Luck Has No Face

Photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

You can’t bargain with luck or argue with luck. Can’t go eye-to-eye or toe-to-toe with it. I throw on a favorite jersey, short and that comfortable pair of socks. There are a variety of socks I wear cycling and certain ones I wear most of the time.  Part comfort, part tradition. Here’s an embarrassing confession. Some socks feel luckier than others.

I’m rational. Intellectual. There’s no luck. So why, when my wife says, “Don’t get killed out there,” do I think I’m more likely to die today? How is it that a mug, a shirt, pair of socks, a pen go from utilitarian to idol? And idol it is.

“Who even comes close to being like God? To whom or what can you compare him? Some no-god idol? Ridiculous! It’s made in a workshop, cast in bronze, given a thin veneer of gold, and draped with silver filigree…” Giving luck a hat-tip belittles God and dehumanizes me. When I have a good day on the bike it’s because I’ve trained well. The muscle that turns the pedals, the blood carrying oxygen to muscle, the tires that hold air, the driver seeing me…all God.

Luck doesn’t have a face. Or heart.  I give to it a face like a little plastic tchotchke or imbue it with ‘energy’. How silly. We are impacted, and impact, the living. God has a face; bloodied and scarred. Friends and neighbors; faces all. If it feels like bad luck came calling; deal with the circumstances. When ‘good luck’ happens in bolt or streak; identify the reality of the event. Then celebrate with those individuals involved—face-to-face. Through it all give thanks to the God that blesses and makes His face shine upon us.

Morning Ritual

On working days and vacation days—one morning ritual. The face gets washed; hot water or cold water; soak the hair, brush it out. Small life-affirming ritual I’ve been engaging in for longer than I’ve been drinking coffee. More consistent than brushing my teeth.

Twenty bucks would buy me a new one! It’s a dark black, solid plastic piece that my dad probably bought from a local drug store. Or the Fuller brush man. I haven’t been parted from it—so to speak. Constant for forty-two years. It wasn’t mine. It was dad’s and it worked pretty good for what I needed. My sixteen years-old long hair needed training and dad’s brush was perfect. When he left the house, he left it behind. Must not have been important. Now I think maybe he knew? How do we lock onto these little things?  

In high school and college I carried a comb in my pocket. Always the brush in the morning. Combs disappeared but the brush traveled with me.  My mom’s pink bathroom to a summer in Chicago; the upstairs bathroom in a house full of guys to the strained and cluttered baths of my first marriage. High desert years alone with my daughter to beach side songs with my beloved. The brush has been along for all of it. In suitcases and toiletry bags; on hotel counters to permanent bathroom drawers. Recently I bought another brush for travel—so nothing happens to the good one.

Why this brush?  Does it feel perfect in hand and on hair (weight, smooth plastic, firm bristles that penetrate to scalp) because it is; or because I’ve used it so long. Is it that ‘one thing’ of my dad’s that I own? I don’t know all the answers.

I do know this. Tomorrow morning the sun will rise.  I’ll get out of bed. Pour a cup of coffee. The face will get washed. I’ll put my head under running water. Then I’ll brush it out with the ideal hair brush. Life goes on.