Category: Words and Rabble

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Travel Trailer Horror Show

piratejohnny

I had a unique childhood.

Everybody says that, I know. But really…

My dad was a traveling evangelist, and until the 6th grade, our home was a Kountry-Aire 5th wheel travel trailer. We spent 45 or so weeks on the road, crisscrossing the U.S. By the time I was 12, I’d seen most of North America, touched my toes in the water on both coasts and eaten breakfast at a Shoney’s (or Elias Brothers or Frisch’s, depending on the region of the country) in almost every state of this fair union of ours. Top that.

While there were many advantages to this lifestyle (see earlier comment about Shoney’s), my parents knew there was also a cost. We saw our friends rarely, and we didn’t have a house with a yard and a tree house. So, mom and dad went to great lengths to make sure we didn’t miss out any more than we had to. Add that to the fact that in our house, holidays (all holidays) were big. B.I.G. These were the formative years where I was taught to grab every reason to celebrate. I’m still a believer.

With this backdrop, we come to the Halloween of 1981. We were on a long stretch of interstate, and for hours my dad had been searching for a haunted house. I don’t recall whether or not I had asked for a haunted house – but it was halloween, blast it, and we were going to get the bejeezers scared out of us. The afternoon drug into the evening, and the hours and the miles ticked away with no haunted house or spooky mineshaft or crazy Zombie corn maze to be found.

It was past ten, and my dad pulled into a dark Kmart parking lot (I know, Kmarts are scary – but it gets worse). My folks told my sister Vonda and me to stay in the truck while they went to work. My dad must have gone to the dumpster to pull out cardboard boxes. Fifteen minutes later, a screechy, spooky voice (my mom) insisted we enter the trailer. We had to crawl on hands and knees through the Mine Shaft of Horrors pieced together by cardboard scraps. Lights flashed as my parents howled and screamed and boomed. They hit the boxes and made clanging noises. It was terrifying. And I loved every minute of it.

There are things a parent does for the sheer fact of love. Some of those thing are crazy little moments like pulling cardboard boxes out of a dumpster and screaming your head off so your boy and your girl can pee in their pants and have a good halloween.

Well, mom and dad, it matters. Thank you.

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Saying Grace

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
{G.K. Chesterton}
image: mattox
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Impressive

Wyatt’s in Tae Kwon Do. Seth’s hitting gymnastics. Our living room floor now groans under catapults and high-forward kicks and the ferocity of sweat-drenched boys. And, of course, they want Miska and me to watch. Every handstand. Every punch. Without an audience, it’s not nearly as much fun.

We never grow out of this desire to be seen. Nor should we. We were made to be reveled in, to receive another’s delight. However, in the sad twists of a world wounded by sin, we discover soon enough that no human can ever fill our desire. No kiss lasts long enough. No touch delves deep enough. No relationship or accolade or promotion or best-seller does the trick. The affirmation sticks for minutes, but unfortunately, the criticism lingers for years.

All this means that we live with a severe deficit, and so we claw harder, fight longer, grunting and preening. We’re desperate to be seen, desperate for approval. With all our desperation, all our exertion, we become the person we think will gain another’s nod, the person we presume others will find acceptable or intriguing or accomplished. The tragedy is that we lose ourselves. We become a caricature of the person God has made us to be.

I feel this temptation in my writing, wanting to be taken “seriously,” whatever that means. With such a shallow and selfish goal, I don’t give away what I truly have to offer the world. Rather, I give away what I think someone (and who exactly is this someone??) expects me to give away. I feel this temptation as a pastor, wanting to be seen as one who “leads well,” whatever that means. When I care much about how I’m seen, I inevitably care little about truly seeing others. I perpetuate this vicious merry-go-round, and we’re all spinning, spinning.

Frederick Bruner gives us this hopeful word: Jesus wants to liberate us from having to be impressive to anyone, including ourselves. God, that sounds good.

image: derrickT

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Well

When we are overrun with all we’ve yet to do, and particularly with all that we realize we’ll never get to do,

When we recognize that what we’ve envisioned is not what has come to pass,

When we’re forced to face down (at last) the truth that we can not control our kids or our marriage or our job or our reputation or the economy, or – basically – anything at all,

When fear stalks us and gloom hounds us,

We need to hear the good blessing from St. Julian:

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.


Amen.

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Autumn Joys

The crisp morning air teases, hints at what’s coming. We watch the colors come afire on Carter’s Mountain, signal that we best get ourselves up into the orchards for the Gala and the Fuji and the Red Delicious and the Golden Delicious and the HoneyCrisp and the (praise the Almighty!) CandyCrisp. Miska puts oranges and cinnamon simmering on the stove, drawing Colliers from the four corners of the house, curious.

Saturday pigskin. Winn’s Texas chili. Tossing the football with the boys. Fireplace. More reason to snuggle. The joys of autumn.
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Mad Men

Miska and I, ever late to the party, have begun watching Mad Men. We’re into the second season, and I’ve yet to find a character I truly like. Early on, I asked Miska what she thought the symbolism was during each episode’s opening montage — that suited imaged falling, falling, falling. A couple nights ago, Miska figured it out. “He’s dropping into the moral abyss.” Bingo.

The writing is sharp. The set dead-on. A far cry from the same show, different channel gloom of most network drivel, Mad Men offers true craft, nuanced stories and dialogue that makes you want to actually listen to what the characters are saying. For television, that’s no small feat.
Still, there’s no character I really want to know, certainly nobody I’d like my sons to know. I’m watching Mad Men, but I realize I’m missing Friday Night Lights.
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On the Anniversary of 09/11

Ten years ago today, I was driving into downtown Denver, heading to my office at Schwab. I was dialed into the same news station that always accompanied my drive. Updates came staccato-style. What a tragedy – this malfunctioned plane (or was it pilot error?) that had set one of the Towers ablaze. Then I remember the somber panic of the announcer: This was not an accident. A second plane has just hit the second Tower.

I walked into the fourth floor of the Schwab building. The room was normally a-chatter with brokers doing broker business. But we were all huddled around the TV monitors hanging ever fifteen feet or so from the ceiling. Normally, we had CNBC’s coverage of the market’s pre-bell hype. We watched the flame and ash, the people diving out of windows. We worried about our colleagues in our Trade Center office – had they escaped?

We went to war, or three. Lives have been saved, I’m sure. Lives have also been lost, far more civilians than on that horrid day. What has come of us? Today, I wonder what we’ve learned as a people. What have I learned?

Lord, have mercy on us.

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Go Looking for It

Joy will surprise you, sneak up on you like a quick-hit kiss. I’m thankful joy comes when we least expect it, when we least deserve it. Some of us tilt toward the sour side, and we need a disruptive shock of laughter or foolishness to punch us in the seat of the pants. Having two boys is good for this. Well, sometimes — let’s be honest.

That said, being surprised is not enough. We need to look for joy, scout it out. I say it’s good to be greedy on this score. The more joy you receive, the more you can give away. And God knows we need more joy in this world.

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Friendship

The older I get, the more I value the simple cadence of friendship. I crave the spaces and people who are music for my soul, who help me see where I shine as well as where I fade – and who care not one bit which it is because the friendship we share isn’t about getting anything fixed but about walking together toward the person we truly are. True friends see the good in me more than I’m able to see it myself.

Buechner got it right. “Friends are people you make part of your life just because you feel like it.” I have a few friends like this. I hope to God you do to.

I have an image. We’re sitting around a night sky (probably Colorado), miles from the noise. We have a fire popping. We have our pipes. We’re sitting round a circle, our breath blowing mist into the crisp air, deep rhythms. We sit, maybe for an hour, silent, with only puffs of smoke and crackle of fire to distract. Finally, someone shifts, signaling a readiness to speak. We listen expectantly as he breathes in, soon to break the long quiet. Well, he says, peering into the fire. He exhales a long sigh, his shoulders releasing again. We all nod in agreement and then return to our conversation amid silence.

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Mark Rife: Give Life a Chance

Last Thursday, a guy I went to college with, Mark Rife, committed suicide. As I understand the story, three years ago his wife Sarah died due to complications from a fall off a 75 foot waterfall. She fell; he dove in after her. Against all odds, they thought she had recovered. In fact, in one of the messages he left, he reminisced about her caring for him during his recovery while she had landed back at work and routines. Life had returned to some degree of normal; but then six months later, she died in her sleep. Mark was devastated.

In a video he left behind, Mark describes leaving Sarah’s funeral, driving who knows where and simply wanting to die — but he remembered the time they watched the film Juliet and Her Romeo, a film he loved, and he remembered Sarah’s question: “Do you think Romeo would have still killed himself if he’d waited 1,000 days?”

So, Mark went on a 1,000 day odyssey, with funds from Sarah’s life insurance policy, to give him time to see if his choice would still be the same. Would he still want to kill himself? Mark traveled, explored, met knew people. He says he “followed every impulse.” Mark had been a pastor in Hawaii, and he left his life behind. Apparently (though I didn’t see it) he suggested that perhaps he left his faith behind. I don’t know what to say about all that, but Mark spoke of the many places where he spent time volunteering and serving the same marginalized and forgotten people for whom he had always felt compassion. This much is obvious: Mark was a man searching.

After 1,000 days, Mark determined that yes, he still wanted to end his life. This man searching had convinced himself that taking his own life was the best way to discover whatever it was he was looking for. He put up a website, called 1,000 days (which Tumblr took down over the weekend) and told his story, with images, videos and posts about his long journey, his experiences, his questions, his grief. He spoke often of the power of love, and he asked forgiveness from anyone hurt by his decision. And then he signed off.

I didn’t know Mark well. Other of my friends knew him much better. The last time I saw Mark was probably 2003 or 2004 at a conference in Atlanta. But Mark’s death, the story of his last few years, has sat heavy on me the past few days. Late last year, another friend committed suicide. This isn’t the way things are supposed to go. I’m angry at death.

If you are contemplating suicide, don’t play that card. Talk to someone. Ask for help. Pursue hope, not death.

 

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