Slurp

Several weeks ago, we were in Baltimore visiting some of our tribe. I originally was going to say “kids” but they are quite well established as adults and do the whole “adulting” thing very well. We were down by the harbor for dinner and the conversation turned to how polluted it was – that if you fell in you’d need all sorts of medical treatment mostly characterized as “lots of shots”. That was more than enough for me to step away from the edge.

Then we saw it. I don’t know what it formally called but it slurps up garbage out of the water by skimming the surface. It was quite fascinating. The picture below doesn’t do it much justice but it opens up its jaws (which are closed in the picture; looks like the front of a snowplow) and uses water sprays to direct trash onto a porous conveyor belt.  The water is screened back out and the trash continues up the belt into a receptacle.

It worked quite well! I’m sure there must have been some sense of accomplishment on the part of the operator because you could see the trash-free water and the trash-filled receptacle in the “slurper”.  It didn’t go down very far into the water, rather it focused on the surface trash.

I don’t know what is used for the really deep down gunk, but I’d kinda like to have a slurper for all the surface trash that my deep down soul gunk creates. Often the surface stuff, which is the presenting problem, obscures and distracts me from dealing with the deep down soul gunk – the stuff that requires “lots of shots” to recover from exposure to and that is difficult to get rid of. My family and friends could be protected while Jesus and I work on cleaning up the deep down stuff.