Jumping over a quarter

One of my favorite memories of Dad.  I'm a little kid and maybe it was a simple question he asked at first – whether or not I thought I could jump over this quarter he was holding in his hand.  Which then extended into an “Are you sure/Are you willing to bet me?” proposition. 

At the time, this just seemed like an impossible to lose situation. Of course I thought I could do it.  Guaranteed.  I forget if I even had an allowance back then of like 25 cents a week, or 50 cents a week, I can’t recall exactly how much it was, but it wasn’t a lot. He asked me if I was willing to bet a dollar, then two, then five, then ten, each query of his met with a resounding and enthusiastic full speed ahead doggone it yes, I’m gonna make some money, yes. I was in a no lose situation.
 
The story could have ended up where I would have lost $10 or more, which was a ton of money to me at the time, but I didn’t because Mom simply wouldn’t let him take my wager. Which would  have taken me a year to five years of my life at my allowance rate back then to pay off. With whatever amount we ended up agreeing on, the bet was made, and the challenge commenced. 

It was at that point that Dad laughed and casually and matter of factly walked up to a corner of all places, and laid the quarter up against the wall in a corner so it was impossible for me to jump over it. And it was in this way, at times - Dad taught his kids. He used to stress that actions spoke louder than words. 

His actions in that moment were speaking loudly life’s truths - without being encumbered by words. The subtext of the moment spoke loud and clear. Life may not be fair, but in every moment, don’t just listen to what people are telling you. Be able to move beyond your assumptions .. and above all young man – remember there might be angles that you don’t see.

Passing

Clinical depression sucks. I've think I've been parked there for a while now. Of course, even prior to Dad's passing. Been a couple months now since that. Seeing your parent pass before your eyes just hits you like that proverbial punch in the stomach. 

He was Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, German. Whipsmart funny, and crazy.  He adopted me and gave me the gift of a family. If there's a recurring prayer, it's that God adopted him as well.  We have to go to Hawaii later this year for services.

Been in a cocoon type of depression over a number of things around that. I started to research topics like prayer for the dead, shortly after his passing in October. 

Up in the air

 Hmm.  I want to have a day like that! 

Babies

Interesting study done at Yale on babies and morality.  Fascinating ..

Flying

Traveling through the airports in America. Yikes. 

Mercy

Probably the most compelling story for me, found in the Old Testament: the story of Hosea and Gomer. A tale of relentless love. Redemptive love.  An aching, suffering, enduring, and one-sided love.  Illustrative of God’s love for a wandering Israel, Hosea marries a woman of ill repute who will go on to put both of them through immense pain. It’s by far one of the most poignant stories in the Bible. What I find particularly compelling and interesting about the theme is in its contrast to the New Testament theme of being “equally yoked.”

This relationship of turmoil was about as "unequally yoked" as it gets, but in its establishment, ordained by God, it happens to serve a point, exposing how real love goes through great and painful lengths to express itself. When you think of him, and the suffering he went through, the last words that come to mind are “self-righteous”. His character, and the story - reveal the ultimate expression of mercy. Thematically, there are ties to the story of the Prodigal Son, although the relationship here is different. Interestingly, later on, Jesus references Hosea when he speaks about desiring mercy, not sacrifice.  A beautiful rendition of the story here.

Rest

So yesterday I found myself in Dixon, Illinois after a long drive. A small town in the middle of homespun Americana, guarded by a river that carefully wraps itself through the middle of a sleepy downtown, the river itself nestling up against Page Park. I went to see Mumford and Sons play. Big concerts with 15,000 people are a bit too much for me, though. At some point, I found myself in a hammock saddled up in between two trees in the park and started to read a book on childlike faith Mum had given me for my recent birthday - Dangerous Wonder - and watched a congregation of brown ducks bob down the river.

 
There were a lot of the local residents watching the concert from their riverboats, and it was a nice surprise to see folks in kayaks as well. They all hugged a listening spot to anchor, and the night looked like a pepper stew of polka dot lights in bloom cast upon the river. Classic. I think the song I enjoyed the most from Mumford was - I will wait. Was invited by a local pastor to a philosophical roundtable between him and some friends tonight - and looking forward to that - but it's been rescheduled until September. Good thing, as I'm exhausted! Have to pick up Silas on Tuesday and chaperone him for the day, and then he's off to Scotland!

Theology

So lately I had given some thought to the Calvinist / Arminian debate. There were a couple of points on the Calvinist Tulip theology that I had strong objections to, across a couple of levels, intellectually and emotionally. The debate between Calvanism and the Arminian school of thought is a difficult digest. The intersection of free will and predestination having spawned a vast catalogue of intellectual chess matches over the centuries. 

Obviously, if God predestines some for heaven and some for hell, the question can then be asked - of what consequence, value, or application is free will? Regarding Calvanism and Arminianism, it kinds of leads to me to think .. as fascinating and important as these theological arguments are .. God looks at the heart. 

Charles Spurgeon had a quote from one of his sermons that was interesting:

"The fact is, that the great questions about man's responsibility, free-will, and predestination, have been fought over, and over, and over again, and have been answered in ten thousand different ways; and the result has been, that we know just as much about the matter as when we first began. The combatants have thrown dust into each other's eyes, and have hindered each other from seeing; and then they have concluded, that because they put other people's eyes out, they could therefore see." 

Questions

Long days at work that roll into hot nights.

I had written a two page paper on the word deserve a month or two ago and shared it with some local pastors. Now that is really funny. I actually sat down and wrote a two page paper on the word deserve. Deserve pointing to merit, and qualification, and ultimately worth.

Tricky philosophical topic. And after it was all said and done, the see-saw of deconstructing the etymology, the implication, and so forth, there was still something gnawing at me. I think part of what had driven me to write the paper was a meditation on fear. Probably won't post that paper here, but let's just say this, so often when its used in the pulpit, the word that's more relevant, and seemingly more suited to the message - should be entitled.

And so then, after I had written the paper, I started to chew some more on it. Part of the impetus behind the paper was the question of what we are worth to God. And then at some point, perhaps it was driving through Columbus and passing Ohio State University .. the questions rearranged themselves, and a new question came out. Maybe I had the questions that had driven me to write a two page paper - backward.

Instead of asking the question of what we are worth to God, the real question I should have been asking myself all along is what God is worth to us. 

Swans

Luc Petton and his Swans opening tomorrow.  Interesting back story of the training involved to make it happen.

                    

Summer camp

Summer coming up. A worthwhile place for abused kids and kids within the foster care system. Royal Family Kids Camps, with camp locations across the country. More information available at their website -  Royal Family Kids.

Listening

Almost a year now. I didn't think I would be in tears for almost 11 months, but I was. Longer than a pregnancy. Maybe that's aptly put, since it's given birth to a new life. A pastor I met had given a sermon about idolatry.  About pursuing health and wealth as idols, which had me pondering .. at what point do normal desires becomes idolatry, and then .. afterwards, thinking about the idolatry of fear as well. 

I had approached him afterwards, and had mentioned to him in the church –  “that  it was a difficult message to swallow. “ ..  I think I said something like “try telling that to someone who is sick” …and then later, after walking around the block and meditating on it for a bit, I went back. I had shared with him that .. “admittedly, I was a bit cynical about some of your message .. and yet my thoughts trouble me."

"Well, what woman would find a husband who is sick and broke a suitable marriage candidate?” - I remember asking him. It was refreshing, in that I could have a honest dialogue with a man that struck me as unassuming, and genuine. Not even 5 minutes later, after talking with him in the church - I met an elderly woman and struck up a conversation with her. She had beautiful blue gray eyes like my former love. At some point, I asked her how she met her husband. 

"He was sick in bed, in the hospital, and I was his nurse" - she says. Classic. Life’s big messages, in little moments.

Observed

Was reading "A Grief Observed" lately. C.S. Lewis .. immediately after the death of his wife Helen Joy from cancer. 

Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don’t care whether I meet her again or not? When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of  ”No answer.”  It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, “Peace, child; you don’t understand.”

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask–half our great theological and metaphysical problems–are like that.

How far have I got? Just as far, I think, as a widower of another sort who would stop, leaning on his spade, and say in answer to the inquiry, 'Thank'ee. Mustn't grumble. I do miss her something dreadful. But they say these things are sent to try us.' We have come to the same point; he with his spade, and I, who am not now much good at digging, with my own instrument. But of course, one must take 'sent to try us' in the right way.

Words

Interesting story I came across:

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there.”

The little boy then understood how powerful his words were.

Hearing

I think this must have been an overwhelming, humbling, transforming experience. Suffering, disabilities, setbacks - hit us all at one point in time or another. It's warming to see someone experience liberty in a profoundly new dimension. Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but when a longing is fulfilled ...

Humility

The artist alone among men knows what true humility means. His reach forever exceeds his grasp. He can never be satisfied with his work. He knows when he has done well, but he knows he has never attained his dream. He knows he never can. -  Rheta Childe Dorr, A Woman of Fifty

- - -

Thinking about humility. Is it a living measurement, a check and balance that needs guidance, or trust, or both? Simple sense - Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less. I like that.

Ambivalence

I had learned to love another with my soul. I'm not sure if learned would be the apt descript of what took place, it wasn't a structured event as such, it began as friendly and flowed into an organic birth of overwhelming love for another person. And when that fell apart, in terribly painful ways, as Marcus Mumford expressed in White Blank Page, I was pushed to the brink. Picking myself up from that desert floor left me in the midst of a painfully strange metamorphosis.

I used to be able to bounce back from breakups. Whatever resiliency there was seems to have yielded to a stubbornly rooted ambivalence about dating and ever opening up again. If loving another with your soul wasn't good enough, the world made no sense to me. I found myself at a crossroads filled with conflict. In one direction, the idea of opening up and caring about someone again that deeply was impossible - unspeakable pain. In another, there would be solitude.

The definition of ambivalence as taken from Merriam-Webster:

1:  simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings {as attraction and repulsion} toward an object, person, or action 

2: a) continual fluctuation {as between one thing and its opposite}
    b) uncertainty as to which approach to follow 

I'm not sure that I will ever date again, or marry. The Lord knows I need to heal first. Unreservedly I still think romance is special, and hearing stories of couples who have been together a long time always makes me happy. For now, I'm not wanting to date, I'm running away from the idea as if it were fire.

And standing still. Maybe someday.

Here's to the dreamers

A recent find: The themes were immediately compelling - imagination, impermanence, and innocence.

That spark where we imagine the possibilities. Maybe that's the case, in the best possible of circumstances, and in the worst. As life will remind us, through the slow and sometimes sharp pitter-patter of age, rain, sweeping wind and fading sunlight - our breaths are measured, as chalk upon a sidewalk of desire. 

Here's to the dreamers, making the most of innocent moments on the cobblestones of their journey.

Off the map

Bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. Those words - maybe in particular that phrase from "Come, Thou Font Font of Every Blessing" - seems to reconcile with something that moves in me, a mirror, perhaps a reflection of the spiritual, and also the life searcher, the voyager.

Sometime back in California, I happened upon a Monica Denevan exhibition, part of her series in Burma. There was one photograph in particular that spoke to me. It imbued a sense of being on a journey, unencumbered by possessions, and I identified with wanting that kind of theme. I thought, how simple, to live that kind of life - in contrast to the frenetic materialism we have in America. A young man, perhaps with a family, out on the sea, harvesting what he can. A simple life. I kept it as I left the exhibition. It's with me today, to remind me, that I do have the heart of a wanderer. May God guide the journey, and steer the boat.

Scattershot thoughts

I never thought I would write in a blog. I'm too busy, honestly. So, this will likely be a slow progression. Been working 16 hour days lately. Went out for a walk into the almost-midnight air and promptly retrieved the next best feel good element to prayer that there is. Cold root beer. Quite the situational juxtaposition, with the falling snow and the moon. Normally, I'd say coffee, hot chocolate, anything warm - would be appropriate! But somehow a cold root beer felt just right. Cheers me up when I'm down.

Walking in the falling snow, the crisply falling messages from above turning into translucent watery beads of pearls on the door as I get home. Still have some root beer. Thinking of a home, and how, if I had my choice, home would be with God above. It's a new year. I can put the 7 months of tears behind me. Life will re-write itself. Pulling up a old poem I wrote at least 16 years ago.

miracle sun you play peekaboo with me
behind a shimmering blue street
my life caged in bones & misunderstandings
so think of our unspoken fragile agreement
that you will visit tomorrow
 
seeing my past today playing in a film down by the beach
admission was free and easy
questions and answers were not
i have yet but scratched the surface of promises to myself
 
my parents vision
turned to happy pot bellys, scars, and pills
and choices i never cared to understand
now overwhelm me with laughter
as i watch how they stumbled and carried us all
 
so mister miracle sun
gift to look upon me then
carry me to those lessons
far far away from home
but bring me back again