Earth’s crammed with heaven,

and every common bush afire with God.

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

–Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A meme compared and contrasted European and American attitudes about time away from work.

The European out-of-office email reply read, “I’m away camping for the summer. Please contact me in September.”

The American out-of-office email reply read, “I have left the office for two hours to undergo emergency kidney surgery but you can reach me on my cell at any time!”

The lines between home, work, and play have blurred. We make ourselves overly available 24-7-365 via calls, voicemails, texts, emails, and social media. People risk not being totally present in any time or place.   

The Lord calls, but we have our earbuds turned up. We encounter burning bushes but miss the theophanies because our eyes are fixed on digital screens.

The contemporary church introduces prayer with the litany, “With every head bowed, every eye closed, and every phone silenced.” The good Lord knows, we won’t turn them off.

Gordan Dahl wrote, “We worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”

May God grant us the grace to unplug.

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner taught me valuable life lessons as a child. The cartoon characters’ Saturday morning antics revealed:

• When you run off a cliff, keep moving your feet and don’t look down.
• Gravity is a real DELETED BY CENSOR.
• Parasols are poor protection against falling boulders.
• The Acme Corporation sells all gear necessary to catch a fast adversary.
• Coyotes have more lives than cats.
• Cannon balls sting but cause no permanent harm.

Most of all, the Coyote taught me to keep trying no matter how many times I failed.

Beep, beep!

The Atlanta Office of Solid Waste Services visits our home every Friday. Last month I placed the roll carts at the curb early in the morning. I returned later to find one standing on the sidewalk and the other flung across the yard.

I shared the photo on Facebook with the caption, “I’m not sure what happened here this morning.”  The post elicited various theories, including:

• They couldn’t get along
• Those darn squirrels
• My money is on some driver texting
• Clearly the recycling bin was taking out the trash
• There was a spider
• They had a fight and the green one lost
• Black bear
• You evidently have a rogue trash can there
• Clearly a fight to the finish
• Battle of the Bins
• Rock‘em, Sock‘em Trash Cans
• Anger issues
• Thunderdome: Two cans enter, one can leaves

Although I like the notion of sentient trash cans or scheming squirrels, the real answer is obvious: alien abduction by Little Green Men. They mistook the olive-colored trash can as one of their own.

Call Mulder and Scully. The truth is out there. I believe.