"we were happy in Alabama..."

As I sit here and look at images of the utter devastation from the deadly tornadoes in Alabama I am reminded of riding my bicycle in that very area last summer on The 5 Weeks for Freedom bike tour. Birmingham was a destination we all eagerly anticipated at the end of our first week of riding up through Alabama from Mobile. We rode through some of the smallest towns and met and were received by some of the nicest and most genuine people many of us had ever met. Many of our team had never had the enjoyable experience of being on the receiving end of southern hospitality. We were welcomed into peoples churches, homes and hearts. It was a perceptible feeling that is infused into the people of these small towns and easily shared with us as we rode north. Jackson...Linden...Moundville...Vestavia Hills...Pleasant Grove...Birmingham...and all the other small towns between. We became part of your stories and you became part of ours. I remember well...every road...every smell...the light rain coming into Jackson. I remember trying to introduce my teammates to boiled peanuts at one of our many rest stops at gas stations. I remember the prayers prayed over us both for our safety and for the cause of human trafficking which we were riding for. I remember the beautiful soft southern accents as people engaged us in conversation and time after time asked us “you ridin' to where?...New York...sure nuff?”. I remember the incredible hospitality of the people of Moundville and how they came together across denominational lines to hear our message and give generously to our cause. It was a powerful witness to many of our team to see so many people they have never met receive them so lovingly and complete. But..that's the south...and the people of Alabama that I am well familiar with. I have had a long history with Alabama and I lived there as a child while my father was in the Army. Many years later I lived in Montgomery when I worked there as a nurse and in fact, my son was born there. I quite jokingly told my wife I wanted to name him Jefferson Davis. Seriously...just kidding. The thing that the bike team really got to enjoy and was very important to continued riding was...southern cooking. Every church in every town went above and beyond in feeding the team. When you ride bikes all day under the hot Alabama sun you can put away some food at the end of the day. I am pretty sure that some of the team from the north got totally addicted to southern sweet tea. People in the south LOVE to cook and they love to feed people and I can assure you we were fed. I often joked that we were going to have the only bike ride to ever gain weight. I must say that the First Baptist Church at Pleasant Grove was totally over the top on food. As it was the fourth of July weekend they had an old fashioned picnic with so much food it was unbelievable. The icing on the cake there was that several men from the church stayed up all night cooking pork on an outdoor smoker for the food of heaven...pulled pork barbeque. Where we were staying at the church we had to smell that pork cooking all night long. It was amazing. Even with all these memories flooding over me making me smile...I am so sad for my friends and those I don't even know who has suffered loss from this extreme weather. I look at the pictures on the news and it just looks surreal and I am sure that the people there feel the same way. The one thing I do know is that these people are resilient and will recover. It's in their blood...their DNA. They are survivors and have come from a long line of survivors. Many of their grand and great grandparents lived through the civil war. Many of these people had relatives that suffered under the cruel system of slavery...escaping against tremendous odds on the Underground Railroad. This is the exact reason we were riding our bikes on a route approximating that same escape route to the north and freedom. So, seeing this devastation in places we rode through and where people reached out to us in a powerful way...hurts. I don't know why...I can only pray. That's all I can do...just pray. There are no answers so why bother trying to figure it out. As I said in my previous blog, this is the sole realm of a all knowing God. I would never even pretend to speak to this one. It is overwhelming and horrific and tragic and our normal thing is to ask...this is what we do...we ask. I ask too...but not why. I just ask that God will give peace and help those affected to stand firm in their faith and not be moved. Anything else is none of my business...right?

to know the impossible...

I have pretty much decided that there just are some things that no matter how hard you try you will never know. We are constantly surrounded with mystery and secrets only known to God...and He's not telling. He's not even giving us a clue and that is maddening to many of us. We have this sometimes overwhelming desire...compulsion...to know everything about everything. Back in the day it was a lot harder to know stuff and have instantaneous answers to even the most inane question. Thankfully for most of us we now have Google and a world of answers is at our fingertips. However these aren't really the deep and troubling questions that most of us frequently ponder and wrestle with. We seek answers to even more complex mysteries of faith and peoples erratic behaviors. There have been innumerable volumes written down through the ages from the most dense intellectual treatises to infomercial style self help books to provide answers for challenging questions. The desire to know is the desire to control...and the desire to control is a faith issue. Sometimes I just have to let go and trust that God really does know the answer and has a much more enlarged view of the thing I am struggling to know. I must admit I do have this fantasy of meeting Jesus face to face and asking a few questions that have been bugging me for a long time. “So, Jesus...uh...I have just been wondering about...” Yeah right...There are surely things that God, in His infinite wisdom, just doesn't want us to know. Do you feel sometimes that you just have this one personal or generic question you want answered? I do. I have a big one...pretty personal. I have often wondered what could my dad have possibly been thinking as he sat alone...in darkness...in isolation...and pulled the trigger and ended his life. What overpowering internal chatter must have been going on that night in his head. Maybe it was that chatter speaking loudly to him...to give up. Clearly it spoke louder than any other voice competing for attention. The harsh reality of suicide is that it is one senseless act that many of us have been affected by and we just cannot understand. Well, you cannot understand it until you find yourself in a similar position staring helplessly into the deep abyss of depression and loss. It is a lie from deep in the pit of hell that ending ones life is ever a good or logical solution to anything. It is totally illogical because the thought processes of your brain have been so rearranged that killing yourself feels ok and seems like a good idea at the time. With something so utterly personal there always is so many more questions that in all likelihood will never be answered...but still we ask. “Why would a dad want to leave a son?”...That's a big one...Maybe there is no reason at all...maybe that isn't even a factor ever considered. But the fact is you are abandoned and that affects everything you do...every relationship...for all your life. It just feels like so many times that a lot of things would have been different if I just could have one simple answer. It always reminds me that God knows and I don't...or ever will. How would our lives change if we knew the answers to these difficult and tough questions? I honestly don't think God ever meant for us to know or will allow us to. That's why we got kicked out of the garden in the first place. God knew that if we became as smart and all knowing as Him then we would have no need for Him. If the creation was on par with the creator then we lose our sense of awe and understanding we exist for the divine purposes of the creator. To rise above that and relegate God to an inferior position is what many of us have done by abandoning faith and endlessly seeking answers to unanswerable questions. Our time would certainly be better spent seeking a closer relationship with God and therein lies the paradox. That paradox is the closer we are to God and the more dependent we are on Him the less important it becomes to know the unanswerable things in our lives. It's called faith. The more we let go and allow our faith to strengthen and grow the less important it become for us to control ourselves and our world by being a know-it-all. Resignation and acceptance is a very hard thing for us incorporate into our daily lives. I have struggled with this and it always feels like I am giving up...but giving up what? Seriously, God doesn't need my help...input...or assistance with any pressing personal or world issues. My only hope is that He is humored that I still sometimes want to help Him do his job. I am sure He literally has thousands of consultants and could do fine with one less. We try to go out of our way to make the questions both profound and compelling and I am so sure He is totally humored by that...a lot. However, even the fact I know all of this... it doesn't seem to quench my thirst to understand and know things that God just will never share with me. If it stands in the way of my faith and belief that God knows what is best for me well then perhaps I will never know...it's ok...I still have a piece of that first apple stuck in my throat...

On Turning Ten...

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins

changing weather...changing minds

Growing up in the Ohio river valley for most of my life there is one thing I know about the weather during the Easter season here...it can be very changeable and dangerous. As a matter of fact Palm Sunday has historically been the day of some of the worst tornado outbreaks in history. There were devastating killer tornado outbreaks on Palm Sundays in 1920, 1965, and 1994 and this Palm Sunday 2011. The temperature swings can be extreme and can vary as much as 40 degrees in 12 hours. It's called unpredictable...changeable... Ohio River valley spring and if you live here you just get used to it. So, why am I telling you all this? Where am I going with this, you probably are wondering, right? Admittedly, this is a big jump here...so bear with me. I got to thinking about how things can be so completely changeable in a short period of time...things other that the weather...things like peoples attitudes and opinions and affections. In light of thinking and reflecting about the essence of Palm Sunday and what it represents in the historical Christian tradition I see some small bit of analogy here. On the Sunday before the resurrection of the crucified Christ...just seven days previous... there was joyous celebration in the air...excitement...and expectancy as the King of the Jews rode into Jerusalem. People lined the road and crowds gathered and many jockeyed for a position in order to get a better view. As told in Matthew 21,

“And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.”

As with everything Jesus did there was much symbolism embedded into this very act of riding into Jerusalem. Even the unlikely choice of riding in on a lowly donkey was a subliminal message to those who understood these things. In this time it was customary to honor someone worthy of the highest respect by covering their path they were traveling with palm leaves and sometimes their garments. This day was no different as people laying their palm fronds created a green leafy carpet for every step of the donkeys foot. Actually the very act of riding a donkey was controversial as Jesus never rode anywhere. Additionally, this was considered a mission of peace as opposed to riding a horse which would be considered warlike. The ever increasing crowd was going wild...singing...shouting...cheering. Hosanna...Hosanna...Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. And then...in the period of 5 short days...the weather radically changed in Jerusalem. Dark heavy clouds gathered on the horizon signaling an upcoming storm that was about to change everything...forever. The adoring crowd has now become an angry mob. Their fickle affections had now turned to a murderous rage. The exact same people who were welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem days ago were not calling for Him to be killed. KILL HIM ! ...replaced Hosanna...every imaginable gesture of distain and hatred replaced the raised hands of adoration only days before. Cursing... beating... spitting... was what greeted the King now. How unimaginable that the tide of public opinion and welcoming acceptance would shift so violently and unexpectedly in a few short days. As they say...the weather took a dramatic turn...and was about to get worse...

True Love...

True Love

by Robert Penn Warren

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.