Steel Blue Sky

I grew up on a small farm in the middle of Florence County, Wisconsin.  There are about 4400 people living in Florence County, just over nine people per square mile.  There are no incorporated communities in Florence County, and, last I checked, no stoplights.  Our farm is located in the township of Homestead.  Homestead has just under 400 residents, and a population density of seven people per square mile.  There were five of us living on 250 acres to the west of County Road C, midway between Aurora and Fence, halfway from tranquility to solitude.  It is a beautiful place, a quiet place.

About half of the farm was cleared for hayfields or pasture before we arrived, and the other half remains forested.  There is a spring on the farm, around which a black spruce swamp has formed.  Beneath the canopy of the spruce trees, the sphagnum moss grows in a secretive green carpet.  A small creek flows past the north gate and meanders off the eastern edge of the farm to join the Little Popple River less than a mile away.  

To the west of the barn across the pasture are the pines.  When I was young, there was no understory beneath the pines.  The giant white pines and stately Norway pines formed a climax community which closed out the sunlight to the forest floor.  You could walk among the massive black and maroon pillars unhindered by brush, nothing but bedstraw and grass at your feet.  It is the solemn habitation of red squirrels and nuthatches and chick-a-dees, a place which solicits an unconscious hush and whisper.  Shafts of light filter randomly through the branches to form luminous angular columns which seem to have their own form of solidity.  

Just north of the pines is the sand forty.  For all the beauty and wonder of the varied ecosystems on the farm, the sand forty is where I am most at home.  It has no form or majesty, nothing in its appearance that I should be drawn to it… a refuge of the neglected and unnoticed.  An unassuming collection of jack pines and red oak, a sparse and misshapen hayfield with an odd island of trees in the center, a haunt of coyotes and grasshoppers.  It is here where I watch the steel blue sky each November.

This is where I learned to live, to breathe. Stone piles and timothy grass.  Bobolinks and barn swallows.  Whip-poor-wills and lightning bugs and the breathtaking Milky Way overhead.  The scent of leaves in autumn and wood smoke from the basement.  Snow drifts and hoar frost and Ursa Major rotating around the bright northern star. This is where my father raised his family. A giant oak stands behind the machine shed, overlooking the house, the barn, the pastures. Quercus. 

  

When I was a boy, the summers were solitary.  I said goodbye to my classmates in early June and would not see them again for three months.  I spent my summers with Dad.  I worked with Dad from as far back as I can remember.  Each year he taught me new things, gave me new responsibilities.  In rough chronological order, Dad taught me to stack firewood, to feed calves, to fetch the cows, to hoe the garden, to clip barb wire to steel posts.  As I grew older he taught me how to roll a stone out of the ground with a crowbar, to drive a tractor, to rake hay, to unload bales, to drive fence posts, to handle a maul and a post-hole digger.  In high school he taught me how to cut hay, to fill the silo, to clean the barn, to feed the cows, to shingle a roof, to stack lumber, to hang sheetrock, to back a trailer, to pull a calf, to handle a chain saw.  A few years back he taught me to clean the chimney.

Dad also taught me how to fish.  It was a great joy to me, summer and winter.  I loved fishing more than Dad did, but he loved spending time with me more than anything, so he almost never turned me down when I would ask.  I see that now.  We spent countless evenings fishing bluegills on silent lakes, mostly with no other people to be seen or heard.  We would weave along the shoreline in our 10 foot row boat casting into pockets in the lily pads while the bull frogs croaked plaintively.  We would fish quietly as the sky turned color and the moon rose until it was too dark to see and the mosquitoes were thick enough to drive sane people to land.  Bats and nighthawks hunted over the water as we made our way back to the truck. 

Dad also taught me to love and appreciate my grandfathers.  He created space and time for each of them.  Dad patiently enabled Grandpa Forrest to cut hay even after his reflexes had declined to the point that he would break the teeth on the cutter bar on protruding stones he didn’t see in time.  I still remember the summer Grandpa stopped cutting hay.  He had hit two fawns in the space of a week and decided on his own to stop.  Dad also called Grandpa Kriegl to do most of his welding and metal work, even though Dad was a fair welder on his own.  Most of my memories with Dad and Grandpa Kriegl together were either out on the ice jigging waxworms or making drives during deer season.  I didn’t know what a gift it was to spend those days with Grandpa.  I also didn’t think about the sacrifices Dad made to enable them.

Almost all of my memories with Dad are tied up on that 250 acre farm and the small lakes just to the south and west.  Setting corner-posts and stretching barbed wire.  Baling hay on sunny days while red-tailed hawks cruised over the windrows, searching for snakes or mice.  There could not have been a more perfect place for a shy, reflective, introverted boy to grow up, or a better man to raise one.  For all the long days we spent together, we spoke relatively little, and rarely of anything other than the work or the weather or where we might go fishing that night.  There was precious little in the way of advice but also never a single overbearing lecture or burdensome expectation.  I’ve always known my place with Dad and been glad for his authority, and he always treated me with patience and kindness and a friendship I couldn’t recognize because I had no way of knowing anything else.

There are three conversations I will never forget though. On the day of Grandpa Forrest’s funeral, Dad and I were together in the basement getting ready for evening chores.  Dad told me that his favorite verse was Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”  Perhaps the most sweeping promise in the entire Bible.  I realized then, as I do right now, how much stability a father brings to a man, even a grown man.  I, of course, had only known my grandfather in his old age and had never seen him interact with his own young children.  I also had only known my Dad as  someone of limitless resourcefulness and independence, hardly realizing how much his own moral compass and groundedness was influenced by his father. The day my cousins and I carried Grandpa’s casket from the funeral home was a day of profound grief for Dad.  On that day, as he tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears, he pointed me to an unfathomable truth that neither of us will ever fully grasp or apprehend.  Little did I know how much I would need that rock to cling to later in life.

The second conversation happened on a routine summer day toward the end of my college years.  We must have been putting the haying equipment away because we were sitting in the pickup alongside the pole shed, facing south toward the fence line where the triangle piece meets the pines.  I remember Dad telling me that he understood why I wanted to go to Africa.  He told me that he and Mom were supportive and that I had their blessing.  I think it means more to me now than it did at the time, but I do remember feeling humbled and grateful.  Both my parents lived most of their lives within a few miles of their parents.  To know that I would not be a few miles away, or a few hours even -- I had considered it, but I had not considered it from the perspective of my parents.  I think that in our silent transactions we three were all seeking a better city, the city that is to come.  As much as I have treasured every day with them, we each of us know that there is a great calling, and that whether leaving or releasing, the days and moments sacrificed will one day be redeemed, that day when all our conspiring to follow Christ will be tested and proven true.  The blessing of my father on this journey is perhaps the most precious gift he has given me.

Of course the third memorable conversation was the summation of all the advice Dad ever gave me on relationships. “Mike, women are mysterious.  You will never understand them.”  Sage advice, distilled from years of marriage, encapsulated in two brief sentences.  The whole of what I was to learn from Dad about love or romance seemed more like an unmooring and setting adrift.  At the time it felt like a pep talk from someone admitting that they were the blind leading the blind.  But now that I am older than Dad was when he gave me this pearl of wisdom, I see the wonderful truth in it.  In actual fact the woman I love is mysterious, and I am immensely glad that I will never understand her.  The things I know and understand are small in proportion to the things which remain mysterious.  And the things most beautiful and inspiring can never be reduced to knowing or understanding.  The older I get, the more I love and appreciate the mysterious unknown, especially the mystery of my dear wife.

When I was a young adult, I used to wish that Dad had spoken more with me during the turbulent, confusing teen-age years.  All the hours we spent alone together.  But as my children grew older, I came to realize what a gift all those hours were, even if there was not much in the way of mentoring as I might have thought it could have looked.  I could see the sacrifices and life decisions that went into spending so much time with your son.  I appreciated those hours more and more.  Now that my kids have graduated high school and life looks unlike anything I might have imagined, I’ve come to value what it really was that Dad gave me, a capacity for silence, a stillness that has served me so well.  

“In quietness and confidence will be your strength” said the LORD to His people.  

So often truth eludes us for lack of concentration and careful, silent meditation.  Distraction and conversation carry us away.  

“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.  It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.  It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.  Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him,” goes the Lamentation.  

How does one bear disappointment or sorrow or tragedy or grief other than through silent utterances and wordless tears?  Someone trained me in the way of silence.  Someone showed me that the most beautiful and holy things can only be approached in silence, that most of the time a word unspoken is more fitting, that to be left speechless before the panorama of life unfolding is to take it in most wonderfully.

And so after all of these years, I need to thank Dad mostly for who he is rather than what he’s done or said.  I know now that all those hours alone on the water were much more than quality time.  I know that whatever might have been lost in terms of advice or direction was more than compensated for by a sense of deep reverent peace.  Even now I can see the lily pads in the fading light on the western shore of Mirror Lake.  My bobber is moving. Patiently, patiently I take up the slack… I set the hook not knowing if I will boat the great meaning of life on the other end of the line as a beautiful purple and dark-olive jewel that fits in the palm of my hand or if that boundless destiny will slowly pull me out to sea.  Either way, Dad always maneuvers the boat to put me in just the right place to make the perfect cast.

___________________________________

To Dad, with love, admiration, respect, and gratitude.

Yvonne Naomi

I am my mother’s son.  Thankfully.  I am certain that I bear certain maternally inherited character flaws, but they are so overwhelmingly dwarfed by the capacity for joy, the love of laughter, the depth of empathy, the solidity of patience, the longsuffering of forgiveness, the rare caution with words, the endurance of unselfishness, and the sheer ability to love of my Mother – I have little room for excuse. 

If, as Dad is fond of saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” then I could not have had a better view of the autumn sky than to gaze up through the branches above me.

Concern for others was the atmosphere of my childhood.  To serve someone requires no special giftedness, no unique talent or skill as such.  Love asks not “What can I do?” but rather “What do you need?”  How to grieve with those who grieve; or to tactfully, humbly, patiently find a way to help. An understanding tear, a silent look of incomprehensible sorrow, a hand held.  Coming of age in the presence of compassion; floundering, wobbling as a new calf trying to stand and finding, there in the beauty of spring, a mother whose grace and simplicity would teach me more than I could know about being human, about being Christ-like in a hurting world. That was the gift of the woman who raised me, who loved me so naturally as a part of the world she has loved so well, so completely and with such noble kindness.

I remember picking blueberries with Mom when I was very young.  She would drive out on sandy fire lanes to find blueberry patches in the Jackpines.  She pulled our socks up over our pantlegs to keep the ticks and red ants off.  We picked blueberries in the peaceful shade of summer.  I hear just now the quiet thumping of the first berries falling into the ice cream pail.  I know she loves picking blueberries, but it is difficult to prioritize her reasons.  It could be the simple pleasure of doing a task efficiently and cleanly.  Or the tranquility of the northwoods in July.  Perhaps it was the hours alone with her young children, hours she certainly knew were fast fleeting.  But I imagine that her highest joy in picking blueberries has always been the foreknowledge of her family enjoying pie together some evening at the cabin.

Mom has spent much of her life loving children and the elderly.  It is impossible to say how many neighborhood children, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren she has cared for.  As far back as I can remember and beyond, Mom has spent part of her Sundays in the company of young children.  Perhaps this was not unusual or notable for women of her generation, but it strikes me just now that she has been teaching Sunday School and helping in the nursery for over 50 years.  I’m guessing she has felt an obligation at times - that is the plain reality of love – but I have never heard her mention anything close to complaint or burden in this regard.

I have the sense that if you asked Mom if she felt gifted to teach children or called to minister in the nursery, she would be a bit puzzled.  Objectively, she certainly is gifted – she loves children, enjoys their company, loves to smile and to hug them.  But my sense is that she has never considered herself gifted to minister to children.  In fact, I rather wonder if she considers herself at all.

I most often observe Mom quietly and unpretentiously doing small, largely unnoticed acts of service in every context of her life.  Driving shut-ins to appointments or dropping off groceries for them.  Visiting nursing homes and hospitals.  Nothing ever seemed planned or organized - a pure, simple kindness permeates her thought and impulse.  You have to elbow your way to the dishpan in her presence, and you need to do it with a hearty laugh – it displaces her, and unless you can convince her that you have genuine happiness and joy taking it on, she will be uncomfortable relinquishing any opportunity to serve, even in the smallest things.

To be truthful, she does show anxiety at times, she does try to do too much.  I can’t in fairness to her laud her persistent and tireless caring without recognizing the toll it takes on her.  She lives with stress and bears others burdens on multiple levels.  I need to recognize this and forgive it, absolve Mom on some level to the extent I am authorized.  It is an act of kindness toward her, but also one of self-preservation.  This particular whirlpool of anxiety draws me as well.  I guess that if, as the Scriptures say, we are to be zealous in doing good, if we are to pour ourselves out, to not flag in zeal – then this is the logical tendency.  Of course we’re also called to be anxious for nothing, to rest in the surpassing peace of Christ.  Still for a compassionate servant like Mom, this balance is sometimes beyond her capacity.  I do know that her needle will always tip toward concern rather than apathy.  I hope to err on that side as well.

One last remembrance to share.  When my mother was my age and I was a young adult, I told her that I wanted to visit the elderly in nursing homes, but that I didn’t know how to begin.  With the wisdom of someone who honored her elders, Mom took me to visit Myrtle Freeburg, an elderly widow who spent her twilight years ministering to Alzheimer’s patients.  For many years, Myrtle was a mentor to Mom, a spiritual mother in the best biblical sense.  Myrtle influenced Mom in much the way Mom has influenced me.  I am struck just now at the profound impact of that visit with Myrtle.  Someone with so much practical wisdom and courage borne from prayer, a treasure of a human person living a few hundred yards from our small country church.  I hope to live up to that legacy of faith for as long as God gives me breath.

“… at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. In the particular instance of your mother, I know that if you are attentive to her in this way, you will find a very great loveliness in her.” Pastor John Ames – Gilead.  Marilynne Robinson

I stop to honor my Mother, I sense the sacredness of her, I find a very great loveliness in her.  I hope I can live up to the Fifth Commandment, there is great joy in trying.

Thank you, Mom.  I will forever be grateful to you.

Autumn Leaves

Photo credit: Cindy Arie

Autumn leaves

Torn from branches

Carried on the wind

Bits of color

Flying unpredictably

Chased by children

Clear blue sky

Carefree afternoons

Bright September days

This my memory

As leaves fall placidly 

While I stare quietly Through the nursing home window

At the overcast morning

The last day of your life

This final day spent with you

I hope to die in autumn

While the leaves are turning

Sit me by the window

To stare out at the red and orange landscape

Sit with me then

When speech has failed

When past and present are indistinguishable

Sit with me and recall our memories

Or sit with me in silence

Or read aloud “The Old Man and the Sea”

As we watch the leaves fall

As we acquiesce to time

As we honor innocence in the fading light

Of ephemeral color

Know then my love and gratitude

Then when words have gone

When leaves fall silently

And your kindness rests gently

On my tired soul

Your Most Beautiful You

This past Monday we learned that Carrie’s cancer is medically incurable. At 3:00 AM the next morning, the Holy Spirit reminded me of these precious words from 2 Corinthians 4...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, yet our inner nature is being renewed every day.

The time horizon for the decay of our outer nature is brief.  The outer nature is wasting away.  Cancer might accelerate that unavoidable process. However our inner nature is being renewed every day. And I believe that the inner nature is made more beautiful by this process of renewal. I see this every day in the steady, persistent sanctification of my beloved. So while cancer might accelerate the process of the wasting away of her outer nature, it is simultaneously hastening the perfection and beautification of her inner nature.

For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Carrie, I have watched cancer change you. And I can say that it has changed you in the most beautiful ways. Because you have walked through this trial with humility and faith, your inner nature has been renewed -- yes, more than renewed -- day by day. The Carrie that I see and hold is only a reflection of the eternal Carrie, the Carrie who is loved by God in a beautiful, caring conversation of spirits. I can not see this inner version of you with my eyes, but I daily sense that she is growing stronger and more glorious. Your inner you, the you that is loved and cared for by God, is immutable and mysterious. Because I am also wasting away outwardly on my own timeline, I can only experience the effects of this growing eternal weight of glory in your words and disposition here in the temporal. I can not touch or see the real you. If my inner me could commune with your inner you then the process of either of us dying would be so much more a triviality for us both. 

But your inner you does commune with the Eternal. And He who makes all things new is perfecting you. And if I am still here when your outer nature has wasted away to the point that I can no longer communicate with you, when I will have no visible or audible sense of the you I love so dearly, even then, your inner you will be steadily and unstoppably becoming more beautiful.  And even though I can’t see this most beautiful you with my eyes, I am looking for her. Today, and for the remaining days we have together, however many they may be, I will continue to see the imprint of this most beautiful you. And I know that I will see her face to face one day -- one wonderful, unexplainable, unending day.  I am grateful for every day that I have with you.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

Love Never Fails

Many of us are familiar with I Corinthians 13.  It is perhaps the most beautiful and poetic chapter of the New Testament.  It calls us to a profound and wonderful place beyond action and beyond motive.  It calls us to something that is humanly impossible.  It unfolds the mystery of God to us and opens up doors beyond comprehension.

In the middle of this chapter is an inflection point turning on the very meaning or definition of love – love never fails.  Everything to this point is a description of love, what love does or how love responds. Love is not arrogant, or resentful, or selfish.  Love rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then…

Love never fails.

This three word phrase does not describe love, it defines love. This three word phrase became the basis of understanding God for me, not really understanding God exactly, but understanding this aspect of how God relates to me.  We are called to love, even to love those who revile us or want nothing to do with us.  And when someone you deeply care about turns away from you, you are left with two choices – to abandon that person in your heart or to continue loving them with all good-will and compassion.  At the lowest point of defeat and despair in my life, this word came to me… “love never fails”.  Go on loving and you can not fail.  Everything may crumble, this person may never speak to you again, your world may come apart at the seams, but if you persist in love toward that person deep in your heart, you will not fail.

And it all seemed so simple, like a huge burden lifted from my chest, staring up at the ceiling in the dark cold of winter. 

But that was not all. 

In fact that was only the beginning. 

Because in that moment, God revealed to me that He loves me this way.  That nothing I can ever do will overcome His love.  His love never fails, it never ends.  I can turn away from Him, revile and want nothing to do with Him, I can ignore Him.  Nothing will change Him.  He will continue to love me. He will continue to patiently long for me to return.  He will receive me again with joy at the first moment of my responding to His kindness.  He will weep over my pride and pointless wandering.  And I suddenly and for the first time had no fear of losing His love.  I realized for the first time the impossibility of God not loving me.  It changed me profoundly and permanently.

 

There is now no place I would rather be than with God.  Understanding that He will love me as a father loves his children, understanding the nature of unconditional love, draws me to Him.  And all of life and death, joy and suffering, everything has meaning and beauty in Him.
________________

Sunday morning I woke early and sat next to Carrie’s hospital bed.  She had just spent two nights struggling through painful back spasms that kept her largely immobile.  She was lying in bed wondering what it meant to have a cancerous tumor in her spine.  She asked me to pray.  We held hands and I prayed.  When I was finished, Carrie prayed.  The high point of her prayer was unique.  She lifted up the hospital staff, all the people coming and going from her room.  She remembered that each of them is dealing with troubles and challenges and she asked God to bless them in some way on this particular Sunday.

A man should have the good fortune to spend one day of his life in the company of a woman like Carrie.

Of everyday saints and heroes: remembering Jeff Valine

My good friend Jeff Valine died this past Monday.  His death made me realize that I am surrounded by saints and heroes disguised as everyday people, remarkable people who have shaped my life.  The grinding perspective of time, the soul-weathering press of disappointment or failure, and the inevitable uncontrollability of life humble us all.  And only through humility can we see the true greatness, the wonderful glory of the beautiful people alongside us.  In the impatience of youth, it can hardly be recognized much less appreciated or treasured.  Today I stare back through time and see the stabilizing power of good people who through providence and grace were placed in my path to form the way that I understand the world, to influence the way I respond to the people around me.  Jeff was one of these people.  He was an oak of stability in a forest of loneliness.  There were no outsiders to Jeff.  His inclination toward everyone was joy and laughter and acceptance.  He was humble, kind, unobtrusive and transparent.  He was simply a trustworthy friend, and that is simply invaluable. 

Love hopes all things, believes all things.  That was Jeff.  He saw the best in people -- he had a loving optimism that hoped all things. 

It is impossible to describe the impact Jeff had on me in ninth and tenth grade, difficult years full of insecurity and loneliness.  I had the good fortune of having a locker next to Jeff, and every day there was a friend who accepted me without expectation and with no terms.  Jeff lived two blocks from school, and I spent one or two evenings at his house each week during the fall and winter athletic seasons, waiting for football or basketball games at FHS.  The Valines were an extension of my family.  I felt safe there.  I was myself with no projection or pretense or anxiety.  It was a haven of joy, and Jeff was the prime instigator.  Recognizing the rarity of the gift Jeff possessed, I know with all certainty what a truly exceptional home he must have made with Lorna.  Alex and Kaycee have been raised by a father who loved others in such an extraordinary way that I can only imagine how he must have loved his children at home.

And this is the paradox which lies at the heart of grief and loss, especially an untimely loss like this.  Those nearest to Jeff, those who lived in closest proximity to his overflowing kindness and love, those who grieve most deeply, are also those who experienced his uncommon magnanimity and goodness most profoundly.  I don’t know how to begin to console a widowed wife of 22 years or two teenagers who lost such a wonderful dad.  The hole left by the departure of Jeff seems inconsolable -- indeed today it is inconsolable.  But the impact of Jeff on their lives is undoubtedly orders of magnitude more beautiful and lasting than his impact on me, and his impact on me was so profound that I am utterly inspired by the thought of what people they are and who they will become.  And that is hopeful for me today, on a day when sadness and confusion are palpable and oppressive.  My good friend is gone too soon, but his legacy is bright and wonderful and eternal, and I am immensely grateful to be a part of it.

The Dental Floss Fairy

I have a hard time being consistent with dental floss.  My guess is that this is unlikely to change.  I try to exercise, watch my diet, etc. but there is only so much self-discipline to go around, and, well, flossing has never made it very high on the list.

A few years back I figured out that I could do lunges while brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush (I’m not coordinated enough to pull this off with a normal one).  That was good while it lasted.  Two minutes to brush your teeth and a decent quad workout to boot.  Now my electric toothbrush can’t charge here in Kenya, so much for that.

My dental hygiene is suffering.

I have thought for a while that maybe I could motivate myself by counting empty dental floss containers.  Sort of milestones or “Monitoring and Evaluation Metrics”.  I could confidently walk in to see the dental hygienist and coolly drop five or six empty containers on the counter. “Yeah, that’s right… flossing like a pro.”

Well, that hasn’t worked out so well either.

I realized yesterday, that what I need is a Dental Floss Fairy.  You know, the Tooth Fairy disappears for us after our baby teeth are gone.  That is only 20 visits, if you remember them all.  

What if I could put my empty floss box under my pillow and be visited in my sleep by the Dental Floss Fairy?  GENIUS!

Of course, the Tooth Fairy is only in for 20 visits max, but then, let’s be honest, I’m 44 and the odds of me emptying more than 20 boxes of floss before I die or my teeth fall out are pretty slim.  So hey, why not?  I’m calling the Dental Floss Fairy and putting her on alert.

But you know, a quarter under the pillow doesn’t do much for you mid-life, so I needed something more substantial.  What would really be worth emptying a box of floss for?  I need something akin to the gifts of Galadriel… a luminary glass bulb that gives you brilliant ideas when you are battling some impossible spider trying to suck the creative energy out of you while you work on a grant proposal.  Or maybe some elvish rope that could keep you from hanging yourself in office politics while deftly building substantial partnerships and collaborations.

Or maybe a strand of hair from her golden head…

;)

So that would get me through the first two or three containers.  But then what? I think the next iteration would likely be Mary Poppins… maybe a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of my next performance review go down or a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious type presentation at the next big meeting.  Or absolutely a Jolly Holiday with no strained family relations or travel glitches.

Hey, maybe this could work.  Let me know if you think of something I could ask for to keep my dog from napping with his rear end on my pillow.

Not that Pinteresting

If I am standing in the kitchen and my wife walks in, places something in the sink, then leaves again without looking at me or acknowledging my presence, she is angry.  If my teen-aged daughter does this, she is self-absorbed.  After 22 years of marriage, of enduring highs and lows, my dear friend and beloved spouse has enough familiarity with me to know that if she were to ignore me, it would be painful to me. Not only that, she loves me very much and most of the time, she is genuinely happy to see me.  But my daughter’s world is different, she is an adolescent finding her way in a challenging world, a confusing world of instant information, relentless advertising, images, songs, digital friends.  A difficult world of looking to be accepted and appreciated in a social setting of equally confused and struggling young adults who bruise one another, often unintentionally, but still just as painfully.  There is a lot swirling through my daughter’s mind, papers to write, exams coming up, the dance Friday night.  So when she passes me in the kitchen and leaves again without a hello, it is likely not intentional.  At least I have to believe that.

But it is still just as painful. 

It says to me, in so many words, "Dad, you are not that Pinteresting."

This happens from time to time, or perhaps more often.  A few weeks ago it went on for two or three days.  Sadie Hawkins dance.  Which necklace to wear, what color clutch, dress needs to be altered… meanwhile the chauffeur in the front seat of the Toyota was just there to get her from place to place.  I have to confess, by the time the dance was over and my driving shift ended Friday night, I was dragging myself to bed at 11:00 PM with bitterness on top of sadness.  I only have 70 or 80 more Friday nights with my little girl at home, maybe 70 or 80 more Saturdays.  Subtract the ones when I’m traveling or she’s busy, and I realize that the moments are disappearing.  I realize that this young woman is so interesting and wonderful.  There is really nothing I would rather do that to sit with her at the kitchen table and to hear all about her world.

______

Saturday morning I was up at 5:30.  Going for a long run in the early morning while it was cool.  Ate a light breakfast and then sat down at the kitchen table to read from the Word.  It had been a few days, but I opened back up to Malachi where I had left off.  Malachi 4… “and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” 

Providence.

Of course my first response was to smile and to think about this prophecy of restoration and why it would connect the affections of children and fathers.  Then it dawned on me that this word, even two days earlier, would have passed by me as familiar and not stood out in such dramatic fashion.  I realized that my being away from the Word for a few days was a part of the mysterious work of God in my life, strange as that may sound.  On this particular Saturday morning I was able to see and to understand this verse in a way that I am sure I could not have otherwise.

But then, that was only the beginning.

The object lesson in longing for a closer relationship with my daughter suddenly turned as I realized that I had just ignored God for two or three days.  The God who adopted me into His family and Who is ever-present with me.  I was suddenly so humbled to think that God loves me and longs to spend time with me, to listen to what is going on in my cosmically trivial life.  I can’t understand that. Why, in the scope of everything happening in an unjust and fallen world would God want to listen to me? More than that, I was ignoring God, not intentionally, but functionally.  Why would God, Who grieves over human trafficking and child abuse, Who takes up the cause of the displaced and the oppressed, Who will one day vindicate the victims of injustice - why in the world would He even care about someone who is ignoring Him? 

Because He is my Father, and He knows that I love Him, even when I’m self-absorbed and blind to His kindness.

Anyone who has tried seriously to walk with Jesus comes, at some point, to the realization that while spiritual disciplines are necessary, they must be approached with caution.  There is not a formula for growing closer to God.  I can’t set my alarm earlier and expect to meet God every day. And if I unwittingly fall into the trap of checking boxes, not only might I miss God, I might also delude myself in self-righteousness.  It is dangerous.  I can set out to read the Word every day, or spend some amount of time in prayer, or serve others in some way.  All things which honor God, but also which have the potential to blind me to Who He really is, if I am not careful.  If I’m not really seeking Him with my whole heart, I won’t find Him.

The older I get, the more I realize that the only practice which runs no risk of misleading me is to turn my attention to Him.  I can pray without really even focusing on God, I can sing without worshiping.  I can read the scriptures without listening to Him.  But at any moment if my heart is prompted to turn to Him, and I respond, it will not fail to honor Him and edify me.  

Certainly being in the Word is necessary for growth and setting aside time for prayer helps me turn to Him.  Gathering in corporate worship opens a door for me to experience God and serving others is an avenue to joy in Christ.  But all of it is really just straw if I am not aware of Him. He must be the purpose and end. And He is never far.

“… he will turn the hearts of children to their fathers.”

Minneapolis

Last night our friends hosted a gathering at Wabun Park near our home in Minneapolis.  It was absolutely humbling and deeply joyful to see forty or so people who have meant so much to us for so many years in one place together to wish us well.  I can’t begin the recount the stories and the kindness of these beautiful people.  All I can say is thank you.

In 2003, Carrie and I returned to Minneapolis after four years in Iowa.  We were on the brink of divorce that year, and when God opened the door for us to come to Minneapolis, it was a gift beyond recognition.  We needed the support of the community of those who loved us, and we found it in immeasurable abundance.

There was a night that July, I remember driving on 35W in the rain, when I first heard Norah Jones sing on the radio.  Tears rolled down my face then as they do now, my heart aching for my beautiful wife.  I didn’t know then if our marriage would survive, and with much trepidation, we settled in Minneapolis even though it meant a long commute for me.  The only joy I knew that year was that of our precious little kids, and the thought of an hour and a half each day commuting was a calculated risk, forgoing the time with them to gamble on the prospect that the community of those we loved would heal our family by the grace of God.  Such was the opportunity before me.  So we settled at 4645 33^rd Ave and rejoined Immanuel Baptist Church.  The friends we knew and loved poured themselves into our family.  New friends came and enriched our lives in unbelievably wonderful ways.  For eleven years, we lived among saints, among noble, generous people.

Within six weeks of moving into our home, Carrie was diagnosed with cancer.  The goodness of Providence was never more real to us than in the love and support of the people we had returned to.  And this home, and this place, and these beautifully kind people helped us to heal.  They are our family in every sense of the kingdom meaning.  Every face I looked upon last night at Wabun Park reminded me how much God loves us.  It is sad to say good-bye - but our family is eternal, we can never truly say good-bye.  We are linked to these people through shared immortality.  They shine in glory now, as they ever will, and in that great final unending Day, we will see them again with joy, and love, and inexpressible gratitude.

The Emigrants

July 18, 2014

The movers just left.  Most of our belongings are on their way to Kenya and in one week we will arrive in a foreign place far from here.  I thought I would be a little more sad to see our house empty, but it is a different feeling than I expected.  We are together again, and perhaps the joy of being together is off-setting the sadness of leaving a place so special.  Eleven years is a significant chapter in life, especially when those eleven years see your children grow from six to seventeen.  This home and this neighborhood, this place and this city have been good to us.  Even the trees are familiar to me here, personal friends in some sense.

And now we move across the ocean for some period of time, to a place unfamiliar and vastly different.  Yet we are always immediately in the presence of God, Who is everywhere and always there.  We are always and everywhere in the presence of the mysterious, unfathomable, yet deeply personal One in whose care we are entrusted.  I was reminded of this again yesterday.  Standing waiting to board in Houston, reading Kierkegaard on the Kindle app on my phone:

“But let us understand one another; the journey of which we speak is not long… it is only a single step, and you, too, have emigrated, for the Eternal lies much nearer to you than any foreign country to the emigrant, and yet when you are there the change is infinitely greater.  So then, go with God to God, continually take that one step more, that single step that even you, who cannot move a limb, are still able to take; that single step, that even the prisoner, who has lost his freedom, even the one in chains, whose feet are not free, is still able to take: and you are committed to the Good.  Nobody, not even the greatest that has ever lived, can do more than you.”

Step into the Eternal today.  Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

SOWETO

In June of 1989, I first boarded an airplane.  For London.  And on to Johannesburg.  I traveled to South Africa with a group of college students to spend four weeks in this beautiful but deeply scarred country.  I didn’t know much about South Africa when I left the US.  My interest in visiting the country stemmed from my nascent knowledge of the Civil Rights movement and my deep respect for Dr. King.  I studied Dr. King during my senior year of high school, writing a senior thesis paper on the relationship of his life and experience with his writing.  As profound as his most famous speeches and letters were, it was a small collection of sermons compiled in the book “Strength to Love” which had the most lasting impact on me.  I read and re-read his sermon “And who is my neighbor?”; a searching introduction to the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the implications of the great commandment to love my neighbor in the context of injustice, social inequality, discrimination and poverty.  The Samaritan had compassion on a suffering person, his neighbor, acting courageously in the face of personal risk, reaching out across lines of ethnicity and class, and demonstrating abundant generosity and concern for a person he did not know.  These simple concepts permeated my thought and spiritual life, challenging me to think about how to love my neighbor as a global citizen in a world full of suffering and injustice.  These questions challenge me still.

In 1989, South Africa was a very different place.  We went to South Africa auspiciously to learn about reconciliation in a country still suffering under institutionalized racism and oppression.  Segregation, forced relocation, detention of political dissidents, and the extreme juxtaposition of poverty and wealth characterized South Africa at the time.  We made pilgrimages to places known and unknown among those familiar with the struggle for equality and freedom in South Africa.  We drove along the cliffs near Cape Town overlooking the ocean where Robben Island still housed its most famous political prisoner.  We visited non-descript shanty towns where displaced persons struggled to find shelter.  We stopped to see a communal housing area where men from rural villages lived in hostels while they worked in the mines, their families miles away in the homelands.  We spent an afternoon in the tranquil garden outside the church where Desmond Tutu ministered.  We stayed for a week with materially poor families in a homeland north of Johannesburg where our hosts gathered to worship in the evenings and the children led powerful songs of hope and redemption.

On the 16^th of June, we attended a remembrance service.  A remembrance service for the children who were killed in the SOWETO uprising of 1976.  We drove to the place where the shooting had happened, where the school children had rallied and where many had been killed.  At 18 years of age, 1976 seemed to me like the distant past.  Reflecting now, as a 43 year old adult, I realize that the scars of a people are not easily healed in the span of 13 years.  At that time, SOWETO was to the black South African community as raw and recent and painful as 9/11 is to the current American psyche.  I realize also that the children who died on June 16, 1976 were my peers.  They would be the community leaders of today, the teachers, the entrepreneurs and professionals of the South Africa that has come to be.

So much has changed in South Africa in 25 years.  Certainly I am not in a position to make any real meaningful comment on the metamorphosis of the country.  I can only really reference what I remember then in comparison with what I experience now, admittedly confounded by the changes in my own perspective and the influence of my independent experiences.  Still, to me, the story is a story of hope and reconciliation.  From my limited perspective, the free South Africa of today is healing, is progressing, is overcoming.  It is a vibrant and beautiful country, a place that I will always be fond of and a people I will always respect.

Partaking of the Divine Nature

I am reading Merton again this weekend.  New Seeds of Contemplation.  It has been a while since I’ve read New Seeds.  I can’t point to exactly why the Spirit led me to this little book again just now, but I have a distinct sense that God is telling me something profound, something that I need.  Not something I need to know as much as something I need to experience, no something I need to pursue.  I’m afraid that I can’t put it into words.  You will seek me, and you will find me, when you seek me with your whole heart. 

  

Yesterday I read and re-read “Things in Their Identity”, a reflection on the nature of created things and on who we are in light of Who God is.  Much of the chapter is quite abstract and would be difficult to explain here, but the words prepared my heart somehow for a pre-dawn encounter this morning with a remarkable biblical truth I had not seen before.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” II Peter 1:3-4.

We are called to the glory and excellence of God, granted His precious and very great promises, so that we may partake of the divine nature.  We are meant to be drawn to God, to commune with God, to partake of His divine nature – an eternal, indestructible, immutable, unblemished nature.  We are not who we are meant to be.  In Christ we are becoming who we were meant to be, by His divine power, becoming partakers of the divine nature.

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From New Seeds of Contemplation, Things in Their Identity. Thomas Merton

“This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or ever will do… each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.

The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God… The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God… The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance.

The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints.  There is no other like him.  He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way.  That is his sanctity.

But what about you? What about me?

For us, holiness is more than humanity.  If we are never anything more than people, we will not be able to offer to God the worship of our imitation… God leaves us free to be whatever we like.  We can be ourselves or not, as we please.  We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal.

We are free beings and children of God.  This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and the lives of others, by choosing the truth.  To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity.  We can evade this responsibility by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living.  It is quite easy, it seems to please everyone.  But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high.  To work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls ‘working out our salvation,’ is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears.  It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation.  The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him.  He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be… But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done.

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love – outside of reality and outside of life.  And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real.  And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

The secret of my identity is hidden in the love and mercy of God.

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfillment of my existence… if I find Him, I will find myself…

But though this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult.  In fact, if I am left to myself it will be utterly impossible… there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.

That is something that no man can ever do alone.

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone.

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His divine power has granted to us all things pertaining to life and godliness…