The Ugliest Noel

     Dirty Santa can count as a full-contact bloodsport. Especially when you get kids involved.

     I don't remember when we first tempted fate-and crying children-but I do remember several times having to avert meltdowns when a favored gift was snatched. Hence the year when I had to heroically steal back the RC-Cola-and-Moonpie gift set and deliver it to Sarah to keep her from imploding when it was taken from her sugar-craving grasp. 

     But the loss of a treasure like X-ray-Specs or Hot-Cocoa-and-Mug pales in comparison to the trauma caused by the opposite disaster.

    Yes, I mean Getting Stuck With the Gift that Sucks.

     One year Andrew got stuck with a nondescript Christmas decoration. A resin plaque consisting of Santa with  a reindeer which strongly resembled a moose, all set over the word NOEL. Not fetchingly hideous, or laughably distressing, just sort of blah, probably bought out of desperation to get enough gag gifts and get out of the store. It would have been better if it was noteworthy by ugliness, because if it was stupid enough to draw attention, it would have been stolen.

     Trust me, I know my family-if it had  drawn attention by bad taste, it would have been stolen over and over until retired.

     As it was, it was simply there. Only awful in its boringness. Forgettable. Stunningly mediocre.

     Needless to say, no one would steal it from him, so we ended up taking it home more out of sheer bloody-mindedness than anything else. Despite his best offers to show it off or to draw attention to it, he could not make it look bad enough to elicit any interest. And needless to say, he was gloomy and upset by the whole drama. What is worse for a kid than to be ignored and overlooked? 

     So I took that stupid plaque and stuck it on the front door, maybe trying to show him that it was not as bad as all that. Or maybe just because we had an extra bare hook already screwed into the wall out front, and what the hell, might as well fill 'em all up. I don't think he was mollified a bit, I think he thought I was trying to fool him into thinking his crappy little plaque was some wonderful treasure, and he has always been too smart to fall for those feel-good Andy Griffith tricks.

     But I left that Noel plaque up there all Christmas season. At New Year's, the traditional time when we strip the house of all the Christmas decorations and pack them away in the garage until next December, we put it in the box with everything else. 

     Next year-yep, it went up again. 

     And every year since then. I just put it up again today, it is out front banging against the front door with every breeze. Also out there is a more traditional and "serious" decoration, a beautiful evergreen wreath. Well-balanced, the two look to me.

     With years binding us together, the Noel plaque and me, it has lost its ugly boringness. Now it looks like an old friend, a reminder of past Christmases with the kids running around, a house full of chattering  family, cakes and pies and Irish coffee and dogs underfoot and gift wrap everywhere after the carnage of Christmas morning. 

     The original story has faded, it is no longer a testament to trying to make a kid feel better or trying to be a supportive parent, it is just a part of our holiday. Along with our perpetually leaning tree, the short-circuiting angel (Sparky, of course), and the handmade scrawled paper plate ornaments, it exists near the heart of the Barber Christmas Experience.

    Or something like that. Maybe this is another Christmas reconciliation story....after all, those are some of the most compelling stories I know...

Just part of the background?

     When I moved to Houston, I saw them everywhere.At every stoplight on the frontage roads that run along the hundreds of miles of interstates here. At major intersections. At mall and shopping center parking lots.
      Dirty hand-lettered cardboard placards.

      HOMELESS VETERAN
      NOT ON DRUGS
      CAN'T FIND WORK
      PLEASE HELP

      Legless men slouched in wheelchairs. Women crouched on the concrete sidewalks. Grubby. Grimy. Hopeless.

     CAR BROKE DOWN
     HAVE KIDS TO FEED
     PLEASE HELP
     GOD BLESS YOU

     Sometimes you see family groups, couples with babies and kids out baking in the pitiless Texas sunshine. Even a scroungy dog once or twice. When the light turns red and the four lanes of traffic stop, they look at the drivers, trying to make eye contact, come over with an open hand or a tin soup can held out. I don't know how they decide which cars are the best bet, who to concentrate on, but I have learned the rules for drivers:
    Keep your eyes ahead of you, keep your windows up, don't make eye contact, don't acknowledge what is going on. Wear dark sunglasses to be safe, to make sure you don't have to tell a scraggly beggar "no" straight to his or her face. Better to look busy, study your radio dial like you're trying to tune in a hard-to-find -station.

     After a while, I stop noticing them. Houston is a large city, over 6 million, so it has a huge population of hungry and homeless and destitute, the beggars and the desperately poor. Being confronted with beggars every day, at every redlight, causes "sympathy exhaustion".
   
     How can you give to every hand that is opened to you?
     How can you make a distinction between those who really are in need and those who are working a system?
     How can you give to only those who "deserve" charity?
     How can I be so arrogant to think it is my decision as to who deserves charity and who doesn't?

     There are some "professional" beggars, I know. I've seen them coming in for a day's work, "clocking in" to work the system. Noticing that I often see the same people at the same intersections, that there seems to be a huge group of constant beggars, is a way to tell myself I'm not being uncharitable and hard-hearted to all those grimy ragged people. If I tell myself that some of them are gaming the system, parking their cars out of sight and then gimping pitifully all the way to today's "jobsite", that makes it easier to deny what I see.
    The poor are always with us, past, present, and future. There have always been those who by necessity or by choice or by social class are beggars. Why am I so inclined to callously dismiss as undeserving someone who begs everyday, who makes his or her way in the world by the support of others, and instead favor another who is in a temporary tight spot and just needs minor assistance?
    When I sit and really consider it in the light of faith, I have a hard time feeling good about making judgements and decisions about other people. Salvation by God's grace is offered freely to all who ask for it, regardless of merit, and we are all unworthy of it through our own actions . Since I myself have fallen upon God's heavenly mercy, how can I even consider deciding that I can withhold my own earthly mercy from one who asks for it because he or she just doesn't "deserve" it?
     Can I? How can I turn my eye, roll up my window, keep on going with no response of love at all? How can I take the love with which I have been redeemed and blessed, just keep it all selfishly inside me rather than loosing a mighty torrent of hope and love and charity to touch the lives of everyone I know, all whom I meet?  If I am supposed to be living a transformed life, why can't I even give a dollar or two when asked?

   Of all that is said about charity and generosity and transformation in the Bible, a lot is subject to interpretation. Parables, Psalms, Pauline Epistles, all are prone to be seen in one light or another. But you know who is plainspoken and as clear as day? Jesus.
    Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. (Matthew 5:42). This comes from the Beatitudes, and says nothing about giving only to those who deserve help. A couple of verses later, as a matter of fact, after the uncomfortable command to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Jesus says the reason is  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.( Matthew 5:45-46).
     So just as God makes his sun to rise and his rain to fall on everyone regardless of merit, so are we commanded to give freely to those who beg from us, and love even our enemies.
      In other words, on earth as it is in Heaven.

      On Earth as it is in Heaven. Has a ring about it, doesn't it? Hmmmm, where have I heard that before?

     So every time I pass by one of these beggars with outstretched hands and pleading eyes, I have to treat him or her as another of God's blessings to me, a stark, humbling, and uncomfortable accusation that I am not practicing the radical, uncompromising love and obedience that Christ demands. Every instance is an opportunity for me to repent of my selfishness and willfulness, to break my prideful heart of stone in exchange for a heart of flesh as promised in Ezekiel.
     So I pray that I continue to feel ripped apart when I ignore these whom Christ termed "the least of these brothers and sisters of mine". As long as I feel this raw nerve inside, it means I am still trying and still growing.

   "They also will answer ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’   (Matthew 25 44-45)

Making my mind up

     In this state of suspended animation the last couple of years in Texas, I've been in a holding pattern. Waiting for inspiration to hit me. Looking for answers.

    It made a lot of sense for me to put on the stay-at-home-dad hat when we moved out here. Stacey often works long hours, based around what projects must go out immediately to meet clients' expectations, and with us knowing nobody out here when we moved from Alabama, someone needed to hold down the fort at home. Not just cooking and cleaning, although that is critically important. How about arranging doctor and dentist appointments? Dogs to the vet? Paying bills? Auto maintenance? Planning trips? Travelling back and forth to bring Marley out here in the summer? How about going to North Carolina for a month last summer to hang out with my father-in-law in the hospital so his wife could return to work?

     It's been a busy time.

     But I found there is only so much cooking and cleaning and organizing I can do before I start holding conversations with the dogs.
     And answering myself in what I imagine to be dog voices.
     Yep, that bad.

     So last fall I answered the call for bus drivers, to enable all the routes to have drivers, to make sure all the kids get a ride to school. It has been an interesting year, indeed, of memorizing 150 kids' names and faces and enough information to tell them apart, of reading route maps in the pitch-black 5:45 morning as I rumble from stop to stop, of sweating and burning in 100-degree weather in an un-airconditioned metal tube. Learning to glance hurriedly in the mirror to make sure no one is standing, throwing trash, or bullying someone else, all this while navigating through traffic that darts in front of a bus with little respect for the inertia of a 14-ton vehicle. I can tell you, air brakes can stop a bus quickly.
     What a year! I have been astounded, amused, frustrated, and mystified daily. Charmed, moved, and touched by my students' different perspectives on the world we both see through the same front windows.

      Some people see the hand of God in everything, leading and guiding us to proper decisions and commitments once we learn to open up to inspiration. Maybe I have felt the hand of God guiding me the last year.
     Maybe sometimes I've felt it pushing me. A shove, even.

     I've finally listened, opened my heart to where I am heading. Driving a bus was the final piece of the puzzle, to assure me that I do have a rapport with schoolkids, that I can listen and respond and lead and discipline and relate to them every day.

     So I am returning to school next semester, my goal to become a teacher. Looking back, it seems my most satisfying jobs all contained elements of teaching and coaching and training and directing people. Of learning to find the knack of motivating people different from myself. I like to tell myself it has all been leading me to this.

     At any rate, in this month of giving thanks, I am very thankful for all the kids who ride my bus. Very thankful for the little triumphs. Very thankful for the failures which pushed me to reset my preconceptions and look at things a different way. Most thankful for the times I've been cheered or gobsmacked or had my heart and thoughts wrenched by a sudden epiphany.

      Thanks, kids. I appreciate all those miles with you so far, here's to many more the rest of the year.

 

Seeing clearly on a cloudy day

     He is in the eighth grade, and he lets his mom kiss him goodbye at the bus stop.

     Anyone who has even known a single 8th-grader understands how peculiar that is. Most 8th-graders do anything to put physical distance between themselves and parents. Emotional distance, even. Demanding to be dropped off at the mall out of sight of anyone who might-gasp!-see their dependence on Mom or Dad for a ride. The horror. The horror.
     Any public display of affection is anathema. May cause trauma. Irreparable damage.
     I've watched him for a week, wondering why he lets Mom hug him, why he wraps his arms around her rather than stiffening up in the resistance that kids learn is a passive-aggressive defense against parental affection, lets her smooch him in plain sight of all his peers. Why no one teases him about it. That, too, if you know any 8th-graders at all, is even more peculiar. He doesn't seem to be a fragile kid, or particularly needy, he sits in the back of the bus and cuts up with his friends about as much as normal.

     Today I got my answer.

     Every day since the start of the year, his mom has worn a big floppy hat and big movie-star sunglasses to keep out the sun. Today, with an overcast sky, she had traded in the big hat  for a pink do-rag with a pattern of tiny pink ribbons.
    Tiny. Pink. Ribbons.
    Oh.
 

     The realization was like being stabbed in the heart. I pulled my hat brim lower and fished my sunglasses out of my bag not to keep sunshine out of my eyes, but to hide the big hot tears which immediately flooded my eyes. Wouldn't do to let a bunch of tough junior high kids see me red-eyed and teary.

     It's hard enough on people my age to deal with such words, "cancer" and "death", to contend with a mother's or father's dying. But in 8th grade? What is that, thirteen? What do you even say to someone going through that?

     I know nothing about her prognosis or their lives together other than what I see every day. But I am astounded at their love which has punched through that wall of reserve in such a visible and profound way. And at the respect shown him by the rest of the kids, who never tease him for being a "momma's boy".

    It is terrible, just awful, that this affirmation has such a high price. But how many times have we heard someone bemoan missed opportunities to appreciate family or friends far in the past, how many of us have wished for just one more day to spend with mom or dad or husband or wife?

    They, mother and son, don't seem to be missing opportunities.

     One of God's promises is to transform us, to change our hearts "of stone": And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26).  

       What does having a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone mean? Here's the picture I get in my mind's eye when I think of "heart of flesh" and close my eyes:

     He is in the eighth grade, and he lets his mom kiss him goodbye at the bus stop.
      
   

 

Who is calling for you?

      The kindergartners, this time of year, wander around dazed, not knowing where they are going or what they are doing, just following directions with uncomprehending blank stares. As a bus driver, I have my hands full with making sure they get off at the right stop, released to parents or siblings or whoever is responsible for safely getting the rest of the way home.

     School just started this week, and it has been a steep learning curve. For them. For me.  Explaining safety rules, street crossing rules, and keep-your-hands-to-yourself rules; just setting the framework for understanding and following directions is what makes primary school teachers twitchy this time of year. Bus drivers get a wee bit nervous, too, I can attest.

    This time of year, the kindergartners wear name/address badges so we can make sure they get off at the right place if they forget their stops. Surprisingly, most of them got off at the proper stop without my help. Most of them, that is. Not all.

     At my second stop, after I unloaded, a father stepped up to the door and announced he was looking for Anna. "Anna", he called out "time to get off the bus."
     I looked back at her, sitting stonily in the second seat staring straight ahead. "Anna, it's time to get off" I repeated to her, but she just looked at me blankly.
    "I heard someone call me, but I don't know who it was" she finally said in a small voice, at which he called out "It's your dad, Anna!"
   Her lip trembled as if about to cry, and she pleaded with me "I don't remember what my Daddy sounds like."

    "I don't remember what my Daddy sounds like." Have you heard anything else that heartbreaking?

   Well, the story has a happy ending, of course-upon my reassurances that it was, indeed, her father at the door of the bus, she launched herself down the center aisle, down the steps in a bound, and into his arms, but the depth of apprehension and tumult in her confusion stayed with me the rest of the day. How overwhelmed by a long stressful day would a child have to be to mistake the voice of her father, to wonder if it is really him calling her name?

     Upon the same principle, how many times in life have all of us mistaken a trusted and loving and concerned voice, have questioned motives and purposes and methods of those who love us simply because we are overwhelmed and dazed? How many times have mothers and fathers and spouses and lovers and friends called and assisted and advised and  offered their love to us, and we have been frozen in a moment in time and unable to respond? Glued to the sticky seat of a 97-degree bus baking in the Texas heat?
    I think that just like the little 5-year-olds I have been shepherding onto and off of my bus, we are so apprehensive about the chaos of the moments we live in that sometimes we can't even recognize a simple calm voice when it calls our names. Whether this voice is parents or friends or God calling out to me that it is time to take the next step, to get off of the bus and start the next phase of my journey, I hope I can open my ears and my heart to the call rather than staring stonily ahead, rigid in fear and self-conscious embarrassment.

     One of my favorite "camp songs" from my St. Francis days, Here I Am Lord,  is about the call to mission of Isaiah, who was able to listen to his Father calling him to service of his people:

     "Here I am, Lord
      Is it I, Lord?
      I have heard You calling in the night
      I will go, Lord
      if You lead me
     I will hold Your people in my heart."

     Oh, that I may be able to hear my Father's voice calling me and not be fearful or distrustful...

Smells like charcoal

     This past Sunday I spent a couple of hours helping cook for our church's Rally Day, which is the end-of-summer-back-to-school kickoff whose main purpose seems to be persuading new members who don't know any better into serving in various groups and committees. Older members know to steer clear of the seductively pretty tables adorned with pictures and slogans and glossy photos just like clever insects stay away from Venus Fly Traps...
     Or maybe not. I have served on my own share of committees and in groups. Willingly, actually. Gladly, even. But it makes a catchy metaphor.
     The meal was simple, burgers and dogs and beans and such spread on a few tables, community picnic food.
     It reminded me of how much of our community life is spent around the table sharing a meal.

     My first few years at St. Francis, the first church to really become a family to me, were spent on the outside looking in. I attended more or less regularly, but I knew no one deeply or even socially, so I stuck mostly to myself and didn't really take part in the deeper church community. That all begin to change one summer at Parish Retreat, which is a midsummer vacation weekend at Camp McDowell in Nauvoo, Alabama.
    We attended that year out of duty and hope, determined to "get to know" some of the folks we saw in church each week, but it wasn't until the second day, Saturday afternoon, that someone's stunning miscalculation of the amount of charcoal needed in a grill created a crisis which put me in the thick of things.
     Wes, one of the he-men of St. Francis, did a quick guesstimate and decided to cram about a hundred pounds (really) of charcoal into a standard 55-gallon drum grill, and lit it off to a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” from assembled children. As might be expected, 15 minutes later, the coals had reduced to a blazing incandescent inferno that heated the grill grates to a color that went straight past red and verged on the bluish-white normally found only in the core of a star. Some brave soul tossed from about five feet away a couple of steaks onto the grates, which promptly burst into flames as the grates charred into them with a horrid acrid smell of burnt meat. Not able to let food go to waste (Egad!), I waded through the waves of heat up to the grill to rescue those steaks. This action everyone obviously decided must be the cue to start handing me food to load up. No one else dared approach the grill, so they stood a safe distance away and handed me what they wanted put on. Steaks, burgers, chicken, chops, with the flames licking all around and my eyebrows smoldering.

      You know, when your eyebrows are smoking, at least it keeps the sweat from running into your eyes. Just a handy tip.

     I suppose it only took about 15 minutes at around 900 degrees to cook enough food for the entire parish, but it felt like a whole lot longer. No one else was stupid enough to get closer than two feet away, so I stood there, a set of tongs in each hand, flipping and turning furiously, hunting for the cool spot of the grill more desperately than the conquistadors hunted for El Dorado, with my smoldering eyebrows and charred fingertips, feeling like some demented symphonic conductor. I was far from the BEST cook ever to touch that grill, but I definitely was the FASTEST cook EVER that night.
    That cemented my place in St. Francis. For months people would come up to me and remark upon the facts that 1) I showed remarkable courage in standing so close to a raging blaze 2) although they had wanted their steaks medium rare, the well done shoe leather I finally managed to chisel off the grates for them was actually quite tasty and 3) my eyebrows sure grew back nicely. Food always brings people close together, as does risk of bodily danger....

    From that beginning I started to join groups, volunteer, participate. Sure, it was several months before my fingertips had prints on them again, but that was a cheap price to pay for looking up from the flames licking someone's breaded chicken patties into a fiery bitter char, to the crowd that formed three feet away behind me to see if I would, indeed, spontaneously combust, and realize I had found my HOME.

     This Sunday nothing caught on fire and no one got singed. Well, maybe a little blister from touching a hot grill. But the same smiles and spirit of community were present. It is not coincidental that the primary ritual of Eucharist or Lord's Supper or Mass or Holy Communion or whatever you call it is based around breaking bread and sharing the cup together. Food is nurture and comfort and inspiration and family all in the same bite. When we eat together we lay down our weapons both physical and emotional, look each other in the faces, and share experiences.

    So I'll see you at the next picnic or meal or dinner party or banquet. I'll probably be the one with burns on my hands and singed brows.


 

The best race you can run

     Sometimes the best race you can run is one you can't quite win.

     We just got home from a beach vacation, a long weekend of swimming and sand and sleeping late, of eating seafood every night and shaking sand out of beach towels, clothes, and hair. Saturday afternoon, after a short swim, I lazed in a chair by ocean's edge to enjoy the mild setting sun and the crash of wave on shore and the tang of the salt air.
    The clientele at this condo was predominantly families, and most of the people on the beach were parents with small kids. About a hundred yards away was a family playing by water's edge. Father, mother, daughter, doing the usual things with little plastic pails and shovels and sand.
    After she got tired of digging in the sand, the daughter decided to challenge Dad to a race. Dad had the look of a long-distance runner, lean and long-legged and skinny, with the scruffy beard and various tattoos of a hipster. I guess even hipsters have kids sometimes. The daughter was about eight or nine and still had the pudgy torso and short legs of childhood. Mom counted down (on your mark....get set...go!!) with admirable enthusiasm, and off they dashed, just a short way down the beach.
     They raced in the opposite direction, away from my vantage point rather than towards it, so I didn't see their faces as they ran. All I saw were the smooth strides of the father and the awkward, churning gait of the little girl as they paced each other.
     You know how the race came out. Somehow she pulled ahead of her daddy at the very end, won the race even though it looked as if every arm-pumping stride she took was off-balance. Somehow, by a mysterious process known to all parents,  she overtook his economical graceful gait with a burst of energy and won with the slimmest of margins.
     From my seat, I could only see their backs.
 
     Until they turned around to run back to mom. The little girl was laughing and squealing in triumph, her face lit up with the thrill of the race and her victory. Such a grin (ear-to-ear!!) I think we only see on the faces of the very young....or the very innocent.
     But Dad looked EVEN MORE like he had just won the race.
     And I really think he did. And I wonder if when he was a little boy, just starting to find out the strength in his own legs, he challenged his father to a footrace. If in the time-honored tradition, he also somehow outran his father. If in his own unearned but oh-so-deserved win he too had been encouraged to run and run and run, to set his mark high and strive for the mountaintops.
    Nothing succeeds like success or just a taste of victory, a few steps gained on an understanding parent who knows that unexpected victory may strengthen and embolden the young or the weak to greater achievement and fulfillment.

   Sometimes the best race you can run is one you can't quite win.

2013 or 1974

     In our month with Marley this summer, I stayed on the go almost every day. In that time, we went to the beach in Galveston, to the Museum of Natural Science downtown, to the Blue Bell creamery an hour away, to the grocery store and the swimming pool and the neighborhood park and the mall and numerous other daily trips and errands. We played Wii games and Go Fish and Harry Potter Uno and colored and cut-out and  pasted and glued. Stacey even taught her some wool-spinning basics and helped her make a crocheted potholder. 

     We were busy. Chasing around after a 6 year old keeps you on your toes. How ever would we have coped if there were MORE THAN ONE of her? Don't know how we would have found enough hours in the day to do everything that needed to be done. Much less cook and clean and pay bills and keep the house together. Whew.

    In 1974, the year I turned 7, my parents got divorced. My brothers and I went to live with our grandparents from sometime in spring until December, when Mom got back on her feet financially and we moved back in with her. I was 6,  Adam was 2, and Shawn was less than a year old. 

   My grandparents were around 60. Taking care of three young boys, two of them still in diapers.

    Having Marley with us is always exhilarating, fulfilling, enlightening-and exhausting. After a month with her, spending my days at the pool or the park and my nights picking up toys and clothes and discussing the plotlines of Disney channel TV shows, I marvel at the devotion and energy and love my grandparents lived by enthusiastically taking us to raise 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

     How many days this month was I exhausted at the end of the day? And I only had one of her to keep up with. My grandmother had three of us, and she was 15 years older than I am now when we came to stay. And I dealt only with a single month instead of an indefinite interim that stretched all through a long drowsy summer and almost until the next year. 

      How did she do that? How did she keep that smile on her face that I remember so well?

      Through my life I have been conscious of several breathtaking instances of grace, of God's love in action here and working in my life. Of gifts and blessings and love being showered upon me through certainly no merit of mine but simply through those mysterious bonds which surround and strengthen me.

      I am so grateful for the grace shown in the love and devotion of my grandparents who took us in as if we were giving them a wonderful gift by our presence with them, who made every day of that year feel like my birthday, who never let on that their feet hurt or their backs were tired from airplane spins. I am overwhelmed and aching with the memories of how much I was loved and so thankful that I can be a part of the eternal chain of passing on such grace and love to my own grandchild. 

     Oh, Marley, that you may feel about my home the way I felt about my grandparents' home.......

    

What kind of cookies do you bake?

      Sometimes they just don't listen. Who? Everyone. In this particular case, it was my granddaughter Marley. Yesterday. With consequences. Disastrous consequences.
      Ever since she got here last month, we had been planning to make chocolate chip cookies together. Meaning she had been reminding me that  I had promised at every opportunity, and I had been evading and dodging and ducking and weaving, hoping she would forget or give up. No such luck. So yesterday I set the butter out to thaw and set up the Kitchen Aid mixer. Of course, being six, she wanted to do the entire thing by herself. Because she is not a baby. Because she knows how. Because she won't make a mess.
    So she measured and stirred and poured, even cracked eggs with minimum of broken shell and mess. Kinda sorta listened halfheartedly to my instructions and cautions. Because of excitement. Because she has watched the cooking channel. Because she is going to be in first grade next year, by golly, and has little else to learn about the world as an empowered 6-year-old.

     You know where this is going.

     Yep, when time came to add the dry ingredients-a bowl of flour and soda and salt-to the wet slurry in the mixer, I told her to lock the mixer stand down with the toggle on the right, hold her right hand firmly on the top, and turn the switch on the left to the first, lowest, gentlest setting.
     I think she heard all this step-by-step coaching, but I'm not sure she heard it, because here's what happened: She tilted the contents in, lowered the beater without locking it, and immediately flipped the left switch selector all the way up to the highest setting. Yep, #10. A mushroom cloud of flour puffed from the bowl and ascended to the ceiling, coating her from her head to her knees in the process. Fallout settled in every crack of the stove, the toaster, the coffeemaker. Meanwhile, the mix arm, unlocked, kicked up at the strain of the ingredients in the bowl and slung them in a spew out of the sides of the bowl. Raw flour and half-mixed dough spurted in a five-foot radius of the bowl.

      Half an hour of cleaning later, we did get cookies in the oven. Half an hour of wiping. Cleaning flour off of her and her step stool.  Vacuuming. Sweeping. Mopping. Remeasuring and fixing. Cleaning the insides of the toaster, getting spurts of flour out of the gasket seal on the fridge-don't ask me how it made it that far, but it did.
      I didn't have to say a lot to her about what she did. She was pretty upset, and pegged her error pretty quickly as not listening to instructions and paying attention and Doing As She Was Told. Lucky she came up with all that on her own, saved me the time.
     You know, with all that, the cookies were pretty good. It's hard to mess up chocolate chip cookies.

      I'm sure I have made horrible errors of my own due to not listening. To being in a hurry. To excitement. To thinking I know it all already.

      I wish that more of my mistakes were as easy to fix as a bowl of chocolate chip cookies.

      Part of one of my favorite prayers from the Book of Common Prayer goes:

                We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
            that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

   (So maybe a Kitchen Aid disaster in a kitchen is all part of a bigger purpose, too.) 

Dad Kit

     Today I had to dig my Dad Kit out again.

     Years ago, when the kids were in their first few grades of school, every year the school would sponsor a Christmas shop for them. Each year they would take their quarters and dollars to school in December and buy trinkets and tchotchkes and gewgaws for me and Stacey. Andrew was the canniest with his money, and would often pass by the shopping and instead present us with home drawn pictures on paper plates, but the girls almost always visited the Santa Store at their schools.

    So I have amassed a collection of five or six Dad Tool Kits. You know the type, I guess. Three or four miniature screwdrivers and maybe a  punch or a blunt knife blade in a plastic case. Not really big enough to exert any force on a real screw. Maybe a one-AAA flashlight, long since corroded out and died. Not really enough of anything as a gift, just to let you know the kids are thinking of you at Christmas even if they only have a dollar to spend.

    But, you know, those kits are some of the handiest tools I have. Today Marley brought me an old toy of Sarah's to replace the batteries in it. The battery compartment was accessed by removing a couple of screws that look more like pins and make eyeglass screws look like carriage bolts. Take them out-why, I couldn't even see them!

    So out came the Dad Kit, and the screws were extracted in quick time. There's even a tiny little pair of pliers in there, useless for anything else, to drop the screws back in and line them up when you are ready to reassemble. And most precious of all, even a magnifying glass to let you see what you are doing. So all the hundreds of dollars of drills and hammers and levels and flanges and whatchamacallits and thingamabobs, cordless and super-torqued and all, that I own, failed to do the job these little bits and ends of tiny screwdrivers did.

    So once again the Dad Kit has saved the day, and made me think again of a time when sometimes a dollar your kid spends on you at Christmastime is more precious than all the expensive things you have. Once again, thanks to my kids for the priceless things they have given to me, free of charge and with no strings attached.



   

Hardly a moment's peace

     She never shuts up. Well, make that rarely shuts up. At least when she is awake.

     She is Marley, my granddaughter. 6 years old and a Chatterbox Princess. 

     We don't see Marley as much as we would like. When we still lived in Alabama, we could drive a couple of hours each way for a visit as often as we wanted. Or take her home for a weekend. Then we moved to Texas, a day's drive away.

     To make up for the distance between us, we have gone and picked her up for a month's visit, just as we did last summer. Stacey and her dad work long hours, and Sarah and Andrew are busy with other pursuits, so Marley and I have been spending our days together. Swimming. Gym. Grocery store. Craft store. Playing Wii. Feeding the birds and cleaning the birdbath.

     In the year since her last visit, she has become even more articulate, more persuasive, more apt to argue her point as to why she must have glitter markers or needs goggles and a snorkel for the pool. Just on the verge of first grade, she is well on her way to a brilliant career at arguing cases in a court of law.

   And she is the most outgoing child I have ever met. Walks up to every stranger she meets to introduce herself. At the park, at the pool, at the gym playroom: "Hi, my name is Marley, what is your name?" Today at the pool she swam around in her swim ring like a shark looking for new victims. Scanning the entry gate. Anytime a new kid walked in, she went straight for the sales pitch, "Hi, the pool is great, I'm Marley, are you coming in to swim?"

    I sure don't know where that brashness comes from. Both her mom and her dad are quiet and rather reserved. The rest of us? Stacey and Sarah are both fairly introverted and cautious. The past few years Andrew has become gregarious and social, but he was nowhere that brash at that age. As a matter of fact, I don't know any adults who work a room as well as she does. That includes me.

    So I wonder at what point her natural ultra-extroversion will give way to more caution and circumspection. Reality and experience have a way of dampening natural exuberance, and since I foresee she will swing more toward the middle eventually, I am troubled to think of a tempering of that powerful charm. And  I dread the heartbreak that will cause it. Because I know that's what happens when you put your smile and your heart out there for everyone to see. Sooner or later you get trampled a couple of times. Or a hundred.

     So I bask in that brilliant sunshine she puts out, even if it will only last in this form a few more years.

    Even if right now she hardly every shuts up.

    Especially because of that.
     

    

Getting over myself

     For the past couple of months, my father-in-law has been staying with us while he works a job out here in Houston. The job market back in North Carolina, where he lives, is not as robust as that here for the engineering specialty he does, so we are putting him up while he works so that he won't have to stay in a hotel the entire time and worry about cooking, laundry, and all the other housekeeping tasks you can't escape.
     Skip has a three-word prescription for any type of inflammatory situation. Whether concerned that the world is targeting you for abuse, upset that someone else gets better treatment than you for the same effort, or that things are just not going your way:
 
     "Get over yourself."

      We all know types that obsess (and compulse, for that matter) over meticulous details and slights, sucking up all the positive energy in the room like black holes of emotion.

     " Boy, that guy" he will say "really needs to get over himself."

     We all are subject to chuckleheads who stubbornly apply the letter of the law rather than its spirit, who meander into legalisms and hijack productivity with foolishness.

    "Someone needs to tell them to get over themselves."

    In fact, his universal proscription has me chuckling with anticipatory glee any time he starts a tale from work or from his colorful past, because I just know where it is going. Someone or other it seems, needs to get over himself.

    So I started thinking the other day that what seems on first consideration to be nothing more than a cynical crack is actually incredibly good advice.
    For what besides your very own self gets in your own way almost every day? Often I have heard the adage that my life would be a lot simpler if I were not held back by the actions of the confounded idiot I face in the mirror when I shave every morning. What anger, or fear, or pessimism ruins otherwise grand days and great plans? If I could come to terms with Jeff and just let go of my knee-jerk reactions, I could accomplish much more each day.
    And there are other benefits, too:
     Several years ago, I took a course on keeping harmful speech out of my life. It was taught by a retired preacher who helped a group of us examine the ways that spiteful and judgemental speech can drive wedges between people in both egregious and minor ways. One of the most important points that I keep with me from that course is this

       People may do things to get on your nerves-but remember, they are still YOUR nerves.

      Even when provoked, you have to own your response. There are TONS of unreasonable people out there in the world who do horrible wrongs deliberately on a daily basis. There is no way to stop some of the most outrageous behavior, and power only in the way I respond to provocation. With viciousness. Or anger. Or coldness. Or indifference. Or, just maybe, with understanding. With compassion.

     And it seems to me that living my life in gratitude also means returning not anger for anger but returning compassion and understanding for hurts and slights. Daily it is a monumental task NOT to flip off the jackhole who cut me off in traffic, or to get my nose out of joint when someone close to me inflicts some minor hurt. Daily it is hard to hold my tongue when I want to let loose and tell someone "Hey, you know what you need? You need to just get over yourself!"

     I guess it starts with my getting over myself.

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. Ephesians 4:29



 

 

Take it where you can get it

     Another Father's Day has come and gone, and my ambivalence to the holiday has continued. Oh, I don't mean in regard to my own kids, or to my wife. Father's Day is always an occasion where I feel honored and singled out-my family really let me know how appreciated I am.

     I mean my own father.

    Yeah, him.

    When my parents divorced, I was six. I had been my father's pint-sized hunting companion and fishing buddy. We had spent a lot of time together outdoors and in the woods, and I was on my way to becoming as much of a shooter, a hunter, and an outdoorsman as he was.

    Something happened along the way-when they divorced, he dropped totally out of my life-and that of my brothers. Adam was about two, and Shawn was a baby, only about nine months or so. I didn't see him between the ages of six and eighteen, even though he lived less than five miles away, in the same town. I don't really know how that is even possible, to stay away from your kids for that long, and how to keep from running into us when we lived so close together.

    The intervening years brought us back in touch-but barely. He seems to be a nice enough guy, but hard to get to know. Keeps to himself. Plays things close to his chest. Tells stories and tall tales and jokes, but never lets any real information out about who he is. A nice enough guy, but a total mystery. I've been to his house about three times in the past ten years, and always find myself squirming uncomfortably, aching to get the hell out of there, after about, oh, two minutes.
      A lot of family relationships are built on shared memories, stories, and experience. What if you have none? What is left?
    I call him, every now and then. I can't remember him ever calling me. Not even returning a call to me if I left a message on his machine. I used to send a card every now and then, holidays or birthday or Father's Day even, but it never seemed to make a difference, he never seemed to show any kind of interest or even to notice, and after awhile it just became a bother. All the contacts with him have been initiated by me, and after a while of a one-sided relationship, you get weary of carrying the weight and the worry and the bother. All. By. Yourself.

     I've been thinking lately about what will happen as he gets older, if he has made provision for what is euphemistically called the declining years. He has no children other than me and my brothers, and they have no contact at all with him. As a matter of fact, both of them unloaded the Barber name, which is a pretty good indication of how far they feel from him. My middle brother, Adam, is a Burdette after my stepfather's family, and Shawn, when he married, changed his last name back to my mother's maiden name of Harrington.
     My current hope-actually more of a desperate prayer- is that either my father's current wife or his sister outlive him and can fill all those obligations. Power of attorney. Guardian. Choice of nursing home. Next of kin. Executor of will. Blah blah blah.
 
    That's a hell of a relationship, hoping against hope that I won't be dragged into his world when he has shown so conclusively that he has never had an interest in bringing me into any part of it.

    What do you do when you grow up without a father present?

    You get your fathering where you can.

     I was blessed with more than a few really inspiring male role models. My stepfather's dad, Joe Burdette, who taught me that you can live in love with God and all the world and that there is nothing manlier than service to your family. Gene Hunter, who showed me that living in community with others and calm serenity can be achieved by doing what you say you're going to do at all times.  Bill Yon, who drew me deeper into the St. Francis church family and taught me that faith comes in all sorts of disguises. Uncles, teachers, managers, I've taken bits and pieces of advice where I have found it, and rolled it into my own outlook on life.
     The old adage is that where a door shuts, a window is opened, and I hope I have been aware enough to realize the occasions when God has sent someone across my path to teach me, to instruct me, to lead me to a new level.

    I have no idea where my mostly absent relationship with my father will turn in the future, but I try to keep myself open to changes. Who knows what will come my way later on? I strive to not close off any avenues, to be open and receptive to whatever transpires.
 
    After all, I've had EXCELLENT fathers to teach me to lead with my head but listen to God's voice in my heart.
 
    Happy Father's Day to all of you!

Sisters and brothers

     Her name was Apriya, and she sat on the front seat of the bus, with the rest of the kindergartners. A tiny waif-like Audrey Hepburn-ish wisp of a girl, delicate and wide-eyed and animated. And chatty. Very precise in speech and diction and hand movements to illustrate her story.
 
    And did I mention chatty?

    The whole trip she kept me entertained with stories, of what she did in school that day, of vacations and pets.

    But mostly about her sister. Her younger sister.

    The year after next, her sister is to start kindergarten. Apriya by then will be a second grader, and assigned a seat somewhere in the middle of the bus, following the pecking order set since time immemorial. Little kids in the front where the driver can watch them, big kids in the back, the rest dispersed somewhere in the middle. By the time her sister arrives, Apriya will have been displaced from the front in favor of younger riders.
     The problem with this? Apriya's sister is going to need her right there with her. About this she was persistently insistent.
     "She is very scared of new things, I just KNOW she will cry the first day" she stressed, her face a mixture of persuasion and concern. "She will only be OK if I am there to tell her where to get off the bus, and what is going on all the time, and I will have to hold her hand if she gets scared."

     I have two brothers, one 4 1/2 years younger and the other 6 years younger. I never attended the same school with them, never had the opportunity to shepherd them through the process of adjusting to school. It's different with boys, also. Most of our interactions when we were young involved playing outside in the woods or inside with Star Wars toys. Or launching balls, sticks, rocks, or other missiles at each other in countless hard-fought battles. Lots of battles.

     I see it is different with sisters. Stacey and her sister Amy, who is two years younger, have always kept in closer contact than I with my brothers. Rare is it when a day passes when they are not in contact. Sure, they fight and squabble just like brothers do, but they also call to ask for advice. To offer support. To take care of each other.
     If I close my eyes and imagine hard enough, I can see Stacey at 6 years old worried how Amy will adapt to riding a bus to school in two more years. Worried that she will cry the first day, that she needs help to get through, needs to have the process explained to her, and to be comforted. To have her hand held when scared.
     Sisters are like that.

 
     When we reached Apriya's bus stop, her mom and her sister were waiting for her at the corner. Of course, her sister was waiting fifty feet or so in advance of the stop, in order to race the bus to the corner, and so she came bounding up out of breath and beaming. Apriya pointed her out to me, although she looked and acted so similarly that it was obvious they belonged together, and together they walked home with their mom.
    Holding hands.

     I think Apriya and her sister will be just fine in a couple of years, regardless of where they sit on the bus. A love that powerful is not diminished by any distance.

     Not even 1200 miles could keep them apart. Just ask my wife and her sister. They know.

   

   

It's all in the mix tape

     In planning for my brother Shawn's upcoming 40th birthday this month, my sister-in-law Amy sent out emails and Facebook messages last month, asking for stories or memories or messages for or about him. For once, I've been at a loss for words.

     The old stories of things Shawn did as a kid have been rehashed over family get-togethers for the last 30 years, and most only serve to embarrass or anger him. What do you say to entertain, amuse, or enlighten other than the same old tired tales of cute mispronunciations or adolescent mischief which have been brought up time and again?

     There are 6 years separating us in age, so when I moved out of the house to go to college Shawn was only 12. I'm pretty sure he was a snot-nosed punk kid full of bravado, and I know I was an arrogant know-it-all full of myself. We always spent a lot of time playing together; before the advent of video games, we played outside more often than not, a frantic mismash of activity and hooliganism. Baseball. Football. Fighting.Frisbee. Tree-climbing.Fighting. Running through the woods. Making war on each other with rocks and sticks and anything at hand.

     I went away to school at first, 700 miles away. New challenges. New friends. New way of life, on my own and making my own decisions. I was BUSY my first quarter at college, in a whirlwind of momentum that seemed never to cease. Who could think of a brother back at home at a time like that?
     So when he wrote me a letter, it was a bolt out of the blue. I remember it was a simple letter, I wish I still had it. Real jokey, I could hear his voice as I read it. I had become pretty fanatical about the Who, and he asked me to record him a cassette tape and mail it home, since I had  taken all my albums and tapes to school. As I said, the letter was simple, maybe a couple of pages of what he had been doing, but it opened up an aching homesickness in me.
     I put on hold everything I was doing to make that cassette tape for him. I made the PERFECT mix tape, a balanced blend of popular and obscure, of hard-edged raw rock and sweeping magnificent artistic composition. I even put it on one of my expensive high-quality blank tapes, and put it in the mail. The. Very. Next. Day.

     Maybe the impact that your brothers make on you is not evident when you are there every day, going through the normal routines and drama and fights and reconciliations. Maybe the impact only comes when you get out of the forest and really look at the trees you have taken for granted. Maybe the impact of those thousands of casual interactions are only visible with enough time or distance between.

     Happy 40th Birthday, Shawn!

    
     
        


    

The worst vacation ever-when good is not good enough

     The worst vacation I ever subjected my wife and kids to was all my fault. No sense denying it now. Panama City in the summer, with sugar white sands and warm waves and sunrises and sunsets over the water. Seafood platters at Captain Anderson's and go-carts. What could ruin a great vacation like that?

     I tell you what can-and will-ruin any vacation. Superlatives ruin everything. Not just good or better but BEST must be the theme. Not just enjoy hanging out on the beach, but spending hours and hours burning in the sun because it has to be the best beach trip ever. Not just going and playing goofy golf or go-carts or Gulf World Marine Park, but going and doing goofy golf AND go-carts AND Gulf World Marine Park every waking hour not spent on the beach.
      Because it has to be the best beach trip ever.
      Playing video games at the arcade until two in the morning? Check.
      Three different goofy golf courses? Check.
      Going into every single souvenir shop on the strip looking for more sand dollars and T-shirts? Check.

     Somewhere along the line, between the sunburns and the bags of worthless crap, I forgot about the relaxation part of vacation. I know exactly where the low point of the whole trip was, the point that the 12-steppers would all be using as their rock bottom.
     It was the Gran Maze at Coconut Creek, as we left town. The goofy golf went well, despite grumblings over sunburns, and I decided it would be "fun" to do the huge maze there as a last hurrah of family togetherness before we started the five-hour drive home. So we paid good money to enter a giant labyrinth advertised as "about the size of a football field" and "a great place for children and adults."
     It's actually about the size of Yellowstone Park, approximately 3500 square miles. Watch out for herds of bison roaming the middle. And the volcanoes.
     
    By our second half-hour in the damn thing, it had totally lost its allure. Sun mercilessly beating on us and our sunburns, wrong turn after wrong turn resulting in frustration and temper. Kids crying, wife pissed at me for dragging her into it, and me bullheadedly keeping on determined to beat it and get out.
    I must have been suffering from sunstroke or something. That is the only way I can explain how, when Stacey chanced upon the emergency exit that would get us out on the street immediately, I told her SHE could give up and take the kids out (and wait for me in the car, of course) but I was going to finish the maze with or without them. I think Stacey was suffering from sunstroke as well, that is the only way I can figure she didn't take a swing at me. I think I've blocked out the memory of the dressing-down she gave me, though.
     I do remember the first couple of hours of the drive home were really quiet.

    My realization that too much vacation crammed into a vacation turns it from a vacation into a hell-cation was dearly bought. These days, I plan lots of down time into any trip, and I have learned the hard way not to cram too much to do into any holiday.
     Thanks, Gran Maze.
     Thanks a lot.

     Maybe chasing superlatives ruins a lot of things. You can't just go see a movie, it has to be the best one ever. A hamburger has to taste so good it makes your eyes roll back in your head. Kids have to have not just friends but a whole bunch of best friends. Why just buy a car to get you from one place to another when you could have the perfect car that completes you and reveals you as the person you always were destined to be.
     There's a lesson in there somewhere about being contented with what you have, and if I were the best author ever I am sure I could draw it out somehow. But since I'm content with not being the best at anything, I'll leave it to you to take your own meaning.

     Meanwhile, does anyone know how to get out of this maze? Left or right at the next turn?

Standing in the pouring rain

     Things have changed a lot since I was a kid. I suppose that is a universal truth that is verified by every generation in succession, but it is true nonetheless.

     I rode the bus until I graduated high school. No matter the weather or conditions, I and my brothers trudged every morning to the bus stop and waited. Pouring rain, freezing cold, mosquito-infested humid heat-you name it, we were there on the side of the road waiting on the cheesewagon.

     As a bus driver now, I find my students are overwhelmingly brought to the stop in all but the most benign circumstances. This morning, with an inconsequential drizzle, I pulled up at each successive stop to a rugby scrum of cars at each intersection, out of which kids would pour when I put on my loading lights.

     Even the high school students.

     Yes, even the high school students.

      Sheesh!

       Lest I sound like some grumpy curmudgeon, I strongly believe in taking care of your kids. In safety. In comfort. But I wonder at the way it seems the norm now to shelter kids from all kinds of unpleasantness. As if walking in a little rain is gonna make someone catch cold and die. Or ruin his or her iPod, at least.
  
     Are we raising a generation used to being sheltered and coddled and protected from life?

      What happened to buying your kid a raincoat and pushing him or her out the door?

      When time came for me to go to college, I researched schools, evaluated financial aid and scholarships, filled out numerous forms, and arranged all the necessary interviews. All on my own. Once everything was decided upon and my choice made, I presented the information to my mother to sign her bit on the dotted line. But it was my own life I was running, as I understood. I think a lot of my classmates did the same. At the end of the summer after I graduated, the family dropped me off down in Miami at school and I was on my own for the most part. And I've been more or less making all my own decisions since then.

    A couple of years ago, when it came time for Andrew to decide on school, he had his transcripts sent to UNA, applied and was accepted, found out about housing and fees and everything, and brought me and Stacey in when all was decided to do our bit. Since it is his life, he understood without being told that he was responsible for his own decisions and consequences.
     Part of our support was attending an orientation at the university for parents of new students, so we signed up for a session and went. At one of the seminars discussing off-campus housing, a mom of a student asked a question about shuttle buses running students to the school, and how was he to know when they ran and picked up and dropped off.

    That was when Stacey and I looked at each other and realized that a lot of people have gone batshit crazy. I hope the mom also found out when she could slip into the classroom and unbutton her shirt and breast-feed and burp her grown son.

     Sheesh!

     Whatever happened to personal accountability and responsibility? I am not a paragon of parenting, but I have two children that can stand on their own two feet and one younger that is going to be there by the time she graduates high school in two years. For better or worse, their lives are going to be their own, and I hope the raincoats I have provided them with over the years keep them moderately dry.

    Otherwise, if they leave their raincoats at home, they are gonna get wet. As they should. Then maybe next time they will remember.

     You know, with all the parents dropping off kids at the bus stop this morning, not a single kid had a raincoat on. Every one of them dashed from sheltering car to the bus without umbrella or coat, no personal responsibility taken for safety or comfort since the parents had provided for all.

    In my house, those would be some wet kids. Learning life lessons.

     I know this is just one day among many, and maybe this is just the societal norm here in Katy, Texas. But, once again....

      What happened to buying your kid a raincoat and pushing him or her out the door?

     

What are you going to be when you grow up?

     When I was about ten I was sure I was going to grow up to be a scientist. Although not sure what a scientist did-other than wear a lab coat and muck around with computers and lab equipment-I felt that since only the smartest people were scientists according to my TV viewing, that was where I should pursue a career. Later on I was determined to be a writer (novelist, or poet, naturally) or a rock star (equally conversant in rock, folk, and New Wave, of course), and with each change of desired destination I modified my dreams and fantasies.

     What I have actually become is a little more complicated, however, and a testament to Robert Burns' famous line "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley". Not that I really planned my path in any sort of organized fashion, just pointed myself in the basic direction I wanted, settled my lance unsteadily over my arm like Don Quixote, and set off at a ramble.

     Somehow I wandered into the unsteady world of restaurants. Well, not hard to understand how I ended up there-the job which was putting me through school rewarded my diligence and hard work with raises and promotions, and soon I found that I could (almost) feed my growing family on what a restaurant manager earned.

     But I always kept the belief that I was destined to do something else, something other, something "greater". Only making time there for a while until my wife could finish college and then I would have breathing room to figure out what I wanted to do. Needed to do. Was destined to do.
  
     About seven years ago,  with my wife's career beginning to gain traction, we were able to spring me out of the restaurant world. Out of working primarily nights. Of working every holiday, every weekend. The most heartbreaking and frustrating 10 minutes of your day is ironing your shirt on a sunny Saturday afternoon and leaving for work when your wife and kids are playing and laughing, knowing you will not be home until two or three in the morning and come into a silent house. The birds never sing so sweetly, the sun never shines so brightly as it does at 2 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon when you are on the way to work.

     Again without a real plan, I fell into the world of sales. Absent a real idea of what I wanted to do, I took a chance on commissions and chargebacks and renewals and premiums. Yep-the real sales. Hard core. Insurance sales, person-to-person, cold calling from a phone book, knocking on doors, working existing clients. Driving around to meet with people who left the house ten minutes before I arrived, or hid behind the curtains, or told me to call back in a week and never answered the phone. Did quite well in direct sales, as a matter of fact, well enough to rise from agent to manager of the entire office's sales force in just two years.

     Later on I was recruited into another profession-I was hired on the strength of a friend's recommendation to be sales manager at a huge cemetery, in charge of the group selling cemetery lots and funerals and caskets and vaults and such. It was an easier transition than you might think, since my skills and experience at talking to people and resolving complicated issues built up over all those years in restaurant management and direct sales gave me a base for success.

     Somewhere along the line I stopped defining myself by what I did for a living and started just being me. Not sure when this happened, it was certainly not a sudden realization, but I focused less and less on what I did and more on who I am. I have been lucky enough to have done well in several different fields, to have risen through the ranks through merit (and a goodly amount of luck, I admit) and to work with lots of great people. But none of my jobs has thoroughly defined me. I'm just Jeff.

     Which brings me to my present classification. Moving out here to Houston, we were fortunate enough to figure out a plan to have one of us work and the other stay at home to keep the house and the kids on track, and to take care of cooking and cleaning and shopping and the million errands that must be run each week. And with Stacey really doing well in her engineering specialty here in the center of the petroleum and natural gas industry, it turned out to be me this time. After six months  I  took a part-time job driving a school bus to get me out of the house and interact with somebody other than my dogs each day, but still leave summers and weekends and school breaks free.

     From cook to manager to insurance to cemetery sales to driving a bus and being Mr. Mom, I've taken jobs as they have come. Although I have never sat down and mapped out a strategy for success, I think I've done well. I've supported my family while my wife studied engineering and gotten established in her field. I've moved up through the ranks in several companies. I've met many people over the years, some of whom really influenced me and taught me about life, about people, about hard work and attention to detail and keeping focused. 

      What will the next twenty years bring? I'm keeping my options open.

     As usual.
    

Back to basics

     "Hidden grace and power."
     That was a phrase from my priest's sermon this morning. A phrase that really resounded with me, since it dovetails neatly with my thoughts these last couple of weeks.

     I've been thinking about my blog, about the title "Living in Gratitude", and wondering if I really do that. It is a constant struggle to remain in a state of readied anticipation and awareness. Too many times my hectic day, filled as it is with busywork and hustle, keeps me from listening to the still tranquil voice inside my heart that accompanies my sense of connection and community. Too many times I forget to appreciate the small wonders of each day, of orangy-pink sunrises and unexpected smiles and wagging tails and stirring music and brisk breezes. Too many times I rush from bullet point to checkpoint to stopping point and forget that the sweetness is in the journey and not in the destination.

     Living in gratitude is exhausting, because it forces me to be aware of what is going on around me. I must step outside of the humdrum boundaries of temporal existence and step into deliberate awareness and thankfulness. It is Kairos time, different from normal Chronos or simple chronological time in that it is the time of opportunity or special purpose. God's time, even.
     It's just like going to the gym. When I go to the gym, I am astounded at how good I feel from the rush of endorphins post-workout. How I walk out feeling like I am taking continent-spanning strides with my head in the clouds and my heart pounding in my ears. The aftereffect is so powerful and so transformative that there is NO REASON not to go and work out and experience that same rush every day for the rest of my life.
     But normal life comes in. The gym is too far away, traffic is a hassle. It's too late to go today, tomorrow is a new day. It's too cold to get out. Too rainy. Too hot. I have to get dinner on the table. I have a million other things to do.

     Looking for and realizing the true face of reality and the work of God in my life is the same way. When I hold myself open to listening and feeling and experiencing and thinking, of drinking deeply from the well of thankfulness, I am transformed and moved to a deeper connection with all who surround me. I see anew that although I am just a small cog in the universe's machinery, I have been rewarded far beyond my due. Humbling and empowering all at the same moment, it is a moment of true spiritual communion.
     But just like working out, it is difficult to achieve without deliberate effort. Normal life comes in. There is no time to sit down and think or pray or meditate. I have too much else to do, I'm tired or stubborn or resentful toward someone for imagined slights.

     So I think the answer is to look, as Father Jim said, for "hidden grace and power". A fellow named Benjamin Hoff wrote an engaging book called The Tao of Pooh, that encourages one to avoid the over-analysis of Owl and the pessimism of Eeyore, and follow the example of Pooh. Pooh is not very clever, but Pooh has a calm and transcendent demeanor because he "just is".
      “A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.” 

     I try to remind myself to look for hidden grace and power in everything around me. I remind myself to slow down and pay attention to what is on the side of the road as I pass as well as the destination of my journey. I remind myself that I am not a destination but a journey, that I am not complete but can and should and must change and grow every day. That I can and should and must make mistakes on the way to where I am going.
    
     Living in Gratitude depends upon deliberately seeking whenever I can for that which is as evident as my reflection in the mirror or as unconscious as the pulse of my heart. As often as I can, I recapture my sense of childlike wonder and overflowing emotion as I "count my blessings."

     And it certainly doesn't hurt to sit down and ask myself as often as I remember to....

    ...how would Pooh see my world?
    


 

Going (or coming) home again-Thomas Wolfe was wrong

      "You can't go back home" Thomas Wolfe wrote "to your family, back home to your childhood." I have been thinking about this line from a posthumous novel written almost 30 years before I was born, and of how this phrase applies as my son Andrew moved back in with us to attend school out here in Houston. Of how things change when you leave your parents' home and grow accustomed to your own life.

     After having lived in a dorm at the University of North Alabama for a couple of years, Andrew is now back home living with us and going to a commuter college out here. Situations have changed-he is no longer a minor child dependent on us for everything in his life, but an adult living under the same roof and who can make his own decisions and choices.

     We missed this change with Pamela, our oldest. She was already out of the house and seemingly halfway to Auburn by the time she graduated high school, and when she returned the next year, she only stayed a few weeks between house changes before returning to her own life. Just a brief interlude between leases was what we got. It looks like Andrew is going to be here a couple of years until he gets out of school and moves out on his own.

      The major facts about Andrew haven't changed at all-he is still thoughtful, witty, self-assured, and industrious. But new challenges crop up all the time. I try to remember to suggest instead of demanding. To encourage rather than command. To offer guidance rather than rules.
      This business of building a relationship with an adult child is not simple. When kids no longer need you to fight their battles for them or to instruct them in how to tie their shoes or toss a baseball, where do you go?

      After I get home from my morning bus route in the morning at about 9 AM, I generally make breakfast for the two of us, and we sit around and eat a leisurely meal together. I scan the newspaper and let him know about the latest scandals and fill him in on the day's crazy letters-to-the-editor from the local wingnuts. We might talk about going to farmers' markets or record stores, and make decisions over cups of coffee, decisions about events that may or may not come to pass.
     He almost always cleans the kitchen up, even without being asked. He's astonishingly helpful, and I appreciate his industriousness. Sometimes we take the dogs out for a walk, or go get groceries together.

     I think of my mom, and of how gracefully she transitioned into that next level. She never made it look hard, it was effortless. She let go quietly and smoothly but has never withdrawn from my life. I think sometimes of how well we get along together as a template, a model from which to take my cues for relating to Pam and to Andrew, and in a few years, to Sarah. Keep close, keep in contact, offer support and offer guidance when asked, but don't smother. Don't overwhelm. Let them make their own choices. Let them make their own decisions.
     Even let them make their own mistakes. That's the hard one. 

     I sure would make some decisions differently than my adult children. With my experience borne of numerous mistakes and poor judgement, I would do a lot of things differently than they do, rushing in with what seems a frightening mixture of naivete and foolhardiness. But living life too cautiously has as its curse a dryness and shallowness. Some risk-taking is necessary for success, and the exuberance of love always comes at the price of possible rejection.

     So I am heartened by the fact that my kids are now and will in the future continue to strike out in the world, to go their own way, to make their own choices, to laugh and yell and live and love, to raise their voices like Whitman said, to sound their  barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world. And meanwhile, even the words of Mr. Wolfe give me hope that some things never change:

 The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.

      Who knows-maybe sitting around the breakfast table sharing a cup of coffee with your son is one of those eternal themes that persevere in the midst of life's upheavals and transitions.

Be Like Mike

     In the 1990's, Gatorade put all its advertising dollars on the hottest up-and-coming basketball player of the time, a move that would result in a pop culture wave of sports adulation and marketable branding as every kid on the block wanted to "Be Like Mike." Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player ever to walk out on a court.
   
     There's another Mike in the news and on my mind. He's far from a famous athlete, has no lucrative sports contract, isn't idolized by millions, and doesn't have a retinue of adoring fans following him everywhere he goes. But, like the "other" Mike, he is a hero and a role model to kids. Some very special kids.
     This Mike is Michael Garcia, a waiter in Houston. You see, last month, Michael stood up for Milo. Milo being Milo Castillo, a beautiful little boy with Down syndrome. Guests seated in Michael's restaurant asked to be moved away from Milo and his family and made a snarky remark that "special-needs children need to be kept in special places."
     So Michael, even though he does not have a special needs child or anyone in his family or group of friends with a disability, did the stand-up thing. He refused to serve the people who insulted his regular diners and their beautiful child. Asked them how they could  make that remark about such an angel of a child. Asked them to leave.

     I worked for about two decades in the restaurant world. In that culture, the guest is unquestioned and all-powerful. There are two rules. #1 is the customer is always right. #2 is when in doubt refer back to #1. So for this waiter to break this sacred rule, to refuse service to someone,and to refuse to turn his head and let the horrible remark slide, to make a stand for kindness and decency, was an astoundingly courageous decision.
To do so when he had no particular reason other than simple moral kindness was inspiring. Simply inspiring.

     So Michael Garcia has been getting a lot of attention after Milo's mom blogged about what he did and spread the news all over. News stories nationwide, laud and praise and donations rolling in to this generous man from all over the country. This last week, Milo's school, which is a school dedicated to the education and socialization of youngsters with Down syndrome, threw a thank-you party for Michael. Complete with cards, balloons, dancing and singing. Michael made a donation to the school of the contributions that have been coming to him. Yes, he did. Really.

     What Michael Garcia fought was one of the most significant battles anyone can ever fight. Rather than tilting at windmills or battling dragons, he took on one of the little pernicious, dehumanizing remarks which fill up the substance of our day. How many times have we all heard an unkind remark and not corrected it? Stood by while bullying was going on? Laughed at a racist joke? Averted our eyes from watching an irate customer dressing down a cashier over some corporate policy on returning merchandise?

     People claim all the time they want to "be like Jesus."  In some ways, sacrifice on Jesus' scale can sometimes be more understandable and simpler than standing up to a bully like Michael Garcia did. How noble it is to sacrifice oneself for the good of all mankind, to take a deep breath and gird oneself with faith and trust and hope and to do what is to be done. The immensity of such a sacrifice makes it once-and-for-all-time and imbues it with purpose and dignity.
     What Michael did is heroic and inspiring, but it won't lead to a movie climax moment, with a swelling Bill Conti orchestra stirring your heart as Rocky shadow-boxes his way up the steps or the Karate Kid hobbles on one leg to crane-kick Johnny Lawrence. Such little battles fill our days with only occasional flashes of appreciation, but they are vital to our hearts and souls.
     Michael Garcia will go on being Michael Garcia and waiting on Milo and his family. But those kids down at The Rise School, well, they know who Michael is. They know they have a friend.
     When Michael went to the party, he received a very special gift. A crown. Made of yellow foam, decked out with glued-on jewels. Presented to him by his friend Milo. Michael bent his head, Milo fumbled with it and placed it upon his head, bestowing a regal dignity upon the proceedings.

     Lord, let me be like Mike.

     Oh, to deserve to wear such a crown.... 

Just like Salieri and Nacho

     Sometimes I know just how they feel.
     Antonio Salieri as portrayed by F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus, one of my favorite movies of all time: Salieri, the villainous and vain court composer whose jealousy of the brilliant Mozart leads him to plot downfall and ruin.
     And Nacho, the priest turned luchador (masked wrestler) of Jack Black's farcical Nacho Libre, who is lured by the fame and glory of wrestling into moonlighting as a particularly bumbling fighter to earn money to purchase better food for the orphanage.
     Because they are each drawn to a heart's desire, and then cursed by inadequacy and mediocrity. In a bitter monologue, Salieri scorns God for his fate: " All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?" His jealousy of Mozart's ecstatic talent and disdain for Mozart's immaturity and vulgarity lead to ruin and death, and result in Salieri's guilt and sorrow at being forgotten by the world.
     As for Nacho, at one point the wrestling friar, frustrated at yet another epic drubbing, cries out " Precious Father, why have you given me this desire to wrestle and then made me such a stinky warrior?"
    Dramatic tragedy or sarcastic comedy, each of these strikes a resonant chord in me. I know just how each one of these fictional characters feel.
     Let me tell you about me and my guitar.

     I have played guitar about thirty years now. Terribly.
     But enthusiastically.
     I can make a few chords-actually, quite a few of them. Anything with a # or sus4 or such always intimidated me, so I steered clear of those. If the song is primarily C's and G's and D's and E's and A's, I probably have made a stab at it.
    F chords-not so much. Those hurt, and it's hard to get a good tone out of them.

     Until last spring, I would play a little every couple of years or so, dust off my guitar, replace the strings  and tune it up,open my old Mel Bay or Guitar for Dummies books for a couple of weeks, do the exercises, maybe learn to play the melody or chords to some old song about telling Aunt Rhody that her goose is dead. Never could figure out why someone would write a song like that... After a couple of weeks of making no real headway on playing a real song from start to finish rather than five notes from Jingle Bells, I would give up until a new President was sworn in.
     Last spring, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and actually take lessons. I enrolled in weekly lessons at the local guitar shop. My teacher is a mid-20s metalhead with brilliant technique and feel and who possesses a talent for teaching. Since I've been adding glitches and bad habits into my playing since before he was born, he works on my rhythm and timing, my technique, my ear. He picks out songs and solos to practice based upon containing elements necessary to master playing. For instance, right now I am working on the solo to Frijid Pink's 1970's version of House of the Rising Sun because it is slow enough for a beginner and because it features vibrato, bends, slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs.
     I've been reinforced in the fact that I am NOT a natural musician. I am a terrible musician, I can play the same 4 or 5 notes twenty times and still not get them right. Or I can play it right 10 times in a row then forget how I've been playing it on the 11th time. My timing is always suspect, even with a metronome going, and tapping a foot, playing, and breathing at the same time gives me fits.
 
     So I ask, why do I have this desire to play guitar when I demonstrably have so little facility? Why have this burning desire then be such a stinky guitar player?

      According to my teacher, the answer is practice and lots of it. If 20 times on a riff doesn't cut it, try 100 and see what happens.
      Which all comes down to how bad do I want it? How much time am I willing to invest to be good, or at least better than crappy? I am encouraged by Bookends.
      When I was about 16 or so, I learned to play Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel. I learned to play it by sitting for hours practicing. Still to this day I can pick up a guitar and play it on the first try, without even thinking about it and without looking at the strings or my fingers. So it obviously can be done.

     I think my teacher is right. It's all about practice and about not giving up, about doing it 100 times as best you can so that on the 101st all of a sudden it comes together. Every now and then I close my eyes and just listen to the music in my head while I play and suddenly what I hear and what is actually coming out of the guitar are the same. That is when the pieces of the puzzle come together and I realize with a rush WHY I am still trying.
    Maybe a lot of things in life are about practicing, both the simple and the sublime. Making bread. Marriage. Fatherhood. Folding fitted sheets. Christianity. Driving. Blogging.
     But for today, I'm just thinking about spending another 1/2 hour running through some scales on the guitar. Teaching my fingers to move without having to think about it. So instead I can pay attention to this music I hear in my head.

Bacon, biscuits, and Bonhoeffer

      Waving a bony finger vaguely in my face and looking down at me from his imposing height, his face angular and keen-eyed over a bushy Prophet Ezekiel Old Testament beard, Bill Yon told me that I needed to come to the church the next Saturday morning. Somewhere between a command and an invitation, this summons to join the table at the Men's Prayer Breakfast resulted in my showing up the following Saturday, bleary-eyed and confused, to St. Francis' parish hall.

     Where I was hooked.

    Physically and metaphorically, I took my place at the table that day years ago and never looked back again.

     I had previously attended several different churches, and out of each one I extracted some measure of comfort or teaching or spirituality, but I never clicked. At all the churches I attended as an adult, I felt vaguely dishonest and uneasy. Church, after all, was for nice  people, who pretended nothing ever went wrong, spoke only vaguely of challenges either personal or faith-based, and generally behaved as if they were constantly on display at a grandparent's house. Everyone was just so....generic. Like Flanders on the Simpsons. Wishy-washy. Even boring...

    When we moved to Birmingham, Stacey got us into going to a type of church new to me, an Episcopal church. We had always gone to Methodist churches, and switching to liturgy and weekly Eucharist and traditional church music and the Book of Common Prayer was an adjustment for me. I remember I was confused with how to juggle prayer book, hymnal, and service music leaflets all at once. I was nonplussed with the different music.  And with the structure of the liturgy, which relied upon centuries-old prayers and instructions that changed but little from season to season. So many simple things were even said differently: we didn't have a pastor-we had a rector. We weren't a congregation-we were a parish. But, since Stacey's heart told her this was the right church for us, I resolved to make a proper go of it, and  after 6 months or so I got used to it all, to celebrating the Eucharist or Lord's Supper every Sunday, to the hymns that went back sometimes to the 7th or 8th centuries, to the priest's formal robes and the incense and chanting at special days.

     And it grew on me. Always an Anglophile and always steeped in history, I gloried in being a modern American representative of the Church of England, of following in forms of worship laid down centuries ago. The liturgy or rules of worship, far from restraining the free flow of praise, gave me a grounding so that I knew what was to come at all times of the service. Many times in the past I had been subjected to cringe-worthy extemporaneous prayers that went something like "Oh, God, you are so holy and you send your holy Son just to be holy and save us, so just let us be holy too, God" and which made me think the preacher was just closing his eyes and saying whatever was in his mind. Compare that with "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen." 

       Just typing that and reading it over in my mind right here in the present moment just sent a thrill coursing up my spine, made my heart swell and my eyes mist. The message and the language are so beautifully blended to set my heart to yearning to be instructed, to prepare myself, to surrender my human pride and arrogance, to take my rightful place in the universe.

      Yowza. I just had what I call a St. Francis moment.

      A St. Francis moment is what I call my personal epiphanies, when mind and heart and soul converge and reveal a greater truth to me. An inchoate epiphany, not fully formed but still embryonic. Bill Yon, a retired priest at St. Francis, was the catalyst for one of my more memorable ones when he invited/threatened/summoned me to join the men for breakfast. I had been attending the church for several years, and I was drawing a lot of spiritual sustenance from the Sunday services and the occasional study groups I went to, but I was not socially engaged with the people in the parish.

     When I showed up for breakfast, I was not sure what to expect but I was pretty sure it would not be exciting or memorable or interesting. Maybe something like having breakfast with-well, with a preacher. Don't put your elbows on the table!!

     Bill had a fine idea that what the men's group should be was not a Men's PRAYER Breakfast but a MEN'S Prayer Breakfast. His goal was that we should learn about each other's lives between Sundays. Far from "Well, I'm just glad to be here with the group today", the guys around the table opened up about themselves, their families. Their struggles. Their crises. Their doubts. That morning and all the subsequent 3rd Saturday morning breakfasts I attended over the next six or seven years we shared real conflict and real struggle, real pain and real joy. Far from being a group of too-nice bland-itos, these men were vibrant, authentic, conflicted, supportive, flawed, passionate, and loving.

       The group, the community into which I subsequently immersed myself, began with this men's group and extended soon to the whole church. The parish life of St. Francis must be similar to what medieval parish life was. A group of people who worship together, work together, play together. Church became where I spent my social time as well as Sundays from 11 to noon. Cooking 70 boston butts for a fundraiser over a weekend, sitting around Buzz Palmer's pull-behind smoker "telling white lies and drinking dark liquor" and bundled up against the 40-degree cold. Cleaning up Bill Yon's house and grounds in the annual Habitat for Yon project. Gathering to cheer on Jessica Lingle win a "battle of the bands" contest at a local coffeehouse. Hosting dinner parties. Sharing weekends at the lake, grilling out and boating and watching football.  Feeding God's people at the Firehouse Shelter in downtown Birmingham.

     The inspirational words, the form of worship and liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer provided the framework, but it is the personal connections started at that Men's Prayer Breakfast so long ago that made my experience of worship so powerful. Communion, the Holy Eucharist, is celebrated in a circle at St. Francis. Prior to and upon receiving wine and bread, you are intensely aware of the others clustered in that circle, those you know and love and work shoulder-to-shoulder with. Of the children of friends you have watched grow up. Of those that have died, whose presence is sorely missed. 

     How much better is faith when it is celebrated in community. With friends.

     Out here in Houston, I've joined a church that I am really enjoying. I noticed that on its website it listed a men's group. When I contacted the parish secretary I found out that this group has been defunct for a time, that they used to get together and hang out, cook and go to ballgames, even toured a local brewery once. I called up the fellows that used to be in charge of it, told them that I would like to offer my assistance to get it started again if there was any interest.

    Last week we had our first meeting. We met on Saturday morning. Andrew and I cooked a big breakfast. Before we got down to the agenda of the meeting, we all took a couple of minutes to introduce ourselves. To say who we are. To say what we do "between Sundays". 

     I'm sure this group will turn out to be different from my old group, but it sure feels familiar starting out. I was taught well to get folks talking about themselves. I sure think Bill Yon would approve of the way we've begun. 

    Here's Bill Yon's traditional close of Men's Prayer Breakfast, found on page 836 of the Book of Common Prayer:

 Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have
done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole
creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,
and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for
the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best
efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy
and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the
truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast
obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,
through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life
again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and
make him known; and through him, at all times and in all
places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.