PleaseGrace

At the coffee shop where I go to write is a group of women who gather every Tuesday to play cards.  They remind me of my grandmothers.  In their obvious love to be out and away from whatever else they could be doing and whatever else someone else might tell them they should be doing, they remind me of Nana.  In my childhood I played cards with Nana in the afternoons.  We started out playing “Old Maid” and a rather obscure one called, “Authors.”

“Do you have any Henry David Thoreau’s?”

“No, but I have a Longfellow.”

“I’ll take it.”    

I honestly don’t recall how the game ended or how you got to win, but it was from these afternoon escapades around the dining room table that I first wandered upstairs to pull Upton Sinclair’s, “The Jungle” book, from the shelf in the guestroom.  The day Nana discovered me reading it was the day she declared victory once and for all.  It was also the day I remember her pulling the board game, “Know-Your-America,” off the shelf.  “Let’s play this one now.”  Like having mastered Charles Dickens and “A Tale of Two Cities”, I was now ready to tackle Alexander Hamilton and Topeka.

I think Nana would fit nicely around the table with these women at the coffee shop, except she probably wouldn’t dare.  For one thing, they’re not near excited enough about Jane Austen.  Secondly, among the pile of cards in the middle of the table is a pile of coins and one-dollar bills.  There might even be a $5 thrown in there.  I’m pretty sure these women could be arrested for running a game of Craps in a public place, but who’s going to do that?  From the look of them, a night in the slammer would be their pride and joy, and upon discharge they’d have the police raiding every backroom in every gas station from here to California for the next 20 years.  In this they remind me of my Gram, whom I think would have loved playing Bonnie and Clyde with them.  Most of all it’s their demeanor around the tables that reminds me of my grandmothers.  Trying to pretend like no one–not even they–know the power of the hand they’ve been dealt.

Some Tuesdays I show up and their game has already begun.  I sit in a corner, in eye and earshot, and I take in just a few hands before things break up.  Someone has to go pick up their pills or get home to take their pills.

Today I got there early.  I was already a few paragraphs into my Sunday sermon when they pounced in.  They pushed the tables around and together, removing the salt and peppershakers and the miniature plastic tent cards that read, “Please don’t rearrange the furniture.”  In a corner, huddled around the trash barrels, two young waitresses looked on.  You could tell they weren’t going to step away from their trash barrels.

I note that in order to play with these card sharks you have to put $3 down up front, a little something to build the pot and to show that when it comes to winning, you’re willing to risk at least a large cup of coffee.  For several hours the game goes on.  Every now and then they get up and switch seats.  I’m not sure why they do this.  They all seem to know one another fairly well.  Maybe Ethel wants a chance to stare down Edie and to not have to spend all her chips on Myrtle?  At no point does anyone ever pause to ask for clarification over the directions.  On several occasions, however, it is necessary to provide correction.

“We’re dealing with diamonds, not hearts.”

“I threw a diamond.”

“No, you threw a heart.”

“Oh, well it looked like a diamond.  These damn cards.  They should make them so that they talk and tell you what they are.”

No one bothers to point out the obscenity behind such a thought.  I smile to think that this is because everyone is quietly agreeing to how great and helpful talking cards would be.

After a while the game is over and everyone gets up to push the tables and chairs back to where they belong.  It’s hard to tell who won.  Someone does pick up the pile of coins and bills, but only to count it all up and then evenly distribute it among all the sharks.

“There, now we can all come back and play again next week.”

“Oh, I can’t make it next week,” someone says.  “Bob has a doctors appointment.”

“Is that next week?” another asks.  “How is he feeling?”

“He’s doing ok.  Good days and bad days.”

“Do you want someone else to come along to the appointment with you and Bob?”

“No, we’ll be fine.  I’ll see you again in two weeks.  Besides, I wouldn’t want you to have to miss this.”

For sure, I think to myself.  We’re definitely dealing in hearts.

I preached the following sermon on December 27, 2013 at my late grandfather’s funeral.  It is based in part on the biblical story of Joseph who is given charge by an angel to name Mary’s baby.

It must have sounded like a firecracker, like a sonic boom going off in old Joseph’s ear: an angel telling him to name Mary’s baby, Jesus.

“You want me to call him what?  To name him whom?  No one will buy it.  That name hasn’t been used in years, not for generations, not since the world went totally bad and everyone forgot about grace and kindness and, God.  You can’t give a kid a name that means “savior” unless you’re absolutely serious about changing things, unless you really mean to set things straight again.  Are you sure that’s what you want me to call this baby boy?”

“Yep,” the angel says.  And so the boy is born and eight days later Joseph, along with Mary, who is still feeling the pain of childbirth, takes the boy to the Temple in Jerusalem, to that holy place where nameless ones become someone, and there they lift the child and declare, “He shall be called Jesus.”  Joseph does it.  He follows through, because we know Joseph is a righteous man who must believe in a righteous world.  So he names the boy, Jesus.

What we name a child is important.  How we call them matters.           

That my great-grandparents named their first-born son Frank Gunnard Nilson is interesting I suppose, but not very.  He was, after all, a junior.  Many of us knew the original Frank Gunnard Nilson.  I did not.  If he was a good man—and I have no reason to believe he wasn’t—then I too would have named my child after him.  But I’m sure he wasn’t always good.  I’m sure that on the day Frank and Ethel raised their son in the air and declared, “He shall be called Frank Gunnard Nilson, Junior,” there was some hope that he would live out the name better than his father before him.  So it’s mildly interesting, what they chose to name him.  What is more interesting, however, and far more important, is that when my grandparents went to name their first-born son they didn’t choose to call him Frank, but Bruce.  And yet, Bruce Gunnard.

Gunnard.  I don’t know what it means.  It sounds a bit German, like something people would say to describe a bad bratwurst-beer combo.  “Oh Helga, that one’s going to be a gunnard to get down.”  Or maybe Austrian.  Like the Von Trapp family in the Sound of Music might have had an eighth child named Gunnard, but we never hear about him because he was a black sheep in the family.  He couldn’t sing.  Gunnard could only play the trombone.   But I believe the name is Norwegian, from the word gunnar, meaning soldier, attacker, which is about right for my grandfather.

What I know of my grandfather is that he was a cross between a gun—loaded, cocked, liable to fire, and often prone to misfire—and nard, a fragrant ointment that when applied could make unpleasant things somehow seem more pleasant.  Gunnard.  To say that he was one is to say he was a force to be reckoned with, which is also to say, he did not like to be wrong…about anything, and in this way he would often insist upon being right…about everything.  We can be grateful for this part of him.  We can, and should be, grateful that as a public educator he insisted on the idea that everyone can learn.  There were, we know, no unnamed, no unknown children in his schools.  If you were the worst kid on the planet and you had to go to the principal’s office, Gunnard would make certain you served your time, but he would also send you on your way with the assurance that at least one person believed you were the best kid on the planet.  And when, after 25 years, he retired from it all in 1986 because he was weary of spending more time in meetings than in the classroom, he simply turned his insistence to the good people of Cushman Union Church.

I spent many Sundays there with him, playing my clarinet while he played his trombone, we all sang a hymn, and he preached.  There were never more than 30 or so people at the church and many years later I asked him why he stayed at it for 16 long years.  He was only supposed to be a 1-year fill-in.  He insisted, “It mattered to them.”

We can be grateful that Gunnard wanted to be in the times and places where it mattered.

Yet we know it’s never quite this simple and that the truth is: Gunnard was fiercely afraid of not mattering.  That like all of us, his great willingness to do for others was also a matter of doing for himself, a self-protection cover against whatever inadequacies and inabilities he had.  So that whether you were talking with him about the best roads to take when driving from the west side to the east side of town, or the best club to use in teeing off the 8^th hole in a round of golf, or the eternal destiny of politicians, he would insist on knowing it all, like all these things somehow mattered the same, when they didn’t matter the same, or maybe even at all.  Of course—and this is a great irony—this meant that if you were the one driving with him or talking with him or just trying to live with him, he could sometimes make you feel like you didn’t matter at all.  That what you know and feel and see wasn’t so important.

I know.  We don’t like to speak of such things, especially not at funerals.  We don’t believe in treading upon the grave.  We much prefer to speak only of the beautiful.  It will do us no good though, to stop at the beautiful.  For we have not come here seeking proof of the beautiful.  Those parts are plain to see.  Rather we have come looking for the hope of redemption, proof of new life, for the ugly parts.  At least that’s how Grandpa said it to me once.

It was 11 years ago.  Having just graduated college and landed my first job, I was living back at home.  I had also just broken up with a girl that I had been dating for about 4 ½ years.  Life was suddenly feeling pretty different to me, but also kind of free and hopeful.  Grandpa had just had his stroke.  Following a lengthy stay in rehab, he was also adjusting to being back home, and to not feeling so free and hopeful.  But he had been dating a girl for about 49 years and she would prove to be the best thing going for both of us that year.  Anyway, 2 or 3 times a week I would stop by to give Grandpa a bath.  I don’t remember how the whole thing got started but I think it had something to do with Nana agreeing to pay me under the table in loaves of banana bread.

It was hard for Grandpa.  Not being able to get his own pants off, to balance himself in the shower, to get the soap into all the cracks and crevices.  For the first few months we were getting along okay but then it happened: he was standing under the water, naked as the day he came into the world, I was scrubbing his bald head with shampoo, and he let one rip.  I tried to laugh it off, to pretend like we all do it, and I figured Grandpa would as well, except he didn’t.  He was clearly embarrassed, though I honestly didn’t know why.  And there was nothing he could do to make it right, which is when he yelled, “Damn it, I hate this.”

I asked him if he’d like a moment and he said he would.  So I walked out of the bathroom, closed the door and just stood on the other side thinking about what I could do to make it right.  When I realized there was nothing I could do, I knocked on the door and went back in.  Grandpa was just sitting there.

“What would you like to do?” I asked him.

“I just want to go back to when I could do this on my own.”

Somehow or another I understood him perfectly.  “Not being able to do it on your own doesn’t mean you can’t do it.  It just means that now we get to do it together.”

There was a pause.  “I can live with that,” he said.

I thought to myself, I know you can, I know you can.  Because, thanks to him, together is all we’d ever been.

And so it went this past Sunday that when Gunnard could no longer do it on his own, and there was nothing more any of us could do to help him out either, Jesus came and lifted him up to carry him home.  And I imagine that when he arrived at heaven’s gate, God came out to say, “Who do you have there?”

And Jesus said, “This is Frank.”

“Frank?  Which Frank?” asked God.

“You know, Frank Nilson.  Middle name Gunnard.”

“Oh yes,” exclaimed God.  “Bring him in.  I know him well.”

Thanks be to God who knows us and loves us all so very well.

We don’t set an alarm clock in our house.  In fact, not counting the last days of her first pregnancy when my dear wife tossed and turned across 290 degrees like a compass lost in a tornado that time could be marked by her regular whirlwind tours to the bathroom, it’s been 1,045 days since we last set an alarm clock.  That’s the number of days since our world was graciously shattered by the arrival of our firstborn.

I’ve always considered myself a morning person.  6 a.m. has never been a problem for me.  I don’t want to be awakened by the sun.  I want to awaken with the sun.  To make sure of it, I would gladly set an alarm clock.  When our daughter was born however, the alarm clock took on a life of its own.  At first it was giving bottles and changing diapers, two things she seemed mysteriously well equipped to call for with great consistency and bravado.  This meant that a 5 a.m. feeding was barely worth going back to bed over.  In two hours the alarm clock would coo and yelp me awake again anyway, and one hour after that I’d be racing to catch up with the sun, and to get to work. 

This morning, however, I rolled over at 7:50 a.m. alarmed only by the sound of silence.  “Sweetheart,” I said, “guess what time it is?”  The shades were drawn and I couldn’t see if the sun was out or not.  At such an hour, I knew it was, but neither of us was jumping up to beat it or greet it.  Not today.  Ever since Bernard’s accident almost three months ago, our lives have been summoned to attention by a whole new alarm clock: anxiety, restless hope, the ever pending call from back home saying the hospital called, we should go there.  I say this not as an attention-seeker or self-pitying fool.  Rolling over to hear my wife say, “I don’t want to get up.  I mean, I don’t want to get up,” I knew the clock had truly caught up to us.  For well over 60 days she has been the one to get the daily updates, to hear that yesterday’s 2 steps forward are today’s 5 steps back.  She has been the one to get on the phone with her dad daily, not necessarily to talk, because at times he just can’t, but to say, “Hi Dad, it’s me.  I’m so proud of you.”  She is not an ignorant optimist.  Just the opposite.  She’s a crazed realist.  She sees it all for what it is–a hard, nearly impossible feat of healing whose only medicine might still end up being death.  And given the choices between life and death, you don’t have to choose life–many don’t, and that is okay–but if you’re going to choose it, let it know that it’s been chosen.  So she makes the daily call and speaks proudly of her dad.  And so Bernard has come a long way back towards life.

A few weeks ago he quite literally won his freedom from I.V. drips and gurneys.  With no more rushes to the operating room, with no one and no thing keeping him asleep, he could, for the first time really, sleep.  Now I have heard about people who can sleep when they must.  A soldier stands watch and is relieved, but soon they will have to stand watch again.  They best sleep while they can.  Albert Schweitzer once said, “We can do only what we can do. But if we do that each day we can sleep at night and do it again the next day.”  I suspect a soldier sleeps fine then not because the ground is soft or the night silent but because they have done what they can do, and they’ll be just as fine with waking up because they know there is work to be done and they can do it.  All this to say, the best sleepers are those who embrace sleep as their only important work to do.  Don’t do this and we find ourselves waking up too soon, or waking up on someone else’s terms, which is the same thing.  Being something of a crazed realist himself, perhaps suspecting full well what lay ahead of him–life or death–and deciding it was going to be life, Bernard made good and sure then to first get some sleep.  And then he woke up.  No one can say for sure what rattled his cage.  It certainly wasn’t an alarm clock.  I’d like to imagine it was the same thing that woke us today: the utterance that though we could not see it, the light had to be shining.  “Sweetheart, it’s 7:50 a.m.”  Another day had struck.

Beginnings, getting started, should not be underrated.  “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  A thousand miles on foot would be one hell of a journey.  For most of us it’s enough just to try for the first step.  That’s how God did it.  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, there was nothing much–an empty space .  And it was dark.”  It might as well have been a bland, whitewashed hospital room.  But there wasn’t nothing.  There was a beginning, a possibility.  And God was there.  At first God isn’t doing anything of obvious consequence.  Just hovering.  Just breathing.  Just scoping things out.  And then, as if now good and ready, into nothingness, yet out of nothingness, an utterance: “Let there be light!”  There’s no waving of the arms, no focusing of the eyes or tilting of the head.  There’s not even a single step taken.  It’s only necessary that one say, “Alright, let’s get moving.  Give me some light!”  “And so there was light,” records the Good Book.  Oh, there was still darkness.  It wouldn’t be all light all the time.  But now one could always find their way out of the darkness.  What is more, we can now see what the darkness is not.  It is not permanent.  It is not terrifying.  It might be–it can be–a rather quiet and safe space to return to for a snooze.  That we might awake again and do what we can do.  Even if it’s only to utter: light.

Afterword…

12 hours after 7:50 a.m. and not wanting to get up, I found myself sitting on the bedroom floor at the base of a laundry mountain.  Perched on top of the mountain was my two year old son, who was determined to keep me from scaling the mountainside by dismantling my handiwork one pair of folded underwear at a time.  He had me going no where.  Outside it was indeed dark.  In the background was the sound of my daughter taking a shower, giggling at what I was pretty sure I should find out but didn’t want to know, and Bruce Springsteen pumping out, “Waiting on a Sunny Day.”  In a moment the water from the shower head shut off and a minute later the song ended, which is when I heard what is perhaps the proudest sound of my life yet: my daughter singing very loudly, “I’m waiting, waiting on a sunny day.  Gonna chase the clouds away.  Waiting on a sunny day.”  I got up and walked into the bathroom ready to tell her that at 3 years old there was absolutely nothing she could do from this day forward to disappoint me.  She was kneeling on the shower floor in a pile of bubble bath suds, her hands caked with foam and drawing shapes on the walls.  I was pretty sure I’d have to answer for that brand new bottle of Disney Bubble Bath later.  Lifting the shower head off the wall I smiled and told her there was nothing she could do to disappoint me, at least not in that moment.  “We should probably hose the shower down, sweetheart.”  “Let me do it daddy.  I promise I’ll do a good job.”  Unwisely, I handed her the hose and walked out to check on my laundry.  My bedroom now looked like a cotton field.  Sticking my head back into the bathroom I saw that the ceiling was soaked, and not just over the shower.  Somehow even the dry towels on the other side of the shower doors, on the other side of the room from the shower, were a bit drippy.  Fortunately it wasn’t hard to find a dry one still.  Someone (no saying who) had draped one over the lamp in my bedroom.  Wrapping her in it, we went into her room to find some pjs.  Her brother followed.  Sneaking back to the bathroom to mop up the ceiling, I came back to her room to find them sitting on her bed shaking loose her piggybank.  Inside they had discovered a bunch of folded up sticky notes with messages on them.  I did not know they were in there.  They were to my daughter from a very good family friend of ours who now lives too far away from us but who used to come over every Monday night for two years to hangout with her.  (It would be inappropriate to say that she came over to babysit because you don’t babysit what belongs to you, and that’s pretty much how she said it was going to be.  There would be no transactions, no obligations.  Just belonging.)  She must have slipped a note in her piggy bank for 100 weeks straight.  We probably owe her for the coins and bills in there as well.

Pulling out a bright green piece my daughter gently peeled back the creases to proclaim to her brother: “Hey buddy, it’s for you.  It says, you are a good little boy and I love you a lot.”  And then she correctly named its author.  Maybe she and her Monday night keeper had a little secret going between them about the piggy bank.  It wouldn’t surprise me.  My guess is, she just knows where love and kindness comes from.

Climbing into bed tonight I can’t say what time we’ll be waking up tomorrow.  But if you’re Bernard, and even if you’re not, I think I see the sunlight poking through here, just a little west from where you are.  Until it gets to where you are, I’ll keep uttering it for you.  

So many hours ago we awoke to this day, for we had been awakened…by the expectancy of good things to come—yes we have hoped all day long—by the urgency to finish what we didn’t get done yesterday, by the terror of our dreams, by the eerie quiet of hallways leading to coffee mugs and eerier headlines, by the patter of a child seeking to be released to Sesame Street…we were awakened and the day began.

This has not been a day without work to do, and nearing its inevitable finish we are mindful that the work is not done.  (Yet it must be.)

So we are mind-full.  And we are trying to remember the great luxury that is ours in being able to have an agenda, and the greater luxury of being able to keep an agenda.  For throughout our great wide world are millions whose lives are being dictated and displaced by someone else’s agenda.

An agenda for war here, one for healthcare there.  An agenda for feeding the poor, another (or is it the same?) for starving the rich.  An agenda to try and do more, or to try and do nothing.                                                             An agenda to figure out which is which.

O God of Impassioned Patience, we would be mindful of those who were awakened today by the sound of bombs or the feeling of hopelessness that stirs from having no job, or no money, or no love.

Gathered at our bedsides we pray you would make us humble enough to feel with our knees and to see in our hearts the pain of all who suffer.

O God, in the name of the One who like a sheep was silent before his shearers so that we would not have to be silent before ours, lift our voices against the blight of self-preservation, and force us beyond all human reservation to seek and seek again such peace beyond understanding.

Prince of Peace who drops nations into buckets, who warns against messing with migrants, widows, and children, in the midst of parties and politics remind us of who we were while we were still in our mother’s womb, that in our helplessness we might reach for mercy and find life.

For we pray in the name of the One whose agenda was full, and then emptied, and then—behold, filled again!—with life, Amen.

In my last post I introduced you, my kindly reader, to Bernard.  Among the many wonders of Bernard, he is my father-in-law, a Harley owner who doubles as an official “Road Captain” for his ice tea drinking bikers group, a lover of tattered Champion sweatshirts, and a charcoal-er.  That’s right.  He’s not a griller, not by a long shot.  He’s a believer in the embers.  A lover of the clock who lights his pile of Kingsford nuggets well in advance and then waits until the heat below the griddle and the meat on top of the griddle are in perfect equilibrium with each other.  It could be a few ears of corn, some roasted red potatoes, and a breast or two of chicken as well, but it’s almost always burgers and dogs.  “Close your eyes and take a bite, you can practically taste the smoke,” Bernard would say.  “It’s just better over the coals.”

One of my first recollections of time spent with Bernard was on a cool Saturday in October.  We come from the Land of Octobers, where it takes only a handful of strolls through the apple orchard on a blue-sky morning, an afternoon of leaf peeping or raking, and a L.L. Bean fleece to make you forget there are three other seasons in the year.  On this particular golden day Bernard was out on the back deck.  He and my mother-in-law had just moved into their house in late August.  While a few boxes were still waiting to be unpacked, based on the way everything in the place had a place, you might have mistook the boxes for decoration.  Even the unfinished basement with its shelves of paper towels up top and extra cans of tomato paste down below somehow looked, finished.  But out on the back deck Bernard was in a state of strange peaceful consternation.  Up above, the canopy of trees had already begun to shed.  The tall oaks and bendy pines were showing no mercy.  If the deck was painted red we wouldn’t know it again until next April.  And one might swear Mother Acorn was using Bernard’s shiny bald spot on his head for target practice.  A few yards beyond us the property came to a gentle stop where a duck pond, a grassy field, and a wooden fence that would make Robert Frost write again, all met.  Like he was standing at attention, afraid to move or he might disrupt the order of creation, Bernard indeed, looked right at home.  And yet, he couldn’t help but mention how, all things considered, the deck would never look finished.  I thought he was referring to the daily chore of sweeping away the leaves.    “It will make grilling more interesting,” he said pleasantly.

Back inside the new dining room table had arrived.  For a room of humble size and people of simple pleasures, the table was huge.  I didn’t know if Bernard had always been used to sitting at such a table.  Growing up in a family of nine children, maybe the table needed to be big enough not just to eat at but also to do homework at, to play board games at, and no doubt to argue and reconcile at.  I’m sure that’s it, because I seem to recall sitting down at the table myself for dinner one evening shortly thereafter.  Thinking it was the proper thing to do I asked for a coaster on which to place my water glass.  Bernard told me, “No need.  We made sure to get a table that doesn’t need protection.  You can put just about anything on it and not worry about leaving your mark.  It can take it.”  In time I came to accept this as a great sign of hope and grace.

I have spent my own privileged time around the table with Bernard.  On certain occasions we have sat as many as twenty.  And there have been times, mostly in the morning hours, when there’s been just two of us.  Now it’s never been Bernard’s style to say a prayer at the table before we eat, though I won’t forget the first time he asked me if I would say a prayer.  It was, I know, his way of making room at his table especially for me, the minister whom he must have thought would like to pray.  Then there was the first time my daughter asked her Grampy if he would pray.  I’ll admit I felt awkward for him.  She, however, acted like it was the most natural thing in the world to receive grace at the hands of her Grampy.  Joining our hands together Bernard prayed.  “Thank you for Grammy who always makes sure there is enough food.  Thank you for laughter, for family, and for this.  Amen.”  And for this.  What did he mean by this?

The 23rd Psalm paints a picture of a shepherd who pays such close attention to us–aching with us, fearing with us, rejoicing with us–that we won’t even bother to want for more or less when we are with them.  At the hands of this shepherd we are made to lie down in stillness, and even the darkest valley is riddled with right paths.  Finally (though not really) there is a table, and there we eat with our enemies.  I would much prefer to eat with my kinfolk, but at this the shepherd bids me join hands with my enemies.  The spread is an overflow of unimaginable goodness, with plenty to go around for all.

Now I’ll tell you this: next time you’re in the area, stop over to get a burger from Bernard.  You might have to wait a bit for it to cook.  Those coals take a while to heat up.  While you wait you can sit at the table.  Trust me, they’ll be room.  And no, it won’t matter who you are, because by the time you leave you’ll know yourself simply to be full, mostly of grace.

For the next several months I’ll be dedicating the occasional post to my father-in-law.  We’ll call him Bernard.  By way of introduction, I’ve been married to his daughter for 7 years, 1 month, 28 days.  On the day he walked her down the aisle to meet me I remember being more fixated on the sight of him than her.  I had gazed upon her in person, in pictures, or at least in my mind’s eye, everyday for 4 years, and she always looked the same to me: a masterpiece.   44 seasons later and no change.  She is still so obviously good and kind to behold.  But Bernard was a looming edifice.  Well over 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, by all appearances he was…a lot…to behold.  Standing at the front of the church I recall the doors opening to reveal Bernard and the Masterpiece.  I thought, “The time has come.  Here she comes.”

One year earlier I had stood in Bernard’s kitchen.  Leaning against the counter I wanted to know, “So I’d like to ask your daughter to marry me.  What do you think?”  I wasn’t looking for his permission.  Bernard had told me often enough, “You got to do what works for you when it works for you.”  Getting him to agree to my proposal wasn’t necessary then.  On the other hand, getting him to say that my timing was good could only work to my advantage.  So, after pontificating on some metaphor about tools and having enough wrenches in the toolbox of life, he reached out his hand, more of a giant paw.  It was a peace sign I would come to feel many times in the years to come.  Bernard saying, the time is right.

Now, looking all the way down the aisle, my body lilting forward with my whole heart, I knew, the time is right.  Except Bernard just stood there.  Canon in D was now into its second movement.  What was he doing, standing there, that looming edifice, grasping in his bear paw my masterpiece?  Finally he stepped off.  In reasonable time they made it to me.  “Dearly  beloved we gather here in the presence of God, with friends and family all around, to witness two people saying yes to each other.  Yes to life, yes to death, yes to poverty, yes to riches.”  It was a moment of sacred intensity, fulfilled only by Bernard holding out his peace sign.  “The time is right.  Love her even more than I do,” he whispered to me.

Now Bernard lies in a hospital bed following a horrible motorcycle accident.  Most of his ribs are broken, one leg all out of whack, a busted ankle, his organs all discombobulated, and he had to lose both his arms.  There is no irony rich enough to humor us even a little bit.  Before he bought his Harley he told himself a hundred times he shouldn’t have it.  A luxury in a world of great need, he would say.  But for a guy who never took what he didn’t need and who rarely got what he did, a little merciful love seemed to be in order.  And so he got that motorcycle.  First though, he signed himself up for a dozen safety courses, and even then, on the day the bike was ready for pick-up, he called on his brother to drive it home for him.  “Keep it in the right lane.  Don’t go over 55,” he probably told him.  How he and his bike have come to lie in disrepair we really don’t know.  Why it has come to be, we really don’t care.  I suppose some might ask such questions.

How?

Why?

Most of the stories we read in the Bible and in our lives are about broken down people, people whose existence has been defined along a razor thin edge between blessing and curse, cruising and crashing, life and death.  More often than not, what breaks us down is that we tempt fate and faith to step over the edge.  In some cases we run head long right past it.  We might also wake up not knowing how or why we got there at all.  That’s when we trust fate and faith to get us up and back onto the edge.

Among the tales of the broken down are a lame man and a blind one.  They are just there.  Maybe they sit.  Maybe they stand.  Most everyone who passes by them tries to figure out how and why they got there.  “Were they born this way?  Did they bring it on themselves (like they read too many magazines in the dark or played too much football in high school!)?  Is this a sign of a divine whipping that I should stay clear of lest I get caught in the crossfire?  Surely nothing happens without cause or reason, right?  How?  Why?”

In the end I choose to believe that we all want simply to be in the right place, doing the right thing in the right way to make everything all right.  But along comes Jesus who doesn’t believe these are the right questions for getting us there.

“Do you want to be made well?  What do you want me to do for you?” he asks instead.

What type of foolish questioning is this?  Who doesn’t want to be made well?  Does such a question even need to be asked?  But alas we know it does.  For sometimes the healing we want is simply not available to us.  The arms are gone, the bear paw is missing.  No amount of surgery can bring them back and no amount of determined focus can distract us from seeing what is not there.  We can sit there for as long as we will to.  No matter.

But still it is up to us.  There are many, Jesus not being the least of them, who can make it all right again, but like true love, real power won’t force itself upon us.  It does, however, invite us.  “Stand up, walk.  Go, wash, and see.”

“I can’t,” we insist.

And the only thing Jesus does demand is that we believe we can.  Not because we can now but because Jesus, the most broken down of all human beings is asking, “What do you want me to do for you?”  It would seem there’s always one who believes now is still the right time for healing.  Thank God for that.

I have several confessions to make.  My first confession is that my title for this blog entry  scares me a little, if not a lot.  “Just peace.”  It’s a good sounding title I suppose.  Among all the things we can have, who among us wouldn’t settle for just peace?  Among all the places we can go, who wouldn’t like a lawn chair on a remote beach or a field of flowers under a starry night sky?  Just peace.  And yet we all know peace is more than wishful thinking and that when Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he probably didn’t mean, happy are the beach goers.  I do think he meant for us to know that peace doesn’t come to us all at once, that it must be made.  I don’t know if it’s something that we must always make for ourselves or if it’s something others might make for us and then give to us, like a Christmas present or a birthday card.

“What is it?”

“Oh, nothing much, a little homemade trinket I just call peace.”

I think of the story of the Good Samaritan who gutsily stopped to help an enemy on the side of the road.  Think like it was you.  Bruised, battered and left for dead, and the one person you hate the most, the one person whose existence makes your blood boil, saves your life.  They scoop you up, lay you in the backseat, drop you at the ER and tell the doctors, “Whatever you need to do, do it.  I’ll cover the bill.”  Jesus tells this story in response to a question he gets asked by a lawyer.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The answer of course is, “Show mercy.  Do this, and you will live.”  It’s not the answer we might expect to get from Jesus.  Whatever happened to, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved?”  Or, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of good works?”  I don’t know but that faith isn’t faith until it’s been turned to action.  So Jesus says, “Show mercy, and you will live.”  Or, put another way, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

You think of it this way and peace doesn’t sound like a day at the beach after all. In his book, The Dignity of Difference, Rabbi Jonathan Saks writes that, “The pursuit of peace can come to seem to be a kind of betrayal.  It involves compromise.  It means settling for less than one would like.  It has none of the purity and clarity of war, in which the issues—self-defense, national honor, patriotism, pride—are unambiguous and compelling.  War speaks to our most fundamental sense of identity: there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ and no possibility of confusing the two.  When, though, enemies shake hands, who is now the ‘us’ and who the ‘them?’  Peace involves a profound crisis of identity.  The boundaries of self and other, friend and foe, must be redrawn.”

And so my own title for this blog entry scares me a little, if not a lot.  But I’m going with it anyway because it seems necessary given the types of conversations I’ve been hearing around me this week for us to talk about whether we can make it on just peace.  And this leads me to my second confession.  In the wake of last Saturday night’s verdict concerning George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, I’ve been confused.  I am not confused by the verdict itself.  I have no opinion to offer regarding the verdict.  I did not follow the case near as closely as I feel I would have needed to in order to now hold an opinion on it.  Maybe I should have followed it closer.  Many did and perhaps, for a case that captured such national attention and seemed to involve so many questions of conscience, we should be preaching on it in church.  After all, throughout history haven’t preachers mobilized their pulpits to speak out on everything from the Holocaust and Nazism to Apartheid in South Africa to racial inequality and the misguided steps of U.S. involvement in wars and international aid?  Didn’t Jesus himself stand before the congregation in Jerusalem and say that the word of God is a call to revolution on behalf of the poor and oppressed?  Isn’t the church only the church then when it is taking sides even at the risk of losing its life?  Yes, so long as we know what to do first after we’ve taken a side.  Blessed are the peacemakers.

But in this case I still have no opinion to offer, no side to take when it comes to the terrible shooting of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman.  A few days ago I thought maybe I could formulate an opinion, and then I’d have something relevant and smart to say about the problem of race in our country and the way of our justice system and what side the church should take in it all.  So I read about two dozen blogs this week, I kept my homepage open to the New York Times and a variety of other news feeds, some notably conservative and others notably liberal.  (I’d try to formulate a balanced opinion.)  But the more I read the more confused I became.  Some have praised the trial process saying that like it or not, when a killer is found innocent, it shows evidence of a fair trial.  Others have said that due to racial bias and prejudice, even a “fair” trial would not be fair.  At the gym yesterday I overheard two people in a discussion in which one person said that they thought the President showed courage and conviction when he expressed sympathy with Trayvon.  The other said the President’s given too much attention to one person, ignoring the fact that soldiers and innocent others are being killed as we speak.  I don’t know but that it seems there is no verdict that guarantees peace for everyone.

In Matthew’s gospel we read about a mute demoniac who is brought to Jesus.  We’re not told what the connection is between this person’s demon and their inability to speak.  Whether the demon has caused the muteness or whether this person was mute and then took on a demon, we don’t know.  But we can imagine this person’s inability to speak is a demon to them, for when the demon is gone Matthew records, “and the mute spoke.”  Now what I find interesting is that Matthew doesn’t record what the mute said.  I mean, if someone couldn’t speak for a long time, or had never spoken at all, and they could suddenly speak, wouldn’t you want to hear their first word?  If it were you, if you suddenly found your voice, what would you say?  Would you go back to that conversation everyone else was having around the dinner table ten years ago, the one you so badly wanted to be a part of but couldn’t?  Would you recall the amazing sights you saw on vacation five years earlier?  Would you finally scream out against that certain injustice, the one your eyes have endured up close everyday?  Who would you say, “I love you,” to?  Or would you just whisper joyful sighs?  But we don’t hear from the mute.  We hear only from the crowds, who can’t believe what they’re hearing, and from the Pharisees, who quickly act to silence what they’re hearing, and in so doing demonize this person all over again.

“It won’t be they say.”  It’s not that it can’t be, for they can’t undo what has happened.  It just won’t be.  “You have a demon,” they say.  ”That’s why you couldn’t speak, because you’re sick, you have issues, you’re guilty of some terrible sin that God was punishing you for.  We can’t change the fact that now you can speak, but we won’t have you going around saying that God has healed you, that you’re actually free and innocent, that you’re just like us.”

What do we do when we don’t like the verdict?  When the outcome is not as we expected?  Is there another one?  Is there an option beyond anger, apathy, and even protest?  All of which have their time and place, but none of which have the power ultimately to heal us.  Is there another verdict?  Yes, there is, but we should be warned.  We may not like it.  In fact, we may like it even less than the first verdict, because this verdict has a certain shade of gray to it.  With this verdict there is no accuser or defendant, no judge or jury.  It is the verdict we hear rendered in the ancient Biblical book of Leviticus where God says to the people Israel: “When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a Sabbath for the Lord.  Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune the vines and gather in the crops; but in the seventh year there shall be complete rest for the land.  You can eat whatever the land gives you that year, but don’t go trying to grow anything.”

Naturally the people ask, “But what if it’s not enough?”  And God responds, “In the sixth year I will order my blessing for you so that there will be enough not only in the seventh year but in the eighth and ninth year as well.”

“Why are you doing this,” they ask?  “What’s the point God?”

“So you will never forget that once upon a time you were slaves in Egypt, that you worked the land everyday, breaking your backs for someone else, but never did you get to eat off the fat of the land.  That in a land of plenty there was no peace or justice for you.  And yet, I showed you mercy and you had everything you needed.  And now you live in a land of freedom, and you can work as much as you can to get as much as you want, but there are still those who cannot, and you must show them mercy.”

“Lord, we would do for the widows, the grieving mothers, and the helpless babies, but what about those who don’t deserve mercy, those who have never given a morsel of bread to a hungry brother or sister, who have actually only ever denied a brother or sister?   Wouldn’t it be a denial of justice on our parts to let them off the hook, to clothe and feed the guilty?”

And God, holding up a loaf of bread, breaks off a piece and handing it to us says, “Would you also like a little something to wash this down with?”

I say, thanks be to God whose mercies are from everlasting to everlasting.  Amen.

One day last week I announced that I was heading outside to mow the lawn.  My son, who is  two and had just woken up from his nap, was sitting on the couch munching on his pacifier.  It’s his one enduring fix.  When going to bed or when going on long car rides, when trapped by a crib or by a Britax triple harness system, he gets to suck on something.  I don’t know what it does for him but I would guess his pacifier is like my good morning jog followed by a chapter in a favorite book.  It eases me back into the day.  It puts me at ease with another day.  Simply put, it eases me.  And yet, say the word tractor and he spits serenity out of his mouth like an addict kicking his bad habit to the curb cold-turkey style.  What follows is some derivative of a circus that is almost worth buying tickets to go see.  With hoopla bordering on sheer madness he runs into his room, grabs his sneakers, and starts to jump up and down, though his pint-size body can’t quite lift itself beyond itself, so his jump amounts more to a unique blend of skipping and shimmy-shaking.  For all that this moment means to him (a wee exaggerated my description may be), you must understand his intensely simple love for tractor time, because without it you can’t possibly sympathize with the pain he suffered (or the pain that I was about to suffer) when he learned that his sister had already been promised the first ride that day.  His shimmy-shake turned to stomping and his squealing to screaming.  I tried to reason with him.  “You always get to go first.”  It’s not like there was a long line waiting in the garage to board our 8 year old Craftsman Special Edition.  That he wasn’t going to ride first only meant he was going to ride second.  “You get to go next.  How about a swing ride while you wait?”  “Words, words, words,” he must have been thinking, as all the earth filled with shrills and shrieks.

It was then that I decided a time-out was necessary, if not for him than at least for me.  We were both losing our ease.  I carried him into his room, his 30 pound frame writhing in my arms.  Against all passive-agressive instinct I placed him gently on the floor.  Walking out I shut his door, though not all the way.  (Never all the way.)  “When you’re ready to stop yelling, you can come out.”  He didn’t have to actually stop yelling.  Reemergence, reengagement, resurrection, whatever you want to call it can’t be accomplished on your own.  Not when you’re 33 and fairly level-headed and certainly not when you’re 2 and feeling emotionally rocked.  Someone has to call us forth, to give us something to move toward–a voice, a hand, a glimmer of persuasion that the world wants us back again.  He just had to let me know that he was ready to stop yelling.  We could take it together from there.

Outside in the hallway his sister was sitting on the front steps.  She didn’t say anything.  No mention of how he was holding her up.  No talk of, “I’ll be outside guarding the tractor just in case.”  No look of superiority.  I saw his pacifier sitting on the coffee table and glancing back down the steps decided he should have it.  I pushed open his door, barely, and laid it out like a welcome mat.  His vocal cords were still at it.  Turning back into the hallway I went to close his door again when his sister ducked under my arm and into his room.  Before I could tell her not to do whatever it was that she was about to do she reached out to her brother with her own welcome mat.  “You can have the first ride.  It’s ok,” she assured him.  In her palm was the tractor key.

I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I wanted to swat it out of her hand, to rebuke her for misplaced grace, to tell her to back me up, he needs to suffer this one.  He can’t be allowed to think this is an acceptable way to get his way.  In fact, what about not always getting your way? But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that she put him at ease.  She put me at ease.  No, he didn’t say sorry.  He didn’t even try, which at his age would have been as good as saying it.  He also didn’t try to hustle his way out to the tractor.  What he did do was to stop yelling and walk out into the living room to find his crayons and coloring books.  Call it his reemergence, his reengagement, his resurrection unto toddler life again.  I bent down and in to his sister, my daughter.  “You are very kind.  There’s never anything wrong with being kind.”

But little did I know how quickly she’d find ground for debate, for no sooner was I ready to say, “Do you think you’d like to go ride the tractor now?” and she was ranting about how her brother was using her pencil.  “It’s my Buzz Lightyear one.  I really, truly, want it.  He won’t give it back.”  “Did he actually take if from you?” I asked.  “Were you using it?”  Not every one who is named a thief has stolen.  Sometimes a thief is what we call the person who has what we would have, except we’d have to steal it to get it.  In this case the jury never had time to deliberate, for the verdict was cast when her brother opened his palm not only to to hold out the pencil, but also a tractor key.

A prophet whom I believe has the power to save us,  once said from a field, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”  Another prophet once said, “Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.  When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.  Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make sense any more.”

I dare wonder, do you think there’s a tractor in that field?

I wear a robe on Sunday mornings.  It’s black.  It’s nothing fancy.  No frilly designs around the collar, no rope cinching it around my waist, no Friar Tuck hood, not even any softly padded buttons running my 66 inch frame.  It has a zipper.  I remember the first time I stood before my church wearing it.  I don’t know if I looked like a cleric or not.  My guess is, I looked like a pre-pubescent boy tripping over his father’s bathrobe on Halloween.  In my own mind’s eye that’s pretty much how I first wore my robe too, like one trying not to look too goofy in an XXL.  We’re told that Jesus wore a robe.  I know, I know.  A robe in his day was like a cell phone clip in our day.  Everyone wore one.  Before there were tee-shirts and jeans, there were robes.

There’s a story about Jesus and his robe.  He is walking among a crowd.  The storyteller doesn’t describe anyone in the crowd.  They don’t point anyone out as if to say, “Four rows back was a girl named Susan.”  We’re simply told, the crowd is large and pressing in.  Hence why no one is named.  In crowds like this one you don’t see people, you just feel them.  You feel their overwhelming presence, their body heat.  In such a crowd I imagine Jesus found his robe to be an issue.  It got stepped on, and he got tripped up and slowed down.  But in this crowd was a woman (who of course is unnamed).  She is, however, diagnosed (another consequence of large crowds: in being too many to name they become too easy to diagnose).  She is bleeding.  Profusely.  Grossly.  She tells herself that if she can just get a hold of Jesus’s robe she’ll be made well.  I don’t gather that she thinks this is a magician’s coat.  Touch it and poof!  I don’t even know that she figured on getting her bleeding to stop.  Maybe she just hoped to get a good grip on his robe, and then to hold on long enough so that when Jesus finally got to wherever he was going, she’d be right there with him.  He’d turn around to see this bloodied, half-comatose human dust ball lying there and think, “How did you get here?”  And because he’s Jesus he’d have to help her.  But instead, the crazy does happen.  She latches on and poof indeed!  For the first time in a long time what flows is healing, not blood.  And Jesus turns around not to say, “How did you get here?” but, “Where are you?” He doesn’t see it happen but the storyteller says, he feels it–power leaving him.  I wonder what that felt like to Jesus.  To me, losing power often means losing control as well, and that means being defenseless, vulnerable, even violated and ripped off.  Of course, the opposite can also be true.  For the one who receives power there is renewal of purpose and person.  “The woman knew that something had happened to her, something that she couldn’t have made happen on her own,” we are told.  “Where are you?” Jesus asks around.  “Where are you who has claimed my hope, my promise, my life, my power for yourself?  Somewhere out there is someone who has been reborn tonight.  I want to meet them.”

One day last week I took my robe off to share communion with a woman in my church.  That may sound backwards, given that in my church the one behind the communion table is often the one wearing the robe.  “We break this bread, Christ’s body given for you.  We pour out this cup, Christ’s blood shed for you.  In these gifts, in this sharing of pieces we have communion.”  Some traditions say that such words, when spoken by a duly robed individual, can stir the heart to believe that we are eating and drinking Jesus himself.  For me though, my robe is not a sign of speciality.  If I wear it at all it is only so you can find the one person who will make sure there is a scrap of bread and a sip of drink left for you, because it’s only communion–and it’s only Jesus–if there’s enough to go around for everyone.  Admittedly, sometimes I wear my robe well and sometimes I don’t.

Anyway, this past week, after the Sunday morning crowd had their fill, I took off my robe, changed into some jeans and a fleece pull-over, and took the leftovers to a woman who couldn’t make it to church that day.  This woman would have liked to come but she couldn’t because she was sick.  Sick with too many thoughts, too many fears, too many paranoias, too many wounds that never took to healing.  You might say this woman was, is, bleeding all over the place.  Sitting in her living room I’m surrounded by stacks of books and half-eaten frozen dinner trays.  The carpet, which no vacuum could find anyway, looks like a cat’s litter box.  The kitchen sink and the garbage disposal have run together.  The TV is on.  “You’ve got to hear this,” she tells me, turning up the volume from loud to blaring.  Some woman is interviewing Jim Wallis.  “This guy knows what we need in this country.”  I think, these are her crowd.  Everyday she drowns her pain in these.  I reach into my neatly packed grocery bag and pull out a loaf of bread, a 4 oz. bottle of Welch’s grape juice, and a matching pottery-hewn cup and plate.  Seeing me do this she clears off her coffeetable entirely to make room for communion.  I think, she’s fighting her way through the crowd.  She doesn’t turn off the TV though.  Apparently Jim Wallis is going to join us for communion.

I read from Psalm 23 about the Lord who is our shepherd and how we shall not want.  It doesn’t say that we shall not want because the shepherd gives us everything we want, or even everything we need.  The Lord has a whole world full of sheep to care for.  That’s a lot of mouths to feed.  God knows there are times when we may need to ration provisions, so to make sure everyone gets at least a bit.  Because with Jesus, enough is only enough when everyone has something.  And when that happens, enough will be enough.

I lift the bread.  “Christ’s body broken for you.”  We eat.  I pour the cup.  “Christ’s blood shed for you.”  We drink.  She, I, and an elder who has come along to stand in for the entire church community.  Afterwards I ask her if she would like to pray for us.  She says, yes, please.  In the course of her prayer I notice that she quotes, word-for-word, from John chapter 10.  Some 21 verses, also about Jesus and his sheep, and she knows them all. “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus promises.  “I know my own and my own know me.”  “Where did you learn that?” I ask her.  This is a woman who can barely keep her mind in one place long enough to scrub a pot.  “Where did you learn that?”  “I don’t recall,” she tells me.  “I’ve just always known it.”

And for a brief shining moment I think I see the crowd disappear, as Jesus turns to see the woman who has been gripping his robe all this time.

I’m not sure which it is: do we  learn early on that certain things go together or do we more figure it out?  When it comes to having a PB & J sandwich I actually prefer having fluff over jelly, and the person who sat next to me at the lunch table most days in high school liked putting mayonnaise to his peanut butter.  Now did he just figure that combo out (because I never would have), or did his grandmother spoil him with mayonnaise like mine spoiled me with fluff?  (The word “spoil” might be totally misplaced in this illustration!)  I don’t know which it is.  Oscar Hammerstein once wrote, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.  You’ve got to be taught from year to year.  It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.  You’ve got to be carefully taught.”  I don’t think the assumption here is that one must be taught to hate and fear because it’s unnatural.  Like it’s a once in a lifetime learning opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.  For human experience tells us, and dictates to us sadly, that being hated and feared are foregone conclusions.  Sometime, somewhere, someone, perhaps your own self, is going to find reason to hate and fear you.  Whether it begins with a hatred that turns to fear or a fear that turns to hatred, we don’t have to learn their names or faces.  We’ll know them when we see them. So what is it that must be taught?  Is it that we must be taught who and what to hate and fear?  As if the mere existence of hatred and fear isn’t toxic enough, we must be taught where and how to get the most bang for our buck.  The setting for Hammerstein’s words was the South Pacific in World War II.  I suppose in that time and place hatred and fear were tragically regarded as necessary defense mechanisms against being bombed again, against being surprised by hatred and having to live in fear again.  I’m glad though that the lyric doesn’t go, “You’ve got to learn to hate and fear,” because so long as it’s something I’ve got to be taught, I’d just assume skip class today.

I’ve titled this post, Bravery at Third and Home.  I’m playing on a softball team this spring.  (It’s a church softball team and so the degree to which the word “softball” applies may be debatable by some.  But the word “team” is as good as gospel truth.)  Running down fly balls, instinctively jolting left or right at the crack of the bat, pounding palm to mitt–all remind me of how good the game is for me, and how, in spite of my lackluster play, I am good for the game.    That both of these statements are true at the same time is a testimony to my dad, and here’s how: my dad is the fluff to baseball ball’s peanut butter.  In his own days of little league glory, my dad was a legend.  He is known to have pitched a game once in which he made every out there was to make.  He did it by striking out every batter but one.  In six total innings of play he whizzed the ball by 17 of 18 whiffers.  As for the one person who got a piece of the action, they hit a pop fly…to the pitcher!  In high school my dad is said to have shattered a batting helmet with his fastball (no heads are known to have been connected to the helmet at the time of contact!).  Had it not been for an unfortunate car accident leading to a broken neck…

Fast forward 10 years and my dad is standing back on the mound.  I’m sitting on home plate, literally.  “Don’t move,” he tells me.  Don’t move, I think.  Are you insane?  What if the ball comes in low?  What if I have to jump to catch it?  What if I have to jump to avoid it?  Can I at least kneel?  “No.  Keep your butt on the ground.”  That day, and everyday thereafter–spring, summer, and fall–my dad threw the ball right at my head.  I swear, a 6-cylinder Ford couldn’t have kept up with that thing.

In eighth grade I broke a bone in my left hand playing back yard football and had to take my first baseball season off in 7 years.  Honestly, I didn’t miss it.  I was kind of relieved actually.  I loved playing ball with my dad.  I loved knowing how to catch anything he threw at me.  But beyond this, I wasn’t very good.  I knew that in a year my 5 foot 2 inch, 90 pound freshman frame wouldn’t be able to hit the ball  beyond shortstop and my arm couldn’t throw for hard for long.  It’s not that I didn’t have it in me to try for the team anyway.  Or at least this is what I tell myself 18 years later.  Either way, anyway, I didn’t, and the goodness of that decision came to me, as it has before but perhaps never so mercifully, this past week at softball practice.  I was standing in right field, pounding palm to mitt, when the ball was popped up on the first base line.  I noticed that the person playing third put their glove up, as if to catch a ball that was flying 90 feet in an opposite direction.  A couple pitches later and the ball was popped up again, this time along the third base line.  The same player put their mitt up again, but didn’t move.  The ball fell about 3 feet to their right.  This is when I realized they couldn’t see the ball, and when I knew who it was.  We’d met at the church several months earlier.  A newcomer to the area, this elusive third basemen (were they brave? fearless? stupid? I was soon to find out) and I were both native New Englanders and soulful Red Sox fans.  What brought them to the area is perhaps a story for another telling.  What matters is what brought them out to softball practice.  That they loved the game and could spout statistical analysis on every major leaguer since Babe Ruth was not it.  That before the kids grew up and the family broke up they coached and cheered at every game, match, and meet was not it.  That cancer had taken their ability to see very well anymore was obviously not it.  That after missing the pop-up at third they still took batting practice, only to lay the bat down on home plate after just two pitches and flop down in the grass beyond the dugouts, surely that was not it either.  What made them do it?

Everyone in the outfield just stood there, murmuring and confused.  “Should we cheer for them, give ’em a little pep talk?  Two pitches?  That’s all they’re going to give themselves?  What should we do for them?”  I didn’t know but what to do first.  I jogged my way across the infield and sat down beside them in the grass.  “I had to try,” they said.  So that was it.  They were willing to risk the darkness, to stand on the third base line where the ball might come whizzing by faster than a Ford?  For all they couldn’t see, they might as well have just sat their butt on home plate.  All this just to be able to say they’ve still got a good inning or two left in them.  “I’ll just take this glove back to the store tomorrow and tell them it didn’t work for me,” they said.  I just sat there in silence.  From where I sat, the glove worked like no glove I’d ever worn.  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked them.  “Did someone teach you to do that or did you just figure it out?”  “To do what?” they said.  “To say you’re a baseball player just because you have a glove.  Bravest damned thing I’ve ever seen.”

Hatred, fear, bravery.  Does someone teach us the difference or do we just figure it out?  Which is it?  I’m not sure it matters.  Bravest damned thing I’ve ever seen.