Death to Taxes

Someone was on their way to get their taxes done at H&R Block and I said a little sardonically, "Have Fun!" You know, as you might say to someone with performance anxiety on their way to stage right. Well she says, "My job's easy, their doing the hard work." This makes me think. What makes a job hard. A job can be hard because it involves the moving of very heavy objects. A job can be hard if it takes intense concentration on many things at the same time. and apparently, a job can be hard if it's very very complicated. But to me the hardest kind of job is one you don't know how to do.

Of all the vices with which I am cursed,
ignorance is by far the worst.

I just wrote that. Yeah, just now. But my point is this. Call me callous but there's not one person at H&R Block who I have a heart to pity even now, except the intern. I don't mind hard work. If my body is capable of a physical task, I won't complain to have to do it. In my mind and to my eye, orderly complication adds a sense of beauty to any system. And though I don't know the United States Tax System, I'm under the impression that it's ordered to the extreme. I'm not saying at all that tax professionals don't deserve their wages. I'm not going to pay them. I don't make enough. I'd rather suffer through filing my four W2's each from a different state, than give up a fifth of my federal refund. I'm just saying that I'll never pity the tax professional, even in his busy season. For knowledge is his business and knowledge is all he needs. Knowledge is power. Truly said. I pity the ignorant, and self-pity is a sweet sweet sickness.

Good Friday

People who know about me know I like to walk. Maybe you might have to be a hard-core fan of Tim to attach that to him as something wholly and truly Tim, but I like to think that people who know me know that. But I especially like to walk on Good Friday after Tenebrae, the service of darkness. So I walked this evening. Some people walk to take time to think. For me that hardly ever happens. Walking is hardly ever a time to dedicate my mind to a certain topic. More often then not it is a time in which all things fall to the back of my mind and I'm simply a body moving through space, ears listening to the voices of others, eyes considering the environment in which God's placed me. These lulls in mental activity, however, seem to shadow a deeper consideration of concerns and worries and the second I pause and cosider what I had set out to ignore, a leap of understanding occurs, or sometimes I simply find I've more things to figure out then I thought.

So I did that today after Tenebrae. Whenever I went to Good Friday service at home,in Overland Park, I could always just walk the five minutes home or take a detour for a longer ambulation, but this time I took to the streets of Waterloo under a full bright moon. I considered my life, in terms of my current and future stations, as well as reflected on times gone by. It seemed that this was one of those times I came to understand nothing in my walk but only found more and more things to figure out. I was not so much frustrated as I was resigned. Almost completely content to be lost and wandering. So I got back to church, hopped in my car, turned the ignition, killed the radio, and set off back to Camp. Then as I was gliding down Maeystown Road, I looked up over my left shoulder to see the moon once again. I remembered instantly an old Family Circus Cartoon. This one was from the good old days when Family Circus was more than one frame. (That or it was not Family Circus. I must admit I'm not sure.) Anyway, the boy, Tommy, I think, is looking out the window of the car at the moon. And he says, "Daddy, why does the moon follow our car whenever we drive at night." The next frame of the cartoon shows Dad on the phone when they get home, calling Grandpa, "Dad, why does the moon always follow our car when we drive at night?" Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, whatever I found myself mentally screaming, "Why are you following me?" I aced Descriptive Astronomy with Dr. Hermann. I know the moon doesn't really follow you, okay? But what we know doesn't always have a meaningful effect on how we feel. The moon appears to follow us, because of it's steadfast position relative to the shifting objects around us. The moon appears to move because it doesn't move. I'm glad to know that my God will follow me like the moon follows my car. Never leaving, for He never moves. Utterly steadfast.