Appreciation

What Bernie Brings

21 Comments / Adaptation, Appreciation, Care, change, Creation, Nature / By

When Joanne and I decided we wanted a dog, our checklist was very specific: an old dog, a tender, obedient, and docile dog. A slow and sane dog. Big as a buffalo, he would take down intruders and sit on their chests till cops arrived. But also, a dog that would sleep most of the time and be gentle and loving to our family and friends.  

       So, of course, we got a puppy. 

Bernie, our Micro Bernadoodle, was and still is sweet and cuddly as a kitten. But docile? Sane? Obedient? He gallops like a horse, barks at snowflakes and leaves, and tackles our guests as we helplessly protest. In response to my commands, he cocks his head in a “Come on man, help me here” look. 

       Our living room looks like a daycare center. Bernie chews tissue paper, steals our shoes, and gnaws on furniture. When he scatters garbage over the floor, he stands within the carnage, wagging his tail, fully expecting a reward. 

       He also seems determined to join our human world. Standing on his back legs at our game table, he pats the tabletop with his paws… Hit me, Cowboy! During the recent Super Bowl, Bernie ran into the living room with a chew football. He danced around like Matthew Stafford in the pocket, presumably waiting for me to hit the front door, going out for his Hail Mary.

A Gift

Bernie is also a gift from God, one that “keeps on giving.” 

       For example, he has given us life beyond our ruts. After twenty-five years of empty nesting, Joanne and I may have grown a little complacent. We’ve lived in a latticework of delightful routines—parlor games, hanging out with friends and family, feeding our coffee addiction, slow drives through Middle Tennessee’s hills and hollows, and watching Jeopardy!

       That all changed the day Bernie cut across our self-centered lives. Our new “baby” pulled us into caring for him. Oh, the synergistic beauty of God’s caring creation. Bernie needs food; Joanne and I have fingers and opposing thumbs. 

       When Bernie first arrived, we caged him every night. And he accepted it. Until one night, about midnight, when he just started barking. That marked his rejection of his cage. He won. Since that moment, Bernie has slept all night, every night, on the floor outside our bedroom door. A silent sentry. 

       I didn’t understand what happened till I told that story to my friend Ian Wallbrech. He explained that Bernie was a born and bred protector. When I caged him away from us at night, I depressed his life’s purpose. He needs to guard us. But we have to release him to do that. As Tom Cruise said to Cuba Gooding in Jerry Maguire, Bernie barks to us, “Help me…help you.”

Flexibility and Patience       

Look; Bernie is more than a pet. Like all creation, he presents a window on the divine power, eternal nature, and invisible traits that fill the universe (see Romans 1:20). Since none of that arrives through human choice or creativity, we need great patience and flexibility if we are to ever discover it.

       My cousin Casey Chinn, a professional photographer, recently wrote a profound insight in a blog on how to take better landscape photos (I highly recommend the whole thing):

“Don’t be so focused on what you were seeking that you miss the other gems that might be there right in front of you. Learn how to respond to what nature gives you. If you wanted sunshine but instead you got rain, find things that look best in that soft subdued light… you might get something even better than pure sunshine when the fog rolls in… sometimes, you just have to be willing to sit it out and see what happens.”[1]

       We all live in stormy weather, cultural and spiritual. So, what do we do when we want sunlight, but get rain? Pack up and go home? Or could we wait for our eyes to adjust to the magnificent and magical gift of new light forming out there? Can we see the awesome mystery that flickers in and out of view as it moves over us? Might we adapt in the face of change?

What If?

What if we found the patience and flexibility to discern new shapes and sounds? Like Christians recognizing their Lord’s design in people of different faiths? Or vice versa? What if aggressive, gentle, introverted, militant, peaceful, or inspirational people could find value in their opposites? What if leftists or conservatives discovered wisdom in the other group?   

       In other words, is a tornado just a tornado, cancer only a disease, or a dog just a dog? Do they also bear messages about the glory of God?

       If I only recognize Bernie as a dog or “my pet,” then I cannot see the gorgeous mystery of the Lord’s purpose. Bernie brings the unexpected, uninvited, and inconvenient truths I need to live fully and maturely within the vast sweep of life. 

       Good boy!

[1] Casey Chinn, “Tips for Taking Better Landscape Photos,” Casey Chinn Photography blog, February 16, 2022, https://www.caseychinnphotography.com/casey-chinn-photography-blog/blog_posts/tips-for-taking-better-landscape-photos

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A Sunday Kind of Love

35 Comments / Appreciation, Care, Culture, Faith, Love / By

When my parents met, Mom melted into the full embrace of Jack Chinn’s courteous, gentle, and protective presence. Those qualities were not empty or misleading enticements. They revealed a true and complete man, one raised by good parents, not coyotes.

         Dad was a gentle warrior. In 1942, he joined the great American roar at enemies that threatened the world. But his boys never saw anything but care and kindness toward our mother. Dad never allowed Mom to enter a zone of danger, or even mild discomfort. 

         I thought of my parents when I recently heard (for the first time) an old song, “A Sunday Kind of Love.” Recorded by Dinah Washington, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, and others over the years, the lyrics spoke of needing strong arms to enfold, someone to care, and one who would show the way.

         So, what was a “Sunday kind of love?” 

         It was/is simply love at its best—sparkling clean, unhooked from the sweaty demands of labor, joining the community in worship, and moving in the rhythms of rest. That love cares enough to clean up, wise up, and show up; who knows, your future spouse may be sitting behind you. A Sunday kind of love made people giddy with possibilities.   

         That era was not perfect, but those “church people” knew and produced social stability. Let’s face it; one of society’s major purposes is to confirm men in their proper roles. When that does not happen, they careen into vicious cycles of unemployment, abandonment, drugs, alcohol, and kaleidoscopic violence. Aimless males will tear the place apart; ask any cop, judge, ER doctor, K-12 teacher, or prison guard.

         Look; that Sunday-Kind-of-Love societal pattern worked. And its highest validation came through the people it produced. There’s a reason we call them the “greatest generation.”

Two Roads

So, what happened? Did we forget the marvelous story of what creates a great generation? Or did we just change our minds about how to get there?

         The 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st have provided a clear look at the two roads that pass through western culture. 

         Millions traveled the old road, the one constructed over millennia with classic virtues. But it slowly fell out of favor and funding. And without proper maintenance, it dropped into disrepair. About the same time, new studies from universities, think tanks, and government agencies suggested new and cool materials that would take us… somewhere. Faster.

         So, we built the new road, a superhighway fabricated from that new stuff—bytes, clicks, and dopamine hits. And we created the gadgets to manage it. But it seems we missed some details; we didn’t think through the possibilities and inevitabilities. 

         Wendell Berry once made his commencement audience face stubborn facts: “The civil rights movement has not given us better communities. The women’s movement has not given us better marriages or better households. The environment movement has not changed our parasitic relationship to nature… we are left with theory and the bureaucracy and the meddling that come with theory.”[1]

         Berry did not degrade any of those movements, but he did warn that ideals and programmatic approaches carry consequences. 

         More than that, he disputed a materialist vision of society, one that insists humans can design a better way of life all by themselves. Just as doctors have to face the side effects, so do those who care about society, culture, and history. Berry effectively reminded his young audience they will never build better trees from lumber bought at Home Depot. 

A Whole New Way

I’m not advocating going back to the old Sunday-Kind-of-Love road. We can’t and shouldn’t. That road was never designed to last. It was only a shadow of a whole new way of life which comes from the Designer of it all. And it brings everyone—male, female, young, old, rich, poor, impaired, whole, and from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth—into safety, rest, and love at its best. 

         That new way is not traditional, nostalgic, romantic, American, or religious. It flows out from a higher domain, a realm led by a generous and magnificent King. That’s why Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” 

         But too often the futility of our times leads people to keep begging “the Big Guy upstairs” to bless our mess. And all the while He just invites us to follow Him out of our chaos and craziness, on up to the higher ground of His place, the realm of Love at its best. Everywhere, over everything, for everyone, and forever.

[1] Wendell Berry, Commencement Address (College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, 1989)

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love in the time of COVID

27 Comments / Appreciation, Care / By

A few days ago, Joanne asked if I could take a break to run over to Target with her. She needed help loading a large Christmas gift. 

         I was busy, but considering her clear and specific parameters for the job, I said, “Sure, I need a break. Let’s go.” I knew the trip would take 30 minutes max. 

         But as we entered the store, she said, “Oh, and I need to pick up a toy for Caleb and a few groceries.” That’s when my gears locked up. 

         She knew; “What’s wrong?”

         “Well, I accepted a very specific mission, but you just expanded it.” 

         “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” 

         Then, in all my glorious Ed-ness, I found a somewhat graceful reason to leave, you know, to do more important things. But as I drove away, I’m pretty sure I heard my loving Lord speak, “O, you beautiful man, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

         After He and I conversed a while longer, it all started coming back to me, how Joanne brings her own gifts, skills, and ways to our marriage. Her dazzling riddles, allurements, and sparks of humor often pull me out of my personal bunker. The journey into Joanne sometimes drives me nuts… just before it enriches me. 

         And it does so because we’re not alike. 

         We came to our marriage from distant places, formed by wildly divergent stories, wired with contrasting brains, furnished with delightfully different bodies, and waltzing through our distinct yet mutual destinies. My thinking works like a bullet; hard, straight, and fast. She muses like a garden of butterflies; fluttering, hovering, and vanishing, sometimes to return to the thought, sometimes not. 

         I so need her butterflies.

         Think of all the gorgeous sounds, sunrises, colors, nuances, graces, and grottos you’ve discovered through your mate. Or once did. Have you lost vision for the marriage? If so, is it possible that the man or woman you first loved twenty, thirty, forty years ago could still be buried deep inside? Could their bundles of secrets and possibilities still be glistening below the surface? 

         Like so much of life, it comes down to what we see. How did we ever lose sight of God’s extravagant gift inside him or her? Did it slip from your vision when sex began to fade? If so, might that be childish and selfish? Do you think He may be waiting for you to dig deeper, down to your mate’s hidden caverns of beauty? 

         What about our community? And nation? Could the same issue apply?

        Maybe you and I need the stark differences our polar opposites bring. Lately, I’ve found myself wondering how, when, and why I ever decided I didn’t need those unlike me. When Joanne asked me to run over to Target, God was setting me up for a test. A test of love, which I failed. Does the pandemic also set all of us up for a test of love?

         My friend, Washington Post columnist Bill Raspberry, once told me, “Most thoughtful people believe both sides of issues.” Well, of course they do. Life is beautifully variegated and intricate—we embrace liberty and order, free and responsible speech, generosity and restraint, strong national borders and kindness to immigrants (especially the undocumented ones). 

         But polarizing forces demand that we pick a side, and then learn to hate everyone on the other side. That too is outrageously childish and selfish. As a conservative and as a Christian, I need my liberal and non-Christian friends, including all they know, feel, and carry.

         For most of the past decade, I’ve worked with left-of-center people. And I discovered my genuine need for their idealism, collaborative energy, sense of community, bold spirituality, and their willingness to do the hard work of building social capital for those on the margins. 

         I need each of them to take me beyond myself. 

         COVID-19 and every other issue (including trips to Target with Joanne) reveal what and who we love, serve, believe, hope, despise, cherish, and fear. Yes, the pandemic raises profound fears of economic damage, loss of freedom, constitutional issues, and death. Those are all valid!

         But love—of spouse, family, friends, community, and world—towers above all the other issues. Do I love them more than I love myself? Can I set my fears aside as I decide to place my life on the line for others? 

         Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when He told His disciples, “Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12-13, NLT)

         Health care workers, law enforcement officers, military personnel, and teachers show us how to do that every day. Your spouse probably does too. 

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The Chinn Farmhouse

The Chinn Place

34 Comments / Appreciation, God, Home, legacy, Place / By

People often called the farms of my Kansas childhood “places,” as in “just past the cemetery you’ll come to the Johnson place.” Novelist Wallace Stegner wrote that such a place “is not a place until people have been born in it, have grown up in it, lived in it, died in it…over more than one generation.”

         Four generations of Chinns have owned (and seven have known) a place, a small farm in Kansas. Many were born and grew up on that land, and some died there. In another confirmation of place, when my cousin Karen was a child, she addressed a letter to our grandparents:

Grammie and Grampie
Coats, Kansas

         And the letter was delivered.

A Hidden Place

The Chinn farm, located just off the Coats-Sun City road, is hard to find. If you plug the address into a GPS system, you’ll never find the place. It’s hidden. The heart of the farm—the old house, barn, windmill, garage, chicken coop, shed, and silo—lies down in a hollow, concealed about a hundred feet below the main road.

         That farm is ground zero for Chinns. My soul’s architecture folds over the undulant contours of the land, the ancient hum of ancestral voices rising from the soil; massive dark thunderheads boiling out of the western horizon; a wedding on the lawn, and the scents of saddles, alfalfa, and machinery.

The Chinn Farmhouse

         The house is a hodgepodge of parts hauled in by wagon, drug by horses, or rolled on logs and nailed together. Two of the parts cost my widowed great-grandmother forty dollars. That’s the only construction cost I can find. Yet that house, through various repairs, improvements, and expansions, has been home to Chinns since 1897.

         The barn emerged from a similar organic pattern. When a horse killed my great-grandfather in 1900, his four young children had to grow up fast. In 1910, my thirteen-year-old future grandfather, his twin, and their eighteen-year-old brother built the barn. It has now stood as a working barn for more than a century.

A Fertile Place

The farm gave abundantly over the decades; it was a fruitful place. Grandpa farmed it for sixty years (1917-1977) and Grandma gave birth to twelve children between 1919 and 1936. The fertile land gave generously, but Chinns also poured their sweat and blood on the ground to uphold their end of the deal.

         Now, after 136 years of continuous family ownership, the old Chinn place is for sale. These days I find myself walking the ridge between the eras of Chinn ownership and the future, considering the mystery of land and identity.

         Land, the most visible dimension on earth, hides in plain sight. Many people walk, drive, or fly over it without even seeing it. But when humans stop, look, and listen; when they take it seriously, that partnership produces wonders. Grass, gardens, and crops, but also houses, highways, workplaces, cathedrals, airports, and cities climb out of the dirt.  

A Sense Of Place

We often hear people announce their need “for space,” usually away from sources of pain or the demands of maturity. But, more than space, we need a sense of place. Space is infinite, but place is specific. Space is romantic; place is real as a hammer. We tumble through space, but we stand on a place. Space brings vertigo and disorientation. Place brings experience, confidence, and (eventually) wisdom.

         That’s because a place forms an altar where pride and illusions die.

         From that altar my grandparents helplessly watched their two-year-old daughter die, struggled with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, got kicked in the guts by a wheat harvest of a bushel and a half per acre, and sent three sons to World War II. They spent most of the 20th Century wrestling with Heaven and earth just to pull life from the ground.

            “Humus,” the Latin word for soil or ground, is also the root for “humility.” We don’t ever find our place in the world without humbling ourselves. Humility commits. To a woman, to a man. To promises, to a purpose. To a place.

         The same story has unfurled in many places; God and a family walked together through a place, a pinpoint on earth. Because weighty things happened there, we have a hardy sense of place. More than that, we were formed by a soaring sense of God.

The Chinn Place (photo by Ashley Chinn Matos)

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The Woman Who Loved Storms

20 Comments / Appreciation, Danger, Environment, God, legacy / By

On the afternoon of May 7, 2002, a large tornado hit my home town, Pratt, Kansas. My brother Vernon, Pratt County Sheriff, immediately called our parents and told them to get to the hall bathroom and stay there. When he later dropped in to check on them, he found them standing at the sliding glass door, gazing at the beautiful terror of the storm.

       Mom was always ready to trade safety for the thrill of dazzling and dangerous spectacles. Her love of ominous Kansas weather forged one of the anchors of my life. She loved the very things which sent others diving into storm cellars or basements.

       Not only was she unafraid, but blizzards, thunderstorms, and even tornadoes brought pure squealing-with-delight joy to Mary Chinn. And she passed it on to her children. Mom’s exuberant enjoyment of storms was wonderfully infectious; we caught it the same way people catch colds.

       The great blizzards of my childhood served magical gifts to the Chinn boys. They kept us home from school, drew us outside to play in the snow, and gave us Mom’s “snow ice cream” (vanilla, sugar, and cream in a bowl of snow). Surely, we were the only children in the world who had ever tasted such a magnificent dessert. 

Beyond Burger King

I’m grateful for the great virtues and lessons that I learned or caught from Jack and Mary Chinn. But a love of storms may be the most valuable legacy handed down to me.

       Why?

       Because God loves storms. They reflect an essential part of His nature, and they also comprise the planet’s fleet of big transport trucks that haul temperature and moisture to places that need them. Furthermore, by learning to love what the Creator loves, we find new alignment with God.

       Mom loved and lived the words of the old hymn,

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed”[1]

       Mary Chinn would rather have known the “awesome wonder…of rolling thunder” than safety.

       But, in our consumer age, many people turn away from wonder in their reach for control. They prefer the words of an old Burger King ad: “Have it your way.” 

       A storm, however, is a powerful reminder that a great sweep of life lies beyond our control. We cannot choose the timing, the target, or the intensity of a storm. A tornado or hurricane is an enormous swirling billboard that announces, “You can’t have it your way.” 

Nature’s Theater

I’m forever grateful that I grew up beneath the large canopy of south-central Kansas sky. We had front row seats at the grand theater of nature. I slept in the backyard as often as possible; the night sky overwhelmed and charmed me. And few natural exhibitions can be as thrilling as a black thunderhead boiling up out of the western Kansas horizon.

       We grew up knowing that a storm might kill us, but it couldn’t destroy us. We knew life was a continuum; it would go on… somewhere! Nature held no threat over our real life. Knowing that released us from the fear of death, a fear which keeps many from living a full life.

       After living a very full 96 years, Mom died November 1. The weather forecast for the day of her funeral and burial called for 37 degrees and light wind. But, when we arrived at the cemetery, the temperature was 22, and snow came horizontally out of the north.

       I could almost hear her laughter in the wind.

[1] “How Great Thou Art,” Stuart K. Hine

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Sailors

32 Comments / Appreciation, death, Friendship, God, Respect, Stories / By

In the summer of 1992, while driving a dirt road in Pratt County, Kansas, my 70-year-old dad saw his own tractor, driverless, rolling across a field pulling a land leveler. He felt a chill; he knew his brother Harold had been driving the tractor and leveler rig up to his place near Pratt.

Dad soon saw Harold lying on the ground beside the road. Frantic, he stopped his pickup and ran to his brother. Harold was fully conscious, but Dad could clearly see that was going to be a real bad day.

Harold’s death was an earthquake in the Chinn family. Youngest son, playful and funny, and the spark of life in every family gathering, his death left a wide wound across our landscape. But it blew a deep and ragged hole right through Dad’s heart. He never recovered.

From that day it seemed that Dad’s strong mind began to melt. The distinct shapes of his personality began to droop and dissolve. His confidence tottered. He still went to his beloved shop, but he stopped repairing and making things. He just stood amidst his tools and cried; he didn’t know why.

Dad served on the aircraft carrier, USS Princeton, in World War 2. He was on board for every day of her 19-month existence. Her sinking on October 24, 1944, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, was the central moment of his life. From that day Dad seemed to live in the shadow of the Princeton.

Dad and Mom made their last visit to our home in Northern Virginia in the spring of 1995. In preparing for their visit I wanted to find something that would engage Dad again, some spark that would animate his wonderful and vivid personality.

In 1995 the very colorful Admiral Arleigh Burke was one of the last living commanding officers from the Pacific theater of the war. And he had participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Two weeks before my parents’ visit, I learned that the 93-year-old Admiral lived in nearby Fairfax, Virginia. So I found a phone number for his home.

When Roberta “Bobbie” Burke answered the phone, I introduced myself and told her about Dad. I told her that Dad would be there in a couple weeks and asked if “the Admiral would be open to a visit from another sailor.” Bobbie immediately exclaimed, “Oh, yes, he would so love that! Please come.” She gave me their address and we agreed on a date and time.

When my parents arrived, I handed a new biography of Admiral Burke to Dad. He thanked me, scanned through it and told stories he recalled of “31-knot” Burke. Then I told him that we had an appointment with Admiral Burke the next day. Dad’s smile revealed his anxiety; he had never met an Admiral. Even after 50 years of civilian life he still thought like an enlisted man.

Dad asked too many questions about protocol and social courtesies as we drove from our house in Reston over to The Virginian apartments in Fairfax. He grew silent as we entered the building. Finally we stood at the door. I knocked. Very quickly, an elderly man, standing with a walker, opened the door and smiled. “Jack,” he barked and grabbed Dad’s hand. Dad relaxed; he heard an invitation to a safe place.

We spent two hours in the Burke living room. Bobbie gracefully vanished from the distinctly male gathering, as I’m sure she had often done in 72 years of marriage to a Navy man.

I watched in astonishment. A former Chief of Naval Operations, a major player in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, an Admiral who had a class of destroyers named after him sat with an enlisted man, a Kansas railroader, a Sunday School teacher. But their eyes glistened at the same heartsounds of battle, loss, and heritage. And they burst into synchronous laughter at the same details and nuances of Navy culture.

I’ll never forget Dad’s face as Burke told him of watching Dad’s beloved Princeton, through his binoculars, explode and sink.

The 20th century had taken these two men to vastly different places, but as children of God they shared an enormous familial heritage. I saw them touch their shared bond as brothers. Class distinctions blew away like dust; they were sailors.

As we prepared to leave, Bobbie bid us farewell with a deep glowing sadness. Admiral Burke, with his walker, escorted us to the elevator; he clearly wanted to extend the moment as long as possible. He and Dad shook hands, “Come back anytime Jack.” They both knew they would never meet again.

Admiral Burke died 7 months later. Two thousand people attended his funeral; President Clinton delivered the eulogy. Burke’s tombstone at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis carries a one-word epitaph, “Sailor.”

Dad lived another 10 years. The slide that began with Harold’s death continued. But that incredible day was a clear announcement that human value has nothing to do with the illusions of rank, class, wealth, or productivity. Our value, our royalty, flows from the Fatherhood of God.

Far more than we realize, we are all His children. We have infinitely more in common than we have in conflict. May we all discover our shared family bond…even with those who may seem so different or so far away. They really aren’t.

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The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

3 Comments / Appreciation, Book Review, Culture, death, legacy / By

The true story Rod Dreher tells in The Little Way of Ruthie Leming (Grand Central, 2013) is simple and straight. And we know the end from the beginning. Rod and his little sister Ruth grow up in a small town in Louisiana. He cannot wait to leave the place. He wants the “big” – city, money, fame. She chooses the local, the little, and the quiet.

At forty, she is stricken with a very aggressive cancer. Rod watches the community come around his little sister. Her quiet and steady sowing – her “faithfulness in small things” – turns into a great harvest of kindness and generosity. She dies. Rod not only writes a book honoring his sister and her choice of the “little way,” he realizes he can and must find that way.

It has been said that a great book will read us more than we read it. This is that kind of book; at least it was for me. I too grew up in a small town. And I could not wait to leave Pratt, Kansas. My brother Vernon stayed. Except for an excursion through the US Army and Viet Nam, and postwar ranching jobs in Nebraska and Colorado, Vernon has been a supporting column for family and community all his life.

So this very real, organic, and probing book was a mirror for me. I saw myself in the intricate layers of father-son relationships, the shades of familial and community acceptance (and rejection), and the nuances of sibling relationships.

But, the real beauty and power of The Little Way…is the compelling twin portraits of Ruthie and St. Francisville, Louisiana. Ruthie was a very full-spirited southern woman. She always manifested a serious, even sacrificial, approach to life. But she also dropped her bra at a Hank Williams Jr. concert, swung it like a lasso, then released it to soar onto the stage (Hank draped it from the neck of his guitar).

In time, Ruthie settled. She became a teacher; “Listen, sweet baby, you can do this,” she pleads with a student. She loved her parents, her husband and daughters, her students, cooking and St. Francisville. She was a true community spark plug. Everyone in town knew and loved her. Ruthie comes right off the pages in full throbbing color.

When Ruthie got sick, the town folded around her like a right hand would grab and hold injured fingers on the left hand. This is one of the most vivid portrayals of community you will ever read.

For example, the town came together for a “Leming-Aid” concert in the park.  Out of 1700 residents, a thousand people came, and they gave $43,000! People were buying ice cream cones with hundred dollar bills.

When Ruthie hit a very bad place, a text message called her daughter Hannah out of class at LSU. Hannah quickly asked a classmate to drive her home (30 miles) in her Jeep. He drove so fast that he blew the radiator. Almost immediately a couple picked them up and drove them straight to the hospital. That night, as the family returned from the hospital, their house had been cleaned, the tables and counters piled high with food, and the Jeep was sitting in the driveway. The radiator had been repaired.

True to the rhythms of community, her open casket sat on the same spot in the church “where she and Mike had stood years earlier and promised to be together until death.”

Ruthie was often barefooted; it was something of a signature. When the pallbearers stepped to the rear of the funeral coach to receive her casket, they were all barefoot, with their suit pants rolled high over their ankles. They carried her “to her grave with the wet green grass of Starhill [Cemetery] between their toes.” When Ruthie’s daughters saw that, they removed their shoes too.

After the funeral, Rod and his family knew – and told some friends –they were returning to St. Francisville. In the little way of small towns, immediately someone told him about a house. He looked at it and took it.

The house was located on Fidelity Street.

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September 16, 1966

5 Comments / Appreciation / By

Today, September 16, is the most frequent birth date in America.

Seriously.

I don’t know why, but I’m sure the Christmas season and alcohol play contributing roles. “Oh, Melanie, Melanie, Melanie, in nine days we will celebrate our Lord’s birth…my grandfather made this moonshine in 1938. He left it to me and I’ve saved it all these years. Let us now begin this season of worship.” Or something like that.

Our first child, Jack Edward, was born on this date in 1966. I can’t remember the Christmas season of 1965, but I do know that alcohol was not involved. As Pentecostals, Joanne and I had not yet discovered those wondrous liquids made from grain and grapes. But having been married just three months, I’m sure we were intoxicated by love.

Whatever the factors that led to conception, Joanne woke me about midnight nine months later, “Honey, it’s time.” Minutes later, I drove my young wife very fast across San Marcos, Texas.

Fathers were not invited into delivery rooms in those days. So about seven hours later Joanne’s aunt Veva, who was a natal nurse, rushed Eddie out to the waiting room. She grinned as she handed him to me. I didn’t understand her joy; Eddie looked like he had been thrown from a speeding car. His head was long and horribly bent. Apparently the doctor had once worked in a sheet metal shop. He used forceps like he was straightening a truck frame. I could visualize the afternoon paper headline: “Tragedy in Texas.” But, in the great mystery of human resiliency, Eddie’s head was just fine by the next day.

I was 19 when he was born. In a very real sense, he and I grew up together. At times, he has seemed like a younger brother. I made so many mistakes with him. But he was always so gentle, sweet, and forgiving. And he still is.

He was a happy child. He often gushed, “I’m just so proud, happy, and glad” as he clapped his hands and grinned. He loved his parents, his grandparents, his brother and sister, and…Johnny Cash. When he was five, we took him to a Cash concert in the Fort Worth Convention Center. Although we had cheap seats, at one point I carried Eddie right down to the stage. I held him as we both gazed up at the Man in Black. Dear God, the man must have been fourteen feet tall.

Eddie never got over that. He has been an unrelenting, unrepentant, Cash fan since that night.

Eighteen years ago, Eddie married his lifelong friend, Myra Roachelle. And they have raised three splendid and beautiful daughters. One of the greatest joys of my life has been watching our firstborn come into full measure as a dad; he fathers his children much different, and much better, than I did.

The Bible says that Samuel grew up “in stature and in favor with God and men.” So did Eddie. Like his brother and sister, Eddie found his life reasons and rhythms beyond this place. He has always been a blessing on society.

So, for this and many other reasons, on this September 16, Joanne and I are just “so proud, happy, and glad” to salute our son on his forth-seventh birthday. Son, we love you and we honor you.

We joyfully celebrate the day of your birth.

September 16, 1966 Read More »

The Artist: a Meditation

1 Comment / Appreciation, Culture, Movie review / By

Besides being wonderfully crafted and thoroughly engrossing, The Artist is a thoughtful meditation on the value of people.

The movie tells the story of a 1920s silent film star, George Valentin, who knows he has value. The applause, big checks, and adoring fans tell him so; doesn’t go any deeper than that. He frolics in the designer pool of his ego, pushing costars away from the waterfall of adoration that cascades over him. Even Valentin’s faithful dog (best movie dog you will see in your lifetime) and his chauffeur have no relational value to him. They are fully functional and expendable.

The same is true of the beautiful girl, Peppy, who literally bumps into Valentin. Ah, another moon whose purpose is to simply reflect his dazzling value.

But a monster of a storm is brewing – a technological one: sound is coming to the movies. One development is going to change everything for an industry; it will swirl new people into the picture and suck others away.

In that tech shift, Valentin suddenly finds himself among the losers. His value drops like a body from a bridge. Broke, unemployed, drunk, and discarded (by his wife and his studio), he is forced to sell his furniture and other possessions (which, by the way, some call “valuables”) and move out to Humbleville.

Have you noticed that life’s crucibles have a way of revealing authentic value? When entire way of living explodes in flames, the first human reaction is to try to save ourselves and preserve the old way. But, eventually, the people, possessions, motivations, and false measurements all get reduced to mere kindling for the blaze. Old (and false) identities, hopes, and values perish in the fire. And then, after time in the grave (could be days or years), on a shimmering new resurrection morning, a new life steps out of the tomb.

In that note, The Artist tells a story we have not seen very often: the redemptive (“buying back”) power of pure love. And Peppy is a character we’ve not often seen. She is beautiful, but her real loveliness is, in words from the Bible, her “hidden person of the heart…the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.”

The Artist is also a discerning look at celebrity. I once asked a young woman who had just become engaged, “Tell me what you most respect about your fiancée.” She twirled her hair, giggled, closed her eyes, giggled some more and said, “Well…” She didn’t seem to know anything about his integrity, faith, family heritage or traditions, sense of purpose, protective instincts, personal dreams or anything else foundational to life. They married and divorced quickly.

Like her, we can’t seem to locate respect for those we adore.

So our celebrity-driven culture splashes exotic intangibles – like cool or awesomeness – on the big screen in our collective head. We don’t define, require, or examine; we applaud, gush, and swoon. Don’t underestimate that power; America elected a President on that. The Artist thoughtfully considers the emptiness of image and the futility of building a life on applause.

Finally, The Artist is a great artistic achievement. In a medium marked by decibels and explosive visuals, The Artist is a splendidly silent and gorgeously black and white movie. It is like walking away from the flash and roar of typical movie entertainment and into a silent and majestic high country meadow.

The Artist dares to present and permit a quiet contemplation of who and what and why we value.

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