“I want answers and I want them NOW!”  My father was holding the rusted sledge hammer with a splintered handle in his hand.  I’m pretty sure there were more than a few times when one of the questions he needed answered was, “What in the world possessed me to have five kids?”  This time however, he just wanted to know who the culprit was.  The hammer had been found, tossed into an old utility trailer, seldom used, that sat near the far side of our property.  I was quick to answer the implied question.  “It wasn’t me!” (It is usually the guilty party that speaks first!)  Unfortunately, there was a witness.  When Dad wanted answers (NOW!), no secret was safe.  It was a pretty sure bet that anyone with information would break before too long, and as he went up the line of my brothers, sure enough, one of them had information he was quite willing to share.  “I saw Paul out there with that hammer the other day, right beside the trailer.”  The interrogator’s attention immediately returned to the youngest boy there.  “Is that true, son?”  Well, I was no match for that look…or the accusatory voice.  “Y-y-y-yes…”  The punishment that followed was for both lying, and trying to hide the broken tool, not for breaking the handle. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

Every once in awhile, I myself have a few questions to voice.  The questions are followed up with the same statement my Dad made that day.  “I want answers and I want them NOW!”  Unlike Dad, I don’t always get them.  Perhaps, that’s because I don’t have the authority that he had in that situation.  It isn’t my right to know the answers now.  All I know is that I don’t like not being in control, not having a clue to the reasons that things happen.

For some reason, I have been deluged the last few weeks, and especially in the last few days, with memories of friends and family who are no longer with me.  For most of my life, I have taken death quite matter-of-factly.  After all, the Book says, “It is appointed to man, once to die…”  How much clearer could it be?  So people have died, I have said the right things, and pigeonholed the occurrence and even the emotions.  Over and done.  Problem is, the older I get, the more I realize what has been lost and the more I feel that loss.  I sense the holes which have been left and I realize that nothing will ever fill them.  Even when friends I hadn’t seen for years have died, the hole was left.  It’s not only the young ones I’m talking about, either.  All of them, young and old, have been part of my life and their absence is felt keenly.

T Ray Dickinson (with thanks to Chris Clendenen)

The recent deluge of memories has been motivated in part by friends who are in pain.  The birthday of an old schoolmate yesterday reminded one of her close friends (another schoolmate) that she missed Dorothy intensely.  Yesterday, a blog post by a friend who has struggled for well over a year with the untimely death of one of her best friends served to remind me of just how helpless we are in the face of unanswerable questions; questions for which we demand answers; questions for which no answer will ever come.  A chance photo posted last night of an old friend, who died too young quite a few years ago, brought to mind how much I have missed T Ray and his sense of humor, as well as his love of music.  The list goes on: Susie, Bill, Miss Peggy, my Father-in-law, my grandparents.  Curtis thinks about his son who would have had a birthday this week, now gone for over two years; Wade is lying awake tonight missing his dad who passed away only today.  You, no doubt, have scores of names and faces to add to the list.  And still, my demands don’t evoke any answers. 

It’s not just the passing of loved ones I want explained to me, I want answers about people who are still with us, but who are struggling under massive burdens.  Kim is going through chemo and soon, surgery for breast cancer…Mom doesn’t remember that I visited her a couple of weeks ago and has even forgotten most of the events from my childhood.  John is slowly losing his eyesight and can’t see to work with his hands any more or even to read.  I can’t begin to enumerate the people and trials that belong in this list.  I want to know.  How are any of these things okay, and why are they happening to these good people?

It is in times like these, the times when my mind and emotions run uncontrolled through the past and then dwell unreasonably on the future, wondering if anything will be right with the world ever again, that I am grateful for faith.  Not faith in what I can see…that has failed me miserably.  I can only rest in the strong, loving hands of a Creator who sees the whole picture and not just the tiny little piece of eternity I can view from my vantage point.  He knows that the fabric of eternity is being woven, and sorrow is part of it.  Joy is too.  Life, death, tragedy, celebration…all of them play their roles.  It doesn’t answer the questions, but there is comfort to be found.  When confronted with the death of his close friend Lazarus, Jesus himself wept and was moved deeply.  When He was asked to remove the physical infirmity of the Apostle, God reassured him.  “My grace is enough.”  Our Maker feels the pain, just as we do.  He is moved.  And, one day, He will dry our tears.

Marvin Eck (another one I miss), the pastor who married the Lovely Lady and me, always maintained that we would still cry when we arrived in Heaven, but he also believed that after that, the questions would be answered and our tears would be wiped away, never to appear again in eternity.  I wish I knew if he was right.  He’s finding that out now for himself.  

So, unlike the result my Dad got, the answers will not be forthcoming for me today.  No retribution will be made to right the wrongs.  Generally, things will have to continue as they have…for awhile longer.  I’m sorry that I can’t explain; sorry that I can’t pat your hand and say, “There, there, everything is going to be all right.”  Yet.

We have hope.  And that, for now, will have to do.

“Jesus wept.”
(John 11:35)

“Oh yes, He cares; I know He cares.
His heart is touched with my grief.
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.”
(“Does Jesus Care” by  Frank E Graeff)

“I’d like to get three accompaniment tracks, please.  The last time, you sent me those new compact discs, though.  I need cassette tapes.”  The voice speaking to me on the telephone was obviously that of a mature woman, probably in her sixties.  I patiently explained to her that cassettes were no longer available, so she would need to buy the CDs and transfer them to cassette if that’s all she was able to use.  In spite of the fact that prerecorded cassettes have been unavailable for at least four or five years, we still get requests like this frequently.

Over the last few years, approaching my senior years myself, I have contemplated this phenomenon any number of times.  The lady described above is a Baby Boomer, as am I.  We were the hip generation, the in crowd!  We were never going to be like our parents, those old geezers.  As groovy chicks and dudes, there was no way we were going to be caught dead over thirty, in square threads, investing our dough in the Man’s system, and handing out downer lingo like, “We’ve never done it like that,” or “When I was your age…”. 

Now admittedly, not all of us in the Boomer generation were hippies, spouting the “make love, not war” mantra, and putting flowers in the barrels of the soldier’s guns.  The great majority of us were more conformist than otherwise, but the universal thought was that we would be “forever young”. Even now, I can hear the whining voice of Bob Dylan, along with the cheesy vibrato of the Hammond B3, as he invokes the blessing of the epoch, “May you stay Forever Young…”  When did we get to be old like our parents, stuck in the past, drawing imaginary lines in the sand over which we will not cross?  It happens to each generation in its turn, it would seem.

I readily admit to a love of nostalgia.  Recently, a friend sent me the text of a radio story about a museum for eight-track tapes.  I was immediately eighteen again, tooling along in my brand new 1976 Chevy Nova, with the stereo I had installed myself.  Radio?  Pah!  We listened to what we selected ourselves, on our extremely portable and wonderfully ill-conceived eight-tracks.  I realize “wonderful” and “ill-conceived” seem to be paradoxical, but that’s how I view the technology, in retrospect.  These tapes were a hodge-podge of genius and idiocy, held together by a generous dash of creativity.  The genius was the idea to use a movable head to read the information on the tape, its downfall the inability to keep the head in alignment, often resulting in double tracking (two songs playing at once).  It was genius to use a continuous tape, but idiocy to loop it in a circle that frequently tightened up on itself, making the music drag as if you had slowed a forty-five rpm record to thirty-three rpm.  Oops, sorry! Another reference to an obsolete technology.  Anyway, let’s just say the idea of the eight-track was brilliant in its concept, but completely impractical in its application.  We bought them by the thousands.

There are innumerable other obsolete gadgets which have come and gone in my lifetime.  The same could be said of my parent’s lifespan and of their parent’s era.  For some reason though, we form attachments to the familiar, the once useful accessories, and we don’t want to let them go even when they are replaced by superior technology.  Our parents did the same thing, as did our grandparents before them.

I’ve said it here before; I want to keep learning as long as I live.  That doesn’t mean that I won’t turn my nose up at a few non-essential inventions.  Right now, the e-book comes to mind, although I may embrace that idea one day.  But, I want to keep an open mind and a lively imagination that grasps new ideas and exciting developments for as long as I’m able to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.  All of my life has been played out in an exciting era of innovation and discovery, with no period more so than right now.   What a shame it would be to miss out on it, just because I decided to get old.

I do still have a small collection of 8-track tapes squirreled away just in case they ever get popular again.  You never know…Hey! bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirts came back…

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:9)

“I could not, at any age, be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.”
(Eleanor Roosevelt~First Lady of the United States~1884-1962)

Originally posted 2/25/2011

It was a young boy’s dream.  Probably about ten years old, it was the first time I had been allowed to wander around the fairgrounds without an adult.  Oh, there was an older brother, but with three of them in the family, that wasn’t anything unusual.  Besides that, we didn’t slow each other down any.  Any trouble one got into, the other was bound to be up to the challenge of.  No, the real difference this year was that for an hour or two, we were free to wander on our own, without being held back by parents.  They wanted to go see the cows, and goats, and chickens, for crying out loud!  Every year the Livestock Show, the local equivalent of the County Fair, was set up in a neighboring town and we went…to see the livestock.  Not this year, buddy!  That was for the old people.  We were headed to the “Midway”!

I had a few dollars burning a hole in my pocket and it was a pretty sure bet that I would find someplace to spend them.  That was an understatement!  As we left the exhibition part of the show and started past the booths and rides, we were immediately assaulted with the noises and visual sights.  Confusion reigned.  Here was the booth where you could test your shooting skills.  “Hit the ducks and win a prize!”  called the pitchman.  As I hesitated, he lifted up one of the rifles to shove into my hands, but just a few feet away, the fellow selling chances at tossing the pennies onto the plates took up the cry.  “Just one penny on a plate is all it takes!”  Every time I wavered, another voice joined the chorus, confusing matters even more.  I really hadn’t planned to stop at any of these booths.  I wanted to ride the Matterhorn, with it’s loud rock music and flashing lights.  But, it was on the other end of the Midway and to get to the goal, I had to wander past all the “games of skill”.  To a young boy, they were ripe for the picking.  Of course, I could hit the ducks!  Without question, I could toss a coin onto a plate.  Balloons to be hit with a dart?  No problem!  My head spun with the possibilities.  What to choose?

We did make our way to the Matterhorn ride, after not much more than fifteen minutes in the pandemonium.  Once there, I stood and watched as my brother and a lot of other kids boarded the ride.  The music blared…the lights flashed…the cars swung and tilted as the ride spun around and around.  Up the incline, then down…faster and faster the ride went as the kids screamed and laughed.  As for me…I stood and watched, my pockets empty of the price of admission to the wonderful adventure.  In just those few minutes, as we made our way from the exhibits to the other end of the Midway, I had heeded every possible tempting challenge made by the carnival workers.  As I said, my head was spinning and the allure of their spiels was more than this young boy could resist.  They were experts in their craft; their assignment, the emptying of pockets of unsuspecting rubes like me.  Their job done, they turned their attention to the next victims who still had a dollar or two burning a hole in their pockets and I was left to watch other, wiser folks revel in the sensations of the scintillating ride.  “How could this have happened to me?” was the only confused thought in my mind, besides the disappointment that only a ten-year old boy could feel.

Just over a week ago, the fifty-four old version of that ten-year old took a trip out to California.  I was on my way to another carnival, but this was for business purposes.  This carnival goes by the name of “The NAMM Show”, the annual equivalent in the music business of the County Fair.  I had good intentions of how I would use my time as I wandered leisurely through the show, stopping to see the new products and talking with company representatives.  I would take notes and acquire new contacts; networking to maximize the reach of my business.  When I left, the success of the business would be guaranteed for at least the next year, due to a successful venture into the land of the trade show.  I can only report that the result was less than spectacular.

The show boasts well over one thousand exhibitors, each one with a product to sell.  Since it is a music show, most of the products make noise.  And, noise they did make.  The longer I was there, the louder the volume rose.  Initially, I made a few good contacts.  I have the business cards to show for it.  I even have some literature from the first several stops I made.  I’m still not sure what happened for the rest of the day.  About seven hours after I entered the hall, I exited with a splitting headache.  I was actually physically dizzy.  The noise level and the sales pitches all run together in my head.  One amplifier company after another with ear-splitting levels of music; one guitar company after another with heavy-metal artists who were all searching for eleven on volume dials that only go to ten, scantily clad models slapping brochures (with pictures of more scantily clad models printed on them) into your hand…it all runs together.  After I finally found my way out of the crowd and to the parking lot, I sat in my rental car for ten minutes before I could be confident of being able to drive safely to my motel.  Once there, I collapsed, exhausted.

It becomes clear to me as I consider the world in which we pass our lives, that we live in a great big carnival, surrounded by confusion and noise.  Throughout our lives, it is easy to be distracted from our purpose, to have our attention diverted from the business at hand.  Every step we take, someone is hawking their product.  Every time we turn a corner, the eye is drawn to a bigger and better activity.  The noise is deafening, the visual assault on the senses, almost irresistible.  I find that frequently, as I sit and consider what I have accomplished in life, I realize that almost nothing has come to fruition; few of my goals realized.  It is easy to be drawn off the long path to our destination, when we are bedazzled by the glitz, by the sheen of the attractive options available to us, right here and right now.

I remember a parable, now familiar to many of you, offered by one of my teachers many years ago.  The story is told about a young man who wants to be a farmer, and mounting to the seat of the tractor, he begins to do the easiest task he can think of…plowing the sod.  Arriving at the end of the row, he turns the tractor around, only to see the most crooked, wandering furrow he has ever seen.  The old farmer, to whom he wouldn’t listen before, offers just one piece of advice.  “Don’t look at the front of the tractor, young man,”  he recommends.  “Pick a fence post in the distance beyond the field you are in.  Head for that, never looking down or around you.  You’ll do fine.”  Sure enough, raising his eyes beyond his present position, he takes off again and, as he reaches the turn-around spot this time, he sees behind him a perfectly straight furrow.

A simple tale, but one we seem to forget, caught up in the present.  Noise, sights, fads, and people…all of these contribute to a crooked path through life.  We need a Point on which to focus, a North Star by which to navigate, or we are lost and our lives wasted in pursuit of first one inconsequential goal, then another.  I’d like to get to the end of my time on this earthen sphere and be able to look back, to see a straight line where I’ve traveled.

I’ve had the Point of focus picked out for many years.  Now if I can just keep my eyes on the goal.  I’m hoping there’s still time to straighten up the furrow.

“Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”
(Omar Bradley~American Army general W.W. II ~1893-1981)

 
“…But, this one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize…”
(Philippians 3:13,14)