“Grandpa, I’ve already learned to swim, and pretty soon I get to go to kindergarten, right? Will my kindergarten teacher teach me everything I need to know, like Miss Britten and Robert Fulghum taught you before you got to be decrepit?
“Remember, Grandpa, what Rev. Fulghum said? ‘Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.'”
When I’m old like you, will I still smile? Or will I be a frowning curmudgeon?
Dear Folks,
There is a custom at a little church in the Midwest that goes like this. Whenever a person is about to be baptized, the minister calls out to the congregation, “Who stands with this child?” and the extended family or close friends rise from their seats and offer an outward and visible testimony of their inward commitment. They stand, hearts brimming and knees shaking, even though they know sometimes their love might seem compromised or limited or unreciprocated. They rise to pledge that they’ll do the best they can. These are the folks in the child’s life who know that growing up has never been easy, the people who know that being a parent is hard work in the best of circumstances.
And this custom of folks popping up here and there in the pews at a baptism makes the church feel cozy and warm and like a family, but I want to warn us from easy sentimentality, from striving to build a church in which it would be simple to guess who might stand for whom. The community of faith is more than a family. The measure of our vibrancy is not when we gather amiable people to stand with their neighbors… rather the church is created when enemies break bread together, when one broken-hearted outcast stands up for another, when a queen kneels before a poor, unwed mother or a recovering addict, and calls her sister.
That is the society that we are trying to create here and beyond, at home and at work and at play. The community of saints is both more welcoming and more challenging than most of our biological families. Our litmus test is not blood, but the spirit, and when we are at our best, the spirit of God is breathing through us wherever we go.
A child named Matthew was presented for baptism at an Episcopal church a few years back, and I imagine a group of folks stood to support him and his family as they gathered around the font. But that same Matthew, child of God, was beaten and left for dead as a young man, tied to a fence post like yesterday’s garbage, because his way of being challenged some people’s idea of family values. He loved “the wrong person,” another man, and that made some of his neighbors mad. So one dark night, two very scared and confused young people, also God’s children, acted out of their own brokenness, and their fear turned murderous.
It would not have surprised me if Matthew’s parents had settled into their own murderous rage, mirroring the worst of their son’s killers, looking for vengeance, an eye for an eye. But his parents did something extraordinary. They asked for their son’s killers to be forgiven. They stepped beyond the narrow circle of family of blood into the family of the spirit, and saw another son staring back at them through the eyes of their enemy.
Our true brothers and sisters are as likely to be our so-called enemies as our friends. Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for what is right and merciful, because that is what the human family looks like and feels like and hurts like. Jesus is describing us. We belong to each other. Any walls we build between us, of race and class and gender, of sexuality and nationality and ethnicity, of political party and religious tribe, are walls of fear. Each of us has been a wanderer and a stranger, and our call is to make the world feel more like home for all.
Who will you stand with today?
Well-fed Elijah has become curious about television. He has a new topic and questions.
“Grandpa, Mom’s been watching CNN. What’s CNN?”
“It’s a 24-hours-a-day news channel, one of many television channels.”
“Yeah, my great uncle John doesn’t like CNN. He told Mom she should be watching FOX. What’s FOX, Grandpa?”
“Well, Elijah, it’s too early for that discussion. There are more choices than CNN and FOX.
“Yeah, like MSNBC and Rachel Maddow! I like Rachel! I don’t like Sean Hannity. He’s mean!”
“I understand. But you need to be careful. Both Rachel and Sean only do one-way conversations.”
“Yeah, like ours, right Grandpa?”
“Sort of. But you get to talk back to me. Sort of. I can hear you. Rachel and Sean can’t and they don’t care what you have to say. When you get older you can choose your own television channel. You don’t have to watch the news all the time. But no matter what you end up watching, you’ll always have Grandpa.”
“But, Grandpa! There’s a lot of scary stuff out there in the big world. When I grow up, do I have to go out there?”
“Yes, Elijah, but this isn’t the time to worry about that.”
Ask Mom to turn on Sesame Street. There are lots of fun people on Sesame Street, like Big Bird, to help you get ready for the big world. Or you can come to Grandpa’s and Grandma’s house and watch re-runs of Mr. Rogers.”
“Who’s Mr. Rogers?”
“Well, Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister. Like Grandpa.”
“What’s a Presbyterian?”
“Well, that depends on who you ask, Elijah. Some people call us ‘God’s frozen chosen’ ’cause they think we think we’re special and we don’t show a lot of emotion in worship. But for me, a Presbyterian is someone just like Mr. Rogers.
“So . . . will you help me to tie my shoelaces when I get shoes?”
Elijah is 10 today. That would be 10 DAYS old. Just the right age for a good conversation like the one with my fiancée years ago. When that one finished, I said “that was one of the best conversations I’ve ever had!”
“Do you know I haven’t spoke a word for the last three hours?” she said with a forgiving smile.
I enjoy “talking” with Elijah. He asks the questions. I give the answers.
“Grandpa, you look really old! Were you ever born?”
“Yes, Elijah, I was born too, a long time ago.”
“And you’re a Christian, too, right Grandpa?”
“Yes, Elijah, I was born, and yes, I’m a Christian.”
“So . . . that means you got born twice?”
“Well, Elijah, not quite.”
“Grandpa, am I a Christian?”
“Well, Elijah, no, not yet. But you are a child of God.”
“Whew!”
“But, Grandpa, if I want to be a Christian like you, do I have to get born all over again? I hated that!!!”
“No, Elijah. You won’t ever have to do that ever again. That’s behind you now.”
“But, Grandpa . . . what about being born again? What about being saved? Don’t I have to get saved?”
“No, Elijah. The second ‘birth’ doesn’t change the first one. It just makes you thankful for it and makes you responsible for other children of God like you.”
“Whew! So, like when I’m falling asleep at Mom’s breast, I’m like ‘born again’? I’m already a Christian, just like you, Grandpa! I’m getting kinda hungry, Grandpa.
Where’s Mom?”
Funny how things come to consciousness slowly over time until, in a flash of light, what should have been obvious all along comes clearly into view.
Learning that “Memorial Day and the Soldier’s Helmet” would not air as expected on Minnesota Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” because of its length, I went back to read it and hear it again over morning coffee.
Hearing the ending again –“three men in a living room — two Americans and on dead Japanese….” — I realized there were more than three. There were five.
Without the influence of the missing two, “Memorial Day and the Soldier’s Helmet” would not have been written. It was as though the pen I had thought was in my hand had been in theirs. They had written the piece.
Who were the missing two?
My American father, the former World War II Army Air Force Chaplain on Saipan, and Kosuke Koyama, the teenage Japanese survivor of the American firebombing of Tokyo.
My father, the Chaplain, on board ship to Saipan, WW!!. RIP
A father casts a long shadow over a son’s life.
Except for a poem he had written on Saipan about the flames of war lighting the night skies of the South Pacific, Dad didn’t talk about the war. During his 18 years as pastor of the Marple Presbyterian Church in Broomall, Pennsylvania, Korean and Japanese students from Princeton Theological Seminary were frequent weekend guests in our home.
Kosuke Koyama – RIP
Kosuke Koyama, who had been a student at Princeton Seminary during my teenage years, came into my life decades later in 1996 when he moved to Minneapolis following his retirement as John D. Rockefeller, Jr Professor of World Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.
Might Ko have been a guest in our home way back when?
That my father and Ko might have known each other is a happy thought.
But, whether they occupied the same physical space is not as important as the large space they opened in the inheritor of their influence. Two invisible men in a living room brought the other three together in the bonds of sacred silence and the hope of something better for us all.
Funny thing! If the recording had aired yesterday on “All Things Considered”, I might still be in the dark!
Some things bring tears to even the hardest of hearts. Christopher Duffley, the blind autistic 11 year-old does that here. Even those with hearts of stone might shed a tear “seeing” Christopher sing “Open the Eyes of My Heart”.
Elijah doesn’t like being confined. He’s screaming for release from his swaddle!
Maybe Elijah already knows about Martin Sostre held in solitary confinement at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, and the warden who allowed him only one hour of freedom in the prison yard . . . or about the 2016 prison revolt when the Dannemora inmates refused to return to their cells from the exercise yard.
“Mom! Stop acting acting like a warden! I love to drink and stuff… but I’m not a fetus anymore! I need some exercise! And stop calling me Elijah; my name is Martin!”
Perhaps the swaddle is to little Elijah’s mind what solitary confinement was to the protesting Martin: a violation of the human rights to the free exercise of speech and bodily movement for the purpose of allowing the warden . . . or the Mom . . . to sleep securely through the night.
But there’s a big difference between the two. When Martin Sostre made a lot of noise, Marin was confined to his swaddle while the warden slept soundly miles away. When Elijah – or is it Martin? – protests every hour or so through the night –“Mom! I’m not a fetus anymore!”– his mother is crying in the same cell.
This morning their roles have switched. Elijah’s sleepless mother is a weary protester; the well-fed rioter is sleeping happily in his swaddle.
Taking his first bath, newborn Elijah Andrew smiled his deep dimple smile, looking toward his mother cooing to him from her hospital bed following emergency surgery.
Newborns don’t really smile, I’ve been told. Their faces change because of gas or for some other bodily reason. But, looking at Elijah’s face, how can anyone doubt that Elijah is smiling at the sound of his mother’s voice?
Elijah Andrew, 8.1 lbs., 21 inches with huge shoulders and smile and dimpled smile.
After smiling at his mother, Elijah was heard to say to the nurse who was bathing him, “What you talking about? Baby’s DO smile! I’d know that voice anywhere. I’ve been with her everywhere she’s gone for almost nine months.”
Elijah fought his way into the world yesterday with the push of a very weary mother. His middle name is Andrew, named after his uncle, his mother Kristin’s younger brother.
Excited by the birth, I phoned a friend. “Hey,” I said, “I’m a grandson! Kristin just had a grandfather!” The grandson weighs 190. The grandfather 8.1.
Shout! Shout!
When the Chinese waitperson who has mixed two Kettle One martinis with twists and a yellowfin tuna roll listens carefully to the reason you’re at Sake Sushi — your pregnant step-daughter is being induced into labor two weeks before her due date because of high blood pressure — responds to your inappropriate question about a good name for the baby (it’s a boy) with “PETER!”, could she be the voice of God?
Just wondering. I’ve enjoyed two Kettle One martinis!
By morning I expect the baby to leave the womb. We shall see whether he is Jackson, Elijah, Eli, Micah. . . or Peter!
Pray for the mother, the child, and the weary grandmother at the hospital.
Views from the Edge 