Easter and that damn list

Easter morning is different, if you allow it to be.  It’s the days leading up to it that are fleeting.

Supposedly, the High Holy Days of the Christian faith happen this weekend. And yet, I didn’t think about it much until halfway through the Good Friday night service.  It was just something else on the calendar. Something else I had to do this week—grocery store, laundry, mow the lawn, oh yeah-Friday night at the church and then Sunday. What do I have to bring to the lunch on Sunday? Back to the store.

It was just something else on the list of things to do.

But it isn’t.

For those of us out there that might feel the same way, here’s the thing—it’s okay to feel that way. The God that we celebrate is not disappointed in us. We do that to ourselves. He already knew about our inability to focus before we did, and yet He still  adores us.

For those agnostics or atheists among us, it’s okay. No one is going to beat you up, at least not on this web page.  Sometimes, if we certified Christians were honest, a lot of us feel the same way. The idea of us having it all together, all the answers, our lives all sorted, the world is smoother for us, is a, well, mostly a lie.

We cheat, struggle, lie, kill, suffer, divorce, die, just like everyone else. We have been infected with the same terminal illness everyone on this planet is infected with. So what?

We believe in something that happened two thousand years ago, actually-it was set up since we started living on this rock.

What if…

The story of the carpenter’s kid was true? What if he grew up, became a rabbi, had a few people following him around a crappy part of the world for three years, his death witnessed and documented?  So, what if, just what if---the rest is true?

The problem with this story isn’t the story, its us who read the story. We think in order to be a ‘good’ Christian, we need to fall on our faces, live a clean and pure life, never make a mistake, and when we do, we beat ourselves up, preferably in front of a thousand witnesses to show our piousness. If we’re lucky, God will have pity on us and take us in, after first scolding us and shaking his god finger at us. We are just lucky to be accepted—we should just be grateful we got God on a good day.

The problem is two fold, that’s not what God thinks of us at all and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything we do. He would even say that was 'Bull' (Yes, my God uses that word, usually followed with the ‘S’ word but I wanted to be pious).

Here is the truth—he adores us.

He knows our issues before we do. He knows we will not only trip, we will fall like a friggin rock. We will screw up, apologize, and do it fifty more times before the week is out. And yet, when we speak, He holds his hands up to the angels, silencing their singing because he wants to hear what we are saying. We bring Him joy, even in our poopy pants. He smiles at our attempt and failure. It isn’t us that stands ourselves up again after we’ve fallen, but the hands of our Dad. He brushes off our clothes, wipes our tears, points us down range again, and sends us off to make another attempt at this life. He is so proud, so in love with us, we can not fathom such a love. 

He does not want us to feel guilt beyond what guilt is designed for, to draw our attention to our spirit telling us we might want to look at what we are doing and see if this is what we really want to do. He does not believe the person that suffers publicly more than anyone else is, in fact, more Christian. Actually, He knows it to be the opposite. There is no list He is keeping on us, no tally of wrongs. That sheet has been shredded, destroyed. “What list?” He would respond to our “Yeah, but….” comment about how screwed up we are. That bill was paid, on a nob of a hill outside an ancient city.

So, here we are at Easter in 2013. Eggs, bunnies, candy, and paisley colors. Fathers attending the one church service of the year, breaking out their one suit and painful shoes because their ‘suppose to.’

You can hear Dad use that word again—that compound word that I believe, and I think there is Biblical support in the minor prophets to back me up, is His favorite word. I think on this day, this one day, He doesn't care what you wear, only what your heart says. He only wants to celebrate the gift he gave us. What if you wore a Hawaiian shirt to church? What if you wore shorts? How about if you didn’t shave or shower? Would Dad love you any less? He can’t. It’s not in his character. There is nothing you did, are doing, or will do, that will make Him go away. He can’t. Once He's in, he's in. He sees you perfectly, just the way He made you. All you have to do is accept it.

He is drawn to our voices. He loves us like a Dad is suppose to. Totally. 

Dare, just once, to believe, and pitch the list.

Happy Easter

The Ball Cap

I never thought I would ever say these words, but in 'my generation' we knew how to wear ball caps. As long as ball caps have been around, there is a way to wear them. Not taking anything away from my son or sons-in-laws, ball cap wearing today rides the fence and has taken on some new looks. There is an important aspect of this we need to be aware of.

The way you wear a cap, especially older men-like me, means something.

Early this morning, while running on the beach towards North island Naval Air Station, I passed a man. He was an old man, at least mid to late seventies-maybe in his eighties. He was walking in the opposite direction, away from the air station. I noticed as I ran by him, he had on a San Diego ball cap. Men his age, who wear ball caps, say something about who they are, just by the way they wear it.

But there was something else.

First, whenever you pass an elderly person on this island, you always use the word 'sir.' It just is natural here. You never know who you are talking to and every last one of them deserves the word. This is a warrior village and some of these people are retired warriors. There was the cap this man was wearing but there was also the man that was very telling.

He walked with a bad limp, like the hip replacement worked on one side but not on the other or he was waiting for the other to be replaced as well. He was walking like a man who, in years passed, probably ran this beach in the morning before his morning flight mission, although he might of been a surface warfare man-the guy was just too big to drive a plane. Even at his age, he was still tall, over 6'2". He could have been a commander of a ship, maybe a cruiser, or even a carrier during Gulf War One. He was on the bridge when he got word of a sonar 'ping' of an unknown target about five miles out. He would have calmly called 'general quarters' and as the bridge crew made ready for a fight, a young seaman would have walked over to him with the old man's battle cover. He would have looked at the kid and simply shake his head. the seaman would have stored the cover where he always stores it, thinking the same thing he always did 'the old man never wears it.' The man would have his ball cap of the ship's moniker on its front, just like the 'SD' he wore today. He would have pulled it off and adjusted it once, just like he was hitting an approach shot at Augusta, a nervous habit just before he gave the first combat order.The bill of the cap properly curled the way caps should be curled.

The old man walking down the beach had a squared away jaw, white hair, and steel blue eyes. His skin was mottled from sun exposure and age. He was an old man now. We see them everywhere, walking down the center of the sidewalk, taking up the entire lane. We get frustrated because we want to pass them but can't squeeze by on the right and the left has people coming towards us.

Sure, this guy could have been an insurance salesman from Topeka. He might have been nowhere near war and the only gun he ever touched was a gold embossed hunting rifle his great grandfather willed him from their estate in Nantucket.

But this place is holy ground. Men like that don't like it here, at least this part of the beach, so close to a warrior village. Something happens to them, and they turn back before they get close to the fence separating the base from the world. This man I passed, I felt, knew the launch codes to the cruise missiles on his ship as well as where the hole in the perimeter fence he and his buddies used to get down to the beach, bypassing the guards at the gate. I had to test it.

I made the turn and ran to see if I could catch him. In the predawn light, I could see the silhouette shuffling up the beach. The distance from the running part of the beach and the water started to narrow and other runners were up and down the beach. The old man, of course, was right in the middle of the space. As I came up behind him, I began to pass on his left. I called out as I began my pass 'by your leave sir.' His response was automatic and telling-'carry on'.

Apparently, he was not an insurance salesman from Topeka.

A new walk through an old bar

Some time, I think it was around 1944, a young naval aviator, after having a few drinks, hopped up on the wooden bar in the Del Coronado Hotel on San Diego's North Island-and danced.

It was war time. The bar was a welcome rest for crews coming back from the war in the Pacific. It wasn't uncommon to have officers and enlisted, their uniforms sometimes covered with the soot of fires faught from battle, days worth of facial hair, and dirt under their nails due to lack of clean water on their ships, finding some leave time and heading for heaven on earth.

Why this young aviator (dare never to call a naval aviator a 'pilot') was in the bar was uncertain. He was a squadron commander of Black Cats. But they were out of Alameda. No one remembers why he was here. It could of been for a thousand different reasons.

Some how, he ended up at this bar.

Sixty-nine years later, I find myself sitting here too, sipping a very good scotch. It seems appropriate to drink a fine scotch at a place like this. I was by myself, also appropriate. I tried to imagine the time, the smells, the feelings, of the young men, maybe dashed with a few pretty girls. The aviator was more than likely drinking beer, good cold beer. When he was on station in the Pacific, the beer was as cool as the air temp. Good cold beer, laughter, no one trying to kill you, all seem to lead to a condition allowing this young man to decide to, well, dance.

I looked down on the edge of the bar, carved to allow you to fold your arm across your leaning chest comfortably on the edge. There were marks and dents in the wood. I smiled at the thought that maybe one of them was from this young man's  heels scuffing the edge as his friends cheered him on to hop up and do whatever a drunk aviator does on a bar after a few beers-before life falls in on him again. I figured the bar would have been refinished a dozen times since then. But still, the mark was there, somewhere, it was just hiding.

No matter. I was close enough.

So,  three chairs from the end, with a good drink, I sat and watched, imagining the dance; the bar tender probably drying a glass and shaking his head; his friends, laughing and clapping, and with some hope the aviator keeps his clothes on.

Good form Dad. I raise my glass to you, almost seventy years late.