A Poem for Father's Day

 

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

I Almost Died Today

 The Day I Almost Died

Reflections after a Near Drowning in February 2018

If you swim in the ocean you know the push of water. Water allures, and like all powerful things, deceives.

I was going far out forthefunofit. Overweight, I was still strong in mind if not body. I could touch bottom easily between swells and was not concerned. It was fun to go further a bit. I swam but grew tired quickly. I knew the current was pushing sideways but didn't worry as long as my toes could reach the sand.

Deciding to return to shore, I lay face down and swam for 15 strokes or so. I stopped and could not touch bottom. I dog-paddled for a minute or so, unaware I was going nowhere. Soon I realized my right leg was caught in a fisherman's line. He was waving his annoyance, about 80 feet away – no more than 100 feet away beyond pounding surf. I kick and paddled but could not loosen my leg, though the string was the least of my worries. After about 2 minutes' effort I was free of the string but moving sideways still, drifting beneath another fishing line as I paddled.

Unknowing, I was caught in a sideways rip-tide. I could not touch bottom and my paddling toward shore produced only exhaustion. I realized I may need to cry for help. “Surely I can make it!” I thought. My muscles ached and I tasted seawater. I thought of floating, but I have never been able to float. There was a most dim awareness I might die. My lungs burned as I treaded water.

Devin, my 12-year-old nephew, was 25 feet away on a boogie board. Dare I cry for help? Would I pull him down with me? I didn't want to be needlessly dramatic. But somehow I knew I must wave and cry for help.

The first time he didn't hear me. I waved with one hand and yelled weakly. From the shore no one could hear. I knew by the time I was truly desperate there would be little energy left for flailing and shouting. I struggled on, going nowhere. I learned later that drowning nearly always happens quietly. The fight exhausts the swimmer and all that remains is to sink beneath the waves. In a few minutes I would have done exactly that. By the time anyone noticed my absence it would have been too late.

Devin was still not far off and he was watching me. Devin is an unusual young man, one of those people who knows more than most, and knows it in ways unavailable to most. His care for people is plain and real and on the surface. He knows what matters without trying, and he is a gift to all who know him.

I think he knew I may need help and so he stayed nearby. He was looking at me intently as he drifted with a hand on the boogie board. I raised a hand and called for help. He heard me and called back, “Uncle Randy do you need help?”

“Yes. Please!”

He quickly pushed his board in my direction. We met in about 30 seconds and both held to the board. I was worried I might drag him down but the board did its job. After a minute or so of kicking I felt bottom and better, the push of a wave lifting me toward the beach and life. A minute later a crashing wave pushed me forward and I knelt in the rocky sand as the undertow returned without me. Barely able to stand, I shuffled toward the frustrated fishermen and tried to explain. Then I half stumbled, half walked the 200 feet to my wife, son, friends and family, sat down, still breathing heavily, and told them what happened.

What does this mean? I have spent the last many hours shuddering at what almost was. My wife and youngest son were there, as well as a niece, 3 nephews, and their friends. At minimum my drowning would have traumatized the afternoon and radically changed life for my wife and sons as well as my relatives; and in a much lesser sense, all who shared the beach that day. I almost died. It is certain I would have without help. It is unlikely I could have gotten anyone's attention; certainly in another minute I would have been unable to stay afloat to flail and cry for help. Pride – and a normal reluctance to cause undue drama – nearly cost me my life. And this is right enough. No one wants to cry out when it is not warranted. And we seldom encounter such near-death experiences – how would we know when to call for help? I certainly didn't. So I struggled, almost to my death.

Lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, lack of strength – all together these lacks would have cost me my life, except for the provision of Devin, my nephew. He knew without knowing that his Uncle needed help and he lingered near, saving my life.

I can barely process it. It is easy enough to speak the hubris: “I could have made it.” But that's false. And I ponder what my death would have meant. While I grieve deeply for what I would have missed in future years, I feel more the loss my loved ones would have felt. What is this gaping hole and emotional onslaught we call death. It rips loved ones from our hearts and crushes us with unalterable realness. And when I think how my untimely death would visit that upon them, I grieve.

No one wants to die, and somehow we make death distant and irrelevant, all the while knowing it comes to all. My great-grandfather drowned about 95 years ago. He was in his mid-20's with a wife and young daughter, my grandmother Freida. While his death was a great sadness to his family and close community, it is forgotten by most and will someday be gone even from the record books. Our lives are that way. The most important people die and are forgotten. Take a figure such as Alexander the Great – known of by countless millions over 2300 years of human history. Still his death remains unknown to most who ever lived.

So what matters – being known on a large scale? Nope. Being known at all? Yes – that matters a lot. I do not know what all of this means – I am pushing a rope, trying to understand. If I would have died today, the people I know would have suffered. I would have suffered for a short time, grieving, hopeless, muscles giving out, painful asphyxiation and death, drifting lifeless to sea or shore in time. I would have been no more for this world and those who remain would have been heart-broken. This is the weight of being, the weight of knowing, the truth of 'better to love and lose than never love at all.'

Why do we go on marrying and birthing, rearing and loving, building and caring and working and dying, only to do it again in the next generation? Are the endless waves a picture of this life, landing on shore with no end, no apparent reason except the cycle of being and life, water with mind-boggling volume and power and depth, yet able to sweep a simple human into its lapping arms and lull him to sleep?

Here is Ecclesiastes, of course, a wisdom one cannot know as well before near-death as after. It is easy to see how pointless life can be because, as the writer says, no matter what you do or what meaning you  contribute, it all goes down with you at death – you can't keep it or prolong it for yourself after you yourself are gone. And gone you will be.

I almost died today and I have no fancy words. I only have words struggling to find meaning. I believe in God, the One who made all things, who gives and takes away, who cares, who holds funerals for fallen sparrows. That God saw a man almost fall today and sent a nephew to rescue him. "Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift!"

My Nephew Devin

Truth is "Written In": or, "All Truth is God's Truth"

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an intelligent man in other matters, says that there is only a ‘theological’ opposition to divorce, and that it is entirely founded on ‘certain texts’ in the Bible about marriages. This is exactly as if he said that a belief in the brotherhood of men was only founded on certain texts in the Bible, about all men being the children of Adam and Eve. 

Millions of peasants and plain people all over the world assume marriage to be static, without having ever clapped eyes on any text. Numbers of more modern people, especially after the recent experiments in America, think divorce is a social disease, without having ever bothered about any text. It may be maintained that even in these, or in any one, the idea of marriage is ultimately mystical; and the same may be maintained about the idea of brotherhood.” (The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 4, 230-1.)

Musing

Musing speaks of thinking, used perhaps when one hopes it is fruitful, peaceful, right. Not all musing bears good. Some merely repeats, going nowhere. Some breeds and feeds anxiety. Some puffs with pride of reason, hubris compounding its own pretensions. Or something like that.

I have (almost) nothing to say these days. I read alot, mostly online news and Facebook posts. Much important reading goes begging, as my stalled Kindle account attests. I am nearly done with my second time through the Bible this year, so that's a plus. And an Alaskan summer is nearly over, with its relentless demands on mind and body.

God is good. More than ever I feel the need of grace. "Without Him I would be nothing." This is no 'worm theology' as it is often disparagingly called. Of course we are special creatures, made in God's image though fallen. But without Him -- intrinsic image and daily sustaining -- we are nothing. 

I browsed a bit in William Law today, a book on the Holy Spirit in which he challenges us to surrender our reason. With plain sense he said reason, too, is part of who we are and if we are to give all to God, reason is included. Really? Must I? "Lean not on thine own understanding."

What a death knell this is, for how do we let go of reason and still function? "But God expects you to use your brain!" True that! We use our brain as the gift it is, and it helps bring us to the Giver where we submit it to Him, for "the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge." He takes all we surrender, makes it new and whole and clean and gives it back to us.

That is more than two cents, but it came around to sense for me, and I am grateful for a musing that leads me to prayer. That is always a fruitful musing.

Skills for Great Preaching

Pulling some thoughts from Wayne McDill's "The 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching." The below is from the introduction. 

• McDill says, "I have been preaching for 35 years but I am still working at it." Encouraging for those of us in the early learning years. :)

• The "why" of a sermon is vital. If the hearer is not persuaded it matters, she will not listen. Or if she listens, will easily forget.

• "Striking content is of real interest to the hearer, even if the delivery is weak."

• "Most Christians hear from rather humble and nondescript pastors week by week" and so, seems to me, we must dare to believe God is at work in them, even them. What else could we think?

• "The great weakness of preaching is fuzzy, ill-defined ideas." Ugh! I say again, ugh!! :)

• "Preaching is a supernatural endeavor. Anyone can learn the necessary skills with discipline, hard work, and a commitment to clear thinking and Bible-based sermons."

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.

Irony and self-awareness...:)

People say I'm condescending (that means I talk down to people).