A Messy Christmas & A Merry Christmas

Christmas has always been messy (from the first one till now).  I don’t know why we have “decorated” it in such a way as to cover up that messiness.  But, that’s what we do year after year, and often times with great success.  We’ve convinced ourselves that what is “real” (the messiness in our own lives, the lives of others, and the brokenness of our world) becomes “unreal” at Christmas time.  In doing so, we do an injustice to what is at the very heart of the season.

Howard Thurman, in “The Mood of Christmas,” writes:  “The symbol of Christmas—what is it?  It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding.  It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live.  It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life.  It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”

The clouds are heavy with foreboding in my world and yours. A worldwide pandemic exists. The cries of life are sounding.  We walk a crooked path over rough places.  Our hearts are tired and sad.  Our hopes are diminished.  The promise of tomorrow seems dismal.  Hate seems sturdier than love, wrong more confident than right,  evil more permanent than good.  To ignore this reality or to pretend it does not exist, makes the very message of Christmas meaningless.  It is the very “messiness of life” that gives Christmas meaning.  

A Promise Made--A Promise Kept

 We made the promise last January.  We would, we told Cher, finish the Quilt Book for her.   Cher had started it years ago in a loose-leaf notebook.  It contained her quilt designs and quilt photos.  She tried to finish the book last January, but could not.  That’s when we made the promise.

With the help of Paul, Rachel, and especially Luke (who pulled it all together for us), the promise made a year ago, has now been kept.  “Cherie’s Quilt Book:  All Things Bright and Beautiful” has been published.

Our promise made and kept reminds me of the Advent Promise, something I experienced, “breaking forth from the bud”, several years ago when we attended an Annual Christmas Concert at an Interfaith Center with our son, Paul, and his wife, Helen.

Hundreds of people were lined up waiting for the doors to open.  Hundreds of people filed into the auditorium filling every available seat.  “Three cheeks to a chair,” someone announced, so “everyone can have a place to sit” and the audience responded with laughter and three cheeks to a chair (COVID-19 was not a threat then). An orchestra of at least 40, a Children’s Choir of over 30, and an Adult Choir of nearly 100 were seated before us.  Above their heads a banner proclaimed:  “All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  

I looked at the program and noted the names representing many different nationalities and cultures:  Youstra, Scimonelli, Kim, Javadov, Onukwugna, Cueves, Ndekwu, and Williams.  I looked at the audience and saw the same wondrous thing.  There were people of many colors, ages and appearances.  Some in the audience were young, some were old, and some in-between.  What a mixture—people, some not so well off, others well-to-do (you can always tell)—all together in one place. This is God’s Promise, I thought, coming to fruition, “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”  This is the Promise of Advent (Emmanuel:  God with us), even now breaking forth from the bud.  

You see, only if Emmanuel is “born anew in us” can the Advent Promise be fulfilled—“All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  Only if Love becomes the norm, can the myriad pieces of humanity (colors, shapes, sizes—religions, lifestyles, politics, philosophies) be sewn together into a quilt.  The Promise was made—the Promise is kept (when we learn how to love one another in spite of our differences).

“Joy to the world! (we sang together that night) the Lord has come:  Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room, And heav’n and nature sing…”

Advent: If It Doesn't Happen Now--It Didn't Happen Then...

 I like the way Eugene Peterson speaks of Mary's annunciation in The Message: "You're beautiful with God's beauty. Beautiful inside and out!" We have to hear that before we can hear God say anything else. God loves us for what we are, who we are, and where we are. Don't ever doubt that!

Advent is about preparing, waiting, hoping, expecting, and praying that somehow God will come in some new way, not just to us personally, but to all people everywhere.  It is a time to look for a burning bush in the desert of life, for a pillar of cloud in the day, a pillar of fire in the darkness, a dream, or perhaps an annunciation.  Because God came once upon a time must mean that God can and will come now.  But how, when, where?  Will I be able to discern that coming?  Will I have eyes to see, ears to hear, mind to receive, and the sense to perceive such a coming?   How is God going to come this Advent?  How will Christ be born anew in me, in you, and in the world this Christmas?

Will some Gabriel come with an annunciation?  Does God have some special message for us?  Will we hear it  as Mary did or dream a dream as Joseph did?  Why not?  If it happened then it can happen now.   Now don’t get all disturbed, I doubt that God is going to announce that you are pregnant with child.  But God might very well announce that you are pregnant with love and that you have some special loving to do.  God might say you are pregnant with a word of hope you need to deliver to someone who is in doubt, pain, or crippled by difficulty.  God might say to me, “Hal, at 78-years-old, I’m not done with you.  I want your life to be wider and deeper than it is now.  I want you to see more, to learn more, to be more.  You have yet to become all that I mean for you to be.”  If it doesn’t happen now—it didn’t happen then!

Do you expect anything new to happen within you this Advent?  Do you anticipate God coming to you with an annunciation?  We’ve made the annunciations in the Christmas story so spiritual, religious, other-worldly, and angelic that most think it only happened then and will never happen again. If you don’t expect it to happen, don’t worry, it won’t happen.  Expect to hear, expect to dream some special dream—and maybe, just maybe—you will.  If it doesn’t happen now—it didn’t happen then!

While It Is Day: Advent 2021: A New Time. A New Year

 Advent 2020 was a difficult passage for me and mine (and, no doubt, for many others).  The Advent hope that in some way or another the God of history, of purpose, of Love, would break through got lost in a pandemic.  Advent hope faded for us as we dealt with my wife’s struggle with ovarian cancer.  “Life was tumbling in,” and in ways we did not choose or want. 

In that difficult time, Cherie and I found a “wee bit of Advent hope” in the Christmas carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear:” “And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.  O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.”  We shared this “bit of Advent hope” with family and friends in our 2020 Christmas card.

As we tried to rest beside our weary road, we talked much about the meaning of life, of our yesterdays together and of the tomorrows to come,  of love, of family, of faith, of the life everlasting. Looking back, I now realize how fortunate we were to have had the “time” to do that together.  In those precious moments, the angels were singing, though we could not always hear their song.

Advent often comes that way. God breaks through, God is with us, but we do not discern Love’s Presence in our midst.   And, that is precisely why it is so crucial to our journey to celebrate the Advent season.  Advent comes from the Latin word “advenio” which means “the beginning, or the arrival of something anticipated”.  Without anticipation we may miss what is coming, what is available, what is hoped for, what is needed.

Advent 2021 is a new time, a new year, but only if we anticipate that it will be so. Advent is a time of promise, of preparation, of new beginnings.  Advent is a time of expectancy, a time of new happenings.  Advent is a time of waiting, of moving forward.  Advent is a time for receptivity and openness, of annunciations, of searching and finding, and following a star.  Advent is anticipating that somehow or another, Christ will be born anew in me, in you, and in the world in some new way this Christmas.  The God of history, of purpose, of Love still breaks through, not in the manger of Bethlehem as of old, but in the manger of our hearts, minds and souls.  

So, today, a new time, a new year, I will light the first of the four candles on the Advent wreath in anticipation of a breakthrough.  

While It Is Day: "Obviously"

 

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Our son, Luke, posted the following on Facebook a few days ago.  

"Made a sort of ofrenda to remember my mom on this Dia de los Muertos.  Just a collage of photos and a thing I wrote a few weeks after she died this February.  On a lavender background, of course.  The grief goes on and on, but this sort of thing helps."

The text in the ofrenda:

“My mom had a particular flair for stating the obvious. “Just stuffin’ this turkey for dinner later,” she’d say, standing behind the counter, visibly shoving dressing deep into the bird’s cavity on Thanksgiving morning. I never thought much of it, until Kim started experiencing it too, and then it became hilarious and really quite wonderful. The day my mom invented lunch (“we just need something to tide us over between breakfast and dinner”) is a truly legendary anecdote in our marriage. 

But sometimes you don’t want your mom to state the obvious. “I think she still wants to be your girlfriend,” is another one I’ll never forget. Mom said this when I was 16. I had been laid up with the flu for a week, and my first girlfriend, who had broken up with me a couple months before, kept coming to visit every day to deliver homework assignments and to see how I was doing. Then again, maybe “she still wants to be your girlfriend” wasn’t obvious at all; I remember being kind of annoyed by the visits, but mom seemed to find the whole situation adorable. Looking back, of course, I do too. My mom had found something meaningful, something obvious but worth saying, in a pattern of events I just saw as fairly uninteresting and definitely uncomfortable. 

My mom’s gift for stating the obvious is just that: a gift. We don’t all see life in the same way, but there are a lot of things that we mutually agree don’t merit much thought or attention. Lunch, that mythical meal between breakfast and dinner, is one of them. But when mom was sorting out some food that day, with her daughter in law and her son and her youngest and most distant grandchildren all lounging around her house, it really was something worth mentioning. It was a new experience, a new day, a new meal, a shared life, a new memory, a joke we tell over and over. A miracle. 

I think maybe that’s how she looked at life. As the memories have rained down the past few months during her advancing sickness and death, most of what comes to me is quotidian and frankly pretty dull. There really aren’t any Hollywood moments: I don’t remember how we felt or what she said when I graduated from college, or got married, or introduced her to my son or daughter for the first time. Instead, I remember going to the Super Fresh grocery store with her every weekend in the late eighties. Going to the mall and conning her into buying me a tape or CD, or the first time she let me go to the movies by myself while she shopped (that was 1989, and the movie was Say Anything). And I remember coming home from summer camp, or college, or grad school, or the wilderness of adult life, and finding her always there, always the same. 

She was into oil painting when I was young, which if you don’t know is a painstaking process of mixing pigments on a palette board and then slowly working them onto canvas or a sheet of slate, back and forth. Think Bob Ross, but much slower: “Still lives” (I found that phrase infuriatingly dull as a kid) and landscapes and flowers. I admired her painting, but I never found it interesting. Perhaps I found it too obvious. Much later in my life, and hers, those roses she smeared so accurately onto slate suddenly exploded and blossomed--just like roses tend to do--into the intricate creations and recreations that they always were. A rose isn’t just a rose when it’s the tender work of your mother’s hands, wrists, eyes, heart, and mind. To paint a rose like that, you have to be willing to really look at it: no two roses, and no two lunches, are exactly the same. 

One of the last things she said to me, from a hospital bed in her periwinkle sewing room, surrounded by walls hung with representations of roses, was “this cancer, it’s just terrible what it does, how fast it can do this.” And my initial thought, back to the old pattern, was “yeah, obviously”: that’s all plain to see and there’s no need to say it. But of course there is: she’d had to live and feel every moment, every cellular shift, of that belligerent sickness making its way through her being. She had to get up and stuff the turkey, and she needed to tell me that. This cancer was destroying her, and she needed me to hear that, too, because, obviously, it all meant everything.”

LEO 

March 5, 2021

The Prayer of a "Patriotic Christian"

 I am a patriot.  I’ve been a patriot for as long as I can remember.  I love the land of my birth.  I spent nearly half of my life in the U.S. Air Force, both as an enlisted and commissioned member.  I am a patriot, however, who found abhorrent the January 6 insurrection.  I am a patriot, however, who supported those who kneeled during the national anthem to call awareness to the inequality that exists in our society.  I am a patriot, who is also a professed Christian.

Can I be both a patriot and a committed Christian?  It has not been easy to be both.  “Render the things of Caesar to Caesar…and the things of God to God” has been a troublesome thing for me.  It still is.  

There is a hymn that expresses my perception of Christian faith and patriotism:  “This Is My Song” puts patriotism in its proper place and expresses what it means to be a “patriotic Christian.”

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine,

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, 

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my prayer, O Lord of all earth’s kingdoms:

Thy kingdom come; on earth thy will be done.

Let Christ be lifted up till all shall serve him,

And hearts united learn to live as one.  

O hear my prayer, thou God of all the nations;

Myself I give thee, let thy will be done.

The Summer Solstice, Lightning Bugs and Cicadas

 Yesterday an amazing astrological event occurred.  The sun traveled its longest path through the sky and reached its highest point of the year—making yesterday the longest day of 2021. In spite of our attempts to make Memorial Day Weekend the beginning of summer—the solstice is the true beginning of the season.  This astrological phenomena happens every year at about mid-year, and has, no doubt, occurred since the universe came into being.  

We are all familiar with “fireflies” or “lightning bugs”—another amazing phenomena of nature.  Lightning bugs are beetles (like the ladybug).  Neither are bugs. Lightning bugs live for only a couple of weeks as adults (about a year from egg to adult).  The flashes we see in our backyards when darkness comes is the language of love. The male of the species is looking for females.  “They flash a specific pattern while they fly, hoping for a female reply.  If a female waiting in the grass likes what she sees, she responds back with a flash of her own.  They will engage in this twinkling love-making until the male locates the female and they mate.”  Isn’t that romantic?   Isn’t it really incredible?

Perhaps you’ve noticed that there aren’t as many lightning bugs “lighting up” your backyard in recent years.  That’s because of “light pollution” which prevents the lightning bugs from seeing each other’s flashes, creating havoc in their love life.  Turn off those outdoor lights!  Like bees, the lightning bugs are also threatened by habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. 

Everybody is talking about the cicadas this year.  The cicada is another of nature’s wonders.  They live underground for years and only come above-ground in adult form to reproduce (to love).  Some species live underground for 17 or more years.  When they do “come out” into the light it is for one purpose—and once that purpose is fulfilled—they die (usually within a month).  What kind of life is that?  Living in the darkness all those years and only experiencing the “light of day” for a few weeks doesn’t have much appeal to me.  Like the lightning bug, the cicada (only the male) sings a love song and longs for a response before his day is done.

Now what am I trying to say?  I’m trying to say that all the remaining days of this year 2021 will be shorter than yesterday.  Every new day from here on out, will be shorter than the day before.  So we must sing our love song while it is day, lighting-up our own lives and the lives of others.  “What the world needs now” is for us to become what we (like the lightning bug and the cicada) are called to be—instruments of love—while it is day.

Father's Day 2021

 My mind meanders through the yesterdays I’ve lived with so many who are no longer with me today.  I miss them. Some were “Father figures” for me. Some were “Mother figures” to me.  Each of them played an important role in my journey.  Each of them shaped my life.  Just a few days ago, listening to music, I heard Slim Whitman singing “Where Has Yesterday Gone?” The words of that song continue to sing in me.  The question “Where has yesterday gone” seems to have stuck in my mind.

I’m grateful for the yesterdays when I had my father and mother around.  I still wonder how and where they obtained the wisdom and the understanding they demonstrated as they raised me and my six siblings.  They really were extraordinary.  

I’m also grateful for the yesterdays when other men and women were there for me—my extended family—my surrogate mothers and fathers.  There are so many.  Bea Smith (a Sunday school teacher), Ken and Bonnie Mart (my boyhood pastor and his wife), Willie (who ran the garage next door), Julie (Willie’s sidekick and brother-in-law), Freda Roveda (who operated the tavern down the road), teachers and professors who took an interest in me, George, a parishioner (known as Pert to some), spiritual directors like Gordon, Mur, and Elton, who guided me through turbulent spiritual storms.  They were “Star Persons” who, like the light of Bethlehem’s star, led me and guided me along the roads of those yesterdays. Isn’t that what a father, a mother, is supposed to be and do—love us, lead us, and guide us along the path of life?

George, who was a “father” to me in so many ways through almost 40 years, wrote at the time of my father’s death:  “I think of my father everyday and sometimes many times during that day.  He will have been dead 58 years tomorrow.  He was 80 years old plus exactly six months….”

When Father took me by the hand,

Somehow the world seemed small,

The steeple’s point, the towering oak

Seemed only half so tall.

When Father took me by the hand,

Bright rainbows scanned the sky,

And hope and confidence were mine

When he was standing by.

When Father took me by the hand,

I had no thought of fear,

And even now, when trials come,

I feel his presence near.

Thank God, the Father of us all, who through those “many fathers” (and mothers)  of yesterday, took me by the hand.

Looking Up, Looking Down, Looking All Around.

I’ve often been accused of being an optimist.  An optimist is a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future; a person who believes that good must ultimately prevail over evil.  An optimist takes a positive event and magnifies it, often minimizing the negative.  It is true.  I am an optimist.  I’m always trying to look up.  My faith fosters optimism. I believe Love is at the heart of things.  I believe this Love is in the process of bringing about a New Age, a New World, where all people are “free to be” and where all live in harmony and peace.  To me, that’s the essence of the Gospel message and to believe it to be the truth, makes me an optimist.  

This belief, this faith of mine, has often prompted folk to suggest that I live in an “ivory tower.”  To live in an ivory tower is to exist in a place where the problems of the world and the trials and tribulations of ordinary people are not known, experienced, or recognized.  It is a great temptation for people of faith to dwell in such a tower and to look down and offer silly platitudes.  “Don’t worry, God will reward you in the end.”   I do not live in such a tower!  I am not looking “down on life,” nor do I believe God “looks down” offering impractical and escapist solutions to life’s issues.  I know,  experience, and walk with my brothers and sisters everywhere the stoney path of a real world  where “don’t worry” or “just believe” or “lean on Jesus” doesn’t cut it!  God is not watching us from a distance as the song suggests, rather God is walking with us.

When Nikos Kazantzakis was a young man, a neighbor said to his father, ”…I think your son’s going to become a dreamer and visionary,…He’s always looking at the clouds.”  His mother responded, “Don’t worry, life will come along and make him lower his gaze.”  And his father had the last word, “Forget the clouds.  Keep your eyes on the stones beneath you if you don’t want to fall and kill yourself.”  

Look up and see the clouds.  Look up and dream.  Look up in the midst of the negative and find the positive.  Look up as often as you can—but, be sure to  lower your gaze and be aware of the stones.  Look down,
and with Charles Dickens realize that “…our path in life…is stony and rugged…and it rests with us to smooth it.  We must fight our way onward.  We must be brave.  There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet them, and crush them.”  Look down and see the stones.  Look down lest you  stumble and fall.  Look down and find God.

Look up.  Look down.  Look all around.  Love is at the heart of things.

Giving Up "Doing It My Way"

 Last year on this date I wrote a blog called “My Way,” based on the song made famous by Frank Sinatra.  I always liked the song even though I know that no one really makes it in this world doing “it my way” and “my way” only.  A poll of funeral directors indicated that many people do believe they “did it” their way, because the song was named the most-played song at funerals a few years ago.

Three years ago circumstances were such that I was unable to do the annual mulching of my flowerbeds.  I hired a couple of fellows to do it for me.  Before they even began the work, one of them told me, “Now remember, we probably won’t do it the way you would do it.”  He was right—they didn’t do it my way—even though they did a decent and acceptable job.  

Last spring, in the midst of Covid and the stay-at-home requirements, I was able to do the mulching my way.  The flowerbeds were carefully edged and prepared my way, and the three loads of mulch were distributed my way.  The day I finished mulching “my way” I remembered this verse of the song:

“Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew 

When I bit off more than I could chew…

I ate it up and spit it out

I faced it all and I stood tall

And did it, I did it my way.”

This year I carefully edged and prepared the flowerbeds “my way,” and I even distributed one load of mulch in the back yard “my way.”  But I knew that I had “…bit off more than I could chew” and instead of eating it up and spitting it out as I stubbornly did last year, I asked for help from my grandson Nick.  Rather than facing it all and standing tall, I realized it didn’t have to be done my way at all—it just needed to be done.  So Nick came today.  In two hours he distributed the mulch to all my carefully edged and prepared flowerbeds.  Looking at the photo of the finished project from last year and Nick’s job today, it is evident that Nick’s way is very close to Grandad’s way.  Thank you, Nick.

April 26, 2021: Nick's Way

                                                     

         April 26, 2020:  My Way

The Road Well-Traveled, Part IV

 We all walk the same road—it is the road of life.   I call it “The Road Well-Traveled” because everybody is traveling  it!  Everybody began the trek down this road when they first entered this life and the road ends when life ends.  Every person “grows up” walking this road.  Everyone grows old walking this road.  We all walk it together—this road of life.  The road takes us through valleys and shadows, into bright sunshine and joy, through deep waters, scorched plains and bountiful plains, and up mountains that seem impossible to scale.  The road takes us through all of this and more.

A common comfort given those on this road and facing its various obstacles is, “You are not alone.”  This is true.  We are not alone, even when we feel that we are.  Why?  Because everybody is walking this same road with us.  Everybody goes the same way we go.  Every person experiences the same valleys, shadows, sunshine and joy.  Every person passes through the deep waters; every person knows the scorched plain, the bountiful plain, and the unscalable mountain.  That is where the road goes and since everybody is walking this same road we cannot ever say we are alone in our pilgrimage.  Our brothers and sisters, wherever they live in this whole wide world, whatever the color of their skin, their gender, their religious convictions, their political bent, walk with us and we with them.  There is no way any of us can claim that we are alone on this road trip.

Almost six weeks ago my wife’s journey on this road well-traveled came to an end.  I like to think that she is now traveling a new and different road, perhaps a smoother and less stressful one.  I have often referred to our leaving the road well-traveled as a graduation from one worn-out road to a new one—similar to graduating from elementary school and moving on to high school.  

I am not alone in my grief on the road well-traveled.  Many of my brothers and sisters know, or have known, this same grief.  One week and a day after losing my beloved Cher, I received a call from my older brother.  His wife had died that morning.  “Grief compounded,” my daughter-in-law said.  Think of the road you are on and those traveling it with you. Think of all those who have suffered the loss of a loved one.  Think of the “grief compounded” during the past year of the Covid pandemic—not only here in the US, but around the globe.  Brothers and sisters everywhere are walking this road with you and me. 

Remembering James Langston Hughes

 James Langston Hughes was the American Poet Laureate of Harlem.  He was born February 1, 1902 and died May 22, 1967.  

“I knew only the people I had grown up with…,” he once wrote.  Isn’t that true of all of us?  We only the know the people we grew up with, and who were they?   Did you grow up in a rural, urban, suburban area where only certain kinds of people surrounded you?  I did.  Hughes finished his sentence…”I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach.”

My favorite Hughes poem is “Harlem.”  It goes like this:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

He wrote another poem that seems appropriate for today.  “I Dream a World” speaks to our time.

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom’s way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white, 

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind-

Of such I dream, my world!

If we cannot bring into being this kind of world, if the dream is deferred (as it has always been deferred) our world will dry up like a raisin in the sun…or it will fester like a sore…and stink like rotten meat…or explode!  

A Grief Observed

 C.S. Lewis wrote a collection of reflections on the experience of bereavement following the death of his wife in 1960.  These reflections were put in a book, “A Grief Observed,” which was published in 1961.  

Here are some of my rambling reflections at this moment.  

I have found comfort in my own experience of bereavement from the many who have called, sent cards, notes, and letters expressing their love for Cher and their concern for me.  Thank you so much.

I’ve also found comfort in the words of others.  Frederick Buechner’s  words in The Sacred Journey have been a tremendous help:  

“Whenever and however else they may have come to life (since they left us), it

is beyond doubt that they live still in us.  Death can never put an end to our 

relationship with them.  Memory is more than looking back to a time that is no

longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything

that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that

still is.”

The famous sermon by Arthur John Gossip, “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” which I’ve read and commented on so many times through the years speaks to me now as it never spoke before. 

The hymns of the Christian faith have been helpful, too.  Cher asked that the hymn, “Abide With Me,” be played at her Celebration of Life service.  The words come alive for me in a new way as I listen to Susan Boyle sing them. You can find her rendition on YouTube.  The last nine words keep ringing in my head:  “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”

Wherever we traveled around this wonderful world, Cher would always do a little dance for the camera.  She danced in New Orleans, in Spain, Italy, Greece, and at the ancient pyramids of Egypt—almost everywhere we visited.  The photo shows her dancing in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2009.   I am comforted by the words of the hymn, “Lord of the Dance:” and its refrain:  “Dance, then, wherever you may be (France, Austria, England—wherever); I am the Lord of the Dance, said He.  And I’ll lead you all wherever you may be (in joy, in sorrow—wherever, whatever), and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said He.”  Which calls to mind another hymn that I trust speaks true: “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land…I am weak, but thou art mighty; hold me with thy powerful hand.”

Give Them The Flowers Now

 “I expect to pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show to my fellow creature, let me do it now.  Let me not defer or withhold it, I shall not pass this way again.”  (Stephen Grellet)

Many years ago I heard a sermon delivered by an Air Force chaplain based on Mark 14:3-9, the story of the woman who came to Jesus in Bethany with a “very costly perfume” and poured the oil over his head.  Jesus’ disciples complained about the waste, but Jesus said, “Let her alone.  Why must you make trouble for her?  It is a fine thing she has done for me.  You have the poor among you always, and you can help them whenever you like; but you will not always have me.”

Some people use the story to suggest that the “poor” will always be among us and we’ll never solve that social problem, thus missing the point Jesus was attempting to make:  “you will not always have me.”

We will not always have our grandparents, our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our loved ones with us.  At this stage of the journey I know this as a fact of life.  Yesterday I lost my wife of fifty-seven years to ovarian cancer. 

The chaplain closed his sermon with a poem—a poem which I have used many times.  Years ago, a friend, hearing me use the poem in a sermon, copied it in calligraphy and framed it for me.  It has had a place in every one of my cubicles (study, office) since, so I see it and read it every day.  I read it again this morning.  Fifty-seven years we shared struggles and strivings, fifty-seven years of cares and tears, fifty-seven years of frowns, furrows, and fears, fifty-seven years of laughter, joy, love, ice cream cones, travel, and so much more.  What about the flowers?  Yes, we gave one another the flowers in the midst of it all.  How I wish I had given more!  I encourage you “to give them the flowers now."

Here are the struggles and striving;

Here are the cares and the tears;

Now is the time to be smoothing 

The frowns and furrows and fears.

What to closed ears are kind sayings

What to hushed heart, is deep vow?

Naught can avail after parting,

So give them the flowers now.

(Anonymous)

With grandson Austin--twenty-four years ago!

Pondering The Road Well-Traveled (Part III)

 What do I remember when I walk back through the years on the Road Well-Traveled?  I remember my early heroes who traveled that road with me.  Gene Autry and Roy Rogers walked the road of life back then.  My horse was not “Champion” or “Trigger,” but the porch bannister or the arm of the large porch rocking chair.  I rode along with Gene and Roy with my play pistols belted around my waist on many a wild adventure—righting wrong and doing right.  I wanted to wear a “white” hat like Gene and Roy—the white hat that never falls off.  All the bad guys wore black hats.  Whenever a struggle took place the bad guy’s hat fell off—but the good guy never lost his white hat. I wanted to wear a white hat that always stayed in place in every struggle that came my way.  

Other heroes were walking with me along the road back then.  There was Jim, the mailman, who always waved and paid attention to me.  Churchill, Willie, and Julie were on the road then..  Churchill was a family friend who never ignored me and always made me feel special.  Willie ran the garage nearby and Julie was his helper.  They patched many a bicycle tire for me and provided the “inner” tubes  for floating down the creek in the summer time. Sometimes Willie would take me fishing or help me build a go-cart or make fish hooks from his supply of copper wire. Looking back from where I am on the road now, I can see that they were just ordinary guys, but to me they will always be extraordinary. 

How significant was the porch bannister or the arm of the rocking chair and the white hat? Did that childhood imagining mold and shape me?  Of course it did!  Everything on the road well-traveled affects us, influences us, and guides us.  Jim, the mailman, Churchill, Willie and Julie were traveling companions on the road well-traveled.  How fortunate for me that we walked together for a time.  They left the road of life many years ago.  I miss them.

I have had to walk the road without them for many years now, but the road of life goes on  through the years, through the struggles, joys, the hopes and dreams.  The road is packed with other people, new companions, new heroes.   We never walk the road of life alone.  It is the road well-traveled.

“Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles around the shire,…

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread…”

The Road Well-Traveled (Part II)

 I’m still pondering the road well-traveled.  There may be a Part III—or there may not.  I have no idea how long this “pondering" will go on.

All of us walk the same road—the well-traveled road of life. Since the world began every human being has walked this same road. Deep are the furrows, rough is the path, worn down by the imprint of countless feet, dampened by many a tear, churned up by a myriad of worries and troubles, and occasionally made smooth by the joys experienced across all time. It is a road well-traveled.  Every traveler on this road has cried, laughed, eaten, hurt, worried, and died.  There are no exceptions.

In youthful arrogance we sometimes think we choose our own road, but from the moment of our birth, we are placed on this common road, not by choice, but by Life itself.  We may choose our own detours along the way, taking a left turn here or a right turn there, but all of these unique individual turns and twists remain part of the main road—the road well-traveled.

It gives me some comfort to know that my parents and grandparents walked this road I am walking and their grandparents before them. It helps to know that whoever may read this blog is walking that road too. There are no lone travelers on the road.  We walk the road always in the company of those who walked it before us and those who walk it with us now. We are never really alone.  This road is a well-traveled road.

All of us walk this same road no matter the color of our skin, no matter our privilege or disadvantage, no matter our circumstance.  Such distinctions make little difference on this road.  If we are alive, if we are human, we travel this road.  It is a road well-traveled.

“I have always known,” wrote Ariwara No Narihira in the 9th Century,

 “that at last I would take this road, 

but yesterday I did not know it would be today.”  

The Road Well-Traveled (Part I)

 Today I want to write about the road of life—not M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled,” a theme he borrowed from Robert Frost’s wonderful poem by the same name—but the road of common life that every single person walks.  It is the Road Well-Traveled because everybody is on it!

I sometimes think of this well-traveled road as a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road because it is just that!  Life is not a rose garden—and even if it were, there are few rose bushes that do not grow thorns. But life isn’t a rose garden.  Some think “living” with Jesus is a rose garden, but it isn’t.  The night in the peaceful garden of Gethsemane was followed by ridicule, scorn, a crown of thorns and a cross.  The well-traveled road is tough.  It is troublesome.  It is the road of life—my life, your life, everybody’s life.  

The disciples of Jesus walked a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful Emmaus Road centuries ago.  As they walked along they talked among themselves about all that had happened to them and around them.  We walk that same weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road today.  Just as the disciples talked of their yesterdays on the road,  so we, too, talk of our yesterdays.  We ponder, as they pondered, the meaning of it all—all the happenings, all the coincidences, all the stuff of life.   The Emmaus Road the disciples of Jesus walked is the same road we’ve walked “afoot and lighthearted” since life began.  It is, as Whitman expressed it:

  “an open road:” which we travel “healthy, free, the world before me.  The long

brown path before me leading me wherever I choose…Strong and content 

I travel an open road.”  

That is how the journey begins on the road well-traveled.  But, as the years go by, the road twists around horseshoe curves, climbs many a steep hill, and winds its way through dark shadowed valleys as well as sunlit plains and under spacious skies.  No longer is it a “long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.”  Rather the road becomes a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road, leading us into places we do not wish to go.  It is a road we would not choose.

G.K. Chesterton wrote “The Rolling English Road” and suggested that the English roads were made by those who stopped by the pub for a few drinks and then staggered home.  

    “Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,

    The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

    A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles around the shire,…

    A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread…”

The Road Well-Traveled has been formed by all those who came before. (drunk or sober), and is being formed by all of us at the moment, and will be reformed by those who travel it after us.  

Liam, our granddaughter Katie's husband, 

enabled me to travel some of those 

rolling English roads a few years ago.