I have words welling up inside of me.  They have been spilling out for a couple of hours already tonight.  I am ashamed to say that I faithfully wrote them all down on pages in front of me–and then deleted every single one of them.

Photo: Jeannean Ryman

The little boy had stolen something from his school.  Now he was paying the price.  He wished he could go back to yesterday and just leave the beach ball where he found it.  But it was not to be.  The paddle came down on his tender posterior.  Whack!  Whack!  Whack!  He wiped away the tears and headed back to class.  If only it had never happened!

Fast forward a year or two and the same boy stands in front of his father, head dropped in shame.  The tool he should never have held in his hands was broken.  Not only that, he had attempted to hide it and even lied about it.  The eyes that looked down on him were sad, not angry.  Still, the miscreant wished he could go back to last week before he had taken the hammer from its place.  The cloth belt swung through the air.  Whack!  Whack!  Whack!  As he cried, he wished that he had never even touched the tool!  If only!

Again, we move quickly past another couple of years and look in on the boy at school.  He is not in trouble this time, for a change.

The austere aspect of Mrs. Dunham’s countenance almost disappeared into the twinkle of her eyes as she pulled the large volume from the little cubbyhole behind her desk.  Today, she would be introducing her students, most of them indifferent to her passion, to a subject she had studied extensively.

“Today students, we will begin to study Greek mythology, the study of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, as well as some of their distant relatives.  We’ll be reading a number of stories over the next week or so.  Yes, they are just made-up stories, but we can learn a lot from this ancient civilization.”

A collective groan went up from the sixth graders.  Few of them had any interest in those stories.  There was at least one however, who had read many of them before and was anxious to discuss them again.  Over the next week, he was in his element, if only for the short time each day when they did their reading assignments and discussed yesterday’s.  Zeus, Hermes, Poseidon, Hades–each one was discussed and their feats described, to his great delight.

But, he knew one story was coming, one that he hated–well, disliked greatly anyway.

Sure enough, the day came when Mrs. Dunham opened the book to the story of Pandora and her box.  His face fell, and he wished that he had stayed home sick that day.  This story, he had no interest in reading, nor in discussing.  He couldn’t have told you why he disliked the story so.  He just knew that it made him horribly uncomfortable.

In the story, Pandora herself was a gift from Zeus to his subjects.  With her came a box.  The box was sealed closed and the king of Olympus gave instructions that it was never to be opened.  It almost goes without saying that the box eventually was opened.  How could it be otherwise?

Pandora, on a day when no one else was around, sneaked to the box, stealthily lifting the lid.  All she wanted was just one short glance inside–just one.  But, as she lifted the lid, through the narrow crack came all manner of flying evils, the sins and diseases and hardships which would make man faint under their load for all of time.  They all escaped, with no hope that they could be collected and stuffed back in the box again.

Suddenly aware that she had done a great evil, the lovely Pandora takes one more look into the box, just to see if perhaps she had avoided loosing at least one great horror on all of mankind.  Just one small creature, the only being in the box which wasn’t evil, remained in the bottom of the box.  Even so, it also flew as she opened the box wide.  As it flew, however, she realized that it was the one thing which would give aid to mankind in its sad state.  Amid all the evils, when all around was darkness and pain, there still would be hope.

The boy listened to the words once more and said to himself, “It’s not enough.  If only she had resisted the temptation.  If only.”

It has been long years since and the boy, now an aging man, long ago figured out the reason he dislikes the story of Pandora’s Box so bitterly.  The story of Pandora is the disappointing story of everyman.  There is not one of us who doesn’t wish that we had acted differently, spoken more gently, or taken a different course at some point in our life.  The damage is done, the evil loosed on the world, and the only thing we can do is to go forward in hope that the future will be better.  But, that almost seems just like wishing, not like anything solid at all.

We can’t go back.  Words said in anger can’t be unsaid.  Deeds done in malice can’t be undone.  We can’t turn back the clock to take any of it back, or to do things differently.  But, I don’t want to leave the impression that we are bereft of a remedy.  You see, there is hope; there is a light in the darkness.  Unlike the people who believed those Greek stories as their religion and were left at the mercy of gods and demi-gods who had none (mercy, that is), we don’t have such a God.

Grace holds out its hand as it tells us that the past doesn’t matter.  Grace gives us the opportunity to start fresh today, with a clean slate erased of all the misdeeds of yesterday.  The past is gone–wiped away.  That grace is ours through the gift of a Savior, who says, “Come to me and I’ll give you rest from your heavy load.  You don’t need to labor under the burden of the past another minute.”  Simple faith opens the way forward. Unlike the story of Pandora, we’re not left with a weak and ineffective hero.  No, our hope is a guarantee, not just a wish.

So, we’ll never again walk the paths we’ve already traveled.  In a way, that in itself is a great gift.  But, even though the penalty of the past is wiped away, we can still learn from it.  We must learn from it.

We start here. Now.  Where do we go from here?  It is indeed dark behind us.  And, we can stay right where we are, gazing into the darkness behind and wishing it were not so.  But, ahead the light shines brightly, inviting us to keep moving.  The road leads to the future and we may follow it with hope–real hope.

I think I want to take a stroll with hope–and you.  What do you say?

“Fear not for the future; weep not for the past.”
(Percy Bysshe Shelley~English lyric poet~1792-1822)

“And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
(Romans 5:5~NET)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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She stands there, broken.
 
Gone to pieces.

We think the words mean that someone has lost control of their emotions, but they do have a double meaning. Both meanings fit my friend standing here today.  I call her my friend, but for all the time I have known who she is, I have never really known her.

Yet here she is, weeping as if she will never stop.  She may not–not inside anyway.  I talk with her and wipe away my own tears which well up without my permission.  The moment passes and she gains control, enough that we can take care of the business she came for.  But, once more before she leaves, the emotions pour out unchecked.  Through her sobs, she apologizes. I stutter out that we will pray, and she is gone.

Broken.  Gone to pieces.

And, I can’t fix her.  She may never be whole again.  Like Humpty Dumpty in the old children’s rhyme, she has fallen from her solid perch and been shattered, with no chance of human intervention which will undo the hurt that has been done.  Broken.

Funny.  Mere moments before, another woman stood in that very same spot, and I laughed with her as she described her little boy and his broken arm.  Yes, we laughed.  The boy has moved from the pain of the newly broken limb to the realization that he has a weapon with which to defend himself from his siblings.  And, he is using it.  Broken, but mending.  And, we laughed at the mental picture.

Just yesterday at lunch, I called the Lovely Lady’s attention to another poem in my little treasure book.

“That…” I said, pointing out a rather lengthy poem, “That describes exactly who I would like to be.”

The poem was one I had read in the dim dark past, but had forgotten, now rediscovering it just days ago.  It touched a sympathetic chord that resonates deep inside of me.

She read the whole thing.  Nodding her head in agreement, she quietly handed the little volume back to me.  We went on about our business, as if nothing had changed.  Perhaps, it hasn’t.

But today, I rejoiced with a traveler who was rejoicing in healing, and I wept with one who was moaning in the agony of loss.  Perhaps, as I say, nothing has changed.  Then again, perhaps it has.

I won’t repent of my resolve, but will do my best to live and serve here, by the side of the road.  I’m not an adventurer, nor a hermit.  I’m not even a world-traveler, but I find myself coming into contact with just such people almost daily.  There may yet be a way in which I can serve.

Our Savior was a friend of sinners.

Perhaps, I can be a friend to man, as well.

The House By the Side of the Road

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
     In the peace of their self-content;
There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart,
     In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
     Where highways never ran;
But let me live by the side of the road
     And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,
     Where the race of men go by,
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
     As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
     Or hurl the cynic’s ban;
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
     And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road,
     By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
     The men who are faint with the strife.
But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears,
     Both parts of an infinite plan;
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
     And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
     And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
     And stretches away to the night.
But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
     And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
     Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road
     Where the race of men go by;
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
     Wise, foolish–so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat,
     Or hurl the cynic’s ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
     And be a friend to man.

(Sam Walter Foss~American poet~1858-1911)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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I met a thief today.  No arrest will be made.  No court would ever convict her, but she stole nonetheless.  Perhaps she didn’t intend to do it.  She probably didn’t even know that she was stealing.  Even so, I can’t help but hear Dragnet’s Joe Friday intoning almost sadly, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Ma’am.”

Rock-a-bye baby on the tree-top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle, and all.

They came to visit again this evening, that motley bunch of children.  We ate supper together–pizza from their daddy’s pizzeria.  (What a childhood!  No once-in-a-blue-moon pizza for them!)  It is a time-honored tradition by now, one which we protect jealously.  But, something is missing tonight.

He always comes too, their Mom’s younger brother.  They adore him and he pretends not to notice–not even to care.  But, all you have to do is wait until they are gathered around him, playing a game, and you may notice that his hand rests on the head of the littlest girl, or that he smiles a little more as he helps them.  I say that he always comes, but he is not here tonight.  His work has taken him away for a week to the bright lights of that city where things that happen there, stay there.  They miss him.  I miss him.

One by one, the children ask to be excused.  One, the next to the oldest, asks if he can turn on the CD player in the living room.  Not sure that the six year old is yet capable of managing the technical operation himself, I start to push away from the table, but he matter-of-factly suggests, “All I have to do is push the button marked “single”, right?”  When did he learn to read?  Something begins to nag at my brain at about the same time as the peppy children’s music begins to blast away.

Dinner over and games put away, the children take a final twirl around the living room, dancing to the music, and–they are gone.  Silence falls.  I suddenly realize that I didn’t want them to leave, either them or their Mom.  It is not always so.  There are evenings when I can’t hurry them out the door quickly enough.  The noise and hubbub, along with the occasional scuffle and stray whine, overwhelm this aging man.  Not tonight.  That something nagging at my brain is beginning to grow clearer.

Suddenly it came to me.  I realized that they are growing up too quickly.  And, just as suddenly, I remembered how fast their mother and uncle grew up before them.  A blink of the eye, a snap of the fingers, and they were gone.  Oh, not gone from my life, but gone certainly from the familiarity that living under the same roof engenders.  Gone from the dependence on us for their necessities.  Gone from the need to wake them in the morning, to remind them of responsibilities, to clothe and feed them. I was never an absentee father, but still, I don’t remember where the time went.

I pushed the thoughts down deep and headed out the door myself to take a bicycle ride.  But, for some reason, the entire hour I rode, I heard a little piping voice singing in my head.  The voice was singing the words (almost) of the song you saw above as you first began reading.  My thoughts carried me back over the years, and I saw the cute little two year old blondie, unable to pronounce the words, but still singing at the top of her lungs.  “Rock-a-bye baby, In tee-top, Wind-a-blownin’, cadle ‘ock, Bough bake, cadle faw, Down come baby, cadle, an’ gall.”  Just as in my head tonight, back then it was repeated ad infinitum with no variation by the little diva.

My mind shifted gears at about the same time as I shifted the bicycle’s down to come to a stop.  The original meaning of the old children’s rhyme is lost in the mists of the centuries, but I have always seen that treetop as a place of safety, of ease, where children are laid for protection and comfort.  Up above the reach of savage beasts, with the wind gently rocking the cradle, the baby sleeps and knows no want.  The picture is a serene one and we relax, knowing that our children are safe.  Or are they?

Suddenly, and without warning, the gentle breeze turns into a gale, the cradle swaying and tilting crazily.  The place of safety has become a place of terror, for the parents down below at least.  Perhaps the child, high above the world, feels the exhilaration of an amusement park ride and, having no understanding of danger, lets out a whoop of joy.  The parents begin to see the peril of their assumption that the treetop is a safe place.  But, before they can make even an effort to bring the child down, the branch cracks under the stress, spilling the precious contents of the suspended cradle into the air, the child they wanted only to protect falling into oblivion.

I will admit that I don’t understand the brain that conceives of such a rhyme as a children’s song.  What a terrible thing!  But, it is, after all, only a bit of doggerel, reminding us that there may be other ways to do things.  And, we do them differently, don’t we?

Our children are not placed in inaccessible places, to grow up high above the world, but they are raised in the very same world in which we walk and live–a world where dangers exist, but where help is close by at all times.  We walk with them, holding their hands to cross the street, tucking them into warm beds at night.  We teach them to navigate the stormy seas of life, explaining the dangers, as well as the incredible joys that are to be found.  True, the ride is a bit bumpier, the road much rougher than the gently swaying boughs of isolation and protection, but the child learns, growing and maturing into a young adult who is fitted and ready to face the same world in which they grew up.

Which is safer?  I’m confident that no answer is necessary.

But, there is another application which speaks to me tonight.  I wonder if we really have learned the larger lesson of the children’s song.  Seeking distance from the noise and danger of the world we live in, we isolate ourselves from its unpleasantness, choosing instead the safety of our own treetops.  From here, we can look down on what happens below and say, “Not my problem.  I’m safe.”  We hide in our work, in our castle-like home, in the fortress we call a church, thinking that in separation we’ll find safety.  I have to wonder how that is working out for us.  Isolation only alienates us from the help, the fellowship, which we desperately need, guaranteeing that there is more danger in the world, not less.

How about it?  I think I feel a gale coming up.  It might be a good time to look for a better place to sleep.

All this talk of rocking cradles is reminding me that sleep, though a great waste of time, is necessary even for me. I believe that I’ll find a place of rest soon.

Sweet dreams, fellow travelers!

“For you will go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”
(Isaiah 55:12~NASB)

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
(Helen Keller~blind & deaf American author~1880-1968)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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The extended holiday weekend has come to an end.  If the pile of merchandise orders which the Lovely Lady and I pulled and prepared for processing tonight hadn’t brought the hiatus to a screeching halt, the consideration of what tomorrow promises would have.  I am not elated.

Perhaps, the book I find myself perusing tonight has contributed to my melancholy.  Always enchanted by the hunt for a bargain, or a treasure, we spent the last couple of days digging through flea markets and antique stores.  One of the treasures (also a bargain) we came back with was this little book of poems, some famous, some obscure.  I have never really loved poetry, but these poems move me.  I am not sure if the book has brought on the pensive mood; perhaps it is the other way around.  Regardless, I have dabbed a tear or two as I read and re-read these old pieces of romantic twaddle.  Silly, isn’t it?  

We are emotional creatures, you and I.  The male of the species is reluctant to admit it, but there is so little difference between the sexes in this respect that it would be hard to prove any exists, save in the ways we show it outwardly.  I have thankfully reached a certain age where it is not considered as much of a disadvantage to speak of it anymore.  That said, I still have perfected the subtle movements necessary to wipe away, without drawing attention, the occasional stray tear which escapes unbidden in public.  I will not divulge what happens out of sight of others, including the Lovely Lady, lest all of you (her too) think less of me.  I am, after all, a Manly Man.  You know–a man who is comfortable in his own skin, but who doesn’t use skin care products.  Prefers large dogs to cats, and so on.  

The little blueish-green book I hold in my hand has a copyright date of 1945.  No wonder the poetry is melancholy.  The Second World War had dragged most countries into its deadly embrace for almost six years.  Millions died, including many civilians.  The world saw the horror of the Holocaust, and death marches, and near the end–the atomic bomb.  Victory brought hope, but many did not return home.  It was a melancholy time.  

Still, I sit and thumb through the pages.  Yellowed with age, they slide obligingly from one selection to the next without the need to lick my fingers, as most new paper seems to require these days.  The slight odor of cigarette smoke, perhaps a remnant of an earlier time when the dangers of that habit were unknown, emanates from the volume.  I don’t love stale smoke, but this doesn’t offend as I consider the possibility that a GI’s wife may have sat nervously with it as she awaited her love’s return.  She might even have shed tears at the sad wartime verses, or have smiled hopefully as she read the more cheerful children’s verses.  Passing the time in expanding her knowledge of popular literature, the moments may have slipped by more easily.  

I know–I know.  It could just as easily have been a spinster schoolteacher who turned the pages in her boarding house room at night.  Or, perhaps the farmer’s wife, sneaking a page in here and there as she labored to be ready for her husband’s return from the fields, tired and hungry, demanding his supper.  

How do I know it was a woman who read the little volume?  The frontispiece has the inscription, “To Ruth, from Joyce.”  I’ll never know who Ruth was, but there is a certain companionship with this faceless lady, as I read “The House by the Side of the Road,” penned by Sam Walter Foss, or “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, evidently one of her favorites.  It is the only poem I see that has any marking on it, a simple check mark beside the dark black and white photograph of the poet.  (“Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.”)

And then, as I sit and think about the words I write here, I wonder why I bother to put them down.  I have no point to be made, no larger truth to offer tonight.  All I know is that I’ve felt this sadness before, perhaps a longing for something more.  You’ve felt it too at times, haven’t you?  

The preacher in me wants to preach, but that’s not what is needed tonight.  You’ve heard those words before, the sermons and the lessons.  Sometimes, there is simply an empty spot that wants to be filled.  It’s not a spiritual need, but just a little homesickness looking for a loving pat on the hand and a cheery there, there, reassuring us that all is still okay in the great big world.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seemed to know exactly what was needed for such times.  I hope you won’t mind if I conclude with his words tonight.  Written a hundred and fifty years ago, they seem intended specifically for me tonight.  It is an excerpt from his poem entitled “The Day Is Done”.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently, steal away.









“And He said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest awhile.'”
(Mark 6:31a~ESV)




“Sitting here…. Can’t sleep. Beautiful evening, listening to the trill of giant frogs and tropical insects in the night…so familiar because I am home, and have heard it all a million times in the past. So very close to home, just down the road at the most beautiful homestead, with some of my most favorite people, ever…And lovely as it has been, I am feeling a little melancholy…maybe you can’t go home again…but, you can never quit trying.”
(Lisa Moye Picciandra, lifted from my feed on Facebook tonight)






© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2013. All Rights Reserved. 





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