Remembering Nine-Eleven

Eleven days.

That is how long I had been in New Jersey.

Shirli was driving me to the Newton Country Club for a job interview. We were listening to the radio and talking about the new life we had begun together. The radio station cut the music and made the announcement about the first plane hitting the tower. No one knew what was happening. It was obviously a tragedy. 

Then the second plane struck.

It became obvious that planes striking the Twin Towers was intentional.

Somewhere in the passenger plane(s) scenario two more airliners were involved. One crashed into the Pentagon. One [who knows what its target was] was forced to crash in a Pennsylvania field by a few brave patriotic Americans charging the hijackers. “Let’s roll.”

The Twin Towers burned and collapsed.

No one survived the intentional plane crashes.

A few shy of 3,000 Americans died in a matter of minutes.

American first-responders are still dying as a result of illnesses related to the Twin Towers fires and debris.

In a little longer than a twinkling of an eye on that day, and for a short while following, we all became New Yorkers. In the midst of the terroristic tragedy, we became a unified America. Skin pigmentation did not matter. The Mason-Dixon Line was erased. Political affiliation did not matter. Church affiliation or denominational preference did not matter. We were America. We were a unified country suffering together. We were afraid together. We were angry together.

Recollection is a good thing. It is good to recollect and remember the events of Nine-Eleven.

In recollection it is good to remember that hatred is an evil force.

Those that planned and carried out the airborne assaults that day eighteen years ago were not operating out of a motive of kindness. Far from it. Their motives were hatred driven. Their goal was to kill as many people as they could. Their goal was maximum effect to inflict as much death, pain, and fear as they could. They were partially successful. Their partial success lasted for a while before the American tendency toward selective amnesia set in and people began to forget.

I have not forgotten.

I will not forget.

I cannot forget.

And still, to this day, when I see an airliner in the sky … I cannot help but to wonder.

Oh. I got the job on the golf course and started the next day.

Approaching Our Third Anniversary

A month, in the grand scheme of time, is not much time.

It is, with the grand scheme of time in mind, that I undertake to keystroke a few comments about our life here at our little cabin in the woods a month in advance of the October date [October 21^st] that will mark our Third Anniversary of doing what we refer to as the small space shuffle.

I want to particularly answer three questions that are pertinent to life in the here and now for us.

Q. Are we still content doing the small space shuffle?

We are.

We are absolutely content doing the small space shuffle after three years of doing it. We are sure this surprises the naysayers and those that thought we were crazy back at the beginning of this journey.

Do not think for a minute that it is not still challenging. There were a few emotional challenges at the outset. We had to learn how to let go of stuff. It is crazy just how emotionally attached we get to our stuff. Not now though. The challenges are more of the physical type. What is the greatest physical challenge that we face at this point three years into the adventure? The greatest challenge is finishing several unfinished projects. Especially the unfinished projects inside the cabin.

There are, I think, a couple of reasons for this.

The first is that we are not in some kind of keeping up with the neighbor’s contest where things are concerned. We live simply. And we simply live in the woods.

The other is that things like finishing the counter in the kitchen corner and redoing the floor are not as easily done as thought about. It is not like there is a spare room or corner to set things up that we use every day as part of normal life.

Strictly to the question … we are perfectly content and cannot fathom the idea of returning to the status quo of normal home ownership, mortgage payments, high utilities, or all the expectations, glitter, and glamor that goes along with what we called life in the ruburbs. [Ruburbs is that geographic area that is no longer rural but not quite suburban. It is the area at the edge of the sprawl characterized by large houses and acreages.]

It helps, too, that Shirli and I have both recognized and embraced our hermit dispositions.

Q. What have we been up to over the course of the past year?

Quite a lot, and at the same time, not much at all.

It takes some time to settle into this thing called retirement.

We have managed to settle. We have managed to let go of feeling like we have to be constantly producing in order to be productive humans … that mindset that gets engrained in us … that mindset that keeps our noses to the grindstone … that mindset that deceives us into thinking that we are less than others if we do not have what they have as signs of success … that mindset that tricks us into thinking that we need more than we honestly need in order to be happy and content on the topside of the sod.

We have mostly been simply living. We have mostly been simply taking care of ourselves.

A large part of simply taking care of ourselves involves our faith-life; an area that is easy to neglect when hammering out a living. We were, when an alarm clock and a time clock owned us, snatching and grabbing at a little devotional time here and there to maintain some semblance of the larger devotional picture. 

It is that way with all of us. Now that we are retired, and settled into it, we are able to do better than snatch and grab. The challenge now is not the time clock and the demands of the workaday life. The challenge is in the personal discipline department within ourselves … a dimension that presents itself as a far greater challenge now than before now that there is time to reckon with it.

We now own that alarm clock. It rarely gets set. Sleeping in [a lot of days it has been daylight for an hour when we awake] no longer launches us into high gear so we can get out the door.

Something more tangible though, in answering the question, has to do with a magazine. Shirli and I have three articles in the works at Backwoodsman. When will they be printed? That is a question that we cannot answer. We are looking forward to their publication though. Not so much to garner any personal attention but more so to encourage others – particularly where tiny house living and container gardening in small spaces are concerned.

Q. What plans do we have for the coming year?

The short answer is … JUST LIVE and ENJOY LIFE!

The longer answer is a bit more wordy. The longer answer is more elusive. The longer answer involves one of those it depends clarifiers.

The it depends thing is the real kicker right now. How we are going to go about just living and enjoying life is going to be partly determined on the 16^th of this month. That is the date for Shirli’s follow-up with the team that did her surgery after a polyp tested positive for endometrial cancer. The follow-up is when we will find out the results of the pathology.

Everyone every step of the way has been very helpful, hopeful, and encouraging. The eyes of the surgeons saw nothing that caused them to be alarmed when they performed the hysterectomy. We are expecting to hear good news from the doctors on the 16^th – that the cancer was only in the one polyp and that no other treatments are needed or recommended.

So, in going forward, we are simply going to keep practicing what we preach. We are going to keep believing and trusting God, knowing that life on this planet is only the journey and not the destination. We are going to be ever more mindful about taking the time to do the things that are important to us. And, in the midst of the going and doing, we will be evermore mindful of the love ideal that is so badly deficient in the void created by the social fabric of this sad post-modern culture.

The love ideal?

Jesus said, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. [John 13:34-35]

It is easy to say. The doing of it grows easier the more we practice it. 

We learn, in the doing of it, when and to whom it is necessary to love with a tough love that limits [perhaps prohibits would be a better word in some cases] their personal dysfunction and drama from destroying our peace. Tough love is the most painful kind of love. It is important to remember that monastery walls are not built to keep the monks inside the monastery. They are built to protect the peace and serenity of the monks by keeping the world, its worldlings, and even large numbers of professors of faith outside the monastery where they can do no harm to those inside. The enclosures represented by our personal lives must necessarily include protective barriers.

Regardless ... JUST LIVE.

Regardless ... ENJOY LIFE.

Regardless ... MAKE THE MOST OF LIFE AND CHERISH EVERY MOMENT THAT WE HAVE.

Regardless of what is going on in the surrounding world or in the smaller world comprised of our own small life-circles … never let go of faith, hope, and love.

There is more to come.

Peace to you and yours,

David & Shirli