Remembering...

I did a re-write of an old piece of work that is meant to prompt you to simply remember. I used portions of it the Memorial Day Sunday and the smiles it evoked were worth it. When you get to the end, I wonder what you'll be remembering from days gone by that I didn't mention but we're memorable for you.

I want you to simply remember. As we used to tell our kids, remembering is going backwards in your mind. So go back ... back before the Internet or Microsoft, before Ipods or Ipads, before cell phones or blackberries, before Playstation or Nintendo or Xbox, before WiTV and SUV and DVR. Way back...

I'm talking about long, long ago. All the way back to hide and go seek at dusk. To Red light, Green light. To hopscotch and double dutch and the playground sounds of girls rhyming out word while skipping. To jacks and marbles, to kickball and dodge ball. To Giant Step, and May I? and Red Rover and Hula Hoops. To Scooters and Schwinn Bicycles. Are you there yet?

Back to the taste of salty lips from eating too many sunflower seeds. Back to smarties and penny candy, to Jolly Ranchers and Wacky Taffy, to Red Wax Lips and orange popcicles you had to split down the middle with your sister. Back to the Good Humor man. Back to the milk man and the bread man, to the fuller brush man and the Avon lady all coming to your door.

Back to running through the sprinkler, sitting on the curb, jumping down the steps, jumping on the bed. Reading comic books by flashlight. Transistor radios tuned to a world series game being played in the middle of the day. Pillow fights, sleeping in a tent in the yard counting stars, playing in the rain. Running till you were out of breath. Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt. Being tired from simply playing all day. Remember that?

Back before Cheers was only a re-run, before bicycle shorts and bicycle helmets, before seat belts and sun block and hand sanitizers. Way back. Back to watching Saturday Morning cartoons, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Fat Albert and Road Runner, He-Man and Superman,. Rainy Saturday afternoons with the Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello or Art Linkletter.

Then weeknights of the Honeymooners, then Jack Paar then Johnny Carson. Way back to when you actually had to behave and be good so you could get to stay up to watch Leave it to Beaver or My Three Sons … Andy of Mayberry or Happy Days… the Flintstones or the Muppets. How 'bout back to Howard Cosell and the beginning of Monday Night Football.

Catching frogs in a creek or lightening bugs in a jar. Collecting bubble gum cards and actually chewing the gum. Playing with a sling shot or playing with your first Barbie Doll. Owning a red rider bb gun or your first cabbage patch doll. The smell of a ball glove and the relief of not being the last one picked. Climbing trees and big family picnics. Back when it was ok to play Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians. Back when danger was a sharp pointy stick or a mean dog.

Back to when a large square drawn in the dirt was considered a fort with walls and you could not get in. Back when a big cardboard box was a days worth of fun. When a towel tied around your neck gave you the ability to fly. When you pretended to be invisible and began to think it might be working when your parents pretended not to see you. When blankets spread over the dining room table and chairs kept the monsters out.

Back when grandparents were really, really old people. When around the corner seemed far away and going downtown seemed like really going somewhere. Real terror was getting lost and real relief was being found.

Back to when it seemed everybody went to church and nothing much was open on Sundays. When it took five minutes for the TV to warm up, if you had one. When nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got there. When nobody owned a purebred dog. When popcorn popped in a pan on the stove with oil, not in a bag in the microwave. When laundry detergent boxes had free glasses, dishes, or towels hidden inside the box.

Back to when your mom wore nylons that came in two pieces and all phones hung on a wall in the kitchen. When all of the male teachers at school wore neckties and the female teachers had their hair done, everyday. When you got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, for free, every time. And, you didn't pay for air for your tires. And, you got trading stamps to boot!

When any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him, or make him to carry groceries into the house, and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it. When it was considered a rare and great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents. And when milk went up two cents a quart and everyone talked about it for weeks.

Back to when they threatened to keep kids back a grade in school if they failed...and then did it. When being sent to the principal's office felt like a death sentence and still that was nothing compared to what was gonna happen when you got home.

Back to sitting on the porch, back to hot homemade bread and butter. Back to an ice cream cone on a warm summer night. Three choices: chocolate or vanilla or strawberry. A million mosquito bites it seemed and sticky faces and fingers. And the dreaded moment when your mom would lick a Kleenex and then wipe your face with it.

Back to when summer seemed endless and you just hated having to come in at night. Back
to memories so rich with life you might wonder where all that life has gone. But boy oh boy, those were some days.

Now…didn't that feel good just to spend time remembering?! They were good experiences then, and they're good memories now … when we remember to think about them. And that’s the problem: we forget to remember.

...just thinkling

The Postponed Life

This blog is based upon a quote sent to me by a friend. I have taken the quote captive and written what follows.
Most of us are prone to the same fatal flaw. We keep waiting for life to begin … to kick in, in earnest. We are convinced in our own minds (which is the easiest place to be convinced!) that what we are experiencing now is “life backstage” and the real life we’ve always longed for is waiting for us as soon as the curtain parts. It’s like real life is somehow, in some mysterious way, awaiting us just ‘round the next bend in the road. We are waiting, it seems, for some corner to turn, for some moment to come, for some event to happen that will make everything different from what it has always been.

And so we convince ourselves that life will really begin after we get past this test or finish high school or university or when we get married, or after we have a baby, or perhaps have another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough for us to be free of them for a few hours and we figure life will begin when they are old enough … it’s then that we’ll really begin to live.

After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly begin really living when they are out of the house and out of our hair. And so we go on and tell ourselves that our life will begin when our spouse gets his or her act together, or when we get that promotion or get that better job, or when we get a nicer car, or when we get that new house or that new furniture, or when are able to go on that dream vacation, or even when we retire.

Meanwhile, real life passes you by. It’s like the ol’ Bruce Springsteen “Better Days” when he wrote, “I’m just sittin' around waitin' for my life to begin, while it was all just slippin' away.”

So truth be told, there's no better time to begin living than right now. If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with things to wade through, challenges to struggle past, hurdles to climb over. It's best to admit this to yourself now and decide to live, now.

The famous marching band composer, Alfred Souza, once remarked, that "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, some time still to be waited out, some debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were actually the content of my life."

So stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds. Stop waiting until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire.

Stop waiting until you get married, or until you get remarried, or until Friday night, or until Monday morning. Stop waiting until you get a new car or new home, until old your car or your old home is paid off. Stop waiting until spring or summer, until fall or winter, until Christmas or New Years.

Stop waiting until the first or fifteenth, or until your song comes on the radio, or until your show is over, or until you've gotten over him or gotten over her. Don’t even wait until the turn of a day to decide to begin to live.

‘Cause what you are postponing is your life and you can postpone it until you die if you want. But know this: life is the journey, not the destination. And that journey is too magnificent and often too short, to postpone and miss altogether. So choose to live it, beginning now.

...just thinkling.

Rethinking Spring Cleaning

I have a two car garage that only holds one car. What does that tell you? Right! I’ve got a garage full of junk. I made a promise to myself this winter, that when Spring came, I would ruthlessly clean the garage. I’m going to throw out all the clutter of life I’ve been collecting for no real reason.

Still, every year, when I try to throw out the junk we’ve collected over time, I can’t bring my self to do it. You know the stuff. Souvenirs from vacations. Tourist trap trinkets. Old car parts, old collectibles, old stereo equipment, and plain, old stuff. I’m a tourist in life: I collect stuff along the way that really should never have been picked up in the first place.

So what do I do with all my junk? I re-arrange it. Stack it differently. Hide it behind something. I promise myself, I’m going to be unsentimental this year but every year the clutter of life just seems to grow. The evidence of being a tourist in life is never more in view it seems, than when I clean my garage.
The Psalmist says, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” (Ps. 84:5)

Ps. 84 calls us to the Biblical tradition of being pilgrims and not tourists. And there is a difference...and it’s a big one. A tourist goes through life collecting the kind of stuff that fills the garage. A pilgrim realizes they are on a journey, and the things they collect along the way are more baggage than blessing. Pilgrims travel light because the destination is more important than the sights along the way.

So here comes Spring. It’s time to keep my promise to myself and clean the garage. And maybe its time to approach it like a pilgrim and not like a tourist. Maybe its time to approach all of life that way.

...just thinkling.

Our Prayer for Haiti

Our Prayer for Haiti

Kind Father, God and Creator of all things,
we have been stunned once again by an event
which seems so unnatural
and yet is called "natural disaster."

We have no words to answer the "why" which we feel…
No wisdom to explain away
these unexplainable areas of life.

Keep us from attributing this event
to an assumption of Divine judgment or Heavenly reprimand.
Keep our hearts from the hubris or the smugness
that imagines we alone know or understand
what really cannot be understood.

Keep us from spiritual pride
that tempts us to form definitive opinions
and speak assuredly for God when God has not spoken.
We, who are so distant from the scene
of such tragic sorrow,
move us from opinions to true compassion.

Kind Father of this bent and broken world,
Give us hearts filled with kindness and gentleness
to be servants to those in need.
Remind us of your gracious love in the midst of sorrow,
and your ability to work miracles when all hope is faint.

We pray for those who suffer in Haiti even now
and for those who await rescue.
For relatives, for the children,
for mothers and fathers,
sisters and brothers,
grandparents, aunts and cousins.

For the survivors who question
what more they might have done.
And for those who must keep on keeping on,
in spite of it all.

For the leaders,
for those who bring aid
and those who await news…
strengthen and encourage them we pray.

Now unto you, O God,
we take the burdens of this hour
and place them in your divine care.
For all you do and are doing,
seen and unseen,
we give thee thanks,
Eternal God of All Creation,
we wait on you.
Amen

Joy is Serious Business

I remember hearing Garrison Keillor one lazy Saturday afternoon tell a story as only he can of a time when he was a boy on the family farm. He and a couple of friends had wandered over to where the hog pen and were throwing small stones at the fat old hogs trying to get them to move. It was just something to do if you’re a bored 10 year old boy looking for something to amuse you.

Well his father scolded him real good. He said, “Don’t you ever do that. Those hogs aren’t here for sport.”

About a week later, his father and the hired men slaughtered those hogs and put the meat up for the winter. Garrison couldn’t quite understand it. What’s worse? Throwing pebbles at a hog or slaughtering it? Killing time or killing the hog? It didn’t make any sense.

But later as a grown man, thinking back, he remembered the look on the faces of those men as they slaughtered those hogs. They were serious and silent. It was a very sober business. It was meat that would feed the whole family for the upcoming long, harsh Minnesota winter. There was a lot at stake.

As I reflected upon that story, it struck me that expressing joy at the birth of Jesus at Christmas is serious business. All the commercialization … all the sappy sentimentality … all the artificial substitutes for the heart of Christmas joy is like throwing pebbles at hogs. It’s sport. It’s something to do when you don’t really know the purpose or value of something.

But the birth of Jesus is full of purpose and lasting importance. This is eternal light and everlasting life coming into a world of darkness and death. It’s not meant for sport or to be trivialized. And expressing our joy over it sends a serious message to a world that behaves like bored 10 year old boys looking for something to distract or amuse them. Our joy says this Gift of God is meant to get us through a life that has a lot of long and harsh winters in it.

Joy to the world is serious business. This Christmas, let’s be about our business.

...just thinkling

Fall ... at last!

You gotta love the Fall! Fall is kind of a “guy” season. Football starts up. Hockey starts up. Baseball playoffs and the World Series. Basketball is coming up quick. What’s not to like about that!?

But there is more to like about the Fall than sports. The return of Fall means a return to order and routine. All the “life as not-usual” is over. Vacations are done. Kids head back to school. Life at work is more focused. The rhythms of life get re-organized. The tune of life marches to a steadier, more orderly beat.

When God created this world, in the opening words of Genesis we read that the before He did, the world was formless and void (Gen. 1:2). The Hebrew words are “tohu” and “bohu”. (I wonder if that is where tofu comes from ‘cause it looks formless and is void of taste!) But while you can have fun rhyming those words, they basically mean this place was a whole lot of random, chaotic, emptiness. Like your kid’s bedroom. No order. No structure. You could never make sense of it.

Kinda like how summer feels to me a times. Not enough order. Not enough structure. No clear routines. No simple rhythms. Life sort of gets out of synch and kids get out of sort as schedules and disciplines break down. Early in the summer, we are all “dying for a break” we say. But by the time Fall rolls around, we are so ready for the order and structure that routine brings.

So could it be that the need for order in life is a quiet witness to our hearts of God’s design for what life in this world was meant to be? He brought order out of chaos and called it life. So maybe that is why we long for Fall. God wired us for it. We were made to live in order. Even your kid’s. Even when their room looks all tohu and bohu.

…just thinkling

On Getting Old

I am reading a good book by Paul Tournier called "Learn to Grow Old". It's a fascinating read for a guy as young as me. Ahem, ahem!!

Truth is, it's best value is for 40 somethings and the occasional 50 something. He has a lot of valuable stuff to say about preparing for the season of old age than about simply offering a 'how to' about living in that season.

But in it he quotes a psychologist who says in effect, if you don't learn to to live a meaningful life now, you won't be able to organize yourself in old age to do so. Who you are now is what you are becoming. What you will be then is only what you are writ large. Old age will only be more of the same.

Does it have to be that way? So bleak and empty? Not at all. But the time for addressing it is now, not then. Now is the season to reflect on the things that give your life meaning. And if they are not sustainable in old age, it would be good to ask yourself, what meaningful pursuit can I start now that will endure and enrich that season to come?
I'm looking forward to getting old. I'm going to retire and sit around and complain about the government full time. What's your plan?

...just thinkling