Taken by the music and the smiles

I was taken by the smiles.  

We had gathered at the Norfolk Music Center in Norfolk, Connecticut; disparate threads to be woven into a tapestry of celebration by the shared affection for two friends who were exchanging vows and rings.  Having travelled from New York and D.C., California and Oregon, Iowa and Canada and Turkey (just to name the ones I know about), convened by their love in this magnificent setting, we shared meals, cottages, a mansion, and a stage.  All that, plus of course common cause.  

And so we rehearsed -- first for the wedding and then for the celebratory concert that would follow it.  The former was easy compared to the latter, though emotions might have run higher practicing the procession and the vows even if the kiss came effortlessly enough.  For the concert there was the orchestra run through, followed by a second run through with the soloists, and always the sound checks and tweaks and maneuvering of the mics. There were cues and corrections and suggestions and replays.  There was glorious music, and laughter, hard work, and always those smiles...

...as if we were having a ball.  I certainly can't speak for everybody, and it's always dangerously presumptuous to generalize from one's own experience, but I think I'm safe to say it:  we were.  Hard work?  Yes.  Important?  Breathtakingly so.  Exhilarating, inspiring, soaringly beautiful?  Absolutely. Fun?  Faces don't light up that way for any other reason.

But here is the wonder.  The officiant notwithstanding, the people assembled on that stage were stars -- Grammy award winners, YouTube sensations, chart-topping recording artists, leads from Broadway, London, the Met; veterans of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Presidential Galas, movie soundtracks and more; vocalists, instrumentalists, tap dancers, composers, arrangers and a groom/conductor.  Yet there was a selfless collegiality that transcended the individual star power.  There was playful banter.  Breaks were filled with laughter.  And when the songs were being played, delight was in the faces.  The grins were everywhere as they played.  Soloists took their spotlight moments, and then effortlessly receded into harmony role or backup chorus as another took the lead.  No assemblage of peacocks, this was an artful community manifesting the homily's message that we need each other.  From the tinkling wind chimes to the piercing trumpet, from the lush strings to the haunting flute, the tapping feet to the Hammond B3, from the rhythm of the drums to the intoxicating voices, we need each other.  In this case we could hardly get enough of each other.

And as evidenced Saturday night, when we give the gifts we bring...

...we make music.  Goose-pimpling music.

And I suppose we just can't help it:  we smile.

Especially me.

Ride on Buckaroo

I've always been drawn to September.  Whatever the distinctive allures of the summer months, their overriding heat has long since leaned me longingly toward September’s moderating mercury.  Even as an adult, long out of the classroom, the resumption of school bells feels like an inner pitch fork recalibrating life back into tune.  All that, plus two marital births for which I am eternally grateful – my parents', on the 12^th, and my own, on the 20^th. 

And then, of course, there is my actual birthing – 59 years ago today.  Never mind the more recent negative connotations thrust upon September 11, I prefer not to associate my birthday with terrorism but with the raindrop’s  unspeakable gratitude for the privilege of joining the ocean.  While certain theological perspectives might take a different view, in a purely existential sense it is better to be than not.  So, here I continue to be – a sentient, reasonably intelligent, lovingly related, essentially healthy, purposefully and productively occupied and profoundly happy guy. 

It has been a pivotal decade, these 50’s now entering their final lap.  Raucously begun in a rented hall surrounded by family and friends and the celebratory music we exuberantly made, its midsection was marked by a vocational shift from preaching to farming, accompanied by a functional shift from work for which I had been technically trained and had practiced for decades to work about which I knew absolutely nothing, and the requisite residential shift from a townhouse in the city to 10-acres in the country.  Here, with my ear to the ground to listen for what the soil might teach me, I have toiled along with seeds and weeds, deep breaths and wide curiosities, chicken coops and the still-surprising harvests – cumulatively negating the reality of less money with the experience of greater wealth. 

All that, plus the intuitive sense that, as with our previous endeavors,  we are scratching around out here on something that is important.

Which is to say that I am blessed beyond merit and measure.  I am confessionally confident that I too-seldom inventory and acknowledge the real gifts that are my blessing’s raw materials – nurturing parents, a bolstering brother, a loving and sustaining wife, forgiving and inspiring kids, buoying mentors and colleagues and friends – but I am determined to get better at that.

In the meantime there is good work to do – seeds to sort, tomatoes to pick, compost to turn, chickens to feed and eggs to gather…

…59 years to celebrate and remember…

…and life still yet to live.

Happy birthday, me.  Blow out the candles and then giddy up, buckaroo.  Get back out on the trail.  Time's wasting and there are miles to ride before you sleep.

A Dread, A Date, And the Luckiest Guy Alive

I haven't a clue why she agreed to the date.  She was busy with a new and politically unpopular job that would demand all of her considerable skill and winsomeness.  That, and she was weary of "relationships" from which she had only recently disentangled herself.  She was strong, independent, stepping onto the playing field for which she had spent a lifetime preparing.  Her plate was full.

But this friend kept pushing her. 

And this guy kept calling her. 

I wasn't trying to be pushy.  In fact, I had my own practical and emotional resistance -- teenage kids, a consuming job of my own, and relational baggage.  For perhaps the first time in my life I was beginning to live on my own with some sense of peace and stable center of gravity -- becoming a "self" in a way that I hadn't before understood the need for, with much more work to do.

But I, too, had this friend pushing me.  The same mutual friend who worked with her, and that friend's husband who worked with me.  And so I called, if for no other reason than to satisfy the obligation.  But she never answered.  I tried multiple days, at multiple times but without success.  Eventually, I left a timidly flimsy message with a call-back number I had every reason to believe she would never use, and turned my thoughts to other things.

And then the phone rang. 

We had a nice chat.  We made an obligatory date for dinner after mutually and forthrightly -- and quite verbally -- reducing the expectations to zero.  The day eventually arrived and I rang her doorbell -- exactly 19 years ago today.  August 31.  I haven't a single recollection about the food, but it was a good dinner; one that would prove transformative.  I remember calling my brother the next day and confessing with cautious dread , "I've had a better date than I really wanted to be having at this point in my life."

The rest, as often noted, is history.  We now share a doorbell -- and almost 18 years of marriage.  We have matured, moved to one house and now a farm; we have aged a little, and grown.  The best part, of course, is that we have grown together, into each others keeping.  We flesh out mutual values, nurture shared dreams, and supportively encourage respective ones.  We laugh a lot, dab occasional tears, sooth frustrations and sort out challenges as best we can.  We don't always get it right, but determinedly carve out the space to repair what goes wrong.  We talk.  We listen.  We roll up our sleeves and work up a sweat, doing what we can to feed and flex the things that make for life. 

And tonight we will return to that same restaurant as we have through the years, and I will gaze into those same sparkling eyes and feel giddy all over again.  Like I do everyday.  Lovesick, proud and humbled all at the same time.  And it will strike me all over again how grateful I am to those persistent friends for nudging me into becoming the most fortunate guy on the planet. 

Happy First Date Anniversary, Sweetheart.  I have loved these years; love even more the prospect of those to come. 

But before dinner, don't we have some weeding to do in the garden?

Familiar Faces -- Along With A Few We Had To Think About

“Do you remember the time…?” He asked.
“No," I replied, "that doesn’t ring a bell.  But surely you remember,” I continued.

“No,” he said with puzzlement in his voice. “I don’t recall.”

And so it went throughout the weekend, memories broadcast on different frequencies with occasional but blessed intersections, reassembling a composite narrative that depended on our respective scraps. We had gathered in our hometown for our 40th high school reunion – reconvened from all manner of far-flung locales and as near as the other side of town. For some it was a congregation of familiar and routine faces; for others of us it was a test of time and imagination to see who we could recognize. I had prepared – passing the flight time with my senior yearbook in my lap, flipping the pages and studying faces and marveling over the litany of names I had long-since forgotten.

I needn’t have bothered, though the silent reminiscences were warming. We all spent the evenings stealing furtive glances at the name tags emblazoned with our names and 40-years younger faces. We were all in the same boat and half the fun was identification. For some it was no challenge at all – as if time had frozen and they were just stepping out of the gym from the pep rally. Others required more scrutiny and veiled disbelief. Time, we have always known, doesn’t handle us with an equal hand but sometimes the truth of it can be startling; time and, of course, experience. Some of our roads along the miles since moving our tassels have been pot-holed and twisting while others have been scenic and smooth. Griefs have etched more than a few faces. Disappointments and dicier choices had left their marks as well. We asked about parents and children and more than a few grandchildren. We wondered about those who were missing, and grieved those who will never be with us again. We remembered teachers (reconnecting with a couple of treasured ones) and milestones and mischiefs and moments; we traced the lines of social boundaries to which we once adhered, and opted to step over more than a few. We scanned the room for loves lost and won, and we caught up with stories written since.

But mostly we willingly and warmly offered ourselves again into each other’s keeping, giving thanks through the stories and hours and appetizers and blaring songs of the DJ for that magically formative season 40 years ago and more that first introduced us to each other in the hallways and classrooms and extra-curriculars of Cooper High School and forged us into the “Class of ’75”.

In case I didn’t say it often enough, or loud enough for all to hear, it was good to see you. It was, to be more fully transparent, a joy. You folks have been some of the most important people of my life, and I am grateful – for the times back then and the hours this weekend. No telling how smart and good looking and totally recognizable we’ll all be at our 50th.

Stay well.

Keep in touch.

Happy Birthday, Mother

Today is my mother's birthday.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I lose track of the exact number, but it probably won't hurt her feelings for that piece of data to go unmentioned anyway.  Let's just say that she is older than me...by a couple of decades or so...and leave it at that.

Born and reared in New Mexico, she found her way to Texas in pursuit of a Christian Education degree from T.C.U.  It was there that she met a slightly older seminarian whom she married, and with whom she launched into a life together and a companionable ministry of her own.  While he spent time in the pulpit, she spent time in all those classic ways -- in the choir loft, at the organ bench, in the Sunday School classroom and ginning up the Women's Fellowship.

Somehow they found the time to start a family which, as she later acknowledged, she considered to be her primary vocation.  I was her second and final round in the maternity ward, my brother preceding me by a couple of years.  She might have preferred a daughter along the way, but she never intimated that we were anything but the answer to her dreams.  Besides, she had prior experience with boys -- growing up as she did with both an older and a younger brother.  So she was prepared for testosterone, and made the best of  it, although it hasn't hurt our standing that in addition to attentive daughters-in-law and a couple of cherished grandsons, both of us have offered up granddaughters to fill the feminine void.

But as I say, if we two sons hadn't been her first choice no one in the universe could have known it. Never  have there been two more adored boys, from childhood through adulthood.  We could do no wrong, even though we often have.

She was our first piano teacher, sitting us down at the keyboard around the second day after we were discharged from the maternity ward.
Right after we got home from Sunday School.
If we weren't the most attentive students, it should cast no shadow on her teaching.  We simply had other things we thought we needed to be doing.

Nonetheless she was a happy meeting of firmness and indulgence.  She set the kitchen timer on the piano and insisted that we practice until it rang, and pretended not to notice when we advanced the needle on the dial to abbreviate the torture.  Long after she handed us off to more "professional" teachers, she insisted that we practice and play the "serious" music we were assigned, while also promising to buy us any popular sheet music we wanted to learn.

That's been pretty much the story:  tough and tender, inseparably intertwined.  Our strictest overseer; our biggest cheerleader, encouragement, publicist and support -- through heartsong and heartbreak; through aspiration and humiliation; through accolades and disappointments, contentments and unsettlements she has been there to nudge, console, embrace and celebrate.

She might move a little slower these days than in some previous years, but her heart still beats as adoringly and warm, and she has never put down her maternal megaphone.  She is still close by in the bleachers, cheering us all on, enjoying our little victories even more than we do.  How great is that!

So today we'll do a little celebrating on her behalf -- in thanks for her birth, in thanks for those to whom she has given birth, and for all the many and vivid ways she bears witness to the image of God alive and well among us.

Happy Birthday, Mother!

Peace, and the Powerful Legacy of Hope

We had been out of touch for a few years.  My life had taken me in a different direction and, depending on the week or the month, his life had taken him in new directions...or not.  With some degree of shame I admit that perhaps more instrumental in my psychological remove than simply moving to a different constellation of communities, and unlike many of my friends and former co-workers, I had simply worn out.  Gary -- let's just say this at the outset -- could be both exhilarating and exhausting, encouraging and disappointing in often wearying juxtaposition.  And then yesterday we buried him. 

At 56 years of age.  Again, however, let's agree that however many years have literally elapsed since he came into this world, his body was some number of years older than that.  Lifestyle issues had almost certainly levied a tax on his system; who can really be completely surprised that the bill finally came due and his heart simply gave out? 

Well, I suppose we were all surprised.  Gary, after all, had played the phoenix so many times before.  However much his booming, resonant voice was his calling card, his real art was rising from the ashes -- determinedly pulling himself up by his fingernails and force of will every time those ashes had claimed him once again.  "Pulling himself up", that is, along with the help and encouragement and advocacy of friends.  There was, to be sure, a large and ever morphing circle of strength that tenaciously pulled for Gary.  Like migrating geese that constantly change positions to relieve the one flying in the point position, new faces constantly cycled into seasons of advocacy when others of us fell back from compassion fatigue.  There were, of course, constants in his life who refused to give him up to his own bad choices -- families by choice, if not by blood, who never closed their door -- but there were more veterans than soldiers in the war to save Gary.

And now that the war is over -- an armistice arranged by death rather than defeat -- it's hard to know what to think, let alone feel.  There is sadness, to be sure; disappointment, a bit of latent guilt, and, if I am honest, something gnawing around the edges of my soul that smells a bit like anger or more likely exasperated frustration.  Neither Gary nor the circle of support arrayed around him could finally pull it off. 

I don't mean to suggest resentment.  Once, years ago, in one of those initial forays in pursuit of some legal redemption, we approached a public figure of some influence for some kind of support and, after hearing the summary of Gary's story, asked, "How many second chances does someone get?"  From my reading of scripture I think the answer is, "However many someone needs."  I regret none of our efforts, nor resent none of their ultimate futility.

No, it's neither resentment nor regret.  Perhaps what I feel has more to do with existential bewilderment.  Never have I known a person with more extravagant gifts.  Gary possessed the kind of voice that shower singers like me only dream about and routinely pay large ticket prices to hear.  He had been well-reared by devoted parents, well-trained by the world's best teachers, and well-introduced to some of the most prestigious stages and most discerning audiences in the world.  And his talent was up for the challenge.  Unfortunately, the rest of him wasn't always that prepared.  And then after his great fall and our providential introduction, Gary's innate giftedness was augmented by the circle of hands determined to hold him up and, as was repeatedly necessary, pull him back up.  God had equipped this instrument with all the assets one should need to soar and yet Gary could never stay in flight for very long. 

All Gary wanted to do was sing, but circumstances were such that he spent as much or more of his time groveling. 

What do I make of that?  Is Gary simply a poster child for the ultimate place of "free-will" -- that no matter how fully and richly God wants and equips a person to succeed, God will not finally do for that person what he will not do for himself -- or is Gary's story simply a testament to the tragic power of addiction?  I am neither a good enough theologian nor an experienced enough social worker to have the answer.

I only know, as I told a friend who spoke at the funeral, that it is somehow appropriate that Gary died cradled in the space midway between Advent's Sundays of Hope and Peace.  Despite all of his ups and downs he never lost the former; and now, by the grace of this God of second chances, he has finally found the latter.

Blessings, my big and beautiful and complicated friend.  Life in your company has been a cherished, and I suppose "appropriately operatic", duet.  Thanks for singing, and teaching us all something about aspirational determination, and the power of hope. 

Peace.

Less the Data Than the Life

Lori and I write Christmas letters.  I know that not everyone thinks that’s a useful practice.  They can sound grandiose and braggadocios.  They can read like saccharine.  All that, plus the tendency of such epistles to over-assess the reader’s interest in the minutiae of the writer’s life.  If we really wanted to know the intricacies of someone’s everyday life – paper or plastic, one-ply or two, gel or paste, the current odometer reading -- we could simply read Facebook.

I understand all that.  But still we write the letters.  In our defense, we try our best to capture some essence of the forest of our year rather than naming every tree.  We keep it to one page.  This year's narrative will almost certainly make note of Lori's retirement in June and the addition of chickens to our little homestead in March.  Readers might detect a note of smugness when we report how many elements of our Thanksgiving Dinner came out of our garden and coop, but the availability of such foodstuffs is as much an occasion for surprise as gratitude.  The letter will, in other words, include a few details.  But we assume that any interest by our friends has less to do with our calendars than our growth and well-being and try to write with that editorial eye and ear.  Essentially we try our best to write a letter that we would want to read.

In truth, though, I suspect we would write the letter even if we never mailed it out.  A Christmas letter is simply the mechanism we have adopted for reflecting on our lives.  Who have we been this year?  Where have we grown?  What have we attempted; to what have we aspired?  What has moved us deeply?  What have we set aside; what have we moved beyond?  The Christmas letter has become for us a kind of annual physical for our marital soul – our inside version of the question Ralph Waldo Emerson reportedly posed to his friend Henry David Thoreau after a long separation, “what has become clearer to you since last we met?”  Or, otherwise phrased, “what have you learned…?”

What have we learned in the course of this year?  What has become clearer? 

Today is the day we’ll be sitting down over a cup of hot tea in the company of each other and something of those searching questions.  Maybe a few of their answers will find their way into a letter. It could be that someone actually reads it.  But whatever words ultimately find their way polished and on the page, the point will not simply be a letter that has been written.  The point will be a year gratefully lived; one, we trust, will end up piquing our curiosity about the next one beginning just around the corner.