Thoughts on Sirens

I’m a person who loves being in the country.  I love the air, the sounds, the critters, the sky at night.  I visit the country often, but I don’t live there. I’m not really a small town sort.  Lived there, done that and gave the t-shirt to charity years ago.  I live in a city.  In fact, if you dropped a pin in the exact center of Fort Smith, top to bottom, side to side, it would probably fall within a very short distance of my little plot in town. 

I know the vibe of my city.  The fireflies and nightsong are similar to that of the country, but when I sit on my deck or float in my pool in the summer, I also hear the sound of my neighbors in their own spots.  Mariachi music sometimes pours from the deck a couple doors down and often I can hear distinctly the conversations of the people on the hill beside us as they sit out on their deck in the evening. I watch as the bats come out at dusk and fly about catching their evening quota of mosquitoes and such.  I cheer them on understanding fully why the city has installed bat houses in various wooded areas of town. 

The lights from the mall illuminate my hill when I’d really like to watch the stars fall or examine the moons of Jupiter or the rings of Saturn.  Sometimes when I’m cooking out in my fire pit, helicopters fly over and seem to be sampling my smoke to see if they should land for supper. Military and commercial planes come and go from the airport nearby with deafening clarity day and night.  But we can also sit on our parking pad in the front yard and watch a variety of personal firework celebrations on New Year’s Eve.  And frequently after we return from the mayor’s 4th of July celebration, we can sit on our deck and see the fine display put on by the country club at the end of our street.

Our city is a sanctuary.  People say “Oh cool,” but don’t realize it means sometimes my cat will share his food, bed and such with a possum until one of us can convince it to leave.  It means my dog got sprayed in the face by a skunk –which taught him a valuable lesson and made him quite ill for a good little while.  It means that the bunnies, groundhogs and raccoons will wander into my yard and hole up under the brush pile my husband has made beneath the huge old pear tree on the hill.  And regardless of the fit my dog throws, they don’t have to leave their vantage but will watch my garden and its produce while the dog comes and goes.  It means that periodically, I will chase geese and ducks from my pool and clean and sanitize –again.  It means squirrels and other critters will carry off my grapes and peaches at the moment of ripe.  Yet it is home and I do find this zoo endearing.  We manage.

We live about half way between two large hospitals, close to a storm shelter that is tested every 2nd Tuesday at noon and a few blocks from a fire station.  Sirens at any time of day or night are a given. The other day, I was visiting with a student’s parent after the lesson.  We were standing on the front parking pad and I noticed her reaction to the siren that went by on the main throughway up the hill.  She commented about how close we were and how loud it was and I thought, I hadn’t even noticed it until she reacted.

Issues that have been driving everyone I know crazy for a bit, regardless of their sides of the proverbial fence, have made me ask myself a lot of questions of late.  One of them is “Why sirens?” 

They alert us; they warn us; they help us react.  About a week ago, I was headed down Rogers in peak traffic when everything came to a standstill.  Sitting there with thousands of other people who could not get out of the way, I waited and watched while a police car streamed by, sirens blaring, lights flashing in the center turn lane.  The accident was a long way up the road, but it was peak traffic time.  I waited and inched and waited more and eventually got over into the right lane where I could detour around it when my turn came.  The siren was not much benefit to us that day.  We could hear it, but we were already stopped, we were in a clogged herd unable to react to any warning. 

Thinking on this brought another event to mind from many years ago.  When I lived in Hot Springs, the hospitals were at the end of the main street going through the busiest part of town.  I was young and not extremely versed in anxious driving and was trying to parallel park when I heard the siren. I got so flustered that I ended up crossways in the street and sat there embarrassed while the ambulance found its way around me and on to its destination. Luckily I was the only novice on the road that day.

My brain is constantly cluttered with choices.  Spiritual and emotional sirens go off regularly.  They are there to warn me, to alert me to a situation that is coming, to help me prepare and cope.  But often I find myself as I did traveling down Rogers at peak traffic.  I can’t get off the road.  I can’t move to the right.  I’m already at a standstill.  I could have chosen the back road, but I didn’t.  I could have been earlier or later, but I wasn’t.  Truth be known, I’m so used to the sirens that I barely noticed it until it was going around me.  I’m speaking in metaphor. 

We are conditioned to the changes, to the spiritual noise.  We’ve listened to the arguments against what we believe is right until we just aren’t sure what is right to do, if we could do anything at all.  We’ve begun believing the lies and often they had to get really bad before we realized they were lies.  I walk or stand still in a crowd of ‘we’ until I’m part of a herd that can neither help nor move away.  I’m conditioned to ignore the siren until it means nothing at all.  It’s where I live.

One of my entries in my prayer diary is “Give me ears to hear; give me eyes to see.”  I’m trying to sort it out and trust the Spirit within.  It’s not easy.  It’s imperative.