SWISS CHEESE

This week my brain is like swiss cheese. No, not especially holy...but very holey. It reminds me of the popular show from the 80’s, Quantum Leap. The main character “Sam” would jump from time to time, and body to body, each episode having to figure out who he was, when he was, and what he was doing there. I think my wife liked it because she had a crush on the actor Scott Bakula. I liked it because of the way each show resolved the weekly dilemma.



The conceit of the show was that the trauma of “leaping” from time to time and body to body made the main characters brain like “swiss cheese.” There were gaps in memory. There were gaps in how relationships worked. There were gaps in how his body worked! Those gaps gave “Sam” the wiggle room to discover interesting things about himself as he tried to help his “host” figure out his (or her! very risky for the 80’s...) life situation.



Last week’s snow storm, and the trauma that went with it, made my brain turn into swiss cheese.



Names of familiar faces are lost to me. I begin driving somewhere and have to turn around because I’ve gone in the wrong direction. I am having a difficult time verbalizing my thoughts. Typing is a little easier, but even here I have to stop every so often to re read what I’ve written, so that I can figure out what I am trying to say. It is frustrating, and funny, and crazy. I recognize it as the stuff of having lived through an extraordinary experience...so I am patient with myself. I am also patient with folks around me, because I can see that they are struggling, too. They are groping for objects that aren’t there. They are flinching at innocent sounds and wandering in their conversations like a cow drunk on whiskey. I’m pretty sure their brains have become holey like mine. Some of them report having trouble sleeping. Some of them say that is difficult to concentrate at work. It’s all swiss to me. 


The good news is, that with time, and stability, the holes begin to fill in. The warmth of familiarity melts the cheese like a sandwich on the grill. The sweet and salty aroma of the toast awakens our memory to the things we’ve temporarily forgotten, and the stickiness of the whole business begins to pull us back together. We heal.



I believe that God is somewhere in the midst of those holes in my head right now. I believe that God is the one who is turning up the heat so that the cheese will begin to warm and soften and fill in the blanks. I believe that somehow, God is gently molding me back to myself; helping me figure things out; giving me the wiggle room to put "things" back in order. I’m not sure exactly how God does it, but I do know that when it happens, it is a holy kind of thing. I feel awakened and alive and aware, again. My senses are more attuned to the stimulus around me. God's done it before when other storms have raged through my life. It's pretty neat how the holy happens when I let her do her thing. I feel more whole...which certainly sounds like the kind of work my God is about...at least, that's a leap I'm willing to take.