“It’s a good bike, Paul, but I just found another one I wanted.  You can have it for fifty dollars if you’re interested.”  My friend, the instrument tech was standing in his shop apron, pointing toward the back of his repair area.  The bicycle was, indeed, a good looking piece of machinery, with its alloy wheels and gleaming twenty-one speed shifter.  I was used to the department store models, which needed to be hammered on and tweaked every time they were dragged out to be ridden, so this beauty was definitely going home with me!

As we talked, I learned that he was purchasing a road bike which was going to cost him over a thousand dollars.  One Thousand Dollars!  For a bicycle!  Anyone knows that ninety-nine bucks will buy you a bike at Walmart!  I shook my head, but I dug in my pocket for the fifty dollars and rolled my new bicycle out the door.  It is still the one I ride today, eight or nine years later.  My friend, the instrument tech is on his third since then.  I had given up trying to understand him.  Until a week ago.

Photo by IrishFireside (www.irishfireside.com)

Last week, my friend, the computer geek…I mean, the web designer, rolled up to my door (actually through it) to spend some time dreaming up new ideas for the website that the Lovely Lady and I maintain for our business.  After an hour or so, he got up to leave and I commented on the beautiful machine he had left standing just inside the door as he arrived.  He explained some of the desirable features of the bike and I commented that it must have been rather costly.  He, reluctantly, and not bragging at all, told me about the cost and benefits of some of the components.  Wheels…four hundred dollars apiece.  Seat…three hundred dollars.  Frame…almost two thousand dollars.  Seriously!

I was mentally adding up the costs in my head as he spoke.  And, wondering if I’m paying him too much for his expertise.  No.  I know better than that.  He definitely earns his pay for the work he performs for my business.  But, I was puzzled.  I still am.

As the Lovely Lady and I rode in the car toward a nearby city tonight, I asked her the question that has been bugging me since that conversation and maybe, since my friend, the instrument tech told me what his bicycle was costing him.  I assume that these men ride for the same reason I do–to exercise and keep the body in condition.  The purpose for every part of the bike that my friend, the web designer, described to me is to lighten the overall weight of the equipment, making it easier to climb hills and go long distances.  I can’t, for the life of me, understand why you would take part in an activity with the goal of getting exercise and then spend incredible amounts of cash to make it less effective exercise!  The Lovely Lady laughed at my analysis, but I still can’t quite wrap my mind around the issue.

I see it every day.  Amateur guitarists, players with minimal skill in the art of arpeggios, or fingerpicking, or even basic chording, feel the need to spend thousands of dollars on professional instruments; instruments with potential that far exceeds any their new owners could hope to live up to.  For many of these folks, a three hundred dollar entry-level instrument would be all they ever have need of.  That, and many hours of practice time. 

Men (and sometimes women) who have taken up the game of golf (if it can be called a game), spend thousands on clubs that will never, ever take away their propensity to slice a drive from the tee.  Amazing quantities of cash are wasted on equipment which will sit in closets, as their owners recognize the sad fact that no amount of overpriced gadgetry will ever enable them to play like Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, or Brittany Lincicome.  Those champions got where they are by discipline and hour upon hour of practice.  Of course, they use the pricy equipment, but it was the hard work that got them to the point that the fancy clubs are of any benefit to them.

Are you getting the picture?  I realize that much of what has been written here is an oversimplification of reality; cyclists do ride for pure enjoyment and, the better the machine, the less there is to annoy.  An expensive guitar plays with less finger discomfort than a cheap one and will at the least, be easier to learn on.  I’m not a golfer (I even lose at mini-golf to the Lovely Lady with regularity), but I can see that better clubs lessen the chance of errant drives and chip shots.

What I’m arguing for tonight is perspective.  Understanding that our goals cannot be bought will bring us to the goal that much quicker.  The wisdom that comes with discipline leads to excellence.  Mr Tolkien reminds us in his quirky way that “Short cuts make long delays”.  Indeed, I have never seen a professional musician who rose to prominence by using the “Think Method” advocated by Professor Hill in the musical “The Music Man”.  Fame and recognition come, not to the rich hobbyist, but to the serious student of his chosen craft, and then only after years of dedication and hard work (and more than a few disappointments), with a good bit of tenacity thrown in for good measure.

Keep your eyes on the goal.  Don’t make excuses.  Bad equipment is the least of the problems you will encounter on the journey.  Keep moving!

Oh!  A two thousand dollar guitar which sits in the case, without being practiced on, will never ever play the Grand Ole Opry.  That three thousand dollar bicycle sitting in the garage won’t ever get you to the Tour De France if you don’t get on it and ride every day.

The concert pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, the story goes, was asked in the streets of New York how one could get to Carnegie Hall.  Fictitious as the story may be, His reputed answer hits the nail on the head for us tonight.   

“Practice, practice, practice.”

“All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”
(Proverbs 14:23~NIV)

“Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.  Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
(Martha Graham~American choreographer and dance teacher~1894-1991)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Art carried the fifty-year old guitar case in and set it down on the counter yesterday.  I am an enthusiast of many instruments, but my heart always beats a little faster when I see the old Fender guitar cases.  If what is inside is a match to the case, this is an instrument which was built in the heyday of some of the finest and most well received guitars of any era.  They also happen to be some of the most valuable on the market today, but that is secondary to the enjoyment of holding and playing one of these historical artifacts.

We discussed the instrument’s features at length and verbally dissected its condition, fair for its age, but still intact, with all the original parts present, give or take a screw or two.  I even had the honor of being the first person to ever remove the neck from the body to confirm the age indicated by the serial number.  The guitar is exactly fifty years old this month!  Its value is not extraordinary, because it is a less desirable model than some, but it still has significant worth.  I felt privileged to spend some time with the fine old instrument.  Art, Chris (another lover of fine instruments who was present), and I stood for more than a few moments in conversation.

Art spoke to us of where the instrument had spent most of its life.  He talked of Kenya, in Africa, and the desperate need there in the seventies and eighties for musical instruments of any kind.  We learned of the program which provided many guitars to the native churches and also heard of a few instruments which were destined to be used in recordings he participated in making while in Africa.  This guitar made the trip with him over thirty years ago and had been left there when he and his wife returned to the United States a number of years after that.  The guitar itself has just returned in the last few days from its sojourn in Africa.  Ah!  If the old instrument could only speak instead of simply playing notes!  What a story it could tell…

Intrigued by the thought of instruments from the States being exported to a country like Kenya, so rich in its own musical heritage and indigenous instruments, we inquired about the circumstances that instigated the journey.  We were regaled by the story-teller for a few moments as the unexpected truth came out.  I was (and am) stunned.

It seems that, as the early missionaries to the “dark continent” won their first converts, they insisted that the natives forsake their native melodies and rhythms.  In the place of these, the missionaries substituted the traditional hymns of the western churches, translating the words into the native languages to be sure, but still forcing a completely alien style of music on the new believers.  Instead of songs laid out in the “call and response” style familiar to them, the odd sounding four-part harmonies of the western choral style were substituted.  No other type of music was acceptable in the church, nor even in the private worship of the natives.  Worse was still to come.  The teachers banned the native instruments, including the stringed melody-producing ones.  Drums were out completely.  The rationale was that the items had been used in the demon-inspired ceremonies before conversion occurred, so the people must never touch them again.  In many cases, the converts were forced to burn the instruments in a symbolic act of leaving behind their old lives.

How sad.  I will not malign these well-meaning missionaries, with lofty goals for the flock that had been given to them.  They believed they were doing the right thing.  It was never their intention to deprive the people of something that was good, but to protect from evil. That’s just not the way it worked out.

Art and his fellow workers understood that the people needed something which spoke to them in a more personal and familiar way than the recycled Western hymnal, so guitars were made available to the natives and they were encouraged to write songs in the native style, but with words which drew their hearts into worship.  The first few men took a few days to get familiar with the instruments and then the race was on!  Everyone wanted guitars.  The demand far outstripped the supply and it was all Art and crew could do the keep a supply coming.  When guitar strings broke, anything that would sound a tone was fair game.  The musicians would appropriate brake cables from old cars and motorbikes and, peeling off the outer wrappings, would employ the core wire for a string.  When the mechanical tuning machines broke, a wooden peg was inserted up through the hole, violin style, to bring the instruments up to pitch.  It was a wonder to behold!  The music was theirs again!

The final chapter told of the conference he attended, when several thousand men, women, and children were gathered to share worship.  Several different people had played and sung, with the crowd remaining engaged and somewhat noisy.  Then the old man stepped on the platform, with a simple, single-stringed instrument.  A hush came over the crowd as they sat and listened with rapt attention.  Not a sound was heard except for the playing of the instrument and the voice of the singer.  When it was over, the crowd let out a collective sigh, almost as if they had been holding their breath for the whole song.  “What happened?” queried Art to some of his Kenyan friends.  The only explanation they would give was to reveal that this instrument, above all others, had been labeled as “demonic” for most of a century and it was only now that they could hear songs of the Savior they loved, played on an instrument which they had longed to be able to hear for most of their life spans.  What an emotionally moving experience for them to sit and take in the joyful sounds once more.

The parallels to our current day experiences almost make my head spin.  But, I have filled enough of the white space on this page for tonight, so I will not waste your time in pointing out the obvious.  You may be able to fill in the blanks yourselves, if you will.  Just a little shove in the right direction and you’re on your own…Intolerance of generational and cultural differences in styles has plagued and sidetracked us for eons, when the better focus might be on the substance itself.  

Perhaps, it is time to take the view of each other that our Creator takes of us.  The outer trappings are nonessential; the heart though–that bears just a little more consideration.

“The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
(I Samuel 16:7 NIV)

“Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”
(Aesop~Ancient Greek author of fables~620 BC-560 BC)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

“Your integrity is in question and will be monitored!”  Now, wait a minute!  We’re not going through that again, are we?  The last time we talked, this was my opening statement.  Surely we don’t need to rehash that for another post.  The answer is a resounding no.  You already know that my mind wanders.  Tonight, although the starting point is the same, it would seem that a different path is opening before us.

I have read and re-read that post, as I am apt to do when the message has been especially impactful to me.  Each time, the opening line has hit me again.  I want to believe that the statement is not true.  My integrity speaks for itself.  Look at who I am.  Look at how I do business.  Look at what I say.  There is no question left about my integrity.  Right?  I guess you would have to say that it’s all in what you understand integrity to be.  I’ve discussed this before, but it has been awhile, so I’ll cover a little familiar territory as the mind continues to wander afield.  Don’t worry, we’ll arrive at our destination soon.

The very word “integrity” comes from the Latin “integritatem”, meaning oneness or whole.  The essence is that of a piece of  fabric, woven together with threads which fit into the pattern, each adding to the strength and beauty of the whole, until you have the completed product, the cloth.  Each choice we make is a thread which adds to the complete fabric, good choice upon good choice, decisions made with our intellect and heart, daily adding to the integrity of a life well lived.  But we can see that the problem with weaving or stitching anything is that, at any given point the pattern can be broken, regardless of what has come before.

I watch the Lovely Lady, sitting in her chair and placing stitches in her latest craft project.  The blank piece of neutral colored cloth is her canvas, awaiting each painstaking stitch.  For weeks–sometimes months–the blank cloth seems not much improved as she labors away.  Hours at a time, she counts the correct number of times the needle pushes through the “canvas”, her masterpiece looking nothing like the vision she has in her head of what it will become.  I cannot enumerate the times she has exclaimed unhappily, “Oh no!  I messed up a long way back!”  The result, although I can never pick out the error with my untrained eyes, is that she will remove every thread which has been placed in the cloth since the point of the offending stitch.  She makes certain to place that stitch correctly and follows from there again, retracing each painstaking in and out motion of the needle pulling the colored thread behind it, until the picture is finished, perfect in every detail.  There is a reason I don’t do needlework…

Why did she retrace her steps?  A lack of integrity.  No…I don’t mean a lack of integrity on her part.  I mean that the handwork demonstrated a lack of integrity.  There was a misstep, a momentary lapse on her part, possibly when she lifted her eyes from the masterpiece to look over the magnifying glasses at her husband making a silly joke.  Perhaps, just that little bit of inattention, coupled with the annoyance of hearing a bad pun, was enough to disturb her concentration.  Whatever the reason, correction needed to be achieved; thus the extra labor.  The result?  Integrity.  Beauty.  Perfection.

Maybe you men need a different illustration.  Not long ago, a young man brought in an electric guitar to be repaired.  It was a beautiful instrument.  The finish was gorgeous, with not a scratch to be seen anywhere.  The strings were clean and bright, with a nice, close action.  Here was a guitar that was the image of perfection, from the fit and finish, right down to the custom pickups and tuning machines.  “What could possibly be wrong with such a nice instrument?”  I inquired of the young man.  He answered that he didn’t know.  “I tune it with my electronic tuner.  Every string is exactly in tune.  Then, when I play the chords, they aren’t in tune.”  He was perplexed, but I was not.  As he spoke, I had been looking at the bridge saddles, the place where the strings make contact after coming through the body.  The sounding length of the strings begins here, stretching up to the top nut, next to the tuners.  On this particular guitar, the individual saddles were all in a perfectly straight line, seemingly in good order, but something was amiss.  “Were these saddles like this when you bought the guitar?”  I asked.  “No.  They were all messed up; one all the way out, the next one almost all the way back.  I straightened them out,”  came the answer from the bright young man.

“Well…there’s your problem,”  I replied.  I spent a few moments with a tuner and a screwdriver and brought the guitar back to the amplifier, where we played a chord or two on it again.  This time, the beautiful instrument played the chords in tune, all the way up and down the neck.  “But, the saddles are all out of place again,” complained the young man.  I explained the need for each string to play true to itself, the issue being that every string was not alike, the height from the neck was minutely different, even the material in the core of the strings was not completely consistent with the others.  All the variables forced us to compensate with the saddles, but the result was a guitar which played in tune with itself, and when tuned to standard pitch, with other instruments.  The formerly useless, albeit beautiful, guitar had become an eminently useable, and still beautiful, instrument.

All of this is to say, the integrity of the needlework project is in constant question.  The integrity of the guitar never stops needing to be monitored.  Every time the player picks it up, the tuning has to be touched up.  Every time the needlework is started anew, the Lovely Lady has to carefully calculate where she stopped and begin again, stitch by painstaking stitch, making a masterpiece out of a scrap of cloth and a myriad of different threads, the final product far exceeding the sum of the various materials.

Indeed, my integrity should always be in question.  Every day that I draw breath, stitches are being put into the fabric of my life, music is being played on the instrument of my heart.  A moment of distraction, I give in to the desire to align my heart with the wrong influences, and the fabric is flawed, the music out of tune.  Sometimes, when I look back, I see places that must be repaired, must be set right.  The process is not as simple as the Lovely Lady’s labor, the finished product never as perfect as it should have been, but the fabric is squared away, patches are placed, and we move forward once more.

How about it?  Any monitoring going on for you?  We walk this road of life with other people for more reasons than just to pat each other on the backs.  Sometimes, that companion will hurt us with a criticism, but it seems to me that the pain is more than compensated for with the reward.  There is little question; the integrity of the finished product is better off for it.

I’m fairly sure that the music will be a lot sweeter too.  Maybe you should keep that tuner handy, though.

“Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.”
(Proverbs 27:6 NLT)

“All music jars, when the soul is out of tune.”
(Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra~Spanish Author~1547-1617)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2012 All Rights Reserved.

The teenage delinquents sat and stood right at the edge of the canyon.  It was the first trip to the Grand Canyon for their family and they were determined to make the most of it.  Without money to spend in the gift shop, the next best thing seemed to be a contest of who was the bravest.  Closer and closer edged first one, then another, until they were all right on the brink.  Below them…a sheer fall to certain death.  The parents of the boys were nearby, but they seemed to understand that over-protection wouldn’t be helpful.  A couple of times, the tired mom suggested, “Be careful boys,” but took no other action.  A few tourists who shuffled past warned the parents.  “They’re getting too close!  You don’t want one of them to fall!”  The travel weary couple just nodded and smiled.  And, sure enough, within a moment or two, the boys returned to the safety of the marked path, each satisfied that their claim to manly superiority had been adequately staked.

Photo by Pfl

 The Grand Canyon is a spectacle beyond all belief.  The vistas are endless and some people will stand for hours, simply gazing at the beauty before them.  The colors, the patterns of the rocks, the sheer magnitude of the huge hole in the ground is enough to hold them spellbound.  As you look down the canyon, you see dots moving on the side of the bluffs below and realize that those are people climbing down or up the canyon wall.  On further down, the river, from here just a stream really, rolls along gently.  It is an illusion.  The mighty Colorado River is a powerful flood of roiling water, pushing its way impatiently along the floor of the Canyon, at times nearly a mile below the rim.  The realization of its significance, while viewing it from the edge, is a little unnerving.  In reality, so large and powerful, yet from this vantage point, so tiny and unimpressive.  Again and again, the eye is drawn to other points of interest, before it is time to move on.  One visit is enough to burn the impression of it’s grandeur into the mind for a lifetime.

With all this amazing vista unfolding in front of us, why do the daredevils have to spend their time here crowding the edge of the precipice?  It’s a question I’ve asked myself for many years.

Yesterday, as dinner approached the time to be served, one last dish of delectably grilled food was brought inside.  The children had scant interest in all the other dishes which had come through the door.  Squash?  Zucchini?  Yawn!  Sweet Potatoes?  Ditto!  Wait!  What’s this?  This looks like pineapple!  That might be worth tasting!  But, the little ones were warned off with the customary, “Hot!” and most of them were content to wait.  One, though…within moments, she was poking, not at the contents of the container, but at the container itself.  I guess she just needed to know if it really was hot.  I wonder what goes through their little minds at moments like that.  “Mom says it’s hot, but she might be fibbing.  Maybe she just wants to keep it for herself.”  You’ll be happy to know that no fingers were burned in the preparation of this blog tonight, since her actions were noticed and she was headed off.

With all of the toys in Grandma’s house, why do the children want to crowd the edges of disaster?  I’m still wondering.

Hmmm…from the first recorded actions of humans in Genesis…“And the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desireable…”  It would seem that this is human nature in a nutshell.  We find out where the boundaries are and then we push.  You can’t keep us in your box!  Never mind that the box is designed to protect us; we want freedom!  And, again and again, we burn ourselves or we fall, realizing too late that there are boundaries because we are loved, not to keep us confined.  How amazingly short-sighted we are.  And how predictable.

The statistics tell us that actually only about sixty people have fallen from the top of the Grand Canyon since records have been kept.  Many more have died by other means there, but the boys (old and young) crowding the edge seldom actually pay the price for their foolishness.  It’s a good thing.

I think I’m going with Johnny Cash on this issue.  He says,”because you’re mine, I walk the line.”  Seems to be good advice to me.

I’m not planning any trips to the Grand Canyon any time soon, either.

“In a love that cannot cease, I am His and He is mine.”
(George Robinson~Irish poet~1838-1877)

 “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time.
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you’re mine,
I walk the line.”
(“I Walk The Line”~Johnny Cash~American singer-songwriter~1932-2003)