Humid this morning with a slight breeze. I am walking along, minding my own business, when here comes this little black puppy, gamboling about and running around in circles, followed by a girl of 8 or 10 calling “Lucy, come here” and chasing that dog. The more she chased, the more the dog ran. So I told her “Just go back home and call, it will come. Right now it thinks you’re playing.” So she did, and it did, case closed, and words of wisdom fall on receptive ears.
A word one seldom hears anymore is “putter”. The dictionary defines it as ‘to move or act aimlessly or idly, to dawdle’ and also ‘to work at random, tinker’.
It used to be an honored occupation, to putter, to tinker. Things got done. Such a person oiled the squeaking door hinge, or fixed a window that was stuck or hard to open, or tightened a loose screw. One of the janitors serving one of my congregations always carried some tools when he worked. And when he saw loose banister or spotted a loose board in a fence, he fixed it. He said he liked to see things ‘ship shape’, and the result of such puttering is less major repairs, because things never got to that stage.
Now here is an item in the Reader’s Digest on the benefits of boredom. But the item says empty moments are increasingly rare, because we have iPods and radio and text- messaging to fill our empty times. And the loss is ours.
Because there is a strong assumption that boredom, a state of nothingness, is essential. It is the human emotion that lies beneath great discoveries. It is at times of restlessness that we discover new things, maybe a different approach to a problem, or just a new way of considering things.
Our lives are like that girl, so busy chasing and pursuing that we don’t take time to stand still and wait for the dog to come.
The Psalmist said, “Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth” Psalm, 46,10
So it is, so let it be.
GPD 5/14/08
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