The New Wild West

The following is a reflection on one aspect of our recent visit to my Mom's home town of Douglas, Wyoming.

-------------------------------

They seemed to be everywhere that morning.  After a weekend spent at homes many miles and many hours removed from this prairie town, a horde of laborers, from the marginally capable to the highly skilled, returned to their grueling routine.

These were weathered men in rough, dusty jeans and boots.  In the hotel dining room they were devouring selections from the breakfast buffet and washing it down with coffee.  The rectangular outline of a box of cigarettes or the circular imprint of a can of chewing tobacco marked many hip pockets.  Caffeine and nicotine, staples of the working man.

Intense eyes peer out of faces creased and burnt by days in the sun and unceasing wind of the Wyoming plains.  Their bodies are shaped by strenuous physical toil, producing a certain taut lean-ness reminiscent of an earlier generation of transient workers who rode these plains a century ago called cowhands.  Not the careful, narcissistic sculpting of regular trips to the local gym, theirs was the hardness of hours and days and weeks of constant labor.

In the hallways and the elevator I was passed by men carrying backpacks or tool bags out to their pickup trucks.  A few were standard half-ton trucks, but often there were heavier 3/4-ton or 1-ton rigs laden with tool boxes and equipment.  Where I was used to seeing mini-vans and SUV’s and economical sedans, the parking lot and nearby gas station was full of bulked-up trucks destined for a long drive out to the fields of work: the trusted steeds of the modern western man.  After topping off the gas tank, they ‘saddle up’ for a drive over narrow winding roads, treacherously crowded by the influx of traffic.

Where their predecessors would have herded recalcitrant cattle to the railroad, these men guide fossil fuels to railcars, either oil fracked from miles under the earth or coal scraped from nearer the surface.  The cargo ultimately powers homes and automobiles of people with little understanding of where the petroleum or electricity came from, much like the city dwellers of an earlier era who dined on beef-steak that arrived on their plate long after the cattle drivers had done their work.

As I watched these men, I wondered how long I would last in a day on their job.  I thought about my esoteric work with data and information systems.  Where results are measured by invisible changes to software.  Where I sit in an air-conditioned cubicle farm surrounded by other knowledge workers in office casual attire worried about whether our workstation is ergonomically correct, not whether someone will be injured or killed on the job or just making it to the job site.

Oh, yes, we do our part to bring products to market, to contribute to the necessary stream of capital flowing in the economy.  I am thankful for a mind that allows me to perform complex analytical tasks.  But those coal and oil workers, following the new boom in Wyoming energy brought on by the irresistible economic forces of scarcity and demand, are at the top of the food chain.  If they were not ripping that hard, black coal from the ground or sucking that reluctant dark oil from deep fields of shale, I would be sitting at home, in the dark, with nothing to do.

Why I Pray

When my hands have done all that they can do,
and there is still much more to be done...

I have given much thought to prayer lately.  Mostly about why.  Why pray?  Why do I sporadically, instinctively persist in an activity that is so intangible in practice and results?  What I read or hear from others on prayer is often how: the practice of prayer.  But always how is inextricably linked with results.  I may not be the most observant person, but I cannot point to
examples of a given outcome explicitly following a specific prayer of mine.  So, I have discarded the results-orientation of prayer.  When I meet a friend for conversation, the only outcome I hope for is a deepening friendship, that we will know each other better for the time spent together, that we will have been encouraged.

So, I have tried to put prayer into that framework - a desire for a deeper knowing, to be encouraged as I catch glimpses of a Good that is weaving itself into my life and the lives of others in ways that are not always clear to my limited view.  As I have done this, I have come to a conclusion about prayer: I need to pray because I need a way to express hope.  Hope for things to get better when I or people I care about are struggling with life.  

Sometimes the circumstances of life are cruel and people suffer through no fault of their own.  Other times they, you, and I make foolish choices and endure the consequences.  In either case, what is done is done, it is what it is.  Think back to your high school or college commencement addresses.  How many individuals who sat around you listening to the grand speeches about the great things all of you would do have had any influence outside their small circle of friends and family?  Even the people we deem most powerful on earth are limited.  It is at that point of reaching our limit that we need hope.

When I face the ‘what is’ of my actions and it is a stinking mess, I need hope.  

When realize that those I love have only the faintest understanding of my heart’s cry for them because of my flawed and twisted behavior, I need hope.  

When insurmountable obstacles of disease or death or disaster loom, I need hope.

I need some way to lay hold of hope, to hope that things will get better, for me, for others.  Or, perhaps, if not better, then that the struggle will be purposeful.

And prayer is the best way I know of to express hope in an unknowable future.  Use the word Destiny or Fortune or Fate or, as I often do, Providence.  Whatever you want to call it, prayer is my recognition that there are mistakes I have made that I can’t fix, there are people I love whom I have hurt, there are places I will never go and things I will never do that I probably should have.  I cannot relive those moments and correct those failings.  When I pray, I am simply expressing the hope that the gap between all I wish to be and what I really am will be bridged.  That there IS a Grand Scheme, and in that Grand Scheme, all my limitations have a perfect fit whether it makes sense now or not.

“…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us…”  Romans 5:2-5 (HCSB)