"Good Food"

 
















It has now been a year since my brother passed away. More than anything I wish he was here for Thanksgiving, but this is one thing I've learned from the experience:

There is something about eating meals with the ones you truly love, it can be a most connecting act if we let it. A soul chews on companionship, therefore, eat good food with those you cherish, and never take lightly the experience. Sacredness sits at the head of the table. On Thanksgiving, may we all find contentment in our hearts, and choose to bask. Bask in it all! Acquire the taste, and learn to always appreciate each bite of God's good food...

"Colorful Gumballs"

A few days ago, while hanging out with our little nephew Pax, I watched him walk up to a gumball machine in fixation and start identifying different colors of candy. He has been doing this for a while now, and since I am entering fatherhood I have become sensitive to these happenings. Certainly there is greatness in watching a child learn to label colors. No greyness has been bound around the lens in which they see bright shades. Simple things illuminate to them. So in watching Pax, I was reminded how colorful life is meant to be. In all of us there are longings to live days that are vibrant, like colorful gumballs, intriguingly passing the years; and if we truly learn how, though some days will be dark dark blue, others will surely be yellow, and some gloriously green. Then when it's all over maybe our lives might illuminate in a small way to someone, like a two year old staring at gumballs...

"Jumping The Grand Daddy"

One weekend, during my high school years, some buddies and I packed up for a weekend and went cliff jumping into a lake. There is a ninety foot cliff called The Grand Daddy at a camp site a few hours from our hometown, and we set off to conquer it. There was a deep sense of being in over our heads when the actual moment came, so right then we made a pact that each of us would go, and one by one we ran and jumped.

Lately, I am once again discovering myself completely "in over my head." There is a high chair in my kitchen for our son who is due next month, though the chair is not ninety feet high, it symbolizes a jump from immeasurable heights. A realization of not having the slightest clue how to care for a baby is settling in. It seems that the Grandest of all Grand Daddies I stand upon, peeking over the edge, yet my reliance is on an impulse that suggests "just jump." 

Go!

So this is me figuratively leaping the overhang, soaring through the air as an awkward naive soon-to-be father, free falling into parenthood, and waiting to hit the lake so I can look up in admiration at my jump. Images of belly flopping flash through my mind. At some point a man just needs to load the car for the weekend and go jump his Grand Daddy. The heights of everything always appear more frightening from the top looking down...

"A Chapter At A Time"

I have been anxious about things so this was written to navigate through it:

A classic is read one chapter at a time, I will not complete Walden today. My degree draws nearer with every passing exam, yet graduation is not this afternoon. I will put my sons crib together tonight, however he will not lie in it until next month. All things labored on this hour are the parts which go to the whole of things grander; I need not be worried to have everything in life accomplished right now. Oh anxious body may you be soothed by patience. My castles are built in bits, pieces at a time, and I recognize they will not reach their fullness today, but find comfort in knowing that to each piece today I will offer myself fully. A classic is read one chapter at a time, I do not have to complete Walden today...

"Boogers"

I always get a kick out of this story:

A few days before my older brother died he was staying at my parents house, and one night he stretched out across the floor of my father's office while he talked to a friend on the phone; as he lied there on the floor talking he happened to look up at the bottom of a chair, a chair that use to be in my little brothers bedroom, and he unexpectedly came across a grossly amount of old boogers that my younger brother had hidden sometime back. He phoned our little brother and told him the cove of boogers had been discovered. Ironically this "picking for gold" incident left us with a golden memory, a last good laugh, and I suppose the lessons learned might be this: inevitably some boogers will be found no matter how good they are hidden, but the much more rich enlightenment- relish! Relish those times around the kitchen table, relish the phone calls, relish car rides together, because truly it is the most minute moments, the ones tinier than the smallest booger, that one day we all wake up missing and wish we could have back- learn to relish the booger moments...

"The Toy Chest"

In our spare time Jessie and I have started painting things for our son's room, and the other day I completed a toy chest that was bought at a thrift store. As I worked it occurred to me that my son will probably never recognize the detail I put into painting this little box. "An unnoticed perfection" thought I the painter. Then I began thinking of all the different toy chests people have painted for me during my life, their precise stroking of the brush, their time taken to wait as one coat dried so another coat could be added, and all the efforts cleaning up after the work was done; in that moment I became very grateful for those who have invested into me. The line is reversed, "like son, like father", as it is realized I too will never recognize every detail that has been put into painting my toy chest...

"Moving Things To The Attic"

My wife and I have been moving stuff out of a spare room in our apartment in order to change it into the baby's bedroom, who is due in just a few months. Most of the things are being put in bins and then going to the attic; where once lay our miscellaneous soon will lie blankies and toys, and through this transition I am witnessing how true relationship always involves making room for the other. "An allowance into our spaces." Therefore we move our boxes upstairs, creating an area large enough for another person to stretch out and make a mess of; vulnerability is now nesting in the corners of this empty room, and it comes to mind that maybe more often in life I need to move my stuff to the attic and make space for others...