Loving Fathers

There is a common saying: "The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother." This speaks to the bonding unity so vital for stability in life. Children need it at home as the foundation for everything else. It is vital their parents are devoted to one another, that the sexual bond from which came a child be expressed in daily realities of committed care. Something like that.

But we should add to the saying above. Might this also be true? "The best thing a mother can do for her children is love and respect her husband."

This opens a can of worms, I guess, for I found it impossible to leave out the word respect. Why "respect her husband," when the same word was not used in the other saying?

I considered various explanations and can only land here: men and women are different and it seems the need for respect is written in. The reader can do with that as he or she will. It is just what seems true.

I mention this on the day after Father's day with a more general idea in mind. Encourage fathers. Love them. They want to do well. They are human. They feel their lack. They do not want to be coddled. In some real sense, suggested above, they don't even want to be loved. But they want to be appreciated, valued, honored, respected.

Is this a weakness? I doubt it. It simply is, and I confess to feeling a bit awkward saying it since I am a father and it can seem self-serving. But I am not going for the "poor-me," or "please understand."

I am merely saying Fathers need encouragement. Tell them. Let them know they matter. Remind them how much their children need them.

This is vital for our culture and for any family.

The best thing a mother can do for her children is love and respect their father.

Everyone a Poet

One day the Maker in glad triumph will make all good come true. Then we will all be poets.

Everyone is a poet. Even the talking on paper that throws in a few rhymes, meter forgot, all contrived and construed and given a moniker. “Want to hear my poem?”

At the other end of the spectrum are Shakespeare and many others, and it is good to know truth and beauty exist to spur us on, to give us that reach exceeding grasp.

But I was saying we are all poets for we all live, and the dullest among us wonder what it means. We find ourselves singing even if mute, running though lame, yearning though bound. The human heart is more than blood and muscle: it is an otherworldly something that will not die entire. Poetry is one of its voices.

This is strange because most of us struggle to write a sentence that gives our heart full voice. Yet it is there whether we write it or not. Writing is secondary to logos, to heart, to mind. Maybe even secondary to being human, though that is hard to conceive because the two seem hopelessly intertwined. After Creation, Adam wanted to write, I am thinking. He wanted to tell the story in a way others could read. But papyrus was not a thing, though cave walls were coming.

Speaking may be better. Writing may be an artifice, an artificial coinage, counterfeit because added, lacking voice, inflection, face, touch, person.

Now we write with machines – “time-saving” we say, on a long list of benefits. Carmudgeons refuse. They keep the touch and feel of pencil on paper, leaving the buzzing machines for those who know the machines are better without really knowing what or why.

Be as it may, on this good morning I attempt a poem, for the wild and urgent beauty of life falls on me, calls me, shocks me, fills me, overwhelms. There is nothing here except everything, and One day the Maker in glad triumph will make all good come true. Then we will all be poets. Though some plain and pedestrian, all beautiful: “Knowing as we are known,” seeing with vision clear and whole.

It is the beatific vision and my longing leaves the world of words behind.

Waiting

Waiting...

...until you hear without effort;
...until a word births itself;
...until hope appears, uncontrived.

In the stillness we find Him. Only in waiting we find what is worth waiting for.

Why are we so slow to wait, to get quiet, to listen? Our trials take us there, but not always. We are recalcitrant.

I have known in rare days the sweet grace of waiting, of being still, of knowing.

Waiting is the ellipsis, the too many dots that seem wasted space and time. Is waiting for God wasted time?

The reward is worth the wait. Hold on.

He is worth the wait.

First Year: An Ode to Alaska

Nearly nine years ago, Jane and I moved to North Pole, Alaska (along with our two sons and our dog, Oreo) to serve as interim pastor at the North Pole Missionary Chapel. It was an adventure we never imagined would happen, and we were scared enough to be judged sane.

Half way through the year I found myself in Cordova, a small but historic fishing village south and east of Valdez, accessible only by air or water. It was January. It was wonderful: boats in the harbor, gentle rain, snow-covered mountains around, moss and evergreen to color my walks through town. While there I found this poem in my heart to say something of what the year was meaning to us. We are very grateful for the blessings of being here in this wonderful place and with the wonderful people who have received us as family.

I hope you may feel with me the happy joy we discovered to grow year by year.

First Year

First year, new home;
Mystery, puzzle, wonder.

People here, but not.
Houses somewhere in the trees.
Summer garage sales, selling out;

bargains passed around again.
Here and there the homes that were;
wished for, now gone.
Beginnings ended too soon.

Downtown feels old with new places, new people;
inviting, different, winsome, strong.
“Distance comes with the place,” they say.
“We'll know you soon, but hold you loose.
Little lost if soon gone.”
I feel it without knowing.
More leave than stay. Their loss.

The roots of some –
not slowed by frost or gravel –
go down to deeper things:
Freedom of place and space.
Rigor calling forth vigor.
Boundless boundaries speaking verdant hope –
the landscape not mute.
The eyes hear this happiness,
the soul knows well the speech
and dares to shout, to rest, to stay.

How to know the snow and birch and boreal;
mountain, sun, and hidden road;
runway, slough, and bitter cold –
would steal into the heart and find a welcome?

Alaska Summer [100WW]

Alaska summers stretch mind and body, light abating but never gone, the unrelenting call of tasks comes forth from voice long dormant in winter freeze. There is something primal. The body wants to do all the sun allows, conquer the clock, start in on more than one can do but believing this year it will. Winter comes too soon with all its muted happiness, and the year waits until the new, and month's horizons promise another summer to get it done. And the heart dares to believe, again, there will be joy and triumph before the snow finds the earth.

God is a Help in Trouble [10"TU]

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Ps. 46:1)

This timeless verse has echoed in the souls of believers for millennia. What does it mean?

We know immediately what it means. God is reliable. He will help us. There is a place to go in the troubles of life.

I often wonder how folks in abject suffering deal with this. The objection I implicitly infer goes something like this: "Where was God when my grandchild drowned? Or when my nephew died in a hunting accident, leaving 3 young children? Where was God when that lecherous fiend did as he wished with his young niece? For years? If 'God is our refuge and strength' is it ok if I wonder about the lack of application? He was no help to me in my suffering!"

The first answer is a long pause, perhaps an "I don't know," and certainly a word to feel with the suffering of the person at hand.

This is ten minute Tuesday but I am taking my time. The question is perennial. And it has reasonable answers.

One I have worked with, which I believe only goes so far, is this: "We live in a fallen world and bad things happen. Some are unspeakably bad. God never says He will remove all bad things or potentialities. He only says He will help us in the midst of it all."

That seems fair, and goes a long ways. And time is up (which may be a clue.) I will hope to re-visit this soon.

A Friend and a Lost Child

We will only love our children as well as our own life is in tune with God.

Prodigal son comes home.

  

A friend I knew in bygone days has lost his way, if such a thing can be said. We know a thousand things are wrong, chief among them what we call racism, or loving the orange man, or drawing a line. But for  someone to "lose their way" requires a moral imagination we have tried to expunge.

We say: 

"Anyone can do anything as long as it doesn't hurt someone else."

"All choices are equally good." 

"Who are you to judge me?"

"That question (no matter what it is) is between me and my God."

In this case I should say my friend's child has lost her way, for that is indeed the case. But I cannot say how, for such would be deemed quite judgmental, and indeed it is easy to be so.

F. F. Bruce said so well: "Theology is grace; ethics is gratitude." So whenever anyone loses their way we can rejoice in grace and remember that right behavior is a secondary good of the Gospel. There's a mouthful and I do not pretend to have it figured out. Just this. Jesus came to save us from our sins -- so said the angel in Matthew 1 and so we believe. He saves us because He is able and He is good. He sets us on the right path and we begin to live the happy and blessed life of those who love God.

When anyone loses their way it means they have lost God's good for their life and are mired in the sin that would beset us all. What to do?

I pondered the pain of my friend. His child is deeply lost, broken, bewildered yet loved by God. An arresting grace would find her where she is, turn her heart to repentance, and deliver her to love and life and wholeness. Only God can do that.

I have long believed grace comes to us in pain, not least in the pain of our children. When they go astray it is like a death. We would do anything to restore and make whole, but instead we often must watch and pray as they go through the same trials we encountered at their age.

This is grace because it puts us on our knees, draws us to the only One who can heal, and puts our own needs front and center. Children are a means of grace because as we love them, we learn to seek first the only One who can do for them what we so long to see. 

We will only love our children as well as our own life is in tune with God.

This seems true no matter the case and I pray for my dear friend as he walks this most painful road of grace.