Category: A Family Man

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Holy Work

Speaking of love affairs, last year Miska commissioned my friend John Blase to write a poem for me, his poetic reaction to a picture the two of us hold dear. I love the poem, as I love all John’s work. I love the picture. I love the ‘us’ that makes this holy work.

There’s more to this story, perhaps I’ll share it sometime.

WinnMiska

Holy Work

We’ve sat close together in
this strange and beautiful
providence long enough now
to know the secret to love is
more skin to skin than eye to eye.
I have felt your grief and joy
as you have felt my anger and doubt.
And we have both felt the urge
to sacrifice. to make sacred.
Some would call this mere empathy
but I find their lack of imagination
deplorable. No, our love affair stands
in this world of contradictions
with the fundamental texture
of one fiercely earned: it is palpable,
or as the Italians would say:
L’ho provato sulla mia pelle–
I have experienced that on my own skin.
This alone is love’s holy work.
an even loyalty, steady and clear.

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Long Love Affair

This morning as the family cleared the breakfast table, Miska put her arms around me and pulled herself in close. Seth, mouth still stuffed with bagel and cream cheese, made an observation. “Puppy love.”

“No,” Miska answered (and here you’ll have to imagine the sultry Spanish accent she carried), “No, this is a long love affair.” Then, to my delight, she leaned even closer and left a sweet gift with her lips. Seth, as any 9 year old boy should, groaned and buried his face in his hands. I sat there grinning and perky, taken off guard but hoping against hope that this breakfast banter wasn’t the end of things.

There was a stretch in our marriage when a morning simply couldn’t have gone like this. There was too much ice, too many questions, too much loneliness. The first four years of our marriage had been spectacular in almost every conceivable way, but life grows and love changes – and if you don’t go along for the ride, you’ll find yourself lying in bed with a stranger.

Through a multi-year traverse, a story maybe we’ll sit down and tell fully someday, we clawed our way back to a truly shared space. Back to the long love affair. Now, we’re in the days when we make our boys squirm because of our flirtatious amore. We’re in the days when even breakfast gets exciting every now and then.

 

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For Dad

Gravette Arkansas

On a Sunday in January 1983, I dangled my legs from an orange-padded pew and listened as my dad preached ‘in view of a call’ at Parkview Baptist Church. That afternoon, I dangled my legs from the paisley-and-polyester quilted bed at the Best Western, sucking back sobs as my dad told us we would be selling our fifth-wheel trailer, stepping off the road and settling down in Waco, Texas. I didn’t know these people, and I didn’t want our life to change.

My feet now reach the floor, but this past Sunday I sat with that same church (now meeting in a different location and without the orange pews) as they honored my dad for faithfully serving as their pastor for three decades (and still counting). Even more, we celebrated fifty years since my dad took up his call to ministry. In these years, it’s impossible to say how many he’s married, how many he’s buried. How many withered hands has he held? How many prayers has he spoken, for a son to return or a daughter to miraculously recover, a bill to be paid or a family to be made whole? How many stories of tragedy and abuse has he carried? How many injustices has he sought to make right? How many times has he laid his weary bones on the bed, asking God for mercy for one of his people and maybe, if God willed it, a little mercy for himself too?

The good folks at Parkview lovingly refer to my dad as ‘Preacher,’ and anyone who’s enjoyed his ministry in these years would give him good marks. However, if I can be frank, I’ve known a number of high octane preachers — and a fair number of them were (are) scoundrels I wouldn’t trust with a $5 bill. The truth is that a father’s preaching skill, impressionable though it may be, does little for a boy waiting for his dad to come home and toss a baseball in the front yard before supper.

I will tell you, however, what matters to a son. It matters that my dad was the same man at the dinner table as he was behind the pulpit. He doesn’t own a halo and he made his fair share of mash-ups – but he wasn’t fake. Not for a minute. I don’t believe I’d be a Christian today if my dad had played the church game. It matters that my dad loved his family and stayed true to my mom – and that he was generous and loyal and kept his word. It matters that my dad said he loved me – and that I’ve never doubted that these words are true. It matters that my dad has given himself to what he believes, even when it cost him. It matters that my dad has, with his life, practiced love.

This past weekend, it struck me how much my dad’s life is intertwined with this dear place and these dear people. He knows their histories and their kids, their financial woes, their joys and terrors. Whenever he’s with us in Virginia, it annoys me how I can’t get my dad to turn off his blasted cell phone. While I still wish he would pop that piece of machinery in the suitcase for an afternoon, I understand that at least part of the reason why it’s so hard for him to step away is because he can never turn off being their pastor. He’s given so much of himself, and you can’t simply shut that down.

Thirty years ago, I didn’t want to move to Waco because I didn’t know the people, the place. But my father does. He’s spent thirty years making their stories his life’s work. And that – from a son to a father – matters.

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Go Ahead, Spend Yourself

Last Fall, the elderly woman who lived alone in the house on the corner of our street died. In December, the family (I assume) planted two “for sale by owner” signs in the yard. They painted the front door red and tied red bows on evergreen wreaths, hanging one wreath on each of the five windows facing the street. Overnight, a weary 1400 square foot rancher transformed into a cozy Christmas bungalow. They screen printed a five-foot wide banner in holiday colors, built a frame of PVC pipe and placed the sprawling sign right next to the sidewalk. Come Home for the Holidays it read. I was impressed with the ingenuity of these do-it-yourself realtors.

Today, as I jogged passed the unsold house, the red-bowed wreathes hung tired, limp and waiting to be packed away. The Home for the Holidays sign has come untied and half of it droops to the ground. Their scrappy push to move the house during the yuletide season did not pay off. I never noticed even a single potential buyer taking a tour.

I wonder if they regret the effort, if their plans now seem foolish. I wonder if anyone has rolled their eyes and muttered, “I told you so.” I surely hope not.

Miska has taken up a new craft this past month. She does this at least once a year, often in the fall or winter. I love this about her, the way an idea will grab her and not let her loose until she’s spent herself — the way she’ll get this wild energy, the kind a poet knows when the words are flying and most other pursuits, for a while, are lost to them. It is good to be so awake that you notice when something asks for your full attention – and it is good in those precious moments to just go with it, to say yes.

Sometimes, though, others will think you foolish. You will be told you ought be more practical or less engrossed. Sometimes you’ll even have a husband who, in a moment of absolute stupidity, will say something like this: just remember the interest will pass.

Hopefully, your husband (or wife or friend) will also (like me) receive a kick in the arse and get right-minded enough to return, hat in hand. Sorry, baby. Don’t listen to me. I’m an idiot. You go as crazy as you want with your art and your loves. You show us the way.

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Enough

“From Jesus’ fulness,” says St. John, “we have all received, grace upon grace.” The truth of our world is abundance and plenty. Lies produce scarcity, miserliness and greed.

On December 26th, we set out on our Northern trek to visit my sister and her family in Michigan. As we backed out the driveway, flurries hit the windshield, and it occurred to me (with Miska’s help) that I had failed to check the weather. It turns out we were driving directly into an East Coast blizzard – meteorologists had christened the storm with a name for crying out loud. 7 hours yielded 113 miles, and we gave up in Pittsburgh with plans to regroup for a second go the next morning.

Somewhere during these travels (or was it during our 2 hour dead stop on I-70 while 4 tractor trailers were hauled off the guardrail and out of the ditch), our two boys entered a protracted dispute carrying financial implications. Miska halted the melee, insisted on their attention and said, “Guys, the only question you need to ask is this: right now, this moment, do I have enough?”

Do I have enough? Enough love for the hour? Enough dollars for the day? Enough hope for the next stretch?

When we believe we are okay, that our life is in God’s hands and that truly, in the end, all will be well – then we are able to unclinch our fists and live God’s generosity toward others.

This past year, my hope has been to grow more profuse with my energy and money and time, more large-hearted. I’ve been given multiple opportunities to stretch into this way of living. On several occasions, I’ve blown it magnanimously; but I’ve also shined in a few places too. Even these reviews of glories and blunders teach us, for generosity always includes being generous with yourself.

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Boy oh Boy

wyatt_and_sethThe two boys fight like brothers which, I suppose, is exactly as it should be. Yesterday, the younger (9) was yet again sticking his grubby paws into the elder’s (10) bowl of munchies (this young one had the nickname ‘juice bandit’ by 18 months old). When the melee concluded, we had a raging red welt, brief concerns for a bruised appendix and one boy laid out on his bedroom floor.

The other night, Seth (younger) asked, “Dad, what does mischievous mean?” This is like Donald Trump digging for the definition of ‘money.’ Seth, though he’s known as the juice bandit, could just as well go by Dennis the Menace. The boy’s heart is pure as gold, but my, he can concoct some outrageous schemes. I explained mischievous while a knowing grin broke across his face. Do you remember a time when you were first handed a word that told you more about who you are?

Of course, Wyatt would not play second fiddle to little brother, cataloguing his own rascally ways. If Seth is Dennis the Menace, then Wyatt is Marcus Elliot, the scarily sharp-witted 10-year-old in BBC’s Spy. When Wyatt calls out from his loft bed at night, asking for a hug, it rarely actually means he wants a hug. The truer translation runs roughly something like, Dad, could you fill up my water bottle? or Dad, would you snag that book over on my desk? or Dad, I’ve been contemplating global economic theory and I’d like to hash it out a bit.

Yesterday, someone placed a response card in the offering plate at church. People fill out the cards if they have something they want us to pray for in weekday morning prayers or if they have a spiritual issue they want to discuss. This card simply had an X beside the ‘talk to pastor’ line but the rest of the card was blank, save this:

David Collins
6th Street #207

No phone number. No email address. Brendan (one of our other pastors at All Souls) and I talked about how to find this fellow and the oddity that he left no other contact info. We decided to handle it on Monday, gathered our families and headed out the door.

On the way to the car, Seth walked up beside me and asked calmly. “Dad, do you know anyone named David Collins?”

Seth wrote the card. Seth would send us on a wild goose chase.

These two boys, they fight and they scheme and they keep us in stitches. And I love every little spec of them.

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A Boy’s Heart

This weekend, Wendell Berry reminded me that health, wholeness, and holy all come from the same Indo-European root. We moderns have lost our sense of things because we’ve become fragmented, disconnected from our sensuous and enduring connection to land and people, to good work and good rest, to what it means to be human beings truly awake.

I see this temptation in my posture as a dad, in the ways I’m trying to pull together all these conflicting images and expectations of what a father’s to be, to do. If you pay attention to all the noise, there’s a lot of pressure out there. We have a fifth-grader and a third-grader, yet the talk’s already begun about college admissions and all the attending angst. There’s a steady stream of statistics touting proper nutrition, appropriate screen time, how much exercise, and which educational theory you should adamantly commit to (or violently denounce).

To make it more complex, I’m a Christian father. This means there is a particular set of values and hopes that I desire to pass to my sons, ways I want them to be formed as good men in this world. There are few things truer to my deep desires than the ways I want to nurture life and wonder and virtue in my boys. Yet if I see this primarily in terms of getting proper behavior from my sons, I am bound to fail. Appropriate behavior, by itself, may keep them out of jail, but it won’t tend to their soul.

I’m taking it as my fatherly joy to seriously tend to St. Paul’s word (tucked into his letter to the Colossians) for parents to watch their children attentively, lest their children lose heart. I want to do everything within my meager powers to help my boys not lose heart, to keep their imagination aroused, to help them believe in hope and possibility. To keep pointing them toward the God of kindness who dreamed them into existence and, I believe, must be giddy with each and every one of their accomplishments as well as their boyish mishaps. I want to silence the naysayers and the doom-givers, the ones who want to tell them they must shoot for the Ivy League or amass fortunes or even cure cancer, admirable as that would be.

Once I had to pay Wyatt $1 to get in trouble in school. He’d gone the whole year without a single reprimand. That couldn’t possibly be good for the soul. We’ve got to make mistakes if we’re ever to know that it’s simply alright. We lose heart because we grow weary and burdened – with expectations, with musts, with the tight cocoons we weave for ourselves with the self-absorption inherent with trying to get life right.

I want my boys to be healthy and whole. I want them to be truly holy. This means that this dad, with eyes afire, will be watching out for their hearts. Every day. For the rest of my life.

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Two-time Crunch

Last Wednesday, I was at Para Coffee when this text arrived: “Winn, call me. Someone hit your car.” An undergrad student was illegally parked and attempted a quick getaway, backing straight into my car and leaving a nice impression on my driver’s side door. The scoundrel immediately peeled out of the lot, but a red light blocked his escape. My friend Evan watched the episode from a second story window, and he dashed out of his office, banged on the back of the car and forced the flustered driver back to the scene. If you know Evan, you know he was created for a moment such as this. With interrogation skills that would make the FBI beam, Evan retrieved pictures and a signed confession. Evan’s assured me there was no waterboarding.

Then last Sunday evening, we decided to make caramel apples with the boys. I hopped in our second vehicle for the short drive (less than a mile) to the grocery market. We live in an urban area, near downtown – not typically the place you’d expect to encounter wild beasts. Yet a large deer jumped out of the dark, a head-on collision. A gruesome crunch, the impact catapulted 200 pounds into the roadside trees, a brown mass whirling through the air. From the backseat, Seth screamed angrily and at a piercing decibel: “Dad, why did you kill a deer? Why did you kill a deer?”

When we pulled over, Seth picked deer hair off the smashed grill and shook his head. Then he paced the sidewalk muttering, “I’ve never been in a crisis like this before.”

We’re two cars down. But we’ve been reminded that Seth truly loves the creatures of this world. And we’ve learned that Colliers can do alright in a crisis.

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Tapped by Joy

Last Saturday night, we sat on our back deck, breathing brisk October air. I loaded the wood into the chiminea and set it ablaze, announcing time for s’mores. On the grocery run that morning, Campfire marshmallows (the ones the size of two fists) somehow hopped into my basket. The boys had sighted these a few times and, wide-eyed, asked if we could try them. When Miska noticed these white gooey behemoths stuffed in one of the grocery bags, she rolled her eyes. “That’s the Texan coming out in you.”

Miska arranged our goods on the deck near the fire. She noticed the marshmallows, the Hershey bars, the hangers for roasting. She looked around, then asked a question providing one beautiful slip-of-the-tongue. “Did anyone grab the graham crappers?”

We laughed and laughed.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I read Robert Farrar Capon yesterday, and he told me that even God’s divine justice – such an ominous and grave reality – is rigged in my favor, rigged because of God’s bold act of decisive love. Later, Anestis Keselopoulos countered the small, miserly stories we often repeat, reminding me of the good news: “The Church forms the potentiality for the entire world to be gathered together.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This morning before school, Seth said, “Dad, you’re my football buddy and my coffee buddy and my steak buddy – oh, and beef jerky buddy.” He took a breath and continued, “Mom, you’re my artist buddy and book buddy and cake buddy.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Joy’s always waiting to tap you on the shoulder. Joy comes in a millions ways.

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Of Waffles and Belonging

Last Thursday morning, the day Miska and I celebrated fifteen years of gritty love, I sang Seth a tune while he pulled on his sneakers for school: Dad’s taking mom to breakfast to celebrate / Dad’s taking mom to breakfast to celebrate / Oh yeah, Dad’s taking mom to breakfast to celebrate (it’s best if you snap along).

Seth exhaled an agonizing groan. “Nooooo fair, Dad. You get to go to Waffle House!”

Of course, Waffle House hadn’t crossed our mind. We did consider The Pigeon Hole, a little house in the University district where, if you like, you can sit in the cobblestoned courtyard underneath a massive oak tree and order red-eye gravy laced with Shenandoah Joe’s coffee grounds. We did consider Blue Moon on Main Street where your first move upon arrival is to look up at the blackboard in the corner by the fireplace to see which gourmet thick-sliced bacon they’re offering (the Moon is where you’re likely to see a person order, all at once, an apple omelete, griddle cakes and a shot of jack daniels). The Nook downtown was an option, where you can enjoy French Toast while watching the town walk by. Of course, we could always pick the Bluegrass Grill, where you endure their kitsch garage sale mugs in order to lock your lips on the most astounding home fries. We did not think Waffle House.

Every month or two, however, we’ll pass by the House of the Waffle, and Wyatt will say, “Dad, you’ve really got to take us there again.”

“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll do that…Sometime.”

My boys like the waitresses who call you “honey” and the short order cooks with the yellow hats who yell out orders like a minor league umpire. They like the hash browns, the pancakes, the sticky syrup at the table. However, I believe they like Waffle House mainly because several years ago, in Clemson, I took them for a guy’s Saturday morning. We sat at the bar next to a guy from New England wearing his Boston College jersey and in town for the game with the Tigers. The atmosphere was crowded and rowdy. We chatted game day and drank coffee — and the boys were included in the ritual.

I also believe Wyatt and Seth like Waffle House because two years ago, when my dad was visiting, he wanted to take all the guys to breakfast. We had three generations lined up at those counter seats. The boys filled their bellies and joked with Pa and were inaugurated, amid maple syrup and OJ, to a family of men.

Every place in this world of ours, every place, can be a space of holy memory, of love, of belonging.

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