Ordinary, Extraordinary

Not wanting to belabor just how ordinary I am (I doth protest too much, no doubt), but I'm not done.  Earlier this week, we finished the BBC Jane Eyre (1983).  There is a scene near the end of the story where the indomitable St. John is attempting to persuade Jane to join him on the mission field of India as his wife.  Not for love, but for service.  While the movie is superb, the book is sublime and highly recommended.  This from chapter 34 which was included almost verbatim in the movie:

"Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June."

"God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work," I answered.

"Yes," said he, "there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,--to join in the same enterprise."

"All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong."

"I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it."

"Those are few in number, and difficult to discover."

"You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up--to urge and exhort them to the effort--to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given--to speak Heaven's message in their ear,--to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen."

"If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?"

I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell.

"And what does YOUR heart say?" demanded St. John.

"My heart is mute,--my heart is mute," I answered, struck and thrilled.

I cannot count all the times I have heard similar messages in my years within the Church.  Though often stirred by such appeals, there has never been a time where I felt that my own heart was receiving a call to trek to some distant land as a messenger of Good News.  

And subsequently feeling, of course, that I was a substandard Christian for not having the slightest desire to leave the comforts of America for a foreign culture.

When it comes to the missions call, my heart is mute.  Some would say that the need exists is call enough.  Yet, I know within the bounds of my own neighborhood are as many untouched by the Truth in Scripture as any thousands of miles away.  God will reveal in His own time whether I have deceived myself out of fear or if truly the call is a unique, personal, and fit for only a few...

Ordinary Me

The concept of ‘finding oneself’ is, I suppose, plausible enough for someone so deluged by expectations of who they 'ought' to be in their formative years that they arrive at adulthood hopelessly muddled.  I, on the other hand, am well past my formative years and have had sufficient time to distinguish between the ‘me’ I am and the ‘me’ others see.  And there is the rub.  Having “found” myself quite some time ago, I have not fully accepted what I teach my children: that God made me who I am.  On purpose.  For a purpose.  An astounding number of 'Christian' books in the 'self-help' genre fill the 'Spirituality' section of Barnes & Noble.  My suspicion is that most are consumed by people who, like myself, have discovered 'me' and want to be 'not me'.  Perhaps not entirely transformed, but certainly, like plastic surgery, we yearn for a nip there and a tuck here in our personhood to make us more and less of who we are.  

I need here to distinguish between character and personality.  Character is what I do to abide by timeless moral principles, personality is how I reflect the inclinations and aptitudes that are somewhat hardwired, somewhat shaped by experience.  It is admirable to seek to improve character, a task that is never finished.  On the other hand, to try to remake a sparrow into an eagle is an exercise in despair.

My personality is marked by introversion, brooding thoughts, a preference for solitude to crowds, procrastination, a dread of meeting strangers, and can endure long conversations with only a very, very few choice people.  (You know who you are).  I would rather read than do just about anything else.  I enjoy my day job, which consists primarily of determining how to make data flowing through the circuitry of our corporate information systems more accurate and timely.  It is an enterprise both profoundly perplexing and profoundly dull to many and I have long since given up trying to explain exactly what it is I do to earn my bread.

So, is this all that God intended when He was assembling me, this ordinary life?  Because in the bulk of my experience as a Christian, I have given lots of lip service to the idea that God's love is not based on what I do, while at the same time admiring the spiritual achievements of others and feeling that 'ordinary' just doesn't measure up.  I want to be numbered with the wise, mighty and noble, rather than the foolish, weak, and lowly.

This dilemma was captured well in a recent World Magazine article.  Given the response to the article, I am relieved to find that I am not the only ordinary person in Christendom.

It's A Man Thing

After years of being the lone male in the household, I now have the pleasure of regular manly company with the frequent visits of my son-law and grandson (along with my daughter and granddaughter, of course).

Having been a boy once, but never having the experience of raising a boy, I am finding out some splendid things by having my grandson over so frequently.  One is that we 'get' each other in a primal way.  That is, we understand the pleasure of simplicity that often eludes encounters with the opposite sex.  Let me say right off that the complexity of femininity is not something I want to give up, it is just that guys relate at a different level.  Perhaps 'relate' is too strong a word.  That implies some purposeful interaction.  Male bonding is more like awareness or co-existance.  Especially if we have eaten recently. Why disrupt peaceful digestion?  Although my son-in-law and I will occasionally use post meal time to solve all the world's problems, as men often do in their spare time.  If only we were in charge...

At long last,
we have conquered
the 'monster'.

While Charles could spend all his time at our house under the smothering attention his bigger sister enjoys from the aunties, he has shown a marked preference for hanging out with Grandpa.  As soon as he darkens the door, he toddles my way on his less-than-2-year-old legs with his arms held up in an unmistakable request.  And I like this.  Because, you see, when I am with Charles, I don't have to keep up with the limitless capacity for banter that my daughters and grand-daughter exhibit.  Charles and I are both quite satisfied with the grunt-and-point method of communication.  Most of the time, we just walk around looking at stuff in the house or the yard: pictures, plants, the cats.  Occasionally we spend time on the play set going down the slide or swinging.  Or, we may kick or toss a ball around.  Or, most recently, ride the vacuum.

Now the aunties frequently swing by and offer to take Charles off my hands.  As they have been - and still are - the target of much parenting in these  formative years, they are eager to test-drive their own child management skills.  However, Charles almost always refuses to budge.  Which, quite naturally, warms my proud grandpa heart.  Because, you see, this is unforced affection.  No 'give Grandpa a hug' coaching necessary.  He just likes me.  Maybe because I have tamed the vacuum cleaner, but there is no way to know.  One thing is certain.  I am going to enjoy each moment.

The Odd Life of Every Family

Friday night movies at our house have been dominated for several months by history, starting with the Civil War and moving slowly forward.  We decided at the beginning of the school year to do this for two reasons: First, not nearly enough good movies crawl out of the Hollywood swamp to supply a new movie every week (astounding considering over 700 movies were rated and released in 2012); secondly, we have watched most of the content in our small library numerous times.  This semi-educational approach allowed us to set expectations that movies can be more than simply 'entertaining'.  Of course, most history headlines are full of conflict, so among our choices are Gettysburg, Gone With The Wind, All Quiet On The Western Front, War Horse, and A Bridge Too Far (the latter being a bit intense for the younger set).  

Naturally, Dad could thrive on this serious weekly war diet.  The rest of the family, not so well.  In the search for a true family movie, last week we found a gem: The Odd Life Of Timothy Green.  In fact, we enjoyed it so much we watched it again this week with our extended family.  An excellent review is here.  There are other reviews that snipe at the movie for being 'unbelievable' or 'smarmy' or 'simplistic'.  I suspect these same reviewers have long since forgotten childhood or harbor some resentment about their own family life.  To vastly oversimplify the reaction to the movie in our home, the parents loved it for the parenting angle while the girls loved it because Timothy Green is an endearing kid.

So many realities about family life were captured in The Odd Life Of Timothy Green.

• The searing pain of childlessness.
• Learning to love your child for who they are.
• Enduring comparisons, by yourself and others, of your child, your parenting, your metrics for 'success' to those who are seemingly doing it better.
• The disappointment of crushed expectations.
• How parenting raises the specter of the gaps in your relationship with your own parents.
• Facing your inadequacy to be what your child needs most of the time.
• The unique opportunity for love that we call adoption.

Leo Tolstoy opens the great novel Anne Karenina with this famous line: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  It seems to me that is the essence of what 'Timothy Green' captures.  There is no end to the number of ways that families can mess up and find unhappiness and bitterness.  But as TOLOTG shows, those same moments are an opportunity for applying the simple ingredients that make happy families alike: to love, to forgive, to never give up.

The movie uses as a thematic wrapper the mom and dad explaining to adoption authorities why they should be allowed to adopt.  In doing so, they are telling the story of Timothy Green, his impact on them and their efforts to be good parents.  At one point, the barely credulous official asks, "So, what would you do differently?"

"We would make better mistakes," was the answer.

That is the essence of parenting.  In all the accumulated experience of raising multiple children by God's grace, my progress as a parent is best summed up by this ambition: that I will make better mistakes.  And, perhaps I should add the hope that our little miracles will become all they are meant to be, in spite of our best efforts.  

An Inconvenient Death

One of the reasons I ride the train is that it is reliable.  It almost always runs on time.  In a given year, there might be a couple of delays.  Impressively, mechanical failure of the train is rare.  Typically during the winter, we get one bad storm that leaves so much water in the low-laying areas that the train has to be cancelled or run at precautionary speeds.  The other reason for delay is death on the tracks.  Several times during my years as a passenger, trains have been delayed by collisions with people.  The people always lose.  I have been on a train when a person was struck.  So has my wife.  It is usually not an accident.  What despair could cause a person to throw themselves in front of a multi-ton locomotive hurtling along the railway at 60 miles per hour?

The train I ride from work was delayed last week by a death at another station further north.  What was most troublesome was the callous tone of the remarks I heard among other passengers.  One would think the person died specifically to disrupt their day.  

“Serves them right for being drunk near the tracks.” 

“They could have picked another train.”

In this case, it appeared to be an accident, although we will never know.  I was left to wonder what internal mechanism people use to value one life over another.  Why is it that when a total stranger dies all the way across the country in a horrific explosion, we empathize, but if the death of total stranger a few miles away disrupts our schedule, it is annoying?

Blogger Interrupted

Our family, up until a month ago, shared two computers and I had my very own delightful little 11.6” MacBook Air.  It is an ideal portable writing station that I could use at home or on the train.  Then, the 6 ½ year old MacBook shared by the younger girls developed a serious problem: restarting all by itself after about 10 minutes of use.  I checked out the symptoms and was able to repeat it by logging into a Flash-heavy web site.  The fan kicked on and shortly thereafter the computer restarted.  Not a good sign.  Now, I could have dropped more money and time into the old machine. But the short-term fix was to pull the hard drive, copy the data onto another external drive, and pass “my” laptop on to the girls - at least until the end of the school year.  So, I am back to the same place I was before I started blogging: using a work laptop and a flash drive as my writing tools.  I could go on about the things I miss about the Air, but this is doable.  No more excuses.

March Madness

Nearly every March for a decade or more, I indulge in a sports activity with a long-time friend.  Like the NCAA tournament, it does include a ball, but our game uses one of the 12 to 16-pound variety with finger holes in it.  We go bowling.  Alex and I have known each other since he was fourteen.  He turned 37 this year, but the Alex I know is essentially unchanged from what I suspect he was like at eight or ten.  He has simple thoughts, simple interests.  I don't know what his malady is, other than he seems to have been blessed with a dip in the fountain of Eternal Youth.  Alex is physically growing older, but he will never grow up.  Alex is one of the most cheerful people I know.

I met Alex when he showed up at a youth function at the church I was attending.  I was one of the adult volunteers.  That night, Alex was eager to demonstrate his knack for shooting a basketball from half-court.  Alex did not then or now have the coordination to play competitive basketball, but he had the unique ability to lob in half-court shots more often than anyone else I knew.  Alex and his mother began faithfully attending church.  I would often give him a ride to youth functions where Alex would make time for us to try half-court shots.  For a few years, his life was a simple routine of school and church.  Somewhere along the way, I found out when his birthday was and that bowling was his favorite past-time.  With my brilliant grasp of the obvious, I decided to take Alex bowling for his birthday one year.  Before I met him, Alex bowled regularly and would rack up close to 200 points a game the first few times we went.  My scores were less noteworthy.

A couple of years after he graduated from high school -- although I am not sure what his graduation meant, exactly -- we moved to another town and began attending another church.  Rather than let distance be an obstacle, Alex would call every so often to check up on me and tell me how people we both knew were doing.  He would also tell me about his struggles at work.  There are many programs for limited-ability adults to gain employment, but the complexities of pleasing managers and coworkers often stumped Alex who didn't understand why people weren't always nice.  Over the years, a pattern developed.  I might not hear from Alex for months, or even all year.  But without fail, sometime in the middle of February, the call would come.  Alex would never ask me directly to do anything, but he would always let me know his special day was coming up.  

And so began our March tradition.  Bowling once a year does not develop any appreciable skill.  Over the years his lack of practice has brought him back down to my level where we consider breaking 100 an achievement.  But, it isn't really about the bowling.  The bowling is just a way for Alex and I to hang out together, for me to be reminded of how important it is to be a consistent friend.  When next March rolls around, and sports fans are watching college basketball, I will be looking forward to another day of camaraderie at the bowling alley with Alex.