Psalm 104:31-32 (King James Version)
“The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works.
He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.”
We’re hearing that this Coronavirus crisis may be with us until late summer or early fall. Like just about everyone else we know, Nancy and I are hunkered down. We’ve been out a few times since March 16th to walk with Ranger and get a bit of fresh air and I did go to our pharmacy this morning to pick up a few of Nancy’s prescriptions. While I was only going to go through the drive-through, I could tell when I left Nancy was a bit worried about me. “”Don’t forget to bring hand sanitizer with you and don’t forget to wipe off the phone after they scan the pick-up barcode I texted you.” I tried to reassure her by lifting the tube of Clorox wipes for her to see as I left. I even thought of telling her that, according to Clorox, the wipes kill 99.9% of Coronaviruses, but felt that would be a bit of overkill.
When I got back home I let Nancy know that the phone, the bags that held the prescriptions, my hands, and the steering wheel had all been sanitized and I felt fine, no wheezing, no fever.
Overkill? Probably, but these are our times. After all, Solomon himself, who has been reported to be the wisest man who ever lived, once said there is “a time to kill.” Given a bit of interpretive wiggle room, I think I can find room for overkill in his wisdom.
It’s a different world than we’ve been accustomed to and it seems things changed overnight. I haven’t seen a sense of foreboding in the air like this since October of 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’d been home in Boston on leave from the Air Force when word came that my leave had been cancelled and was told to report back to Bolling Air Force Base, right outside of Washington, D.C. By the time I got back to the base, President Kennedy had already made his speech. His language was direct and ominous. “It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
In order for the United States to ensure that we would not need to avail ourselves of our full nuclear arsenal, the President also declared that a “strict quarantine” (interesting choice of words, wouldn’t you say?) of all military equipment destined for Cuba would be initiated and enforced.
For the next thirteen days, the world lived on the brink of nuclear annihilation. I didn’t know from day to day whether the end of the world was hours, possibly minutes, away. I remember the chill that came over me when I saw the flash messages coming over the teletype that the U.S. military was placed on Defcon 2 alert, just one step below Defcon 1, which was euphemistically called “Cocked Pistol.”
Looking back at it, it seemed to me at the time that those thirteen agonizing days felt like eons.
Thankfully, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended. The “quarantine” worked.
Now the world is dealing with another quarantine, a microscopic virus of Biblical proportions. The fear in the air is palpable. I don’t know what Defcon level we’re at now, but I suspect it’s creeping up by the day.
But, for me, this quarantine has a much different feel than the one I was part of back in 1962. In 1962, I had no belief system to undergird me. I was adrift in the world. I was a small cog in a very big machine and I was powerless. There was nothing I could do but transmit, encode, and decode messages. If the end came I was going to be vaporized along with everyone else. It was strange, really. I shouldn’t have been concerned, but I was. While I rejected the idea of an afterlife, I believed this life was all I had. I should have been stoic about it, but I see now that I didn’t have a death wish. I wanted to live. But, today, things are different. I do have hope. There is an afterlife of joy and peace that Jesus himself opened for me. Therefore, I am at peace. I still don’t have a death wish, but I don’t find myself clinging so desperately to this life as if it were all I ever had or will have. I live now with the assurance that there is a place that’s being prepared for me when I pass from this life to the next.
One of the great benefits of my station in life now is that I’ve gained a healthy perspective over the years. There are so many things I have no control over. Events like Coronavirus make me feel small and insignificant. It’s at times like that a voice creeps through a crack in the pit. “You’re just a small speck in a very big universe, nothing more.”
Thankfully, there’s another voice that responds and lets me know, that while I am indeed small, I am also known and loved.
I was considering these things this morning and looked back in my mind’s eye to being with fellow Christian pilgrims with whom I’ve shared moments of joy, sorrow, anticipation, and even smallness . To that end, what follows is the patching together a couple of essays I wrote years ago, one in 2002 when I dabbled with a bit of free verse as I wrestled with my own smallness and another in 2006 when I gave thought to a Christian friend who had made that same journey as I had many, many times. The title of the piece is “Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike.”
If you do by chance read it, I hope it brings you comfort in your journey:
Part One – 2005
Coach and I took another trip to Wichita today. The part the Volvo dealer had ordered a week or so ago was in and so we headed out at about seven-thirty to get it attached to the rest of the car.
As we started out I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike through the Kansas Flint Hills so many times it had become too common to me. If I had to put a number to it I’ll bet I missed the glory of the Flint Hills ninety-nine times out of a hundred back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery.
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. So it was this morning, June 2nd, 2005.
The hills are especially beautiful this year. The late rain and early spring rains, along with the burning, have produced the most incredible green that I’ve ever seen. It is a sight to behold!
I think it was right about my favorite spot, mile marker 109, that Nancy mentioned something Curtis McCauley said the other night when he and his wife were over for some barbeque. Doctor Mac, as I know him, says he’s retired, but he does more work these days than most of the young bucks I’ve met in the corporate world. One of the things he’s currently doing is providing transportation for young people who have somehow made it into the “system.” I think that most are products of broken homes. At any rate, Doc spends a good part of his time taking them to doctor’s appointments, counselors, or an absentee parent. Not too long ago he was taking a young boy from Emporia to some sort of appointment. Their course took them through the Flint Hills, and somewhere along the turnpike he asked the boy a question. “Did you know that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills?” The boy seemed a bit puzzled, so Doc continued with an explanation. “Some of them are black, and some of them are brown, but none of them are green.” The boy seemed even more puzzled with this. Curtis, who finds it almost impossible to avoid mischief, then decided to add more puzzlement yet. “Why do you think that God doesn’t make them green?” he asked. Now I wasn’t there, but I can almost see the gleam in Doc’s eyes as he parried with the lad. I think he might have been thinking “I’ve got this kid stumped.” But, after a minute or so of reflection the boy offered this wonderful piece of youthful wisdom. “If they were all green,” he replied. “God wouldn’t be able to see them from “up there.”
I’d have to say that the boy won this little battle of wits, and I also think that Curtis was delighted to have been the boy’s foil. Curtis has one of those gruff exteriors, but inside is lurking a universe of kindness and love. I don’t think he does all this driving around for the money. I think he does it because he cares about these kids; I think he loves them and wants to give them a little bit of caring that they would otherwise never get. Absentee parents and the “system” just can’t do those things.
The thought of this wonderful little exchange did something for me. As we passed south of that treasured marker on the turnpike, I felt the recapturing of the awe and the wonder I had felt before the trip seemed like drudgery. To that end, I’m going to re-post a bit of free verse I penned one morning as I stopped a bit south of mile marker 109.
The things I felt then I felt this morning. I felt that wonderful sense of my own smallness. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being “known. I felt that wonderful inner sense of being loved.”
It now follows. I hope you find it edifying.
Part one – 2002
Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike
By
Phil Dillon
© 2002 Phil Dillon
It’s the cusp of dawn. I’m chasing Orion’s Belt and bull-haulers down the Kansas Turnpike. At mile marker 109, about a furlong or two south of the cattle pens, I stop.
The occasional rush of southbound traffic breaks the dawn silence. Like a general poised in his appointed place, I review the early morning parade. Saints and scoundrels, gospel singers and politicians, truckers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, mothers, fathers, children, all pass by. Problems and opportunities wind their way down the highway with them.
I touch the highway sign. Mile marker 109. I feel the bits of rust creeping up on the metal. It’s man-made, temporal, placed on the edge of the eternal. It speaks. “This is where you are.” It speaks of commerce and progress passing by. It speaks of cattle and concept drawings on their journeys past a solitary milepost planted on the edge of eternity.
I turn, take a step, and cast my gaze across the prairie. Like the storied astronaut of my youth, that one small step transports me from one world to another. Thoughts pass by. Some pass quietly, humming like the Toyotas and Fords on the highway. Others I hear in the distance. Their low, grinding hums become roars as they draw near, like the Peterbilts and Kenworths hauling their precious cargoes from Chicago to Dallas or the Twin Cities to San Antonio.
While the darkness has not yet surrendered to the day, there are hints of color along the rim of the eastern sky. I sense that they carry the faint whisper of an announcement of the millennium to come. The ageless ritual proceeds, moment by moment. Light overcomes the darkness. The unbroken sky and the endless sea of grass now join together in a hymn of praise. The morning breeze caresses the tallgrass. The blades of grass, in turn, wave gently to and fro, worshippers caught up in the glory of this moment.
Thoughts glide effortlessly through the air, then stop to gently kiss the earth. The earth gratefully receives the kiss from above and pleads, “Maranatha…..Maranatha.”
A hawk circles above, wings outstretched, reaching for an unseen spire. As he circles, the dawn sun touches him, revealing his priestly robes and eyes of fire.
I sense that I’ve entered a great cathedral. I’m overwhelmed by my own smallness. I fear. The hawk descends slowly, gracefully and speaks. “You are indeed small. But, fear not. You’re known…..You’re known. This is where you are. Mile marker 109. This is the place where the line between now and forever is drawn. Here you own nothing, but are given the grace to be a part of everything. The language of the world you left is ownership. The language here is stewardship. This is the place where moth and rust do not corrupt.”
His appointed ministry complete, he now lays hold of the morning currents and moves effortlessly off to the east.
I feel the warmth of a tear as it drifts slowly down my cheek. My epiphany’s complete. I turn back and take another small step, returning to the world I left moments before. I take my place in line with my fellow travelers, the builders and dreamers, the movers and shakers, the commerce and the concepts. Our daily procession has taken us past this place…..mile marker 109.