In The Summertime (1972)

The summer of 1972 was glorious.  The end of the school year was always a source of joy.  To make school bearable, I would begin the count-down on the first day in the fall: how many days until Christmas vacation, then how many more until school was out for the summer.  But that year, summer vacation was more significant than ever.  You see, I had survived 7th grade.

The change from elementary school where I had the exalted status of a 6th-grader to the Junior High where I was a punk 7th grader was shocking.  I was a creature of routine.  One teacher in the same classroom day in and day out was ideal.  Now my school days were spent on a sprawling campus where I had to find a different class room every hour.  There were weeks of wandering with my campus map until I got the hang of it.  And I will not discuss the calamity of P.E. which was only hinted at when the shopping for ‘back to school’ clothes included the purchase of an unusual garment to be worn only for gym class.

Ford Pinto
or was THIS the worst car ever?

Chevy Vega - worst car ever made?

Meanwhile, I had older sisters who were navigating the more sophisticated climes of high school.  Being the 'kid brother' had its drawbacks to be sure.  Older sisters could go places and do things that were only mysteries to the mind of a 12-year-old.  Ford Pintos or Chevy Vegas or equally underpowered thrift-minded cars would appear and my sisters would join their giggling friends and motor down the narrow trailer park access road and disappear towards the entrance.

The Osmonds
Phase 3
Ick...

Three Dog Night
Harmony
Awesome

But occasionally, their friends would stay.  They would hang out in the living room playing Three Dog Night or Chicago or, heaven forbid, the Osmonds, while somehow carrying on a conversation over the blaring speakers of the straining console stereo.  If mother had only known.  But she was at work, where she was every weekday until 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.  Those hours between the end of school and mother's arrival home were sort of a free-zone from the usual decorum that had to be observed on the return of our sole, overworked parent.  And the usual decorum most definitely did not include rock ’n’ roll.

Need more bell...

What straight hair was all about.

An awareness came to me that these female friends of my sisters were — aside from their propensity for loud and laughter-punctuated talk that made absolutely no sense whatsoever — interesting in a way that the girls at school were not.  It was the era when long, straight hair was required on girls, and straight-legged jeans were absolutely outcast.  A large amount of time was spent straightening hair and sewing extra denim into the legs of jeans so they would be transformed into massive bell-bottoms.  

In the summertime, the visitors came more frequently.  School had ended.  The sun and Coppertone® were out in force.  Jeans gave way to cutoffs.  And halter-tops. And bikinis.  Until that summer, I may have only been vaguely aware that the surface area of a person had so much skin.  (Something in the neighborhood of 17 square feet.  Do the math.)

Before 'SPF'

Skin looked so much better on tanned girls than it did on my pale, scrawny physique.  So when my sisters had visitors, I would find all sorts of excuses to make the trek from my room (where I was by an unwritten protocol imprisoned due to my complete uncoolness) to the kitchen at the opposite end of our boxy trailer,  whereby I had to pass through the intoxicating sanctum of music and teenage femininity.  The sights and sounds.  The unconscious gesture of a girl's hand flipping a wisp of hair back over her shoulder was enough to make me stumble.  Should one of them look my direction, my mouth would suddenly parch.  I would swallow hard.  Sure, there were girls in Junior High, but they merely hinted at the promise that these companions of my sisters embodied: womanhood in full bloom.

Tanned,
lovely,
high school girl.

On my return trip to the meagre bedroom I shared with my brother, I would occasionally hear whispered tones and quiet giggles.  A suspicion came to me that perhaps I was the unfortunate cause of their mirth.  Still, I told myself, it had to be better to be noticed than to remain invisible and virtually non-existent.  

I had not progressed much beyond that awkward, tongue-tied state several years later when I met another tanned, lovely high school girl.  Providentially, she knew how to carry a conversation that continues to this day.

Sunday Night Missionary Service

After God found our family, it was not long before Mom molded our family life to the rhythms of the little Assembly of God.  Several of the founders were originally from Arkansas, giving this simple Pentecostal church in a rural community the flavor of a Bible-Belt transplant.  Sunday morning services were much the same each week with the exception of the first Sunday of the month when communion was served.

Sunday nights were a different matter.  Pastors are busy fellows.  Coming up with two barn-burning sermons in one day requires a lot of preparation, so most Sunday night services were a catch-all for an assortment of special guests: evangelists, musical groups and missionaries.  Missionaries became, in my mind, the true heroes of the faith.  I learned about the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul in Sunday School and read the biography of David Livingstone and other missionaries of times gone by.  But there was nothing like hearing about missionary work first hand.

There were good missionary services and dull ones.  The best were like a trip to a museum with a knowledgeable curator.  The worst were when the missionary just preached a ‘regular’ sermon.  After all, I could get that any Sunday night.  For a elementary school age boy, little could compare to the wonder of arriving at church on a Sunday night to see the communion table swept clear of its normal accoutrements and in its place a collection of foreign artifacts spread out for our wondering eyes: animal hides, musical instruments, weapons, eating utensils (and sometimes food), clothing.  The most creative missionaries would dress in the native garb of the mission country.  Typically, their first words would be in the language of the land they were serving, followed by a translation into English.  I had no way to verify anything they said, but that didn’t matter.  Their stories included all the strangeness of a foreign people, rare diseases, grinding poverty, odd foods, occasional violence, dangerous animals, and of course, testimonies of converts.  A slide show or movie would take me places that I would never otherwise visit.  My first exposure to the Third World was through the lens of a missionary camera.

Missionaries were not just there for my entertainment, however.  They had to raise support to get back to their work.  At the end of their presentation, the pastor would come back to the podium and it was time for the missionary offering.  As a child, I rarely had money.  But I remember wanting to give.  Souls were hanging in the balance.  Still, after hearing their tales, the boy I was wondered why people would choose to go.  It all came down to ‘The Call’.  Missionaries had invariably experienced an irresistible internal beckoning to a foreign people.  They often encouraged those in the service to be open to a similar experience.  I never heard that call to head out for parts unknown.  I felt both guilty and relieved.  Guilty, because I knew I should want the lightening to strike me as it did the Apostle Paul; relieved, because I was given to car-sickness and international travel by ship, air, or rail seemed a sure path to an early grave, even before I reached the destination.

What Do I Believe?

What do I believe?  I am not ready to revisit that question just yet, since I still hold essentially to what I described at the end of this post almost two years ago.  Instead, I want to share a list of beliefs that I ran across while reading about LIFE magazine's location in the Rockefeller center after watching the movie 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'.

In 1962, the center management placed a plaque at the plaza with a list of principles in which John D. Rockefeller Jr. believed, and first expressed in 1941. It reads:

"I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
I believe in the Dignity of labour, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.
I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.
I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character not wealth or power or position – is of supreme worth.
I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.
I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individuals highest fulfilment, greatest happiness, and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His Will.
I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might."

As heir to the Rockefeller fortune, John clearly thought deeply about making the most of the life and resources he had been given.  For so long, I have drifted along (like Walter Mitty, I suppose) with unspoken assumptions about what is important, but never actually making the effort to articulate the essence of what my life is about.  So, a task for 2014 -- define what I believe.

DON'T KNOW MUCH

The old Sam Cooke song 'Wonderful World' starts with these three words:
"Don't know much..." 
And as the song unfolds, there is a lot of things he doesn't know much about.  Which just about sums up life.  The more you learn, what you don't know seems to grow exponentially.  But Sam sings of one vital thing he knows about: love.

I managed to squeeze in a few moments for devotional reading this morning and was struck by the importance of 'knowing' the right things.

Jeremiah 9:24 ...let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Prayer remains a difficult mystery for me after many years.  I don't know God well, I don't know how to pray well.  But if the pangs in my spirit result in more of what God desires -- love, justice, righteousness -- in my world, I can be content with that.

Allegiant and the whole 'Young Adult Lit' thingy

As mentioned earlier, I was at the tail-end of the Divergent trilogy in January.  My review is here at Goodreads.  Veronica Roth is not long out of college and wrote much of the trilogy while still in college.  I am not sure what that says about college, but it is an impressive feat of writing to put together a coherent 3-volume narrative in that time span while otherwise academically occupied.  I am convinced that even the most creative fiction authors are still autobiographers.  Who Veronica Roth is seeps deeply into the characterizations in Divergent-Insurgent-Allegiant, particularly the values that Tris holds and her view of her parents.

The YA genre works because it is idealistic, fast-paced, emotional, reactionary.  Exactly.  I was a teenager once.  Which is why I am not recommending a steady diet of this for my daughters or anyone else for that matter.  However, in the inescapable buzz of our media-saturated culture, the Divergent movie will be this year's Hunger Games.  Oh, wait, Hunger Games 2 is this year's Hunger Games…  Anyway, I am not sure about watching the Divergent movie because there are some parts in the book that could lend themselves to overly violent or overly sexual imagery.  Have to wait for some reviews.

Whether anyone in my family reads the books or not, the story will be out there.  And I want to be part of that story with my daughters.

Some great questions are raised, not necessarily answered, by the series:
What does it mean to be loyal to family, friends, your culture?
What do you do about conflicting loyalties?
How much does your genetic heritage determine who you are?
Can you overcome a horrible childhood or even a slightly flawed childhood?
What is the place of faith in an often violent and unjust world?

Those are precisely the kind of questions I should be discussing with my idealistic, fast-paced, emotional, reactionary teenage daughter.  :-)

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

It is, as we will continue to be reminded for the next 13 days, Valentine's month.  Yesterday, I shared a joyful breakfast with a friend whose son wed a delightful young lady in January.  Their start together is captured so well here.  We have high hopes for their 'ever after'.

"Happily Ever After" Disney Corporation

As my wife and I are well into the 'ever after', I have seen how much 'happily' there can be.  Marriage at its finest is so enriching.  Truth be told, though, it isn't 'ever' as in 'forever' happy.  There is a steady accumulation of daily choices resulting in a two becoming one, or in a slow drifting that ultimately leads to two individuals who don't know each other.  Every day I have to choose, because I wake up a slightly different person than I was yesterday, and my bride does as well.  After 32 years, that can be a lot of change.

Do the vows mean something two or three decades later after the bloom of youth has been eroded by work and children and the simple struggle to live?  I have found the vows continue to mean something when I live them in the light of something higher:

"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself… “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound…"

Pruned in the Garden of Faith

For only the second time since planting roses beside our house 10 or more years ago, I did the annual pruning and feeding.  If there is an opposite of a green thumb (such as a brown thumb) when it comes to horticultural aptitude, I have it.  Which is why the majority of our front yard is drought-resistant rock and other forms of non-living ground cover.  But, I want the rose bushes to live as their fragrance and color are a gift each spring.  So, I have tried to educate myself on the mysteries of the seasonal nurturing.  Ruthlessly cutting back doesn't seem like a very helpful thing to do to a plant that is already dormant from lack of the sun's warmth and light.  Yet, it is.  It produced some lovely, healthy blooms last year after my first attempt at annual pruning.

For some time in my walk of faith, I have been feeling like these rose bushes: lacking light, cut back, and just lately, surrounded by, well 'fertilizer'.  Sometimes I am more thorny than I really have cause to be.  But, I have a flicker of confidence that a spring will come and am trusting in these words:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser… every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15).