“Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?”
- Job 38:1-11 (New International Version)
This morning, I feel the need to get in touch with my smallness. It’s an exercise I first became acquainted with when my wife, Nancy, and I moved from Memphis to Emporia, Kansas, which sits about 100 miles south of Kansas City.
I knew very little about Emporia before the move. My wife, Nancy, and I were living in Memphis, working for FedEx.
As we started out, I remembered how things were just before I retired. I’d made the trip south on the turnpike 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 a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery.
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. That was what it was like on the morning, June 2nd, 2005.
This is the way I described the events of that morning back then:
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 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 a hundred out of a hundred and one days back then. It had just become humdrum, a drudgery. Listening to sultry new-age voices on NPR like Lakshmi or Mandalit.
Ah, but now I look forward to these little day trips. So it was on 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 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 had become 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.
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.