Coat Pockets

Much to my dismay, it is now jacket/coat season where I live.  Sure, the changing of seasons is kind of fun, and Fall is a very pretty time of year.  Colder weather means football and Halloween and football and Thanksgiving and football, all of which I enjoy (especially football).  Sadly, it also means defrosting the car and shoveling the drive and being cold, which I do not enjoy.  I am not a big fan of being cold and I would rather sweat than freeze.  However, since I cannot stop the earth from rotating and for some reason cannot convince my significant other that life in Southern California would be oh so wonderful, I have broken out the coats.

The advent of coat season brings with it a few surprises.  I have a habit of sticking things in my pockets and each year I discover all sorts of little treasures that have been tucked away for the last six months.  Before you ask, no, I never seem to find any money (stupid wallet).  However, my heavy winter coat yielded an amazing variety of stuff this past week.  First, there was the wrapper from a candy bar (chocolate!!!).  Then two of my wife's pay stubs (no clue how those got there), some napkins from a fast food restaurant, a receipt from a different fast food restaurant, a pen (which never seems to be around when I really need it) and another receipt, this one from a gas station.

While not quite as exciting or relevant as, say, the opening of King Tut's tomb, the contents of my coat pocket allow me the opportunity to play a little game I like to call "Where and when did this come from?"  Looking at the dates on the receipt is permitted but comes with a mandatory reduction in style points.  There are, however, serious bonus points available if I can remember not only what restaurant the napkins came from but when I went there and what I had to eat.  Believe it or not there have been occasions in which I could reconstruct an entire Thursday afternoon in February based solely on the items found in my coat pocket.  This is all the more remarkable considering that I can't often remember what I had for lunch three days ago.

Once the initial thrill of discovery is over (usually the euphoria wears off in about 30-45 seconds) I find myself feeling a bit melancholy.  Last winter I wore my coat pretty much all the time, which means I had it on at least 100 days.  Most of those days were average, ordinary, unremarkable.  Just another day in the life of me.  And what do I have to show for them, what evidence of the 2400 hours I walked the face of this earth?  A couple of receipts proving that I consumed some incredibly unhealthy food and bought some gasoline for my car.  Oh, and that my wife went to work for a couple of weeks in January and and got paid for her time and energy.  That's it.

Granted, my life cannot and should not be reduced to the contents of my winter coat pockets.  Yet, my coat pockets remind me of how much of my life seems to be lost in the day-to-day grind of just living.  I have a friend who will tell you that today is the best day of his life.  I have no reason to doubt him when he says it.  I wish I had the same approach to living.  Instead, the vast majority of my days are spent doing the basics of life - eating, sleeping, working, eating, parenting, being a spouse - not really noticing what I am doing and wondering if anybody else is paying attention either.

Scientists tell us that our universe is billions of years old and that there are hundreds of billions of stars and planets out there in space.  As a human being, I get to live on one of these planets for a tiny fraction of time, not even a blink of the proverbial eye.  How in the world can anything I do matter?  What difference does it make?  Even if you accept the butterfly in the Amazon flapping its wings and making it rain in Texas theory (which I do because it just sounds so cool) in a universe as massive as ours can I say or do anything that will have any influence?

I really want to be able to tell you something uplifting here, that each day is a gift (that is why they call it the present) and that we should value every second we are alive.  I really, honestly do.  Yet, I know that for many of us Tuesday morning will come and we will go off to work, our kids to school, and we will come home and have dinner and three weeks from now we probably won't remember any of it.  The day will come and go and no one will really care what we said or did - not our grandchildren, or their children or the people that write history books about famous people and their remarkable accomplishments.  No one, except God.

See, I think that the present is a gift not just for us but also for God.  It took billions of years to get to this point, for the universe to evolve so human life can exist.  How long will it last?  Who knows.  But I am sure that God savors each and every moment of it.  Our mundane lives are anything but pointless and boring to the One who waited so long for the chance to see us live and breath and eat and pray and love and work.  Our lives are so short that I don't think we appreciate how long God has been anticipating and working for this moment.  After billions of years of waiting, I honestly can't imagine God missing out on a single second of our lives.  All those minutes and hours and days and weeks of our lives that got lost because they are just ordinary, average days, are not lost to God.

So, as you are taking out the trash this week, or making coffee, or typing up that report, or doing anything that you do day after day, week after week, remember how long God has been waiting to see you do it.  Maybe, just maybe, that makes even the most average of days seem a little more extraordinary.  Even the trips to get gas in the middle of winter.

Last One Standing

As I write this my mother is facing a very sad time in her life.  Her little brother recently suffered a massive heart attack and his family made the difficult decision to remove all life-support systems.  He is likely to pass from this world within a few hours.  Her older sister is in a nursing home after having had a stroke that has left her in a coma.  She is not expected to ever regain consciousness and her sons are struggling to figure out when it is time to say goodbye.  My grandfather, her Dad, died before I was born and my grandmother passed almost 20 years ago.  Soon, my mother will be the last member of her family left in this world. 

When I was a kid I relished those few occasions when I was the only one at home.  With three siblings, quality "me" time was hard to come by.  I would pass up going places just so I could be home by myself, free to watch what I wanted on TV, or take a nap, or raid the kitchen.  What made those times so special was the knowledge that within a few hours my family would be back home.  I could enjoy the peace and quiet in part because I knew I was not going to be alone forever.  The idea that my Mom, brother, or sisters would never come back again seldom crossed my mind, unless I was really mad in which case I might fantasize about the whole lot of them being abducted by aliens.  Even those desires were short lived (most of the time).

Eventually all of my siblings left home for good.  At one point my brother lived in Alaska, I lived in Kansas City, my mother and younger sister in St. Louis and my older sister in New York.  Family reunions were and are rare.  Yet they are possible.  Even though my parents are divorced they are still alive.  I can call either one up at will or trek to Kansas or Florida to see them.  That is a nice feeling (even if I don't do it nearly as often as a good son should). 

Only in her mid-60s, my mother is now alone.  The memories or family vacations, holidays, and other events that were important to the Davis clan reside only with her.  There is no one left to reminisce with, no one else who can recall the sights, sounds, smells and tastes.  As the middle child, I doubt that my mother ever dreamed that the day would come, so early in life, when she would be home alone.  For good.

Not only is she alone, but everyone else is together someplace else.  What they are experiencing I don't know.  One day I will find out for myself, so will my Mom.  But for now, they are enjoying it without her.  The longing to be reunited is a strong emotion, yet so is the desire to live a long full life.  There are kids and grandkids to be loved and enjoyed.  A husband to spend time with.  Friends who need her.  Yet, the pull must be there, to a place unseen, but real.  A dearly adored Dad gone for too many years, a Mom and brother and sister and the promise of restored relationships.  The communion they are all sharing at this moment will have to wait for my Mom. 

One day I too may be the last one standing.  I do not hope for that day.  I want to live a long life, a good life, but for some reason I have no desire to be the one who gets left turning off the lights.  I will happily leave that task to my younger brother or sister.  At my passing they can tell all the old stories of our childhood (and a few made up ones as well) and relive the good and bad times, if they choose.  I don't mind going ahead and getting things ready for them.  At least I will know that there is someone to say goodbye who remembers a different me, the one that still believed in Santa, hunted for Easter eggs, and pretended to be Luke Skywalker when we played in the basement.

I love my mother more than she may realize.  I hurt for her right now.  I hope she can take some comfort in the promise that there will come a day when she will not be alone.  Selfishly, I pray it does not come too soon.  When it does, I know I will find a way to rejoice that her family is together again in the loving embrace of the God who created and loves them. 

Symbols

She keeps a lock of hair in her pocket
She wears a cross around her neck
Yes the hair is from a little boy
and the cross is someone she has not met
not yet

She Talks to Angels The Black Crowes

She Talks to Angels is not one of my favorite Black Crowes songs, though I am a big fan of the band and their music. However, these lines have always captured my imagination. In case you are not familiar with the song it is about a woman who is a drug addict. The little boy is likely her child, though her connection to him is reduced to a lock of hair she carries around with her. The cross she wears around her neck, at least at this point in her life, is just jewelry. She may not even really know what the cross symbolizes, what it means. If that is the case she is not alone.

When my wife and I lived in Kenya we had a good friend who was a strong opponent of alcohol consumption. Part of his dislike of liquor was rooted in his religious convictions, part in his experience with an alcoholic father. So it took my breath away to see him walk into the office one day wearing a Budweiser t-shirt. I asked him about the shirt. He said it was one of his favorites and that he, like many Kenyans, purchased it at an open-air market. See, many of the clothes that you and I take to places like Goodwill end up in Third World countries. Importers will bring in huge containers of shirts and hat and pants and then sell the clothes to small business owners who sell them on the street. That is how my friend ended up with his Budweiser shirt. They have beer in Kenya, but not the Budweiser brand (not being a fan of Budweiser, or its flavorless sister, Bud Light, this is not a bad thing). So he had no idea what Budweiser was or what the logo on his shirt represented. If you really like irony then you will love the next part of the story. I have a t-shirt I bought in Kenya. It has the picture of an elephant's head and the word "Tusker" on it. People in America think the shirt is really cool (it is). What they don't know is that Tusker is a brand of beer in Kenya (and a much better beer than Budweiser, thank you very much). Seems beer logos are not as universally recognized as advertisers would like. Bummer. World domination is not yet in reach for the great breweries of the world.

There are lots of symbols and logos in the world. Sometimes people know what the symbol/logo represents, sometimes they don't. It is not uncommon for folks to wear something with a symbol or logo on it because, like my friend, they think it looks nice. If they knew the meaning of the symbol, if they understood what the logo represented, I wonder if they would still wear the shirt or hat or piece of jewelry.

The cross is a symbol of the Christian faith. Its meaning is found in the story of Jesus. Two thousand years ago the cross was an instrument of death. People were executed on crosses, hung in public so everyone could watch them suffer and die. So why do Christians wear such a macabre symbol? Because of God's power to transform it. Jesus was hung on a cross but God raised him from the dead. The cross, the symbol of death, became a symbol of life.

That is why I love the lines from She Talks to Angels. The broken, hurting, drug addict wears a cross around her neck. She does not know Jesus or about the power symbolized by the cross. She does not know about the healing and the newness of life that Jesus offers. No, not yet. What the song offers up is hope that one day this woman will meet Jesus. And when she does that cross around her neck will take on a whole new meaning. What great lyrics and what wonderful imagery. May all that is symbolized in the cross - healing, forgiveness, love, life, be yours today. And may you meet the one who makes it all possible, Jesus.