End of the story

We ended up flying home for another funeral last Saturday. We're pretty tired of it honestly. This is our third funeral in under twelve months. But, it's family. You have to be there. Much as I didn't want to sometimes, for this particular funeral I really had to be there. Mamaw died at age 88 while driving to the store for dog food. The details are unclear, but they involve an 18 wheeler and anecdotal evidence that she might have had a heart attack or something before the accident. Anyone's who's read my old blog knows just how much Mamaw meant to me. She treated me like close kin. There's a lot I could share about Mamaw, but for now I just wanted to share one thought that occurred to me while we were busy saying goodbye. Funerals are a chance of us to hone in on the end of the story - to read the last couple chapters and find out just what we were seeing all these years. As my professor pointed out, when you open Othello it looks like a comedy, but it ends as a tragedy. Without the end it's hard to understand the beginning. At Mamaw's funeral I saw the end of a story that more people should be writing. She loved God and loved people and poured out her life blessing everyone around her. She was a saint with crooked teeth and a garden patch and a hug you'd be happy to drive a hundred miles for who went out and mended fences and loved me more than just about anyone I've ever known. So many times we see only a small portion of someone's life, and it's hard to know where they're going. At all the funerals we've been going to these past months, we've gotten to see just how all those actions and intentions played out. They all three of them told a story of love and faithfulness, hard work, cheerful endurance and unending gratitude. Seeing how those stories unfolded and pronouncing the final "amen" over their graves gives us a nudge to evaluate how our own characters are unfolding, and for that we can be thankful. To see the end and be about to change our own beginnings is a great blessing.

Smart test

Ok I can now write blog posts on my phone even though my computer is sitting five feet away. That's progress for you!

Seriously though, as much as I might like to laugh at our growing dependance on technology there's a point at which you simply have to thank God for giving us a better way to find our way around strange cities. I mean, seriously, a map containing rated restaurant reviews that can call A A A when your car breaks down and contains a star chart so you have something to do while you wait (or you could just play Angry Birds like everyone else).

(Honestly, it was the star chart that sold me. This phone now qualifies as camping gear and is therefore more awesome than any mere texting platform could be.)

a holistic approach to plastic

I should be heading for bed about now, but there's a blog post trying to get out :)

This past weekend Allen and I visited a small marine center just outside Santa Cruz. While in there I noticed the small plastics exhibit in the corner - just your basic "please think before using so much plastic" plea that we've all heard time and again. This time though it got me thinking, and the first thing that came to mind are those little plastic tubs grocery stores use to sell cut up melons and such. They're pretty useless when you remember that melons come prepackaged in handy hard casings that can easily store your fruit until you're ready to eat it. Cut melon, store remainder in reusable, resealable containers and toss the rinds in the trash (or compost if you're really lucky). It's really lovely. But why do I buy those unnecessary plastic containers? Because I'm tired, lazy, stressed, and just want to walk over to the fridge and pull out something ready to munch. Hence the need for a more holistic approach to dealing with extra waste products. It'd be easy for me to have a guilt trip over all this, but A. I'm not a member of Greenpeace, and B. guilt is a really lousy motivator. I'm realizing more and more that the problems are more in my head than my hands - more in what I think than what I do. When I'm tired, stressed, lazy, and otherwise checked out of my life I'm way more likely to waste time doing things I don't enjoy (ie crash) or waste resources by resorting to more expensive, more packaged goods. Crashing just exacerbates the cycle. On the other hand, when I'm feeling happy, productive, and peaceful little things like making a trifling mess in the kitchen don't bother me. It's easier to actually cook and do prep work and clean up the mess afterwards. I have to create space in my schedule and space in my brain so that I'm not constantly pushed towards the easy at the expense of the good (pre-cut fruit is rarely as good as the fresh stuff you buy yourself).

So that's my theory on excess waste - people need to slow down, make time, and de-stress to a point where they can feel good about doing a little cooking. Get your head in place, and the rest will follow. Guilt won't help.

Night and Honeysuckle

While my class is taking their final I thought I’d go ahead and bang out an essay of my own. I had originally meant this topic as class discussion, but various scheduling collisions prevented our getting around to it. It’s a pity too because I thought Chesterton’s “End of the World” would be an interesting counterpoint to the usual character and leadership type discussions. Briefly, Chesterton’s essay is about his travels to a little French village in the mountains called Le Bout Du Monde and his discovery that the world does not all end in the same place. If that doesn’t make sense then consider where you are most your own - where all your art and understanding and being come together in one expression. That is the world’s end. For Chesterton’s Frenchman the world ends at sunset in one still quiet village set amid the cacophonous medley of plunging chasms and endless peaks. Chesterton said, “If the story of the world ended here it ended well. Then I wondered if I myself should really be content to end here, where most certainly there were the best things of Christendom -- a church and children’s games and decent soil and a tavern for men to talk with men.” To Chesterton’s own surprise he realizes that his world doesn’t end here. He wants an English cabman in an English city and an English policeman to wave them through. I can’t do justice to Chesterton’s imaginative love for his chosen home, but to hear him talk even the grime of London is only the patina on an old platter or the vines masking a stately country home. It’s the end of the world for him. It’s where all his livelihood and desires converge.

If you can’t see where this would make a good class discussion for a class on “Character and Servant Leadership” then let me explain. Chesterton had it impressed upon him suddenly and deeply how good it was to be in certain place and was then equally impressed with the necessity of the far better good of being himself in another place. The good that was indeed good was not the good for which he wept on his journey back down the mountain. This is a rare quality I think. He saw something that was good and that really should be preserved by the people who love it, but he was also able to see that there’s something out there uniquely his to preserve and love. I wanted to challenge the class to think about what they love and want to see carried out in the world to think about how they wanted to do it -- all the while acknowledging and understanding how other people are likewise fighting for their corner of Christendom. I think that’s one of the rare qualities displayed in Chesterton’s essay. He’s not trying to convince his French friend that England is better. He in fact admits quite the opposite - it’s precisely because the Frenchman’s world is better for the French that the English world is better for him. They’re complementary visions not competing. We need people who love cities and deserts and plains and mountains and oceans and caves and interstellar travel because if I were to have charge of a desert I’d make a huge muck of it. It’s a glorious adventure for a week or three days, but it’s not my world. I wanted my students to see that they have the chance to grab onto a chunk of the world and make it theirs - to love it through glory and grime and, maybe just once, to weep when they cannot be near it.

So where does the world end for me? I will confess that I love many things and cannot be as rooted as Chesterton and his desire for Wallham Green, and of all the things I have ever seen one of the best is a summer's evening in Alabama. It doesn’t matter much what one is doing then - chasing fireflies, drinking tea, or riding the 4-wheeler out to watch the sunset behind the hayfields. It’s just good to be outside in the warm, damp air smelling cut grass and honeysuckle and listening to the frogs and crickets chanting. The ac fan cuts in and after a while everyone goes inside to eat pizza and watch a Marx Brothers movie. You scratch an itch and are grateful the mosquitoes are outside and not in. No matter how many other sunsets I may see this is where my world ends. It's home and always has been.