PleaseGrace

Bernard’s mother died this week.  Her name was Mary.  In the 11 years I have known Bernard I’ve only ever heard him call her,  Mother.  “Mother, how are you today?”  “Mother, what happened in the Red Sox game last night?”

I’ve been thinking the last few days about how it went the day she got the call about the accident.  It wasn’t the first call of its kind that she had received.  Mary was, after all, a mother of 9.  You can’t have that many chicks on your roost and not expect that from time to time one or two is going to fall off and even fall away.  And sure enough, some did.  A couple seemed to have decided that the roost was simply too full; too many chicks sharing the same room, the same bathroom, and they flew away in search of their own house to call home.  I don’t know if they ever called to tell Mary they were going.  Perhaps someone else had to make that call.  “Mother, she’s moved south.”  “Mother, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but he left a month ago.”

We should be neither surprised nor discouraged to discover that in a house of 9 chicks, 1 rooster, and a hen, there is going to be some clawing, some cockfights, and everyone is going to grow up with some scrapes, bumps, and bruises.  Some will even endure wounds too deep to heal.  Flying the coop, cutting certain ties, falling in and out of love is necessary trial and error on the road to redemption.

Then of course there is Bernard, my father-in-law with bear paws for hands who lost those paws in a freakish motorcycle accident over 9 months ago.  How must that call have gone?  “Mother, it’s Bernard.  He’s…”

I remember seeing her walk into the waiting room at the hospital.  It hadn’t even been 24 hours yet since death had gotten into the ring with Bernard.  He had gone from a joy ride under blue skies with his Harley buds to an ICU room with dull lighting that is supposed to make you feel like the person in the bed is just resting comfortably, when the truth is, they’re about to go 250 rounds.  The extent of his injuries were so massive that when you entered his room you had to look on the little whiteboard over his bed to see where they’d scribbled his name.  Otherwise you might not know who it really was under the sheets.  To say the least, only immediate family was allowed in to see Bernard.  The other 40 people–yes, 40–would just have to persist (and persist they did) in the waiting room.

When Mary came in there was a muted sense of awe.  Her arthritic body didn’t like car rides, even short ones, and the trip to the hospital wasn’t short.  Speaking only for myself, it’s a terrible mistake the young make when they try to suggest that old eyes and hearts won’t be able to survive the sight of their unrecognizable children.  “Are you sure you want to go in to see him?” I asked her.  She didn’t say a word to me,  which was, I humbly admit, her way of telling me that such questions are not mine to ask.  She walked down the hall, her rosary in hand, and I don’t imagine, not even for a second, that she had to check the whiteboard over his bed to know that it was Bernard she was looking at.

I never asked or was told what, if anything, Mary did or said that day she stood beside Bernard.  When I heard about her death several days ago, though, I found myself wondering again.  Did she whisper to him?  Paul McCartney and John Lennon once famously confessed,

“When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be”

In her own way Mother Mary was always one to let it be.  Let the children who have remained and let the children who have gone to far off places find the door to my home and heart always wide enough for them to fit through it together.  Let it be.  In this same way, however, Mother Mary was, I think, waging the fight to beat all other fights.  When it is love, when it is peace, when it is light, then let it be.  Until then, fight like hell.

I don’t know if Mother Mary whispered such words of wisdom to Bernard ever.   I do know that  Bernard is not much into lying in bed or sitting in chairs these days.  Ever since his right leg got a new knee 2 months ago and his left side got a new arm 1 month ago, he is now into going up and down the hallways on the fifth floor at the rehab hospital, learning (because Bernard is caring like this) the name of everyone who is anyone.  From the peg-leg woman who lives next door, to the kindly older gentleman who mops the floors to a shine, to the Filipino-accented woman who takes his meal orders and never gets upset when she has to track him down because his lunch is ready and his potatoes are getting cold, to his physical therapist whose full name is rather long and so who just likes to be called Ro, Bernard knows them all and they all know him.

For a few hours each day Bernard goes down to the second floor to workout in the gym.  At first it was all he could do to spin a few rotations on a stationary bike or to practice picking up a fork.  Now it’s all anyone can do to tell him that a half-mile on the bike and a 400 meter power walk around the gym is probably all he should do.  Not so, says Bernard.  I may not always be able to make my finger push the right button on the elevator to get me back to the fifth floor but when I get there, my sweat drenched tee shirt will make it look like I took the stairs.

Still, I can’t say what, if anything, Mary did or said that day as she stood beside Bernard in the ICU.  I mean, at her age, with all that arthritis and 8 other kids to think about, what could she have possibly given him above a whisper?  I just don’t know.  But if that’s all it was, thanks be to God for Mother Mary.

 

 

I’ve been listening in this week. You need to understand that by listening in I don’t mean I’ve been eavesdropping, or at least not on purpose. In the ancient spirited words of Saint Irenaeus, I simply mean that I’ve been trying to stay awake to the glory of God. This seems like a good and sensible thing to do right now, to expect that God is going to pass me by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way. After all, it was only 7 days ago that I celebrated Easter, 7 days ago that I went to the tomb in the wee hours with the women, 7 days ago that I expected to see nothing there but a huge stone sitting on top of Jesus, crushing our hopes and hearts into darkness, 7 days ago that I asked, “Who is going to roll it away for us?” 7 days since I discovered God already had, because this is how God works: God gives life to the dead. 7 days since the angel delivered the news: “I know what you are looking for—Jesus. He is not here. He has risen and is going ahead of you to Galilee. Go there yourselves. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

So for 7 days now I’ve been listening in, looking out, trying to pay attention to the glory of God, to catch a glimpse of that resurrection power going before me.

We know this, or at least we ought to, that prayer is not just a matter of words, like we cobble together some words that sound thankful or painful or joyful, babble them off to God and call it prayer. Prayer is also a matter of posture and position. It was said that C.H. Spurgeon, a well-known British preacher of the mid 1800s had a faded spot of rug in his study that was practically worn through to the wood underneath. The spot is where he prayed. He prayed so often on his knees that you could see his prayers being worked out on the rug.  For my part, there is a particular Jewish prayer practice that I’ve been trying to use this week, to help me dwell in Easter a bit longer.  I stand on my feet, I reach my arms out, I open my eyes wide, lift my head up, and pray, “O Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, my eyes are open to you that I may see your purpose and love in all things. See the suffering of your children today through me that grace may leap freely from my palms and my head never droop in shame, for you are Lord, King of the Universe, forever blessed, amen.”

There is no question that to pray with your eyes open is to pray as someone who expects God to pass by in some majestically eye-popping glorious way, someone who believes their prayer can powerfully roll away a stone or two.

So I’ve been listening in this week, trying to keep my eyes open, and this is what I’ve heard: I’ve heard that this past Monday in a soccer stadium in Kigali, Rwanda thousands of people gathered to mark the anniversary of one of the most heinous acts ever committed against humanity. It was 20 years ago this month that roughly 1 million Tutsi people were killed, mostly at the hand of their Hutu neighbors and mostly by being butchered with machetes and hammers, and it all happened inside three month’s time. It was a state campaign, not unlike the one that took Jesus down or the one that sparked the Holocaust under Hitler. A deadly mixture of government power and an ideology that said some people are more deserving than others. In this case, a group of extreme Hutu Rwandans deciding they are more deserving of life than their fellow Tutsi Rwandans. We need know that this decision wasn’t made overnight. It rarely ever is. You see, in the early 1990s the Hutus represented 85% of Rwanda’s population, while the Tutsis covered only 14%. With one exception these numbers were not much different than they’d always been. The one exception was that there was a time when the Tutsis, though the minority, they ruled the majority. Politics being what it is however, power changes hands, and when it does, the new majority can be ruthless. Fear of having to play the minority again someday, the sudden power of privilege, can cause yesterday’s victims to become today’s perpetrators. And so it went in Rwanda in 1994—a deadly massacre, genocide.

In Kigali this past Monday the story of the Rwandan Genocide was retold, as it has been every year for two decades, with masses of mourners carrying banners that read, “Remember.” Remember the countless slughtered Tutsis, remember the thousands of Hutu rebels who stood up to their government, who called their actions criminal, and lost their lives for the innocent. Remember the other countries of the world that for so long just stood by denying responsibility. As one person observed of the event, “It seems almost cruel. Is it really healing to keep reopening a wound?”[1]

It reminds me of a sermon that Peter preached not too many days after Easter—50 to be exact.  During this time Jesus has appeared to his disciples on many occasions. Whatever shame they may have had related to his death, whatever feelings of remorse Peter may still have been carrying around for having denied Jesus, all that should have been put to rest by now. No need to dwell on Good Friday anymore. It’s all Easter all the time now.  Or is it? For with this sermon Peter seems to feel the need to talk about Good Friday a bit more.  He gets up in his pulpit and blasts out, “Fellow Israelites, listen carefully to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man thoroughly accredited by God to you—the miracles and wonders and signs that God did through him, we all know about them—this Jesus, following the deliberate and well-thought-out plan of God, was betrayed by people who took the law into their own hands and then put Jesus into your hands.  And you pinned him to a cross and killed him.”

I think it’s appropriate to point out that in addressing his “fellow Israelites,” Peter is addressing those with whom he shares not just national identity with but also those with whom he has shared home and temple and family with. He is speaking to those he has broken bread with and sat in the pew with, those who have struggled with him through ups and downs and ins and outs.  And Peter wants his fellow Israelites to know that from the very beginning it was God’s desire for them to have Jesus, so that in having Jesus they might, in their homes and temples and down and outs, have the presence of miracles and wonders and signs of life. “But some of us let things get away from us,” Peter admits. “The power of the miracles went to our heads and we handed Jesus over to be used by people whose motives were self-serving and without grace, and when Jesus would have nothing to do with such people, they put him to death.  We put him to death.”

In other words, remember this, Peter tells us. Remember what you have been capable of. Remember the terror you have done, remember the places to which you have gone, and more than this, remember that God has brought you back from such places, remember that in raising Jesus from the dead, God has raised you, too.

I find it’s possible to get up on Easter morning, to hear the proclamation that Jesus has been raised from the dead and completely miss Easter, because Easter isn’t for those who just show up.  The women went to the tomb with their spices in hand. They were probably dressed in the appropriate outfits for the occasion. Like you and I wearing our Easter best, they were wearing black, the official sign of mourning. They showed up at the tomb knowing exactly what they were supposed to do.  But behold, the tomb was empty. “You are looking for Jesus. He is not here! He has risen,” a messenger tells them. “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of them to Galilee. He will meet you there, just as he told you.” And the women, we are told, ran away and said not a word to anyone.

A few mornings ago I was in my kitchen making breakfast when from around the corner came my daughter, Lillian.  I was still wearing my pajamas and sucking down coffee in an effort to wake up.  She was her usual cheery, already full-dressed self.

“Good morning sweetheart.”

“Good morning, Daddy. Do you like my shirt? It’s my nice, beautiful, handsome shirt.”

“Yes, and you look so beautiful in it,” I said smiling at her.

“It’s new,” she announced.

I looked the shirt over.  “That’s not a new shirt,” I told her. “You got that from Reese.”

Now Reese and Lillian go to pre-school together. Reese is a year older than Lillian and every now and then she shares her hand-me-downs with Lillian, which Lillian loves. In fact, if given the option between wearing Reese’s hand-me-downs and something brand new from the store that her parents spent good money on, Lillian will choose the hand-me-downs.

“Your shirt is an old shirt that belonged to Reese,” I told her again.

“Yes, but she gave it to me, so now it’s a new shirt again.”

I thought, if ever there was a definition of Easter and how God works, that was it.  It was a nice, beautiful, handsome new shirt, not unlike a majestically, eye-popping glorious stone rolled away.

 

 

[1] From The New Yorker magazine, April 21, 2014, p. 31.

As a minister every now and then I receive an invitation to come along and offer a prayer.  Usually the invitation sounds something like, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to say a little prayer.”  It’s important to understand that it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re standing inside or outside the church’s four walls when the question is asked, the intent of those asking it seems to be the same.  “Just a little prayer — could you say one?”

Inside the church it can come just as easily before a potluck dinner as before some major decision to drop $50,000 to renovate the sanctuary, like these are both somehow similar acts of humanity before God.  Granted, I don’t necessarily see these two things as being very different from each other.  Our prayer should be no less with one over the other.  They sound very different, I know.  $50,000 to hire a construction crew and get a building permit sounds like a lot more capital than $8.00 for a box of macaroni and a large jar of Ragu.  But it’s not.  In fact, if we had to say that one is a weightier decision in need of prayer, it should be the prayer we offer before the potluck (and if you’ve ever been to a church potluck then you know why)!  Simple daily gratitude for the profound gift of food can never be overdone.  We can’t think too much about our gratitude and how best to express it.  In Jewish homes, before any meal, snack, or morsel is consumed the family prays, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe.”  From this follows a list of whatever is being eaten.  “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the barley, the oats, the water that made them grow, and the dirt that warmly and safely nurtured them to life.  Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe for the fruit of the vine.”

There is a story about an eighteenth-century Jew whose daily work was to slaughter animals.  Each morning he said a tearful goodbye to his wife and children before setting off to meet his destiny.  He felt, every morning, that he might never see them again, that as he stood, knife in hand and prayer on lips, “Blessed are you God, our Lord, King of the Universe,” that God might notice and destroy him before he had time also to utter, “Have mercy.”

The fact is, this is not a little prayer.  This is an earth-shattering prayer.  One can’t just say this prayer on a whim.  If you’re going to make your gratitude count you have to think long and hard about what ultimately makes your gratitude even possible.  “For the food we are about to eat and the drink we are about to drink, we didn’t do anything to make it appear.  It comes from you, the King of the Universe, who obviously loves and cares about us.”  Yes, we have a part to play in its distribution.  Have we walked the earth carefully, making sure not to trample on the cabbage and to kick up the apple seeds?  For there are hungry people.  Have we made sure to sell the food at a fair and honorable price?  For there are poor people.  In this we also honor the King of the Universe, for without the King we’d all be poor and hungry.  It’s not a little potluck prayer.

Author Annie Dillard once observed that, “Outside of the catacombs, Christians are not sufficiently sensible to the conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may awake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

It’s not a little prayer.  Indeed, it is never a little thing to pray.  And yet when the question was asked of me one day last week, “Pastor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to come and say a little prayer?” I so blithely said yes.  It was to be an annual meeting for a local charitable organization.  Most, if not all, of their benefactors and beneficiaries would be there and breakfast was going to be served.

On the day prior to the meeting I sat down to consider my prayer and that’s when it hit me: I had no idea what I was doing.  What was I supposed to pray?  No one had told me.  For that matter, why were we going to pray at all?  It didn’t seem like a bad idea to me.  I suppose we can pray with a dirt-filled heart of mean motives and selfish pursuits.  I suppose we can pray stupidly.  We can pray an “I don’t really care let’s just get it over with” kind of prayer.  We can pray in such a way that it may, and probably should, get us struck down by lightning.  We can pray without ever saying, “God, have mercy,” but it doesn’t change the fact that God will.  So it didn’t seem like a bad idea to me that we would pray.  But what was I to pray for a  gathering of benefactors and beneficiaries?  Our whole reason for showing up was to make known what we had already done.  This one sheltered the homeless for 250 nights.  That one ran a free clinic for battered women and children.  This one gave all the money for the clinic.  That one gave enough for a clinic and 20 new beds at the shelter.  What more could we stand to give and receive?  Let’s say a little prayer and eat!  The eggs are getting cold.

Tragically, this is more or less how it all went.  I stood to pray, sat down, and a circus of self-congratulations began.  One by one each group sent their president forward to receive a plaque and to have their picture taken with the mayor while the audience went ooh and ah.  We clapped so much that after a while I found myself clapping before the names were even announced.  When, after a while, there were no more names to call, it was decided that we all could leave.  But first, “Pastor, would you come back up and close us with a little prayer?”

I got up and fumbled my way back to the microphone.  I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hear some rumblings still, not of the crowd but of thunder.  What was I supposed to pray again?  Not even “God, have mercy” seemed right.  How do we pray for mercy and not come off like we’re praying for everyone but ourselves, when the truth is, the need for mercy starts with me.

“Let us pray,” I invited.  For about a minute all was silent. No one said anything. We just sat there doing the one thing that makes us all the same: breathing.  Finally it sounded like we were praying.

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Great God, some would call what we are doing a strange thing — praying.  We are not gathered here to be religious.  This is not a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a place for quiet meditation.  Is it because of where live that we pray?  Is it because we’ve heard it’s the thing conservatives do, or maybe it’s liberals?  Do we just want to be known as upstanding, morally good citizens?  Why do we pray?  We don’t even all believe in the same God or believe in the same way about God.  We don’t all call you by the same name.  Why do we pray?  Could it be because we see how divided we’ve become, that we see how easily we slap labels on one another and pass unfair judgment, but we are yearning for unity?  Is it that we are desperate to see each other differently, as brothers ,sisters, neighbors, and we pray because we believe this is how you see us and we need you to help us be more like you?  Why do we pray?  Could it be that we share a common concern for our world and its needs and we know the concerns are big and the needs greater than what any one of us, and maybe even all of us together, can meet?   Could it be that we know our world has become so troubled and the only explanation for it lies beyond this world?  So we pray.  We place our hope and faith on the line and we proclaim with one voice that things can be better and we are united to make it so.  We look beyond ourselves while also looking around ourselves.  We see how much we have and how much we have to give and we say thank you for both.  Great God, in this world there are some who have love but no food and some who have food but no love.  Open our eyes to see how easily both have come to us in this moment and give us the courage and wisdom to want less so others may have more.  We ask all of this for the sake of love and in the name of the One who is love, amen.

 

In our house a cup of water is a big deal.  Around bedtime a cup of water, and how we handle it, can actually be a deal breaker–the difference between a bedtime story and just lights out.  One night last week it was just lights out.  For the record, I would like to say that giving someone a cup of water is an act too simple and kind to refuse.  I’ve heard stories and seen pictures of soldiers who after capturing or mortally wounding each other, offer each other a canteen of water.  (If you’re wondering how things might have played out differently had they only offered each other the water first, so am I.)  So I ask you: what reason have we in heaven or on earth to withhold a cup of water, a little chug, a slight sip?  If enemies can get this right on the field of battle, how hard can it be for a daddy and daughter at bedtime?  Very.

It all began with a routine question.  “Hey, aren’t we going to read a story?”  She was sitting on her bed, her paisley comforter pulled back, her polka-dot flannel sheets looking ever so inviting.  On most nights we cuddle up together, side-by-side to hear what Sophia the Princess or Amelia Bedelia has to say to us.  Tonight I just stood in the doorway to her bedroom, one foot in and one foot out.  A new episode of Modern Family was due on any minute.  

“Not tonight sweetheart.  It’s late,” I told her.

“It’s not that late.  We always read a story.”

Honestly, she was right on both accounts, but she doesn’t know how to tell time.

“Not tonight,” I said again.  “It’s late.”

“Well then get me some water.”  This is how she said it: it wasn’t a question: it was a sassy statement.

“Excuse me,” I snapped.  “You don’t get a cup of water when you ask for it that way.  We’re done for today,” I ordered.  “You can try again in the morning for a cup of water.”  I just turned and walked away.  No goodnight kiss, no “I love you.”

I stood in the kitchen, my elbows resting on the edge of the sink.  My hands, as if folded in prayer (I don’t know, maybe they were) hovered just under the faucet, which was dripping.  We had pancakes for dinner.  My two-year old son wanted to help flip them on the griddle.  It felt a little too suicidal, if not for him than for me.  I convinced him to wash some sippy cups in the sink instead.  He obviously hadn’t turned the water off completely.  Two full hours of droplet drippings had now collected in the Mickey Mouse cup.  I couldn’t help but notice it was overflowing.

  From around the corner and down the hallway came a still sob for water.  It  had a note of pathetic to it.  “I won’t survive until morning!  I’m crying!  Don’t you care?”   I was at a classic impasse.  I knew she would make it till morning and yet I didn’t know if I would make it 10 more seconds.  She wanted water.  I’m quite sure a sip would have satisfied her deepest thirst at that point.  I peered down at Mickey.  For a moment I thought evil, like maybe he had a few droplets to spare.  I picked him up thinking about how sassy, sassy-mean, she had been.  I knew she didn’t mean to be.  I knew she’d been awake for 14 hours, which is a really long time when you’re 4.  I knew she had her Valentine’s Day party at pre-school that day.  That it had been canceled twice on account of harassing snow and that she had handed out over 20 homemade cards, each one made out of two pieces of construction paper that had been sown together with yarn, cut into the shape of a heart, stuffed with a Tootsie Roll, and exquisitely decorated, and she and she alone made it happen.  I knew she was getting in the car tomorrow morning to drive 5 hours to visit her Grampy who is still in rehab, who is still not at home where she would like him to be, pushing her on her swing, dragging her around the neighborhood in her wagon.  That she doesn’t really get how someone can lose their arms but how it really doesn’t matter to her.  By combining ridiculous jokes involving Pu Pu Platters with a bowl of spoon-fed ice cream, she makes it look like the world is just the way it’s supposed to be.  I knew that had she known it was going to make me look so mean in return, she would have asked for water by saying “please” first.  I knew I was taking advantage of her inability to read a clock.  I knew, and I know still, that I wanted her to have a cup of water (a whole gallon straight out of Poland Springs!) and that the real reason she still wasn’t going to get one was, I didn’t know how to give it to her.

We had both been mean and it had caused me to forget just how easily certain things come to us.  Maybe we had both forgotten, or just not yet realized it.

I tipped Mickey over and walked back down the hallway to her bedroom.  I passed through the doorway without stopping and sat down on the edge of her bed.  Downstairs the washing machine was filling up for the third time in four hours.  Outside her window I could see a few icicles dripping winter’s glory to the ground.  The weather man says it’s supposed to be 50 degrees tomorrow and that we ought to watch out for puddles.  Yet I’ve read that a woman in Africa walks 4 miles a day on bare feet through the desert to collect water from a well.  She gets up early to get there early, lest the well be emptied before she has her chance.  Her jugs are dirty from also having been used to mix a batch of cement, which her family uses to build their house.  If the well is riding low today than a decision will have to be made about the water: drink it or mix it?  For now she just fills the jugs as much as she can, slings them on her shoulders, and hikes home.  She’ll need a couple Tylenol in the morning.  Good luck swallowing them without…you know…

I don’t blame my daughter for not knowing this.  I don’t really want her to know this, at least not yet.  And I never want her to come to realize it–what it’s like to walk so far without water to get water only to not have water.  She doesn’t need a lesson in water purification either.  For now we can just be glad that tomorrow she’ll want to put her purple-flower rain boots on to splash about the very puddles from which her brother may risk a drink, because all he knows is, water is water.  In no particular order you can mix it with sand to build castles, mix it with cement to build a house, carry it around in a jug, carry it around in your shoes, drink it.  The great and terrible truth of course is that water really isn’t water, that there is a world of difference between having no water to drink and not being given water, and that for better or for worse, we’re going to have to learn this.

I once heard it said that truth is like water, it always finds it way.  I take this to mean that on its way to wherever it’s going, water, like truth, can often wreak havoc and chaos.  Indeed, for truth to be truth, it must leave a little rupture in its wake.

Some say that God created out of chaos.  That before there was any oak trees, any slugs or aardvarks or any saints or sinners roaming the earth, the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  If there was chaos, it must have been one ballistic spirit at work, stirring up a perfect storm of grade 5 proportions.  But then, as the story goes, God, the same spirited God who brewed chaos over water, stills the water to a perfect calm.  “Let there be light!  Be still!”  God orders it, but not like us.  There is no sass.  Just the hope that if we would only step into the light, we might see each other for who we are: a daddy, a daughter, being warmed by polka-dot flannel sheets, with closets full of shoes.

I slipped my hand onto her back and slowly rubbed her to sleep.  “Sweet dreams, be still.”  I was still whispering it as I clamored downstairs to change the laundry over.

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.