Incense

We had our first service of prayer and fasting a few Wednesdays ago. Not bad—6 of us, and a few more would have been there, but we had some things come up that kept folks away. I think it will be a challenging service because it is centered on two difficult things for an American culture (I don’t just mean U.S.!!!): fasting and being silent. It’s a thirty minute service, but 15-20 minutes of it will be silence. Today it was Curtis and me, and we prayed and then had some dueling psalms, and prayed for our mutual burden: the people of God living out their faith in our neighborhood.

I have been busting out my censer during the prayer and fasting service. I light it and walk through the room, thinking about prayer and the time of incense in the Israelite religion, and how the Hebrew word sacrifice merges into the word for “rise up,” as in the smoke of incense or burnt sacrifice rising up to God. The golden bowls of incense in Revelation 5, which are the prayers of the saints, also comes to mind.

At one point I had to put some more incense on (still learning burn rates, etc) and I noticed something that fascinated me. Frankincense comes as powdered, different-sized clusters. But as it burns, it starts to look carmelized, bubbled, a new solid shape. It had to be refined by fire, had to be transformed and twisted to release its fragrance, to become something beyond useful: beautiful, sacramental.

Melissa was talking about this a few days ago, thinking about where does this illness/recovery lead? What is the end? Not that you are looking at it like it’s something intended to happen, but how do you let God take what the evil one meant for harm and turn it to good? What will be released by coming through this?

March 28

Last night, as I was putting the boys to sleep, we talked about Melissa being back in the hospital. Joe said he was scared because he was sad and sad because he was scared. That’s about as much as he has ever said about any of these things. John mentioned that he was sad and scared, too. And he added that he longed for the days when “Mommy’s hair was long and she took care of us.”

If you remember, taking care of the boys is really the only thing Melissa has ever wanted to do. She did it well, perhaps too well, when you think of the gap between what they had and how things are now. Oh sure, we take good care of the boys, but it’s not the same as having her around as she was. John and Joe are hopeful that one day she’ll get back to it. It’s particularly cruel because each time she picks up and can do more with the boys, something comes up and knocks her down.

It’s hard for them to see her go to the clinic each morning, and I know that they watch her go out the door and wonder if she’ll be back that night. But they are amazing little boys.

The word this morning is that the graft-vs-host disease is working on her intestines and that the pain medication has masked pain, but added to her digestive system not working well. In the back of my mind every time something comes up is that the lymphoma is back. So I am glad to hear it’s more of the graft-vs-host. Maybe if she just has a mean bone marrow it will work that much harder if the cancer ever tries to come back.

Through the long days of the summer, when she had the transplant, when the lymphoma spread to her brain, when she just looked like she had been pummeled, I read Ezekiel a lot. I mean like every three days I read the whole thing. I kept saying to God, alright, we get it! Enough of the being on display! Enough of Jesus’ solidarity with us on the Cross!

“My soul finds rest in God alone” Psalm 62:1

p/g

This Past Sunday

It was good to see my "cuz" Lisa Watkins this past Sunday! She's been such a good evangelist-- 5 people come to the Rock thru her! Yikes, and she gets this done from Louisville!!!

We also welcomed a couple-- husband from Central African Republic, wife from Togo.

Since I last said much about Africa, we have welcomed a number of Liberian families.

Keep praying that we are open to this!

Aaron

Joe's Swing

A few days ago, we were, as usual, out in the woods. I pointed to some stuff floating down the creek and asked John, “Do you remember what those are?”

“Sycamore seeds!” he said. He has had a lot of fun picking up the seed balls and separating the seeds to scatter them on the wind or water.

I suppose there are some standards for good poetry. But in the end, I think it comes down to what you like. Or maybe what strikes you, what resonates with your own experience. So, I have shared with you before how one cold, snowy morning I was hunting Charlie Wilson’s farm in Robertson County. I trudged up the hill, found my spot, settled in and waited. Sunrise came and I had not seen anything. But the day was not lost at least; Three crows were in a cedar tree next to me and they all flew away at once with loud “caws”, beating of wings and a spray of snow. I didn’t see a deer, but I comforted myself that I got that close to the crows. Or maybe they just didn’t care. Anyhoo, it brought to mind a short poem by Robert Frost that I used to love only for it’s tight structure. But now I love it because it described something I now knew:

The way a crow shook down on me

A dust of snow from a hemlock tree

Has given my heart a change of mood

And saved a part of a day I’d rued

There’s another Frost poem that has spoken to me, “Birches.” When I was a kid, I loved nothing better than to go to my grandparents’ house. It was out in the country, and I loved the solitude. Me and an old border collie and whatever adventures we might cook up. You had to make your own games.

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter, darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging them doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice storms do. . . .

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

On the day that John and I were looking at sycamore seeds, I heard Joseph laughing downstream. I looked and it seemed he was floating in mid-air! He had found a vine draped over a tree branch in such a way that he could sit on it and swing.

Now, we don’t live too far from town to learn baseball, or to have toys. But there is something important about being surprised, being open to what might come along if you’re looking, or if you’re open to what it means to be in the right place at the right time.

Not only did the poem come back because Joe had some play he found himself, but also because I found myself in the poet’s voice, nostalgically wanting there to be boys who are outside, doing something besides watching tv or playing video games. Boys who come running when one of them says he’s found a snake.

We went hiking Saturday at Taylorsville Lake. After our brief snack we went to the tailwater and saw all kinds of people fishing. The boys definitely want to fish, so I got them rods and they practiced casting. Unlucky for them, I am not much of a fisherman. I like it, but am no good at it. So we’ll see.

When on Safari, The Careful Hunter Carries a Mime-Rifle

I promised Nelson I would tell a good mime story in the wake of describing Blue Man Group to him. Besides my uncanny ability to summon deer, I can also call an army of mimes to my immediate aid. I will pass on the knowledge of this arcane skill if you promise to use it only if you are in desperate need and there is no other way out.

Back in the day, I used to go to New Orleans all the time. Southern Miss was about 90 minutes away, so Friday afternoon, we’d pile in to my truck and hit the town. New Orleans was a special place. At first, you go to all the places college kids go. But then you find your own places. Good bookstores, quiet places to sit, bars where the real music is. Was? New Orleans at once benefited and suffered from its reputation. You had to go to the Prytania. Eat at Frankie and Johnny’s, and you didn’t show your face there if you didn’t love the Saints.

I got lost in Algiers one night, stopped at a gas station. The cashier was in a cinder block hut with thick glass. He had a box you put money in, so no one was getting to him. I walked up, and before I could say a word, he said, “Son, you turn left over there. You can go east or west after that, but whatever you do, get your a** out of here.” It could be a tough place, but somehow, folks took care of the naïve kid I was in those days. Like the clerk at the A&P who wouldn’t give me directions to some place I was looking for. “You got no business there, boy. Your mama would never forgive me if I told you how to get there.” And no, it was not The House of the Rising Sun.

I had a professor who was a little like Niles and Frasier Crane—everything was supposed to be civilized and proper. We were on our way to see Strauss’ Elektra at the Opera House (I told you it was like Frasier Crane…) We got lost and I stopped and asked for directions at a dive under I-10. Man, was that place under water during Katrina. Anyhoo, we got directions and he asked what the name of the bar was, because the sign had him guessing: “The Shatto.”

I reluctantly told him it was “The Chateau.” He almost stroked out; couldn’t believe he had gone in to not just a dive, but one with such a terrible misspelling!

I could tell you a hundred stories. I’d have more, but one year, a woman shot her cousin for cutting in line at a Port-A-Potty and I figured maybe I didn’t need to go back…

My friend Shawn had this boyfriend. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed. In Jackson Square, there are all kinds of street performers. Tarot card readers, Olympia Brass Band, jugglers, you name it. For a few weeks there was an absolutely beautiful barefoot woman singing old time country with a jug band. They looked like they had just come out of the bayou, and maybe they had. There were also mimes.

Now, I have inherited from my mother a pathological horror of mimes. But I am also fascinated by them, so much so I sometimes want to learn mime. Anyway, Shawnie’s boyfriend saw one who was standing stock-still. She was so still he did not believe she was real. He kept mouthing that she must be a statue. Well, he decided to find out so he smacked her. She was real, alright. She immediately began screaming and shouting, “Richard! Richard!” Mimes descended on him, and it wasn’t silent and it wasn’t, well, mime. He took a beating. I’ve been in some rough places, y’all. And I am telling you, you would rather knock over all the motorcycles at The Satan’s Helpers Biker Bar than tangle with angry mimes.

But: if you are ever in dire need, shout out the mime-underground alert, “Richard!” and help will be there.

Live Shows; being an addendum to a previous post

Back in the summer, Charles Brockwell let me have his two tix to see Willie Nelson in Louisville. Melissa was slated to go, but she was not up to it, so me and her brother went. It was a great show, one of the best I have ever been to. Willie Nelson has forgotten more about playing guitar than most folks know.

Willie bought the small Methodist church where he grew up, because it closed and he wanted the town to still have a church. I thought about bum-rushing the stage, telling him my story like Ralphie in Christmas Story getting his request out to Santa.

But then I thought: those are Dr. Brockwell’s tickets, and when the newspaper headlines are: METHODIST PASTOR RUSHES STAGE; BEGS WILLIE: “BUY MY CHURCH!!!” I knew people would say, “Wait a minute, doesn’t Charles have season tickets to shows at the Performing Arts Center? No, it couldn’t be! Could it?”

I’m always looking out for you, Dr. Brockwell!

The Birth of Cool

Back in October, we went to Texas to visit my folks. One day, I took Joe to Barnes and Noble and we took my dad’s truck—a red, Hank Hill truck, no less!

What you have to know: if you want to see a cool show, go with my Uncle Tim. He tried to get me to see Poco with him when I was 16, but you couldn’t teach me anything. I was a metal-head and was surely not going to a show with 200 people for some fruit band. And now, all I really like is a small show. Anyhoo, Tim and I did see Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, and that was off the charts awesome. So my dad is out in Cali and he goes to see Steve Miller with Uncle Tim.

We get in the truck and my dad has a Steve Miller CD in there. We put it in, and Joe loves it (no denying him) and he starts tapping his hand on the door through the open window.

A few days ago, Joe and I are going down the road and “Take the Money and Run” comes on. Joe says, “Hey, we listened to that in Texas Papa’s truck! Turn it up, Daddy!”

Being There

Last Saturday, John and I went to see Blue Man Group in Louisville. We saw them in Vegas at my little brother’s wedding. It seems like maybe that will be something we do together whenever we can. Anyway, it was a good show, but mostly good for hanging out, and it strikes me that the fun was going in and coming out, talking, remembering the trip to vegas. John said something about that Blue Man show being the time we came up with a silly name. He asked why I always call him and Joe silly names. I said because they teach that at Daddy School, and that you have to say them all the time because when they get older they won’t want to be called silly names anymore.

“What do you mean?” John asked.

“Well, when you’re 10, I don’t think you’ll want me to call you ‘booberry’ in front of your friends.”

“I don’t want to be 10, then.”

I have seen the future and it is The Rock

The Rock La Roca is the future of the United Methodist Church. Rather, I should say that churches and ministries like The Rock La Roca are the future.

I say this not out of excitement or sentiment, but out of a sober assessment of reality.

1.The Kentucky Annual Conference has tried a number of church plants/restarts, and The Rock La Roca and Hope Springs are the two success stories. Both of them fit a similar profile of working in marginal neighborhoods.

The suburbs have too many churches competing for limited market.

Most pastors want to be in suburban churches. There is more prestige where you can get paid more, and there is a perception of greater stability in the congregation.

Denominational bureaucrats tend to press the need for a church to be self-sufficient and pay money to the national agencies. Therefore, there is great pressure to put the churches in places where it is assumed that the congregation can raise the kind of money that the national body needs.

So, churches begin a scramble to move to the newest area of growth, or the place where they assume they can reach prosperous (largely white) people.

The first problem is simply practical: Methodists are behind the 8-ball and are generally late getting to a location. The success stories are the exceptions that prove the rule.

To make a church work in the suburban area inevitably means 2 kinds of growth: by transfer and sheep-stealing. That is, many churches have made quite a killing by focusing on disaffected Methodists and Presbyterians. The church grows, but not by adding anyone to the kingdom, only shuffling members around.

This is a simple fact; in spite of the growth of mega-churches, there is no county in America with more people in church today than it had in 1990. Therefore, the growth of large churches at best represents a growth for that church, but a net decline for the Kingdom. I read somewhere that failure is succeeding at something that doesn’t matter. What about succeeding at what will ultimately kill you?

If churches get bigger and the Kingdom gets smaller, it means retreat and eventually collapse. So, we can keep trying to fight with other churches to reach the kind of people that can feed our denominations’ hunger, or we can get down to Jesus’ work.

We have to move into new, underserved “markets.” This means neighborhoods like The Rock La Roca is in. Neighborhoods that have been left behind by stores, schools, “good people” and churches. There are a number of churches near The Rock La Roca, but they are all small and crumbling, except for one which still has managed to keep its old members, even though they live far away. The working class areas of our towns are almost entirely unreached.

It’s a difficult population, to be sure, but a large population, one that is unreached. 125 million people in the U.S. live in multi-unit housing (condos, apts, trailer parks) but they are generally ignored by the mainline churches because we want homeowners and the potential money they represent.

I know I’m not being politically correct here, trying to win friends and influence people. That’s not my strong suit. Someone else can do that. I lay out the facts as I see them and try to move forward.

Because this demographic is underserved, it is the prime place to move into. If we keep trying to be suburban, we will have to compete with denominations that are simply better at running the kinds of programs to draw folks in (and frankly, preaching some kind of “conservative” gospel that will reach the people left cold by typical mainline preaching and, again, exceptions like First Church in Santa Monica only prove the rule).

But if we make a move into the unpopular, unreached parts of our towns and cities, we will reap a reward because no one else wants to be there. (Additionally, I think that our rural areas can be a place of revival, but it will mean serious cooperation between small churches—a possibility perhaps as remote as what I am suggesting about urban ministry…)

The advantage that we have is that we generally already have churches in the very neighborhoods I am describing. They are often churches in decline, staffed by part-time pastors. The chance we have is that, as a connectional church, we can direct our resources to fund staff and ministries for the churches in “marginal” areas until they can get on their feet. This is precisely what we would do to “plant” a church in the suburbs. But since planting churches in the suburbs is going to be dicey (i.e. others are better at it than us) and the people I am suggesting we reach are precisely the people Jesus would have us reach, the only conclusion is that we need to put our resources and efforts into a viable future, not the path we are on now, where each church that closes only sends a portion of its members to other churches.

p/g,

Aaron

3/15

A few days ago, the boys and I went down to the creek. How things have changed! A few weeks ago, things were covered in ice and a squirrel was frozen solid. Now, water bugs are all over the creek—they were the first sign of spring. We caught a salamander for a few seconds. Crawfish are out. We caught a toad juts coming out of his hole—he was so just waking up, so lethargic that he really couldn’t even get away from us. It’s a tough world.

Back in high school, my favorite class was Marine Biology. Biloxi High School was 1 block from the beach. A few times a week we would gather our buckets and seine nets and head down to the beach. We’d pair up and drag the seine nets to shore. Sting rays, flounder, shrimp, calamari, anchovies, squids, starfish—all kinds of stuff would be in there. Ever since then I have said that if the world comes to an end, I’ll be on the Gulf Coast because you won’t starve.

I suppose we could make a decent meal from the creek.

Walter Anderson was a great artist on the Gulf Coast. He said something that has stuck with me for years: “The first poetry is written by farmers and sailors, men with the wind in their teeth. The second poetry is written by scholars and students who know a good thing. The third poetry is written, if it is written, by those who make of man and nature one thing.” I like the first poetry and am not sure there has ever been the third.

There’s so much upheaval and turmoil in the boys’ life when Melissa is in the hospital. Somehow, this time, we really pulled together to work on smoothing that out. It was tough—it goes against your instincts, inclinations, and energy. It’s not that we tried to avoid, or hide anything. Rather, we just took time to keep things even and smooth. Finally, it was a spiritual question. It took all of Jesus I could handle to press on, to constantly make the decision to find space for love, not what’s “right” or “convenient” in the sense of getting things done. So lots of things did not get done on time or at all. Some sublime things came from it. In a strange way, Melissa was a powerful mother to them as she was away—there were times we probably needed to be with her, but we were also needed with the boys and she sent us to them. I still don’t have a lot of words about this, or any clear expression of it. All I know is that something intensely spiritual happened, so much of the stuff that me and the boys talk about in John 13 started happening. Will it continue now that much of the stress is off, or is back to the same old thing? I keep asking, Lord, don’t let me and my grown-up ways get in the way of the boys.

Who knows where it all leads? Some days are good, some bad. And it does something to you. My phone rang, I saw it was Melissa, and thought, “she’s calling to tell me something about what the docs say at the clinic.” Is that all we have to talk about? But no. She called to say, “Beware the Ides of March.” That was it. Typical. She always used to do things like that, but other things have so much occupied our attention and time. It’s good to have her back.

Big Doug’s house burned down. Doug is a pretty simple guy. The firemen brought out his shoes (he loves those boots), his wallet, and his Bible. All ok. He said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” How many of us can testify like that!?

p/g,

Aaron

There's Nothing Cool About It

One of the tropes of studying Southern Literature centers on Richard Wright and Eudora Welty. You can’t find two more different writers, but their similarities of geography heighten their differences, and illuminate broad themes in Southern Culture. They were born within 2 years of each other (I think—Wright in 1908 and Welty in 1910—I am not near any source to check and I can guarantee you I am too lazy to look it up later. You check it out.) They were born in houses on the same street, Congress Street, in Jackson, Mississippi.. Their lives were so different, that being born on the same street almost begs for comparison. A sympathetic white man let Wright use his library card, under the guise of getting books for the man, but they were for Wright. Richard Wright was beaten by his mother when she caught him reading. Welty, on the other hand, remembers her mother throwing volumes of Dickens out the window when their house caught fire. I guess the part that gets me is how two ends of a street in a small town can be so different (Jackson is Mississippi’s largest “city,” but it did not pass 100,000 until the 60s.) In the end, I don’t think Eudora Welty has much to say, but you probably should read (at least) Wright’s Black Boy (and probably Native Son, too).

I’ve got this idea for a series of videos, “Evangelism Stuntman.” It’d basically be me and some other hardy individuals doing pain-inducing stunts so people will believe in Jesus. “So” is a huge word there. The gag would be something like, “If I beat Rosario in a shopping-cart race down Upper Street, will you believe in Jesus?” (Courtnay: stop whining. Your man won’t get hurt. And even if he does, he is cool with taking one for the team.) Thoroughly post-modern: on the one hand, a backhand to the Come-To-Our-Church-Festival-And-Win-A-Car method of “church growth,” and on the other, a clear idea that indeed, this will get some of my kids’ attention. Michele Rodriguez assures me that she has a rap of the Lord’s Prayer that can be our theme music. All I need now is Michael or Nathan to say, “I’m Johnny Limestone, and this is Evangelism Stuntman.”

But back to the lecture at hand (10 points to anyone who can spot the reference there…) Over at Arlington School, there is a wall display, a letter sent from the fourth grade class at Sayre School to the 4^th grade at Arlington. Sayre School is a nice private school, a prestigious one, on the other end of Limestone from Arlington. There, on opposite ends of a street are two terribly different worlds. In the end, it’s not that there aren’t problems for the kids of the rich. My loyalties are to the kids of the 05. [In a minute, or in another entry, I will have to have an episode on de-coolifying the Rock La Roca—because right now, we are struggling with people thinking this is a cool place to be, and coming to watch but not participate in our life.]

The kids have a lot on their plates. A few of the teachers told me that this year is the worst mental health for the incoming kindergarteners they have seen. I can vouch for it. There’s a lot of sadness, anger, and anxiety in the kids. It’s what they see at home, or maybe what they don’t see at home. Here’s something Jean Vanier says in Community and Growth: “When a child feels that it does not belong to anyone, it suffers terrible loneliness and this is manifested in anguish. Anguish is like an inner agitation which affects the whole body, transforming the digestive and sleep patterns, bringing confusion, destroying all clarity about what to do, and how to act. It closes the child in on itself in feelings of uselessness and death, but also of anger and hatred which are intolerable. A child that is unloved , knows it is not lovable; it is not good; it is evil. Loneliness is quickly transformed into terrible feelings of guilt” (13).

Wow. How many of our kids are like that? The young man whose anger wells in a flash. The little boy whose mom just left the house one day and no one knows where she went. The little fellow whose mom is a stripper—he’s so young, but knows to be ashamed. The girl who has moved four times since November, all around a rocky relationship between her mom and mom’s boyfriend. The two boys who fight each other, because one boys’ father lives with the other boys’ mother. The one boy hates his mom’s new live-in, the other boy hates his dad and the other boy’s mom who took his dad from his mom. They can’t beat the adults (kids always have to take it) so they wail on each other.

Here is the conflict that will emerge at The Rock La Roca. I say it now so that no one will be surprise when we have to face it. The conflict will be around the disruptive behavior of the kids. We are going to keep pushing hard to work with the kids and youth of the community. But what will happen is that some people—parents, other kids, volunteers—will start to balk at working with the difficult kids, at being patient, at being firm in love. We’ll start to say things like, “They’re disrupting the other kids.” And that will be (is) true. We’ll say, “We need to be able to minister to kids without the disrespect and the hassle.” All of what we will say is reasonable, and no one would argue with it. Except me and a few others, because we see that this is, as Bob Lyon put it, the terrible logic of Caiaphas. “The Caiaphas Principle,” that someone should be sacrificed so things will run smoothly or be “manangeable,” makes such sense, is so effective, that Christians agree with its basic premises, even though it got Jesus killed.

Our Superintendent, Paige Williams, has a saying: “Meat-eaters take care of themselves.” What she means is that the stable people, the ones who have a Christian walk have lots of places to go where they can worship, participate in “church life.” They are, to some degree, on the right track. At least, they aren’t suffering from the kinds of terrible issues that plague the people who are messed up. The meat-eaters, then, need to do two things: the first is, quit being gluttons, assuming that it has to be about them “being fed.” That is, they will have to bear with the weaker ones (gee, and the Bible even says that!) Then the second thing is, they need to walk alongside the folks that have not quite made it to where the “meat-eaters” are. This, as best I can tell, is what Jesus meant when He said, “Go make disciples.” I know we all want to think it’s some magic process that the pastor is supposed to do.

But will this happen? Will the people who know Jesus, who have been privileged to lead moral, stable lives step out? It’s a simple fact that many of us have assumed that leading a moral and stable life has meant avoiding not just the things, but the people as well, that are immoral and unstable. Perhaps even in church, we reduced Jesus down to a series of things to do and not do. Jesus became nothing more than a plan for managing sin, not the life-giving power that crushes sin and its effects in our lives. He is life! Not an avoider. He was confrontational—both in the sense of causing the kind of trouble we call “rocking the boat,” and in interfering in people’s lives to the extent that because of His witness and presence, they either had to change or choose to die.

There is an amazing principle at work in the Jesus Life—it doesn’t take many people to lead change, to show a different way. A little bit of yeast works through the whole lump of dough.

p/g,

Aaron

Adventures With The Boys

I. The Naturalists

Joe and I had gone to the creek in those first days after the hard freeze. The creek was frozen, and the deeper pools were wide, thick sheets of ice. In the places where stick-jams have backed up the water, the ice looked like meringue; it’s like the water foamed and froze in layers. At that time, the ice was thick enough for me to walk across. John was at his sleep-over that day, I think. Joe was wondering where the fingerling fish that we see in the pools were.

So a few days ago, the three of us went. Even though the temperatures have not been above freezing, there has been sunlight and the ice was mostly melted. There were a few iced-over spots, near the aforementioned stick jams. The pools were clear in the middle, but a thin layer of ice gradually spread to about an inch at the banks. We found out how thick it was by doing an experiment… “What’s an experiment?” John asked. I tried to explain it’s figuring out something you don’t know, sometimes based on what you do know, and sometimes just by discovering something. Not a very good definition, I know. John had a small piece of tree branch that had a big gall at the end, so it was kind of like a mallet. He started whacking at the ice until he got closer to the edge and we could see how thick the ice was at the edge.

We heard a hawk’s piercing cry, and John found it first—he has always wanted to be the one to find it first.

Joe came down the bank to where John and I were and he made a great find—a dead squirrel. John asked what happened to it—no real sign that anything got it—sick or starved? We poked at it with a stick and it was frozen stiff. Like a hair popsicle.

II. The Theologians

Having been through this a time or two, I know that the boys’ anxiety grows the longer Melissa is in the hospital. They know she is doing ok, doing better, but still… So I try to take their minds off things. Really, it’s not so much different than what we normally do. We try to let Saturday and one other evening be “Daddy-Baby day.” Usually that means wrestling, going to the creek and especially going to “The Train Store--” Barnes and Noble. Well, we were coming back from the train store and I took them by a place I wanted to see: Norton Commons. The development is pretty impressive. It’s one of those TND (Total Neighborhood Development) concepts. Really cool, attempting to make livable, workable spaces, the way neighborhoods were before the advent of the automobile. Anyhoo, I was talking to one of the developers about a year ago, looking for ways to put a church there—you know, to add to the whole TND principle you’d need a church. They had a prime spot because they had been thinking the same thing. They couldn’t give it to us, but they would let us buy it at cost. Problem was the Methodists didn’t have the money to buy it. My claim that we couldn’t afford not to buy it wasn’t cutting it.

So the boys had to hear my spiel about how we need new churches and if we don’t start now, if we keep missing opportunities like Norton Commons, there will come a day when we’ll be out of business.

As we were leaving, John said, “Everybody worships something.” I suppose he has heard me say that. He went on, “some people worship a house.” Man, was he hitting home or what? Joe added, “Or some people worship a horse--” I guess they’ve heard me gripe one too many times about the best land in Kentucky going to horses, then to whiskey, and then maybe for people…. John added, “And what do you do if the horse dies? What will you worship then?” He has inherited the sarcasm gene from me… I said, “You have to worship the One who will not die or fade away--- God.” Joe said, “Yeah, because a tornado can tear down your house.”

I suppose that the one constant in their lives is worship. Always has been. Whether Dunaway, Christ Church, or The Rock, it’s always been about worship. One day in Sunday School, John made his own craft for me. He rolled up a piece of paper, had his teacher tie a piece of strong around it and make a scroll. Inside, John had Ellen (his teacher) write: “Love of the Holy God.”

Joseph was not to be outdone. Melissa wrote a note in a Bible she bought me. It says, “Be safe. Know that I love you. Spread His Joy!” Joe really likes that note. So he gave me a Cat-in-the-Hat sticker to put on the note. I guess the whirlwind that the Cat-in-the-Hat is is a good “symbol” of introducing people to Jesus—if they let Him in, no telling what might happen.

III. Words

A few days ago, Joe dropped something on the stairs. He turned around and bent down to get it. I fussed at him to not lean down the stairs. It’s the first rule of being on a roof—don’t lean over down the slope. I remember Steve McKinney’s lecture about not reaching for a hammer that is sliding away. Just let it drop and go down and get it. I told them about a guy I knew who fell off a roof, landed on his head and “he can’t use his legs.”

“He’s paralyzed,” Joe said. Wow, where did he learn that word? At school where they studied about “the man whose friends put him through the roof to see Jesus.”

What is it about words? I mean, why do we read? The practical side of me thinks, “It’s for transfer of information, description of reality.” But then there is the side of me that likes fiction and poetry, and there is not much practical there. Or is there?

Jack Jourdain was a bull of a man—we called him “The Old Bull.” He didn’t like the “old” part. He was my 7^th grade English teacher. He loved poetry above all else. He was also a body-builder. In his 50s and just huge and ripped. He would arm-wrestle us, three at a time and win. We would hang on him and… nothing. So we read The Odyssey. Eliot’s Wasteland and The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in The Dooryard Bloom’d,” stuff maybe we were too young for. But then, when my best friend in seminary, David Crow, died, what words did I have except some Psalms and Whitman? Mr. Jourdain also taught us that it was only recently that poetry was for wimps. Ben Jonson fought a single-combat in a war with Spain and won. Donne was a tough soldier. And Chaucer, for all he seems like just a writer of rowdy songs, was a bad mamma-jamma. He was attacked by thieves and got away, some of them didn’t fare so well. When you saw a man like Mr. Jourdain, a man’s man up there, reading, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May…” You don’t roll your eyes and think, “Wake me when you’re through…” You wonder about the power of words, about the importance of imagination, beyond diversion or entertainment. You realize that in the artfulness, you pay attention, hearing what you otherwise would miss. And in a story that is unreal, or at least not yours, you find things you would have dismissed because, well, you know it so well, you’d heard it all before.

Maybe he set the stage for the parables in my life? Whatever it is, there is something going on, even now, in the boys. We have read lots of stories, but now we are at the place where we read books with chapters. Last year, the four of us read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. There’s a deep story for a family fighting cancer. Now it is Charlotte’s Web—again, a story of life. And like the great stories of life—whether St. Peter’s, Lewis’ or White’s—there is no shirking death. No morbid melancholy, just reality. How mysterious that fiction can be so honest, or that it takes faith in the unbelievable miracles and resurrection of Jesus to bring us to real life.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t buy the idea that Jesus can be read allegorically, that the miracles are “optional.” It is precisely their absurdity, their meta-fictional quality that makes them real—Tertullian said, “Credo quia absurdus est.” “I believe because it is absurd.”

When we finish Charlotte’s Web, we’ll move to one of my favorites from childhood, The Door in The Wall.

IV. The Naturalists, part 2

When we go to the “train store,” it’s not for books, as the boys’ name lets you know. About 5 years ago, my mom introduced John to Thomas the Tank Engine. John doesn’t do much with them anymore, but Joe sure does. So when we go to Barnes and Noble, we’re going for Joe to play with the trains. John likes to look at all the stuffed animals. John loves animals, and a stuffed animal is close enough to the real thing, and lets his imagine go. Joe had picked out two trains he wanted, and John was looking for some animals. He came back with 4 ducks. I said, “look, we’re not getting a lot of stuff. Joe’s two trains are part of one set.” But then John says, “But Daddy, they need to be together! They’re like us! A mommy a daddy, and two babies…” Man, he had me there! Luckily, they were big time on sale…

V. The Naturalists, part 3

My mom, grandmother, and aunt bought the boys a set of horses with trailers, all that stuff. That’s what happens when your parents live in Texas. Now I am in trouble because the boys know I had a pony when I was about their age. We’re reading Charlotte’s Web and they want a pig, a runt, at that. And a rabbit. And some sheep.

Some days back, John was at a kids place where a guy came in from “Silly Safaris.” He had a lot of animals—a rat, a rabbit, a millipede, a corn snake, an alligator. He would ask the kids questions. John is generally hesitant to answer questions in front of a group. But he was really scoping out the big plastic box. That was the last animal he was going to bring out. John snuck up behind the stage to get a look. He came back to me and said, “It’s a vulture!” I thought, “Who brings a vulture?” Well, it was. Some of the kids knew what it was. The guy asked if anyone knew what it ate. John’s hand was up, and not many others. He asked John, and I wondered, “will he answer?” John said with great joy, “Dead stuff!” The guy laughed and John was very happy. I told the woman next to me that when we see buzzards in the air, John says, “we better get moving!”

VI. That’s my boy!

Occasionally, if the boys do something outrageous or bad, I’ll hold my finger up and say, “Prick the finger! Prick the finger!” then I mumble something about going on Maury Povich to see if I’m the father. Rude, I know, but Melissa has to deal with a lot from me, and that’s about the least of it.

Melissa and I both like Fleetwood Mac, but I guess I am a weirdo because I don’t really care for Stevie Nicks. I think Christine McVie is clearly a better songwriter and easily the best singer in the band. Today, we’re going down the road and “Tell Me Lies” comes on the radio. Joe says, “Wow! She has such a pretty voice, Daddy!” There’s no denying him now.

p/g,

Aaron