Spirit & Soul Connections

Have you wondered what keeps those tall electrical poles from toppling over during storms? I learned the answer to that question the hard way when I worked as a “grunt” on a construction crew in 1956 for Otter Tail Power Company in western Minnesota.

It was a crew of six men, including me, at age 18. The foreman, Jerry, was a journeyman electrician and expert pole climber. The second in command, “Old Blue Nose,” was the driver and operator of the big boom truck. I thought he had the most exciting job using his big truck to lift poles high in the air and drop them into their holes.

It was a sunny and hot day in the middle of the summer and we were building a line along a rural road in the lush green fields outside the small town of Brandon. By now I had learned that the electrical poles were steadied and the dangerous wires were held high above the ground with a guy-wire attached near the top of the pole and buried five feet deep into the ground about ten feet from the base of the pole.

One of my jobs was to use an auger to dig the hole for the guy-wire. The hole was dug on an angle, eight inches wide and five feet deep. Digging it took a lot of twisting strength and sweat. Then I put a cone-shaped steel contraption, called an anchor, at the bottom of the hole. The next step was to “smash” the anchor with a long, heavy tool that expanded the anchor’s blades into the compressed soil around the hole. When this well-designed contraption was smashed and expanded, it could do its job of making sure the pole and the electric line didn’t fall down. Finally, I would fill the hole with dirt and the job was done.

Except, that day I had a problem. My arms were aching and I wanted the workday to end. But, I couldn’t remember if I had smashed the anchor. Should I tell the foreman or not? I was faced with two unpleasant alternatives. I imagined a storm sometime in the future when the anchor might come out of the ground, the line would fall down, someone could be electrocuted and I was responsible.

And I was afraid to tell the foreman of my possible error. I could get chewed out with their “blue” language – swear words. Worse yet, I could get fired from one of the best paying summer jobs in the area. I badly needed the money for my sophomore year in college. My alternatives weren’t pleasant.

I struggled with my ethical dilemma and finally, I told them. I still have no idea how I made that decision to face reality and tell the truth.

The next thing that happened surprised me. I didn’t get the criticism I feared. The foreman, matter-of-factly, told Old Blue Nose to bring the boom truck to the site and hook onto the wire. The wire and anchor easily came out of the ground. I hadn’t smashed it. In a storm the line would have fallen down. I quickly re-did the job and got teased a bit about being the “Rookie.” I was so relieved I didn’t care what they said as long as I didn’t get fired. Today, I can still feel the relief I felt that day, knowing no one was going to be hurt because of my mistake.

The moral of the story is not that I learned my lesson that day and ever since I have faced up to the truth on all occasions. I haven’t. My memory has preserved that hot summer day to remind me of something important. And my recollection gives me the pleasure of feeling good about myself because that afternoon I had the courage to face reality and deal with it. Maybe the courage was the result of collaboration – unknown to me at the time – between my spirit and God’s spirit. If so, that is collaboration worth repeating. There will be more opportunities for me to face my reality with truth. I hope I will be up to the task.

Tell us about the time you told the truth and still feel good about yourself for doing so.

We’ve all had failures. One of those moments when I flubbed it was while playing on the basketball team when I was a senior in high school. I had been playing the position of bench warmer and it was the last minute of the last regular season game.

Several players had fouled out of the game. The visiting team, Morris, was ahead by two points. Coach Nylund called a timeout and looked down the bench at us reserves. We rarely got in the games except as “clean-up” when our team was winning easily. He looked at me and said, “Nohre, get in there.” This was the first chance I had to be in a game when it was important.

With a lot of nervous energy I ran to my position on the floor. Larson, at point guard, brought the ball up the court and looked for our best shooter; he wasn’t open and the rest of the players were also well guarded except for me. I was open about twelve feet from the basket. Larson passed me the ball and at that moment I knew I could be a hero. I took the easy jump shot; the ball hit the rim and rolled off. I missed the shot, Morris got the rebound, and we lost the game. The locker room was glum but I don’t remember my teammates getting on me for my miss; I think they might have felt a little sorry for me.

I was really disappointed, but not devastated, because soon after, I realized that missing that shot taught me something about myself. It confirmed I wasn’t a very good basketball player and coming to that truthful realization actually felt good. I no longer needed to drive myself with an unrealistic expectation to be something I couldn’t be.

I became aware at seventeen that it is not true that you only need to have determination, discipline, and belief to make your dreams come true. Those positive thinking mantras and exhortations by the motivational industry with their inspiring speakers and books can cause unnecessary hearthache.

The meaning of “be all that you can be” is quite different than “you can be anything you want to be.” The former implies the excitement of realistic possibilities; the latter, if taken literally, is out of tune with reality.

That’s not to say there’s not unrealized potential in my soul for me to be me – even more than I’ve been able to do and be so far. At this wonderful time in my life I will try to be more than I have been, by embracing my life and who I am; I won’t try to become an NBA basketball player. I learned that lesson a long time ago.

Write a Comment – if you have ever flubbed and learned something from it.

If you received this article by email, you can write your comment by clicking on the title On Missing the Winning Shot; it will take you to www.spiritandsoulconnections.com where you can scroll down to the comment section and share your thoughts with others who value spirit and soul connections.

If you found this article from Facebook or by an internet search you can receive each new essay (about two or three a month) by subscribing in the box near the top of the home page.

It ‘s late afternoon in December, yet warm enough for me to be sitting outside, quietly looking at majestic Black Mountain, the center-point of our Carefree/Cave Creek community. From some place beyond the swimming pool is pristine desert, untouched by human activity, and I hear the distinctive call of a coyote, but I can’t see him.

When I hear a coyote, I have both an eerie and an awesome feeling about these savvy animals.  I wonder whether he is singing, crying, talking to a friend, or like Wiley E. Coyote trying to entice another creature to be his meal. There is also the possibility he is speaking to me.

I wonder what it’s like to be a coyote, living in what is left of their desert between our houses and neighborhoods. Our presence is new for them. For thousands of years, before houses were planted here, the coyotes, their prey, and their predators had free run of the place between mesquites, saguaros, and desert brush. I understand coyotes usually den year after year in the same location so they seem to have adapted quite well.

I listen for what the coyote might be saying. I think he’s asking me to pause and think about what is most important. He reminds me of the importance of connection: connection to all creatures “great and small” and our connection with the infinite universe beyond Black Mountain. Mr. Coyote has been a wonderful happy hour companion, even without seeing him.

Write a Comment

If you received this article by email, you can write your comment by clicking on the title The Call of the Coyote; it will take you to www.spiritandsoulconnections.com where you can scroll down to the comment section and share your thoughts with others who think about spirit and soul connections.

If you found this article from Facebook or by an internet search you can receive each new essay (about three a month) by subscribing in the box near the top of the home page.

By Daniel Olson

I discovered this insightful and uplifting essay written by my friend Daniel Olson. He agreed to let me share it with the readers of Spirit and Soul Connections.

Cynicism is a terrible reality; it is contagious and spirit depleting. It creeps in when you know those who are corrupt, those who take advantage, those who stand in the way of justice and truth. When I was in Africa there were times when cynicism found a place to breed in my mind. In 2000, at an ecumenical meeting north of New York City, I sat on the bank of the Hudson River and reflected.

Blowing across the river the wind is cold and raw. The Hudson is wide at this point. The wind, blowing from the wooded, rocky banks of the New Jersey Palisades on the far bank, creates large whitecaps moving diagonally across the surface.

Then it strikes me that the waves are moving left to right – against the flow of the river – against the flow of the deeper current moving steadily toward the sea.

The biting wind and the surface white-capped flow are like the negative forces that blow harsh cynicism across my soul.

But an inner voice reminds me that there is a deeper flow unrelenting, unhindered by the cold winds of cynicism – a deeper flow of grace moving in my life toward and from the Creator.

Deeper, stronger that the oppression in our world of race, gender, and person is the ultimate, deeper flow of grace moving in my life toward and from the Creator.

Deeper and stronger than the cynicism is the movement of the flow of faith toward community.

I long to feel the flow of grace as grace moves toward grace; I long to know its movement within my life, countering the chilling winds of cynicism.

Daniel Olson was a parish pastor in Minnesota, a missionary consultant with the Youth Department of the Ethiopian Mekane Yesus Church and was Africa Program Director for the global mission department of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American. Dan and his family lived in Africa and for many years, he traveled the continent serving the people of Africa.

Write a Comment

Readers will benefit from your thoughts.

If you received this article by email, you can write your comment by clicking on the title Cynicism; it will take you to www.spirituandsoulconnections.com where you can scroll down to the comment section and share your thoughts with others who think about spirit and soul connections.

If you found this article from Facebook or by an internet search you can receive each new essay (about three a month) by subscribing in the box near the top  of the home page.

I like to write about spiritual moments, as the tagline on the front page of my blog reads, it is about “the divine here and now.” Spirit experiences are divine. Sometimes the spirit is present and we don’t know see it or know it. I sent an email to Eleanor, my writing coach, bemoaning that I was unable to find a topic for “Spirit and Soul Connections.”  I dejectedly wrote, “Maybe the divine is not here and now and in my life as often as I hope.”

 No sooner had I finished writing that sentence when it ironically occurred to me that it had been a fantastic day. While writing the email, I had my epiphany. My next sentence was, “Now that I think about it, today was divine.”

I had been stressed working on a lead article for the magazine “Together AZ,” a monthly publication about recovery from alcohol and drug addictions. http://www.togetheraz.com/ The magazine’s publisher asked TERROS, the behavioral health organization I work for, to submit the lead article for the upcoming December issue. www.terros.org

Part of my job is to interview people recovering with addictions. These amazing people give me the privilege of writing their stories and it occurs to me they also struggle with life and death issues. I see we are different and the same. They don’t have a cancer and I don’t have an addiction, but we fight for our lives and I see what we have in common.

My article was an exploration of the similarities of people with chronic health conditions like cancer or drug and alcohol addiction. I finished the article a few days before it was due and needed to show it to my boss who is a good writer. She has very high standards and that’s when I got nervous. I hadn’t kept her apprised of progress on the article and very late in the game, it occurred to me she might not like the topic at all and wouldn’t want it submitted for publication. I knew there wasn’t time to start over with a different subject and I became panicky.

The anxiety I felt was that particular one, the exaggerated feeling of disaster that’s out of proportion to the reality of the situation. Question and doubt are two of my familiar and life-long companions. When my boss and I met and she read it, it turned out she liked it. I was incredibly relieved to have made the publication deadline but also I felt like a school kid who received an “A” from a respected teacher who is a notoriously tough grader. The lightness and effervescence of my spirit that entire day felt like it was fizzing out of me from a shaken bottle of lemon-lime soda.

There are so many small moments when life is enormously great.  It happened when I was a high school sophomore and unexpectedly made the varsity basketball team. It happened when I gave Kathie an engagement ring and she not only said “yes,” which, to be honest, I really expected her to say, but she also loved the ring, which I wasn’t so sure of.

We are never more alive and fully ourselves than when we are filled with spirit and feel the life that animates our physical bodies, the very life we are. It doesn’t have to be labeled the Holy Spirit, but some do call it that. Spiritual moments happen all of the time when we care to take notice. These moments fill us with ecstasy and gratitude.  I share this because I saw for myself, that upon second thought, it had been a divine day after all.

Write a comment.

If this essay triggers a memory of a spirit experience when you felt like a shaken bottle of lemon-lime soda, please share it with us in the comment section below.

If you are a subscriber, and received this essay by email, click on the title A Divine Day After All, which takes you to www.spiritandsoulconnections.com , scroll down to the comment section and let us know about your “divine day after all.”

Arizona’s boom and bust real estate market had yet another boom from 2000 to 2008, followed by another bust whose devastation still continues. During the boom years, Kathie and I built a beautiful custom home.

Construction was done on the house on Chino Lane and I was washing floors and cleaning windows.  The squeegee and the smell of ammonia brought back a teenage memory of washing windows at O.G. Hanson Drug Store in Elbow Lake, Minnesota. I was doing my best to make the house attractive to buyers, who had become scarce in 2009. We knew we would suffer a financial blow because it would never sell for the money we put into it.

I cleaned all morning, went home for a lunch of leftovers and then went back to Chino in the early afternoon. From inside the house, I opened the door into the garage;a half a step in front of me on the garage floor was a four-foot long, fat, brown snake curled up in the corner next to the garage car door. I had no idea what kind of snake – peaceful or hostile. I froze. I panicked. I stood like a statue but my insides were racing and I managed to quietly close the door.  I came up with a plan. I ran outside around the garage to the service door. I had to get closer to implement my plan to open the automatic garage door so the snake would politely leave. My assumption was the snake would be happy to crawl across the concrete driveway back home in the desert.

But there were two problems with my plan – the automatic door lift had not yet been hooked up to electricity. A rope and a handle were hanging from the center track, as on all garage door openers. The construction crew had tied a small rope about three or four feet long and attached to a handle on the far right bottom of the door.

Fortunately, the snake was still snuggled up to the far left side of the door and I never took my eyes off of him. I was glad he wasn’t moving but I wanted that garage door open as soon as possible so it would leave. To open the door I had to pull on the center rope with my left hand to unlock the mechanism, while at the same time stretching my right arm as far as I could to reach to the rope on the floor and pull up with all my might. The garage door was unusually heavy; it was an extra-wide double car door made of wood – beautiful, heavy wood.

I was stretched out, like on a cross of my own making, as I repeatedly pulled on the two ropes to get the door open. It never occurred to me this was not a good idea. I finally got the door open for the snake to leave. Mission accomplished? No. The snake didn’t move. After a couple of minutes it was clear he wasn’t going to leave. I looked at a broom and gave some thought to sweeping him out, but decided a broom’s length was too close to the snake for my comfort.

Now what? Finally I did what I should have done in the first place. Call somebody and figure out what is the best course of action. I called Kathie. I casually said something like, “Kathie, I’m at Chino and I’ve been trying to get a snake out of the garage. Does the fire department come and pick up snakes?”  She said they did and gave me the phone number. With my “it’s not a big deal” and “oh by the way” manner of speaking, I also told her I had pulled a muscle opening the door. I decided I might as well tell her now, knowing her response would be something like, “You should’ve known better.” Of course I should have, and I didn’t expect sympathy, just problem solving – which I got.

Within fifteen minutes the fire department’s small desert brush fire truck parked on the street. A young fireman, who had obviously done this before, came down the driveway with an orange colored, plastic, five-gallon can and a device to pick up the snake. He gently picked it up, put it in the can, and drove off to release him to his new home in a remote part of the desert. That snake and I are both God’s creatures, but the truth is we are not compatible as close company.

Like our ancestor Eve, who lost the privilege of living in paradise, my encounter with a snake has also resulted in losses. I didn’t pull a muscle in my shoulder; I crushed my thoracic vertebrae numbers six and seven. Because of the injury, I can no longer run 10K’s, ski, bike or lift anything more than fifteen pounds.

I have lost a bit of paradise and I have some observations about my experience. Sometimes the spirit of “JUST DO IT!” is just stupid. Adrenaline infused my “just do it” determination to carry out my plan. Kathie calls it my “Norwegian stubbornness” which might be a continuation of Eve’s original sin. Whatever it is, I have paid a price and so has Kathie. Now, when we travel, she has to lift my suitcase. I’m embarrassed and she is happy to do it. We have to hire more handymen and landscapers to do things around the house, things that I used to do. I have gotten used to asking for help because I don’t want more back pain and we’ve learned not to build any more spec houses in this real estate market. The snake put an exclamation mark on that decision.

The word “fate” has become a favorite of mine, as has my understanding and application of it. Nietzsche had a lot to say about fate that I‘ve found helpful. My fate is the combination of what is given and how I respond to it. The snake was there – a given. I responded to it. The result of that experience is my fate and I accept it. Accepting what is feels better than wishing it hadn’t happened; it brings peace. Some think accepting fate is to be fatalistic or, at best passive. That’s not that for me. I am free to respond to everything and every opportunity in my life – positive or negative. We are always creating our fate and I’m still free and determined to “just do it” – just not “do it” so stupidly.

What kind of experiences have you had like the Snake at Chino Lane? Do you have a little house of horror story?

 Please write about them in the COMMENT section below. I am sure other readers would like to hear your story so we can laugh and learn together.