Fat Opportunities

If I had made some resolutions their annihilation would have occurred days ago. It wasn’t until the first Sunday in January that I found the intangible sense of renewal that comes with the turning of the calendar.

In Micronesia, on the street of Denpei, the silent ringing in your ears would float down the muggy street filtered by the call of pigs and cocks. The noise would have stopped. The constant drumming, the singing, dragging tethered and battered soda cans down the asphalt street in celebration of the New Year during the time stuck between the first wee hours and the first Sunday of the year. A call to worship halts the revelry for another year and the quiet reserved Mwoakillese people go back to slow living.

For me, a sense of faith replaced an uneasy sense of wishful hope. It took a few days of pondering my resolution to worry less to understand that my decision was an empowerment. Instead of wandering down a path of wishful hope and worry, I’ll stand in the realities of faith. So much better. So much more a powerful weapon.

Maybe it was those deer grazing on the bushes outside the basement windows. The animals triggered the motion sensor spilling a shattering light, across the night’s landscape. Unfazed, the fat deer browsed on the tender ends of the junipers. I watched them pick through the snow covered branches, to find the choice greens. Unaware of my presence, they continued to rip at the branches. Unaware that they intruded upon my sleep, they worked to destroy the growth of last season. Unaware that I thought of them as food. I wanted a gun. The deer hoped their grazing will always be good. I have faith they will find it so, and their hope provides me with a useful resource. Power over them.

It’s illegal to shoot the deer, but if I was starving, would I care? Not in the least. Would I successfully gut the animal? Know how to care for the meat? Not in the least. Much would fall in waste, staining the snow until spring comes to wash away my crime with a cold rain. But I would learn, survive and do it again. Better the second time.

It’s faith that empowers, reduces worries. I have faith to draw upon my God given resources. My resolution is not to rely on hope. There is no need to worry.

If it had been polar bear rummaging through the garbage, I’d be worried.