Pass it on, stripped of all righteousness, is what a heaven's for. There can be both good and not in all we do. A good wife helps make us twice better. Nobody holds only goodness and we can't help it. We must strive to remove the chunk in our own eye before we point at another's.
Too old to be angry... too young to be frightened. Unfortunately, the human animal tends to teach the opposite. Would that we learn the wonder of the child without the wounds of experience. Humor, for me, is a source for this truth. Thank you for uncovering it through the narration of your experiences.
I also grew up in the Sanctified Brethren and then migrated to the Episcopalians, and one day a bunch of years ago I decided I wanted to explore my faith along any route I considered likely to bring illumination. In other words, I chose to become highly literate in my faith, learning its history, its various takes on various things, and about as much else as I could take in. I read books and books, and then more books, and wrote and wrote, and then wrote more, although not for publication - just to see if things that seemed plausible in my head could survive five minutes when committed to paper. For a bookworm and newspaperman it was wonderful, and yet when I came to the end of that safari, I realized that all I needed is something simple and honest, along the lines of trying to love my neighbors (Reps and Dems alike, etc.), to be humble about God by refusing the ferocious absolutism that seems to feed too many today, and to seek God's justice in small ways as well as in the grander themes where possible. Above all, to respect each new day as the next set of holy possibilities, despite my inclination to tinker and meddle in the long term. Anything more profound and theologically complex would put roadblocks in the way of almost everyone.
Just a way of identifying with much that you say, by also acknowledging my own path.
Hi, David! That list of ways you can explore your faith that you have discovered in books is interesting. I had “an awakening” of my own, with a different result. It seemed to me that sometimes God needs “earthly beings” to get his work done. You know – a child has fallen overboard from a small launch, and one of the passengers sees this, dives in, fishes the child out and give artificial respiration. That sort of thing.
When I got my teaching degree from the University, I suddenly found myself in a garden, on my knees. It was my “Billy Graham Moment!” “From this day forward, God, if you need some human assistance and I’m there, I’ll be your ‘Handmaiden.’ Count on me!” And, Guess what? The Good Lord up there must have smiled, and said “DEAL!” It was probably less than a month later, when I was down at our farm in Rancho California, that I was working with our irrigation system for the Kiwi vines we had there. “Susanna! Come quick!” Natividad, one of the Mexican field workers who live nearby, came to me. He led me to the owner of the orange grove across the dirt road from us. He was laid out in the sun with a HUGE PURPLE BAR of a bruise across his forehead. He was a retired man, probably in no physical condition to be picking a 50- pound sack of oranges on a hot sunny day. He had fainted, and knocked his head against the top of the step ladder he was using while he picked. Talk about The Good Lord! It’s as if He has a schedule in his head – He knows what will be coming up in our lives, so he’s like a Scout Master: “Be Prepared!” I had recently been welcomed to a new job. The supervisor of our section had to send someone to First Aid Training – “Just In Case It’s Needed” in the section. He thought about the various secretaries, and knew I had a farm and wasn’t afraid of “Physical” encounters. I doubt if it was two months before that day in the Orange Grove, when I got my Red Cross Emergency Training – focused mostly on artificial respiration.
I crossed the street, came to the neighbor, moved him into the proper position, and got down on my knees. I’d press on his chest for the “exhale,’ and blow into his mouth for his “inhale.” Let me tell you! If you’ve never done this yourself, it’s hard to imagine how FOUL the air can taste, coming out of someone who hasn’t had a clean breath of air in ten or fifteen minutes!
I breathed in, pressed, breathed in again, and again. And AGAIN! His wife was standing there over me, and every time I looked up at her, thinking “This isn’t going anywhere,” she’d say “KEEP GOING!” Someone had called the Emergency Medical Team. They had to come all the way from Elsinore, 30 minutes away. We still hadn’t reached the point at which the man was breathing on his own when the EMT showed up. The driver came over and said “Let’s Take a Walk.” We went back to my farm, out of sight of what his partners were doing with the victim. It was probably at least twenty minutes before he heard some sort of a signal. The man was being loaded into the ambulance. He’ll be all right, thanks to you!” They said. “Stop by the hospital in Elsinore – and don’t forget to include your daughters. They need to see that their neighbor survived, too! “! My Kids!” Here I had been so engrossed with the artificial respiration, that I hadn’t really noticed the ring of their faces, among others, watching all this. ”Is he all right, Mom?” Tami, my older daughter asked, worried. “Yes. He’ll be fine. We’ll see him in a little while.”
“Thank you, EMS folks!” I had been so focused on giving artificial respiration properly, that I hadn’t given a thought to what my elementary school-aged daughters might be imagining. It turned out that that “Post-op” visit to the hospital was really, really important, too! Monday morning, in “Show and Tell, my daughters told their teachers about the near-death experience. “And He’s such a nice man! He visits us on our farm and plays with us. And he’s not dead!” Their teachers called me up – verified what had happened, and each of them gave their class a half-hour session or so on “emergencies.” They were careful to include a “game” of calling the operator and telling them “Dad (or Mom) had an accident. We need help. Our Address is…” I was really impressed! Their school turned a “rare” occurrence into an opportunity to give the students helpful information on “Emergency Management.”
This is one particular event – and one hopes a rather rare one. But, to me, it shows the utility of taking a problem and turning it into a “Learning Experience.” For a week or so, both my daughters were flooded with questions about what they had seen. Something that the students might have seen, vaguely, on Mr. Rogers, or Sesame Street, was suddenly brought into their own schoolroom. The teachers had a chance to discuss “Emergency preparedness,” and they thanked me for it. They even invited me to the school, where I gave a demonstration of artificial respiration on one of my daughters. It’s possible that some of the older students might have wanted to look into it, and learned how to do it themselves.
As parents, we may “Hope that their children “See No Evil…” But at the same time, there could be an incident in which a school-aged child would be the only person present to call for help. As the Scouting organizations motto says, “Be Prepared!”
Having said that my Saturday evenings have never been the same since you left PHC. I feel like an old friend has been gone for about seven years now and I keep peering out the back door every Saturday into the twilight hoping he will return. I know he's out there living his life. But I miss his gentle presence around the kitchen table.
Stay Well. And (as you used to croon), "forever young!" (I loved that song; I tried to find the original song writer and I was never able to do so.)
I apologize for abandoning you. I was 75 and felt I should spend my remaining years doing other things. I did bring some things to public radio that were unusual, a love of hymnody and Scripture, juvenile humor, and a curiosity about ordinary life among unpretentious people. I keep wishing some ambitious 32-year-old would start up a new show that carries on in the tradition but I don't see it. Public radio is so wedded to news and so aloof to the provincial, it's made itself terribly dry and almost inhumane. I do think that colleges should not be allowed to have radio stations: they're a bad influence.
I love a good rerun, be it old television shows or your columns. They're like books, as C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter to Arthur Greeves in 1932: “I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” I've read some books three times and am reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" right now for the fourth time. It's like having a favorite meal... each time you're able to enjoy it there's something yet more special about it... I do miss listening on Saturday nights was it... on NPR...? But revisiting them now makes even more sense because at 66 years old my memory needs an abundance of refreshing... Thanks for everything... especially the "curiosity about ordinary life among unpretentious people" type stuff. Blessings to you and yours...
There are links to old shows posted on Facebook a few times a week. It is fun to listen (and watch in some cases) because they are so old that they almost seem new.
I prefer the purer distilled spirits of the Minor prophets to the voluminous mash of the Majors - "what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8
Hmmm. Dumb things I’ve done. Once I wasn’t thinking and I poured clumping cat litter into the toilet. I will always look for my glasses from room to room telling myself that they have to be somewhere because I had them a minute ago. I finally find them on my head. Somebody say Amen to that. I seem to say “No worries” when in fact there is something to be concerned about. “No worries” is something you say when someone accidentally mistakes your shopping cart in Trader Joe’s for their own and they realize it when they’re pretty sure they didn’t buy Chips Ahoy! cookies. I repeatedly read books that I’m hoping the ending will change. And I’m definitely dumb when I promise myself I’ll eat cottage cheese tomorrow after I eat a piece (or two) of cake today. That never works and based on my experience I’m pretty sure it never will.
But the dumbest thing I repeatedly do is underestimate myself. My life has been a battlefield and I only become fierce and more determined in response. But never angry, thank God. I don’t let any of it live rent free in my head. I want to leave room in there on the off chance that I’ll gain some wisdom along the way. I’m not sure that I have, but maybe I should cut myself some slack and believe that I have, in spite of all the ridiculously dumb things I have done and will do. Or maybe because of them. I think I’ll give myself that instead of choosing what might be a car behind curtain number three.
Tess, love what you've written here! One line grabs me, "I don't let any of it live rent free in my head." There, I feel lies a constant mystery each of us deal with daily, questioning do we let things we wish never happened live 'rent free' in our heads/hearts, because there is always a cost to be paid for such things/events. The other side of that 'rent free,' is all the beauty spent in our lives still, and forever hopefully living there 'rent free thank God.' The longer I live, I find almost daily dead things long past that shouldn't be there are at last gone. This I find is the better part of this constant mystery, the craving for those beautiful short lived moments long past are surfacing filling what has finally disappeared, thank God.
My first reaction when I can't find my glasses is to assume I left them in the airport in Dallas or some other god-forsaken place. Then it dawns on my I haven't left my room all day so they've got to be here. Somewhere. And I just had them.
Pushing the “like” button just didn’t seem adequate after reading these lovely words and having just received my copy of CHEEFULNESS way down here in Mexico. I can now look forward to another wonderful read. Thank you. Thank you Garrison. And, thank you too to Muse Jenny who makes you happy and thus provides the ongoing inspiration for what gives the rest of us joy.
I love how you always manage to transcend the inanity of politics nudging us toward the more spiritual and moral and, well, human, and so thankful for your humor and humility and wisdom lo these many years--and especially glad that you’re managing to steer clear of cemeteries.
Wonderful words to live by! Thank you for your wisdom, sir!
Pass it on, stripped of all righteousness, is what a heaven's for. There can be both good and not in all we do. A good wife helps make us twice better. Nobody holds only goodness and we can't help it. We must strive to remove the chunk in our own eye before we point at another's.
Keep sharing the good as you do so well.
👍❤️
Too old to be angry... too young to be frightened. Unfortunately, the human animal tends to teach the opposite. Would that we learn the wonder of the child without the wounds of experience. Humor, for me, is a source for this truth. Thank you for uncovering it through the narration of your experiences.
I also grew up in the Sanctified Brethren and then migrated to the Episcopalians, and one day a bunch of years ago I decided I wanted to explore my faith along any route I considered likely to bring illumination. In other words, I chose to become highly literate in my faith, learning its history, its various takes on various things, and about as much else as I could take in. I read books and books, and then more books, and wrote and wrote, and then wrote more, although not for publication - just to see if things that seemed plausible in my head could survive five minutes when committed to paper. For a bookworm and newspaperman it was wonderful, and yet when I came to the end of that safari, I realized that all I needed is something simple and honest, along the lines of trying to love my neighbors (Reps and Dems alike, etc.), to be humble about God by refusing the ferocious absolutism that seems to feed too many today, and to seek God's justice in small ways as well as in the grander themes where possible. Above all, to respect each new day as the next set of holy possibilities, despite my inclination to tinker and meddle in the long term. Anything more profound and theologically complex would put roadblocks in the way of almost everyone.
Just a way of identifying with much that you say, by also acknowledging my own path.
Many thanks for your "testimony".
Hi, David! That list of ways you can explore your faith that you have discovered in books is interesting. I had “an awakening” of my own, with a different result. It seemed to me that sometimes God needs “earthly beings” to get his work done. You know – a child has fallen overboard from a small launch, and one of the passengers sees this, dives in, fishes the child out and give artificial respiration. That sort of thing.
When I got my teaching degree from the University, I suddenly found myself in a garden, on my knees. It was my “Billy Graham Moment!” “From this day forward, God, if you need some human assistance and I’m there, I’ll be your ‘Handmaiden.’ Count on me!” And, Guess what? The Good Lord up there must have smiled, and said “DEAL!” It was probably less than a month later, when I was down at our farm in Rancho California, that I was working with our irrigation system for the Kiwi vines we had there. “Susanna! Come quick!” Natividad, one of the Mexican field workers who live nearby, came to me. He led me to the owner of the orange grove across the dirt road from us. He was laid out in the sun with a HUGE PURPLE BAR of a bruise across his forehead. He was a retired man, probably in no physical condition to be picking a 50- pound sack of oranges on a hot sunny day. He had fainted, and knocked his head against the top of the step ladder he was using while he picked. Talk about The Good Lord! It’s as if He has a schedule in his head – He knows what will be coming up in our lives, so he’s like a Scout Master: “Be Prepared!” I had recently been welcomed to a new job. The supervisor of our section had to send someone to First Aid Training – “Just In Case It’s Needed” in the section. He thought about the various secretaries, and knew I had a farm and wasn’t afraid of “Physical” encounters. I doubt if it was two months before that day in the Orange Grove, when I got my Red Cross Emergency Training – focused mostly on artificial respiration.
I crossed the street, came to the neighbor, moved him into the proper position, and got down on my knees. I’d press on his chest for the “exhale,’ and blow into his mouth for his “inhale.” Let me tell you! If you’ve never done this yourself, it’s hard to imagine how FOUL the air can taste, coming out of someone who hasn’t had a clean breath of air in ten or fifteen minutes!
I breathed in, pressed, breathed in again, and again. And AGAIN! His wife was standing there over me, and every time I looked up at her, thinking “This isn’t going anywhere,” she’d say “KEEP GOING!” Someone had called the Emergency Medical Team. They had to come all the way from Elsinore, 30 minutes away. We still hadn’t reached the point at which the man was breathing on his own when the EMT showed up. The driver came over and said “Let’s Take a Walk.” We went back to my farm, out of sight of what his partners were doing with the victim. It was probably at least twenty minutes before he heard some sort of a signal. The man was being loaded into the ambulance. He’ll be all right, thanks to you!” They said. “Stop by the hospital in Elsinore – and don’t forget to include your daughters. They need to see that their neighbor survived, too! “! My Kids!” Here I had been so engrossed with the artificial respiration, that I hadn’t really noticed the ring of their faces, among others, watching all this. ”Is he all right, Mom?” Tami, my older daughter asked, worried. “Yes. He’ll be fine. We’ll see him in a little while.”
“Thank you, EMS folks!” I had been so focused on giving artificial respiration properly, that I hadn’t given a thought to what my elementary school-aged daughters might be imagining. It turned out that that “Post-op” visit to the hospital was really, really important, too! Monday morning, in “Show and Tell, my daughters told their teachers about the near-death experience. “And He’s such a nice man! He visits us on our farm and plays with us. And he’s not dead!” Their teachers called me up – verified what had happened, and each of them gave their class a half-hour session or so on “emergencies.” They were careful to include a “game” of calling the operator and telling them “Dad (or Mom) had an accident. We need help. Our Address is…” I was really impressed! Their school turned a “rare” occurrence into an opportunity to give the students helpful information on “Emergency Management.”
This is one particular event – and one hopes a rather rare one. But, to me, it shows the utility of taking a problem and turning it into a “Learning Experience.” For a week or so, both my daughters were flooded with questions about what they had seen. Something that the students might have seen, vaguely, on Mr. Rogers, or Sesame Street, was suddenly brought into their own schoolroom. The teachers had a chance to discuss “Emergency preparedness,” and they thanked me for it. They even invited me to the school, where I gave a demonstration of artificial respiration on one of my daughters. It’s possible that some of the older students might have wanted to look into it, and learned how to do it themselves.
As parents, we may “Hope that their children “See No Evil…” But at the same time, there could be an incident in which a school-aged child would be the only person present to call for help. As the Scouting organizations motto says, “Be Prepared!”
You're on a roll Garrison, another perfect balance of politics, culture, religion, and humor!
Ignorance becomes stupidity when it is thrust into others' faces. So far I'm only ignorant (I think).
Yes
Another great column. You are getting better and better.
We love you, Garrison! Thank you for your notes.
Having said that my Saturday evenings have never been the same since you left PHC. I feel like an old friend has been gone for about seven years now and I keep peering out the back door every Saturday into the twilight hoping he will return. I know he's out there living his life. But I miss his gentle presence around the kitchen table.
Stay Well. And (as you used to croon), "forever young!" (I loved that song; I tried to find the original song writer and I was never able to do so.)
I apologize for abandoning you. I was 75 and felt I should spend my remaining years doing other things. I did bring some things to public radio that were unusual, a love of hymnody and Scripture, juvenile humor, and a curiosity about ordinary life among unpretentious people. I keep wishing some ambitious 32-year-old would start up a new show that carries on in the tradition but I don't see it. Public radio is so wedded to news and so aloof to the provincial, it's made itself terribly dry and almost inhumane. I do think that colleges should not be allowed to have radio stations: they're a bad influence.
I love a good rerun, be it old television shows or your columns. They're like books, as C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter to Arthur Greeves in 1932: “I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.” I've read some books three times and am reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" right now for the fourth time. It's like having a favorite meal... each time you're able to enjoy it there's something yet more special about it... I do miss listening on Saturday nights was it... on NPR...? But revisiting them now makes even more sense because at 66 years old my memory needs an abundance of refreshing... Thanks for everything... especially the "curiosity about ordinary life among unpretentious people" type stuff. Blessings to you and yours...
There are links to old shows posted on Facebook a few times a week. It is fun to listen (and watch in some cases) because they are so old that they almost seem new.
I prefer the purer distilled spirits of the Minor prophets to the voluminous mash of the Majors - "what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8
Good question. Nothing.
Tx for the reminder, GK.
Hmmm. Dumb things I’ve done. Once I wasn’t thinking and I poured clumping cat litter into the toilet. I will always look for my glasses from room to room telling myself that they have to be somewhere because I had them a minute ago. I finally find them on my head. Somebody say Amen to that. I seem to say “No worries” when in fact there is something to be concerned about. “No worries” is something you say when someone accidentally mistakes your shopping cart in Trader Joe’s for their own and they realize it when they’re pretty sure they didn’t buy Chips Ahoy! cookies. I repeatedly read books that I’m hoping the ending will change. And I’m definitely dumb when I promise myself I’ll eat cottage cheese tomorrow after I eat a piece (or two) of cake today. That never works and based on my experience I’m pretty sure it never will.
But the dumbest thing I repeatedly do is underestimate myself. My life has been a battlefield and I only become fierce and more determined in response. But never angry, thank God. I don’t let any of it live rent free in my head. I want to leave room in there on the off chance that I’ll gain some wisdom along the way. I’m not sure that I have, but maybe I should cut myself some slack and believe that I have, in spite of all the ridiculously dumb things I have done and will do. Or maybe because of them. I think I’ll give myself that instead of choosing what might be a car behind curtain number three.
Bravo. And onward we go.
Tess, love what you've written here! One line grabs me, "I don't let any of it live rent free in my head." There, I feel lies a constant mystery each of us deal with daily, questioning do we let things we wish never happened live 'rent free' in our heads/hearts, because there is always a cost to be paid for such things/events. The other side of that 'rent free,' is all the beauty spent in our lives still, and forever hopefully living there 'rent free thank God.' The longer I live, I find almost daily dead things long past that shouldn't be there are at last gone. This I find is the better part of this constant mystery, the craving for those beautiful short lived moments long past are surfacing filling what has finally disappeared, thank God.
Amen to that.
My first reaction when I can't find my glasses is to assume I left them in the airport in Dallas or some other god-forsaken place. Then it dawns on my I haven't left my room all day so they've got to be here. Somewhere. And I just had them.
Why do I always panic first and then think later?
Amen!!!!
I know its hoping for too much, but wouldn’t 2024 be a good time for angry people to chill out.
Wonderful! Thank you for your honesty!
Pushing the “like” button just didn’t seem adequate after reading these lovely words and having just received my copy of CHEEFULNESS way down here in Mexico. I can now look forward to another wonderful read. Thank you. Thank you Garrison. And, thank you too to Muse Jenny who makes you happy and thus provides the ongoing inspiration for what gives the rest of us joy.
I love how you always manage to transcend the inanity of politics nudging us toward the more spiritual and moral and, well, human, and so thankful for your humor and humility and wisdom lo these many years--and especially glad that you’re managing to steer clear of cemeteries.