DaddyRoBlog

Creation and Will

Due to recent rains, Tuesday night’s church league softball games were cancelled.  That gave me a free evening, and I jumped at the chance to spend some time in the garden.

I began the process of weeding and clearing out last year’s beds to get them ready for this year’s plantings.    As I did so, I was impressed  at how much the weeds have grown in just a few short weeks this spring.  It made me think that creating a garden is a sheer act of the will; nature has other plans for the space, and is vigorously at work to return it to its natural state. 

In fact, I think there are some weeds that would positively take over the world in very short order if given half a chance (and no, I am not talking about “The Day of the Triffids”.  Anybody else ever see that movie?)

A Call in the Night

There are a lot of things I like about my job.  But here’s one I don’t:  When the phone rings in the wee hours of the night. 

It doesn’t happen often, but two or three times a year I’ll get a phone call sometime after midnight but before dawn.  It’s never good.

Last night it was 4:14AM when I heard the familiar sound of my cell phone’s ring tone.   As I hopped out of bed to go answer it, I find myself saying an automatic prayer, “God, please no.”  I say it as think of all the people and situations it might be. 

I review the people who are struggling with their health…  “Oh God, no…”

I wonder if maybe it was an accident … “Oh God, no…”

It occurs to me it might be family…  “Oh God, no…”

And it turns out that this night, anyhow, God both listens and answers just as I would wish.  It’s a wrong number.

Journaling Gratitude

The Five Things Today for which I am Grateful:

1.  The ascendant green of fresh spring grass

2.  The descendant gray of a gentle misting rain

3.  The pure even blue of a robin's egg

4.  The pink petal piles collecting under cherry trees

5.  The patient black earth, waiting to be worked

Rummage Sale Reflections, Part 1

Saturday we did a rummage sale at the church.  It helped raise money for our mission trips to Africa, Belize, Philadelphia, and Mississippi.   But as it turned out, it also helped a lot of people in our community as well.

It was a powerful visual (and visceral) experience of the income gap that is so real in our country and our community.   The things that we no longer wanted because we had something newer or more advanced, or that we were getting rid of because we have so much we simply needed to make room in order to acquire still more, were things that other people were thrilled to be able to buy. 

Sure, some people were doing the rummage sale circuit looking for bargains.  But others were buying out of necessity.  If they couldn’t buy these clothes at $1 a bag, basic household appliances for $5 or less, or home decorations (even if their home is a single room in someone else’s basement) for 50 cents, they wouldn’t be able to buy these things at all. 

It is tempting to blame others for economic inequality; to blame flawed policies or political systems or greedy corporations, for example. But the truth, I think, is far more basic, and far more painful.  We are to blame.  At least I am.  Maybe you are too?

When we have so much more than we could possibly need but keep on acquiring and amassing anyway, and when we do so at the expense of generously and at least sometimes even sacrificially helping others, we’re part of the problem. 

The good news is that if this really is the case, then we can also be a part of the solution.  Or is that bad news, given what being “part of the solution” would mean? 

I guess that’s what we each have to decide…

In the Evening

Here is one of my favorite prayers.   Though it is in the Book of Common Prayer, I never really noticed it until I heard Ernie Bennett use it during what was probably my first funeral service as a clergyman.  Afterward, Ernie (who was not just my boss but also took the time to be a most excellent mentor) and I talked about the service,  about what he did when and why.  It was in that context that he pointed this prayer out to me and showed me where it is (page 833).  Like so many of the things he taught me, including that prayer in funerals at which I am officiating is a practice I have continued over the years.

But I don’t just pray it at funerals.  I pray it on days like today, long days, days when I didn’t get everything done, days when I’m so tired my bones ache.  I pray it as I let the day go and find new hope in the promise of a good night’s sleep.

Anyway, it goes like this:

O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows
lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is
hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.
Then in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,
and peace at the last. Amen.

Beat by the Blank Page

If you’ve done much writing, you know that soemtimes it is a brutal battle against the blank page. 

Tonight, dear friends, the page wins…

Chasing Lightning Bugs--and Loving It!

Journal number 2 closes with an entry written on Saturday, March 11, 1989, describing Linda catching fireflies. 

“…Linda didn’t grow up with fireflies—I guess they don’t have them in California.  She is fascinated by them, and is thrilled every time she sees them.    The other night we went out to do what she had never got to do as a kid—though she had read about it in books and dreamed about doing it.  We went out to catch fireflies. 

It was quite funny in a delightful sort of way watching Linda as a 32 year old very pregnant kid chasing fireflies. Running around in the dark, looking very awkward because, well, she is pregnant, but mostly because in the dark people often don’t move with their normal fluidity born in the confidence of seeing where they are going.   Sweeping her hand in large gestures through the air in a path estimated to intersect the path of the creature who only gives brief sporadic flashes as clues of his existence and whereabouts.  Finally going into a particularly black corner of the yard to watch the three we finally captured in the jar light up.  And then letting them go.”

It was “a forever moment” for me, captured in my heart as well as on the written page.

Words

Like many of you, I am a fan of words.  Recently I’m seen some pretty interesting words that I am looking forward to using in everyday conversation.  Here is a brief sampling:

neanderthink.    Ways of approaching life and the world that are no longer helpful or constructive. 

What a clever word!  It immediately raises the question, "How do I neanderthink?"  Hmmm… that might even make an interesting sermon series!

digital native. A person who grew up in a world with computers, mobile phones, and other digital devices. 

I think this is a particularly fascinating word because of the line of thought it suggests.  A person under a certain age—35? 25?  15?—is going to grow up in a culture as unlike the culture of 50 year old as the culture of one country is different than that of another.  Think of the profound ramifications this word calls to our attention...

riffage.  Informal guitar riffs. “Man, that was some killer riffage you just played on RockBand!” (though I will admit I don’t know why this has to be limited to guitar.  Why not drums as well?    “I couldn’t believe the riffage he laid down on his drums!”)

twonk.  A stupid or foolish person.  OK, I probably can’t call anyone this because I’d be in danger of the fires of hell (see the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 22).  But it just sounds so cool, doesn’t it?  Maybe I could use it in reference to myself.  I am such a twonk sometimes!

Good News!

Apparently, it is not enough to eat ice cream any more just because you enjoy it.  Now ice cream has higher purpose.   Well, at least super premiums do.

While checking out Ben and Jerry’s  and Häagen-Dazs’ new flavors, I noticed they had linked several of them to social causes.  Ben and Jerry’s, for instance, has One Cheesecake Brownie,  created  “to spread the word about ONE, a grassroots campaign dedicated to fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases around the globe.” They also have Imagine Whirled Peace, a “whirly mixture of toffee cookies and fudge peace signs”  that is meant to “enlighten your belly and soul and make you ask what you can do to promote peace in your lives.”

Häagen-Dazs’ has Vanilla Honey Bee, and they have “given this sweet flavor an even sweeter purpose: funding research to protect disappearing honey bee populations.”

So there you have it.  You can indulge yourself and your conscience too…

For Christine

I have been thinking a lot lately about a father’s love for his daughter(s).   It seems to me that all true loves are strong in their own way, and that this uniqueness is heightened by the shared history and experience of each particular love.

I have never known how to capture such loves in words, and so I sometimes find myself writing or saying to those I love that “words cannot express” how deeply I care for them.  And though that is true, it does not (of course!) stop me from trying.  Nor should it.

Today is my older daughter’s birthday.  How I tell her that I love her is between the two of us; it is her choice to share those words if and as she chooses.  But how would I tell you how much I love her?

I’d tell you about worshipping with my little girl (who is now neither little or a girl) yesterday.  She’s a kid who burns the candle at both ends, and does so long into the night.  Between her studies, her activities, her friendships, and now a boyfriend as well, she pretty much always has something going.  She is tired, and in unguarded moments the weariness shows for those who know how to look for it—and sometimes even to those who don’t.  But she makes time for her old man, and for the Old Man (to use an ageist and sexist reference to our Creator that I hope you will grant me the grace to pardon), and both are gifts I do not take lightly.

She is also old enough now to have learned the hard way at least a little bit of something about life’s disappointments, heartache, sorrow, and loss.   She has learned these things because she has cultivated the ability to care deeply; to be mindful of others, of what is important in the world, and of how the two intersect in her relationships.  Ours is one of those relationships, and though our relationship could easily take a back seat at this stage in her life, she is careful (care full) to do more than conveniently work me in as she can, making the effort and sacrifice necessary to share her life with mine and allowing me to share mine with her.  Is there any greater privilege one human being can give another than that?

She is still every bit as full of life as she has always been, and there are few things in life that I am as deeply thankful for as I am for that.  Despite the last paragraph, in virtually every picture I see of her she is smiling, and I believe that smile come from the heart.   I see her smile as she sings Gospel music, as she hangs out with her friends, as she talks about her boyfriend.  But I also see her smile when she sees me, when she greets me after not having seen me more for awhile or even just a few hours, when she says, “Love you, Daddy.”

The very first time she smiled at me was during a church service.  I was so taken that I became disoriented, forget where I was and what I was doing.  The whole service came to a halt because my whole world had just come to a halt, totally reduced and expanded to that single moment.   No matter how many times I have seen it, I have not ceased to be taken with her smile to this very day.

I could go on…and on… and on.  But there comes a point when going on is actually unproductive, overkill, and when it sounds like trying to convince rather than honest celebration.  And so I think I’ve said enough.

I love you Christine.  Happy Birthday!