Obey Today

A critical element in Solomon’s Ecclesiastes is the otherworldly advice to ignore yesterday and tomorrow, and obey the moral imperatives of the day.
It’s not as if we make no plans. For example, I have a regular workout schedule. Six days each week, barring intervening necessities, I ride my bike at least ten miles (16km). By no means would I have any imaginary intentions of competing or even sport riding. I ride because it gives me some good head space. As a side benefit, it does keep me in decent health. Doing this is obedience to one of those impressions in my spirit that is hard to explain, but forms a moral imperative for me.
Today I rode past the property on North Triple X Road in Choctaw that was washing away into the North Canadian River. The recent heavy rains caused the river to wash out the banks near this property, eating away some 20-30 feet (6-9m), making a much wider channel. The water level is typically ten feet (3m) below the land level, so it’s a significant threat when it washes out from under the buildings. The owners are named Buford, and they had to get help evacuating their movable goods when they woke up one morning to find the river very near their barn. By the time they got help, half the barn had already fallen into the river. It’s bad enough I can see it all from the road. The Bufords were worried about their dog, because it spent it’s whole life there. They had offers to kennel it, but couldn’t bring themselves to put it in cage, so they left it on the property. They still feed it daily and so forth, but the poor dog gets bored with no one around.
Most of the dogs who chase me are no genuine threat. The few who are get a face full of pepper spray, which is precious few of them. The spray works really well when you hit them in the eyes, which I’ve managed to do consistently so far. But the tactics the dogs use in chasing tells me a lot. Biters will get right up on my feet and start snapping. Other dogs will wander around in front or behind, chasing because it’s a challenge. The Buford’s dog came sneaking out between the wheeled trash bins in the driveway, but never really threatened me. So I stopped and we got acquainted. Like most dogs, if you stop and get off the bike, he was actually afraid because I was no longer vulnerable. I got him to come to me so I could pet him and talk to him a bit. He’s pretty lonely. The time lost was a small sacrifice to a higher moral priority.
Tonight I’ll go out after bathing in insect repellent and try to pick some blackberries. I’ll have to wear long pants, knee-high rubber boots and gloves in this heat because that’s the only way to avoid poison ivy and some of the ravenous insects, all of which grow alongside the blackberries. I’ll share some raw with the neighbors, but most of them will become jam. I’ll share that, too.
Later this summer I’m hoping to pick pears from a couple of trees in the area, whose owners invite folks to do so. When it comes the fall and we have a freeze or two, the persimmons will be ready to pick. All of this fruit is rather easily preserved in various ways, and I hope to put up enough to last until next picking season.
That is, if nothing much changes in my world. And I’ll keep blogging pretty much every day, and I’ll publish more books — if nothing stops me. Frankly, I’m half expecting things to get ugly here in the US this summer, but I have no way to estimate how it will affect me. That’s because I can’t really estimate just what will become ugly, or how ugly. I figure we’ll have some economic troubles we have seen before, maybe some political troubles we haven’t seen before, and likely some other unexpected events nobody dreams of yet. I can’t plan for that stuff, aside from making sure I understand the generalities of moral imperatives with more clarity. Who knows? I could die between now and then, or during the hullabaloo. And maybe the Internet will become impossible for some reason. Meanwhile, I expect such things in the general sense of a prophetic message of which I’m utterly certain, though I can’t explain how it came to me.
I’m sure the proper course of action will be apparent when the time comes. I’ll obey the moral imperative of that day same as I do it now.