Not Only Moses has to Deal with Pragmatics

Just in from second shift of snow shoveling. The snow is medium heavy and so-so deep .... maybe 10". The Prophets predict another 5" or so. Brings two things to mind.

1) Jeremiah's first prophecy comes to mind. God troubles him for his free associations ... Go, figure ... God as psychoanalyst. Poor depressed Jerry says ... Hey, Big Guy ... I don't have my own voice. Go is not pleased.

                              No Jerry, tell me what you really see and stop all this resistance.

Jerry responds reluctantly.

                              I see a pot and it's boiling over from the North.

I never quite got God's interpretation but I've been told that patients don't always understand the deep interpretations of their therapists .... for God tells him that armies are going to gather in the North Country and swoop down on Jeremiah's people, cause they done God wrong. As a kid, when I first read it, I was convinced that the pot shoulda been boiling over it's South side if the enemy was to spill in from the North.

No matter. Jeremiah, who was also told a little later -- after this deal with his God was brokered -- that he couldn't have a woman in his life, in his prophetic vision may have not only seen the exile but may have divined that Handel was destined to choose Isaiah 40 for the Libretto for his Messiah Suite. No women and no concert halls! Dang. This snow storm came -- not from the North but -- from deep in the heart of Dixie!

2) Shoveling snow may well be God's way of culling the herd after the indentured children have found lives of their own.  Each storm finds some number of men failing to get back inside and failing to make any snow angels ... just lying there inert in the snow ... Now, that I think of it, I wonder if those little kids with their snow angels aren't attempting to channel Grandpa? or Grandma? "Grandpa's shoveling clouds in the sky." Oh, those sweet little grand-spawn and their imaginations.

Any case, made me think about my own life and that of my older visitors. Spouses tend to express concern after activities that involve muscle training with repetitive motion. Indeed, the most common three occasions that I hear stories about in which partners of all stripes ... first-time-arounders and repeat-offending partners, alike ask: "Are you really OK ... are ... I bet you can guess ...

                                               Vigorous sex-play

                                                    Snow shoveling and

                                                         Potato peeling.

More shoveling to do.

"M ... I'm gonna be just fine .... pass the defibrillator."