Transcendent Moments ... or My Life as a One-Hit Wonder

We filed into the shell of a gym at a community college for a ballet class.  The faint smell of decades of perspiration seemed to seep from the wood floors, and the shellacked blond brick walls echoed back the sound of each movement --  the squeak of a shoe, a sigh, the thump and crash of purses and other possessions being dumped on the floor. 

The class was a diversion for us, a kind of elegant impulse, a unique way to get some exercise – “Hey, let’s sign up for a ballet class” -- but suddenly, no one seemed to want to be there, especially the teacher. We were all amateurs, totally unfamiliar with ballet’s terminology, let alone the disciplined movements. The teacher tried to describe the precise, stylized movements to us, but we stared back at her with bovine blankness, at first eager to learn, but then surrendering to a cloud of confusion.

After a few warm-up exercises and a brief explanation, she asked us to perform a pique, which is sort of a series of turns in a straight line.  But each clumsy attempt seemed to end the same way.  The person would start out with a look of intense concentration that would dissipate into a discouraged, deflated jumble.  Instead of rotating, we’d end up in an uncontrolled twirl, our torsos spinning off in errant directions like spinning tops that would slowly lose momentum, followed by floppy arms and legs.  As our feeble attempts faltered and floundered, our teacher’s frustration became more apparent, and the weight of her disappointment robbed the experience of any pleasure.  

Suddenly, I decided to give it a try.  For a moment, no one else was in the room.  I entered a dimension where I drew from something deep and, as a result, preternatural ability emerged.   I could feel myself turning and turning, my face whipping around rhythmically, my body propelled through space as if carried on a breeze.  When I finally stopped spinning, the teacher and other class members all stared at me in astonishment. Finally, the teacher spoke.  “That’s what I mean. Do that again.”

But I couldn’t. Suddenly, I was self conscious and I couldn’t repeat what I had just done.  It had been a magical, elevated moment, where I had become a part of the air, fluid and transcendent, but now I had returned to the the ground. Now, I was just another untrained, awkward kid in a community college ballet class with a grumpy teacher who scowled at me in disgust and disappointment.

I had experienced something that gave me a glimpse of a world where passion and ability merge in an expression of effortless transcendence. But that moment had passed and I didn’t want to be reminded that I had fallen back to earth. I never went to ballet class again.

Another time, as an even older adult, I was trying to learn to ski.  In my lifetime, it was only my second visit to the slopes, and I couldn’t get beyond the bunny hill.  Just when I thought I was making some progress, I’d go for one more run down the bunny “slope” and end up on my rear end or topsy turvy.  Finally, I figured that I couldn’t improve if I didn’t push myself, so I decided to give the intermediate hill a try. 

As I headed down the hill, no one was more surprised than me when I didn’t fall.  The packed, icy snow propelled me forward faster than I anticipated but my knees eased and rotated with a natural responsiveness to the terrain.  The speed was exhilarating. The wind seemed to caress me with giant, unseen hands into just the right angle and rhythm and I felt like skiing was what I was born to do. I felt my Scandinavian ancestors come alive in each fiber of my being, and it was like every molecule in my body buzzed.  Take that, mere mortality! I had connected with a thrill shared by skilled skiers throughout the ages.

“Wow! Did you see that?!” I hollered, as I came to a perfect stop, scraping the landscape with a spray of snow worthy of an Olympic skier.  “That felt amazing!”

I couldn’t wait to try it again.  But this time, as I headed down the hill, I was hit by a wave of fatigue. I careened off the side of the mountain with no strength left in my legs.  After I tumbled into some kind of perverse pretzel shape, I was buried in snow and couldn’t even make myself get back up.  It was like temporary paralysis and I started to cry.  I can’t even remember exactly how I made it back down, but I do remember the exhaustion and fear.  I haven’t gone skiing since.  I intend to go skiing again eventually, but for now, it just seems like another transcendent moment that I may never recapture.

Finally, in another recent incident, while practicing to play the non-speaking role of the biblical Martha in my church’s Easter drama, I was put on the “hot seat,” meaning that I would be queried by a church volunteer named Stephanie in an acting exercise designed to help me get into character.  

She asked me about myself and I told her in detail who I was, or who Martha was, because at the moment, we were one in the same.  I talked about my family and how I had grown up knowing Jesus and that he was no ordinary man, but that it had taken me a while to recognize him as the Messiah.  I told her about my brother, Lazarus, and how Jesus had raised him from the dead.  “Were you there when they crucified Jesus?” she asked.  “Yes,” I said, trying to choke back tears that, nevertheless, flowed freely.  

It wasn’t an exhilarating moment like the others because of the somber subject matter, but it was energizing nevertheless.  I had transcended my own identity and entered a character and place beyond my own. When I was finished, and everyone else had finished their exercises as well, Stephanie gave me a hug.  “Thank you for that,” she said.  “You really blessed me.”

This coming weekend, I’ll take on the character of Martha for seven performances.  During practice, I’ve often transcended my experience as I’ve relived the wonderful story of the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus.  Still, I don’t know if I can recreate it with the same intensity seven times and, of necessity, I approach this weekend with an awareness of my total dependence on God’s power.

So far, my life has been filled with “one hit wonders,” but I’m thankful that God continues to supply the wonder, even when my own limitations provide the “one hit” part.

The free, reserved tickets are gone, but you can still  watch online at church-redeemer.org.  Here's a preview. You’ll get a limited sense of the drama online, but still hear the story. And I’m praying that -- not through my feeble power but through the power of God’s Spirit -- you’ll have your own transcendent experience as you encounter Jesus.  

Dear Santa: Drop Dead

I don’t know how old I was when my parents ‘fessed up and told me that there was no Santa Claus, but I do remember my response:  “I know.”  Eventually, any astute kid can piece the clues together, tipped off by things like the disparity between sometimes creepy mall Santas with their bad breath and disappointing fake beards, as well as the dawning realization that it’s totally implausible that anyone could physically deliver presents to the entire world on the same night.

I was reminded of that cynicism-inducing realization recently when 11-year-old Anisa announced that she’s too grown up to want to see Disney movies anymore, and she’s also  just so over this Santa Claus thing – but not over the getting presents part.

Her newfound sophistication is bittersweet, representing a necessary and expected maturity, but it also represents the passing of childhood innocence. What concerns me is whether the exposure of this whole Santa Claus story as a ridiculous fraud causes her, and children everywhere, to be less trusting of the parents and family members who perpetrate the fraud year after year – and, therefore, make children less likely to believe other things that parents teach?

Childlike faith is a precious thing, something that Jesus said is necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven.  But the Santa myth manipulates that child-like faith.  And that’s why I would like Santa to trudge away off into the frozen tundra never to be heard from again.

Some people might think that makes me a Grinch, but let me explain.

As a Christian, I’m a huge fan of the real message of Christmas, which definitely has to do with a gift –but it’s the gift of God’s Son.  Now that we’ve got this Santa thing going on, we’ve almost totally forgotten about the real meaning of Christmas.

The Santa myth perverts the purity of the real message, encourages out-of-control consumerism, and manipulates the willingness of children to believe what their parents tell them.  Think about it.  Those of us who are Christians tell our children that they are not the mere product of slime that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and then formed into a randomly produced life form that will live an ultimately meaningless life and then die, disappearing forever.  Instead, we tell them that they are a unique creation of a powerful and all-knowing God, who designed them in all of their miraculous complexity and that this all-knowing God wants to redeem their eternal soul through the gift of His Son, forgive their wrongdoing, empower them to live right and love others, and form a relationship with them that will last eternally.

At the same time, we tell them that there’s this jolly gift-giver who “sees you when you’re sleeping.  He knows when you’re awake.  He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.” He’s a god-like figure but without the capacity to offer forgiveness because, if you blow it, you just get coal in your stocking, or more than likely, you’ll just get the threat of coal in your stocking (because I’m glad that I’ve never heard of a parent who actually did that.)

We tell them that this god-like Santa guy demands that they “be good” or else they won’t get any presents, when the Biblical way is the opposite – we receive the present of God’s Son and the free gift of salvation, which then empowers us through God’s spirit to do good out of love, gratefulness and a pure heart.

When the Santa fraud is exposed, what kid wouldn’t think that the God story, with a similar all-knowing character, wasn’t also fraudulent?  In fact, I’m convinced that some militant atheists, at their core, are just grown-up versions of disillusioned, heartbroken children who want to prove that they will never be gullible again.  They’re now way too sophisticated to believe in that Santa Claus/God stuff.  The result is the pathetic situation of someone like Christopher Hitchens, who is dying of cancer but too proud to even entertain the possibility that there might be a God because of the fear of believing in something or someone that could be a sham.

Personally, when my kids were growing up, I never told them that there was a Santa. I wanted my kids to know that I was trustworthy, so I never thought it was fun to deceive them with the Santa myth or any other lie. Instead, I would say things like, “Isn’t it fun to pretend that there’s a Santa?” and then I’d do the whole leaving-cookies-out-for-Santa and presents-under-the-tree thing, but only after I had already made it clear that it was just pretend.

 I enjoyed the annual ritual of my nephew dressing up as Santa and distributing presents to little children who are enthralled by the mystery of it all and who just know that it’s fun getting presents.  But, for me, that’s as far as it goes.  I’m not going to tell my children that this Santa guy in the weird, red suit is some all-knowing figure with the supernatural power to bring them presents if they’re “good.”

Apparently, the Santa Claus myth has its roots in the behavior of St. Nicholas centuries ago.   Maybe it’s my jaded, modern persona, but personally, I’m suspicious of old dudes who habitually give gifts to non-related children. At the very least, such activity merits an investigation of motives. What did they have to do to be “good”? And that living with elves story?  Pretty weird.

Wikipedia states that Santa Claus could be the result of Christians superimposing the story of a kind-hearted bishop upon a framework of Germanic paganism or vice versa. “According to Phyllis Siefker, children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw or sugar, near the chimney for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Steipnir’s food with gifts or candy.”  Fast forward to 2010 and, instead, you have kids ripping open packages that leave them asking, “Is that it?” while their parents are left with a staggering credit card bill during tough economic times.

All I know is that the real St. Nick, if he existed at all, dropped dead centuries ago. And IMHO, it’s about time for the diabolical Santa myth to drop dead as well.

Merry Christmas.

Stevie Ray Vaughan-Inspired Ruben V Gets it Done

Ruben V was a musician in a Judas Priest-wannabe band when the music of blues artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan spoke to him.  “In Texas during the 80s, it was all about metal,” he told me recently at Doctor Rockit’s Blues Bar in Corpus Christi.   “But when I heard artists like Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan, I knew that was what I wanted to play.  I wanted to bend a string like that.”

And learn to bend a string he did.   I can attest to that fact because I paid a $7 cover change to hear him two other band members play a few sets in front of a small crowd in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he went after Thanksgiving to “wear off some turkey.”

And he was amazing.  It takes guts to cover people like Santana and Hendrix, but Ruben pulled it off with aplomb and got the crowd dancing with his original music, which also grooves.

Check out some of his music here. 

We bought a CD and asked Ruben to sign it so he came over and talked to us for a while, in the same way that he stopped and talked to most of the people in the small crowd at Doctor Rockits.

He told us that Stevie Ray used to play at the same place “and there would be less than 100, maybe 50 people in here.”  But after Vaughan died, his popularity sky-rocketed. “I was working in a record store at the time,” Ruben said, “and we had maybe 20 Stevie Ray Vaughan disks but there was such a demand, that people were lined up out the door.”

Suddenly, the injustice of it all inflamed him. 

“I jumped up on the counter and started yelling at people, ‘You know what, people, you all suck!  When Stevie was alive, you didn’t support him, but now that he’s dead, here you are’.”

Needless to say, the record store fired him, but he landed on his feet.  He now opens for acts like Robert Cray, playing Latin-influenced music and Texas-style blues, and he’s well known in his hometown of San Antonio, where the city awarded the title of “Best Guitar Player,” as well as “Best Songwriter” and “Best Blues Band” – but he’s still working hard to make a name for himself nationally, and at 44, he’s not exactly a young turk.

Nevertheless, he’s an immensely talented working musician who seems to have his head on straight, playing music that he loves.  And I love that he had the guts to vent his passion, even though he now sees things a little differently.  “People get upset when I say this, but one good thing that came out of Stevie Ray’s death is that, now, people know who he is.  Everybody knows Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I think that I know what he means. 

I hope that Ruben lives a long and happy life, but if his popularity soars after he dies, I’ll be the first one jumping up on the record store counter, or whatever counter exists, yelling passionately that, “You know what, people, you all suck!”

Me, surrounded by three cool men: brother-in-law Richard, Ruben V and my hubby, Vince.

House Lust

I’d like to blame the people behind HGTV (home and garden television) but, in reality, they’re only partly to blame. OK, maybe they’re not to blame at all. Maybe they’ve just created compelling television and I’m the one who has morphed it into a pathological addiction.

Like an alcoholic who can’t handle having just one drink, I can’t watch just one HGTV show, so I have to avoid it altogether. But sometimes, like recently, I slip up, planning to catch just one episode. And then, the next thing I know, I’ve gorged myself on hours and hours of house-lust-inducing home improvement television.

Each show starts out by stirring up a need-to-know curiosity that’s akin to hunger and grows into a compulsion. I NEED to know. How will they transform the dated, discombobulated room into a dazzling showpiece? Which house will the couple choose and what will it look like three months later? How will they re-do a drab façade to possess attention-grabbing, jaw-dropping curb appeal? Each time, when the answer is revealed at the end of each show, I experience a sense of exhilaration, a rush that must set off serotonin surges in my hypothalamus—but it’s short-lived because then the hunger starts all over again and I keep coming back for more, more MORE!

It’s an endless tease in search of another aesthetic high, presided over by hip design priests and priestesses who are like seers of old, only instead of seeing future events they envision future environments with elements like travertine, accent lighting and coordinating fabrics in pleasing combinations beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. And then they conjure up the vision by mobilizing teams of carpenters, electricians, and assistants who do their bidding with skill and precision, all compressed into a 30-minute time slot.

Post-binge, when I’m finally exhausted by it all, I start to feel disgusted and depressed. My house is so UGLY! I need a design team to descend upon my humble domicile and transform it into stunning display of creativity that’s practical and functional yet sleek and inviting. And it has to have something that “pops,” according to the oft-repeated refrain of the HGTV design divas.

And unlike me, the design divas always seem to know exactly what they want. For example, it’s taken me months to try and choose a paint color for my dining room, where I turned the walls into abstract art from the application of myriad paint sample colors as I tried to make up my mind. Seriously, I must have bought at least 20 paint samples. Of course, part of the problem is that I was – and still am – dealing with dislocated, multi-colored furniture that wasn’t really designed to coordinate, resulting from the merging of my household with that of my husband’s. But the design divas have no such dilemma. They simply sketch a design, compile swatches, seemingly manufacture the components out of their fertile imaginations, and voila, there it is, design perfection!

Watching HGTV isn’t a waste of time, but it’s just that I lose all capacity for moderation. But I do get ideas and learn things, including facts about other cultures. For example, in one episode, I learned about a girl who was looking for an apartment in Saudi Arabia. The apartments she had to choose from each cost about $60,000 a year, which had to be paid for in an upfront lump sum, a provision that would exclude just about every prospective renter in the U.S.—but in Saudi Arabia it’s no problem because, according to HGTV, each Saudi is worth about $16 million, and besides that, 80 percent of the people in Abu Dhabi are foreigners and their employers often pick up the tab. In the case of the prospective renter, a Canadian, she was paid about $60,000 for teaching young children, plus she received a whopping $65,000 housing stipend from her employer. Not bad for a twenty-something who saw a bidet and asked, “What’s that?”

HGTV also provides an opportunity to see how other socio-economic groups live. Sometimes I can relate and other times I can’t, like when a couple that had a $2 million budget to spend on Napa Valley housing sniffed at a gorgeous home because it didn’t have a vineyard view.

Sometimes, the ideas are great but definitely beyond my skill level to implement them. For example, I would love to construct an inexpensive fountain/water feature out of plywood, pipe and slate, but lack the required carpentry cred. And by the time I factored in the cost of a carpenter to construct it, it would cost a couple of grand, decidedly more than the advertised "design on a dime" cost of materials.

The other day, I combined hours of watching HGTV with home magazine reading and talk about other peoples’ homes, resulting in irritation and dissatisfaction with my own home. As usual, Scripture provides the only antidote to carnal craving that’s beyond the bounds of what God has provided.

“Keep your lives free from the love of money,” says the book of Hebrews, “and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’.”

OK God, help me, please … but first just let me see how the amazingly talented Candice Olson infuses this hum-drum space with a touch of glam and pizzazz … and then transforms this Disney-ish kids’ room into a sophisticated space a teenager will love … and then …

Naked and Exposed

I think the neighbor saw me naked. It was just an unintentional flash as I walked past the window which, for some inexplicable reason, had both the shade and blinds drawn up. Fortunately, I think he just saw the top half of me which I’m more comfortable and confident about than my bottom half, but still, I’m a little embarrassed and concerned that we might develop a reputation as the weirdo, nudist flesh-flaunting neighbors.

Usually, the window has horizontal blinds that we leave down even during the day, although we open the louvers to let in some daylight. At night, we close the louvers and also pull down a hefty, opaque shade that totally blocks the light when the morning sun hits the window, allowing me to sleep like a baby, at least past a few snooze alarms.

So why in the world did I have both of them drawn up? And why in the world did I decide just at that moment that I needed to get something from the end table? And why did I think, ‘Hey, I’m going for it because what are the chances that, just as I walk past the window, the neighbor will be outside, which he rarely is, and look up?’” But I did, and he did, and in one mortified moment, I realized that he had probably seen me flashing my chubby, white self, or as I prefer to say, my ample assets of a certain ripened vintage.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I did a drop and roll on the bed to get to the other side of the room, ducked and did a guerilla warfare-style crawl out of eyesight. Still, I held out hope that maybe the light was such that, from the outside, I would just look like a vague, amorphous shadow. Intense light can be merciless, but diffuse or backlit light can be kind, and maybe the time of day and year and the quality and direction of the light would all coalesce to somewhat conceal me and protect me from myself, or—best case scenario—project an enhanced version of myself as a shapely and alluring but sufficiently modest silhouette, you know, like those on trucker’s tire flaps.

Over breakfast the next day, I told Vince what had happened, especially since I needed his help to test my hypothesis. But maybe in the back of my mind I was also thinking that I needed to tell Vince to alert him just in case my neighbor became so inflamed with lust that he would venture to commit a crime of passion like Scripture’s usually devout King David who impregnated Bathsheba and connived to have her husband Urriah killed after he saw her bathing on the roof. Ha, like that would happen! More likely, he could report me to the police for public, or at least quasi-public, indecency.

“I want to do a test,” I told Vince, “I’m going to go outside and stand at approximately the same angle as the neighbor and I want you to stand in the window and I’ll look up and see if I can see anything.” He agreed.

Later that morning, at about the same time of day as “the sighting,” I looked up at the window. Vince stood there shirtless and plain as day. He pranced around a little and did a Gypsy Rose Lee striptease-style chest shimmy that made me laugh, but it blew my hypothesis to smithereens because I could almost count the hairs on his chest—and he’s not even a gnarly, hairy guy.

If it’s true what Blanche DuBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire, then I’m in a heap of trouble. “After all,” she said, “a woman’s charm is 50 percent illusion.” So now, when it comes to my neighbor, I guess that whatever mysterious charms I once possessed are neither mysterious nor charming, but they just are what they are.

But I’m just thankful for God’s gift of a body that can enjoy so many things.

So dear neighbor, I apologize and, someday soon, I may actually be able to look you in the eye again, as long as you’re not looking back lasciviously because that would be just “Ewwww.”

A Sam's Club Fugitive

All I wanted to do was buy two tires from Sam’s Club. You wouldn’t know it from the clientele, who pose as regular folk with an affinity for mass quantities of Cheetos, but Sam’s Club is apparently an exclusive organization-- and I don’t belong. No problem, I thought, my husband belongs to “the club,” so I’ll just use his card.

After entering, I flashed his membership card at the “bouncer,” who was cleverly disguised as a besmocked grandma. I strode past her and flashed my card confidently and speedily, so that stopping me would require special effort. According to plan, she had an aversion to extra effort and let me glide by without close examination of the card’s name and gender. Whew, that was easy. I felt an undercurrent of exhilaration as if it was still the 80s and I had just slipped into Studio 54. I was in!

I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to the tire section, where my exhilaration quickly evaporated. A cashier who looked like she wasn’t even old enough to drive asked to see my card. I started to panic but told myself that I was being silly. Surely, married couples can share a Sam’s Club card.

I adopted a cavalier, surely-it-doesn’t-matter attitude. “It’s actually my husband’s card,” I said, as if sharing a confidence with my BFF.

“No, you have to have your own card,” said the cashier.

“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I thought that I could legitimately use the card, but had tried the surreptitious approach in order to avoid drawing suspicion or having to launch into any convoluted explanations. And I had made it past the gatekeepers. But now, this whippersnapper had the audacity to challenge my Sam’s Club credentials.

The cashier called an older woman over and asked if I could use my husband’s card. “Oh no,” she said, as if I had proposed a gross travesty of justice, “you have to have your own card, and if someone catches you trying to use that card (she motioned toward the card that was emblazed with the name of Vincent Santiago and I was clearly NOT Vincent Santiago) -- they can take it away.”

The words, “they can take it away” seemed to echo through Sams Clubs’ brightly lit caverns of discount commerce. They can take it away … they can take it away … they can revoke my privileges, diminish my life, strip me of my dignity, leaving me shivering, naked and cardless.

“I can take it away?” asked the teenager. “I can do that?” she repeated, apparently astounded that her position as a Sam’s Club “associate” had imbued her with the heady power of card confiscation.

“If you take his card my husband will probably never shop here again,” I said before I even realized that I had probably lied. After all, the real Vincent Santiago has been a Sam’s Club member for 18 years. He’s practically a founding member of the resistance movement against the dreaded MSRP, and he would never let a little card confiscation get in his way. (Note to self: As a committed truth-teller, I need to avoid projecting into the future and making definitive, sweeping statements about what other people may or may not do.)

By now, I was feeling guilty and busted and the older woman was on a roll. She clearly enjoyed striking fear into the hearts of cardless imposters like me.

“Don’t try to use that card,” she said, “or we’ll take it away.”

“Oh, don’t worry “ I replied. “ I won’t try to use the card, so you don’t need to arrest me.”

She clearly didn’t appreciate my sarcasm and made a face at me. And I mean literally made a face, scrunching it up like a sassy 5-year-old. Next, I expected her to stick out her tongue.

Okay, it was time to bring in the big guns—customer service, and I mean real life customer service with real faces and bodies as opposed to those disembodied customer service reps I always encounter on the phone who have Indian accents but suspiciously quintessential American names like Sean, or Chip or Heather.

 Maybe customer service could even award me a member card on the spot and I could bring it back to the tire department and bask in my newfound authority as a Sam’s Club card holder. Once I was ‘in the club” maybe I could actually buy some discount tires, whoppee!

At the customer service desk, I encountered a friendly, smiling face and felt a boost of confidence. “I’d like to get a membership card,” I said. My husband is already a member, so I’d like to get a card, too.”

The smiling face faded. “He has to be here for you to do that and you’ll have to prove that you live at the same address.”

“Even though we have different last names we really are married, but he’s in Montgomery County right now and I’m here in Baltimore at the moment and we haven’t lived at the same address for two years, “ I said, “and now we live together but I haven’t changed the address on my driver’s license yet.”

“He’ll have to be here and you’ll have to prove that you live at the same address,” she repeated, unmoved.

My story was true, but I realized that I was in a weak position because of my unusual situation, which made me appear like a total poseur, desperate for a Sam’s Club card. I resisted the temptation to offer a blood sample , allow them to run a DNA sample through some Big Brother database, or whatever it would take to join the club.

I ended up buying my tires at Sears.

My life is complicated.

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Feel the Love

I’m in love with a gas station.

First, let’s define love. In English, we casually use the word “love” to describe everything from spiritual love to lust. The ancient Greeks, however, were more precise. To them, “philia” meant virtuous or brotherly love, “eros” meant passionate love or lust, “storge” was natural affection, and” agape” referred to deeper, more spiritual or sacrificial love.

I love my husband, which incorporates emotional and physical love as well as commitment, spiritual oneness, and a reluctant willingness to put up with his misplaced affection for the snooze alarm. As Prince sang, “I would die for you.” It’s much more intense and all encompassing than what I mean when I say that I love Snickers bars.

My gas station love falls somewhere in between.

For some people, red symbolizes the Maryland Terrapins or the Red Cross. For me, “red” is all about Sheetz.

My love affair began when I used spend between five and six hours driving from Radford, Virginia, to Baltimore. After nearly four hours of road hypnosis, interrupted only on by an occasional appreciation for the rolling, maternal curves of the Appalachian Mountains, I would exit I-83 at Westminster and there it was—the friendly Sheetz, shining in all its red and silver glory, like a light on a hill or an inn in the desert, offering refreshment and calibration for the soul.

Sheetz symbolized civilization, refueling, and progress toward my destination. It offered practical amenities like a clean bathroom and yummy comfort food—warm coffee and a crunchy Snickers bar--all seemingly offered out of magnanimous concern for my well being. All told, the Sheetz experience stirred warm fuzzies and evoked something bordering on bliss in my innermost being--for real.

Sheetz was a marker, letting me know that the journey was not interminable, but would conclude within a reasonable and perceptible time span and that, in the meantime, Sheetz would minister to my most basic needs.

That’s why, when I recently saw a Sheetz truck with the slogan “Feel the love,” I did not resent it as a crass exaggeration or brand identification run amuck. Instead, I considered it a stroke of genius. Indeed, my friends, groove with me, revel in the redness, feel the shiny friendliness of your inner Sheetzness and, in the process, “feel the love.”