Yellow Fly Paper – III

A little over a week ago we had a selective storm in the Richmond, VA area. It was selective in that it didn’t treat every area the same. At the office where I work, west of Richmond, it was like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz, at any moment I expected to see a pleasant-looking gal riding through the air on her bicycle laughing that she had my little dog.

Yet, on my 35-mile drive home there was little evidence of a severe storm for most of the way. I later found out that only five miles from our home there was severe damage – with a tree splitting one house in half.

At our place a lightening strike blew out the transformer on the utility pole, knocking out our electric service and frying our air conditioning system. Since we are on a well this also affected our water supply. Joy, joy, joy! At any rate, that’s how James says we should view these things in the first chapter of his NT letter.

Now you may be asking what this has to do with yellow fly paper ribbons – I’m surprised you haven’t guessed. Here’s a hint:

A couple of days after the storm I was talking with a coworker about her commute home the evening of the storm. Because the area around our office had many traffic lights disabled, traffic – which on a good day can be challenging – was especially bad. She talked about how rude people were, not allowing others to pull into traffic, blocking them from doing so, faces with scowls on them; you get the picture.

What does this have to do with yellow fly paper?

It doesn’t take much to remove civil constraint from society. Just make us uncomfortable, just deprive us of traffic lights, and let us show you what we can do. So much of the way we live is nothing more than submission to the police power of government and the veneer of society – a veneer easily pulled away. We are, after all, a soft people. We are morally soft, we are physically soft, and it doesn’t take much for us to justify rudeness and worse.

I don’t think you can have much social veneer with fly paper in your house; so I’m not sure that we are all that better off without yellow fly paper. I mean, who are we kidding anyway?

Yellow Fly Paper – II

Uncle Jake and Aunt Freda lived in three houses that I recall; the first two had yellow fly paper. They also had exterior asphalt siding that was made to look like brick.

This is not the pattern that Uncle Jake’s houses had, but maybe it helps you get the idea – what you’re looking at is really asphalt single siding.

While Uncle Jake worked for a local town, he also raised corn, hogs, and had a cow or two and chickens. I recall going out to his place with my Dad on hog butchering day. I don’t recall much about hog butchering, but I do remember huge cauldrons of boiling water – did they put the butchered hogs in them? I don’t know, it’s just one of those childhood images without much detail.

On one visit to Uncle Jake’s my cousin Franklin and I got into a sling-shot battle with my brother Bill and Franklin’s brother Tuck. The thing about this particular sling-shot battle, for we had more than one during my boyhood, was that Bill and Tuck pined Franklin and me down in the hog pen. I still can see us peering through the slats in the hog pen, trying to figure out how to get a shot off against the opposition. Thankfully the hogs were in a docile mood that day – otherwise we would have found ourselves between the sling-shot rocks and the hog place.

There were always woods in proximity to Uncle Jake’s houses and we used to explore the woods on every visit. We’d climb trees and rocks and just enjoy the outdoors. The first two houses had outhouses, which were a novelty to a suburban boy; they also had outdoor water pumps operated by hand. The third house had indoor plumbing – no novelty there.

In the woods around the second house where Uncle Jake and Aunt Freda lived were a cluster of huge boulders that we called, The Big Rocks; has an original ring to it don’t you think? Climbing The Big Rocks was always part of a visit’s itinerary. On one visit as we neared the base of the biggest of The Big Rocks one of us shouted, “Snake!” Off we went, running for the house as fast as our legs could carry us. I guess we thought it might be a centipede snake capable of doing 60 miles per hour and that we’d be caught and swallowed at any moment.

The thing is, I don’t recall actually seeing a snake. Not that there wasn’t one, but even if there had been a snake it couldn’t have caught us – yet we ran. Of course we were kids, and the idea of a faster-than-lightening snake introduced adventure into our day; but I wonder how often adults holler, “Snake!”, and then act the same way minus the adventure?

If the news media didn’t holler “snake!” everyday who would watch it? If Rush Limbaugh and company, whether from the right or the left, didn’t holler “snake!” everyday who would listen? If some “Christian” radio networks and preachers didn’t yell, “snake!”, who would send their money?

If politicians didn’t look at their opponents and scream “snake!” they might have to actually think about exercising thoughtful leadership rather than invoking fear and visceral reactions.

How often do we run from things we don’t see but believe because someone else has hollered “snake!”? Once our imaginations grab hold of the equivalent of a snake they are loath to let it go. But if we would examine the snake maybe it wouldn’t be a threat after all. Maybe it wouldn’t even be there; if there maybe it wouldn’t be the threat we are told that it is.

It’s amazing that God has managed to hold this world together for so long considering all the snakes we are told threaten our existence. It’s downright incredible that Christ has been able to maintain and protect His Church in the face of all the dire threats that we are told will soon destroy the Church. How did we manage to make it for so long? Snakes here and snakes there – what’s one to do?

In the Gospel of John Jesus says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life,” John 3:14 – 15. This is a reference to Numbers 14:1 – 9 in which the people of Israel complain against God and Yahweh sends fiery serpents among the people.

“Then Yahweh said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.”

Could it be that when there are indeed snakes among us, whether of our own doing or not, that the main thing is to keep the main thing as the main thing – looking to Jesus Christ and Him alone for salvation and wholeness? Folks hawk substitutes for Jesus, I’m sure I’ve done it myself; good Christian folk hawking substitutes for Jesus, good-looking substitutes, good substitutes, but substitutes nonetheless.

God hasn’t called us to live lives of shouting “snake!” or lives of running from snakes, real or imagined; He has called us to live life in intimate relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. We can live in that relationship because Jesus was lifted up on a Cross, becoming sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

“And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived,” Numbers 21:9. 

Yellow Fly Paper

My anxiety was relieved this morning when I found that they still manufacture fly paper ribbons, and not just any fly paper ribbons, but yellow fly paper ribbons. I write “manufacture” when for all I know they are selling from ancient stock. I wonder how long fly paper lasts in the box before it goes bad? I wonder if it has a “Best used by” date?

You see it occurred to me that perhaps no one has written recently about yellow fly paper. When is the last time you read about yellow fly paper ribbons? When is the last time you meditated on the subject? When is the last time you gave (or received) yellow fly paper as a gift?

There is something homey about yellow fly paper, something nostalgic, something…well…something about a time before houses were built so tightly that they poison their inhabitants with toxic interior air. A house that breathes just enough to let a fly inside, now that’s a house one can live in.

Yellow fly paper streaming across the kitchen ceiling like crape paper at a party. The difference is that fly paper ribbons serve two purposes, they evoke a festive atmosphere and they catch flies.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’m told by reliable sources that after the movie, The Fly, was released that sales of fly paper ribbons increased eight-fold. Then there was the time that a manufacturer of fly paper released one million flies with little tags on their wings; if you captured one of the flies with the manufacturer’s fly paper you received a year’s worth of fly paper and disinfectant soap – plus a photo book of Disneyland autographed by Mickey Mouse.

Then there was the advertising campaign in which Kermit the Frog hawked another brand of fly paper, “If you can’t get them live, then get them with Honeysuckle Fly Paper – they taste soooo good. Also available in 30 other flavors for the frog with discriminating taste.”

We didn’t have fly paper in our home, but Uncle Jake and Aunt Freda had it in their home out in Loudoun County, VA. I wonder how many homes in Loudoun County have fly paper today? I wonder if builders in Loudoun County include fly paper in the amenity package of their homes? I wonder if they offer designer fly paper? Come to think of it, why is it that Southern Living doesn’t run an article on fly paper? Or what about Martha Stewart coming out with a line of decorative and scented fly paper? What about a fly paper of the month club in which you receive a new color and scent every month?

To be continued….stick with it….