A fatherly testimony

Here we are, sitting in your work van, a white, ’71 Ford van with barely more metal than rust holes. The windshield has a world map of cracks that grows larger each passing season. The seats, more exposed cushion than vinyl, precariously hold our bodies on this calm and muggy summer afternoon. 

You’ve just returned home after working another twelve-hour day as a carpenter in our small, rural Minnesota town. Your arms, tanned from hours laboring under the sun, straddle the steering wheel as you readily look over at me in the passenger seat and ask me how my day was.

This is the ritual to which I’ve assigned myself. Each day, at precisely the same time, I run home from wherever my nine-year-old curiosities have driven me that day and wait for your arrival. Most days I’m exploring the woods that surround the river as it meanders through our neighborhood. 

Always arriving home a few minutes before you, I wait inside our house, straining my head out the large picture window to see when your van turns the corner and pulls up outside. If for some reason I don’t see the van when you turn the corner, I can usually hear the van’s disjointed shifting as it comes to rest near the curb in front of our house.

Before you have a chance to turn off the ignition, I’ve already made my way into the passenger seat. You move your black, cement-stained lunch pal from the passenger seat to give me room to sit. After we say our hellos, I sheepishly look over at you and ask the question, the one I ask each day: “Did you bring me any wood?” 

Your job as a carpenter and my joy at building tree houses and other contraptions makes us a good combination. I already have enough wood to build several go-carts, tree houses and ladders. Maybe it’s the father-son ritual that makes me keep asking.

We sit for a few more minutes, not saying too much, but reacquainting ourselves, father and son. You’re in your mid-40s by this time, still somewhat rugged and in great shape. I look up to you.

We walk the fifty or sixty feet from the van to the house, where mom has dinner prepared. You wash up and sit down at the table, happy to be home from work and with your family. Your demeanor, always reserved and humble, doesn’t let on to this much—but I can tell. You become more relaxed, patient and your smile is more evident.

After dinner, you are exhausted from your day of climbing roofs, hauling cement, and pounding countless nails into shingles and two-by-fours. You crumble onto the couch. The TV silently beckons your attention, but you don’t watch it, your mind and body having their first real chance at rest all day.

But as usual, and this must be part of my ritual, too, you begin to perk up after a few minutes, me hovering over you and asking when we can go outside.

Even though it’s early evening, the sun and humidity have not released their stifling grip. In the garage, clean and always in order, we grab our baseball mitts and head out to the back yard. My mitt, just recently purchased from the local Coast to Coast store; your mitt, the leather stained dark from numerous chemicals intentionally and unintentionally spilled on it over the years, is worn and held together by one leather string. We grab a baseball, one of about ten I have in an ice cream bucket by the back door.

Baseball is probably the easiest sport for you to play. Since an accident with a joiner at work left you without significant parts of two fingers on your throwing hand, you struggle to grip firmly most balls. A football is nearly impossible for you to throw, but you still play catch with me. A basketball even harder, as the flick of your wrist releases very little power to the ball when two of the most powerful fingers used in this action aren’t there. Yet, on occasion, you still shoot baskets with me.

We play catch for fifteen or twenty minutes, father and son. You don’t have trouble with throwing the ball a certain distance, but your accuracy is shaky. And when we’re done, you move to the garage and putz around, repairing things that need repairing and straightening up the mess I probably made. I run over to a friend’s house and spend the remaining daylight hours riding bike or climbing trees.

Now some thirty-odd years later, I’m a father myself, with the same worries, fears and joys that you experienced. Though you aren’t a man of many words, a man who relies heavily on talking to communicate things, you clearly communicated many things to me. While your faith is strong and important in your life, you rarely talked about it. 

But that didn’t matter to me. I understood who you are and the important things in your life. And to me, those wonderful occasions when we, father and son, played catch in the backyard, those occasions communicated more to me who you are than all the words you ever spoke.

"A Room Called Remember"

I've been doing a lot of remembering lately. We've experienced several illnesses and deaths in our extended family the last several months. These events always conjure up memories, some good and some not so good ... but all important in some way or another.

Frederick Buechner writes about the importance of remembering in his book "A Room Called Remember."

He writes that it's good "from time to time--to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to the long journeys of our lives with all their twistings and turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember--the room where with patience, charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived."

Those "remembrances" form the foundation of who we have become and in many cases why we have become this particular person. The people we have met, interacted with, loved ... they have immeasurably impacted and shaped us. Many times without our realizing it.

As I have been doing some "remembering" these past few weeks, I can't help but feel blessed, grateful. As Buechner says, it's during our trips to the room called Remember where "the dead are alive again" and "where we are most alive ourselves."    

Writing and emotional upheaval

I had one of those days recently. A day when hope was quickly snuffed out by disappointment. A really neat book project got the green light but soon after I received word that an article I wrote--something I had invested a lot of emotional energy in--was rejected by a magazine.

After doing this thing called writing for so many years, you would think I would be used to these days. And to some extent I am. Writers trudge to their writing desks or laptops each day, hoping maybe this is the day (or week or month) when the news will only be good, when the acceptances will far outweigh the rejections.

That's never the case, however. And maybe it shouldn't be.

At times it seems as if our highs can only rightly be defined by--or informed by--the lows that we have experienced. If we only experienced one or the other, they both would eventually become meaningless. That certainly doesn't make it easier when rejections--be they articles, books or relationships--far outweigh the opposite. Yet how many of us can point to times in our lives when the "lows" played a huge role in who we are today?

That's what I've been wrestling with these last few weeks--how pain, disappointment and loss inform and shape us. I'm still working through this but am realizing the powerful impact they have on our lives.

Another life?

The holidays are always compelling times for many reasons. First, regardless of religious tradition, they are a time of deep reflection and significant observances.

The holidays also tend to be the time of year when family and friends gather to renew their relationships and celebrate—or observe—their particular faith traditions. It’s that unique point in time when I think we get a glimpse of heaven.

Let me explain.

As a Christian, the holidays are a time when we celebrate the birth of the One who took on human form, suffered, died and rose again so that we would have the opportunity to spend eternity with Him. At its core, Christ’s mission was relational. His time on earth was often defined by loneliness, however: His suffering, His trial, His death all were essentially experienced alone.

Nevertheless, the transfixing and life-altering aspect of that mission was that the loneliness Christ suffered would no longer be mandatory for us; we now had a vision of what life in Christ would be.

Back to the holidays. Each year—if you are like most families—while you celebrate you are also in some ways mourning the loss of an aunt, a brother, a cousin or parent. As we grow older, those holiday celebrations are inevitably missing someone special. If you’re fortunate, those missing are not forgotten. Stories are regularly told and memories are shared of the one who has passed last year or last decade. It’s a time when lives are remembered and a glimpse of relational restoration is grasped—albeit only slightly.

The fact that we mourn and remember those who have passed on—to me—is a reminder that God created us for the restoration that is to come: where parents, siblings and friends will be reunited with those who have gone before. At once it’s a beautiful reminder and also one filled with longing for the age to come.

Life Began at Death

I'm convinced nearly every person has one of these moments. Frederick Buechner described it as the day life began for him; it was the day his father committed suicide.

For some, this "when life began" moment revolves around the death of a loved one, the loss of a house or a job, or the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. Regardless of the specific event, this moment in time changed the life of the person who experienced it.

For me, that moment was Nov. 26, 1989. It was the day one of my best friends was in a car accident; he died several days later.

After you experience a "when life began moment," several things usually occur. First, you begin to question your belief system, those things you trusted and put your faith in--almost without thinking. You also begin to notice things differently. Something a friend says, the way your kid smiles after doing something funny, the way your house smells after arriving home from a trip or a long day at work.

At the root of a "when life began moment" is the struggle--sometimes overtly and sometimes subtly--between what writer Mark Buchanan called the "borderland." It's the area that exists between belief and unbelief.

A "when life began moment" nearly always delivers a person into this borderland. What do I believe anymore, what happened to the life I had planned, why did misfortune choose me? It's a struggle on many levels: emotional, spiritual and even aesthetically.

And, it's what this blog--Beyond the Borderland--will delve into each week.

We'll have some fun too. But ultimately, we'll look at life, writing and how to travel the path between belief and unbelief. I hope you tag along!