graduation night

Posted on by June 7, 2013

graduation caps

Our daughter graduates from high school tonight.

That’s a pretty huge milestone for a young kid.

It’s a big deal and worthy of great celebration.

I remember my own graduation.

We had the ceremony at the Cobb Civic Center from what I can recall.

When the ceremony was over, I remember going outside with my parents and our friend, May, who’d flown out from California for my big night.

It was hot…like it gets in Georgia in late Spring…muggy and hot.  I was standing in the parking lot with my parents…standing by our old Ford Fairlane.

Every one of my friends were tearing out of the parking lot in their old trucks….going to parties at the lake,etc…. parties, parties, parties….wild times on graduation night.

They were finished with something big…it was time to move on to the next chapter.  But first, they needed to party hard.

I was standing by our old station wagon with my parents and sister…and our family friend, May.

My parents said, “You can come home with us and have cake with May”.

I listened to the tires screeching…and the excited yelling of all my friends going off to have another adventure….going off to have the last adventure they’d have as “high school students”…..and my parents were inviting me to go back home and have cake with May….and I think that I panicked a little.

This was a big night for me.  I needed to be out in the world with the other celebrators.

I got into the Fairlane and rode home.  I had cake with May.

But I was chomping at the bit to get back out and find my friends…and after we’d had our cake, I explained that I needed to get back out there and celebrate….and I left.

From what I remember, I did end up finding a few of my fellow graduates and we went out and roamed around together…went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, got a late bite to eat.

It wasn’t really a rocking party.  It wasn’t a blow out.  It was more of a trickle out, if there is such a thing.  I guess it was kind of a slow leak kind of celebration.

All these years later, I can’t help but think of May coming all the way from California for my big night.

May wasn’t a “blood relative”, whatever that may mean, but she was as close to our family as any relative related by birth.  She’d been a close and loved family friend for what seemed like forever.

I wish that I could have calmed down long enough to realize that having cake with May would be a bigger deal than partying with my friends.

That’s probably just something that you figure out when you’re older.

May’s long gone…and I never see most of the folks I knew in High School.

My parents are both gone now, also.

Tonight my daughter graduates from High School.  She drives an old truck, but she isn’t really in the “tear out of the parking lot” mode.  I don’t think she’ll have the same situation going that I had so many years ago.  I hope that she has a good celebration with us…and with her friends.

“You can come home with us and have cake with May”.

I’d like that.

 

image from here

 

 

in the world, not in the world

Posted on by June 6, 2013

Quiet_Getaway,_Lake_Tahoe,_Nevada

There’s a phrase in the Bible that describes our situation here on Earth.

It says that we’re to consider ourselves “In the world…but not of the world”.

I wrestled with that thought for years…wondering how do I transcend daily life, how do I draw so close to God that, even though I’m stuck on this earthly plane, I’m close enough to Him that I’m not really of the world?

Maybe I thought it was like getting a leg a little farther over the fence or something…impossible not to straddle a little, but my efforts would be enough to “get over“.

I pondered this thought hard.  I wondered why something so difficult would be required or requested.

Later, I came to the conclusion that what it probably means is that we’re here right now ….but that ultimately this world isn’t our home.

“Here” wasn’t something to transcend.  “Here” was a gift to be used like it mattered.  It wasn’t something to be feared or regretted.  We are “in the world”…we are here right now…but in the end, we’re designed for better things. We are not, in the end, of this world.

No one ever told me that when I was wrestling with my misunderstanding of the phrase “in the world…but not of the world”.

In keeping with that thought, driving around or running or doing any of the things I do outside, I notice people outside listening to what used to be Walkmen…but now, unless they’re real throwbacks or unable to afford something new, are probably MP3 players.

It’s like they understood the phrase to be “in the world, not in the world“.

Not even in the world.  It’s like they’ve got something to transcend every day… and they don’t even know it.

“YO, Man…gotta have my jams!!!”

It seems like getting out into the natural world is our shot to hear the wind, hear the little new frogs we call peepers around here, see the grass move in the breeze, hear the crunch of our footfalls on the gravel or pavement or dirt trail.

It is our chance to be in the world.

To be fully immersed in the world.  To be covered up with “world”…right here, right now….a good animal able to experience everything the world has to show us.

But instead, we stick something in our ears that lets us “do something practical” with our time outside.

“Let’s not waste a moment….while I’m exercising outside I can listen to Britney Spears and really get something out of the experience.”

I’ve done it…listened to music while I exercised.  I’ve been a gym member…paid my dues to come someplace inside to lift weights while I listened to really loud music.

I’ve done that.

I’ve even run with what at the time was a Walkman.

That was kind of goofy.

I’ve started wondering if that is the wrong way to approach things, though.

I think that when we’re outside, we need to be outside.  Not somewhere inside our heads, not somewhere else….listening to music is great, but Nature doesn’t need another soundtrack.

The soundtrack it provides should be enough.

And that, my friends, is the beginning of the true definition of “opinionated curmudgeon”.

Enough said.

fishing

Posted on by June 6, 2013

Sunset_fishing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I woke up this morning at 4:30 instead of my usual 5:00.

I’m not sure why a half hour would make such a difference, but it felt really early.

When I looked at the clock, I thought it was like I was going fishing.

For a minute, I thought I was going to miss all the fish I wasn’t even trying to catch.  I thought I was going to miss something.

I remember when we used to go fishing…up so early to get on the lake and catch the fish before they knew we were after them or something.

That was what you did when you went fishing…you got up early.

Back then, I was the one my father had to wake up.

“Wake up…time to wake up” and I’d get up and have some breakfast and then we’d get in the station wagon and drive to the lake.

Now I’d be the one doing the waking up…but for some reason we don’t go fishing.  Maybe it’s something I should start doing.

My children can wake up early, too.

Fishing is a good reason to wake up.

Yesterday when I was just starting out on the mail route, I looked up to a porch I never deliver to and noticed an older man in overalls staring out into the fog.

Fog is pretty atmospheric.

( “fog is pretty atmospheric” ?  Very true, Sherlock, very true.)

I’d seen him pulling weeds out in his garden before…but never noticed him up on his porch.

“I wonder what he’s doing up there?” I wondered.

( I’ve stopped listening to the radio when I deliver the mail.  “Wondering” must be what I replaced the external noise with…I seem to be full of wonder these days.)

I finally arrived at the conclusion that he must be watching time.

( Have you ever noticed that when we say “finally arrived at the conclusion” we never let it be the end of the thought?  Here we are at the “conclusion” and we can’t give it a rest.  Maybe finally arrived at the diversion….or “you know I’ll keep talking”…or something like that would be more appropriate. )

Watching time?  Like waiting for the fish to rise….

What better use of our time than just letting it wash over us some…times?

I don’t know what he was doing up on the porch in his bib overalls.  Maybe he was balancing his stock portfolio or setting up a big company merger somewhere in Bolivia…I don’t really know. He might have been doing something really involved.

It looked to me like he was “just” watching time.

You know….maybe fishing is just a good excuse for us to watch time?  Staring at that line going down into the water legitimizes it all.

When someone says…even if it should be obvious….”Whatcha doin’ ?”  and we’re able to tell them that we’re fishing, it sounds better somehow than if we say that we’re just staring into space.

“Watching time”  isn’t an answer that inspires the same understanding or confidence that “trying to catch some fish” does.

Like the old Rolling Stones song says…”tiiiiiiiiiiiime is on my my side…yes, it is”.

We should be able to watch it if we want to.

07 Time Is on My Side

acolyte

Posted on by June 4, 2013

Flame

I remember the first time I was given the chance to be the acolyte at our small Lutheran church in Georgia.

I was probably about thirteen and was good at chasing butterflies.

I was distractible.

This was in the days before ADHD…but I remember myself as being the classic undiagnosed case.

But when I was given the opportunity to carry the flame up to the front of that little white church, my focus was laser like.

I think that I must have felt like I was some sort of facilitator…like I was the one who was going to bring the Holy Spirit into the church and allow the service to begin.

I remember each measured step, watching the flame at the end of that brass…what was it called?  I know it wasn’t called the fire pole…it must have had a name…that wick…watching it like what I was doing was important.

I was still a child but what I was doing was important.

What I was doing was worthy of reverence.

Maybe a better way to say it is that what I was doing demanded an attitude of reverence.  I don’t think anyone reveres me.

I think that’s a pretty powerful feeling to be able to give a child.  There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that we find ourselves able to sincerely revere these days.

To allow a child to feel their importance in the Creation is a good thing.

To be able to teach them to revere their connection to both the Creator and His Creation is even better.

We’re kind of a nation of smart a**** these days.

(That’s the kettle calling the pot black, of course.  I’m very guilty of being a smart aleck most of the time.)

I don’t think that reverence has much meaning these days.

It isn’t a “kinda like” or “yeah…they’re OK” or “I guess it was good” type of response that I think we’re after here.

But that’s the response we give.  It’s like we’re afraid to fully commit to something that’s worthy of more than complete commitment.

The definition of revere says “show devoted deferential honor to”.

Wow.

Who knew that was what I was doing when they let me slow down long enough to carry that tiny flame through that small church?

( And as an aside, that was probably one of the only times a group of adults felt comfortable with me walking around inside any building with something on fire.  It was probably a big moment for me for a number of reasons.)

“Devoted deferential honor”…that’s a pretty heavy thought.

I can do irreverence in my sleep.  That world view comes easy.  It’s easy to relax into gentle sarcasm and pointed humor, deflecting lack of substance with self-deprecating observations.

It’s not hard to suspect that most of the world is a curious place lacking the worthiness that would allow me to respond to it in a way that shows respect.

To give myself over to love in a way that would allow me to fully revere…to show reverence in the best and most complete sense of that word….now, that is something to shoot for.

When you’re a child, you probably don’t know what the word “reverence” means.

But…maybe that’s when you understand it the best.

I don’t really know…but I’d like to.

 

 

 

 

cello days

Posted on by June 3, 2013

Traveling down the highway, road tripping at 65 miles an hour…the not uncommon exclamation, “Did you SEE THAT?!!” as we quickly pass another milestone or marker….each of us seeing something a little different from the other.

Most of the time, we noticed…sometimes just barely.

My daughter plays the cello.

She finds her own ways to have fun with it.

This Friday she graduates from high school.

Another marker flying by.

The funny thing is that, until you pass the milestone, you think that you’re just out for another Sunday drive, a meandering voyage through the familiar country lanes….breeze on your face, fried chicken for lunch, no hurries or worries or thoughts of the future.

No thoughts of what you might have missed when you looked down to adjust the radio.

And then you pass the “milestone” on the one way country road and you wake up and wonder:

“How the heck did I end up on the Autobahn?”

The autobahn?  Now you’re driving to survive…faster than you ever wanted to go and no one is saying, “did you see that?”….we’re all just white knuckled, eyes forward vessels of adrenaline…looking for the first place to exit so we can catch our breath.

But if we realized how fast the journey really goes, we’d never get in the car in the first place.

How do you even keep something that fast on the road?  It sounds impossible.

My daughter plays the cello.

She started playing in the 6th grade…and played all through high school.

The funny thing about vehicles is that even though some of us may pick a fast car…and some of us may pick a slow truck…I think that the general consensus when we near the end of even a small part of our journey through life is that, “that part went a lot faster than I thought it would.”

Maybe we improve our driving skills as we get older….maybe we get fatalistic about the whole game, sure that something weird like a wheel flying off at one hundred miles an hour is just around the next bend.  Maybe we just take the closest on ramp and get swept along with all the other vehicles moving forwards.

We move forward.  That’s our option.  Fast…or slow…we move forward.

My daughter plays the cello.  That’s a small part of who she is…a small part of what she does.

They say that at the end, your life flashes before your eyes.  That’s something that, thankfully, I haven’t experienced yet.

But I have to wonder if some parts don’t flash before my eyes as I move through the middle of my life?

When our oldest children were young, someone wiser than me said, “you better pay attention”.  And in between remodeling a gutted house, working….and dealing with all the other distractions I provided myself…I really did try to pay attention.

If someone yelled out, “DID YOU SEE THAT?!”…I think that, at least some of the time, my response would have been, “What?! What did I miss?!”

My oldest child plays the cello.  My oldest graduates this Friday.

I saw that.

13 Benedictus

 

 

today may be a good one

Posted on by June 2, 2013

rural-iron-man-mailbox-29611280793326T1UA

I deliver mail.

I’ve mentioned before that delivering mail is the job I do.  Six days a week, I sort and load my collection of bills and checks, letters and magazines, good news and maybe even some bad news….and then I take it out on the road to deliver it.

I have some routines that I follow.  When you do something 6 days a week…for what seems like forever…routine is the word of the day.

I pull my mail down in the same way.

I load my vehicle in the same way.

My dog bones are in the same place in the vehicle everyday.

I eat the same breakfast and lunch everyday.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s so I don’t even notice that it’s a different workday? Maybe I want it all to run together so I don’t notice what kind of stone I’m rolling up the hill?  Maybe I’m just a creature of lazy habit…

Anyway, this post isn’t really about all my many habits and routines.  It’s about one consistent part of my day that got me thinking about expectations and observations.

I have a customer on my route who is known in the community by the nickname “Zippy”.

Zippy ( I call him by his name, Michael…but Zippy sounds more colorful, so I’ll call him that in this post ) uses a wheelchair.  Everyday that the weather allows it, he powers down the road from his house to his mailbox and waits for a couple of minutes of conversation when I pull up in the mail jeep.

It’s an everyday occurrence.  I look for him and expect that my forward momentum is going to be halted for the time I sit and visit with Zippy.

That’s OK…what’s my hurry?

A typical conversation always goes like this:

Me: ” It’s nice outside today.”

Zippy: “It’s HOT.”

Me: “Yeah….but the breeze feels nice..”

Zippy: “Yeah…but it’s going to rain. ”

Me:  “Where’d you hear that?”

Zippy:  ” 40 percent chance today, 60 percent chance on Sunday, 20 percent chance on Monday, (etc. etc. etc.)

Me: “So…there’s a chance it won’t rain, too….”

Zippy: “Maybe….Maybe Not.”

That’s the way our conversations typically go…day in and day out.  “Maybe…Maybe Not” is sort of the joke that punctuates the end notes of our visiting….kind of the admission that even though something bad could happen, we don’t know when or what, so whatever the weatherman tells us can be held under suspicion.

My amusement out of all this is trying to figure out if there is going to be a day when I say, ” This snow is amazing…see how that one drift over there looks?! ”  and Zippy will say something like…

“Oh, I know…isn’t it beautiful outside today?”  or even that something to do with the weather is really kind of pleasant.

That’s my game.  It feels like a victory if perfection is ever recognized.

Zippy is not a bitter guy.  He delivers his observations of gloom with tremendous good cheer.  He is happy to point out that it may not be as nice as I think it is…and even if something strange has happened and it really is pretty nice right now, and he has to admit to that fact…well, something is projected to come along soon that will turn “nice” on its ear.

But all I really want is the admission that it might turn out to be an amazing day.

Just once or twice, I want to pull up and have our talk turn to how nice it is outside.

I don’t know if that’s going to happen.  It doesn’t seem to be the way our conversations are ever going to go down.

( It takes a lot of creativity to talk for five or ten minutes about how a beautiful day could turn sour.  It takes more muscles to frown, too…or so I’ve been told.)

Zippy is not a bitter guy.  I said that before….he’s pretty hilarious in his own way, and I think that we enjoy talking to each other.  I don’t know how many people become captive audiences for the moment at the end of his driveway….I think I’m the only car that has to stop at his mailbox…so I may be the only person he gets to talk to consistently.

He waits for me to pull up so he can wheel on down….and I wait for him at the mailbox when I see him coming.

That’s part of my routine.

I think that one of the things that keeps me going is that small break in the routine that I look for…the one where I pull up and before I can even start talking, Zippy says…

“You know….today may be a good one”.

 

Anything good can happen.

 

 

 

I’m listening

Posted on by June 1, 2013

My daughter found this on YouTube…pretty funny.

“I think we all know who the real boss is.  The real boss is the one who does…the tickling.”

Our three-year old has, seemingly all of a sudden, gotten lucid.

It’s strange to understand most of what comes out of his mouth.  He has some unique insights.

Six months ago, most of it required some deciphering.  There were some moments of pure and strange brilliance, but a lot of the time was spent asking my wife, “Did you catch that?  What did he just say?”

I think she is kind of a baby whisperer…many times she could actually translate for me. She spoke his language.

It is refreshing and weird to be able to understand the complete sentences that come out of his mouth these days.

His perspective is definitely a fresh one.

How much am I missing out in the world because I just don’t speak the language?

It’s not only a matter of the rest of the people not being up to speed…not being able to communicate in a way that I can relate to.

I think the problem really does lie with me.

Weird.

Our child was having the same thoughts when he was younger and unintelligible.  Nothing changed except his ability to pronounce an ever-expanding vocabulary.

But I act like he’s the one who is suddenly “up to speed”.

This was a funny video.  It doesn’t deserve any quasi philosophical rambling…but it’s amazing when you realize that, at least as far as language goes, you really are on the same page/planet as your young child.

Short post this morning…I overslept.  5:30 instead of 5:00 AM.  What happened?

how big is a bushel?

Posted on by May 31, 2013

its-a-wonderful-life-3

“Hide it under a bushel?  NO!  I’M GONNA LET IT SHINE.”

How big is a bushel?

And just what am I hiding my light under?

I wrote a blog post about Lloyd Kahn yesterday…and it got me thinking about “right livelihood” again.

Of course, if your talent in life is finding ways to be dissatisfied with what you’re doing in the moment…while you imagine some “pie in the sky” perfect activity or occupation…then I suppose you have some major work to do.

There are going to be some things to figure out.

03 That’s What the Lonely Is For

Maybe one of the real gifts of being a parent is when things sometimes accelerate to the point where self-absorption is a lot harder than it used to be?

Although, if I’m up and writing this a couple of hours before everyone else gets up, I may need to back away a little farther from “self-absorption” than I think.

Being so self involved that you feel you need to write about how to escape self-absorption is kind of psychotic.

Not that I’m psychotic or anything.  They don’t allow psychotic mailmen.

I don’t think that a recognizable part of being a “good parent” is total self-absorption.  It’s not something that’s celebrated in all the “parenting” literature.

Being selfish is bad.  That’s an established idea.

But wouldn’t it be a fantastic gift to give to our children to be able to be employed at the thing that brought us complete joy? How selfish do we need to be for that to happen?

Or is it only a matter of blooming where we’re planted?

I love the old movie It’s a Wonderful Life.  The old movie with Jimmy Stewart….where the angel shows him what kind of effect his life’s had on the world?  I cry every time I watch it…and I know it by heart.

In the movie, Jimmy’s character, George Bailey, is down on himself because he’s sure that he’s wasted his life.  He wasn’t the success he envisioned.  He didn’t have the big life he’d hoped for.

Most of his self perceived short comings came about because he made choices based on other people’s needs.

Anyway…the angel shows him what the world would have been like if he hadn’t been around to make a difference.

It’s pretty eye-opening for George to see it in its true light.

I love that movie.

So…once again…how big is a bushel ?

What have I set in motion that allows me to “hide my light”?

I don’t really know.  It’s hard to see the big picture when you’re just working on getting through the day…although nothing feels wasted when you’re just busy living in the moment.

But when you snap awake at three in the morning, with a question like “what’s this all about?” stampeding through your head, it’s hard to let it rest until you’ve pondered it long enough to realize again that it’s a question without an easy answer.

I don’t know how big a bushel is.  I don’t even know how big a hectare is.

I do know that if you never reach for something, you don’t even have a shot at figuring it out.

But if you’re hiding under a bushel basket at least you’re out of the rain.

And if it’s not raining, you’ll never know it.

 

grow up not old

Posted on by May 30, 2013

“I like builders, like I like farmers, because they have to deal with real things.  Things have to work.”

I’ve written about Lloyd Kahn before…but here’s a short video where he talks about his homestead and his early years working on the Whole Earth Catalog.

These days, when we have the ability to say, “just Google it” when we want access to information, we forget how revolutionary it was to hold in our hands a book that introduced us to new ways of doing and thinking about things.

Lloyd is the best example I know of the thought that age is just a number.

From his example, I guess I can learn that to stay interested and involved…and to work at something you love and are excited about…must be some sort of fountain of youth.

The quality of the years in our lives must count a lot more than the quantity.

It is inspiring to learn about people who take that thought to heart.

Now, that being said, I think that to have a whole bunch of high quality quantity (of years) wouldn’t be such a bad thing, either.

 

Check out Lloyd’s blog here…

http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/

Here’s another short video….