Dad's Desk Drawer

A New Father

2012-01-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

(Note: One week ago our family lost a great man, my father-in-law, James Love, who passed away after a long illness. The text below is what I shared at his service.)
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A great man has left us. He wasn’t great in the ways the world measures greatness. He wasn’t a great athlete or celebrity or billionaire businessman. He was great in the humble way he served the Lord to further his eternal kingdom. He was great in how he made deposits into the lives of others. He was great in how he led his family.

Jim Love was my father-in-law for nearly 30 years. My own father died a little before my 9th birthday. I had no brothers or sisters so at the time I met and later married the Loves' oldest daughter, Joi, I had only my mom on my own side of the family. Psalm 68:6 says that God sets the lonely in families, and I not only married a wonderful, godly young woman, I was received into a great Christian home and made to feel more like a son and not just a son-in-law. So in part because of the number of years, but certainly because of the impact he had on my life, Mr. Love completed in my life what my own father was unable to. He became my new father.

His greatest legacy lives on in this great, godly family he leaves behind. He was kind, wise, generous and steadfast in his integrity and service to the Lord. He was always available for counsel in making decisions. My father-in-law exemplified the biblical quality of meekness. We don’t understand that concept today and equate it with weakness. The scriptures say that Moses was “the meekest of men” yet he confronted a tyrant king and led a nation to freedom. Jesus was meek, but huge crowds followed Him and He spoke with authority they’d never heard although He was “humble and gentle in heart”. Likewise Mr. Love walked in strength and authority, clothed with gentleness and humility. Wherever he was, he led and people followed.

He served faithfully in ministry throughout his life in Christian schools and in three churches he pastored. Since his passing this past Friday night, the family has received hundreds of emails of support from former students and people he pastored. He always focused on others above himself. If you had a conversation with him, he made it about you, not him. Right up until the end he was sharing Christ with medical personnel in hospitals and rehab facilities. They cared for his physical needs; he cared for their spiritual needs.

I’ve often reflected on why, in his last few years, he had to suffer so through all of his medical afflictions. But I never once heard him ask why he had to go through such pain. He was not one to sink into self-absorbed “why me’s”, but understood that the more important question was “For what purpose?”, what was God’s intended will that He could carry out through Mr. Love’s life in this way? We may never know in this life what that was, other than perhaps that in a world of suffering he could comfort others with the comfort he himself had received from God, and that he could be an emblem of godly courage for others to draw strength from.

As long as he had breath he gave away his faith to others, then he slipped from our grasp, leaving behind his groaning flesh, and entered the radiant joy of eternity with the Savior. There he is only living apart from us for a season, and one day we will each see him again.

Yes, God gave me a new father, and I couldn’t have asked for better.

Honor Thy Father and Mother

2011-07-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

Two years ago I discovered a jewel in the writings of the late Abraham Joshua Heschel. Dr. Heschel was a Hasidic rabbi and prominent leader in the 1960's civil rights movement. His wisdom and prescience on caring for the vulnerable in society still reverberate through today. Here is a nugget from him concerning care for the elderly, via Trent Gilliss of NPR's "On Being" blog:

What we owe the old is reverence, but all they ask for is consideration, attention, not to be discarded and forgotten. What they deserve is preference, yet we do not even grant them equality. One father finds it possible to sustain a dozen children, yet a dozen children find it impossible to sustain one father.

Perhaps this is the most distressing aspect of the situation. The care for the old is regarded as an act of charity rather than as a supreme privilege. In the never dying utterance of the Ten Commandments, the God of Israel did not proclaim: Honor Me, Revere Me. He proclaimed instead: Revere your father and your mother. There is no reverence for God without reverence for father and mother.

In Jewish tradition the honor for father and mother is a commandment, the perfect fulfillment of which surpasses the power of man. There is no limit to what one ought to do in carrying out this privilege of devotion. God is invisible, but my mother is His presence….”

Interpretation and Representation

2011-05-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

Doomsday religious groups have come and gone over the centuries and will continue to do so. It's bad enough that gullible followers give up jobs, school and life savings to follow misguided iconic figures who lead them not to the Promised Land, but to disillusionment. Such embarrassing spectacles also hurt the reputation of the followers of Christ overall, even those who are mature, stable and know better than to believe such rantings.

Harold Camping's declaration that May 21st would herald the rapture followed by the end of the world was brassy in its certitude, stating on thousands of billboards "the Bible guarantees it". Then there was this on his website:

Indeed, in the face of all of this incredible information, how can anyone dare to dispute with the Bible concerning the absolute truth that the beginning of the Day of Judgment together with the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011.

Well! How can we dare to dispute the Bible? But that's not the question. The enormous flaw in this thinking is that disputing with the Bible wasn't at issue; it was disputing Harold Camping's really bad interpretation of the Bible. And it was atrociously bad interpretation; a labrinth of dates, numbers, math equations and huge assumptions. There are many biblical doctrines that still are unresolved in the thinking of biblical scholars after two millenia of study and debate, yet Camping supposed that he had aced them all regarding the most anticipated event in escatology. Far greater scholars have spent lifetimes of study and realized in humility that they only "see through a glass darkly".

Recall too that the religious leadership at the time of Christ believed that they had the coming of Messiah all figured out from the works of the prophets. When Jesus did not fit their interpretation of prophetic text regarding the Messiah, they plotted against Him and had Him crucified by their Roman overseers.

Gallileo was placed under house arrest by the Inquisition because his scientific work brought into question the church's interpretation of the Bible verses that refer to the "rising" and "setting" of the sun and of it "standing still" in the book of Joshua. From these descriptions the church held that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun rotated around the earth. Gallileo believed that the scriptures were the Word of God and therefore were not wrong, yet his observations and mathematics showed that the earth rotated the sun. He held that the church's interpretation of scripture was wrong: those expressions were merely colloquialisms to describe what the sun looked like approaching morning and evening, not the actual mechanism of its movement.

Thus does poor interpretation, often mingled with a strong dose of pride, spawn bad representation of the Christian faith. The religious leadership of Jesus' time, convinced they had the one and only correct interpretation of the prophets' works, crucified Jesus not because He violated scripture, but because He violated their interpretation of the scripture. The same can be said of the atrocities of the Inquisition. The doomsday silliness of the Harold Campings of the world also are rooted in the same "my interpretation is right, case closed" mentality. All of them committed the error of dogmatically placing their commentary on scripture on par with scripture itself.

Another by product of this will be that fresh scorn will be heaped upon the Christian faith and all religions by the sneering likes of today's proselytizing atheists. In dishing out ridicule they commit the same fatal conceit: declaring emphatically that there is no God, period. Their interpretation of scientific data leaves no room for God and is absolute and infallible, case closed. The Camping debacle just proves to them that all religious believers are superstitious rubes. Radical atheists mock the Christian faith by committing the same error themselves, because prideful dogmatism is not constrained to the church.

An analogy I've cited before is that I work for an excellent company, selling an excellent service. The majority of the employees do excellent, professional work. But if one employee does a poor job representing the company to customers or to the public, it reflects badly on the company as a whole. The work of all the other fine employees are not what the offended customer or public sees. Their view of the company is shaped by the misrepresentation of the one bad apple.

So it is with Christianity. For every self appointed prophet, for every smarmy televangelist, for every pedophile priest there are tens of thousands of humble pastors, brilliant scholars and selfless lay workers who humbly serve in the garden of the Lord, but whom the world never perceives or acknowledges, because the charlatans in their midst cause them shame. The life savings forfeited by a misguided follower of Harold Camping represent temporal material loss. The value of the souls left adrift because bad behavior by Christians repelled them from the joy of God's redemptive love is incalculable.

Being Truly Counter Cultural

2011-05-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

My generation, the "Baby Boom" generation, came of age during the tumultuous 1960's and later we were dubbed with another, more dubious label: The "Me Generation".

As in me...the center of the universe. Me, the main topic of all my conversations. It's all about me. My three favorite nouns are all pronouns, "me", "myself" and "I".

This second label comes as a rather dispiriting critique given that the "baby boomers" are the children of the generation Tom Brokaw labeled "The Greatest Generation" that toughed out some of the most daunting times in modern history: the Great Depression and World War 2. It would be a feat of unsurpassed fecklessness to weather both of those tempests and not emerge with noble character, sacrificing the longings of self for the needs of others. Thus, I believe, Brokaw's descriptor was apt.

With good intentions the parents who brought us into the world wanted desperately to deliver more to us than they had known in prosperity, education, peace and freedom. And so in many ways they indulged us and showered us with the fruits of their hard labor and striving to build a better world and shelter us from the hardships they had endured.

Yet as has been said good intentions can often pave the way to a certain toasty place. Good intentions may accomplish good, but they often also spawn unanticipated negative consequences.

My generation certainly took the foundation of prosperity and education bequeathed to us and super charged it. The houses and consumer goods we have today are the stuff of royalty compared to what our parents had. But we also produced the 1960's "counter culture" revolution with it's emphasis on self: self-actualization, self-fulfillment, getting in touch with self and the pursuit of pleasure as an end in life, not just a by product of more noble pursuits. Interestingly, perhaps as a counterweight to the guilt of self absorbtion, they also seized the aparatus of government benefits begun by the "greatest generation" and infused it with steroids, mushrooming it to gargantuan size, with much of the populace as addicted to taxpayer assistance as to the most powerful of drugs. And the segment of society indifferent to the needs of the suffering people amongst us, those who pursue material prosperity with reckless abandon, not caring who they hurt in the process, also squander the nation's financial well being by inflating market bubbles to the bursting point and the subsequent expensive, expansion of regulations to rein in such destructive behavior. We would not need the monumental expenses of today's regulatory state if people acted with more selflessness in their conduct.

The entertainment industry is a morass of self-absorbed celebrities that we mistakenly make into heroes to emulate. Nightly family entertainment is dominated by "reality shows" where each week's episode features people engaged in exibitionist self degradation while the nation peers through that window into their lives known as the television.

What happens nationally is the collective work of individuals, so turning to question of what qualities compose a person of greatness, I find that the single greatest indicator of character is the opposite of what the culture has come to value. That single characteristic of true greatness is selflessness. Not selfishness, but selflessness: the concious decision to be other centered; to not think of self first. Realizing this causes discomfort as I see how far I have to go in conquering the tendency toward self-absorbtion. But it has led to awareness of the work that must be done:

~If I have an impatient, irritable attitude, it’s usually for some self-centered reason. But when I have a heart ready to serve others, it fills me with joy.

~There are times when it is appropriate to tell or even order someone to do something. But but most of the time it is much more considerate and selfless to ask politely. A selfish person barks; an unselfish person asks.

~At the heart of person full of graciousness and kindness is a unselfish individual. But a person who is critical and complaining is full of self.

~A person who has an unselfish heart doesn’t go through life thinking they are always owed something, doesn’t care if they get credit for something, doesn’t need to be the center of attention, doesn’t worry about what others think about them.

~Unselfish people have joy, selfish people are some of the most miserable people you’ll ever encounter.

~Unselfish people have a quality of authenticity to their life. They don’t put on airs. They don’t have to impress. They are who they are, humble, with no pretense.

~Unselfish people have integrity. Acts such as lying, manipulating, stealing and other dishonesties are the predatory deeds of selfish people using others for personal gain.

~Unselfish people are generous and giving and consequently, full of joy; selfish people hoard and clutch to hold on to what they have, yet never find lasting satisfaction.

~Selfish people find it hard to forgive; unselfish people forgive and seek reconciliation when conflict arises between themselves and others. By withholding forgiveness, the offended person believes they are punishing their offender, when in reality they only punish themselves. The person who forgives freely lives free from the crushing burden that carrying a lifetime of offenses imposes.

~Unselfish people accept responsibility for their own actions without equivocation or blame shifting. The three hardest words to say in any language are "I was wrong." But we cannot attain to the true character of selflessness without them.

~Unsolicited kindness, expecting nothing in return, is probably one of the greatest expressions unselfishness. Abraham Joshua Heschel said "When I was young I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."

As always these observations are not new and find more eloquent expression in the words of Scripture. Christ said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:24-25) To carry the cross meant death to self and Christ said that only through the ultimate giving up of one's self would one gain all.

Then Paul later had this to say of truly mature, unselfish love: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)

The greatest people I have known and from whom I want to learn and to emulate, have lived these values with seeming ease, while I find them to be a daily conflict with the relentless appetites of self. Yet it is an ongoing quest worth pursuing without giving up. If we can attain to this, we will truly be counter-cultural in a world consumed with self.

Life Cycles

2011-01-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

His hands are aged, the knuckles seemingly enlarged, stretched over with the papyrus skin of the elderly. They are still surprisingly strong, these 93 year old hands, given that they do little more now than grip a walker for slow treks down the hall of an assisted living facility.

Twenty nine years ago I first shook the hand of my wife's grand dad, "Pappaw", a rancher in south Texas who had raised crops and livestock all his life. At 64 he was still as vigorous and robust as a much younger man. He still worked his ranch, managing livestock, operating equipment, wielding tools. Those hands could fix anything and could seize and lift loads that I would have struggled with, being 26 at the time.

His wife, "Nannie", was abuzz with activity and talk, running her household with vigor surprising for a woman of 62. She continued to travel, play tennis and card games well into her 80's. They were the stereotypical image of the western American couple: Pap, the strongly masculine, reticent patriarch; Nan, queen bee of the household, the matronly gadfly. They raised two daughters and a son, who in turn, produced nine grand children, who in turn, generated legions of great-grand children.

Though I was a "city boy", I was embraced into this vibrant, sprawling extended family melded inseparably togther by abiding love for one another and unshakeable Christian faith. Thus I entered a new world, coming from a household through most of my youth composed just of my mom and me and with only occasional visits with a few aunts, uncles and cousins around the country. I never knew any of my grandparents.

Psalms says that God "sets the lonely in families" and though I never was aware of feeling lonely, sometimes we cannot appreciate what we have never had. It took the warm embrace of a large family to bring awareness of what I had missed. And as part of this new found home, God gave me Nan and Pap, who became for me the grandparents I had never known.

We lost Nannie this past August when, after a long illness, she slipped the bonds of this life to enter the radiance of the next. We miss her sparkling laugh, her steady and sure walk with Christ, her strength of will and character and most of all her prayers for each of us that sustained us in ways perhaps not fully seen by our earthly eyes.

Pap is with us still...may we cherish his presence as long as possible. I saw him weep for the loss of his bride of 73 years. I had seen him silently weep once before as the family began packing to leave after Thanksgiving one year. Off to one side, the rugged, quiet cowboy expressed with silent tears the love he would have felt awkward verbalizing.

Life cycles unfold inexorably before our eyes if we can pause from harried living long enough to perceive. The parents we once depended on for feeding, to help us learn to walk, who buckled us into the car, will, in their twilight years, need the same tender care from us, their grown children. We will still call them "mom" and "dad" (and I notice that grown women often still refer to their fathers as "daddy"), but those endearments no longer symbolize our dependence on them. Rather, they are now dependent on us.

But our dependence hasn't entirely ended, for even as their aging hands clasp us for support, we lean on the love, character and values they built into us over a lifetime, which we will then hand over to our own children, one generation handing to the next.

Thank you, Nan and Pap, for the legacy you have handed down to each generation after you. May our hands bear it well.

Fleeting Fatherhood

2011-01-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

As a man who grew up most of my youth with no father in my home, the latest blog post by the always thoughtful Tony Woodlief resonates. His wife's counsel about the absence of a loving father in his life rings true with me as well, though his loss and mine were different, and colors my own role as a dad. I recommend the post (and anything else by Tony) which you can find here:

http://www.tonywoodlief.com/

The Leftovers That Wouldn't Die

2011-01-10T20:55:00.000-08:00

Zombies have made a come back in popular entertainment, and how else to explain the Christmas leftovers that keep climbing out of the refrigerator and into my lunch bag? Last week I thought that I had eaten the last of the Christmas dinner leftovers. "Free at last! Free at last!" I exulted.

Yet what should I find lurking in my lunch bag long after I thought I was safe but baked squash with cheese, a relic of Christmas day feasting. I am convinced that last week we did indeed eat the last of the leftovers, but that a few undetected spores of baked squash cloned themselves into a whole dish in a tupperware "petrie dish". Only a total decontamination procedure involving flames or chemical retardent will finally rid us of this scourge. And don't get me started talking about "pink salad".

All of this led to a discussion...no, scheming is a better word...between my youngest daughter and myself to break from Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition next year and ditch the traditional holiday dishes for something people may consider heretical. Like barbeque. Or Tex-Mex. Or Whataburger.

Seriously, do you really like dressing? Is there any other time of year when you would eat sweet potatoes in a casserole with pecans and marshmellows melted on top? Honestly, do you truly like these dishes even at holiday time? Yeah. That's what I thought. They are a twice-a-year indulgence (?) at best.

So next year...grilled steaks. Or shrimp scampi. Or shrimp with fettucini alfredo. Or even just grilled hamburgers. Something that we will devour to the last morsel on the spot, not a leftover in sight.

And what about Santa? Does he really like all those sugar cookies left out for him on Christmas Eve? Well, maybe one battle at a time.

At least someone seems to have driven a stake into the heart of fruit cake, since I haven't seen that show up for several years.

Exponential Living

2009-10-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

His smile was infectiously buoyant and irrepressible. Like Lewis Carrol's Cheshire Cat, Jay McDonald's smile lingers in the memories of all who knew and loved him even though now he is gone. Jay McDonald departed this life suddenly, shockingly, a week ago at the young age of 52. His memorial service this past weekend, like Jay himself, bubbled over with praise and joy for a life well lived.

For Jay radiated joy. His countenance and every breath and movement exuded a love for the life with which God had blessed him. That radiant joy washed over everyone who came in contact with him. He relished God's love but did not hoard it. Instead he handed it out to all.

Tributes most often are written to those who have passed from this life, less often to those who remain. The same can be said for appreciation in the sense that we most often appreciate what we can no longer have. This explains the shock that we, the earth bound, feel when someone of such priceless qualities as Jay McDonald is taken from us prematurely. When someone like Jay slips from our grasp, we fumble to express what we shouldn't have waited so long to say. This often produces regret and guilt.

Yet I'm convinced of such regret that Jay would have none of it. Rather than look back with regret he would exhort us to live with an expectancy of good things to come from the hand of our loving Father. Would Jay find it ironic, would he even be resentful, that he has been taken from this life, from his loving wife and children, with so much left to live for,when his family still needs him so? I dare say not. For even in death I believe he would entrust those most precious to him in this life to the loving and wise God whom he served.

Great men walk among us who have never made a headline, never starred in some sophomoric You Tube video nor cheaply sought the limelight. Jay McDonald's godly influence rippled out around the world through his humble, bountiful life.

So the finest tribute that I can pay to him would be to follow him as he followed Christ and to let his impish, joyous smile inspire my own.

Cockpit Cool

2009-10-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

This past week perhaps the most famous airline pilot ever returned to the cockpit. Chesley "Sulley" Sullenberger, who steered crippled U.S. Airways flight 1549 to a soft landing in New York's Hudson River back in January, has returned to flying. His first introduction over the in-cabin audio system brought cheers from the passengers.

It has always amazed me the cool with which airline pilots and air traffic controllers calmly dialogue under breath taking pressure to find solutions whenever a plane is in trouble. Even when the ending is tragic they remain calm and professional up to the end.

Sullenberger's cool was masterful. Where most of us panic in the face of misplacing our wallet or other such mundane calamities, Sullenberger, responsible for the lives of passengers, crew, people on the ground in the plane's path and a multi-million dollar airplane itself, calmly reports that a flock of birds has killed both engines and then methodically queries air traffic control for a place to safely land. When none can be reached, he matter-of-factly says "We're going to be in the Hudson" as though he were telling his wife "I'm taking the dog for a walk."

You can hear short audio of the flight voice recorder here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSPsrhCPt-0

It has been a personal study of mine over the years to understand how people respond with such courage when facing daunting dangers. Perhaps my fascination with this is fueled by my own failures of nerve under pressures far less imposing. Such grace under fire is inspiring to me and seems other worldly.

Yet gradually over a lifetime I have seen slow progress. Situations that would have produced spasms of anxiety, frustration or anger in the past no longer nettle me or at least I am able to slap down the fear when it threatens. Though I have sought to draw strength under pressure from my faith, I find now the temperance to respond coolly to challenges grows mostly with experience. Facing pressures over a lifetime leads to increased capacity to manage them with grace. As with Capt. Sullenberger and his professional kin, it comes down to training. I am still fully capable of degenerating into hand wringing left to my natural tendencies. It is the training that has come with years of experience that has given me this measure of success.

Pilots spend many hours in flight simulators not only learning the intricacies of routine flight but also how to handle emergencies. They spend hours in the air training and many hours of continuing education. Such cool under fire does not spring spontaneously from men and women of preternatural courage. Rather, coolness under fire is the child of preparation and training.

Sullenberger himself attributes his handling of the crisis to experience. From the Wikipedia article on him:

In a CBS 60 Minutes interview, he was quoted as saying that the moments before the crash were "the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling" that he had ever experienced.[34] Speaking with news anchor Katie Couric, Sullenberger said, "One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal."[35]

Notice that he felt the fear, the twisting in his gut that disaster loomed. But his years of training kept him under control. And when you hear his voice on the recording, there is no hint of the anxiety within.

It is in the daily challenges, threatening situations, tough decisions, even failures, that preparation for bigger obstacles is forged. I can be more under reserve in some situations now because the past has been my "flight simulator" as it were.

Christ said that the storm comes against everyone's house and the one properly founded on His teachings is the one that stands. True enough. Yet I would add that every storm brings opportunity for the owner to discover new areas that need reinforcement, more shoring up, more bracing, bringing growing confidence for the bigger storms that may one day come.

A tale of two kitties

2009-04-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

Winter has come to a close and not a moment too soon for Sasha, the stray cat we adopted several years ago. She's an outdoor cat that we found as a wild kitten in the woods near a previous home in which we lived. She's sweet and fairly amenable to petting, but retains a systemic measure of feral cat skittishness.

Sasha is temperamental when it comes to accepting tender mercies from her human benefactors. Feed her? Sure! A complementary buffet is always welcome. Petting? Maybe. Sometimes she indulges herself in our attention. Other times she bolts. She will not tolerate being picked up and refuses to be on our laps. And if the door is held open for her to sample temporary visitation in the house she will stand at the open door, peer in, but not step inside.

There are some benefits we force on her despite her protestations and petulance. Vaccinations are a must. Come late spring, so is shaving. Sasha is a long haired cat, a benefit in the winter, a real liability in the Texas summers. By late May the temperatures climb into the 90's, a prelude to sizzling 100's by July. She spends most of the summer in the cool shade under the deck, but left unshaved, her fur falls out in clumps. Shaving relieves her of this torment and by October her fur has almost grown completely back.

Thus in April or May it's time to catch Sasha, crate her, and carry her to the vet for shaving. This can take multiple attempts over several days because Sasha has very sensitive radar and knows when They Are About to Take Me to the Vet, whereupon, as usual, she bolts.

But when she is finally caught and her hair cut, she is so much happier. She sashays around like a little princess, relieved of all that fur and much cooler for it.

The reverse of the summer shave-down are those winter days in Texas when a "norther"--an express train of frigid air, comes blasting down the Great Plains out of Canada, mowing down everything in its path. Winds can hit a constant 25 mph and overnight temperatures fall into the 20's or teens. Then it is time to rescue Sasha by luring/chasing/pleading with her to let us put her into the garage. The garage may be somewhat chilly, but it's the Bahamas compared to the outdoors.

Here Sasha's radar is even more sensitive. So often have I caught her and carried her to the garage that now when the temperature even drops into the 30's she associates cold weather with Dad pursuing her under the deck. Thus, when the wind turns from the north and the temperature plunges, Sasha preemptively heads for the exit. Often we can't find her at all and she spends the night out there somewhere, alone in the bitter cold. On such occasions we wonder if she'll survive, if we'll see her again. Yet for the times we do successfully get her secured into the garage, she's clearly happy. She purrs and prances around the garage, doing that curling thing around your leg, obviously relieved to be out of the cold.

All of this is in stark contrast to the other stray cat we adopted, Oscar. He is a yellow tabby who is not nearly so finicky when it comes to our benevolence. He not only will gladly accept food, strokes and being picked up, but there is no need to catch him and carry him to the garage. He'll walk there on his own, thank you. (Being short haired, Oscar has never experienced the joys of shaving). Oscar is a very cool customer and one of the few cats I've seen who is not intimidated by a dog of any size.

Oscar seems to know that when the temperature plunges, the garage is a welcome relief from the cold and that even if Dad picks him up to take him there, that's a good thing. "Dad is looking out for me. He knows that if I stay outside I might have to be pried off of the deck with a crowbar." Sasha, it seems, can't quite make that connection and can't see beyond being picked up and carried by Dad to safety as Dad just hassling her, no matter that she will be so much better off.

Somehow I didn't make those connections either when my mother was valiantly trying to raise me with no father in our home. I was, frankly, a troublesome, selfish, rebellious pill. I wanted food on the table and a few other benefits of my choosing, but otherwise anything she required of me was "mom hassling me".

Often we don't make that connection either when it comes to God's prescriptions for living a life of noble worth and value. Instead, so many today want to live like...well, like feral cats. Unbridled and unrestrained. Bless me God, but don't hassle me with responsibilities.

Then we reach adulthood and attain some incremental measure of maturity and realize that restraints on behavior are as much a benefit as a full stomach and that there are greater, more sublime rewards than merely satisfying our grunting instincts.

There are some though, like Oscar, who realize early that the whole package of benefits from their Provider is good, including the restraining influence of the garage, and that one can gladly accept everything while still remaining a pretty cool cat.

Generational relics

2009-03-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter and I love the "I Spy" series of books by Walter Wick and Jean Marzollo. These oversized, colorful books are filled with still life photographs of everyday clutter. Each photograph spans double pages and is filled with a busy assortment of common items. At the bottom of the page is a riddle of the items we must hunt for on those pages. One such scene is open before me now and the riddle reads: "I spy a schoolhouse, three camels, a bell, a lighthouse, a swan, and a basket that fell; a paintbrush, a drum, an upside-down block, a calendar card and a grandfather clock." The double page photograph is littered with books, pencils and pens, children's blocks, photographs, an old fashioned abbacas, a bell, toy animals and much more. Our challenge, heads together, faces intent, is to carefully scrutinize the clutter and find each item named in the riddle.

This game draws up long dormant memories of my own father who, like many dads I would think, had a drawer that became a repository of the everyday pocket litter of life. Coins, wallet pictures, pens, business cards, tacks, a pocket knife, a small address book, all things he dropped without a thought into one common place, but which to a small boy, became a world of discovery to poke through.

My memories of my father have receded deep into mist now. He died when he, my mother and I were all far too young for such a loss. I remember a quiet man, gentle hearted, who was in and out of the hospital battling heart disease. He taught me to play chess, to throw a ball and best of all, to love reading.

I am middle aged now, with children of my own, some of them grown, yet one thing I recall about him was that he could distill insight from a situation or from people he met, and share it succinctly and gently when it was appropriate.

My dad would have excelled at the "I Spy" books, given that he was quietly perceptive and gleaned treasures from the ordinary in the conduct of life.

Much of my dad's belongings are locked away in a safe box now: his wallet, his World War 2 dogtags, many photographs. I now have my own drawer, my own littered collage of common goods. Amidst my collection of clutter is a picture of him kneeling beside me as a toddler, which I look at now hoping that he passed to me his gift of mining wisdom from the ordinary.