James 24:7

There's nothing that can make you more aware than being smacked across the face with a wet mackerel.

Flannery O'Connor, the great Georgia writer (hat's off please), was the master of showing how that mackrel across the face could do wonders for helping a person wake up.

She called the mackerel "grace."

After I posted earlier, I was thinking about her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and how in the end of that story the old self-righteous grandma, as she faced The Misfit and his smoking pistol, suddenly saw him as someone whom she might even love.

After he shot her, if I remember correctly, the Misfit said: "She'd have been a good woman if she'd had somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

I paraphrase.

I told this story yesterday:  one time my wife and I stopped off to visit Carl Sandburg's house in Hendersonville, North Carolina.  We toured the house, played with the goats out in the barnyard and then headed up the mountain path to visit a place of bare rock where Sandburg often sat and composed his poems.  (Here's some pictures.  They are not of us but pretend they are.)

Well, as we sauntered along I noticed a black water hose by the right side of the trail and wondered what in the world that was doing out there in the middle of nowhere.

About that time that hose's tail began to shake and I realized it was a SNAKE!  (Yeah, read that as a scream...)  Of course, I jumped to other side of the trail and dragged my wife with me.  I then looked to my left and saw another hose..er..SNAKE! 

We had apparently walked smack into a SNAKE! crossing.   Everywhere we looked left or right, we saw another SNAKE!

Fortunately, they were just good old black snakes.  (Yep, they shake their tale feathers like rattle snakes.  I think it's their way of saying, "Hey, if you have a bat and feel the need to pummel me, then have at this while the rest of me excuses myself.")

Now until we came to SNAKE! city we had been sort of drifting along in that fog William James wrote about.  But after seeing those SNAKES! and several more like them on up the trail, we became aware of every little bit of our surroundings: the birds, the trees, the rustling in the leaves. 

The misplaced garden hose tossed tither and yon.... 

When Jesus was at the table with folks, he often did/said things that woke people up, that made people uncomfortable, that made them aware.

Just thought I'd add that little story to clarify a bit more (and sit down here and cool off after cutting the grass.)