Jane's Birthday Coming Up February 1

So, a picture of Jane (see more here) as I send a note to ask for words of love and memories as she comes up on a milestone birthday. I decided to send to all of our FB friends. (So... if you get this but don't even know Jane, sorry. She's a great gal and the loss is yours, but don't feel beholden to make up memories... :) )

I would appreciate any connections you can add as there are folks who know and love her who I will not connect with. For example, I'd greatly appreciate any of the Mt. Carmel girls spreading the word. She loved having you in our home and I'd love to share your thoughts with her.

It will be a trick to keep this secret, but this blog is rarely seen. So you can leave your comments here. FB messages are fine, too -- I may just have to keep her off of it somehow for awhile so I can keep them a surprise!

This is just part of celebrating the big Five-0 by putting together expressions of love from the many who have known her across the years. A few words, a memory, whatever you can find time for in the midst of everything else -- much appreciated!!

Trying to get it together before next Sunday. Thank you!

Randy

Time...

...stolen for a few minutes of written reflection, little figures that represent sounds which, when put together, comprise ideas of one kind or other. Communication. Always takes time. so much of it I avoid if I can because, well because life is taxing. It is. and so we love people, all people, but self-absorption is always at the door because of the demands of life.

Enter Jesus who said, it seems, "Give yourself away." Even, "Give what you do not have." I have seen this bear out truthfully, and I have seen the painful results of its denial.

Where does this brief spot in time for a reflective meandering end? With this: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and I find amazing, deep joy (very real, mind you in the demands of life!) in knowing he gives purpose and meaning, truth and beauty, and...redemption!! And...it is an amazing journey -- truly amazing -- to look, look hard, listen 'loudly' in the pursuit of knowing who this amazing man is. Jesus, son of man, Son of God, my Lord and Savior, my friend, my big brother. Anything good, as Dr. Herron used to say, is from him. The 'stuff' of my life is all me. But I ain't looking there. I am looking to, and loving, Jesus. With a happy smile on my face. (Can't you see it in all these figures that represent sound that....)

So happy I ever surrendered my life to Him!

Words that cannot be spoken...

There are words that cannot be spoken because they are not words, only dim awarenesses, inarticulate because life is just that way. Do you know everything? A silly question. And yet, and yet, the path of knowing God will press us through the highest trials. I do not say I am there, though this is relative to be sure. My trials might be child's play to you,and yours to me.

As someone said recently, the yearning for perfection and permanence is written into our being and so we long for...we are desperate to know perfection, completion, wholeness. And the whisper of this broken world almost sounds like a taunt: “not yet”. Not yet?! Let it be over then, let me know heaven, “come Lord Jesus!” Is this not the deepest and truest angst that makes us cry out, reach up beyond our grasp, knowing there must be a heaven or there is no point after all?!

But I must believe this is no taunt but plain reality. God is our Father and he guides us along a good path, always to something better. And lest we get too fond of this broken world, He does not shield us from all of its pain.

I realized this recently as I prayed while driving down the road. In the midst of a multitude of blessings I still yearn for something more. This yearning is written in and we are all prone to satisfy it in a myriad of misguided ways. But when we make God our pursuit...that is the answer! Seek anything less than God – take your pick of anything this world offers, even the truly goods things – seek them as the highest good and they will rot in your mouth. “Fear God and keep His commandments”, love Him with all of your life and your life will become rightly ordered and the temporary afflictions, whatever they be, will take there rightful place as lesser than the ultimate prize of knowing God.

This I believe and I reaffirm it today as the yearning of my life. God is working, not as fast as I wish, but that is the universal human story! God is good always, always faithful and true and beautiful and joyful and just and kind. And I call Him my Father. Help me, Lord, to walk in your good way!

Grandma Hoerner Sandwich

Tonight I made a Grandma Hoerner sandwich. Ever had one of those? You may have had one kind of like it, but not one exactly like it! I made a regular “PBJ” tonight to put in my lunch for tomorrow. Well, to be truthful, there was no “J” in this PBJ because I opted for apple butter and...the bread was frozen so no worries about it getting too soggy while sitting in the fridge until morning, but I digress. It was a Grandma Hoerner sandwich because I remember her putting real butter on the bread before the peanut butter.

Yes, regular ol' butter.

So I took the aforementioned slices carved from a frozen loaf, applied normal butter, then peanut butter, and the rest. Some of the Aunts and Uncles do not remember the real butter, but I certainly do. It gave those sandwiches a funny taste, one I wasn't especially fond of. But I was fond of my Grandma...very fond, so I always took that sandwich and ate it with gusto.

And as I make a Grandma Hoerner sandwich every now and then, I remember this special woman who went to a better world in 2005. She was strong and resolute, joyful and loving, (too) hardworking, musical, practical, prayerful. She loved God and she loved her eight kids and she loved her husband for the 67 years God gave them together. And so when something as simple as butter on a sandwich reminds me of her, I get very tender about it.

I hope you have ways of remembering the great people in your life. When we remember them it makes us want to be better, to follow the path they lived so well. That's what I will pray tomorrow as I enjoy my sandwich on lunch break, asking for love and joy and determination and...longevity so I can strive to be a blessing to my family like she was.

And I wonder, what small thing might you and I do that, because touched with love and care and service and a sound life, makes a lifetime difference in someone who looks up to us? My Grandma made a lifetime difference in me, not least through the memories that come when I eat a simple Grandma Hoerner sandwich. There's nothing quite like it...because, to me, there was no one quite like her.

Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa, My Hero

Grandpa will always be my hero. I can’t tell you all the reasons why – I can’t. But I will try.

He is someone I want to be: qualities of hard work, children, farm, honesty, love, determination; serving his country at great sacrifice, going to college and entering the ministry with a young family, returning to roots to live and care and work hard and honest for a lifetime.

It is hard to grasp, this hero thing. If I were to say this to him he would have sort of laughed and mumbled something about life and failures…or more likely, if I told him he was my hero he would have responded silently, moving on as soon as he could.

There was a quiet love in this man. I of course never talked to him about marriage and his love for Grandma. But I have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion – a pretty sure conviction – that they loved each other with passion and tenderness. And their love grew and grew, learning to bear faults and failures with grace and truth and kindness. They loved each other with intensity and that love gave them 8 children and so many grandchildren and greats. It was really there, I think – imperceptible almost – this amazing, foundational, real love. He would have been pained at his failings in showing love, but he loved nonetheless. I want to be like him. He will always be a hero to me.

He was a hero from the time I saw him running past the bleachers to play in a stars and stiffs game at MWC. He would have been about 50. He got in there and mixed it up with those young guys and this wide-eyed 5 year-old loved every minute.

He was a hero from the time he let me into the mix of uncles doing Thanksgiving woodcutting. I was eager to help – too eager I am sure – but he let me help and I loved it so much. You just can’t know how much I loved it. I loved my Grandpa – he will always be my hero.

He will always be a hero for the way I used to hear him in the mornings, in and out, doing chores while Grandma fixed breakfast. I would roll over and go back to sleep and when I woke up he was gone, hard at work on some project somewhere.

He will always be my hero for the breakfasts Jane and I had with him and Grandma in later years. So much love and interest, and the timeless habit of reading from a devotional book when we were done eating. That voice will always be in my mind, kind of deep and gentle, going somewhere but not in a hurry, interested in hearing and sharing the things of God. Grandpa will always be my hero because he really worked at this thing of loving God in the midst of all that life demands. He seemed to feel his shortcomings painfully but he always got up and kept going.

And go he did. Who could stop this man? Grandma couldn’t, it seems. Of course, amazing woman that she was, I’m sure she kept him going and…if she wanted him to stop, really wanted him to, I bet he stopped on a dime and did her bidding, with love and gladness.

But…he seemed pretty hard to stop! I always loved and laughed at his determination to work beyond what other folks call retirement. I think he was going on 90 before he really retired. When he visited our home in 2004 I was doing a roof job on the campus where we lived. At 86 or so he insisted on getting up on the roof with me – in dress shoes. He had forgotten his work shoes but he wasn’t going to miss the action. He stood at the peak and just sort of took it in as I worked for awhile. Kind of a mystery going on in those eyes, the insatiable longing to be busy, to get things done, the yearning for and loving of life that makes him a hero to all of us.

Grandpa was a real man, a hero for a thousand reasons. Rugged and sacrificial WWII service, hard work in whatever it took to raise a family, love and determined devotion to God that expressed itself in countless ways, a family heritage that, to me, is rich beyond words.

This is my Grandpa, my hero. I want to be like him, I really do, and I will always count my self incredibly blessed that Glenn Hoerner was my Grandpa.

Of Words and Wonder -- an October Musing

Ever notice how the most valuable things in life, the most sacred and meaningful, are the hardest to talk about? It is almost like you are afraid that if you talk about it you will destroy it. The moment is too precious to ruin with words. The smile, the priceless hug, the return home of a long-lost child, a God encounter, a wedding, simple heart-songs, a gentle -- or passionate -- kiss. And how easily we do destroy things with words. Can't simple enjoyment and simple observation just be stored in memory and savored in the moment? No, we have to talk about it or type about it or take a picture or a video. Life is nothing if we don't apply technology or analysis, we think, but in the process we nearly destroy it.

Don't believe me? How many photos or video-hours sit on hard drives, never to be seen again. So often in the process of recording the moment for the future, the present joy is trudged upon, unsavored, sullied.

The ancients had it better. Even sports had it better before instant re-something. Life is most real when it is lived and left alone. The journey is not to be re-lived somehow; all efforts to do so are artificial, cheapening the real thing. Modern obsession with having has applied to time so that we morsel the moment to death, blanching taste and depleting value.

Such with a son and son going together across the street after long estrangement. No way to describe it or analyze it, unless I am the best poet. They do have that right, the best poets, a right earned through LONG times of silent observation and tortuous struggle with life and meaning and words. They can convey precious moments in words ripe with treasured life. The rest of us are far better to enjoy, savor, and live with life real before our eyes, seeing enough to know there must be something Good behind, underneath and above all this wonder. Leave off the video, the photo, the words – its time for simple rocking-chair rest, quiet sunsets filling the eyes and heart, simple words with family and friends, a game of kick-the-can if you wish; it's time for all that to be loved and enjoyed as so much more than the pseudo-gift of technology which promises more but leaves us more empty.

So I try to say in words what we all know in our bones. Analysis can help but often kills. TV entrenches inaction and fills the mind with...something. The vast bulk of photos has its allure in the suggestion that life is captured on paper, or worse, on a flickering screen. Life is something else – lived in the moment, lived on behalf of others, knowing only now really exists, investing in people not images, basking in the joys of life as they come, unpreserved, real, painful and poignant, but never really captured.

Did I just type all that on the internet? Technology is a mix of good with bad, that's for sure but I'm shutting this thing down and talking a nap. That's what the next moment is for. And it is good, I know it!

A Memory of a Great Man

Kenneth Bryant

From a distance I knew him, far enough away in age and miles that I lay awake tonight wondering if I could/should say anything at all. How did I know this man? I didn't, not really. And yet I did in what is, to me, sacred memory. And I knew him in knowing some of his children. And that is how I remember him first. So many children that I'm afraid to name them, fearing I will miss one. There was Becky, the eldest and her he-man husband, Ron, both of whom loved me early as a young man, setting a good example of a godly life. Then there was Mark, the cowboy – well all the guys were cowboys in a way. Mark and Steve were the older brothers. Then came Liz and Mary, Nathan and Sarah, and that little guy running around under foot, Micah. I might have missed one but I think that is it.

As I say, I'm just a distant observer but on this day of remembering the man, the father of this clan, I keep seeing a lot in my memory. I remember his eyes. Kenneth Bryant had this ever-present way in his expression, nearly impossible to describe. It was not a twinkle though it had merriness to it. It is like he knew this secret and it gave constant energy and joy to his life. It was nothing he lorded over others. In fact it seems like it was the secret that kept him going in service to everyone else. A pleasant truth, reflecting a well never running dry, a life really lived in ways and from sources the rest of us puzzled over before going our lesser ways.

My most fixed memory of Kenneth Bryant, his wonderful wife and fun family, is seeing them arrive at church camp grounds in Wichita, Kansas. The grounds were always hot and dusty and when the Bryant clan arrived there was an old car kicking up a plume of dust, pulling a trailer, and a pickup with a topper following, I guess. I only remember that they weren't driving anything fancy! But it had to be more than one vehicle to handle all of those kids. And they set up camp in and outside their cabin over there in the SW corner of the grounds. Nothing too romantic on those dusty grounds, mind you, but if there was time to tell it all you would know why I consider those memories sacred.

Around the Bryant cabin I was introduced to a lasso, messing around after and between services to learn something about lassoing someone's little brother or related mischief. There was some real coyboyin' goin' on in that family as I knew for sure when I went with Steve in '82 to visit Mark on the backside of nowhere in Arizona. Having grown up in western Kansas I knew big spaces, but NE Arizona redefined it for me. Steve and I drove for a long time – maybe an hour or more – no markings, no stores, nothing but....nothing. And then in the middle of all that we found Mark with a trailer and truck and horse, doing his job in service to a rancher who, honest, had cattle out there somewhere. We took Mark's truck and left him with a car as I recall so we could return to Kansas where church camp was getting started again in one of those hot, dusty, happy Augusts.

And so when we met the Bryants, starting in 1978 in that happy place in Wichita, it was always with all those kids and somewhere around was Mrs. Bryant -- always smiling in my memory -- and Mr. Bryant. Of course they loved God and you knew it, and they loved Him with service and love and just being in a way that made you almost forget they were there. As Micah told me, “Dad wasn't on any big councils or big important stuff like that, but he lived Jesus in a way like no one else I ever knew.”

As I grew older I didn't see them as much. One of the last times was in Miltonvale in 1989 or so. Whatever year it was, they had lost Steven in the past year. One of the pastors motioned toward Mr. Bryant and said, “There is a man of God, just buried a son, carrying on in faithfulness and truth and love.” I looked across at Mr. Bryant and knew, in my youthful unknowing, that there was a mysterious truth to this and a sustaining enabling in his life.

As I say, I knew him from a distance, but I could not shake his memory as I lay awake tonight. He died sometime on Monday, leaving eight children and their families, a heritage that is really priceless. I confess I remember him as being very poor – seemed like they had so little. But as the saying goes, the most important things in life are not things, and the Bryants had that in abundance. A real, simple, living faith in a God who was good, faithful, loving, steady, honest, always there. That was Kenneth Bryant, I think, living faithfully so that we saw in him the Jesus he loved and trusted. And so now that he is gone from us his example helps us to believe that we, too, can walk that life of faith, if faint by comparison, and someday rejoin him in heaven. I think that makes sense; I think that is real. And I believe it all the more because of the life and love of this good man I knew from a distance, Kenneth Bryant.