Overcoming Instinct

"I did it!" exulted Asherel as she sat atop the horse, and just as I was about to say, "Scoot forward- you're too far back!", the horse started bucking wildly. It happened so fast that none of us had time to be scared. Asherel quickly slid off the horse, landing feet first, though a little closer to the kicking hooves than I would have preferred.. As soon as the horse felt her weight fall away, he stopped kicking and bucking.
"You were sitting too far back," I said.
"Oh."
I decided that was enough practice mounting a horse bareback and we led the horse back to Jill who was preparing for another lesson. Jill is a fantastic instructor and had only left Asherel with the horse knowing Asherel had ridden for many years, and also that I was there. I didn't fault her at all, but I had to tell her that the horse had bucked. She trains her horses so that you can drop a bomb and they won't flinch, but this was a fairly new horse for her.
"Asherel was sitting on his poor kidneys... I don't blame him," I said to Jill.
"No, I understand why he did it," said Jill, "But he can't be allowed to do it and still be in this program."
She showed us how to stand out of range of the back hooves and flick our hands along the horse's twitchy flanks.
"You keep doing that," she explained,"And the horse learns not to fear touch and pressure there. He was just reacting with instinct."
"You can overcome instinct?" I asked.
At that very moment, she glanced up to see her German Shepherd chasing a barn cat. He was snarling, and not looking like he was about to ask the cat over for a cup of tea.
"NO!" she shrieked to the dog.
He stopped in his tracks, looking sheepishly at her as the cat scuttled under my van.
"Yes," continued Jill, "You can overcome instinct but it takes a lot of time, persistence, and commitment."

We are finishing our reading about the American Revolution. I am time and again amazed at how universally beloved George Washington was. One of the most striking aspects of his character is that he was supposedly a man of a ferocious temper. However, he set about determinedly to control it, and became the model of dignified patience and decorum. Our baser nature can be overcome.

The SAT question of the day was a vocabulary question, but the content was about anger. The sentence said that research showed, contrary to what is often believed, that by expressing anger, one often increases its magnitude rather than reducing it. The lesson? Anger should be controlled.

I often pray what I call the "2x4" prayer. It goes something like this:
"Dear heavenly Father,
I am dense and thick headed, slow to understand, hard of spiritual hearing - and now that we mention it, physical hearing as well. Show me your will, but you may need to hit me over the head with a 2x4 with it, or it is quite likely I won't get it."
I think God was slamming me with a 2x4 yesterday. Anger and all its little precedents- criticism, frustration, irritation, demeaning comments, sarcasm- need to be eradicated. Anger may get the monkey off my back, but it may also get me thrown out of the program.

Proverbs 15

¹ A gentle answer turns away wrath,

   but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 29:8

New International Version (NIV)

 ⁸ Mockers stir up a city,
   but the wise turn away anger.

Proverbs 30:33

³³ For as churning cream produces butter,
   and as twisting the nose produces blood,
   so stirring up anger produces strife.”

Psalm 86:15

¹⁵ But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
   slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Not without honor

I love it when it cools down enough that I can do errands using my bicycle. This has been a beastly hot summer, and not at all pleasant biking weather. But this past week, the temperature has stayed below 90, low humidity, and I got my hair cut to a short pixie, all events conspiring to let me run some errands on my bike.

I had to mail a package first, and then head to the drugstore for some suntan lotion for our upcoming last hurrah of summer beach trip. And then, I was done with my errands. The relative coolness of the air beckoned, and as often happens, instead of turning homeward, my bike took over and ferried me off to the Greenway.

"Where are we going?" I asked my bike, "I really need to get back to promoting my book and quizzing Asherel on her school work."
"There will be time for that," my bike said, "Do you realize you barely rode me at all this summer?"
"It was too hot, and it got awfully busy. I had to marry off a son, visit my folks, go to Texas to help my sister, publish my book, promote my book, and edit and publish Comer's book. And then I started working on editing my next book. By the way, I thought it was much better when I first wrote it...."
"That doesn't sound like vacation."
"It was a working vacation."
"Well forget work for the next hour. I am taking you someplace special."
"The Greenway? What makes it special? I've been here thousands of times."
"Have you seen the sunset a thousand times?"
"Probably."
"Is it still special?"
"Well....now that you mention it, yes."
"That's the kind of special I mean. The familiar seen with grateful eyes."
"I get where you are going with this, Star."
(I name all my bikes Star...it keeps life simple.)

The bike path was nearly empty. I rode happily, and saw nothing of particular note. It was peaceful, and quiet in the dappled forest surrounding my route. It occurred to me that it was just as lovely, in its own way, as the ocean bike paths I would be riding next week.

I have often wondered at Jesus saying that a prophet is unrecognized in his home town. There is something about being very familiar with people, places, and things that makes you no longer see them for what they really are. We take them for granted. They become invisible, uninspiring, unimportant.  I looked around at the beauty of the Greenway, and patted my bike's head. (For those of you who don't think of your bicycle as a horse, that would be the handlebars.)
"Thank you , Star," I said.

Matthew 13:56-58

⁵⁶ Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” ⁵⁷ And they took offense at him.
   But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”
 ⁵⁸ And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

What a smart phone can teach of God

I got my christmas gift early and it has resulted in bouts of delight accompanied by bouts of frothing at the mouth. This is how most things in life are for me. I believe it is an immutable law of nature- for every force there is an equal but opposite force, which is why I was created to counterbalance all the calm and gentle people on earth.

But back to my gift- since I was due for a phone upgrade, Arvo got me a smart phone. These wonders of the modern age do everything. If I get lost, I hit a navigation button and in a soothing voice, the phone asks me where I want to go and assures me it will get me there. If I want to send an email from the Sahara desert, it can do that too. If I want to shoot videos or photos, or read a book on its little screen or text a message with either a touch screen or a real slide out keyboard pad, it can do all that! It alerts me to incoming emails or text messages with my choice of a hundred ring tones, including a deep Satanic voice that growls out, "droid!"

There are many features and buttons I have yet to understand. I don't dare press the one that shows an icon of a nuclear weapon. The only thing that it is difficult to do with this phone is actually make a phone call but I am getting the hang of that. And the one disappointment is that the touch screen is slow and draggy compared with my ipod screen thus making drawing on the phone difficult. I tried a few sketches but was frustrated by the limitations of the unresposive touch screen.

Still, determined to give the Droid a true trial,I have been drawing and blogging the past few days only from my phone.
Asherel lay nearby on the couch, still recoveriing from our holiday tradition of getting sick on xmas. I pulled out my Droid and began sketching. My first instinct of frustration was to fling the phone in the fire, but then I discovered that if I drew very, very slowly, the screen was more responsive. This is the antithesis of me- to proceed slowly and thoughtfully, but as I did so, my heart rate slowed and my drawing looked more planned, more deliberate.

My favorite Bible verse is Psalm 46:10 - "Be still, and know that I am God." I need that continual reminder to slow down, to notice all the wonder around me, to soak in the joy of the journey and not fret so much over where I hope to ultimately go. It is a hard lesson for me, one I am forever forgetting. Funny how the smart phone is even able to impart that spiritual message.

Exodus 14:14 NIV

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

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