One of the dogwood trees my grandmother and I planted about 35 years ago.
The Leader of the Band is tired, and his eyes are growing old,
But his blood runs through my instrument, and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the Leader of the Band.
-Dan Fogelberg
Alison had that look in her eye. Half smile, half dead-serious, she walked up and to me and said, “Some of us have been talking. And we’d like to ask you a favor.”
“What’s that?” I asked cautiously – bracing myself for, well, anything.
“We don’t know either of these people, and we don’t think they knew Grandmother all that well. We were wondering if you would say something – you know, more personal – in the service.”
Alison is my cousin, and she’d just asked the unthinkable – to stand up in front of a couple hundred family and friends and eulogize a family legend.
I’d done plenty of funerals before, but this one was different. This was family. And not just any family member. It was Grandmother, for cryin’ out loud. [click to continue…]
An interesting op-ed headline appeared in The Chicago Tribune a few days ago. It read, “Govern like a leader, not a politician.” The author, Mike Lawrence, proposed that the current financial mess in Illinois would only be solved by politicians who had the courage to do unpopular things (raise taxes, I presume) rather than trying to please people.
Oh… leadership.
Ooh… politics.
Can they ever really coexist? [click to continue…]
It was a surprising experience – seeing old friends, and people I had said good-bye to almost ten years earlier in that south Mississippi town. I was surprised at the warmth of their response. I was surprised at the depth of their respect for me. I was surprised at the intensity with which they prayed and expected good things from this youth retreat I was to lead. I was surprised at how many names I remembered, and how natural it still felt to love them – even though I had not seen them in so long a time.
Needless to say, there was a rush of memories. Like the time I borrowed Don’s reel-to-reel tape recorder, and he said to me at least three times, “Please lock it up in your office.” I forgot. Don didn’t. He went back to check the church the next morning, and there was his tape recorder. (Pause here to shudder).
There were memories of the homes where we held Bible studies. Memories of the King’s Inn – the Christian coffee house we started (the sign still hung outside the deserted building).
I also was reminded of the married adult retreat I was asked to help lead while I was there – and wound up being the only single person on the trip. This really entertained everyone when the other retreat leader was doing his session on marital intimacy. I was not amused. [click to continue…]
I want to take you to a place where, frankly, we aren’t invited. For just a minute, let’s be one of “those” people we often gripe about – those rubberneckers on the highway, who seem fascinated with somebody else’s messes.
In this case, we’re creeping up to a closed bedroom door, where on the other side, we can hear muffled sobs.
A man’s sobs.
A few days ago, somebody from home had rocked his world. The news was bad, and every ounce of optimism he once had was crushed.
You should have been here yesterday. He was really blubbering then. And he will be again tomorrow. Fasting, too. And praying. Lots of praying.
But as he cries and prays and cries and fasts and cries some more, something happens. [click to continue…]
“It seems plausible that folly and fools, like religion and magic, meet some deeply rooted needs in human society.” -Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter
At a convention, filled with pastors and other very religious people, I was sitting on a shuttle bus going from the parking lot to the convention center. The bus made a stop, and on hopped Dennis Swanberg – comedian, and then-pastor. I recognized him, because we’d recently had him as a guest in our church. Somebody else recognized him too. A good ol’ boy hollered from the back of the bus, “Hey! Aren’t you Dennis Swanberg? Say sumpthin’ funny!”
Dennis smiled good-naturedly, but the look in his eye said it all: Seriously?
I joked with him about the cluelessness of the request. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s sorta like saying to a doctor in public, ‘Cure something,’”
One Planet, Two Kingdoms
Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Where are the clowns? [click to continue…]
Laura Kate Wiley is finding her voice.
At 17 months, she’s off to a good start.
With safe surroundings and a fearless heart,
A free spirit and a supportive family,
She plays and rests and dreams and wants –
Sincerely believing that what she has to say actually matters.
She will need these things again and again,
As her world evolves and her voice is threatened.
Nobody can sing the songs meant for her alone.
Again and again, she will have to find her heart with clarity,
And express her mind with grace and courage.
So will you.
Find your voice.
I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away
I called him up just the other day
I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind”
He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job’s a hassle and kids have the flu
But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad
It’s been sure nice talking to you”
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He’d grown up just like me
My boy was just like me
-Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle”
He’s an old man now. His physical vision is virtually gone; his heartbeat will soon follow. His spiritual vision? That’s another story. It’s still bright and filled with fire and hope. But it’s a vision that now sees through the eyes of other men. He has no children of his own, but does have a relationship with a man who may as well be. He’s one of those blessed individuals who knows his time is up, and who faces eternity with no regrets. And now he writes the man he calls his son in the faith. His future looks bright; he can only pray the same for Tim.
Stand steady, and don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Bring others to Christ. Leave nothing undone that you ought to do. I say this because I won’t be around to help you very much longer. My time has almost run out. Very soon now I will be on my way to heaven. I have fought long and hard for my Lord, and through it all I have kept true to him. And now the time has come for me to stop fighting and rest (2 Timothy 4:5-7, LB).
A decade before I became a father myself, Harry Chapin sucker-slapped dads everywhere. [click to continue…]
It was, without a doubt, one of the lowest periods in my life. I was broke and jobless, living in the wake of my own failures. My whole world had turned upside down. I was torn between two directions – to stay in that part of the world that I had always considered home, or to venture out to a place I had only seen on trips to my in-laws’ house.
My wife wanted to be near her parents during that season. I wanted to live in Anywhere Else, USA. “If the world was flat,” I said, “Lubbock would be on the edge of it!”
But my world was flat. [click to continue…]
I had an experience a few years ago that moved me more than anything had in months or years. And to this day, I’m still not sure why, and/or why it moved me on that particular day.
It was a Sunday afternoon. The house was quiet and I was alone. I lay down on the bed and started watching a rerun of “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” I’d seen the movie several years earlier, and for whatever reason, decided to watch it again.
I had already gotten pretty weepy at a couple of places in the movie. But at the climax of the film, when Mr. Holland sees the lives he has impacted, and hears the governor, once his student, say, “Mr. Holland, we are your opus,” my guts turned inside out. It hit a nerve – a deep, raw nerve – like nothing had in years – perhaps ever.
By this time I was sitting in the den, alone in the house, sobbing. [click to continue…]
(Note: This is out of sequence, but I couldn’t pass this by. I’d like to know your thoughts.)
First, read this:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)
Then read this: A Botched Abortion in Mother’s Own Words
Then read this again:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)
Please tell me you feel at least a little outrage.
Please tell me that you haven’t lived so long in a culture of death that this leaves you untouched.
But while you’re at it, please give me something better than violence or political rhetoric. [click to continue…]
