Where the Trembling Stops

In preparation for speaking Sunday night on Thomas a Kempis' notable work, "The Imitation of Christ," I referred to various commentaries for insight on 1 Peter 2:21, one of which is a tattered old set of Lange's Commentary that was printed in 1901. Holding in one hand something written more than 600 years ago and in the other another book printed a hundred years ago, I couldn't help but wonder if anything I've done, said, or written will last a day beyond my lifetime, much less hundreds of years. What will be my enduring influence? Will I leave any at all? Lingering impact is measured best not by programs initiated, buildings constructed, or institutions established. Instead, what endures is inspiration. It may transpire as I read your words, or it may settle deep as I remember something you said or did. I may have known you, or I may only read something that was a part of you, but if you inspire me to think and live better, you endure. I close every email with a favorite quote from Frederick Buechner, with the hope that it will prompt others and myself to think through both the strength and fragility of one life lived in concert or in conflict with others: "The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt."

Glory Days

Glory days are never as interesting to those hearing the retelling as they are to those doing the reliving of them. After a satisfying session yesterday at the driving range, I settled in to a corner booth at the course cafe, ready to eat a turkey melt while enjoying the view of the 10th tee and Lake Waco in the distance. Off to my left was a small but boisterous group of men divvying up wins and losses from the morning's golf. It was all I could do to shut out the less than uplifting vocabulary, but I couldn't ignore their yesteryear conversation. Every story was at least 50 years old and each narrator just so happened to be the hero of his own story. My otherwise tasty sandwich didn't settle so well, the digesting of it disturbed by all the hot air and diatribes from the overweight and over lubricated wannabes. When they finally cleared out, I lingered willingly in their wake, appreciating the silence and space for quiet reflection. Right then and there I determined to spend more time focusing on and sharing about what God is doing today, than living in the shadow of past experiences and promoting myself as the hero of any story. Testimony time should be like show and tell in a child's classroom, less about a past experience and much more about the current effect of that decision. Father, deliver me from filibustering about glory days and glorious moments, and grant me grace to tell what you are doing in my life and the world right now. Glory should always be shared in the present tense.

Finding Your Way Home

How do you find your way home again? It's easier if you ever had a home to begin with. As a boy growing up in Port Arthur, home meant private time in my own bedroom, meal time around the kitchen table, baseball with friends in the backyard, the independence of riding my bike to elementary school, summers playing little league baseball, and, much later, sitting in the high school football stadium stands waiting my turn to walk across the stage and bring closure to the previous 12 years of education. Home was my first car (1965 Rambler), my first date, first job, my first anything and anywhere. In a way, home is anything familiar that causes you to sense that you belong. People provide that, too, in a still more significant way-- mom, dad, sister, best buddy, favorite teacher, childhood nemesis, pastor, coach, next door neighbor. 

What is really odd is that the young spend their time trying to leave home while the old occupy their twilight years trying to find their way back. My favorite song as a teenager was the Haggard classic "Ramblin' Fever," but my favorite tune these days sounds a lot like "There's No Place Like Home." What we're all searching for is a center, a fulcrum on which to fix our equilibrium, but we do not know this. We try to match the emotional attachments of our childhood with things that were never meant to satisfy our God-given longing. It is good theology to insert here that Christ is our Center, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Magnetic north is something you can't see; instead, what you observe is the needle that points that direction. In a similar way, home is our earthly needle - a person or persons that help orientate us toward the Center.  This explains why familial conflict is so destructive -- we lose our bearings because we lose the very thing God intended to point us toward Him. Some never find it again. Some think they do only to discover that what they thought was home is in reality a place where they don't belong or an experience that disappoints. Blessed is the man or woman who experiences the grace of loving and being loved by someone who moves them back toward the Center. Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again. And when you find your way back, you will discover that home is a person pointing you still further back to Christ.

Finishing

The World Cup is a fixation for every soccer enthusiast the world over, and I am no exception. My addiction began during the 1994 World Cup that took place in nine cities across the United States. Ironically, I did not watch the games from any US venue. Instead, I was living at the time in Tigoni, some 30 minutes from Nairobi, attending Swahili language school, and preparing for missionary service at a station in northern Kenya. Soccer (or football) is more than a national past time in most places around the globe; it is a national obsession, and East Africa is no exception. Because of the time difference, all of us ex-pats would stay up all night, glued to the small television set in one of the language student cottages, and sleepwalk through our language studies the day after. During certain games there would be language students from America, language teachers from Kenya, and African workers from Brackenhurst International Conference Center where we lived and studied, all crammed in a small room, different and yet united by sport. Needless to say, I was enthralled by last night's contest between the US and Ghana. Some of the match was exhilarating, but most of the game was exhausting. One can only bite so many fingernails before no outlet remains for nerves and anxiety. The American team prevailed against a relentless Ghanian attack, and by the end it seemed impossible that these players could persevere to the final whistle, but endure they did. The score ended in favor of the US team 2-1, but the real victory was in their hearts more than with their feet. 

Their courageous performance reminds of the truth that motivates me every day: what matters in life is that you finish well. Your marriage, your parenting, your vocation, your life may have gotten off to a rocky or even rotten start, but what matters is not how you began but how you will finish. This is so important to me that I've asked my wife to include only three words on my tombstone below my name and appropriate dates if she determines that they may be expressed honestly about me when I die: "He finished well." How will you complete your course?

"For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." 2 Timothy 4:6, 7

Father's Day

Time allows perspective, and it is for this very reason that Father's Day is not necessarily a Hallmark moment for many of us who are called by at least one other person, "Dad."  Father's Day (and Mother's Day for the fairer sex) is the one day of the year when we are forced to review our parenting skills, and admit our failures while celebrating our successes. The truth of the matter is that the end product is not what determines our success, simply because there is never truly an end product. It is our involvement along the way that matters most. Were we there? Were we there often enough? Were we fully there when we were there? In keeping with this annual parental day of reckoning, I have some bad news and I have some good news. The bad news is that remorse cannot change anything. The good news is that remorse does not change anything. You are still "father," and every moment is an opportunity for a fresh chapter. While you can never start over, you can start from here and strive to be present, loving, and supportive. There is something inherent in parenthood that causes a child, even under the worst of circumstances, to be receptive and even eager for a better relationship with mom or dad. I am convinced that as we put forth renewed effort, in time, we'll find a receptive son or daughter. Who knows, there may come a time when we look forward to Father's Day, and then look back on it as a cherished memory.

The Gift

The gift I remember most during adolescence was a small wooden plaque my mother gave when I was fifteen years old. There was nothing special about the stained and varnished block of wood or the black metal plate attached to the front, but I'll never forget the words etched in gold on the metal surface. Mom wanted to make a point at that impressionable stage of my life, and, as usual, she hit her mark (Mom was an emotional sharpshooter). The gift came at what we call today "a teachable moment."  I remember vividly that I was finding it hard to appreciate my dad, and was beginning to vocalize my rebellious spirit. Somehow I lacked appreciation for the man who endured the strained working conditions of an oil refinery worker, welding rail cars and whatever other dirty jobs happened to be required of a boilermaker by trade. Temporary teenage insanity made me forget the sacrifices he had made during my childhood in order to coach the little league teams I played on, take our family on vacations when paying the mortgage was a challenge, to encourage church attendance even though he never quite understood my passion for church. The gift actually came the day after an uncomfortable confrontation between me and my father, and, although I was wrong, my defiant spirit had reconstructed the incident into fodder for self-pity and even greater defiance. The scene plays out now in my memory like a slow motion replay: Mom coming home from her part-time job at the Bible Book Shoppe in Port Arthur and placing before me a neatly wrapped package, instructing me to open it. I was confused because it was not my birthday, nor was it any other occasion that would have merited a gift, but I did as she said, with one eye on the package and the other on her intense expression. Peeling back the colored paper and removing its tissue shroud, I held the small piece of wood in my hands and stared at the plaque. Near the top of the metal plate were etched the letters 'FOWLKES' and below my surname I read these words: "Son, your father has given you the greatest gift you'll ever receive--his name.  He has kept it untarnished for many years, and it is now yours to do the same. Cherish his name as a treasure and wear it proudly. Make sure to never spoil it, so that one day you may pass it on to another who will cherish it just as much." 

I have not always lived up to the challenge, but I've never forgotten the mandate. Thank you Dad, for the gift of your name and the gift of yourself. I only hope that were you able to see me now, you would swell with pride and be satisfied that I wear your name well.

Backsliding

A modern day image of an ancient sermon illustration told by Jesus of Nazareth -- a crumbling $700,000 vacation home on a collapsing bluff above Lake Whitney has drawn nationwide news coverage. According to news reports, multiple factors may have contributed to the bluff’s collapse, including erosion, the weight of the home’s leveling material and long-term drought combined with recent heavy rains that might have moved the topsoil. It may be added that questionable judgement on the part of both owners and builder may have contributed to the home's demise in keeping with the precarious location of the dwelling to begin with. In any case, the conditions that led to the eventual demise of the structure deteriorated not suddenly, but over time. 

This reminds me of a word from my childhood vocabulary, a word seldom heard in church these days - "backsliding." I don't need to search for a dictionary to understand; I can easily define it according to my own experience. Backsliding is the slow but steady erosion of one's spiritual moorings: Gradual compromise, auto-sabotage, self-induced spiritual amnesia. This is the reality of the lost sheep described by Jesus in Luke 15. Sheep never stampede over a cliff in bison-like fashion; instead, grey-white wooly creatures stray one clump of better looking grass at a time, until the shepherd is first out of sight, and then a distant memory. No wonder Scripture consistently compares human beings to sheep. I am no innocent lamb; I am an obstinate ram, flint like in my determination to go my own way.  I was created to be a masterpiece, but sit precariously on a crumbling cliff caused by my own spiritual erosion. The remedy may seem drastic, but cascading mansions require dramatic measures. I will arise and return, regardless of the distance and disturbance, and revisit the moment when the relationship was new, before my first glance away toward greener grass. I will relive the wonder of endless grace and absolute forgiveness, and in the wake of first love, I will live once again in the shadow of the shepherd.

Vintage Glass

I am sitting on a love seat in a small bedroom on the third floor of Sweet Cane Inn in Natchitoches, Louisiana, sipping a cup of Community coffee and looking out a window that is original to this house constructed for Congressman Phanor Breazeale in the late 1800’s. My current vantage point allows a view of certain treetops near the Cane River, but I'm as much intrigued by the tall, narrow window as I am by the view it affords. Vintage glass always appeals to me. It is unquestionably imperfect, but it's very imperfection is what piques my interest. Images seen through vintage glass appear slightly distorted due to the ripple effect of the glaze itself. The aged glass adds texture to the light that filters through it and becomes a thing of beauty all it's own, without distracting from the image on the other side.

I can't help but think of this as a great commentary on the properly viewed and powerfully lived Christian existence. Our calling is to allow Christ to show through us, but the inescapable reality is that anything passing through us will be either slightly or greatly distorted by us.  That need not be completely negative, if indeed it's negative at all. God intends to use flawed human beings like you and me in showing himself to the world. Just like vintage glass, we add texture to the light that passes through us.  We may distort his image slightly, but Christ has to sound something like us and look something like us in order for people to understand him at all.  Without us as a filter, God remains an abstract thought, a truth to which we give assent but never know. Jesus speaks of this in his parable of the vine that we read about in John 15. He is the grapevine and we are the branches, and the only way the world will comprehend the value of the vine is by seeing and tasting the fruit that the branches produce. 

Summer Comes Too Soon

Summer comes both too soon and too late. In my childhood, summer came too late. Always anxious for the end of the school year, I savored the beginning of long days of leisure, until less than half way through the summer they became too long and too leisurely, leaving me longing for school again. But now, summer comes too soon, signaling with it too many changes in the ones I love and in myself. This past week, I've attended a grandchild's graduation from pre-K4, missed two other grandchildren's graduation from kindergarten (because their parents thought they had informed, but had not), and realized somewhat helplessly that this will be a summer of tremendous change for these precious ones. They are taller, smarter, wiser, and nearer maturity than ever before. Summer forms a rite of passage, movement from not only one grade to another, but an exchanging of innocence for a lesser amount of naïveté. 

When you're getting old as I am, summer always comes too soon. No longer a rite de passage, it morphs into a time of remembering and for realizing that the time for remembering will all too quickly fade away.  What does one have as the years diminish? We're left with memories, some good and some bad, and with other things that can't be fully recalled-- experiences of which the details are gone but the vague recollection brings either warming joy or chilling tear. One might call this bittersweet.  Old enough to nod to life out of self-assurance, yet no longer young enough to be excited about the advancing of age. We have no taste for admitting that a chasm of aging lies ahead of us, let alone exploring its significance in our lives. That’s a tragedy because aging is a defining spiritual issue, and I strongly suspect is that this uncharted territory of aging holds far more potential than most are transparent enough to benefit from. The process, if we explore it honestly,  may actually hold spiritual gifts that accompany the aging process itself. There are spiritual treasures here that we must explore. 

   “That time of year thou mayst in me behold

    “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

    “Upon those boughs which shake against the cold

    “Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” 

(Shakespeare's Sonnet Number 73)

A Goodly Measure of Grace

Our four-year-old grandson spent last night with us, the sleepover his reward for making it through his Friday night t-ball game without the usual late inning meltdown. He came close to losing it when the final out was made before his time to bat again, but pulled it back together enough to slouch back to centerfield, sniffling and insolent, but there. As the game was pronounced over by the umpire, life was good again, the future bright, and the sleepover at Papa and Jo Jo's back on.  To the casual observer, Joshua Dane is a bundle of energy, emotion, intelligence, charm, temper, and humor.  To me, he is all of those elements and more -- he is a goodly measure of God's grace. Josh is named after me, proudly wears a shirt proclaiming 'I Love Papa' (I'm Papa), loves to ride with me in my Jeep Rubicon that he affectionately calls "Ruby," but Josh is technically not my grandson.  He is my step-grandson. We do not share DNA; we share Jo Jo, the mother of Joshua's mother. Apart from divine orchestration, this little boy would be named after someone else, call some other man Papa, and I would be the lesser for it. Like his grandmother (Jo Jo), Josh is a constant reminder that I am the recipient of grace beyond comprehension, mercy exceedingly great. I am the least deserving of any child's affection, but Josh doles it out in large measure and I greedily accept it, and am different because of it. That's the way of grace-- grace changes everything and never allows us to remain the same.

Honest Recall

Buechner suggests that we should listen to our life. I agree, but would add that most of us employ selective hearing when we do, explaining why we remember certain experiences and not others. Memory is fickle and frequently exaggerated, meaning that I often do in remembering what I lack the courage to do today. Life can certainly seem to have been better than reality records, the mind's protection against loss and disillusionment. A healthier approach is to recall the past honestly and translate it quickly into prayer. Confession comes from such brutally transparent thinking, but so does thanksgiving and worship. To see clearly where we've been is to recognize the hand of Providence; remembering God is tantamount to praising God. 

Quiet Resolve

If you ever hear me say, "I'd like to..." or "I wish I could...", just ignore me. I rarely alter anything that I mention out loud. Change, for me, is born of severe resolve, so intense that I've no time for words, only action. I once thought that I refused to speak about my decisions out of fear of failure, or worse, because of uncertainty. Now I know that I go about transformation quietly because of the concentration required and radical demand placed on me by the object or subject of my difference. Maybe this is why Jesus condemns the verbose pray-er in Matthew 6:7; the Master knows that much talk serves as a smokescreen for little fortitude. Beware the language of intention. If I speak, let it be to encourage the change in you. If I'm silent, let it be to summon change in myself. Better to move silently from action plan to action plan in pursuit of a gripping goal, than to enlist a support group of sympathetic dreamers. 

Remorse and Grace

Mental health is a balancing act between remorse and recovery. If you live long enough, you'll have something, and, likely, many things to regret. Health comes from accepting the past, allowing it to impact you, and then moving forward in its light rather than its shadow. As C. S. Lewis could attest, the shadowlands are a harsh environment and result in a dark existence. In extreme cases, the shadowy environs drag to institutional lock-down. In milder cases (and I suspect there are vast numbers of them), the darkness turns us into shadows of ourselves -- a faded image of what we once were; a ghost of what we were intended to be. Grief is natural, and even necessary in order to deal with loss; however, remorse perpetuates the loss into debilitating guilt. For these reasons, and many, many more, grace is the greatest gift a person can receive from God, and, in turn, extend to herself. "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you"(Lewis B. Smedes). 

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." 

 (Ephesians 4:29 ESV)

Who Needs To Know?

My Sundays are frequently studies in contrast and today was no exception.  Three churches, all in Bosqueville, and each as different from the others as different can be. I preached this morning from 1 Corinthians 2:6-13 for Bosqueville United Methodist Church, sharing an inspirational (in my opinion) introduction to the life, ministry, and global impact of John and Charles Wesley. This afternoon, I preached a sermon entitled "Tight Rope" from Proverbs 22:6 at the baccalaureate service of Bosqueville High School.  An admittedly odd text for such an occasion, the message was aimed at encouraging parents of soon-to-be graduates to function as a safety net while their budding adult children walk the high wire above them. I call this "encouraging safe independence."  This evening, I spoke to the small church called Crossings, which meets in the recording studio of Dick and Marilyn Gimble, preaching from the final portion of the last chapter in the book of Ecclesiastes, encouraging each of us to find intimacy in light of God's majesty.

As the curtain falls on such a varied day of ministry, I cannot help but reflect on what I anticipated God's calling to be when I set out on this ministerial journey some thirty eight years ago. It seemed so well defined back then, and had someone told me what Christian service would look like these many years later, I would likely have laughed or cried or possibly, run in the opposite direction. What I've learned over these years is that God's call is really a sphere of influence, rather than a target to be struck with a homiletical arrow, or a clerical act to be performed according to some predetermined script. A divine call is a living, breathing thing, as dynamic as the One who issues the summons. As a young pastor, I thought that, and at times acted like  such a call was an honor earned by devotion and deserved by ecclesiastical potential. As a slightly older missionary, I served with the silent conviction that cross-cultural sacrifice was the badge of highest courage. When life changed radically due to some circumstances out of my control and others of my own choosing, I developed a ministerial chip on my shoulder that dared anyone to question my standing and usefulness in the kingdom. These many years later, out of experience and, at times, necessity, I embrace grace in each moment, and wonder at God's willingness to use me at all.  If given the chance to retrace steps, remove the pain, erase the scars, and retrieve my earlier innocent arrogance, I would refuse without hesitation. Who can know the Father's plans, but who needs to know them?  All that remains is to accept, to believe, to submit, and to love. Nothing, it seems, better prepares a heart for resurrection, than a soiled towel and a bloody cross. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that called a wretch like me.