There is a dog that I've been trying to recruit for my adventures. He is an Airdale named Winston. Such a distinguished looking gentleman with his bristly whiskers and jaunty stride. I've accosted his master a few times with requests to take him to the park along with my pack of loonies. I always figured his consistent "no" was a reaction to the chaos he witnessed in my car as we stopped along the street to greet him. The roar of yelping and barking emanating out wasn't exactly ice cream truck melodies. (I've spoken to my crew about their poor marketing appeal, but they just don't get it!) Finally one day the owner 'fessed up'...Winston has a problem. He despises boxers...goes ballistic, despite his distinguished manner, when he comes face-to-smashed-in-face with a boxer. It used to be just one specific boxer, with whom he had had a tiff, but now it had escalated to include all boxers. Winston is a perpetrator of mass prejudice.
Confession time. I am wrestling with this oozing energy myself, though boxers aren't what set me off. It started during the battle over the dog park issues. One of the 'deal breakers' for the park rangers was the conflicts between dogs and cyclists. Up to that time I had been very accepting of the bicycle crowd that raced through the dog park area. I just worked around the shortcuts they forged through parking lots, their indifference to stop signs and their determination to ride 2 or 3 abreast on the narrow road leading into the dog park. I was actually glad to see people enjoying themselves out in nature. Like Winston, my slate was fairly clean until an altercation occurred. In an effort to help solve the dog/cyclist conflicts, I began asking cyclists to simply stay on the road instead of cutting through the parking lot where excited dogs were loading and unloading from cars. This required almost nothing on their part to tweek their route to avoid this hotspot... maybe it added an extra 5 seconds to their course. I didn't even try to point out the stop sign at the entrance end of the lot, since 98% of the riders totally ignore this irrelevant obstruction to their flow of freedom. (Being on a bike somehow exempts a person from the need to comply with the rules of the road). My 'Winston moment' came when one of the bicyclists responded to my carefully crafted request to avoid detouring through the parking lot with, "Nope, this works fer me." Something about that self-centered retort kicked me deep down in my gut. We were losing access to this beautiful part of the dog park largely because of this kind of attitude on the part of cyclists. Suddenly, I hated cyclists...all cyclists. I didn't want to, but that kick broke something open inside of me that gushed out to include anyone pedalling on 2 wheels.
Poison, absolute poison! I can sympathize with Winston's prejudice problem. I would have loved to nurture the passionate energy of this poison except for 2 reasons. One, most of my favorite people in the world are cyclists. And two, Jesus calls me to love, not hatred. Damn! So, like the cleanup of the oil spewing in the Gulf waters, I have some mopping up to do... and a leak to plug. Not an easy task when I (we)'ve lost the dog park battle, and the cyclists (who pay zippo to ride through there), lost nothing. I guess it did "work fer' that cyclist...worked us right out of our park.
Luckily God is the 'mop-up' specialist. His indwelling Spirit busts me every time the adrenalin of anger roils up within me. "Lynette, we need to talk." And so we do. I talk it out with Him and ask Him for forgiveness and new power to love. Sometimes I can even feel my old vicarious joy at seeing a cyclist delighting in the freedom of the road. The parking lot is a mute issue now since that no longer officially belongs to the dog park, so mostly I feel numbness as I watch the bikers pedal happily by. I still must confess that I long to see a park ranger pull over a cyclist for blazing through a stop sign, but I doubt that will ever happen. God obviously still has some work to do in my heart...just like Winston's.
