Come Pass On
com·pas·sion
[kuhm-pash-uhn]
noun
from compassus, past participle of compat
, to sympathize : Latin com-, com- + Latin pat, to suffer; see p
(i)- in Indo-European roots.]
1. a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
Last night at Midweek, Spring Branch’s cool middle of the week service led by Bible teacher and pastor Adam Bradshaw I learned about compassion. We all know the word. We all try to live it out and understand it, and give it and receive it. Since I’m over 50 I can easily get caught up in the sheer depth and width and breadth of my wisdom (not really, just making a point) yet I am constantly learning that old dogs can learn new tricks.
Especially if you rub their spiritual belly. Adam did last night. He will laugh at that analogy.
Adam and his compassionate sidekick Joe Caldwell (a young servant elder if you take my meaning) did two cool things last night that permanently changed the way I think about compassion:
1) Joe interviewed an author named Georgia who spent a couple years homeless, living on the street. She talked about meeting a young homeless man in Denver and asking God to let her serve this community. Then she became homeless. Not what she expected, but later she realized this was how God could truly use her, for her to experience and understand from the inside out what it means to be homeless. She experienced compassion by suffering alongside the people she wanted to serve.
Later she wrote a book about being homeless in Virginia Beach. It is titled Home Street Home- The Virginia Beach Chronicles. To buy it in print or on Kindle, go here to Amazon. Georgia has started a ministry helping street people at the Oceanfront, so purchasing the book will help in that endeavor.
2) Adam told the story of the The Good Samaritan. We all know the story. Jesus was being interviewed and tested by legal scholars, Pharisees, Sadducees and legalists. These were the people who knew the law inside and out and taught the people what it meant and how to live it out. These guys (they WERE all guys back then, no women, sorry) went out of their way to trip Jesus us and constantly threw him curve balls.
They felt that Jesus was subversive, trying to turn the law upside down. But in truth he was simply trying to turn it right side up and show them the true meaning of the old covenant given by his father, our father who art in heaven. They could find little fault it his answers, yet they knew something was not right, because he was claiming a special relationship with their one true God (well duh) and even suggesting he CAME from God and that talking to him was just like talking to God. Blasphemy!
Yet he was convincing and they hung on his words while they plotted to kill him.
Here is the text from the Bible (NIV):
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[c]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Adam pointed out the following amazing things that Jesus did with this story:
1) The Pharisees and legalists really wanted to know about eternal life
2) Jesus made them give the answer, but then they wanted to know who was their neighbor. This coming from a group who separated themselves by the way they dressed, what they ate, how they prayed and gave money to the poor. Perhaps they were looking to Jesus to prove that their acts of keeping only to themselves was correct. But that was not to be as Jesus told the story.
3) The fact that the priest and Levite were LEAVING Jerusalem meant that it would be appropriate for them to dirty their hands by helping the wounded man. They were very concerned about cleanliness, both physical and spiritual. But Jesus made it clear they could have helped the man according to the law.
4) He was talking about them and showing how they followed their rules so closely they failed to do what was right
5) Samaritans were shunned by Hebrews as they practiced idolatry and not the one true way. They were considered spiritual low life. Or simply outcast low life. They were to be avoided at all costs. Samaritans likewise knew how the Hebrews felt about them. Yet the outcast man showed compassion on the Hebrew (we presume that since he came from Jerusalem) and cared for him as if he were his neighbor.
6) The Pharisees and legal scholars had to agree that the Samaritan did according to God’s will, while their own kind did not. They chose to pass on versus show compassion. This did not endear them to Jesus. Fact was, their kind was the only kind of people he despised. This only served to help write his death warrant, as people in charge do not like to be put down by carpenters.
So the question then became what can we do with this? Do we wait for that moment when we come across a wounded person on the street and then act heroic? Yes of course we would want to act like the good Samaritan man did. But for me, this also means every day in small ways we can show mercy and compassion on EVERY HUMAN BEING around us, all the time.
For me it reminded me that my anger towards others is not compassionate. I have some work to do, some people to forgive and to follow that forgiveness by showing them mercy and love. I have work to do. I do not want COMPASSION to mean COME PASS ON like the priest did in the story. I want to be the man who stops and does the right thing, who gives himself away, his time, his money and risks his health and reputation for the sake of a complete stranger.
Because when you come right down to it, the moral of the story, and the key to the Gospel is that we must treat complete strangers as our neighbors, as our friends. With compassionate love.
I have work to do.
Dear Tucker
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Dear Tucker,
Dude, its me, no-leash Jake. I heard you made it up to Doggy Heaven. dude. Good on ya, mate! I know you were draggin’ butt there towards the end and you were ready to go. When a dog has to squat pee….. well what’s wrong with that. I do it sometimes when the guys ain’t around. But when a dog can’t sniff his own butt, things are over, dude. Hang on a second, need to check and make sure I can still do it…. oh yeah! You know, I think I smell good. That stupid Jack Russell down the street says I smell crazy. So what. Crazy is as crazy smells. Hang on man… CAT!……. no, it was just a bird. They sound the same, did you ever notice that? Catbirds.
- Tucker looking fly in heavenly snow
So listen, I’m up in my owner’s office, using their computer. Steve Jobs could have done a better job and made these things dog friendly. Dude. Took me a while cause I had to watch some dog videos on You Tube. Completely clean stuff, my friend. Except for the poodles, but that’s our secret. Then I had to listen to Who Let the Dogs Out a buncha times. I love that song. How do they get those dogs to bark inside the computer? Hey, do they have songs in heaven? I bet they do. And they got trees too, right? Don’t tell me they don’t have trees! I’m not going. I mean, what do you pee on? Well…. I guess God figured that out, right? Send me a sign and let me know there’s trees and lamps and stuff to pee on. Even bushes. I gotta have something to look forward to.
Hey, did you know… SQUIRREL!!!! Dang thing is running across the roof. Oh yeah, did you know that God backwards is Dog? No mistake there my friend, no mistake there. The two-legged ones say we’re man’s best friends. I say we’re God’s best friends, and they just get to borrow us for a while. I’m down with that as long as there are trees up there. And of course, no cats allowed. Cats are going straight to hell. Hell, my friend, is essentially a lack of dog.
So anyways, me and the boys were doing a pee off the other day down near Koehler’s mailbox. Yeah, that one, you remember. Oh baby, good times. So Red Rover peed himself out, it was embarrassing, but we pretended not to notice he was shooting blanks. Then we all were done and nothing to do or sniff, so we talked about you.
You were a good dog. No lie. I don’t mean some mamby pamby poodle suckup dog that will do anything for a treat. Hey wait….I’ll do anything for a treat too. But I ain’t no poodle! Neither are you. We decided that you had dignity, which Jack thought meant you had nice fur, but we told him the truth: you got big balls. I should know, I got pretty close to them on a regular basis. They demanded our respect. Very respectable balls you had.
And another thing…. TREAT TREAT TREAT. Gotta go, just heard the can opener.
LATER
I was gonna say that sometimes I watched you and tried to act like you. The way you stared at other dogs. The way you wagged your tail without looking like a total dumbass. I never do that unless my owner has bacon treats BACON! You were always kinda like those dogs in the movies, the ones who are older and wiser. But I could never act that way. Neither could that poor excuse for a lamebrain mutt who moved in with you a while back. Clansea has got to be dumber than dirt. But he can pee, I will give him that. Problem is he ain’t clean yet. You used to do it and never get a drop on all that low hangin’ fur. But Clansea, he’s a mess. But he’s still okay with me, cause once I seen him eat two mouths of dirt followed by a mouth of mulch. I’ll never forgot that, so help me Dog. It was almost spiritual. But then his lady owner yelled at him and it was like POP the moment was ruined. Now Sundae is another story. She scares me, but I want her. I’m real conflicted here, Tuck. Keep dreamin’ bout her, puppies everywhere. It’s like a nightmare! Yet I like it. But only in the dream, pal. Only in the dream.
So anyways, like I was saying.. FLEA!!!! ARGGH AHRHHHHH AHHHHHHH SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH. Ah, yeah, much better. Now why would God invent fleas. TO TORMENT DOGS! Tell me they don’t have fleas in Heaven. Cause if they do, I swear I will run away. But not today, he just opened a bag of bacon treats BACON!!! Ahh, God, what happened. Bacon makes me go nuts BACON!!!!!!!! I can smell it all the way up here and I’m drooling on the keyboard.
Oh yeah, before I forget, Gigi says hello. She always had a soft spot for you, Tucker. Not like your coconuts were still ripe, if you take my meaning. But she always just about piddled whenever you were around. Whimpering and showing her belly that way. Disgusting. Now if she’d do it for me, it would NOT be disgusting. So yeah, I just wanted you to know that I’m going after her. In your honor. Oh yeah, gonna get me some Gigi. AROOOOOOOOOO! Crap, just woke up my owner. Gotta go.
Listen, all the guys, we just wanted you to know that you was a solid dog. A real standup dog. And ALL of us said if we ever had to share our food, it would be with you. But not my bacon treats BACOOONNNNNNN! Yeah, okay, I’m glad we got that taken care of. We remember you every day. We will never forget the smell of you, Tucker, or the way you licked us and always acted like we smelled better than any dog alive. Only you could do that. My butt always smells nice, in spite of what Jack says….. CAT! Gotta go chase that stupid cat.
Wish you were here. We are all waggin’ tail for you buddy. We remember you. We will never forget you. See you soon. Keep the lights on for me, okay?
Your best dog,
Jake
Dear Rachel Maddow
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Dear Rachel Maddow,
I am writing to tell you that you have besmirched the name and reputation of my dog, Jasper, when you called him, and I quote, “The Poop Fairy,” and also referred to him as “the slightly overweight female Labrador.”
Where to begin?
First, Jasper was very much a male lab. While it may be true that he was neutered and therefore very much confused about his sexuality, he was totally male. He lifted his leg to pee and was prone to leg humping, which I believe is a male Labrador Olympic sport. Pure male.
Second, we did not like to call him overweight, as that may have hurt his feelings, even though he did not understand English. We called him hefty or full-bodied. As far as he was concerned, if food was involved he was always willing to go on the Jabba the Hut diet for the sake of kibbles and bits. So we were careful, when we weren’t spoiling him that is.
Third, and most importantly, we are in complete denial about the Poop Fairy part. While it may be true that our girls did dress Jasper up in girlie outfits when they were young, he never knowingly engaged in any transgender or translabradoodle behavior. He did not prance or act like a queen. Other than the ridiculous outfits they made him wear, he maintained a dignified and completely male composure. Most of the time.
Fourth, he was not gay. Not that we would have had an issue with that. He was very much an equal-opportunity partner with whatever dog was in his general vicinity. More often then not, they were female. The so-called Buddy affair only happened once, and we broke that up. With a hose. Jasper’s alleged affections for Bobo the Jack Russell Terrier was entirely true. That dog was hot.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Jasper NEVER wore lipstick for any of the photo shoots or appearances he made for the Scoop the Poop campaign or as the Poop Fairy. He would not have put up with that, and besides, I could not make it stick. Not that I would have. So I Photoshopped it in.
So there you have it. Jasper was a male dog, all the way. He was no fairy. I just wanted you to know for the sake of my dog’s memory, and for the sake of your show. BTW, he loved your show. So do I.
Making Donuts
Normally I would agree that eating donuts is a sure-fired way to happiness. But today I needed to be involved with making donuts. I needed the diversion and the good feeling that I knew would come over me. The ingredients are simple: one crippled dog named Hoppy, two scoops of dog food, one owner, one iPhone.
Any questions?
Preface to Billy Blue Sky
My name is Billy Blue Sky. That’s my nickname— everyone calls me that. My fancy name is William Lincoln Pearlman, but I only use that on important grownup papers. My mom gave me my nickname when I was little ‘cause I used to go outside and say, “Blue Sky! Blue Sky! Blue Sky!” I remember doing that. I still like to run around outside, especially when the sky is so blue, the way it gets sometimes right after a storm when its like that snap crackle pop cereal. But I don’t say, “Blue Sky!” anymore because I’m all grown up and grown ups have to be serious.
But I don’t mind if you call me Billy Blue Sky ‘cause that’s my name. You can’t ever run away from your name, even if you want to. It will follow you around just like a puppy who loves you and pretty soon you take it home and ask your Mom if you can keep it.
I want to tell you a story about what happened to me when I was a boy. When I was just 10-years-old. I’m almost twenty now. I’m a grownup man. What happened to me back then seems like a long time ago, but my Mom says it feels like yesterday. Gampa says it was just a few eye blinks ago, but I tried counting my eye blinks in an hour and it was more than a few. So I told Gampa he was full of prunes. He laughed. I don’t like prunes.
I love my Mom. Her name is Linda. She is a very special lady. I think she may be the most special woman in the whole entire world. She’s still not too sure about God, but he is real sure about her. She’s the finest invention he ever made. She is awesome and bad to the bone cool. She is my Mom. I don’t want you to be upset but she is the best Mom in the world. I know your Mom is great, but my Mom is the greatest! She is S-P-E-C-I-A-L!
I’m special too. I’ve been called special all my life because I have Down syndrome. It makes me look funny and sound funny and walk funny. Yup, I’m a funny guy. You may not believe this but I’m glad God let me have Down syndrome ‘cause I get to help others who are like me, and people who are not like me. Being special is cool. And I’m really good at Special Olympics basketball and I got three gold medals this year. Maybe I should put pictures of them in this book.
Billy rules!
The story I’m going to tell you really happened, but it may be hard for you to believe because some magic stuff happened. My Gamma calls it “God stuff.” Do you believe in God? I do. I always have. God made me look just like him. Some people don’t like the idea of God looking like a Down syndrome kid like me, but that makes me happy. God is so big he can look just like all of us. Now that is big!
When I was a boy I called God “Sky Daddy,” but now I just call him God or late at night in my bed when I’m all alone, I still call him Sky Daddy, but I don’t like to tell others because it sounds like baby talk. God doesn’t mind if we baby talk to him. He whispers back to me like baby talk and I like it. I know I’m a grown up man now, but I still like it.
You don’t have to believe in God to read my story, because God made you and me just the same and he loves us to the moon and back. That’s what my Gamma says, though I don’t know if God is on the moon ‘cause there’s no people up there.
Down syndrome was named after a doctor who discovered it. His name was Dr. Down. My Gampa likes to say “Get Down, Billy!” and then he dances around like a special needs man. Dr. Down found out that people like me are missing a chromosome, which is a tiny little thing inside of us we can’t even see without a super powerful microscope. I looked in one once and there were creepy things like baby crabs in there. I don’t like the idea of baby crabs living inside me but the doctor said there were T-rex white cells who beat up the crabs. I like having T-rex super heroes living inside me. That’s super cool!
When I was ten years old I got famous. Everybody knew my name. Lots of people all around wanted to see me and touch me and hear me. I liked it. But not all of it. Some of what happened made me sad. I wish people didn’t have to be mean. If everyone had Down syndrome I think they might be happier. I don’t know about that.
My Mom and Dad are going to help me with my story. Her name is Linda so when it says “Linda” that’s her talking, okay? His name is Steve. When it says Billy, then that’s me, Billy Blue Sky. We’re going to tell you my story together. My Mom didn’t want him to help write the book but I told her it was my book and she said I was right, it is my book. So even though we’re not together in real life, we will be together in my book. Totally cool!
If you want to read my story you have to believe in magic. I want you to pinky swear with me. That means you mean it. You don’t have to swear to God ‘cause my Gampa said God doesn’t like it when we swear at him.
Now put up your pinky. Good. Let’s hook our pinkies together. Great. Now close your eyes and wish I may and wish I might, I wish upon a star tonight I promise to believe whatever Billy says cause it is the truth, so help me God.
Because God will help you if you ask him to.
I hope you like my story.
Love,
Billy
What are you waiting for?
For Adam, God’s man
- Abigail the Wise acts quickly and presents David with gifts and an apology
Last night I needed a boost so I went to the Midweek service at Spring Branch. I was feeling out of touch, out of sorts, out of gas, and I was hoping that God would speak to me through his people and in a place where people were coming together to do likewise. No matter what we believe, it is good to be with others who likewise believe.
Ahh, but it was good. The crowd at these events has grown to 75-100, yet it is intimate. First the singing. Someone told me the other day that people call singing in church “worship” because it is in those moments that they feel closest to God. There was almost a suggestion that this was false, and that we are simply programmed to believe that this is the only time to worship God, when of course it is not. We can worship and commune and communicate and BE with the Lord any time, all the time.
If we are the temple of the holy spirit and God is in us then this must be so. We think we can flee but look, we take him with us wherever we go! Yet singing can in fact be a catalyst and it can cause our heart strings to quiver and our spirit to flow. It did last night for me and it was good to flow like a river.
Then my pastor Adam spoke. Adam is younger than me by nearly twenty years. He is the Associate Pastor, number two behind Michael Simone. He came up through the ranks as a youth pastor, then went to seminary. He has operated in the shadow of Michael, a gifted orator and communicator. Michael is my pastor.
But last night Adam became my pastor, my shepherd. As his name suggests, he became number one, the first one, last night. He had arrived and brought water with him to quench my thirst. I was so thirsty to drink this living water. I needed it brought to me by a servant. It was brought.
The question Adam posed was, “What is God’s will for us?”
Adam told the story of Nabal, Abigail and David, the man who would be king, from 1Samuel 25. Nabal was a rich man with many flocks, who had been watched over by David and his army. When David asked to be received and thanked by Nabal his men were rejected and sent back empty handed. David then did the only thing an old testament kind could do: he strapped on his sword and took his army to wipe out Nabal and all his people.
Fortunately Nabal’s wife had better instincts then her “surly” husband, as scripture calls him. The Bible describes Abigail as beautiful and intelligent. Adam pointed out that there is no mistake in the use of these words. Her intelligence caused her to instantly load a feast of food and wine on several donkeys and take it to David, who was on his way to take his revenge with his army. Abigail threw herself at the feet of David and asked for mercy. She took the blame from her husband. She won David over and he spared Nabal and his people.
Adam pointed out that sometimes we should not wait to hear the will of God. Sometimes we must act on our instincts based on what we believe to be right, in the hopes that our values, morals and belief system is based on God’s will for all things. This is not to say don’t listen for God’s word, for his direction and guidance. Drink from his word, wear it around your neck, put on the clothes of his righteousness.
Then you must act.
Abigail did not wring her hands, saying, “Woe is me. Have mercy on me Lord!” It was not God who was marching to kill her and her people. It was David, with an Army. She did not need to ask how to correct the mistake. She knew how to right the wrong. We usually do know what to do. Not always. We may have doubts, but still we have a good idea of what to do. So do it. That’s what Abigail did. She acted.
Acting is usually not a problem with me, in fact the reverse is true. I get in trouble by acting too quickly, and not waiting enough. For me learning to wait on God is a good thing. But in my haste to act, I know that sometimes I get it right, and I also know that if I had waited, I would have gotten nothing at all. Because one way or another, God WILL let you know. You may run into a hurdle or a wall and have to turn around and start over.
Or you may get it right. So get going. Take the plunge. Just do it, for God’s sake. And for yours.
Eating my Pony
Lilli and I were drawing pictures on her ridiculously cheap drawing thing. It is about the size of a wallet. You draw on it and the plastic starts pulling up immediately and the drawing starts to disappear unless you really crease that sucker hard with the stupid little plastic scribe that comes with it. So cheap and awful, so perfect for Lilli and me.
She was the director and she told me what to draw. I was the artist, and I drew whatever she told me to. I know what side of bread my butter is on. Does it really matter? What a dumb saying. I drew an apple tree… with a rainbow. Then a duck, also with a rainbow. She’s three, remember, so rainbows are totally cool. Then she asked me to draw a pony. My horses tend to get pretty clunky, unlike Patty’s which will make you laugh and weep with happiness.
Meanwhile Patty was at the bar Googling broccoli on the laptop. She had just picked two barrow loads of it and had wheeled it in to the house, announcing to all that “we’re going to be eating a lot of broccoli, people.” Okay, I may have added the “people” part but you get the idea. She doesn’t mess around with things that come out of her garden. You will eat them my precious, yes you will. She was Googling to see if we could eat the broccoli after it flowers without killing ourselves.
I had just drawn Lilli a pony, and then added wings, which made me a hero.
“I love my pony,” she said.
“We can eat it!” shouted Patty.
“No we can’t, Nana,” said Lilli, convinced her Nana wanted to eat her little pony.
I laughed. They can’t script stuff like this, folks. Seriously nation, this is good stuff.
My Windswept Life
I was walking Hoppy the Amazing Dog this morning. Same old same old. Every day I walk her, in the morning and later in the day. Plus she likes to dash out with me for the mail, in hopes that a slow squirrel or cat with a broken leg will sacrifice itself for Hoppy to conquer. She probably wouldn’t kill it. She’d probably run at it growling, then skid to a stop, sniff it, and walk away to sniff other more interesting things, as if the cat or squirrel were uninteresting to her, not worth her time.
Sometimes when we walk outside our idiot cat hides in the open, plain as day. He crouches down and waits for us to walk by so he can jump out and kill us in his own tiger fantasy. Does he think we can’t see him there in the short grass, tail twitching to get our attention? Seriously, he should try the bushes next time.
Hoppy and I had made the turn and were on the the way back home. Home where she knew two cups of that same old delicious dog food awaited her. The dog food that made her so happy she would spin in circles with capering joy. Every time it is the same, she spins in circles. Every time she poops, she spins in slow circles, as if to find the centrifugal force and the right bulls-eye mark to squat on.
For some reason on our walk back I noticed a tree that had always been there. It is a windswept live oak, perhaps 15-feet tall. Bent way over towards the southwest. The owners had tied a heavy rope to it on the northeast side in the hopes of stopping the tree from leaning.
But the tree was meant to lean. They grow that way and the beauty of the beach is partly about how the live oaks grow gnarly and bent in response to the constant pressure of the northeast winds. The wind blows and so they bend. The wind blows a long time and they stay bent. It is meant to be. It is a good thing. It is normal.
But the people don’t want a bent tree. They want a perfectly straight tree to match their perfectly straight house and their perfectly manicured yard and their perfectly clean cars. My car is dirty. Sometimes I walk up to the back of my van at a store or church and think, “that’s disgusting, who would let their car get that dirty?” Oh…. it was me.
I have a lot of bent trees in my yard and I love them. They remind me that there is great beauty in the imperfect things around us. Bent or straight, all made by God. I have a crippled dog and a lot of people feel sorry for her because she’s not perfect. But I love her imperfections and she loves me in a perfect way. I have a lot of kids toys in my yard and it is not as neat as it could be. But I like it that way, a lawn painting by my grandkids.
My windswept life blows me in one direction, the direction I am going, the direction I was intended to go. It bends me and I allow myself to bend, a bonzai of life.
A Call from Ruben
For some reason I woke up feeling grumpy this morning. I decided that the world and certain people in it were picking on me, out to get me and just plain mean at me. That’s what my youngest daughter used to say when she was little. “I’m mean at you, Daddy.”
So I began to cycle my emotional washing machine on heavy wash and agitated myself with thoughts of what would happen and what I would do. How I would vanquish them and conquer them and put them down and not let them put me down and bladdy bladdy blah. As I walked my dog on the beach and watched the sun come up I was thinking about how I would tell off those dastardly folks who dared to demean me. And that’s a lot of Ds, if you take my meaning. Somebody, please take it!
I obsessed about things that probably would not happen and compulsively went over them, hammered on them, considered them and worried about them as if they were going to happen. I was paranoid in the usual sense of the word. Not a healthy place to be, and not a place I like being. But sometimes I live there for a while, as if I belong. Or want to belong. Always after, when I return to my rightful place I wonder what the devil was I doing there. Then I remember that sometimes I am the devil, or he in me, a rightful takeover of my mind and heart his only goal and me the willing kidnap victim.
I returned home, showered and drank my morning coffee whilst reading my morning paper, that shrunken bit of newsprint I hold on to, part of my daily routine. My phone buzzed and the caller ID said, “RUBEN.” I did not want to answer, and for a long ring I considered letting it go to voice mail.
Ruben calls me every day. Sometimes he misses Sundays, when even he understands that there needs to be a break in the pattern, a temporary disconnect. Ruben is 38 years old and has some intellectual disabilities, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He has trouble fitting in, yet he constantly pushes to fit in. He is a Bible savant and can give you chapter and verse on just about any subject.
But he calls me every day. It can be a pain. Today I didn’t want to deal with him, but I did. I answered and we went through our normal routine. Ruben just needs to know I’m there. He needs to hear my voice and know I give a heck about him. Same old, same old.
Apparently I need him too, because after I rang off I felt better. My paranoia was gone, now revealed as a disgusting momentary mean streak. It was unimportant and I swept it under the rug of my day and became the man Ruben expects of me. Ruben is my friend.
I’m looking forward to his next call.
Mr. Brown Can Moo
Eli sleeps on his Papa's easy chair
Normally my office is littered with manuscripts waiting to be read. Today I noticed two other things that litter my office: my grandson Eli, sleeping on the easy chair behind me, and a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can you?
The book of course was there because of Eli and Lilli. Their flotsam and jetsam litters our house, and everywhere we look there they are, even when they are gone. The evidence of their passing is left behind to remind us of the next time we will be lucky enough to see them again. Our empty nest is never empty long.
Eli was supposed to be napping in his crib downstairs. Perhaps he did for a while. But then I heard the sound of small feet coming up the stairs to my studio. I thought to myself, “Uh oh, someone is in trouble.” I went out to the landing and looked down at him, prepared to say some kind of gruff Papa words to discipline him.
He looked up at me and said, “I’m coming to see you, Papa.”
I just looked down at him. He shook his head and confessed. “I got out of my crib.”
For a two-year-old boy that was both a confession and pride in the fact that he had managed to get out of his crib, sneak out without waking his sister and come up to see his Papa, his pal, the man he loves to play with and who he KNOWS loves him. Right Papa?
All this went through my head and I just could not be mad at him. He climbed up the stairs, a mildly worried look on his face. He knew he was wrong to be there but he was willing to risk it all to be there. I picked him up and said, “You’re supposed to be taking a nap.”
He put his head on my shoulder and said, “I got out of my crib. I came to see Papa.”
Well at that point I would have signed the house over to him or pretty much whatever he wanted, so I said, “Do you want to sleep up here with Papa?”
He said, “Yes, Papa.”
So I got him my pillow and a blanket and he fell asleep in plain sight of his Papa. And I got to turn and look at him as he fell asleep. Every time I turned he was looking right at me and we smiled at each other, secure in our love. Every time his eyes got heavier and then, he was asleep.
Now I write these words to record the lucky life I have with Eli, my grandson, the boy sleeping behind me.
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