I had a wreck a few days ago. A bad one. I am lucky to be alive, since my car isn’t. It was a big, blue, gas-guzzling, steel reinforced “clunker.” But it was my clunker.
My arm, my good arm, was sliced and diced. My head and jaw hurt like I’d been through another series of electro-shock treatments. (Different story for a different day). I shake. My concentration is shot. I am more paranoid than usual. I ache all over. And if that’s not enough, for the next few weeks I am driving a Kia.
I’ll give you the bare facts, then I’m going to bed. I don’t know if I will write tomorrow.
I was on my way to the Mental Health/Mental Retardation (MH/MR) clinic for my monthly “visit” with my psychiatrist and to pick up ‘scripts (7) for another month of meds.
I was driving 30 through a residential area when out of nowhere a white blur going 35 slammed into my driver’s door. I was thrown over the curb, across the lawn and up against the house on the corner. Since I was conscious through it all I assumed I wasn’t hurt. Then, I saw blood running down my arm, onto my shirt, my pants and the passenger seat. Glass, I guess.
The front of her ’98 Lexus folded up like an aluminum can.
The neighbors came running and wouldn’t let me out of my car until the ambulance arrived. They brought me glasses of water and told me hair-raising stories of neck and back injuries, most of which resulted in some form of paralysis.
The police came first. Two cars, three officers. One talked with the woman in the Lexus, one gathered witnesses and the other talked with me.
I thought I was making sense until he told me I wasn’t.
“You’re in shock,” he said. “Don’t worry about anything. We’ll get your statement in the ambulance when you pull yourself together.”
Two ambulances arrived. His and hers. When they removed her from the Lexus they slapped a neck brace and a back brace on her and laid her out on one of those hard, plastic stretchers.
They pulled me out and helped me lie back on a stretcher with wheels. Mine had padding.
The woman asked them to bring her over to me. Regret came pouring out.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t see the stop sign. Forgive me.” She was sobbing. She repeated it three times.
I don’t know her name. All they told me was that she is insured by Allstate.
I’m not, but there is no doubt I was in good hands.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
My Mother's Secret
I missed one day of school in junior high and it turned out to be the day I discovered my mother’s secret.
I spent the morning reading the comic books I had borrowed from Benji when I knew I was getting a fever.
I heard the front door open and close around noon. I got up and looked out the kitchen window. My mother was standing on the curb next to the mailbox. The mailman was next door. He had no white truck. The only thing he was driving was his hush puppies.
He reached into his worn-out, over the shoulder leather letter holder and handed her the mail. With her back to the house, she sorted through the letters one-by-one. She looked both ways, tucked a letter in her apron pocket, turned, smiling like the cat that ate the canary, and started up the sidewalk. I beat it for the bedroom.
Three hours later she went to pick up my sister and brother. I went straight for the kitchen. The letter was still there. It was a bill from a fancy department store. The bill was in her name and it wasn’t small. The thing about my dad was that he never allowed charge accounts. He was real strict on that. Everything was cash except for the house and the bills that went with it. Money was tight. I wondered how she would pay it.
I went through the bill. It was clothes for us kids. She knew everyone was wearing corduroy jeans, button-down, half-sleeve shirts and weejuns. They were on the bill; along with two blouses for my sister, and a shirt and jeans for my brother. Nothing for herself.
We would just find the clothes hanging in our closet, or folded in the dresser like they belonged there. Like the Clothes Fairy delivered them.
Maybe she went shopping for herself sometimes, but my guess is she never made it out of the children’s department.
Here's to the moms who went without so we could go in style.
I spent the morning reading the comic books I had borrowed from Benji when I knew I was getting a fever.
I heard the front door open and close around noon. I got up and looked out the kitchen window. My mother was standing on the curb next to the mailbox. The mailman was next door. He had no white truck. The only thing he was driving was his hush puppies.
He reached into his worn-out, over the shoulder leather letter holder and handed her the mail. With her back to the house, she sorted through the letters one-by-one. She looked both ways, tucked a letter in her apron pocket, turned, smiling like the cat that ate the canary, and started up the sidewalk. I beat it for the bedroom.
Three hours later she went to pick up my sister and brother. I went straight for the kitchen. The letter was still there. It was a bill from a fancy department store. The bill was in her name and it wasn’t small. The thing about my dad was that he never allowed charge accounts. He was real strict on that. Everything was cash except for the house and the bills that went with it. Money was tight. I wondered how she would pay it.
I went through the bill. It was clothes for us kids. She knew everyone was wearing corduroy jeans, button-down, half-sleeve shirts and weejuns. They were on the bill; along with two blouses for my sister, and a shirt and jeans for my brother. Nothing for herself.
We would just find the clothes hanging in our closet, or folded in the dresser like they belonged there. Like the Clothes Fairy delivered them.
Maybe she went shopping for herself sometimes, but my guess is she never made it out of the children’s department.
Here's to the moms who went without so we could go in style.
Monday, September 7, 2009
The God Box
A small man with big hair blew through Hazelden Alcoholic Treatment Center to speak to us. He was an addict-turned-preacher-turned-addict (x 3). He was 68 by the time he got to us. Sober for 15 years.
He brought a psychedelic box with him. He held it under his arm, like a teddy bear, when he spoke. He’d decorated it with paisley wallpaper, red hearts, crosses and comic strips.
He told us his “God Box” kept him sober.
We were skeptical, of course.
He told us that whenever he is tempted to get into trouble (alcohol, money, pills, sex, pride, manipulation, worry) he writes the problem on a small piece of paper and drops it into the Box.
“I give it to God ASAP,” he told us. “I let it go. I give it up. And whenever I find myself taking the problem back and handling it myself, I open the God Box, pull out that piece of paper and tell God, ‘I think I can handle this better than you can’.”
Some of us tried it. We’d find a Kleenex box, or a box from the kitchen. We’d decorate it a little, put our name on it and carry it to meals, to group meetings and to bed. You’d see guys writing, stuffing and unstuffing the Box. I did it for ten days, and I ran pretty clean those days.
One downside to being an alcoholic/addict is believing you can handle everything yourself. But who doesn’t like being in control? The Lone Ranger rides again (and again).
I’m back at it. The God Box. I don’t carry it into restaurants, or everywhere I go. I leave it in the car, or at home. Fifty times a day I’ll let a problem go to God, then take it back. And somewhere in the middle of this endless cycle I pray, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I have a long way to go, but as my brothers and sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous keep reminding me, “It’s progress, not perfection.”
He brought a psychedelic box with him. He held it under his arm, like a teddy bear, when he spoke. He’d decorated it with paisley wallpaper, red hearts, crosses and comic strips.
He told us his “God Box” kept him sober.
We were skeptical, of course.
He told us that whenever he is tempted to get into trouble (alcohol, money, pills, sex, pride, manipulation, worry) he writes the problem on a small piece of paper and drops it into the Box.
“I give it to God ASAP,” he told us. “I let it go. I give it up. And whenever I find myself taking the problem back and handling it myself, I open the God Box, pull out that piece of paper and tell God, ‘I think I can handle this better than you can’.”
Some of us tried it. We’d find a Kleenex box, or a box from the kitchen. We’d decorate it a little, put our name on it and carry it to meals, to group meetings and to bed. You’d see guys writing, stuffing and unstuffing the Box. I did it for ten days, and I ran pretty clean those days.
One downside to being an alcoholic/addict is believing you can handle everything yourself. But who doesn’t like being in control? The Lone Ranger rides again (and again).
I’m back at it. The God Box. I don’t carry it into restaurants, or everywhere I go. I leave it in the car, or at home. Fifty times a day I’ll let a problem go to God, then take it back. And somewhere in the middle of this endless cycle I pray, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I have a long way to go, but as my brothers and sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous keep reminding me, “It’s progress, not perfection.”
Sunday, September 6, 2009
A Hard Lesson
"Never play cards with a man named Doc.
Never eat at a place called Mom’s.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than yours. "
Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side, part 3 (1956)
Never eat at a place called Mom’s.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than yours. "
Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side, part 3 (1956)
Saturday, September 5, 2009
A Father's Love
I have this recurring dream. I am in the park at Barton Springs in Austin. The place is dead except for one man sitting on a bench about 100 trees away. I don’t think he sees me so I serpentine to within three trees.
He is a man in a dark suit, white shirt, black thin tie and sunglasses. He looks like Ackroyd of the Blues Brothers.
Without looking up, he motions me over. He pats the bench twice with his ring hand.
It is my Uncle David. My dad’s younger brother. The so-called black sheep of the family. The alcoholic. I move toward him cautiously. He has been dead for many years, but I don’t know it in the dream.
I could let you in on the whole conversation---how long he’s been on the bench waiting, why he chose Austin instead of San Antonio where I lived, and a bunch of other stuff, but that gets us nowhere.
So I’ll start where he asks, “How are you doing these days, KP? You look a little sad to me.”
I tell him I’m not sad.
“You’re thinking about your dad, aren’t you?”
I say yes, because I have been thinking about him and whenever I think of him I am either sad, or mad.
“Let me ask you something,” he says. “Who taught you to tie your shoes?”
“You.”
He sits there waiting for it to sink in. It doesn’t.
“Look,” he says. “I was your father. Look at me. I am your father. No kid has just one father. One man can’t do it all. You think it was luck that I was always around? I was there for you then, and I am here for you now. I am your father, too. Ask your mother.”
Like I say, I have dreamed this dream many times, and always when I needed a father’s love.
He is a man in a dark suit, white shirt, black thin tie and sunglasses. He looks like Ackroyd of the Blues Brothers.
Without looking up, he motions me over. He pats the bench twice with his ring hand.
It is my Uncle David. My dad’s younger brother. The so-called black sheep of the family. The alcoholic. I move toward him cautiously. He has been dead for many years, but I don’t know it in the dream.
I could let you in on the whole conversation---how long he’s been on the bench waiting, why he chose Austin instead of San Antonio where I lived, and a bunch of other stuff, but that gets us nowhere.
So I’ll start where he asks, “How are you doing these days, KP? You look a little sad to me.”
I tell him I’m not sad.
“You’re thinking about your dad, aren’t you?”
I say yes, because I have been thinking about him and whenever I think of him I am either sad, or mad.
“Let me ask you something,” he says. “Who taught you to tie your shoes?”
“You.”
He sits there waiting for it to sink in. It doesn’t.
“Look,” he says. “I was your father. Look at me. I am your father. No kid has just one father. One man can’t do it all. You think it was luck that I was always around? I was there for you then, and I am here for you now. I am your father, too. Ask your mother.”
Like I say, I have dreamed this dream many times, and always when I needed a father’s love.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Her Fever has Broken!
Woody Allen said that the most beautiful words in the English language are not, “I love you,” but “It’s benign.”
I was at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas visiting a friend. We talked for 10 minutes, prayed together and I left. I passed the nurse’s station on my way to the elevator, pressed the button and waited.
Suddenly, a door down the hall opened and a man came bursting out. He looked both ways, saw me and started running toward me waving a piece of paper.
“Her fever has broken! Her fever has broken!”
He grabbed me around the chest, whirled me around and said breathlessly in my ear, “Her fever has broken!”
The elevator opened, he let me go, and I went down to the lobby.
I am thinking about that man again tonight who had such good news that he had to stop the first stranger he saw to tell him.
I was at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas visiting a friend. We talked for 10 minutes, prayed together and I left. I passed the nurse’s station on my way to the elevator, pressed the button and waited.
Suddenly, a door down the hall opened and a man came bursting out. He looked both ways, saw me and started running toward me waving a piece of paper.
“Her fever has broken! Her fever has broken!”
He grabbed me around the chest, whirled me around and said breathlessly in my ear, “Her fever has broken!”
The elevator opened, he let me go, and I went down to the lobby.
I am thinking about that man again tonight who had such good news that he had to stop the first stranger he saw to tell him.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
God's Native Language
My neighbor lost his dog. Peaches ran away. He looked everywhere from his house to the highway. He finally went home. He was sick.
He found his wife putting on lipstick. How could he tell her? Peaches was his wedding gift to her a year earlier. She was the child of a couple who would be childless.
He stood behind her in the bathroom frozen in grief. He saw himself in the mirror with his mouth open trying to speak, but only a sound came out---a tiny cry of a sound. A sound anyone would miss. A sound only a dog might hear.
When she heard it she turned and said, “What?”
She put her hand to the side of his face, and said, “What is it, baby?”
Things happen that push us back to a place before vowels and consonants. Back behind where words come from. We are speechless. Literally.
In 1982, I stumbled onto something by accident that shattered everything. The noise that came out of me was prehistoric. The next day, and for several weeks, there were no words. The men in white coats came and took me where I did not want to go.
St. Paul writes that there is a language understood only to God---groanings too deep for words.
It is God’s native language.
He found his wife putting on lipstick. How could he tell her? Peaches was his wedding gift to her a year earlier. She was the child of a couple who would be childless.
He stood behind her in the bathroom frozen in grief. He saw himself in the mirror with his mouth open trying to speak, but only a sound came out---a tiny cry of a sound. A sound anyone would miss. A sound only a dog might hear.
When she heard it she turned and said, “What?”
She put her hand to the side of his face, and said, “What is it, baby?”
Things happen that push us back to a place before vowels and consonants. Back behind where words come from. We are speechless. Literally.
In 1982, I stumbled onto something by accident that shattered everything. The noise that came out of me was prehistoric. The next day, and for several weeks, there were no words. The men in white coats came and took me where I did not want to go.
St. Paul writes that there is a language understood only to God---groanings too deep for words.
It is God’s native language.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Life in Three Acts
I. Move into a new neighborhood. Walk down Main Street. Fall into a deep hole. File suit?
II. Walk down Main Street. Fall into a deep hole. I deserve to be here. I must adjust my life to failure. Pour me a drink. Find me a woman. Leave me alone.
III. Walk down a different street.
(Repeat)
II. Walk down Main Street. Fall into a deep hole. I deserve to be here. I must adjust my life to failure. Pour me a drink. Find me a woman. Leave me alone.
III. Walk down a different street.
(Repeat)
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Margaritaville
(A Weekend in Three Acts)
I. It’s Nobody’s Fault.
II. Hell, It Could Be My Fault.
III. It’s My Own Damn Fault.
“Margaritaville”
Jimmy Buffet (1977)
Livin’ on sponge cake
Watchin’ the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil
Strummin’ my six-string
On my front porch swing
Smell those shrimp they're beginnin’ to boil.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s nobody’s fault.
I don’t know the reason
I stayed here all season
Nothin’ to show but this brand new tattoo
But it’s a real beauty
A Mexican cutie
How it got here I haven’t a clue.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
Now I think
Hell, it could be my fault.
I blew out my flip-flop
Stepped on a pop-top
Cut my heel had to cruise on back home
But there’s booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault.
Yes and some people claim there’s a woman to blame
And I know it’s my own damn fault.
I. It’s Nobody’s Fault.
II. Hell, It Could Be My Fault.
III. It’s My Own Damn Fault.
“Margaritaville”
Jimmy Buffet (1977)
Livin’ on sponge cake
Watchin’ the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil
Strummin’ my six-string
On my front porch swing
Smell those shrimp they're beginnin’ to boil.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s nobody’s fault.
I don’t know the reason
I stayed here all season
Nothin’ to show but this brand new tattoo
But it’s a real beauty
A Mexican cutie
How it got here I haven’t a clue.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
Now I think
Hell, it could be my fault.
I blew out my flip-flop
Stepped on a pop-top
Cut my heel had to cruise on back home
But there’s booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.
Chorus:
Wastin’ away in Margaritaville
Searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own damn fault.
Yes and some people claim there’s a woman to blame
And I know it’s my own damn fault.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Layers of Grace
A pearl doesn’t start out as a pearl. It starts out as a mistake inside an oyster. Something that doesn’t belong. An irritation the size of a grain of sand. Who would think something that small could make any difference?
Oysters deal with an invasion of a foreign object by covering it with the same stuff that coats the inside of the shell. You’d think that a couple of layers around a grain of sand would be enough to take the edge off (like a couple of drinks at the end of the day) but the oyster is still irritated and the object is still foreign. A million layers later there’s a smooth shell around the intruder.
Pearls become pearls one layer at a time, and each is different in size, shape, surface and color.
Salvation happens gradually like the formation of a pearl. It starts with something wrong. Something that doesn’t belong, like a thorn. We would pick it out ourselves, but it’s impossible. Perhaps we pray, but God doesn’t touch it with a ten-foot pair of tweezers. It is not removed. We live with it.
So much for instant salvation.
It’s more like frustration (“coming up empty”).
I don’t offer a solution, but I have had decades of experience with foreign invasion.
I’ve found that with the right amount of Steadfast Love and Compassion---one layer at a time---the wrong is covered by grace. What is unacceptable is accepted. What is unlovable is embraced; even transformed into something priceless.
Oysters deal with an invasion of a foreign object by covering it with the same stuff that coats the inside of the shell. You’d think that a couple of layers around a grain of sand would be enough to take the edge off (like a couple of drinks at the end of the day) but the oyster is still irritated and the object is still foreign. A million layers later there’s a smooth shell around the intruder.
Pearls become pearls one layer at a time, and each is different in size, shape, surface and color.
Salvation happens gradually like the formation of a pearl. It starts with something wrong. Something that doesn’t belong, like a thorn. We would pick it out ourselves, but it’s impossible. Perhaps we pray, but God doesn’t touch it with a ten-foot pair of tweezers. It is not removed. We live with it.
So much for instant salvation.
It’s more like frustration (“coming up empty”).
I don’t offer a solution, but I have had decades of experience with foreign invasion.
I’ve found that with the right amount of Steadfast Love and Compassion---one layer at a time---the wrong is covered by grace. What is unacceptable is accepted. What is unlovable is embraced; even transformed into something priceless.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Art and the Craft
The light seldom comes on all at once. We usually “get it” gradually. We expect to go from dark to light immediately, but it’s more like sunrise.
Healing is gradual. We don’t get well overnight. Change is gradual. We don’t break self-destructive habits overnight. As Chicago sang: “Good things in life take a long time.”
There are seasons in our life however hard we fight against them. Seasons of joy and sadness. Seasons of realism and denial. Seasons of intimacy and loneliness. Seasons of hope and despair.
Winter finally gives way to spring; and spring surrenders to summer. It can’t be rushed no matter what or who you know.
In Jerzy Kosinski’s book Being There, Chance the Gardener is on a talk show and says to the host: “In a garden things grow…but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish” (page 67).
This is the art of letting things happen. This is the craft of making things work.
Healing is gradual. We don’t get well overnight. Change is gradual. We don’t break self-destructive habits overnight. As Chicago sang: “Good things in life take a long time.”
There are seasons in our life however hard we fight against them. Seasons of joy and sadness. Seasons of realism and denial. Seasons of intimacy and loneliness. Seasons of hope and despair.
Winter finally gives way to spring; and spring surrenders to summer. It can’t be rushed no matter what or who you know.
In Jerzy Kosinski’s book Being There, Chance the Gardener is on a talk show and says to the host: “In a garden things grow…but first, they must wither; trees have to lose their leaves in order to put forth new leaves, and to grow thicker and stronger and taller. Some trees die, but fresh saplings replace them. Gardens need a lot of care. But if you love your garden, you don’t mind working in it, and waiting. Then in the proper season you will surely see it flourish” (page 67).
This is the art of letting things happen. This is the craft of making things work.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Static
I bought my first CD player in 1983. I was in California. I had enough cash left over to buy “Linda Ronstadt’s Greatest Hits”. I loaded the disc, pushed “play” and ran to the couch (no remote). “Love is a Rose” began to play. I listened to the first half-minute and thought: “Hey, wait a second! The first part of the song is missing.”
I got up and started it over. I was right. They cut part of the intro. I called my neighbor David Wettstein to come over.
“Listen to this, Dave, and tell me if something is missing.”
Dave listened to it twice, and smiled. “Something’s missing all right, but it’s not part of the song. The song’s all there. You’re missing the surface noise---the pops and crackles the needle makes during the first two revolutions of the record before the music starts. What you’re missing is the static.”
Static. One of my dad’s favorite words. As in, “Don’t give me any…”
When I went into alcohol rehab they asked us to identify the static in our lives; the unnecessary noise.
For me it was anger. It didn’t take long to identify it. Most of the time, I could feel it brewing like the strange silence before a storm. Still can.
I never figured out where it came from, even though I underwrote several lengthy archaeological digs.
Every counselor tried to get me down to the root of it. Not possible. For one thing, I was holding onto it so tight for fear of what else I would lose if I let the anger go. Would I lose my link with my dad? Would I lose the raw fuel to my creativity?
So what am I doing these days? Still trying, one day at a time, to separate (not eliminate) the static from the music of my life.
I got up and started it over. I was right. They cut part of the intro. I called my neighbor David Wettstein to come over.
“Listen to this, Dave, and tell me if something is missing.”
Dave listened to it twice, and smiled. “Something’s missing all right, but it’s not part of the song. The song’s all there. You’re missing the surface noise---the pops and crackles the needle makes during the first two revolutions of the record before the music starts. What you’re missing is the static.”
Static. One of my dad’s favorite words. As in, “Don’t give me any…”
When I went into alcohol rehab they asked us to identify the static in our lives; the unnecessary noise.
For me it was anger. It didn’t take long to identify it. Most of the time, I could feel it brewing like the strange silence before a storm. Still can.
I never figured out where it came from, even though I underwrote several lengthy archaeological digs.
Every counselor tried to get me down to the root of it. Not possible. For one thing, I was holding onto it so tight for fear of what else I would lose if I let the anger go. Would I lose my link with my dad? Would I lose the raw fuel to my creativity?
So what am I doing these days? Still trying, one day at a time, to separate (not eliminate) the static from the music of my life.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Priorities
Every time we meet for lunch he sits with his back against the wall facing the crowd. He must’ve been ambushed when he was a younger man. I’m late and he’s early. He carries an internal clock like the crock from Peter Pan.
It’s Monday and I’m breaking bread with the blue-eyed Cherokee.
There’s no telling where the conversation will wander off to. One week we’re Don Quixote and Sancho Panza slaying windmills and dreaming impossible dreams. The next, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The next, two old cats stuck in the 60’s. He’s already ordered my diet Coke and I sit down where it’s sweating. He asks how I’m doing and I tell him things are going pretty well, but that I’m having some trouble juggling things. Keeping them in the right order.
Ever read your own writings, Doc?” he asks me. “You wrote something about priorities a while back.”
“What did I say?”
“Not enough,” he says. “You didn’t go far enough.”
“Life is a box,” he says, “with all different size holes in the top and a peg that fits every hole. The trick is getting the right peg in the right hole. The trouble starts when you try to put small pegs in the big holes.” (I’m trying to listen but one thought keeps going through my mind: “I didn’t go far enough?!”)
“So what do you do,” he asks, “when your little box gets a hard shaking and all the pegs fall out?”
“I put them all back in.”
“No,” he says. “You find the biggest peg and put it in the biggest hole. That’s the first thing you do. Then, find the next biggest peg and put it in the next biggest hole.”
“That’s it?” I ask
“That’s it,” he says.
“What’s the biggest peg,” I ask.
“That’s what you left out,” he tells me.
“God?”
“The biggest peg in the biggest hole,” he says. “Whatever that is for you. That’s where you start.”
It’s Monday and I’m breaking bread with the blue-eyed Cherokee.
There’s no telling where the conversation will wander off to. One week we’re Don Quixote and Sancho Panza slaying windmills and dreaming impossible dreams. The next, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The next, two old cats stuck in the 60’s. He’s already ordered my diet Coke and I sit down where it’s sweating. He asks how I’m doing and I tell him things are going pretty well, but that I’m having some trouble juggling things. Keeping them in the right order.
Ever read your own writings, Doc?” he asks me. “You wrote something about priorities a while back.”
“What did I say?”
“Not enough,” he says. “You didn’t go far enough.”
“Life is a box,” he says, “with all different size holes in the top and a peg that fits every hole. The trick is getting the right peg in the right hole. The trouble starts when you try to put small pegs in the big holes.” (I’m trying to listen but one thought keeps going through my mind: “I didn’t go far enough?!”)
“So what do you do,” he asks, “when your little box gets a hard shaking and all the pegs fall out?”
“I put them all back in.”
“No,” he says. “You find the biggest peg and put it in the biggest hole. That’s the first thing you do. Then, find the next biggest peg and put it in the next biggest hole.”
“That’s it?” I ask
“That’s it,” he says.
“What’s the biggest peg,” I ask.
“That’s what you left out,” he tells me.
“God?”
“The biggest peg in the biggest hole,” he says. “Whatever that is for you. That’s where you start.”
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Light in the Darkness
There is a story about a buck who loved his horns and hated his feet. But when the hunter came his feet saved him until his horns, caught in a thicket, destroyed him. The story is from Emerson who said, “We’ve all been hurt by a point of pride in our life, while at the same time, we’ve been helped by our weakness, even our character defects.”
I saw Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, ten years ago at Cambridge University in England. He was in the teacher’s lounge between classes. Lou Gehrig’s disease had incapacitated him, but his mind and his wheelchair were state of the art. His assistant tied a bib around his neck for afternoon tea and poured nine cups down him, one after the other. The bib was wide with a deep pocket that caught the tea as in ran down his chin.
He was being interviewed by a reporter from the Manchester Guardian newspaper. He communicated with the help of a machine attached to his keyboard. He didn’t speak in sentences, or even in words. He built the conversation letter-by-letter, like he was laying brick.
I could hear pieces of the interview from where I was sitting. I heard him tell the reporter that he was scatter-brained, undisciplined and at loose-ends before his disease, but as his body grew weaker his focus grew stronger. Once he faced his powerlessness over his disease his hidden resources grew. As if the disease opened a door for him.
This is how it is with my periodic battles with depression. If I don’t fight against it, but, instead, listen to it---even befriend it---I am surprised to find a light in the darkness. It’s not like the searchlights car lots use to lead you into the parking lot. It is more like a candle, or a porch light.
The light is always on, but when we are unraveling we tend to see only darkness. But the light is there. In the darkness.
And sometimes, like with Dr. Hawking, the thing we thought would ruin us turns out to be the very thing that opens the door to a new life.
I saw Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, ten years ago at Cambridge University in England. He was in the teacher’s lounge between classes. Lou Gehrig’s disease had incapacitated him, but his mind and his wheelchair were state of the art. His assistant tied a bib around his neck for afternoon tea and poured nine cups down him, one after the other. The bib was wide with a deep pocket that caught the tea as in ran down his chin.
He was being interviewed by a reporter from the Manchester Guardian newspaper. He communicated with the help of a machine attached to his keyboard. He didn’t speak in sentences, or even in words. He built the conversation letter-by-letter, like he was laying brick.
I could hear pieces of the interview from where I was sitting. I heard him tell the reporter that he was scatter-brained, undisciplined and at loose-ends before his disease, but as his body grew weaker his focus grew stronger. Once he faced his powerlessness over his disease his hidden resources grew. As if the disease opened a door for him.
This is how it is with my periodic battles with depression. If I don’t fight against it, but, instead, listen to it---even befriend it---I am surprised to find a light in the darkness. It’s not like the searchlights car lots use to lead you into the parking lot. It is more like a candle, or a porch light.
The light is always on, but when we are unraveling we tend to see only darkness. But the light is there. In the darkness.
And sometimes, like with Dr. Hawking, the thing we thought would ruin us turns out to be the very thing that opens the door to a new life.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Secrets
There is always one guy in the neighborhood that is so good at hide-and-seek that you’d swear the guy can disappear. The crazy thing is that he was always hiding close enough to home base that he could see who had been found and who hadn’t.
I learned to hide in the third grade after I got into big trouble with my dad and I promised myself I would never be found again. By anybody.
Hiding takes a lot out of you. It is hard on you to swallow a big secret and keep it down. Some of us have been hiding so long we can’t remember the reason we’re hiding. Whatever the reason, it usually goes back to something that hurt and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So we become a turtle with head, legs and tail pulled in under the shell.
Some of us are not much more than a shell.
There is a scene in the movie Absence of Malice where a young woman’s uncle (Paul Newman) is accused of racketeering. She knows he is innocent because they were together at the time of the crime (out of town for her abortion). She doesn’t dare confess it to the newspaper reporter who is covering the story (Sally Field) because she was in Catholic school at the time and it would hurt her family and the sisters.
She ends up telling her story to help her uncle. The next day it was on the front page.
Before sunrise she is sitting on the front porch waiting for the paper. She hasn’t slept. She is in her robe.
When the paper is thrown in the yard you can feel her fear. She scans the story. Then, she goes from house to house in the neighborhood picking up every newspaper. Later that day she commits suicide.
Everyone is carrying something that is heavy and difficult to bear. Some secret. A reason for hiding.
There must be a way we can help each other hear some of the best words any child of any age can hear: “Come out, come out wherever you are;” and then, “All-ee, All-ee in free!”
Wherever you are, whatever your secret fears, you are closer to home than you know.
I learned to hide in the third grade after I got into big trouble with my dad and I promised myself I would never be found again. By anybody.
Hiding takes a lot out of you. It is hard on you to swallow a big secret and keep it down. Some of us have been hiding so long we can’t remember the reason we’re hiding. Whatever the reason, it usually goes back to something that hurt and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So we become a turtle with head, legs and tail pulled in under the shell.
Some of us are not much more than a shell.
There is a scene in the movie Absence of Malice where a young woman’s uncle (Paul Newman) is accused of racketeering. She knows he is innocent because they were together at the time of the crime (out of town for her abortion). She doesn’t dare confess it to the newspaper reporter who is covering the story (Sally Field) because she was in Catholic school at the time and it would hurt her family and the sisters.
She ends up telling her story to help her uncle. The next day it was on the front page.
Before sunrise she is sitting on the front porch waiting for the paper. She hasn’t slept. She is in her robe.
When the paper is thrown in the yard you can feel her fear. She scans the story. Then, she goes from house to house in the neighborhood picking up every newspaper. Later that day she commits suicide.
Everyone is carrying something that is heavy and difficult to bear. Some secret. A reason for hiding.
There must be a way we can help each other hear some of the best words any child of any age can hear: “Come out, come out wherever you are;” and then, “All-ee, All-ee in free!”
Wherever you are, whatever your secret fears, you are closer to home than you know.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Finding or Being Found?
I’m not sure anyone finds God. It’s more like what I saw happen in a large grocery store in Texas.
There was an announcement over the store’s intercom system. It was a woman; somebody’s mother. Hearing her voice was shocking because it was so real and vulnerable; unlike somebody calling for a price check.
She said, “Jenny, this is mommy. I know you are lost and scared. I know you are looking for me.
“Jenny, just sit down where you are. You can stop looking for me. Wherever you are, just sit down Jenny girl and I will find you.”
Finding, or being found?
“It’s not that you haven’t done enough. It’s that you’ve done too much” (Martin Luther).
There was an announcement over the store’s intercom system. It was a woman; somebody’s mother. Hearing her voice was shocking because it was so real and vulnerable; unlike somebody calling for a price check.
She said, “Jenny, this is mommy. I know you are lost and scared. I know you are looking for me.
“Jenny, just sit down where you are. You can stop looking for me. Wherever you are, just sit down Jenny girl and I will find you.”
Finding, or being found?
“It’s not that you haven’t done enough. It’s that you’ve done too much” (Martin Luther).
Monday, August 24, 2009
Cracked
The first time I heard the word “cracked” I was walking home with a ninth-grader, Glenn Curry, who had just moved into the corner house before school started. He was a foreign exchange student from Mississippi. He was a tall, skinny red-haired guy still mad about the move. I was in seventh grade and we had been in school one month.
We were talking about one of the kids in my class who lived one street over named Larry. Larry was slow and I don’t mean in the 50-yard dash. Glenn was making fun of him, mimicking the way he talked. So was I. He talked like a younger version of Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade.”
“You know he’s cracked,” Glenn said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “He’s real cracked.” (I had no idea what it meant).
Later that night, in the heat of battle, I told my sister she was cracked. I got a whipping for it; and a lecture about the Insane Asylum in South Presa in San Antonio. So I figured out cracked means crazy.
That year Larry sat beside me in English class. We were reading “The Road Less Traveled.” The teacher asked where the road less traveled is. Nobody knew. When Larry raised his hand we rolled our eyes and knew he would “boldly go where no man has gone before.” I can’t remember his words verbatim, but the essence of his vision of the road has stayed with me.
“The road,” he said, and it took him a while to say it, “the road is where no one is taller or shorter, faster or slower, where nobody has to catch up, nobody’s stupid and nobody’s alone.”
We should be so cracked.
Leonard Cohen wrote and sang, “There are cracks, cracks in everything; that’s how the light gets in, that’s how the light gets in.”
Sometimes, that’s how the light gets out.
We were talking about one of the kids in my class who lived one street over named Larry. Larry was slow and I don’t mean in the 50-yard dash. Glenn was making fun of him, mimicking the way he talked. So was I. He talked like a younger version of Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade.”
“You know he’s cracked,” Glenn said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “He’s real cracked.” (I had no idea what it meant).
Later that night, in the heat of battle, I told my sister she was cracked. I got a whipping for it; and a lecture about the Insane Asylum in South Presa in San Antonio. So I figured out cracked means crazy.
That year Larry sat beside me in English class. We were reading “The Road Less Traveled.” The teacher asked where the road less traveled is. Nobody knew. When Larry raised his hand we rolled our eyes and knew he would “boldly go where no man has gone before.” I can’t remember his words verbatim, but the essence of his vision of the road has stayed with me.
“The road,” he said, and it took him a while to say it, “the road is where no one is taller or shorter, faster or slower, where nobody has to catch up, nobody’s stupid and nobody’s alone.”
We should be so cracked.
Leonard Cohen wrote and sang, “There are cracks, cracks in everything; that’s how the light gets in, that’s how the light gets in.”
Sometimes, that’s how the light gets out.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Love Without Understanding
George Mason wasn’t the first person to tell me I had a problem with my dad, but he was the first person I listened to. We happened to be leading a week-long camp together and though we had never met we stayed up late every night talking in my room. That’s when he brought up the thing about my dad. He asked if I’d ever considered letting go of some of the baggage.
“It’s that obvious?” I asked him.
“It’s obvious,” he said.
For weeks I thought about what George had said, but what could I do? My dad had been dead for 10 years. I called George in Dallas. He asked me where my dad was buried.
“In the panhandle of Texas,” I told him. “In Plainview between Lubbock and Amarillo.”
“Let’s fly over there and see him,” he said.
So we did.
We got to the cemetery late in the afternoon. It was rainy and cold. Every grave marker is flat at Roselawn. Great for mowing, not so great for finding your father. And if that’s not enough, the grass had been mowed the day before.
So George and I went from marker to marker raking off the wet grass with our fingers and looking for Joseph Perry Wood, USAF.
I was carrying 15 pages of things I wanted to tell him. I hadn’t held anything back.
An hour later I found him. I knelt down in the grass and began to read. George was there beside me with his hand on my shoulder. I was losing it big time. I gave up after page one and shoved the rest in my pants pocket.
Everything I had written on those yellow pages, the raw and ragged sentiments I had carried in my heart seemed smaller. I’m not saying they were little things. I’m just saying they weren’t the main things. The main thing was that I loved him. However flawed he was I loved him.
There comes a time when you finally begin to let the pain go a little at a time. Underneath the pain is love. Not understanding, but love.
“It’s that obvious?” I asked him.
“It’s obvious,” he said.
For weeks I thought about what George had said, but what could I do? My dad had been dead for 10 years. I called George in Dallas. He asked me where my dad was buried.
“In the panhandle of Texas,” I told him. “In Plainview between Lubbock and Amarillo.”
“Let’s fly over there and see him,” he said.
So we did.
We got to the cemetery late in the afternoon. It was rainy and cold. Every grave marker is flat at Roselawn. Great for mowing, not so great for finding your father. And if that’s not enough, the grass had been mowed the day before.
So George and I went from marker to marker raking off the wet grass with our fingers and looking for Joseph Perry Wood, USAF.
I was carrying 15 pages of things I wanted to tell him. I hadn’t held anything back.
An hour later I found him. I knelt down in the grass and began to read. George was there beside me with his hand on my shoulder. I was losing it big time. I gave up after page one and shoved the rest in my pants pocket.
Everything I had written on those yellow pages, the raw and ragged sentiments I had carried in my heart seemed smaller. I’m not saying they were little things. I’m just saying they weren’t the main things. The main thing was that I loved him. However flawed he was I loved him.
There comes a time when you finally begin to let the pain go a little at a time. Underneath the pain is love. Not understanding, but love.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Rags
Things happen we wish we could take back. Something we did, or said. Everything spins out of control. Anger is delivered with a flame-thrower. Lines are crossed and somebody gets hurt. Children die in friendly fire. Somebody earns a black belt in sarcasm and draws blood. Someone dies a thousand deaths, but has to go to work in the morning.
Every one of us has scraps of memory we’d like to throw away, but who would want them? Who could possibly want every humiliating failure that is a part of our permanent record? Who salvages our self-destructive choices and wasted years? Who picks up the pieces of broken dreams?
In the early 30’s, a man pushed a cart through the neighborhoods of Cleveland shouting, “Rags! Rags!” Women would come out their front door bringing him bags of old rags and scraps of material. A boy asked his mother what the man did with the rags.
“He takes them home, washes them and makes the most beautiful loop rugs. His rugs are big and round with every color you can imagine. He has been making rugs out of rags ever since I was a little girl.”
Nothing that happens to us is lost. No experience is worthless. No moment is empty. Nothing is junk. We store away scraps of our childhood when we felt left out and forgotten. But when we tell children these stories, especially after a sad day at school, they feel less alone.
Do you ever hear someone pushing a cart down the streets of your life asking for the rags and scraps you’d like to forget? This Artist has been working since the beginning of time; and will accept any and every scrap, however dirty and worn, to work into a beautiful and original pattern that tells the story of our lives.
Every one of us has scraps of memory we’d like to throw away, but who would want them? Who could possibly want every humiliating failure that is a part of our permanent record? Who salvages our self-destructive choices and wasted years? Who picks up the pieces of broken dreams?
In the early 30’s, a man pushed a cart through the neighborhoods of Cleveland shouting, “Rags! Rags!” Women would come out their front door bringing him bags of old rags and scraps of material. A boy asked his mother what the man did with the rags.
“He takes them home, washes them and makes the most beautiful loop rugs. His rugs are big and round with every color you can imagine. He has been making rugs out of rags ever since I was a little girl.”
Nothing that happens to us is lost. No experience is worthless. No moment is empty. Nothing is junk. We store away scraps of our childhood when we felt left out and forgotten. But when we tell children these stories, especially after a sad day at school, they feel less alone.
Do you ever hear someone pushing a cart down the streets of your life asking for the rags and scraps you’d like to forget? This Artist has been working since the beginning of time; and will accept any and every scrap, however dirty and worn, to work into a beautiful and original pattern that tells the story of our lives.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Unloading
We were on our way to a meeting. There were three of us in a green Pontiac. We passed a long line of 18-wheelers waiting at a weighing station. The driver at the front of the line was pulled over and unloading part of his load. He was over the weight limit.
What if there was a weighing station for us? Don’t suck in your stomach; I’m not talking about fat. I’m talking about a different kind of load. The kind that is hard to see. The kind that shows up in your eyes.
Imagine being pulled over periodically, stepping up on the scales and hearing some hairy-knuckle type say, “Sorry, but you’re carrying more than the maximum weight for a load-bearing rig of your make, model and year. You’ll have to unload the excess, put it on another carrier, or leave it behind. That’s the only way we’re going to let you back on the road.”
It could be guilt, or grief; shame, anger or disappointment…. It could be a truckload of good deeds. Overload is overload whether you’re carrying gold or garbage.
Lewis Grizzard’s father died, broken and cut-off, one Christmas.
“I asked daddy a thousand times, ‘What’s wrong? Why can’t you stay sober? What can be so bad you can’t talk about it?”
He began crying. I think he wanted to tell me. I think he wanted to tell somebody, but he never had the courage.
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said. “A bad mistake.”
“What did you do, daddy? Please tell me.”
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said.
“Did you kill somebody? Did you rob or cheat somebody? Were you a child molester; or guilty of cowardice?”
Whatever his sin, his secret, I loved him---and I loved him anyway.
Who in your life has the love and power to pull you over and say, “Enough! You’ve got to unload some of this. You are not safe.”
And who do you trust enough to pull over and unload the excess baggage?
What if there was a weighing station for us? Don’t suck in your stomach; I’m not talking about fat. I’m talking about a different kind of load. The kind that is hard to see. The kind that shows up in your eyes.
Imagine being pulled over periodically, stepping up on the scales and hearing some hairy-knuckle type say, “Sorry, but you’re carrying more than the maximum weight for a load-bearing rig of your make, model and year. You’ll have to unload the excess, put it on another carrier, or leave it behind. That’s the only way we’re going to let you back on the road.”
It could be guilt, or grief; shame, anger or disappointment…. It could be a truckload of good deeds. Overload is overload whether you’re carrying gold or garbage.
Lewis Grizzard’s father died, broken and cut-off, one Christmas.
“I asked daddy a thousand times, ‘What’s wrong? Why can’t you stay sober? What can be so bad you can’t talk about it?”
He began crying. I think he wanted to tell me. I think he wanted to tell somebody, but he never had the courage.
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said. “A bad mistake.”
“What did you do, daddy? Please tell me.”
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said.
“Did you kill somebody? Did you rob or cheat somebody? Were you a child molester; or guilty of cowardice?”
Whatever his sin, his secret, I loved him---and I loved him anyway.
Who in your life has the love and power to pull you over and say, “Enough! You’ve got to unload some of this. You are not safe.”
And who do you trust enough to pull over and unload the excess baggage?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Paradigm Shift
My friend was studying all night for his last big test. It was all that stood between him and his doctorate. The night before the test he settled in at his desk. He heard a dog barking. He tried to ignore it, but it was one of those hairless rats that yip like there’s no tomorrow. It went on all night.
He was too angry to study. He gave up at 3:00 and set his alarm for 6:00 so he could bang on the neighbor’s door. A woman in her late 50’s came to the door. It was obvious she’d been up all night.
My friend said to her, “In six hours I will take the biggest test of my life. Your dog has been barking all night and I haven’t been able to concentrate. Would you please keep him quiet?”
She apologized and said, “My husband died suddenly yesterday and I didn’t even hear the dog. I’m sorry he disturbed you. I’ll let him in.”
Everything changed. My friend asked if she would like some company. She pushed open the screen door and touched his back as he walked in. He sat with her for a few hours, went to school and passed the test.
We never know what’s going on inside a person when they are not themselves. It might be as simple as a restless night, or as sad as a lost love.
He was too angry to study. He gave up at 3:00 and set his alarm for 6:00 so he could bang on the neighbor’s door. A woman in her late 50’s came to the door. It was obvious she’d been up all night.
My friend said to her, “In six hours I will take the biggest test of my life. Your dog has been barking all night and I haven’t been able to concentrate. Would you please keep him quiet?”
She apologized and said, “My husband died suddenly yesterday and I didn’t even hear the dog. I’m sorry he disturbed you. I’ll let him in.”
Everything changed. My friend asked if she would like some company. She pushed open the screen door and touched his back as he walked in. He sat with her for a few hours, went to school and passed the test.
We never know what’s going on inside a person when they are not themselves. It might be as simple as a restless night, or as sad as a lost love.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Reunion
When I was a kid we went to the Holmes family reunion in Oklahoma. My dad’s mother was a Holmes’ before she was a Wood. The Holmes’ were less fun than the Wood’s and the Wood’s were no fun at all.
The day started out heavy: hot biscuits with churned butter, sausage the size of pancakes, pancakes the size of hubcaps, bacon as thick as a Butterfinger, eggs fried in bacon grease, red-eye gravy, potatoes, grits and coffee. Grease…is the word.
Boys and girls couldn’t swim together. I didn’t understand this. We were cousins. Then again, this was Oklahoma. The boys swam first, right after lunch. Why should girls be the only ones with cramps? We swam in the river in long sleeves, jeans and tennis shoes. We sank like stones, but we did not lust after each other.
I don’t know what the girls wore. I hid in the hedge once, but my aunt Nella found me and pinched my arm all the way to my grandfather.
We had church every night and when I say church I don’t mean four verses of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” in a brick building. The ceiling was stars and the floor was grass. There were guitars, drums, tambourines, banjo and bass…singing and shouting, dancing in the spirit, rolling in the aisles, and speaking with other tongues. It was a trip.
I am 60 now and my life hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped, but when worse comes to worse I still see those Oklahoma stars, and every face around the table.
Sometimes I borrow their faith when I don’t have much of my own.
The day started out heavy: hot biscuits with churned butter, sausage the size of pancakes, pancakes the size of hubcaps, bacon as thick as a Butterfinger, eggs fried in bacon grease, red-eye gravy, potatoes, grits and coffee. Grease…is the word.
Boys and girls couldn’t swim together. I didn’t understand this. We were cousins. Then again, this was Oklahoma. The boys swam first, right after lunch. Why should girls be the only ones with cramps? We swam in the river in long sleeves, jeans and tennis shoes. We sank like stones, but we did not lust after each other.
I don’t know what the girls wore. I hid in the hedge once, but my aunt Nella found me and pinched my arm all the way to my grandfather.
We had church every night and when I say church I don’t mean four verses of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” in a brick building. The ceiling was stars and the floor was grass. There were guitars, drums, tambourines, banjo and bass…singing and shouting, dancing in the spirit, rolling in the aisles, and speaking with other tongues. It was a trip.
I am 60 now and my life hasn’t worked out the way I’d hoped, but when worse comes to worse I still see those Oklahoma stars, and every face around the table.
Sometimes I borrow their faith when I don’t have much of my own.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Letting Go
Do you remember the poster with the picture of a cat hanging onto a rope with a knot in it? Caption: “When you come to the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on.”
We know about being at the end of our rope. My aunt called it “being at your wit’s end.” So you make like a cat and hang.
The thing I hated most about high school P. E. (besides showering) was climbing the rope and be graded on it. If you climbed using only your hands - A. If you climbed using your hands and feet- B. If you could hang on the rope for 30 seconds - C.
Hanging on is harder than it seems.
I’m still hanging on to all kinds of things. I have trouble letting go.
My oldest daughter, Tiffany, is 32. I let go with one hand and hold on with the other.
My daughter Sarabeth is 17. She is in her senior year. How do you ever let go?
When both girls were learning to ride their bikes, each screamed, “Please daddy, don’t let me go!” They didn’t need to say please.
I know why we tie a knot when we come to the end of our rope. Because it’s better than letting go and getting hurt. But it hurts to hold on, too. We get stuck.
Sooner or later, cats like us have to open our paws and let go. But the threat of breaking something is always there.
I am constantly surprised that the only thing broken is my fall.
We know about being at the end of our rope. My aunt called it “being at your wit’s end.” So you make like a cat and hang.
The thing I hated most about high school P. E. (besides showering) was climbing the rope and be graded on it. If you climbed using only your hands - A. If you climbed using your hands and feet- B. If you could hang on the rope for 30 seconds - C.
Hanging on is harder than it seems.
I’m still hanging on to all kinds of things. I have trouble letting go.
My oldest daughter, Tiffany, is 32. I let go with one hand and hold on with the other.
My daughter Sarabeth is 17. She is in her senior year. How do you ever let go?
When both girls were learning to ride their bikes, each screamed, “Please daddy, don’t let me go!” They didn’t need to say please.
I know why we tie a knot when we come to the end of our rope. Because it’s better than letting go and getting hurt. But it hurts to hold on, too. We get stuck.
Sooner or later, cats like us have to open our paws and let go. But the threat of breaking something is always there.
I am constantly surprised that the only thing broken is my fall.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Hunger of the Heart
No matter what I eat for dinner I get hungry again around 11:00. One minute I am writing at my desk, the next I am standing in front of the refrigerator. I don’t know how long I’ve been there, but I am getting a nice tan. When I close my eyes I can still see the Miracle Whip.
I’m not sure what I want. Here are some options: ham, fried chicken, and barbequed ribs in aluminum foil. Sandwich stuff. Breakfast. Cold pizza. Ice cream. Nothing knocks me out, but I’ll have something.
I am now in front of the pantry. There is bean dip here; and Fritos. Picante sauce. Keebler. Nabisco. Jalapeno Cheetos. Popcorn. Bananas. Peanut butter. Moon pies. It’s not that I don’t have a lot of choices, but I can’t make up my mind. I will. I always do.
When my hunger alarm goes off at 11:00 I go directly to the kitchen. But if I will slow things down before I get up out of my chair I can locate my hunger. I usually find it a few inches above my stomach. The hunger is in my heart. But I have always responded to all hunger signals by making myself a sandwich.
By late evening I start to feel the deep hunger I have ignored all day. The same hunger I used to drown every night for years with a bottle of Scotch.
I am hungry for honest, faithful relationship. I am hungry for intimacy with God.
I am hungry for what Emily Dickinson calls, “the only Food that lasts.”
I’m not sure what I want. Here are some options: ham, fried chicken, and barbequed ribs in aluminum foil. Sandwich stuff. Breakfast. Cold pizza. Ice cream. Nothing knocks me out, but I’ll have something.
I am now in front of the pantry. There is bean dip here; and Fritos. Picante sauce. Keebler. Nabisco. Jalapeno Cheetos. Popcorn. Bananas. Peanut butter. Moon pies. It’s not that I don’t have a lot of choices, but I can’t make up my mind. I will. I always do.
When my hunger alarm goes off at 11:00 I go directly to the kitchen. But if I will slow things down before I get up out of my chair I can locate my hunger. I usually find it a few inches above my stomach. The hunger is in my heart. But I have always responded to all hunger signals by making myself a sandwich.
By late evening I start to feel the deep hunger I have ignored all day. The same hunger I used to drown every night for years with a bottle of Scotch.
I am hungry for honest, faithful relationship. I am hungry for intimacy with God.
I am hungry for what Emily Dickinson calls, “the only Food that lasts.”
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Paths
The dog is lying just inside the front door. He opens one eye when I come in. He doesn’t get up. He knows me. He is sad because the woman of the house is dying.
I say hello to her husband who is sitting alone at the kitchen table eating lunch. I offer my hand and remind him of my name. I ask if I can see his wife. He says yes and gets back to his sandwich.
The house is still like summer. Her bedroom is big. So is the bed. She looks so small for a woman over six feet tall. She is asleep on her back, barely breathing; but still she shines.
I pull up a chair beside the bed. She opens one eye, sees me and tries to sit up.
“Don’t,” I say.
She gives me her hand. Her fingers are elegant and worn. The hand I hold has been places.
I want to talk, but she is out of words; so I sit while she sleeps.
On the nightstand in a crystal dish is a gold whistle. I pick up her lipstick---plum brandy. There is a thick, double-sided emery board. I notice that her nails are done. A small glass cookie jar sits in the corner near the lamp, half full of yellow gummy bears.
Her daughters, Marsha and Lee, are smiling in a photograph. They have their mother’s natural beauty. A painting hangs above her side of the bed. Two little girls with their mother at the lake. The younger girl is barefoot, lying in the grass at her mother’s feet. The older is skipping stones.
There is one sentence of Scripture slipped under the glass on the table: “He leads me in paths of righteousness…”
Paths! It is plural. There is more than one way.
I say hello to her husband who is sitting alone at the kitchen table eating lunch. I offer my hand and remind him of my name. I ask if I can see his wife. He says yes and gets back to his sandwich.
The house is still like summer. Her bedroom is big. So is the bed. She looks so small for a woman over six feet tall. She is asleep on her back, barely breathing; but still she shines.
I pull up a chair beside the bed. She opens one eye, sees me and tries to sit up.
“Don’t,” I say.
She gives me her hand. Her fingers are elegant and worn. The hand I hold has been places.
I want to talk, but she is out of words; so I sit while she sleeps.
On the nightstand in a crystal dish is a gold whistle. I pick up her lipstick---plum brandy. There is a thick, double-sided emery board. I notice that her nails are done. A small glass cookie jar sits in the corner near the lamp, half full of yellow gummy bears.
Her daughters, Marsha and Lee, are smiling in a photograph. They have their mother’s natural beauty. A painting hangs above her side of the bed. Two little girls with their mother at the lake. The younger girl is barefoot, lying in the grass at her mother’s feet. The older is skipping stones.
There is one sentence of Scripture slipped under the glass on the table: “He leads me in paths of righteousness…”
Paths! It is plural. There is more than one way.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
I Shaved My Father
I shaved my father’s face before he died.
“Don’t you think I need a shave?” He rubbed his whiskers with his hand. He had never asked my opinion about anything.
“You look fine to me.” I always told him whatever I thought would make him glad.
I didn’t want to shave him. I wanted someone from the hospital to do it. It’s not so much I was afraid I would cut him. I was afraid of the closeness; touching his face, moving his nose from one side to the other.
He pointed to the cabinet above the sink. He was really going to make me do this. I found the shaving cream. I stood looking in the mirror wondering how I was going to get through it. I lathered him up. Then, with the smallest strokes I cleaned him up with a Gillette Super Blue blade.
I remember when he first shaved me when I was heading out to a church Sweetheart Banquet. It was with the same kind of rig, and he seemed proud to be doing it. Fourteen years later I was shaving him for a whole different kind of date.
He asked me to move my chair near his bed. He started telling me last minute things, like where to find the important papers. It took everything I had to stay in the room. When he mentioned the Will, I said, “We don’t need to get into all that now.” I got up and went to the sink to wet a wash cloth. I looked in the mirror, pulled myself together, went back over to the bed and wiped shaving cream from the corner of his mouth and behind his ear.
He asked me to get his calendar. He wanted to know his schedule for the next few months. I knew where this was going.
“I’d like for you to cancel everything.”
I told him no, that we didn’t need to do that. I told him that we were going to get through this; “we’re going to beat this thing.” He asked my brother-in-law to handle things.
That was 31 years ago. I was 29 and he was 52. I’m sure he expected that I’d become more of a man; I never expected he had become more like a boy. So here we were, two boys---one freckled, the other fair---together for one last summer day; finally daring to love each other, and to lean.
“Don’t you think I need a shave?” He rubbed his whiskers with his hand. He had never asked my opinion about anything.
“You look fine to me.” I always told him whatever I thought would make him glad.
I didn’t want to shave him. I wanted someone from the hospital to do it. It’s not so much I was afraid I would cut him. I was afraid of the closeness; touching his face, moving his nose from one side to the other.
He pointed to the cabinet above the sink. He was really going to make me do this. I found the shaving cream. I stood looking in the mirror wondering how I was going to get through it. I lathered him up. Then, with the smallest strokes I cleaned him up with a Gillette Super Blue blade.
I remember when he first shaved me when I was heading out to a church Sweetheart Banquet. It was with the same kind of rig, and he seemed proud to be doing it. Fourteen years later I was shaving him for a whole different kind of date.
He asked me to move my chair near his bed. He started telling me last minute things, like where to find the important papers. It took everything I had to stay in the room. When he mentioned the Will, I said, “We don’t need to get into all that now.” I got up and went to the sink to wet a wash cloth. I looked in the mirror, pulled myself together, went back over to the bed and wiped shaving cream from the corner of his mouth and behind his ear.
He asked me to get his calendar. He wanted to know his schedule for the next few months. I knew where this was going.
“I’d like for you to cancel everything.”
I told him no, that we didn’t need to do that. I told him that we were going to get through this; “we’re going to beat this thing.” He asked my brother-in-law to handle things.
That was 31 years ago. I was 29 and he was 52. I’m sure he expected that I’d become more of a man; I never expected he had become more like a boy. So here we were, two boys---one freckled, the other fair---together for one last summer day; finally daring to love each other, and to lean.
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Test Tube
Every Wednesday for three years I spent an hour-and-a-half with Mary Harris, a wise woman in her 80’s. I told myself I wasn’t going to her for therapy, but therapy was what was going on in her living room. I was in Seminary at the time. I had come to California from a big church in Texas. I figured I had exactly what California needed. How Texas of me.
One morning it occurred to me that maybe Mrs. Harris needed a dose of the old-time religion. I asked her if she’d ever heard a really good sermon. She said she wasn’t sure. I told her I had one. She asked me, “Whose?” I told her, “Mine.” She told me she’d be glad for me to bring it by next time. I touched her hand and told her I’d be right back. (I happened to have one in the car).
I fully expected her to pop it into the player immediately. She didn’t. Maybe she was waiting until after I left.
I fully expected her to call me on the phone that night and rave on and on about me.
She didn’t.
I came back the next Wednesday. She didn’t mention it. She didn’t mention it the next Wednesday either. Finally, I asked her if she ever heard the tape.
“Yes,” she said. “I heard it twice the day you left it with me.”
“What did you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t think you are ready to hear,” she said.
I told her I was ready to hear. I assumed she was afraid I would become too inflated from all her praise.
She said that both times she heard it she kept getting a recurring picture:
“There was a big test tube filled with people, like ants, working. There was a house 100 yards away from the test tube. Every day you would come out of the house carrying a tall ladder and a bull horn. You would lean the ladder against the test tube, climb to the top, lean halfway in and shout instructions down to the workers. But no one ever listened to you because they all knew you had never been in the test tube yourself.”
The next summer I fell in. It about killed me, but it was the most fortunate fall I’ve ever taken. I ran into God who had been living and working down there all the time.
One morning it occurred to me that maybe Mrs. Harris needed a dose of the old-time religion. I asked her if she’d ever heard a really good sermon. She said she wasn’t sure. I told her I had one. She asked me, “Whose?” I told her, “Mine.” She told me she’d be glad for me to bring it by next time. I touched her hand and told her I’d be right back. (I happened to have one in the car).
I fully expected her to pop it into the player immediately. She didn’t. Maybe she was waiting until after I left.
I fully expected her to call me on the phone that night and rave on and on about me.
She didn’t.
I came back the next Wednesday. She didn’t mention it. She didn’t mention it the next Wednesday either. Finally, I asked her if she ever heard the tape.
“Yes,” she said. “I heard it twice the day you left it with me.”
“What did you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t think you are ready to hear,” she said.
I told her I was ready to hear. I assumed she was afraid I would become too inflated from all her praise.
She said that both times she heard it she kept getting a recurring picture:
“There was a big test tube filled with people, like ants, working. There was a house 100 yards away from the test tube. Every day you would come out of the house carrying a tall ladder and a bull horn. You would lean the ladder against the test tube, climb to the top, lean halfway in and shout instructions down to the workers. But no one ever listened to you because they all knew you had never been in the test tube yourself.”
The next summer I fell in. It about killed me, but it was the most fortunate fall I’ve ever taken. I ran into God who had been living and working down there all the time.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Grace Will Find Us
The longest year of my life was the six months I spent as a volunteer chaplain on the transplant floor at Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital. When it was good it was very, very good; and when it was bad…
A five-year-old boy was waiting for a liver. The clock was ticking. His parents would come to see him every day, before and after work. One afternoon I didn’t want to see them. Everything was too sad, plus I was out of gas. I snuck out early. At 4:45, I headed downstairs for the parking lot. I got off the elevator in the lobby and saw them pulling into the handicapped space near the front door. I ducked into the bathroom.
I was looking in the mirror when I heard someone coming. I hurried into the last stall. Someone came in. I climbed up on the toilet, bent over and held my breath. I heard a flush, water in the sink, then his voice:
“I know this is hard. It is hard for everyone. We don’t expect you to be God, just our friend. We know you need to take care of yourself. We want you to. You can go home without feeling guilty about it.”
He opened the door and went upstairs. I stayed frozen in the stall, king of the toilet, for another ten minutes. Then, I walked out into the parking lot to my car and went home.
I discovered something that afternoon; something terrible and wonderful. Grace will find us wherever we hide.
A five-year-old boy was waiting for a liver. The clock was ticking. His parents would come to see him every day, before and after work. One afternoon I didn’t want to see them. Everything was too sad, plus I was out of gas. I snuck out early. At 4:45, I headed downstairs for the parking lot. I got off the elevator in the lobby and saw them pulling into the handicapped space near the front door. I ducked into the bathroom.
I was looking in the mirror when I heard someone coming. I hurried into the last stall. Someone came in. I climbed up on the toilet, bent over and held my breath. I heard a flush, water in the sink, then his voice:
“I know this is hard. It is hard for everyone. We don’t expect you to be God, just our friend. We know you need to take care of yourself. We want you to. You can go home without feeling guilty about it.”
He opened the door and went upstairs. I stayed frozen in the stall, king of the toilet, for another ten minutes. Then, I walked out into the parking lot to my car and went home.
I discovered something that afternoon; something terrible and wonderful. Grace will find us wherever we hide.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Worst That Could Happen
I was in Seminary in Berkeley when I discovered a psychiatrist named Fritz Kunkel. He practiced in Los Angeles. When he died his wife donated his papers to the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Episcopal) in Berkeley. I began a dissertation on his life and thought and received permission to read everything---letters, lectures and an unfinished book. I spent several months snooping through his stuff.
I ran across a lecture he gave in Chicago in the early 50’s. I don’t remember anything in it except one sentence written sideways in the margin in pencil. It was so smeared I could hardly make it out.
It said,” The greatest contribution a human being can make to life is through what’s wrong with him.”
I read it again, “The greatest contribution…through what’s wrong with us.”
I thought about it for days. Of course! What do we know more intimately than what is wrong with us? It haunts our dreams. It stares back at us when we look in the mirror. We can’t outrun it.
I am thinking of a recovering alcoholic in Austin who is a true “man of the cloth.” His cloth is a towel. He wipes faces, floors and beds of alcoholics when they come in sick. He is a high school teacher.
I am thinking of a woman who lost her baby sister in a fire. She was just a girl herself when it happened. She sometimes blames herself. She brings immeasurable depth of understanding and generous compassion to any situation. She is a stockbroker.
I was in a hospital room with a cancer patient doing my best in the middle of bottomless sadness. Suddenly the door opened and a cancer survivor came into the room bringing light and hope. She is a florist.
I’ve seen it in divorce, infertility, SIDS, abortion, drug addiction, death of a partner, job termination, chronic pain, bankruptcy, rape, crime…you name it.
It is just like God, isn’t it; to use the worst thing that has happened to us, the humiliating thing, the wrong thing, the thing we thought would kill us, to help in the healing of another.
I ran across a lecture he gave in Chicago in the early 50’s. I don’t remember anything in it except one sentence written sideways in the margin in pencil. It was so smeared I could hardly make it out.
It said,” The greatest contribution a human being can make to life is through what’s wrong with him.”
I read it again, “The greatest contribution…through what’s wrong with us.”
I thought about it for days. Of course! What do we know more intimately than what is wrong with us? It haunts our dreams. It stares back at us when we look in the mirror. We can’t outrun it.
I am thinking of a recovering alcoholic in Austin who is a true “man of the cloth.” His cloth is a towel. He wipes faces, floors and beds of alcoholics when they come in sick. He is a high school teacher.
I am thinking of a woman who lost her baby sister in a fire. She was just a girl herself when it happened. She sometimes blames herself. She brings immeasurable depth of understanding and generous compassion to any situation. She is a stockbroker.
I was in a hospital room with a cancer patient doing my best in the middle of bottomless sadness. Suddenly the door opened and a cancer survivor came into the room bringing light and hope. She is a florist.
I’ve seen it in divorce, infertility, SIDS, abortion, drug addiction, death of a partner, job termination, chronic pain, bankruptcy, rape, crime…you name it.
It is just like God, isn’t it; to use the worst thing that has happened to us, the humiliating thing, the wrong thing, the thing we thought would kill us, to help in the healing of another.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Death of a Dream
My favorite game growing up was “The Game of Life.” I still like it. I played it yesterday.
Players start out with different color cars and cruise through the big choices of life: Will I go to college, or start a career? Borrow tuition, or get a job? Graduate? Career? Salary. Pay taxes. Vote. Choose a spouse. Get engaged. Get married. Buy a starter home. Have babies (limit two). Go back to school? Lose job. Change career. Sue. Get sued. Send kids to sports camp? Upgrade home? Buy lakeside cabin? Become a grandparent. Visit the Great Wall of China? Collect pension. Retire at Millionaire Estates, or Countryside Acres?
The game is so good and has lasted so long because we are born dreamers. We visualize the unfolding of our life from early-early. If it happens like we hope it’s great, but if it crumbles under our feet it’s an earthquake.
Ken Moses is a psychologist whose specialty is working with parents of “impaired” children. He interned in a Chicago Hospital. During his first week he met with a group of parents. He began by asking them to describe their children.
“We went around the room and everybody talked. I had never seen such emotional extremes: anxiety, denial, anger, betrayal, depression, rage, sadness, resentment. So much pain. People cried easily. Guilt poured out.”
He went back to his office wondering what was going on. The parents had shown all the classic signs of grief, but no one had died. The next week he went back to the group and told them he didn’t understand their grief.
“Your children are alive!” he told them.
Over the next few weeks those parents taught him that what had died was their dream of who and what their children would become.
One mother wanted to be a dancer but her conservative parents said no. So when she married and became pregnant she was sure she would have a daughter with long legs and grace. Her daughter would become the dancer she never was. Her daughter was born with cerebral palsy.
Dr. Moses had dreams for his son. He would become the baseball player Ken couldn’t because of rheumatic fever. His son was born blind.
“I had dreams for this boy,” he said. “Dreams of who he was supposed to be. But if he is blind it won’t happen like I dreamed. Then what am I supposed to do, and how?
What do we do when our children can’t, or won’t, realize the dreams we have for them? Or a friend, spouse, or colleague? How do we cope?
Some cry alone. Others believe dreams aren’t real enough to cry over. But we all know what it is to watch a dream die.
Go ahead and grieve. These deaths are as real as any loss we experience.
Players start out with different color cars and cruise through the big choices of life: Will I go to college, or start a career? Borrow tuition, or get a job? Graduate? Career? Salary. Pay taxes. Vote. Choose a spouse. Get engaged. Get married. Buy a starter home. Have babies (limit two). Go back to school? Lose job. Change career. Sue. Get sued. Send kids to sports camp? Upgrade home? Buy lakeside cabin? Become a grandparent. Visit the Great Wall of China? Collect pension. Retire at Millionaire Estates, or Countryside Acres?
The game is so good and has lasted so long because we are born dreamers. We visualize the unfolding of our life from early-early. If it happens like we hope it’s great, but if it crumbles under our feet it’s an earthquake.
Ken Moses is a psychologist whose specialty is working with parents of “impaired” children. He interned in a Chicago Hospital. During his first week he met with a group of parents. He began by asking them to describe their children.
“We went around the room and everybody talked. I had never seen such emotional extremes: anxiety, denial, anger, betrayal, depression, rage, sadness, resentment. So much pain. People cried easily. Guilt poured out.”
He went back to his office wondering what was going on. The parents had shown all the classic signs of grief, but no one had died. The next week he went back to the group and told them he didn’t understand their grief.
“Your children are alive!” he told them.
Over the next few weeks those parents taught him that what had died was their dream of who and what their children would become.
One mother wanted to be a dancer but her conservative parents said no. So when she married and became pregnant she was sure she would have a daughter with long legs and grace. Her daughter would become the dancer she never was. Her daughter was born with cerebral palsy.
Dr. Moses had dreams for his son. He would become the baseball player Ken couldn’t because of rheumatic fever. His son was born blind.
“I had dreams for this boy,” he said. “Dreams of who he was supposed to be. But if he is blind it won’t happen like I dreamed. Then what am I supposed to do, and how?
What do we do when our children can’t, or won’t, realize the dreams we have for them? Or a friend, spouse, or colleague? How do we cope?
Some cry alone. Others believe dreams aren’t real enough to cry over. But we all know what it is to watch a dream die.
Go ahead and grieve. These deaths are as real as any loss we experience.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Backlash
A father took his son fishing off an old pier. They stood 10 feet apart with a red cooler between them. They didn’t talk, they fished.
The boy made his first cast hoping his father was watching. Lucky for him he wasn’t because something went wrong. Maybe he was trying to cast too far out, but for whatever reason he ended up with a nasty backlash. The line looked like a bird’s nest had exploded.
It was his father’s reel, handed down like an heirloom, like an old watch, from his father. The boy had begged to use it. Now look at it. One cast. He turned his back and tried to untangle it. He couldn’t have done it even if he had fingernails. He was afraid the reel was a goner.
His father finally turned and noticed his son wasn’t fishing. He saw him bending over, working on the reel. He knew what was wrong without asking.
“Let me see the old girl,” he said. The feel of it took him back to his own boyhood, to the same pier and to Saturdays like this one---his father’s arms behind and around him, big hands over smaller hands, casting sidearm, practicing.
He worked at untangling the line but it was hopeless.
“I knew this day would come,” he told his boy.
He sat down on the edge of the pier, opened the tackle box, pulled out a new reel still in the package, unscrewed the old reel, wrapped it in his handkerchief and laid it down in the box like a loved one. Then, he mounted the new reel onto the rod, handed it to his son and said, “Now you are ready to do some fishing with your own rig.”
Backlash. There’s no way around it. And it’s easy to get the idea from well-meaning doctors and friends that we are supposed to trace the mess back to the beginning, find the root cause and untangle our knots. But sometimes all we can do is hand it over to someone who recognizes what is beyond repair and needs to be laid to rest. Often it’s the very thing that stands in the way of beginning again.
The boy made his first cast hoping his father was watching. Lucky for him he wasn’t because something went wrong. Maybe he was trying to cast too far out, but for whatever reason he ended up with a nasty backlash. The line looked like a bird’s nest had exploded.
It was his father’s reel, handed down like an heirloom, like an old watch, from his father. The boy had begged to use it. Now look at it. One cast. He turned his back and tried to untangle it. He couldn’t have done it even if he had fingernails. He was afraid the reel was a goner.
His father finally turned and noticed his son wasn’t fishing. He saw him bending over, working on the reel. He knew what was wrong without asking.
“Let me see the old girl,” he said. The feel of it took him back to his own boyhood, to the same pier and to Saturdays like this one---his father’s arms behind and around him, big hands over smaller hands, casting sidearm, practicing.
He worked at untangling the line but it was hopeless.
“I knew this day would come,” he told his boy.
He sat down on the edge of the pier, opened the tackle box, pulled out a new reel still in the package, unscrewed the old reel, wrapped it in his handkerchief and laid it down in the box like a loved one. Then, he mounted the new reel onto the rod, handed it to his son and said, “Now you are ready to do some fishing with your own rig.”
Backlash. There’s no way around it. And it’s easy to get the idea from well-meaning doctors and friends that we are supposed to trace the mess back to the beginning, find the root cause and untangle our knots. But sometimes all we can do is hand it over to someone who recognizes what is beyond repair and needs to be laid to rest. Often it’s the very thing that stands in the way of beginning again.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Normal
My mother volunteered at the Cerebral Palsy Center. She loved the children and they loved her. She would play with them for hours. Sometimes she would take me with her. I faked every kind of illness to get out of it. Those kids scared me.
Once a year they would pile the children into yellow busses and take them to the circus. One time I went along to help out. One time.
These kids weren’t what I’d call normal. They looked and acted different than any of my friends. They wore braces to walk; some wore helmets and gloves so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. They jerked; they talked loud and laughed most of the time. I couldn’t understand what they were saying to me. The harder I listened the less I understood. Sirens were going off in my head. I felt stupid. They touched me without warning. They pulled on me. They hugged me. They tore my shirt. I yelled at them and made them cry.
Naturally, we had front row seats under the Big Top. When the clowns came in the kids exploded. Anyone sitting nearby eating and drinking ran for cover. I watched our kids more than the circus. They were becoming the greatest show on earth.
They didn’t hold anything back. They were natural in a peculiarly human way. Like when the lions scared them, they screamed. When the trapeze artist fell, they pointed and cried. When little trick dogs jumped onto the backs of beautiful white horses they shrieked, jumped and waved their arms like windmills. I wanted them to tone it down. I wanted the strangers around us to be comfortable. I did the same thing in restaurants to my daughters when they were just children being children.
Something else. They were contagious. I started laughing instead of chuckling. I even shrieked a couple of times! I didn’t realize the circus was such a magic rollercoaster.
I don’t know what “normal” is, God knows I don’t, but I believe these rare children are closer to God’s idea of normal than we are. We are the disabled ones. We disable our hearts so we won’t hurt too much, or be too disappointed. We control our laughter so nothing comes out our nose. We dance better drunk.
I wasn’t tempted to run away and join the circus that day. I was tempted to run away with them.
Once a year they would pile the children into yellow busses and take them to the circus. One time I went along to help out. One time.
These kids weren’t what I’d call normal. They looked and acted different than any of my friends. They wore braces to walk; some wore helmets and gloves so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. They jerked; they talked loud and laughed most of the time. I couldn’t understand what they were saying to me. The harder I listened the less I understood. Sirens were going off in my head. I felt stupid. They touched me without warning. They pulled on me. They hugged me. They tore my shirt. I yelled at them and made them cry.
Naturally, we had front row seats under the Big Top. When the clowns came in the kids exploded. Anyone sitting nearby eating and drinking ran for cover. I watched our kids more than the circus. They were becoming the greatest show on earth.
They didn’t hold anything back. They were natural in a peculiarly human way. Like when the lions scared them, they screamed. When the trapeze artist fell, they pointed and cried. When little trick dogs jumped onto the backs of beautiful white horses they shrieked, jumped and waved their arms like windmills. I wanted them to tone it down. I wanted the strangers around us to be comfortable. I did the same thing in restaurants to my daughters when they were just children being children.
Something else. They were contagious. I started laughing instead of chuckling. I even shrieked a couple of times! I didn’t realize the circus was such a magic rollercoaster.
I don’t know what “normal” is, God knows I don’t, but I believe these rare children are closer to God’s idea of normal than we are. We are the disabled ones. We disable our hearts so we won’t hurt too much, or be too disappointed. We control our laughter so nothing comes out our nose. We dance better drunk.
I wasn’t tempted to run away and join the circus that day. I was tempted to run away with them.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Waiting
Waiting tables is no picnic. I lasted a couple months at a Café in west Texas. It started out a one-night stand filling in for my college roommate, Wayne. Halfway through my shift the owner motioned me over to the register and asked me if I wanted permanent work. I nodded. End of interview. End of Wayne.
The owner was huge. His nose weighed more than my niece. His thighs would throw sparks when he wore polyester. When things were slow he would sit me down at his special teaching table and “edgeecate” me on the general public. He told me they’ll swallow anything if you say it with a smile. Invaluable advice for the ministry. He told me to practice smiling in the shower and to keep repeating aloud, “I’m HAP-PY! I’m HAP-PY!” He taught me the two big questions: “What can I get you?” and “What else can I get you?”
He rehearsed me at his teaching table near the register and stopped me whenever I seemed insincere. When I’d get it right he’d let me bring him pie. He developed a high tolerance for insincerity.
The real money was tip money which was bad news at this joint. I got blamed for late food, raw food, burned food, cold food, wrong food, old food, ugly food, small food and hairy food. But I would stand there and take it like the Cheshire cat, invisible except for the smile.
An old farmer named Tom was impossible to please. At the end of his meal he would reach into his overalls and pull out his coin purse. It was a green plastic thing from the bank shaped like a football with a slit across the top. He’d squeeze the ends with his fingers and it would open like a mouth. He would reach in and delicately pull out a dime and three pennies. He would hide the change under his saucer so I’d be pleasantly surprised.
They call it “waiting” tables but it is a different kind of waiting. It is active, not passive. It is doing something for someone else. It is waiting, hand and foot, on somebody. Being present, attentive, patient and busy.
Imagine waiting on God. Also a different kind of waiting. Not being still, but serving. “What can I get you?”
Any chance we’ve misunderstood Isaiah? “Those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength…”
The owner was huge. His nose weighed more than my niece. His thighs would throw sparks when he wore polyester. When things were slow he would sit me down at his special teaching table and “edgeecate” me on the general public. He told me they’ll swallow anything if you say it with a smile. Invaluable advice for the ministry. He told me to practice smiling in the shower and to keep repeating aloud, “I’m HAP-PY! I’m HAP-PY!” He taught me the two big questions: “What can I get you?” and “What else can I get you?”
He rehearsed me at his teaching table near the register and stopped me whenever I seemed insincere. When I’d get it right he’d let me bring him pie. He developed a high tolerance for insincerity.
The real money was tip money which was bad news at this joint. I got blamed for late food, raw food, burned food, cold food, wrong food, old food, ugly food, small food and hairy food. But I would stand there and take it like the Cheshire cat, invisible except for the smile.
An old farmer named Tom was impossible to please. At the end of his meal he would reach into his overalls and pull out his coin purse. It was a green plastic thing from the bank shaped like a football with a slit across the top. He’d squeeze the ends with his fingers and it would open like a mouth. He would reach in and delicately pull out a dime and three pennies. He would hide the change under his saucer so I’d be pleasantly surprised.
They call it “waiting” tables but it is a different kind of waiting. It is active, not passive. It is doing something for someone else. It is waiting, hand and foot, on somebody. Being present, attentive, patient and busy.
Imagine waiting on God. Also a different kind of waiting. Not being still, but serving. “What can I get you?”
Any chance we’ve misunderstood Isaiah? “Those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength…”
Friday, August 7, 2009
We Are Not God
They led me into Silkworth Unit at Hazelden Alcohol Treatment Center on Mother’s Day, fourteen years ago. There were 22 men between the ages of 20 and 65 sitting on couches and chairs in a big circle talking.
I asked one of my guides, “Which ones are the counselors?” He told me that counselors don’t work weekends. I thought he was kidding.
“Counselors aren’t the reason it works here,” he said. “We are. We help each other. It’s the group. That’s the way it works in here. That’s the way it works out there.”
I hadn’t flown from Texas to Minnesota to sit in a circle of failures, blabbing about what used to be. I wanted at least one bearded guy in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe, quoting Jung and handing out a reading list. I wanted to sober up from the neck up. But I would learn that I am a bundle of appetites.
I was wrong about the counselors. They were competent, but the best help I got was from my peers. They opened their lives to me and we laughed, cried, prayed, worked hard, sat in silence, accepted each other as we were and began to articulate our dreams for a new life. We listened to each other carefully, expected honesty, caught each other in lies, told the hard truth and held each other accountable in all things. We scrubbed toilets together on our knees, made a thousand pots of coffee, swept, moped, washed dishes, cleaned windows, emptied ashtrays and trash cans.
Deeper than anything, we learned that we are not God.
Most of us got sober in those 30 days. Dobb and I have stayed sober for the fourteen years.
I arrived at Hazelden three weeks after a one-car accident which nearly tore my right arm off. My roommates from Arkansas and New York helped me in and out of the shower, buttoned and unbuttoned me, carried my tray, helped me make my bed and do my daily work. Gladly.
The business of the church was being done, without the wine, on earth as it is.
I asked one of my guides, “Which ones are the counselors?” He told me that counselors don’t work weekends. I thought he was kidding.
“Counselors aren’t the reason it works here,” he said. “We are. We help each other. It’s the group. That’s the way it works in here. That’s the way it works out there.”
I hadn’t flown from Texas to Minnesota to sit in a circle of failures, blabbing about what used to be. I wanted at least one bearded guy in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe, quoting Jung and handing out a reading list. I wanted to sober up from the neck up. But I would learn that I am a bundle of appetites.
I was wrong about the counselors. They were competent, but the best help I got was from my peers. They opened their lives to me and we laughed, cried, prayed, worked hard, sat in silence, accepted each other as we were and began to articulate our dreams for a new life. We listened to each other carefully, expected honesty, caught each other in lies, told the hard truth and held each other accountable in all things. We scrubbed toilets together on our knees, made a thousand pots of coffee, swept, moped, washed dishes, cleaned windows, emptied ashtrays and trash cans.
Deeper than anything, we learned that we are not God.
Most of us got sober in those 30 days. Dobb and I have stayed sober for the fourteen years.
I arrived at Hazelden three weeks after a one-car accident which nearly tore my right arm off. My roommates from Arkansas and New York helped me in and out of the shower, buttoned and unbuttoned me, carried my tray, helped me make my bed and do my daily work. Gladly.
The business of the church was being done, without the wine, on earth as it is.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Intervention
Intervention. It’s when you’re in trouble, whether you know it or not, and someone shows up to help you, whether you want it or not.
I was in first grade, in the principal’s office for lying, when my dad intervened. “Let me handle the situation myself by taking the boy home for lunch,” he said. The boy ate standing.
I was eight, in the dime store. The yo-yo was a dollar, all I had was a quarter, so I pocketed the yo-yo. Before I got out of the store the manager collared me and asked for my parents’ name and number. “My mother is at the beauty shop next door,” I told him. He sent a girl for her while I sat in his office. My mother came in with wet hair. She apologized and made me apologize. “Let us handle this at home,” she said. On the way out she said the six words I dreaded most: “Wait ‘til your father comes home.”
I was in ninth grade, on my way home from school, when three senior boys started chasing me. Just as they caught me, Mr. Barton came out his front door and scared them off. Mr. Barton walked me home. “Watch your back,” he told me, “because there won’t always be someone to look out for you.”
In 1995, I was invited to sit down with the family in the den of my in-laws house. It was the Friday before Mother’s Day. My drinking was way out of control and I was the only one who didn’t know it. I thought, “If my work’s not suffering, I haven’t got a problem.” They told me that for the past few years I had been going through the family like a tornado. I flew to Minnesota the next morning and checked into a treatment center. As hard as rehab was, it wasn’t harder than the intervention in the den.
A father had a son who demanded his share of the estate. The father turned over the deeds to the property. The kid went through town selling off half of the family place. Prime land. He left town unpopular, but rich. He finally hit bottom. He decided to come home. His father saw him coming, but not before the townspeople, who had no intention of letting the spoiled crook come back to do more damage. So his father ran through town, through the angry crowd, to protect him from them. Then, he wrapped his own robe, the best robe, around his son, turned, the crowd parted and he walked him home.
Talk about an Intervention.
I was in first grade, in the principal’s office for lying, when my dad intervened. “Let me handle the situation myself by taking the boy home for lunch,” he said. The boy ate standing.
I was eight, in the dime store. The yo-yo was a dollar, all I had was a quarter, so I pocketed the yo-yo. Before I got out of the store the manager collared me and asked for my parents’ name and number. “My mother is at the beauty shop next door,” I told him. He sent a girl for her while I sat in his office. My mother came in with wet hair. She apologized and made me apologize. “Let us handle this at home,” she said. On the way out she said the six words I dreaded most: “Wait ‘til your father comes home.”
I was in ninth grade, on my way home from school, when three senior boys started chasing me. Just as they caught me, Mr. Barton came out his front door and scared them off. Mr. Barton walked me home. “Watch your back,” he told me, “because there won’t always be someone to look out for you.”
In 1995, I was invited to sit down with the family in the den of my in-laws house. It was the Friday before Mother’s Day. My drinking was way out of control and I was the only one who didn’t know it. I thought, “If my work’s not suffering, I haven’t got a problem.” They told me that for the past few years I had been going through the family like a tornado. I flew to Minnesota the next morning and checked into a treatment center. As hard as rehab was, it wasn’t harder than the intervention in the den.
A father had a son who demanded his share of the estate. The father turned over the deeds to the property. The kid went through town selling off half of the family place. Prime land. He left town unpopular, but rich. He finally hit bottom. He decided to come home. His father saw him coming, but not before the townspeople, who had no intention of letting the spoiled crook come back to do more damage. So his father ran through town, through the angry crowd, to protect him from them. Then, he wrapped his own robe, the best robe, around his son, turned, the crowd parted and he walked him home.
Talk about an Intervention.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Pecking
I was swinging my youngest daughter in a tire swing when she was in first grade. Suddenly she told me, “Stop! I have to warn you about something!”
We stopped, she got out of the swing and I got in. No small feat.
She shook her finger at me and said, “Don’t ever help baby birds out of their shells!” I nodded. “Promise, Daddy!” “Okay, I promise”
“Do you know why to not do it?”
“Not really,” I told her.
“Because babies have to peck, peck, peck their way out of the egg so their lungs will be strong enough when they come out…and birds know exactly how much pecking it takes. You don’t.”
Then, we changed places on the swing and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
I thought about people I have rescued too soon. The hot air I have spent trying to affect change. Tears I have dried too quickly. Times I’ve thought: Get Over It. Individuals I have pushed into what I thought should be the next phase of their life. My daughters.
As Sarabeth said to me, “You don’t know how much pecking it takes.”
I am reminded of the story of the butterfly in Zorba the Greek:
“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster then life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.
“That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm” (Nikos Kazantzakis: pages 120-21).
We stopped, she got out of the swing and I got in. No small feat.
She shook her finger at me and said, “Don’t ever help baby birds out of their shells!” I nodded. “Promise, Daddy!” “Okay, I promise”
“Do you know why to not do it?”
“Not really,” I told her.
“Because babies have to peck, peck, peck their way out of the egg so their lungs will be strong enough when they come out…and birds know exactly how much pecking it takes. You don’t.”
Then, we changed places on the swing and enjoyed the rest of the evening.
I thought about people I have rescued too soon. The hot air I have spent trying to affect change. Tears I have dried too quickly. Times I’ve thought: Get Over It. Individuals I have pushed into what I thought should be the next phase of their life. My daughters.
As Sarabeth said to me, “You don’t know how much pecking it takes.”
I am reminded of the story of the butterfly in Zorba the Greek:
“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster then life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.
“That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm” (Nikos Kazantzakis: pages 120-21).
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Wings
In Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, a street preacher stops a guy in his mid-20’s to ask if he’s been saved. The guy answers, “Anybody with a good car doesn’t need to be saved.
It’s difficult to admit we need help beyond what we can give ourselves. We are raised to be daddy’s big girl or boy.
My grandmother slipped me a five one Sunday while we were at her house. It fell out of my pocket somewhere and by the time I realized it was gone it was time to go. I wanted to tell her, not simply because she might give me another, but because she’d take me into her lap.
“You’ll never be too big for me to hold,” she'd tell me.
A few years later, I didn’t want to be held by anyone. I wanted to be too big.
Then, the move into mid-life when we carry our umbilical cord around looking for a place to plug it in.
After one of the big fires at Yellowstone, two rangers were surveying the damage when they saw a bald eagle perched on the stump of a burned-out tree. The ladder in their truck brushed up against her and she disintegrated into ashes. As she crumbled, her three babies ran out from beneath her wings. She could have left them in the fire, but she gathered them under her wings and never moved during the intense heat and suffocating smoke.
The rangers took her babies to a wildlife refuge and a year later they were released.
There is a monument at the spot where she sheltered her babies. It says, “Here lies the American bald eagle whose protective wings gave her babies life.”
Every summer, three large bald eagles circle the spot, each wearing the red tag from the refuge.
I am remembering the One who lamented, “How often I would have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.”
It’s difficult to admit we need help beyond what we can give ourselves. We are raised to be daddy’s big girl or boy.
My grandmother slipped me a five one Sunday while we were at her house. It fell out of my pocket somewhere and by the time I realized it was gone it was time to go. I wanted to tell her, not simply because she might give me another, but because she’d take me into her lap.
“You’ll never be too big for me to hold,” she'd tell me.
A few years later, I didn’t want to be held by anyone. I wanted to be too big.
Then, the move into mid-life when we carry our umbilical cord around looking for a place to plug it in.
After one of the big fires at Yellowstone, two rangers were surveying the damage when they saw a bald eagle perched on the stump of a burned-out tree. The ladder in their truck brushed up against her and she disintegrated into ashes. As she crumbled, her three babies ran out from beneath her wings. She could have left them in the fire, but she gathered them under her wings and never moved during the intense heat and suffocating smoke.
The rangers took her babies to a wildlife refuge and a year later they were released.
There is a monument at the spot where she sheltered her babies. It says, “Here lies the American bald eagle whose protective wings gave her babies life.”
Every summer, three large bald eagles circle the spot, each wearing the red tag from the refuge.
I am remembering the One who lamented, “How often I would have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.”
Monday, August 3, 2009
Breasts
I was 14. It was Saturday morning and I was reading comic books when my dad called from work and told me to get dressed we were going to the doctor.
I waited for him in the front yard beside the mailbox. Nobody said a word on the way.
The nurse took us straight back.
I sat on the table with the wax paper, while my dad sat on the counter near the sink. He rubbed his eyes like he had one of his headaches. Maybe he was the sick one.
The doctor came in.
“How are you fellows doing?”
I looked over at my dad. So did the doctor.
My dad told me to take off my t-shirt.
“Take a look at his breasts,” he said. “The size I mean. Is there something physically wrong?”
I sat there and tried to cover up. Then, I turned away and put my t-shirt back on.
The doctor said something about “growing out of it.” I didn’t hear much. My head was spinning like that Exorcist kid.
On the way home my dad asked me if I wanted to stop for a hamburger. I said no, which was a first. I wanted to go home.
I didn’t shower at school after that. I would put my good clothes over the sweat and dirt after practice.
I am 60 and starting to wear t-shirts again regularly.
Tell me, where is the universal chart that establishes the acceptable size of body parts?
I waited for him in the front yard beside the mailbox. Nobody said a word on the way.
The nurse took us straight back.
I sat on the table with the wax paper, while my dad sat on the counter near the sink. He rubbed his eyes like he had one of his headaches. Maybe he was the sick one.
The doctor came in.
“How are you fellows doing?”
I looked over at my dad. So did the doctor.
My dad told me to take off my t-shirt.
“Take a look at his breasts,” he said. “The size I mean. Is there something physically wrong?”
I sat there and tried to cover up. Then, I turned away and put my t-shirt back on.
The doctor said something about “growing out of it.” I didn’t hear much. My head was spinning like that Exorcist kid.
On the way home my dad asked me if I wanted to stop for a hamburger. I said no, which was a first. I wanted to go home.
I didn’t shower at school after that. I would put my good clothes over the sweat and dirt after practice.
I am 60 and starting to wear t-shirts again regularly.
Tell me, where is the universal chart that establishes the acceptable size of body parts?
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Art of Living
I tried to eat the 72-ounce steak at The Big Texan restaurant on I-40 outside Amarillo, Texas. I tried twice, in ’71 and ’79. They give you one hour to eat everything: shrimp cocktail, salad, baked potato, a roll and the beef. They make you fill out a form. I assume for your obituary.
There are rules:
1. You must pay in advance.
2. You must sit alone at a table for one on a stage so you won’t share.
3. The food must stay down.
I pulled into The Big Texan at 11:00 in the morning. I buttoned my top button, pulled my pants high and looked around pie-eyed like it was my first time out of the house. I told the manager “the biggest steak I’ve ever eaten is a filett,” and “is the 72-ouncer a heck of a lot bigger?” He looked at me like I was from California.
Strategy: “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate the shrimp cocktail, salad, potato, and roll in ten minutes. Then, I turned to my steak, “Hello, li’l dogie.”
Strategy: “If you know your enemy, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I carved my steak into several smaller steaks. I tricked my stomach into thinking we were only eating six 12-ounce steaks.
Strategy: “To plunder a locality, divide your troops” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate half the steak in ’71 and the whole thing in ’79. What was the difference? I will tell you now. I grazed without looking up. I chewed without ceasing. I mooed contentedly under my breath. In short, I practiced bovinity.
Strategy: “The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
The ability to change and adapt: the art of living.
There are rules:
1. You must pay in advance.
2. You must sit alone at a table for one on a stage so you won’t share.
3. The food must stay down.
I pulled into The Big Texan at 11:00 in the morning. I buttoned my top button, pulled my pants high and looked around pie-eyed like it was my first time out of the house. I told the manager “the biggest steak I’ve ever eaten is a filett,” and “is the 72-ouncer a heck of a lot bigger?” He looked at me like I was from California.
Strategy: “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate the shrimp cocktail, salad, potato, and roll in ten minutes. Then, I turned to my steak, “Hello, li’l dogie.”
Strategy: “If you know your enemy, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I carved my steak into several smaller steaks. I tricked my stomach into thinking we were only eating six 12-ounce steaks.
Strategy: “To plunder a locality, divide your troops” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
I ate half the steak in ’71 and the whole thing in ’79. What was the difference? I will tell you now. I grazed without looking up. I chewed without ceasing. I mooed contentedly under my breath. In short, I practiced bovinity.
Strategy: “The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
The ability to change and adapt: the art of living.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Kinky
I was sitting across from Kinky Friedman at a Mexican restaurant in Austin when out of nowhere he asked me what I believe. Being a “professional religionist” back then I jumped at the chance.
I was delivering great hunks of truth across the gulf between us when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Put it on a bumper sticker.” I didn’t appreciate it. For one thing I was on a roll. For another, I’ve never been able to put anything on a bumper sticker.
To put truth on a bumper sticker you can’t repeat everything profound that you’ve heard, or read. You can’t perform your Greatest Hits of songs somebody else wrote.
All Kinky wanted me to do what the restaurant had done. He ordered soup and they delivered. They brought him their specialty, hot, original and nourishing. What I brought him was dried tongue.
My high school career took a sharp turn for the worst when my 10th grade algebra teacher said three words: “Show your work.” Just filling in the blank with the correct answer was worth only two points out of ten. I panicked. If I truly showed my work, I would draw a picture of me copying off Trudy McTrusty.
Kinky wanted to hear the result of my own digging. He wanted to know what I believe, not some professional believers. He wanted a live conversation with me, not an encounter with some of my dead heroes. In other words, truth can’t be pickled.
I still can’t put it on a bumper sticker. I talk too much. But I have learned to put it in a story. That is what I am trying to do in this blog.
It is time, as King Lear said, “to say what we feel, and not what we ought to say.”
I was delivering great hunks of truth across the gulf between us when he held up his hand like a traffic cop and said, “Put it on a bumper sticker.” I didn’t appreciate it. For one thing I was on a roll. For another, I’ve never been able to put anything on a bumper sticker.
To put truth on a bumper sticker you can’t repeat everything profound that you’ve heard, or read. You can’t perform your Greatest Hits of songs somebody else wrote.
All Kinky wanted me to do what the restaurant had done. He ordered soup and they delivered. They brought him their specialty, hot, original and nourishing. What I brought him was dried tongue.
My high school career took a sharp turn for the worst when my 10th grade algebra teacher said three words: “Show your work.” Just filling in the blank with the correct answer was worth only two points out of ten. I panicked. If I truly showed my work, I would draw a picture of me copying off Trudy McTrusty.
Kinky wanted to hear the result of my own digging. He wanted to know what I believe, not some professional believers. He wanted a live conversation with me, not an encounter with some of my dead heroes. In other words, truth can’t be pickled.
I still can’t put it on a bumper sticker. I talk too much. But I have learned to put it in a story. That is what I am trying to do in this blog.
It is time, as King Lear said, “to say what we feel, and not what we ought to say.”
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tenderness
I’ve been waking up around 4:45 in the morning for the past few weeks. No alarm goes off except the one in my head, but you can set your watch by me. I’ll get up sometimes and watch a little TV hoping for a thigh master infomercial. Then, after 15 minutes, I go back to bed and try again.
First, little things surface. Things I need to do. Change the oil, spam, pay water bill…I keep a pad on the nightstand where I can remind myself.
Next, I see faces. My cousin Susan whose polio hasn’t kept her from dancing; my uncle David who would get down on the floor with us; my dad in his Air Force uniform with his foot on the fender of his Ford (three years before me); my mother with a mouthful of clothespins hanging out sheets on the line in the back yard; a small dog with patches of bald lying on a towel near the door; my sister having tea-parties in my mother’s petticoat and red heels; and my brother on the bed under mine turning pages of any book he can get his hands on.
I smell quilts in the cedar chest; my third-grade teacher; my grandmother’s breath (carnation milk); camphophenique; fresh-mowed grass; biscuits and bacon; and popcorn.
I hear my mother stirring her coffee; my dad whistling to wake us up; the tearing of an old white t-shirt for the rag bag; my little brother counting his money; and my grandfather praying.
It is not such a terrible thing being awakened at 4:45 to be reminded of a lifetime of tenderness.
First, little things surface. Things I need to do. Change the oil, spam, pay water bill…I keep a pad on the nightstand where I can remind myself.
Next, I see faces. My cousin Susan whose polio hasn’t kept her from dancing; my uncle David who would get down on the floor with us; my dad in his Air Force uniform with his foot on the fender of his Ford (three years before me); my mother with a mouthful of clothespins hanging out sheets on the line in the back yard; a small dog with patches of bald lying on a towel near the door; my sister having tea-parties in my mother’s petticoat and red heels; and my brother on the bed under mine turning pages of any book he can get his hands on.
I smell quilts in the cedar chest; my third-grade teacher; my grandmother’s breath (carnation milk); camphophenique; fresh-mowed grass; biscuits and bacon; and popcorn.
I hear my mother stirring her coffee; my dad whistling to wake us up; the tearing of an old white t-shirt for the rag bag; my little brother counting his money; and my grandfather praying.
It is not such a terrible thing being awakened at 4:45 to be reminded of a lifetime of tenderness.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Holding Hands
I remember the first time I held hands with a girl the way some remember their first kiss.
It was my junior year; summer of ’65. I was at a Baptist youth camp. Her name was Jan. She was blonde and barely 14. She was a preacher’s daughter who knew the ropes (redundant).
It was Friday night, our last night of camp; the night when things turn tender. I had met her earlier at the Canteen. We'd talked and she'd said maybe we could sit together in the big open-air tabernacle. We were third row center. Her dad was preaching.
It was Texas hot and humid. We were fanning ourselves like mad, courtesy of Roy Akers Funeral Home. But Jan was wearing a sweater over her camp shirt. Maybe she was cold-natured.
Ten minutes into the service she pulled her sweater over her head, laid it across our legs, reached under it and put her hand on my knee. I put my hand over hers and kept it there until everyone else was leaving.
I floated out of that service, and camp, changed forever. Saved!
When a couple is sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a cold war, the most difficult and loving way to break the mood is to reach across the table and take the other’s hand. The gift of touch, unexpected and intentional, can soothe hurt feelings, dissolve anger and make peace.
It is stronger than words, taking the hand of someone you love.
It was my junior year; summer of ’65. I was at a Baptist youth camp. Her name was Jan. She was blonde and barely 14. She was a preacher’s daughter who knew the ropes (redundant).
It was Friday night, our last night of camp; the night when things turn tender. I had met her earlier at the Canteen. We'd talked and she'd said maybe we could sit together in the big open-air tabernacle. We were third row center. Her dad was preaching.
It was Texas hot and humid. We were fanning ourselves like mad, courtesy of Roy Akers Funeral Home. But Jan was wearing a sweater over her camp shirt. Maybe she was cold-natured.
Ten minutes into the service she pulled her sweater over her head, laid it across our legs, reached under it and put her hand on my knee. I put my hand over hers and kept it there until everyone else was leaving.
I floated out of that service, and camp, changed forever. Saved!
When a couple is sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a cold war, the most difficult and loving way to break the mood is to reach across the table and take the other’s hand. The gift of touch, unexpected and intentional, can soothe hurt feelings, dissolve anger and make peace.
It is stronger than words, taking the hand of someone you love.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Take the Plunge
I got my first bicycle before I knew how to ride. A green Huffy Mainliner. I was in the front yard when my dad drove up on a Saturday with a big box in the trunk. It was meant to be a birthday surprise but it's tough to sneak something by me, then and now. (Paranoia has its perks).
As soon as my dad and the neighbor man got it out of the box, put the handlebars on and fixed the chain I wanted on!
"Can I ride it?" I asked him.
"Hold your horses," he said, and he took out the training wheels. Ididn't want training wheels. Raymond Westmoreland didn't have training wheels. Penny Wilson (a girl!) didn't either. Besides that, they were yellow to match a stripe down the side of the bike. Toddler yellow.
I started riding in circles in the backyard like those brown bears in the circus. This is nothing! Then, after a week my dad decided it was time to take the show on the road. The training wheels came off (his idea, I was liking them). Before he pushed me out onto Havana Street he said, "Get ready to fall."
WHAT?!
He straightened me up, pushed me, ran behind me for a while, and then let go. I fell immediately, hurting my arm trying to catch myself.
"Two things about falling," he said. "Don't catch yourself or you'll break your arm. Second, don't tense up. Relax. Roll with it."
Easier said then done. Most of us try to catch ourselves automatically when we fall, especially in public. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." I've fallen many times and tried to make it look like I haven't.
Some of us fall like we're drowning. We fight and try to take everybody close down with us.
Nobody learns to walk, ride, or love without falling. Baby birds leave the nest and either fall or fly. But the only way for them to find their wings, which have been there all the time, is to take the plunge.
As soon as my dad and the neighbor man got it out of the box, put the handlebars on and fixed the chain I wanted on!
"Can I ride it?" I asked him.
"Hold your horses," he said, and he took out the training wheels. Ididn't want training wheels. Raymond Westmoreland didn't have training wheels. Penny Wilson (a girl!) didn't either. Besides that, they were yellow to match a stripe down the side of the bike. Toddler yellow.
I started riding in circles in the backyard like those brown bears in the circus. This is nothing! Then, after a week my dad decided it was time to take the show on the road. The training wheels came off (his idea, I was liking them). Before he pushed me out onto Havana Street he said, "Get ready to fall."
WHAT?!
He straightened me up, pushed me, ran behind me for a while, and then let go. I fell immediately, hurting my arm trying to catch myself.
"Two things about falling," he said. "Don't catch yourself or you'll break your arm. Second, don't tense up. Relax. Roll with it."
Easier said then done. Most of us try to catch ourselves automatically when we fall, especially in public. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." I've fallen many times and tried to make it look like I haven't.
Some of us fall like we're drowning. We fight and try to take everybody close down with us.
Nobody learns to walk, ride, or love without falling. Baby birds leave the nest and either fall or fly. But the only way for them to find their wings, which have been there all the time, is to take the plunge.
Looking Up
My friend keeps inviting me to the lake. Her family has a house there. She says “You need to get out of yourself and look up at the stars.” I smile and tell her I’m a city boy and that we’ve got stars, too. She says it’s not the same.
The truth is I do look down a lot. Computer, watch, phone, day-timer, shoes, mail, newspaper, stomach. I look down into my dreams, and even deeper into my private world of wonders.
As you can see, looking up is not a major part of my routine.
So we went to the lake house. I was prepared for mosquitoes and poison ivy. I packed protection.
We went out on the deck as the sun was going down. The orange ball in the lake. The trees on fire. Words are too small.
We sat under the moon and the stars. She drank a glass of wine. I smoked a cigar. A thousand stars in the sky. Love is in the air. The answer is blowing in the wind. Starry, Starry Night. (And any other “outdoor” songs you can think of, except “Kum Ba Yah.”)
In the Tom Hank’s movie, “Joe vs. the Volcano,” his ship sinks and he ends up on a raft in the middle of the ocean. He runs out of drinking water. The sun cooks his skin, then his brain, and when night comes he looks up and starts seeing things. He sees a sky full of stars dancing over his head. A moment later, the moon comes up huge on the horizon and joins the dance.
He struggles to his feet, spreads his arms and prays, “O God, whose name I do not know. I forgot how big you are. Thank you for my life.”
Indeed!
The truth is I do look down a lot. Computer, watch, phone, day-timer, shoes, mail, newspaper, stomach. I look down into my dreams, and even deeper into my private world of wonders.
As you can see, looking up is not a major part of my routine.
So we went to the lake house. I was prepared for mosquitoes and poison ivy. I packed protection.
We went out on the deck as the sun was going down. The orange ball in the lake. The trees on fire. Words are too small.
We sat under the moon and the stars. She drank a glass of wine. I smoked a cigar. A thousand stars in the sky. Love is in the air. The answer is blowing in the wind. Starry, Starry Night. (And any other “outdoor” songs you can think of, except “Kum Ba Yah.”)
In the Tom Hank’s movie, “Joe vs. the Volcano,” his ship sinks and he ends up on a raft in the middle of the ocean. He runs out of drinking water. The sun cooks his skin, then his brain, and when night comes he looks up and starts seeing things. He sees a sky full of stars dancing over his head. A moment later, the moon comes up huge on the horizon and joins the dance.
He struggles to his feet, spreads his arms and prays, “O God, whose name I do not know. I forgot how big you are. Thank you for my life.”
Indeed!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
An Immersion of Grace
When trouble is breathing down your neck, heartbreaking trouble, why is it that somehow, for no logical reason, the clouds will break and hope will rise?
It happened to me here in my room a moment ago. Happened to me. It was unexpected, even uninvited, but it came anyway, without knocking. It is fleeting, like when Hank Williams sang: “I Saw the Light,” I imagine it came and went suddenly. You can’t corral it. It has a life of its own. “It will be what it will be.” It happened to Bill W., founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He had hit bottom. He was lying in his hospital bed drying out when light first broke in on him. A very smart and cagey man who could never get his mind around it.
I am wondering about it now because it seems so dark outside. Even the future feels closed-off. The last thing I expected was an immersion of grace.
Whatever the setting or situation---however tight---grace muscles in. Sometimes it comes quietly like the warmth of the sun. Other times like the sudden chill of a November morning.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Taking Inventory
All over the radio you hear, "HUGE inventory close-out sale to make room for fall!" I worked in a men's clothing store when I was in college. Inventory was when we locked the store and stayed up all night counting belts and bad ties. We were the only automated part of the store back then.
We didn't understand the necessity of taking inventory, but it didn't matter. We only needed to understand four words: time-and-a-half.
When I went into rehab taking inventory was important. It's amazing all the things they wanted us to count. Like, how much money we had spent on alcohol. Or, who we held grudges against and for how long; what we were afraid of; and who all we had manipulated, and how. It was like I was visiting a country I hadn't been to...and the country was me.
Last month I started drawing a map of me. I am trying to include every humiliating thing. I don't think it's a country you would like to visit. There is a cemetery where some people who are buried there aren't dead yet. There are several bombed-out churches. There is a massive desert. There are several libraries, three movie theatres, two photograph galleries, and what appears to be a deserted island.
There are ruins, like in Mexico. I have done some careful digging to see what is there.
All in all, it has been a good experience, this map-making. It is a colorful way to take inventory.
I have carried one short sentence in my pocket for when things get dark. You might want to put it on your refrigerator. It is from Rumi, a Persian poet.
"Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."
We didn't understand the necessity of taking inventory, but it didn't matter. We only needed to understand four words: time-and-a-half.
When I went into rehab taking inventory was important. It's amazing all the things they wanted us to count. Like, how much money we had spent on alcohol. Or, who we held grudges against and for how long; what we were afraid of; and who all we had manipulated, and how. It was like I was visiting a country I hadn't been to...and the country was me.
Last month I started drawing a map of me. I am trying to include every humiliating thing. I don't think it's a country you would like to visit. There is a cemetery where some people who are buried there aren't dead yet. There are several bombed-out churches. There is a massive desert. There are several libraries, three movie theatres, two photograph galleries, and what appears to be a deserted island.
There are ruins, like in Mexico. I have done some careful digging to see what is there.
All in all, it has been a good experience, this map-making. It is a colorful way to take inventory.
I have carried one short sentence in my pocket for when things get dark. You might want to put it on your refrigerator. It is from Rumi, a Persian poet.
"Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure."
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