instructions about how to fill out the papers he had given us. It was obvious some of the guys seated under my sign knew his talk by heart. It was also obvious some of the veteran workers in the group, for some reason, needed to be reminded of the required procedures each time they were about to go out on the rig. And for two of us, this was the very first time we had heard the spiel.
First, we were asked to find the map and layout for the rig on which we would be working. There were several floor plans to examine depending on the type of rig that would be our temporary home for the next two weeks. I found my rig. The floor plan indicated all the emergency exits to get off the rig, the locations of life boats to get off the rig, where fire- fighting equipment was located in the event of an oil or gas explosion, and the general layout of the rig’s other accommodations. The instructor stressed the absolute importance of knowing where things were and what we had to do in the in the event we were instructed to get off the rig.
Next order of business was the form that renewed my ever-increasing level of anxiety. At the top of the form, in large print, was the purpose of the form – CONTACTS IN THE EVENT OF YOUR DEATH OR LOSS AT SEA. What? Death or loss at sea? Nobody told me about that in my job description. My imagination already working overtime formed an endless stream of questions I wanted to ask- how would I die? From what activity or circumstance would I die while working and living on the oil rig? And how the heck would I be lost at sea? I wasn’t planning on being that close to the water. I was told the rig’s main deck was at least 75 feet above the ocean at all times. That’s as close as I planned to be to the frigid waters of the North Sea. My terror was real and it was peaking in intensity. Everyone else appeared calm, nonchalant. I was so far from mellow the word had slipped from my vocabulary.
Next, I was directed to stand up in front of what looked like a bedsheet hanging from the ceiling. A very bored looking photographer, who had a nasty smelling cigarette dangling from his lips, took my picture. I was told my new photo ID would be placed on the back of the “death notification” form I was just now completing. I noticed there was also a place on the back of the form for my fingerprints. I had already been fingerprinted before I ever got to Scotland. They too would be added to my ID at some point.
“Contacts in the event of your death or loss at sea” – I found no comfort or context for pondering the disposition of my remains those words suggested. Let me ask you this – have you ever had all your thoughts pushed aside by an all-consuming dread that really scared the heck out of you? I needed some fresh air. I needed to get away by myself before I was summoned to the next set of departure procedures. My grasp on handling current challenges to rational thought processes was rapidly disappearing. I desperately looked for someplace to run where I could get away and try to get control of my thoughts.
Just then my rig number was called. All of a sudden there I was following the other guys in my crew, like lemmings through the gate. All I could think of as I passed through the metal detector were these words, “Abandon hope, ye who enter here.”
End of Part Two
Part Three will be posted next Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The answer to this seemingly simple question depends on several factors: 1) what time my wife and I finally get out of bed, 2) how much time the latest sleeper needs to get ready to hop in the car, 3) what other meals will we be having later on in the day, and 4) where do we want to go to eat.
Today, we were both ready to go by 10:30 am. I specifically voiced my preferred meal choice, “I want breakfast!” It’s good to voice an opinion from time to time. After a brief discussion and eventual concurrence with my choice of meals, my wife and I traveled to one of our favorite breakfast spots. Since it was a favorite spot, we decided on our breakfast choices, even before we entered the restaurant. Today, the breakfast menu would be superfluous.
My wife ordered her usual breakfast without ever really considering the other options available to her if she had consulted the breakfast menu. When it was my time to place my order, I hesitated. My usual breakfast sounded good in the abstract, but now, with the waitress standing inches from me, I quickly glanced once more at the menu. From deep within the chores to which my active mind was attending, my breakfast order surfaced.
My next words to the waitress must have sounded like some far off obscure language to her. I could see she was already writing down my order from memory. Then she heard my order. Our waitress turned pale and quite perceptibly, rocked back on her heels. She did not expect one of her regular customers to willy-nilly change his usual breakfast order. She was stunned and she asked me if I was sure of my order. Casually I said, “Life without whimsy and serendipity is hardly worth living.” I don’t think she grasped what I had said. She turned and hurried towards the kitchen where I assumed she entered our orders.
It turns out she was so obviously unnerved by the unexpected change in my order that in communicating my wife’s order to the short order cook, my wife’s selection of a dry biscuit with her breakfast came to the table covered in sausage gravy. For some inexplicable reason, my wife’s aversion to sausage gravy is pathologic. Now it was her turn to become pale and unstable as she twisted in her seat, following a similar reaction I had recently observed in our waitress’ demeanor.
The plate that held my wife’s breakfast was immediately removed and after a brief absence, a new plate of food was delivered to my wife, with biscuits sans sausage gravy. Then my breakfast was served. Everything I had ordered was just as it should have been, just like the photo in the menu advertised.
My new breakfast selection was even better than I had convinced myself it would be. I did not let on the degree of happiness and contentment I felt. It would have been insensitive of me to acknowledge what a great breakfast I was having, while at the same time my wife was forced to remember how the sausage gravy poured over her biscuits had unnerved her. No enlightened or sensitive spouse would ever cross that boundary of careless and wreckless thought.
We finished our meal. The check arrived. Since we are regular customers, I knew our breakfast bill would be about $25.00 before the tip. The total of the bill this morning was, however, $34.95 before the tip. When I finally got the attention of our waitress, she discovered she had charged my wife twice for her breakfast – once for the original order, complete with sausage gravy and biscuits, and then again the same order, but minus the sausage gravy.
As loyal repeat customers, I politely but firmly asked for an adjustment to the bill due to the mistake in my wife’s breakfast order. I did not in any way assign blame for the inaccuracy of the order. You see, if I blamed my wife, the rest of the day would have been consumed by thawing the coolness arising from the distance that had come between us. If I blamed the waitress, God knows what she might do to our orders the next time we came in for breakfast, brunch or a late lunch. I would have been afraid to order eggs benedict for fear of what might replace the hollandaise sauce.
I simply asked if there would be any way that the second charge for my wife’s breakfast might be rescinded. The waitress disappeared into the kitchen. We heard a dish crash to the floor or perhaps against a kitchen wall. The waitress returned with a corrected bill closer to the $25.00 I was expecting.
As I paid the bill at the cashier’s desk she asked me two questions: 1) how was everything and 2) did I want to include a tip? Here is an insight into the shallowness of my character. Wanting to return to this restaurant in the future, I hesitated before I answered the cashier’s questions.
“Yes, everything was fine as usual, great service, great food, great value and yes, I would like to leave not just my usual 20% tip but the suggested 22% that’s printed on the bill.” My wife looked at me as if I had just told the greatest lie the world had ever known. She turned and left the restaurant, leaving me there alone with my ever growing sense of shame for playing fast and loose with the truth.
It really doesn’t matter how the rest of the day turned out, does it? This whole incident would never have happened if I had slept just a bit later and we ended up having a late lunch. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin – early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and a fool if he asks his wife, “honey, what’s for dinner?”
Writing about one particular “memorable day” is a harder task than I first imagined. I have had plenty of memorable days. The account of this “memorable day” contains the accumulated memories of several days leading up to the day I remember as one of the most frightening days of my life.
With great clarity, I remember the first time I was helicoptered out to an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea to begin my first two-week shift, doing God knows what kind of labor. All I knew was it would be hard, physical labor. I also knew it would be potentially dangerous work. If that wasn’t enough to engage my active, imaginative, suspicious, scared as hell mind set, nothing would be.
I had taken the train up from London to Aberdeen on Thursday, the day before I was to begin my new job. That’s what the representative from my new employer told me I should do.
Here’s what I remember happened next, beginning with waking up at the Dee Motel in Aberdeen Scotland after a short night’s sleep.
My instructions from the company that had hired me to work on the oil rig were simple and clear: on Friday, be outside the Aberdeen Train Station promptly at 8:00 am to get on a shuttle bus that would take me to the Aberdeen Airport, the second leg of my trip to the rig. Obviously the first leg was the trip from London to Aberdeen.
In fact, the train trip from London northward towards my own unique rendezvous with destiny was actually the second leg of a trip that started at the airport in Newark, New Jersey for my flight to Heathrow Airport London. This first leg, second leg, narration will get very confusing very quickly. So, let me be somewhat loose with some of the finer details of how and when I found myself standing outside the train station in Aberdeen that Friday morning in May. Who really cares what leg of my journey this represented?
A cab picked me up at the motel about 7:15 am Friday morning. I informed my cab driver that all I knew was I was to meet a shuttle bus taking folks from the train station to the airport to go out on an oil rig in the North Sea. My brief travel instructions to the cabbie didn’t seem to phase him. He obviously had done this before with other similarly confused passengers.
To be honest, I was hoping for a longer ride. I hadn’t had enough time to deal with my increasing anxiety. “Here you go, Laddie.” I got out and the cabdriver got on with his day.
I wasn’t sure I was at the correct gathering spot at the train station. Folks who work on oil rigs don’t stand out from the general population. They look normal. But a large gathering of guys, standing in a group, smoking cigarettes and talking too loudly for 7:45 am was a tip off these guys might be my companions for the next two weeks. In a vain attempt to start off on the right foot, I tried to engage the group in conversation. They would have none of it. I was no one of consequence, just a new face. New faces didn’t show up in that group without some concerns for the veteran workers. I would have to ease those concerns at some point. For now, I followed the group onto the shuttle bus that had just arrived and off we went to the airport in Aberdeen.
It was routine to the others on the bus. They were off to work. I was off to adventure. They weren’t as interested as I in the quaintness of the streets of Aberdeen or watching shops opening along the way or being fascinated by the early morning activity along the waterfront. Like I said, they were going to work, I was going on an adventure. Every flower and tree, every storefront sign, every sea gull looking for a free meal, every noise and smell was unfamiliar to me and held secrets to be explored. My companions on the shuttle had milked dry the secrets of those scenes. I was fascinated, they were oblivious. My fascination would soon turn into terror.
End of Part One
Part Two will appear on January 17, 2018.
I am reminded of the story, The Lady and the Tiger, in which a commoner falls in love with a beautiful princess and she with him. The King is none too happy with this turn of events. His daughter was destined for a better arrangement. And so, the King devised a test of the commoner’s character.
For the next 31 days, I will be involved in a writing challenge courtesy of Jeff Goins. He is a wonderful motivator and trainer of wanna-be writers. You should Google him. The purpose of my involvement with the challenge is to help me return to the habit of daily writing. By accepting the challenge, I agree to write a minimum of 500 words per day. This will be no easy task for me.
I will not be posting all 31 days of my efforts on this blog, but I did want you to know what I am attempting to do. Most of my posts/daily writing assignments will either be consistent with my blog’s theme of “The Power and Promise of Hope” or closely related topics.
Just an aside – about two years ago I “retired” from my vocation as a pastor. I was lucky enough to be offered an appointment to another church. That new appointment began last July 2017. My goal at the time was to remain in that appointment for several years or until my wife retired. Until recently, the plan was working well. Some unexpected health concerns have popped up and I have reluctantly returned to retired status. With the extra time I now have, I can attend to my health issues. And of course, I can also attend to this writing challenge.
My mind is good, my spirit is good, but alas my body has not joined the trinity of balance – mind, body, spirit. Hopefully with physical therapy, exercise, diet and determination, my body will respond to efforts to maximize my attempts at returning to full functioning.
That being said, it is absolutely appropriate that this 31 day writing challenge begins on New Year’s Day. Make no mistake, this is not a New Year’s resolution. It is a writing challenge that runs for a finite time period. After the challenge concludes, I am hopeful I will be primed to finally finish the rough edit of my first book. I underscore my assertion that this challenge is not part of any new year’s resolution.
My mind is racing ahead and is concocting a scenario in which I now launch into a trite attempt to say something original concerning the new year and new beginnings and new hope. I imagine any reader who has made it this far will grab at the chance to be done reading this post. You’re thinking, “I know what he is going to do next. He’s going to begin a worn out attempt at turning the old themes of the new year and new beginnings into something worthy of reading. He isn’t that good a writer.”
If you’re not thinking that, you should be, because that is what I had in mind. And you are correct in your assessment of my creative writing abilities. See how easily the deficiencies in my talent become apparent. Perhaps in the next 31 days, one of my writing colleagues will put me out of my misery by completely exposing my lack of any talent or my lack of any hope in improving my craft.
There it is – my theme – hope. Somehow I got around to what drives me – the power and promise of hope. That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. To the regular readers of my blog, I apologize for this disconnected posting. Expect posts worthy of your time to return after I complete today’s attempt to begin the 31 day challenge.
Writing to put words on a page and writing to convey something of value are two entirely different tasks. I hope as the challenge unfolds and, in future blog posts, I will be able and skillful enough to offer value, not just words. Happy New Year to friends old and new.
I am assuming most of you will be reading this just before or just after 2017 draws to a close and 2018 arrives on the scene. For some reason, this year’s transition is a particularly introspective event for me. I am wondering about life and I am wandering through my thoughts concerning where I have been and where I might end up during the next 365 days.
Here are some issues I am considering, vis a vis, how I have handled myself in the past and what I have learned that may affect future interactions during 2018.
My wish/prayer/hope for each of you is that as you skim this post, you will give yourself time to sit down and consider your own review of the past 365 days. Give yourself this present. Sit down, listen to some favorite music, drink some favorite beverage, pull out a journal, just stop and slow down.
I really want to make sense of how this year has warped me or challenged me. I don’t want to conclude I have just survived this year. I want to have survived it and confronted it. So here is what I have been asking myself.
If you have hung in and read this far, I thank you. I realize that you have committed about five minutes so far and I ought to be offering you some reward or gesture of thanks for your valuable time.
During this year, enough has happened to significantly call into question my deeply held belief that in the long run good wins out. My faith in the power and promise of hope has been shaken to its core. The basic foundation of my life has been exposed. Several times this year I have looked into the psychic abyss.
But this one thought kept coming back in the times of my worst angst. The short term must be fully embraced if there is any hope for long term happiness. Suffering in fear is injustice. Suffering in the pursuit of that which helps ease the turmoil of another person’s life is time well spent. There is an agenda, a plan that supersedes all other plans. It fits into the harmony of the universe. Until a person finds that agenda, they can know no real peace or joy.
Certainly you and I can recreate some unique version of get up, eat, go to work, interact with others, eat and go to bed, but after a short time we sense that’s not enough. I guarantee no amount of accumulated “stuff” will ever satisfy our lives. You and I will always be looking for diversions to temporarily bring relief from the routines of our own “unique” agendas. We don’t dream big enough to bring us real success or purpose.
Do this in 2018, and I guarantee the year will fly by. Devote yourself to someone. What I mean is this – intentionally choose a person with whom you will interact in the following way. During this next year, you will put the needs of your intentionally selected person before your own. On a daily basis you will develop opportunities and strategies to offer your person constant affirmation and encouragement. You will only seek their well being and help them discover how they might best live out their perfect idea of a great life in the next year.
In short, this year, make a new best friend. Not an acquaintance, not a shopping buddy, but a fully functioning new friend based on your utmost care for them. In short, sacrifice your time, your talent, and your treasure for the benefit of one new friend. Make his or her welfare the most important purpose in your life.
One last thing – if you are single this may be easier than if you are living with another person. Let me suggest before you begin this endeavor you discuss this exercise with your partner. Your partner may wonder why they aren’t the object of the challenge.
This will be tough because as we get older we don’t generally make new best friends. Unfortunately we don’t always treat our old friends/partners with this level of sacrifice or intentionality. Just keep this in mind.
Let me know how that goes.
“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” (Arnold H. Glasow 1905-1998)
On occasion, an active imagination is more a curse than a blessing. For folks with active minds, waiting patiently results in conjuring up too many potential next steps. We let our minds lead us into places we would not go if we did not have to wait patiently.
If these seven suggestions really could bring great success, why would I be writing this post instead of sipping Pimm’s Cup on a sail boat in the Mediterranean? Just in case you make better use of these suggestions, send me an email describing your success.
It’s time I offered something practical for you to try. Up to this point, many of my blog posts have offered you, my readers, unsolicited groupings of words. Sometimes those words did help or comfort or confuse, but of what use were they really? So it’s time to offer you some intentionally formed words to ponder.