January 7: Small Sad Voices, Light Without Darkness, Furnace Wasn't Terminal

Santiago rows for deep water and thinks about birds . . . 

Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.

In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, "The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea."

Santiago has so much compassion for the small, delicate birds in this passage.  Plus, his love and respect for the sea is strong, as well.  As he says, the ocean is "kind and very beautiful," but also "cruel."  That pretty much describes the entire universe, doesn't it?  There's so much to love and appreciate in nature, but there's also the need for respect.  

I live very close to Lake Superior.  People who have never seen Superior don't really understand its vastness and beauty.  It is, literally, a freshwater ocean.  That big.  That beautiful.  That dangerous, at times.  Every once in a while, the Big Lake likes to remind us all of its power.  Waves as tall as buildings.  Lake effect winter storms that dump upwards of two-feet of snow on our heads.  Undertows that steal away loved ones who aren't used to its icy currents.  

Life is like that, as well.  There are beautiful sunrises and sunsets.  Mornings with skies as blue as cut jade.  Afternoons that seem to stretch on like arias of light.  But there's also cold that grabs your bones like hungry dogs and won't let go.  Nights so deep it seems that God, on Day One in Genesis, said, "Let there Darkness" and left it at that.  You can't have one thing without it's opposite.  No light without darkness.  No beauty without ugliness, life without death.  Hope without despair.

As both Constant Readers of this blog know, I have been struggling with one of those dichotomies.  No warmth without cold.  Yesterday, my heat stopped working.  I called a repair person, who arrived at my doorstep last night and declared within five minutes that my furnace had fought its last winter battle.  The repair person handed me an almost $7000 estimate for a new heating system.

Today, I tried to arrange the financing for that new system.  I approached two banks and discovered that, because of some pandemic struggles I had with car payments and trombone payments (you read that right--trombone payments), nobody would loan us the money to get our new furnace.  This afternoon, I was pretty much at the end of my rope.  I even organized a GoFundMe page.

And then I took the advice of my wife's cousin.  I called another repair person for a second opinion.  I took an Ativan and went to clean two churches.  By the time I was done scrubbing toilets and sweeping dead flies from window sills, the repair person called.  He showed up, climbed down into our crawl space.  After 25 minutes, the replacement of a small fuse, my furnace roared to life.  And I was told that the furnace wasn't terminal.

I sit here tonight, writing this post, having both a reduced and restored faith in humanity.  The first repair person reduced my faith--tried to take advantage of my family in a desperate situation.  The second repair person restored my faith--fixed my problem, gave me hope.  One thing cannot exist without its opposite.

I am a sea swallow flying over the cruel gray waves of the Pacific, trying to avoid being swallowed up right now.  Beauty and terror.  Darkness and light.

Saint Marty is ready to face a new morning.  Like a beautiful cocker spaniel, holding his favorite ball in his mouth.