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