Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
~ Philip Dormer Chesterfield
I’m sitting on a bowed and weather-beaten wooden bench watching the crowds go by. Across the quad walks a former classmate, her fair, shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail that bobs against her pink backpack. Her stride is determined and swift. She’s going someplace . . .
I see another group pass by. It must be in-class presentation day, for they are dressed for business. No flip-flops, fluorescent pajama bottoms or tank tops. Instead it’s shades-of-brown chinos and skirts. They are rehearsing: comparing notes; detailing segues; pointing at invisible pie charts. The appearance of purpose . . .
Me? I can’t seem to move from this bench and get on with wrapping up this semester. There is much to do, and all will get done. But at times the point seems lost.
I see these kids – for some are not much older than my teenage son – and envy their place in time. Barring some tragic accident or sudden illness, they are closer to the beginning of life than the end. Time stretches before them, a tapestry waiting to be woven. I imagine they can see it, what they want it to look like as it progresses, the nuances of texture and shades of color that will be for them a masterpiece worthy of display.
I know they will make mistakes. Circumstances will lead them down unbidden roads. Perhaps they know this, that seldom do our dreams materialize exactly as we imagine. Perhaps they are too young to care. So I wish for them an attitude of purpose leavened with a dash of creativity, for navigating the unexpected takes a stern rudder . . .
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
~ Edith Wharton
After nearly eighteen years of marriage and four children, my wife and I have learned to let a lot of things slide.
Take falling down.
If we had a nickel for every time someone in our brood has fallen down, we’d be able to afford a night out at Steak & Shake. Maybe even Applebee’s. It’s generally not a big deal. You fall? You get up. Brush off the dirt and move on.
So yesterday morning, when my wife took a tumble backwards off her gardening shovel onto the driveway, I glanced up from my spot on the porch where I was reading blogs and doing some Facebooking, noticed she wasn’t bleeding, asked her if she was ok, and when she didn’t scream or appear to be crying, I went back to browsing.
Only she wasn’t really ok. My youngest son, having seen her tumble, came running over to help her up. He then walked up to me and said, with a hint of a tear in his eye, “You know, you should go to your wife when she’s hurting.”
He’s nine.
And I’m an idiot. Please, let me have it . . . I deserve it.
The first thing that sprang to my mind, however, was a certain Christian punk rock band from the late-80s-early-90s called One Bad Pig and their 1990 release Swine Flew. These guys were the shit, if you will, in the burgeoning Christian rock scene of that era. CCM Magazine described their performances as “kind of like a carnival/revival run amok.” I saw them in Fargo, and CCM ain’t kidding; there were plastic kiddie pools filled with whipped cream, chainsaws and Christmas trees, and lots of smashed instruments . . . all the props that accompany radical evangelism. Since I hosted the local Christian music radio program at the university I attended at the time, it fell to me to convince the activities board to foot a portion of the bill for an OBP concert in our mid-sized, northern Minnesota town. Being the reluctant but nevertheless ham-fisted proselytizer of all-things-Jesus, I pitched the event as an outreach to the seldom-represented, hurting and searching youth of the city. Souls would be saved and, perhaps more importantly, Bemidji would be sufficiently RAWKED!
They not-so-respectfully declined.
I wrote recently about how memories can trigger very specific attitudes and emotions, and the images that flooded my mind at recalling OBP make me a bit queasy. Above, I referred to myself as a “reluctant” witness for the faith I espoused at the time. I believed in reaching the lost, but I always felt there should be more emphasis on building relationships with people before broaching topics such as sin and divine forgiveness. But one tends to get caught up in the excitement of spreading the Word, and bands like OBP gave us more than enough ammo to fire massive, debilitating broadsides against the Enemy.
For example: Back in those days, at the urging of a friend, I spent a week as a camp counselor at a Full Gospel youth camp. The leader was a local pastor who spewed hellfire-and-brimstone preaching with effortless precision. His goal? To empower a generation of warriors for Christ, by any means necessary. Think Jesus Camp and you’ll get the right picture. Our job as counselors was a simple one: scare the hell out of the kids.
During the final evening’s service, time was set aside for skits or songs that each group of kids had put together during the week. This was our opportunity to evangelize, to demonstrate how we’d go about delivering the radical message of salvation. As a result of the week’s indoctrination, my group of youngsters determined that there was no better way to evangelize than to point out just how depraved society had become. So, I whipped out my OBP CD and picked a song that summed up the camp’s collective attitude about the world . . .
You’re A Pagan – One Bad Pig For those of you viewing this in a reader, the audio player might be at the bottom of the post . . .
Feelin’ low, smoke a joint.
Cuss real loud, make your point.
Rock n roll’s all you play.
Always getting’ your own way.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
In the words of Kenneth Hagin,
Face the facts, you’re a pagan!
Chorus:
You’re a pagan, with a capital P!
You’re a pagan, full of i-dol-a-try!
You’re a pagan, that is what you be!
Theres no fakin’, fry like bacon,
You’re a pagan!
You’re a man who’s out of shape,
But before that, you were an ape?
In eons past, you were a worm.
Not long before, you were a germ.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
Like Charlie Darwin and Carl Sagan,
You’ve evolved into a pagan!
Chorus
Sunday morning, go to church.
Every Monday, fall from your perch.
Wednesday prayer, fill your cup.
Every Friday, throw it up.
Where you goin’? Where you been?
Your cruddy heart is full of sin.
Hear the charge that I am makin’ . . .
There is no doubt, you’re a pagan!
There’s me in my Zubas, fat and sweating, thrashing and head-banging, surrounded by a brood of kids screaming the chorus with me. Needless to say, we were a huge hit.
And then I moved to the back of the tent, becoming a spectator, and something in me clicked. It was perhaps the first time I’d observed these types of events with a discerning eye. I had been cynical in the past, but not in a way that led to any honest reflections. On that evening, I felt an unease as I watched these precious kids being coerced forward to receive their “personal prayer language“, a fringe benefit the Bible promises to Spirit-filled believers that will make their prayers more effective; when one prays in their personal prayer language, even though they cannot understand their own utterances, they are somehow more in tune with the Spirit within them, the very Spirit of God, and convey directly to God the deepest cries of their own renewed spirit. Without it, according to the camp director, the kids would be ineffective as Christians, so pressure to “get it” was great. At one point, to demonstrate just how this prayer language worked, he asked his son to come up and pray in his prayer language for the other kids to see. When he failed to utter a single syllable that didn’t make sense, the pastor, his own father, chastised him and sent him back to the altar to get prayed up. The young boy had tears in his eyes as he lowered his head and walked away.
My stomach sank.
I’ve wondered over the years if this event wasn’t the beginning of my doubts about these particular aspects of faith I knew. It at least set in my mind an image that didn’t jibe with the notion of a loving Heavenly Father. And it’s the image that came to mind when I received Kat’s tweet this morning. No sweet melancholy, that’s for sure . . .
Back in my radio days, when I hosted the morning show, I saw it daily. I seldom greeted it with a smile. Most mornings, I smashed the snooze bar, opting for 4:10. I can do 4:10.
When I worked the night shift at the nursing home, 4:00 AM meant last rounds: changing linens; emptying urinals; taking blood pressures; looking for an empty bed to curl up in until the morning crew arrives.
At 4:00 AM on a snowy December morning in 2000, a cup of coffee in one hand, my wife’s hand in the other, I began repeating the mantra, my husbandly duty, one last time . . . “Push!”
Perhaps it depends upon from which direction of the day you approach 4:00 AM. Is it better to stay up until 4:00 or to get up at 4:00?
With time running out, and term papers frantic to be committed to hard drive, I plan to get up at 4:00 AM tomorrow, just to see if the next paragraph will come to me then. For it seems to be lost at present, eclipsed by the light of day.
Few of us want to see such an ungodly minute. But there it is, nestled between 3:59 and 4:01.
4:00 AM is what you make it, I guess. And I’m not the only one contemplating its significance . . .
Like Uncle Buck, I eat a lot of the stuff. I love it in a “nothing tastes better, when I’m really in a snacky frame of mind, than a hunk or slice or pinch of cheddar” kind of way. I do it on burgers. I melt it on apple pie. I liquefy it and dunk Wavy Lays in it.
Cheese, me likey.
And it’s not so much that you keep moving it; our fridge isn’t enormous or over-crowded, so I can generally track it down when the craving hits.
It’s that you keep leaving the damn bag open! Even though it has a convenient little zipper thingy.
But I understand: your fingers are small and uncoordinated. Even though you play video games with no problem, and type remarkably well for your age, I hear your pain when it comes to having to squeeze together the packaging along that right-in-plain-sight line so that a tight seal is magically formed. You know why they make those zippy things, right? Of course you do. You’re a very bright child. Say it with me . . . They put the zipper on there so that the cheese stays moist, tender, edible . . . and doesn’t get all crusty or turn green.
You know this. Yet, there’s my cheese, the cheese I paid for, Dad’s Cheese, looking very sad. The cheese wants to be eaten, my dear offspring. It wants to be there, when I come looking for it, and it wants to feel worthy of being eaten. It doesn’t want to be all shriveled and nasty. It has a reputation to uphold, an image to maintain, and when you haphazardly place it back in the bag and choose not to lock the door, to seal it in, to tuck it in all cozy and safe, you hurt the cheese’s feelings. You laugh at my cheese’s pain, and tell it, “I don’t care about you, cheese.”
My cheese weeps.
So, your mom, who (1) is the real brains in this bunch, (2) is one who hates to see unhappy cheese , and (3) is fed up with my whining about the state of the cheese, has taken it upon herself to lend a hand. She has begun purchasing my cheese, my very special, part of the family, cheese, in some brand new packaging. It’s so new, I couldn’t even find a picture of it online. Not even at kraftfoods.com. I have had to resort to taking a picture of my new cheese . . .
. . . just so my Tweakers could see this awesome new cheese packaging. My glorious cheese, nestled contentedly in a hard, plastic container. With a lid! Observe how, when you pull the little tab in the upper-left-hand corner . . .
. . . it opens so nicely and smoothly. Even better, when you get through stealing my cheese, all you have to do is put the lid back on, press it all together, and . . .
. . . presto! My cheese is tucked away again, all comfy and smiling. With this innovative new package design, my cheese will never lose its youthfulness. Its beauty. It will sing with joy, I assure you.
And so will I when I next open the refrigerator door to get some of my cheese, and it is consumable.
We have the tools in place. Let’s agree to work together to keep the cheese, and me, happy.
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
I do respect people’s faith, but I don’t respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b5038baa-dac0-4a76-b9d4-d5b115fa7c5f)
Early morning hath gold in its mouth.
Here’s the thing: I love cheese.
