Chain Shot

Back in the days of fighting sail, fighters would weld a length of chain between two cannonballs.

When fired from the cannon barrel, the two balls stretched the chain between them and whirled through the air; the two balls circled round each other, gaining force and speed.

When chain shot hit the enemy ship, it scythed down everything—masts, rigging and men.

Vicious, lethal stuff.

To my mind, depression and frustration circle together like chain shot, each feeding the momentum and strength of the other.

I feel as though I’ve been under such an attack recently.

Hardly any fun at all.

I’d like to attribute my state to just aging, I’m a few days short of 70, but, let’s face it, I’ve been subject to cycles of depression all my life. It’s just a thing I deal with—with varying degrees of success. Or failure.

Some folks mellow as they age; others sour.

I curdle.

But, mellowed, soured or curdled, I’m still here and by the grace of God, kicking.

Thanks to the efforts of Donald, Helen, Ginny and the telephone guy, my computer is back to working; it was down since Monday night. Of course I called at&t (we put the cuss in customer service). I went through their recorded voice phone tree, waited for ages to speak to a real person (who spoke little English) and…

Chain Shot!

For the first time in my life that I can ever remember, I hung up the phone on someone who was still speaking! Hey, as part of my southern upbringing, I’m even courteous to telephone solicitors.

But like chain shot, frustration and depression cut right through my manners.

I told Donald to rip out the whole computer system and haul it off!

A few days later, he called at&t and eventually got a repairman dispatched on Sunday… so my computer is back working so that I can continue to spread light and joy to all readers throughout the world.

On the good side, my current fit of depression began to lift last Friday as I mowed the grass—for me, physical work often helps depression better than prayer times (which I turn into mope sessions). Better yet is to pray while engaged in physical work.

While the computer was down, I continued to write in my journal and at the end of this post, I’ll copy last Wednesday’s diary entry… the chronology of this post warps around several days.

Back to Friday as I did yard work… I must be the only person in Jacksonville who did not see it!

The Saint Johns River flows north, one of the few rivers in the world, like the Nile, to do so. In Jacksonville the river curves to the northeast as it bisects the city into neat halves.

Right at 5 p.m. Friday as everyone left work, a tornado touched down in the river in downtown Jacksonville. Everybody with a cell phone camera snapped photos of the resulting water spout; here are two photos from the Times-Union newspaper:

By the grace of God, the whirlwind stayed midriver. Had it moved a few hundred yards to either bank, it would have devastated downtown Jacksonville and caught thousands of commuters in the open. I hear it stayed in the river for over ten minutes.

As it happened, there were no people injured and hardly any property damage—although drivers caught on any of Jacksonville’s seven bridges did get a thrill.

Now, although this happened just blocks from my house, I had my head down pushing the lawnmower and I never even heard the tornado—didn’t know a thing about it till Saturday morning.

If I did hear an odd noise… I probably wrote the roar off as just more chain shot passing overhead.

Oh, here’s that pity party diary entry from last week:

Me Feeling Sorry For Me

Somewhere in the Book Of Common Prayer occurs the phrase “Miserable Offenders”. I identify with that phrase.

While other Christians of my acquaintance talk about feeling happy, joyous, and prosperous, my own experience tends more toward Christian misery.

I don’t know if this is an accurate perception or merely a quirk of my own psyche, some imbalance of chemicals in my brain, some morose hereditary defect, some buried childhood experience, some vile sin—or it my own spiritual/mental state reflects reality.

Or maybe I just overreact to external circumstances.

More likely than any of the above, maybe I’m just a bitter, grouchy old bastard given to whining and bemoaning my state.

So, when in misery, I turn to devotions and Scripture hoping to see some glimmer of light. That’s what’s supposed to work for other Christians. Again and again I’ve heard others gush about the promises of God and the comfort of bible reading.

Good for them.

Feeling low yesterday I turned to devotions:

Nineteenth Century revivalist Charles Finney wrote, “If we do not enjoy the service of God, it is because we do not truly serve Him… Always remember that whenever you lose your enjoyment of serving God, you may know you are not serving Him right”.

Whoopee!

Isn’t that a comfort?

I turned to another devotional book to find that the reading for today deals with the sin of impatience. … Impatience? Who me? After all I’ve been hounding Donald for six months to fix whatever computer glitch has been blocking me from my website… And he came over tonight to fix it and now I have no internet access at all.

My internet was down for eleven days last month, and now it’s gone again. So yesterday I called AT&T Fast Access to be told by some girl in some foreign country who does not speak much English that the company will not send our a service man because I have the wrong equipment. The line repairman says the fault is in the DSL system; the DSL repairman says it’s in the phone lines.

Bottom line: I have no internet again.

A pox on all their houses.

Impatient? Who me?

Anyhow, I turned to the Holy Bible and my scheduled reading takes me to that place where God tells King David that he’s not qualified to build the temple but that he’s welcome to gather materials so one of his descendants can build it.

Ever wonder why I hate having devotions?

Why am I writing this stuff? If I want to win readers to Christ, shouldn’t I be upbeat and positive?

Well, maybe so. But I think Christ places a certain value on honesty. And this is where I am in my spiritual life right now. I may not be right, but I try to be real.

To me it seems that for decades I’ve been molding bricks without straw and I’m really tired of it.

I feel the game’s not worth the candle and I’m ready to cash in my chips. If I was working a job, I’d retire. I feel as though I’ve worked and worked as hard as I can and ended up with nothing to show for it. I’m just weary to the bone. Gone down in utter defeat.

And it’s not that I don’t believe there is a resurrection, it’s that I just don’t care.

What about my writing?

Who cares.

Again and again over the years, editors and readers have told me that I’m a good writer—so long as they can use my stuff for free. Hardly anyone anywhere thinks I’m a good enough writer to pay for anything I write. Were it not for Ginny’s working at a real job, we’d starve. My work has no value.

I’ve heard it said that if you are doing something and it doesn’t help you, then you can stop doing it and it won’t hurt you.

I feel as though I’ve pissed away my whole life fiddling around with things that are not quite right, that I’ve taken up space and wasted time.

But, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and all that crap.

That’s what I hear anyhow.

Somehow I’ve missed out on that part of the Christian life. The fact that I’ve missed out does not make Christianity any less real. It just means that I miss out on that element in it.

Maybe I’m just a trifle down today.

Maybe I should read Ecclesiastes to cheer up.