FATHERS DAY 2013

In another month my father will have been dead for 20 years.  In that time much has happened and many unanticipated turns in the road have been negotiated.  I have wanted and needed him badly through all this and long even now for his counsel and his courage and his unsentimental kind of deep paternal affection.

Those of us who have had larger-than-life fathers know something about living with lore.  There is a kind of oral tradition that springs up around these men, and it is tempting to allow it to replace real memory as the years file by.  In the days following Daddy’s death we heard numerous tales of his restrained and subtle spirit. 

Three older guys from the spit-and-whittle club of the local lumberyard showed up at the memorial service in clothes noticeably less expensive than most of the attendees wore, and told me with some incredulity that they thought Daddy was a cabinet maker and knew nothing about all this ‘teaching stuff.’  Former students related recollections of calming words of wisdom in times of personal turmoil which were touching to hear but in no way surprising.  Old friends told of his calm, fierce loyalty.

I have hundreds of memories of Francis Christie. One however consistently rises to the surface.  I spoke about in once extemporaneously in sermon and got embarrassingly choked up and never mentioned it again.  Yet I think about it weekly even now.  Be warned:  This is a sports story.  I know some of you think of these as archaic and sexist throwbacks.  Oh well …

I was a sophomore Wampus Cat and found myself to be one of three sophomore starters on our football team.  In the final game of our 1970 season we played Pine Bluff Dollarway for the district title and a ticket to the state AA playoffs (yes, Conway was MUCH smaller than it is now).  It was a home game for us and in those days our home field was Estes Stadium at what in now the University of Central Arkansas.  The weather was and had been terrible, and, by that time in late November,  the turf at Estes had turned into a mud bowl.  It was very cold and the wind was blowing very hard.  Within seconds of gameplay all the warriors on the field were covered with a thick coat of mud.  The public address announcer gave up midway through the first half because he couldn’t make out jersey numbers.

I don’t remember his name, but Dollarway had a fullback with the speed of Hermes and the strength of Hercules and his pistoning knees battered my face and chest all night. An offensive tackle who went on to be a record-holding national shot putter clobbered me at will all night as he would do months later in track and field competition.  He whipped my ass but good.  I was double-teamed most of the night and those guys hit hard.

We lost, and my teammates and I got brutalized. Dollarway was faster, bigger and stronger than us. And better.  The final margin was better than two touchdowns.

Ordinarily fellow students, cheerleaders, Wampusettes, band members, parents and townspeople would surround us at game’s end, win or lose, and fete us with congratulations and encouragements.  What girl would walk what guy off the field was a Big Deal.  However, on that night in November, the weather was so inclement that everyone cleared out the stands and headed pell-mell for warmth and shelter. Even at fifteen-years old the sense of desolation was remarkable, and it is difficult to remember a time in my own life when I felt more discouraged and alone and defeated and tired – that, I would venture, is saying something.  After some sort of half-assed pep talk or prayer at midfield I picked up my helmet and began the long slog to the team bus.

Dad appeared almost out of nowhere.  He was wearing newish, light-colored winter overcoat, a Lou Hoffman’s special.  I uttered some sort of protest about getting his coat filthy, but he made no response.  He just walked slowly and silently with me, his arm across my shoulder, his heart broken even more than mine. His presence was powerful, his love unconditional and masculine. Even at those times in my life when my struggles took on their most hideous self-pitying forms, I never questioned or for a moment doubted his indefatigable love for me after that night in November of 1970.

In my subsequent years of life as a clergyman, I found my counsel to panicked and despondent fathers to echo these themes: Shut up and be there.  Don’t be afraid to get a little mud on you.  Try to be strong instead of harsh, the kind of strong that comes through being vulnerable.  Walk with your troubled kid all the way to the bus. You don’t have to be smart and have all the answers, but you do have to show up, especially when everyone else is gone.  I have tried to embody these simple principles in my own role as a father – my success or failure at them is not mine to judge. But I have tried, and will continue to do so.

So God bless you fathers out there, and the memories you have of your fathers.  We don’t have to get all of it right, but we do have to be there when the lights go off and the party is over and everyone else is running for cover.

THE HOLY MAN’S WAND

Yesterday Stephen Coburn posed a general question on Facebook and it lead to a brief stroll down Memory Lane:  What is the most practical life lesson ever shared with you and who shared it?

The summer of 1975 was memorable for several reasons.  I would be married for the first time in mid-August. I was the summer youth director at First United Methodist Church of Russellville, Arkansas.  I lived in a dorm room on the campus of Arkansas Tech with a handful of Wonder Boy football players doing summer school to shore up their academic standings.

The senior pastor at the church was the venerable Charles Ramsay.  He was very generous with me.  He allowed me to lead worship, to preach a couple of times, and even to wear his second-hand pulpit robe when doing so.  He seemed interested in me and in what I was doing with the kids which largely consisted of hanging out with them in my little office while listening to Earth, Wind & Fire’s That’s the Way of the World. I also took them to Opryland that summer.  It was fun.

In the last week of my time there and a little over a week away from my wedding, Charles shambled into my office very early on a Sunday morning – a highly unusual event since his sermon prep time was almost exclusively restricted to the early morning hours of our Protestant Sabbath and we all knew to not disturb him.  He genially inquired of my welfare and my feelings about the huge changes ahead of me.  Then he gave me a piece of unsolicited advice I have not to date forgotten.

“Be careful, John.  There are a lot of women who would like to get hold of a holy man’s wand.” He grinned and leered at me, the thick lenses of his glasses magnifying his beady eyes.

I was shocked enough that I have no recollection of what was said next or who said it.  Even after we became clergy colleagues we never discussed it and I doubt he would have even recalled having said it. But its memory intrigues me.  Was he talking about himself and his own experiences?  Was this a whimsical reflection of some kind about a path he had walked or come dangerously close to walking?  Had he seen something in me, prophetically it turns out, that lead him to issue this humorous and gentle warning? Had his association with me that summer led him to look back over his younger years through the lens of “If I had only known then what I know now…”? Sadly I was not curious about this until many years after Charles’ death.

Like almost all the counsel offered me in the first forty years of my life, I blew it off.  I wish I hadn’t. For those of us wired in a certain way, the best advice is nearly always unheeded.