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Music for airportsThursday, March 5, 2015
Jeremiah 17:10 The weather snafu-ed us, or tried to. Our flight from Springfield was cancelled. But it was easy to drive to Chicago and find inexpensive parking for nine days at O'Hare. And we had all day. The trip to Chicago was smooth and quiet. My young TSA man's name was Keile. Nice name. Nice guy. Not everyone in the airport security business is a nice guy. But he was. But his x-ray machine found a bunch of weird stuff in my bag. The real showstoppers were two one pound containers of skin cream - prescriptions, medically important to me, but too big and not in clear containers. They couldn't be checked by their machines. "We don't want to take these away from you, so we have a procedure for these cases. You just have to be patted down. Is that OK?" Sure. Took a minute or two, then another nice guy (two in one airport) named Donzalo asked me, "Can you stand for four minutes while I do this pat down? Would you rather do it in private? When I touch your buttocks and groin, I'll use the back of my hand rather than the front. Are you ready?" Wow. This was much more thorough than the "guest" pat down at the Danville Correctional Center. Although I know the inmates are much more intimately handled than I ever was. This patdown sounded Thorough. So I suggested, "Donzalo, since we're going to be getting to know each other over the next few minutes, you might as well pray for me while you're touching me. Hands-on prayer is by far by far the best kind." He smiled. We began the ritual, the dance. I got to take off my belt and shoes after all. I removed things from my pockets, he worked his way down. And then we were done. I retrieved my belongings. He said a nice thing to me, "Most of the time people are yelling at me when I do this. It was good to laugh a little instead." I think we were praying for each other. And we both knew the truth. Only God probes the mind and tests the heart. We are just here, all of us together, children of the heavenly Father, making our way day by day. Don't forget to breathe. No telling, Lord, what will happen to each of us today. Breathing with our own sets of lungs, feeling the world around us through our thick skins, our thin skins, our black skins, our white skins, our all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow skins. Please show yourself to us now and then, Lord, and let us each hear your voice and taste your love on our tongues. You are so close. Thank you. |
In no hurry for once, I gave the TSA man at O'Hare my bags. "Don't worry about your socks and shoes today. Don't take out your laptop," he said. Margaret and I were in the fast lane to Austin, Texas. They must have known how happy we were to be on our way.